Question: Dietary nutritional advice for breast cancer prevention and thoughts on HRT? Carrie: Well, that's probably better for you when it comes to like nutrient ratios and stuff. But I will say working for an estrogen lab, we're looking at phase one and phase two detoxification and what we're trying to assess with estrogen. Men and women, we make estrogen, and then we detox our estrogen. We go through phase one detoxification. Well, it becomes a reactive oxygen species essentially. Then we qui...
Apr 23, 2020•9 min
Sign up for the free newsletter: chrismasterjohnphd.com/covid19-updates Support the service by purchasing a copy of The Food and Supplement Guide for the Coronavirus: chrismasterjohnphd.com/coronavirus DISCLAIMER: I am not a medical doctor and this is not medical advice. I am also not an infectious disease epidemiologist and I am not speaking on behalf of infectious disease epidemiologists. I have a PhD in Nutritional Sciences and my expertise is in conducting and interpreting research related t...
Apr 22, 2020•5 min
Sign up for the free newsletter: chrismasterjohnphd.com/covid19-updates Support the service by purchasing a copy of The Food and Supplement Guide for the Coronavirus: chrismasterjohnphd.com/coronavirus DISCLAIMER: I am not a medical doctor and this is not medical advice. I am also not an infectious disease epidemiologist and I am not speaking on behalf of infectious disease epidemiologists. I have a PhD in Nutritional Sciences and my expertise is in conducting and interpreting research related t...
Apr 22, 2020•10 min
Question: What are causes for night sweats in men? Carrie: Oh. Well, it can be hormonal just like it can be for women. I test all the same hormones in men. I check their thyroid with night sweats. I definitely even check the same thing. I check cortisol and I do norepinephrine markers with night sweats. This is also assuming that I don't suspect cancer because night sweats can be a key note, especially in men, night sweats can be a key note for cancers, and so I want to make sure I'm not suspici...
Apr 22, 2020•4 min
Sign up for the free newsletter: chrismasterjohnphd.com/covid19-updates Support the service by purchasing a copy of The Food and Supplement Guide for the Coronavirus: chrismasterjohnphd.com/coronavirus DISCLAIMER: I am not a medical doctor and this is not medical advice. I am also not an infectious disease epidemiologist and I am not speaking on behalf of infectious disease epidemiologists. I have a PhD in Nutritional Sciences and my expertise is in conducting and interpreting research related t...
Apr 21, 2020•8 min
Sign up for the free newsletter: chrismasterjohnphd.com/covid19-updates Support the service by purchasing a copy of The Food and Supplement Guide for the Coronavirus: chrismasterjohnphd.com/coronavirus DISCLAIMER: I am not a medical doctor and this is not medical advice. I am also not an infectious disease epidemiologist and I am not speaking on behalf of infectious disease epidemiologists. I have a PhD in Nutritional Sciences and my expertise is in conducting and interpreting research related t...
Apr 21, 2020•8 min
Question: With an ovary removed, when should I think about increasing progesterone or estrogen? Carrie: You may actually need more progesterone. Like I was saying in the very beginning of this, that progesterone actually turns into that neurosteroid allopregnanolone, which can cross the blood-brain barrier and bind itself to GABA and affect sleep. It's very calming, obviously relaxing. It's GABA. Carrie: Obviously, there are other things that affect sleep too. If your norepinephrine is going up ...
Apr 21, 2020•4 min
Sign up for the free newsletter: chrismasterjohnphd.com/covid19-updates Support the service by purchasing a copy of The Food and Supplement Guide for the Coronavirus: chrismasterjohnphd.com/coronavirus DISCLAIMER: I am not a medical doctor and this is not medical advice. I am also not an infectious disease epidemiologist and I am not speaking on behalf of infectious disease epidemiologists. I have a PhD in Nutritional Sciences and my expertise is in conducting and interpreting research related t...
Apr 20, 2020•10 min
Sign up for the free newsletter: chrismasterjohnphd.com/covid19-updates Support the service by purchasing a copy of The Food and Supplement Guide for the Coronavirus: chrismasterjohnphd.com/coronavirus DISCLAIMER: I am not a medical doctor and this is not medical advice. I am also not an infectious disease epidemiologist and I am not speaking on behalf of infectious disease epidemiologists. I have a PhD in Nutritional Sciences and my expertise is in conducting and interpreting research related t...
Apr 20, 2020•9 min
Question: Why do I wake up early every morning when I'm depressed? Carrie: Now, with depression, it's heavily studied if you have an elevated or excessive cortisol awakening response, meaning you go higher, your spike is higher and more dramatic than the average bear, then your risk for morning depression is much higher. The reason for that as we've already touched upon with estrogen and the serotonin versus kynurenine pathway because high excessive glucocorticoids or cortisol can also upregulat...
Apr 20, 2020•8 min
Sign up for the free newsletter: chrismasterjohnphd.com/covid19-updates Support the service by purchasing a copy of The Food and Supplement Guide for the Coronavirus: chrismasterjohnphd.com/coronavirus DISCLAIMER: I am not a medical doctor and this is not medical advice. I am also not an infectious disease epidemiologist and I am not speaking on behalf of infectious disease epidemiologists. I have a PhD in Nutritional Sciences and my expertise is in conducting and interpreting research related t...
Apr 19, 2020•10 min
Sign up for the free newsletter: chrismasterjohnphd.com/covid19-updates Support the service by purchasing a copy of The Food and Supplement Guide for the Coronavirus: chrismasterjohnphd.com/coronavirus DISCLAIMER: I am not a medical doctor and this is not medical advice. I am also not an infectious disease epidemiologist and I am not speaking on behalf of infectious disease epidemiologists. I have a PhD in Nutritional Sciences and my expertise is in conducting and interpreting research related t...
Apr 19, 2020•8 min
Sign up for the free newsletter: chrismasterjohnphd.com/covid19-updates Support the service by purchasing a copy of The Food and Supplement Guide for the Coronavirus: chrismasterjohnphd.com/coronavirus DISCLAIMER: I am not a medical doctor and this is not medical advice. I am also not an infectious disease epidemiologist and I am not speaking on behalf of infectious disease epidemiologists. I have a PhD in Nutritional Sciences and my expertise is in conducting and interpreting research related t...
Apr 19, 2020•8 min
Sign up for the free newsletter: chrismasterjohnphd.com/covid19-updates Support the service by purchasing a copy of The Food and Supplement Guide for the Coronavirus: chrismasterjohnphd.com/coronavirus DISCLAIMER: I am not a medical doctor and this is not medical advice. I am also not an infectious disease epidemiologist and I am not speaking on behalf of infectious disease epidemiologists. I have a PhD in Nutritional Sciences and my expertise is in conducting and interpreting research related t...
Apr 19, 2020•6 min
Question: How does the body make hormones and what nutrients and foods do they need to do this? Carrie: Now, as far as nutrients go, like I said, cholesterol is the backbone to all of your hormones. Much like the gentleman who said earlier his cholesterol was quite low, it can impact the way and the amount of hormones that you make. The lower your cholesterol is, the tougher time you can have to make hormones. But the more cholesterol you make doesn't necessarily mean you're going to have mass a...
Apr 17, 2020•13 min
Question: Should someone with low testosterone go back on testosterone replacement therapy or wait it out? Carrie: Men have luteinizing hormone just like women do. It comes from the brain. It's what stimulates the testes to make testosterone. If you have low LH, then I know it's a brain problem, not necessarily a testicular problem. If your LH is normal, it's not in the brain. Chris: If the question is how long should he wait, waiting is probably not going to give you any more answers than it wa...
Apr 16, 2020•9 min
Question: What to do about low libido after a LEEP procedure? Carrie: With the LEEP procedure, so like I was saying, basically it's kind of like a hot knife through butter. They cut away a portion of the cervix. And it depends. Sometimes it's a little portion and sometimes they do what they call like a full big slider right across the face of the cervix. If you remember, for those of you who maybe never seen a cervix, it's shaped like a doughnut. Literally, your cervix is this tiny little pink d...
Apr 15, 2020•5 min
Question: Would a seasonally low vitamin D intake and high calcium intake cause soft tissue calcification? Chris: Yeah, okay. The end of this question is would the calcium simply be excreted due to the low vitamin D levels. Your vitamin D level being low, the first thing that's going to do and the major thing that's going to do is it's going to lower your calcium absorption. You would have more calcium excreted in the feces as a result of not absorbing it if your vitamin D level is low. However,...
Apr 14, 2020•5 min
Question: Question on Iodine, Fatigue, and Detox Reaction. Carrie: Remember, iodine belongs to the halogen family and other halogens can bind onto your PT or tyrosine. I have had this before where patients would take iodine and the iodine will push off the fluoride and the chloride and the bromide off of the tyrosine, and so it binds on and now you have essentially a detox reaction. People will say, "I get headaches. I've broken out in rashes. I'm really tired." Because the other halogens have c...
Apr 13, 2020•6 min
Question: How to lower Sex Hormone-Binding Globulin (SHBG)? Carrie: SHBG is like bane of my existence. I have no idea how to get SBHG down once it's up. Boy, I actually talk to practitioners about this all the time to figure that out. I would agree that supplements that for SHBG, it's very hit or miss, Tongkat being one of them, DHEA being the other. There are two other ones, stinging nettles and Avena oats. There's like very mild, very weak research about lowering SHBG with nettles and then wit...
Apr 10, 2020•8 min
Question: Why does estrogen regulate tryptophan metabolism? Chris: I think that it's basically the body trying to make sure that the baby has enough niacin because chronic estrogen exposure would occur during pregnancy. When I was doing my niacin research, one thing that I found is that women seem to need more total niacin than men, but they seem to be better at making niacin from protein. What's really interesting is that the studies that were done that were used to make the RDA, there weren't ...
Apr 09, 2020•6 min
Question: Insomnia is different between people who are and aren't on HRT? Carrie: Yes, sort of. If it's strictly a hormone issue, if she says, "I've never had insomnia. I turned 45 and I got insomnia. And, oh, by the way, I'm also having irregular periods and hot flashes and night sweats and all this stuff," I find that going on HRT generally resolves their insomnia. If they've had insomnia their whole life and, by the way, they're having hormonal issues as well or they're perimenopausal, going ...
Apr 08, 2020•2 min
Question: The use of pregnenolone to manage perimenopausal symptoms, particularly insomnia. Carrie: Well, so here's the thing about pregnenolone. Oral or sublingual, so if you've got drops or little tables you suck on. Pregnenolone and progesterone, when they go through first pass, so you swallow them and then you go through first pass, they turn into other metabolites. One is called allo, which is short for allopregnanolone. Allo binds to your GABA receptors in your brain. Allo can cross the bl...
Apr 07, 2020•2 min
Question: Guidance on what time of day it is best to take T4 and/or T3? Carrie: It actually depends if you're taking immediate release T4 or T3 especially or sustained release because T4 has a much longer half-life which is why we traditionally say to take it in the morning since it helps with energy and metabolism and all those things. Although I do know some people choose to take their T4 at night before bed. But T3 has a very short half-life, and so what I'm finding is some practitioners are ...
Apr 06, 2020•2 min
Question: A rant on why many people use "MTHFR" to slap a label on their health problems. I put MTHFR in quotes because I meant it the way that people mean when they say, "I have MTHFR." Everyone has MTHFR. What people mean by that is they have these MTHFR polymorphisms. What I meant by that title is that there's a very compelling—It's not totally airtight. It's not completely proven. There's a very compelling argument that the low activity of the C677T polymorphism in MTHFR is exclusively a res...
Apr 03, 2020•9 min
Question: Are there safety concerns in supplementing cyanocobalamin rather methylcobalamin in those with MTHFR polymorphisms? If you're concerned about methylation-related issues, you would want to be careful with methylcobalamin supplementation in a way that you would not need to be careful about hydroxocobalamin supplementation. If you don't have a specific methylation-related goal, then I think hydroxocobalamin is the default because that's the sort of like metabolically neutral B12 in that i...
Apr 02, 2020•2 min
Question: What about pyroluria and measuring kryptopyrroles? I think it's fairly harmless to increase zinc and B6 as a test of whether that's true and see if you get results from it. But I wouldn't treat it like a diagnostic value because no one has followed up any science on that disorder in the decades since it's been proposed. Kryptopyrroles are very similar to porphyrins, that LabCorp has a whole series of tests on. I would go to LabCorp's site, go to Test Menu and then search it for porphyr...
Apr 01, 2020•3 min
Question: How to manage blood levels of omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids. I don't specifically want to look at the omega-3-to-omega-6 ratio. The AA/EPA ratio, I do not believe in wanting to get it low enough to prevent inflammation. I don't believe in using it that way. But I do believe that if it were too low, it could cause problems. I don't know what the cutoff would be. But if you're on the low end of normal, then I would think about cutting back your intake of EPA. But my main concern would ...
Mar 31, 2020•2 min
Question: Can PEMT genetics cause fat malabsorption, mineral deficiencies, and oxalate problems? First of all, saponification of minerals, the point here is that if you have malabsorption of fat, the fatty acids are going to bind to any positively charged minerals in your diet. This has been particularly well studied in preterm infants where the poor absorption of fatty acids causes the fatty acids to bind to the calcium that have lower bioavailability. Yeah. If you surpass your ability to absor...
Mar 30, 2020•4 min
Question: Could an elevated BUN indicate protein malabsorption and low stomach acid? I get the Heidelberg test. That's the only accurate way to assess stomach acid. If you want to do something else, it would be better to use the kitchen techniques, like take half a teaspoon of baking soda and see how long you take to burp, or take HCl with your meal and keep adding capsules and see how many capsules you can take without reflux. That's probably both more accurate than using BUN. I find it almost ...
Mar 27, 2020•5 min
