The UltraMind Solution (53 page)

Scoring Key—Sexual Hormones for Men

Score one point for each box you checked.

PMS is a condition that causes mood swings, irritability, depression, anxiety, fluid retention, bloating, breast tenderness, sugar cravings, headaches, and sleep disturbances. It affects 75 percent of women.

In 20 percent, it is so severe it requires medical treatment, and about 8 percent have extreme symptoms that have been given a new name: premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD). Of course, a new drug called Sarafem has been “discovered” to cure it (it is only Prozac with a different label). This was a great sleight of hand by the pharmaceutical industry, skilled at producing new diseases to match its drugs.

What about
menopause
? The brain fog, memory loss, mood swings, sleepless nights, vaginal dryness, low sex drive, palpitations, and anxiety common in menopause are simply signs of hormonal imbalances (estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone). But are you truly destined to suffer?

And how about
andropause
? Although men experience a more gradual drop off in hormones, they too experience “andropause”—the slow decline in male (testosterone) and energy (DHEA) hormones, which leads to depression, fatigue, and loss of mental sharpness, not to mention loss of sexual desire and function.

What’s wrong with this picture?

It is based on the assumption that these symptoms are an inevitable part of aging and require “medical intervention” with serious medication to correct.

Which is simply untrue.

To think that 75 percent of women have a design flaw that gives them PMS and requires medical treatment to live a normal life is just absurd. To think that we all have to dwindle, shrivel, and lose our emotional, physical, and sexual vitality is a burdensome self-fulfilling prophecy.

We now have endless examples of balance and thriving at any age. One of my eighty-one-year-old female patients with a twinkle in her eye recently told me about her new boyfriend and their wonderful love life.

PMS, menopausal symptoms, and andropause are signs of imbalances in your sex hormones. They are not the result of mutant genes that destroy our sexual vitality as we age. Instead, they are treatable symptoms of underlying imbalance in one of the core systems in your body. Get the sex hormones back in balance, and these problems usually disappear.

The emotional strain that comes with these conditions is a telling way to understand the connection these hormones have to your mind, your body, and your reproductive cycle. It is yet another example of the way the body affects the brain.

Depression or Hormonal Imbalance?

Let me tell you the story of a patient of mine with PMDD. She was barely able to function. She suffered three weeks out of every month with severe physical symptoms and debilitating depression. Was she Prozac-deficient? I think not.

Maureen was thirty-seven years old. Many women feel worsening PMS symptoms as they get into their later reproductive years because of changes in hormonal cycles. Part of what Maureen experienced was severe depression, fatigue, anxiety, and food and sugar cravings that led to overeating and weight gain.

She also had joint pains, breast tenderness, heavy bleeding, hot flashes, dry skin, acne, hair loss, trouble with memory, poor sleep, and no sex drive.

Maureen didn’t drink alcohol, but was a big coffee drinker. She started the day with a bagel and cheese, had a cafeteria lunch, chocolates in the afternoon, and a healthy dinner followed by binging on ice cream, potato chips, and Cheerios.

She also complained of gas and bloating.

She also ate a lot of dairy, which a lot of people (this woman included) are sensitive to.

This is a story I hear all too often. The good news is that there was a simple solution for Maureen that didn’t involve taking medication.

We know that sugar, caffeine, alcohol, stress, and lack of exercise all contribute to worsening PMS
²⁴
and hormonal imbalances, including menopause and andropause.
²⁵

It is also true that dairy consumption can worsen hormonal imbalances because of all the hormones in milk.
^26
;
27
Even organic milk can come from pregnant cows— jacking up hormone levels.
²⁸

I helped Maureen change her diet, cut out the sugar and caffeine, eliminate her food allergens, take a few supplements and herbs, do a little exercise, and within one menstrual cycle her life changed.

All her symptoms resolved, she lost weight and dramatically increased her energy. Her mood stabilized (meaning her depression evaporated), and her acne and dry skin went away. All without medication.

The approach I take to this problem is part of the overall approach of Functional Medicine. Define the imbalance (in Maureen’s case severe hormonal imbalances), address the causes first (namely diet/lifestyle in this case), and then help the body repair and regain balance. The body’s natural intelligence takes care of the rest.

When you use this method to rebalance the hormones, not only do the
physical symptoms of PMS, menopause, or andropause disappear, but the mental symptoms usually go away as well. That’s because sex hormones act on various parts of your brain that influence your mood and behavior.

How Sex Hormones Act on the Brain

What many people don’t know (although they experience this all the time) is that sex hormones act on the brain directly to affect mood and cognition.

For example, estrogen promotes the production of neurotransmitters, especially serotonin, making it a wonderful antidepressant (not to mention a great sleep aid).

In fact, there are receptors for all hormones, including estrogen, in the brain. And estrogen in the brain seems to be neuroprotective, potentially reducing the risk of dementia.
²⁹
But a little too much can cause breast, uterine, and cervical cancer. Getting the balance right is essential.

Progesterone is another important sex hormone. Levels drop in PMS and in perimenopause, leading to increased anxiety and insomnia. There is evidence that natural, bioidentical (hormones identical to those produced by the body) progesterone reduces this anxiety and stress through its action on GABA receptors, the relaxing neurotransmitter—your body’s natural Valium.
³⁰

Testosterone is also a wonderful brain-boosting hormone that improves mood, memory, motivation, and overall cognitive function. It drops significantly in women and men with age and has an enormous impact on quality of life.
³¹
But it drops mostly because of weight gain, lack of exercise, stress, and high-sugar diets—not because we are genetically designed to have less testosterone as we age.

The biggest reason I see low testosterone in men is insulin resistance. High belly fat drives insulin up and testosterone down. That’s why men start looking like women and lose hair on their bodies, grow breasts, and have round, soft skin. It is because they are actually producing less testosterone and more estrogen. At the point that their estrogen levels exceed their testosterone levels, they sort of become women!

Correcting insulin problems by eating whole foods, cutting out sugar and white flour, and doing some exercise to build muscle may naturally raise testosterone levels. And if you are a man, be sure you root for the winning sports team, because research shows that when your team loses, your testosterone levels drop!
³²

I find, especially in older men, that giving them a little topical bioidentical
testosterone helps them build muscle and bone and lose weight; it relieves depression, stabilizes mood swings,
³³
improves memory and concentration,
³⁴
and improves sexual function.
³⁵
Even women benefit from the use of bioidentical testosterone in some cases.

Hormone replacement therapy must be carefully administered under a doctor’s supervision after adequate testing. I strongly advocate the use of “nature-made” molecules to support normal function, rather than “new to nature” or man-made substances, which often have many unwanted and dangerous effects.

That means supplementing your system with chemicals it already uses, like vitamins or minerals, is usually a better treatment than using medications.

This applies to hormones as well, which is why I recommend only
bioidentical hormones
. Used intelligently, at the right time, for the right patient, in the right dose, for the right amount of time, they can be lifesaving.

But 80 percent of the time, simply changing your diet and lifestyle, detoxifying, addressing stress, and rebalancing all the other seven keys to UltraWellness can often help you regain balance without taking hormones.

To do this, you need to know what is sending your hormones out of balance to begin with.

Why Are Our Sex Hormones Out of Balance?

Sex hormones can become unbalanced in both men and women. But
why
does this happen?

PMS and perimenopausal symptoms most women experience are because their hormones are out of balance. Estrogen levels actually increase, especially from the age of about thirty to fifty, and progesterone levels decrease either relatively or absolutely. Testosterone levels drop off in men and women, leading to a loss of energy, depression, and low sex drive.
³⁶

Many things promote these imbalances in hormones, such as a high-sugar, refined carbohydrate diet, caffeine, stress, dairy (if you are sensitive to it), hormones in the food supply in dairy products and meat, and estrogen-like toxins from pesticides, plastics, and pollution.

Exercise also helps keep hormones in balance. If you don’t get enough of it, they will get out of balance.

Alcohol damages the liver and prevents it from excreting excess estrogen, yet another factor that influences hormonal imbalance. Men who drink too much literally grow breasts along with their beer bellies!

In addition, constipation and imbalances in the gut bacteria can lead to
the reabsorption of estrogen from the gut back into your blood, even after your liver has tried to get rid of it.

Before I close this chapter, there is one more issue I want to discuss that has a major impact on all the hormones and many other biological processes as well—sleep. You need it if you are going to stay in balance.

Lights Out: Why We Need More Sleep

Most people don’t know that sleep deprivation leads to depression, chronic pain, heart disease, diabetes, and makes you fat!

In fact, beside eating whole foods and moving your body, getting enough sleep is the most important thing you can do for your health.

Yet it is estimated that 70 percent of Americans are sleep-deprived.

The era of Starbucks has been surpassed by prescription stimulants to keep people awake and functioning, like dexadrine and Ritalin, otherwise known as “speed” or amphetamines.

Surprisingly, I see an increasing number of patients prescribed these uppers by their psychiatrist because coffee is not enough. If we can’t do ten things at once, then something must be wrong with us, right?

Wrong!

Our bodies and biological rhythms, which keep us healthy, produce cyclic pulses of healing and repair hormones, including melatonin
³⁷
and growth hormone.
^38
;
39
When those rhythms are disturbed by inadequate or insufficient sleep, disease and breakdown get the upper hand. Sleep also helps us maintain low levels of cortisol—the stress hormone that makes us depressed and fat (see chapter 12).

Most of us need at least seven to eight hours of restful sleep a night.

Getting this is more and more difficult. Yet we evolved along with the rhythms of day and night. Our bodies use these rhythms to signal a whole cascade of hormonal and neurochemical reactions that keep us healthy by repairing our DNA, building tissues and muscle, and regulating weight and mood chemicals.

The lightbulb changed all that.

However, not following the normal rhythms of day and night can be deadly. In fact, when I learned that shift work (like I did in when I worked in the emergency room) leads to a shortened life expectancy, I quit.
⁴⁰

When we are sleep-deprived our cortisol rises with all its harmful effects, including brain damage and dementia, weight gain, diabetes, heart attacks, high blood pressure, depression, osteoporosis, reduced immune function, and more.

Sleep deprivation also leads to depression, decreased cognitive performance, and even decreased reaction times.
⁴¹

Good sleep is not something that just happens (unless you are a baby or teenager). There are clearly defined things that interfere with or support healthy sleep. By following the six-week plan in Part III of
The UltraMind Solution,
you may restore your natural sleep rhythm.