Essentials: Tools for Hormone Optimization in Males | Dr. Kyle Gillett
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Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, [music] where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science-based [music] tools for mental health, physical health, and performance. I’m Andrew Huberman, and I’m a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. And now, for my discussion with Dr. Kyle Gillette. Dr.
Gillette, great to have you back. >> Great to be back. Thank you. >> I’d like to begin with a question about what all males ought to do in order to optimize their hormones. What should they be doing, what should they avoid doing if the goal is to have a long arc of healthy hormone optimization throughout the lifespan?
There’s many things that you should do. An analogy that I often make is when there’s a brand new car that comes off the assembly line, you do a full scope of diagnostic workup, hook it up to the computer, and I think we should do the same thing with humans as well. During puberty, you know, obviously you’re a functioning human, but I would say there’s still development, and I think that the human always develops. I don’t think development ever ends, but you want to monitor that progress across a person’s lifespan. >> What do you think are the key things to look for in blood work?
I mean, testosterone is always the topic that comes up in the context of male hormone optimization, but certainly there are a lot of other hormones that are important as well. >> Mhm. And with testosterone, you want to get either testosterone and a SHBG or a free testosterone. >> Could you define SHBG for our listeners, please? >> It is sex hormone binding globulin.
It is the protein that binds up all androgens and estrogens in the body. So, the stronger the androgen, the stronger it binds. During puberty, strong androgens, especially DHT, which is the strongest bioidentical androgen, has a huge role, a prominent role in secondary sexual characteristics. And if your SHBG is very high, then your DHT can run higher because it’s not metabolized, but there’s not quite as much free DHT. So, you want to balance between um a high enough free DHT and a high enough total DHT.
So, assuming that there’s no major intervention, how often do you recommend that people get their blood work done? Using shared decision-making with their physician, usually a good follow-up is about 6 months. >> So, on a daily basis, uh maybe you could just take us through the arc of a day and um and push out some of the protocols that you use or the things that you like to see your male patients use in order to try and optimize their hormone status. >> I’ll briefly touch on some of the lifestyle pillars to start. Diet and exercise are the first two.
Um in puberty, sleep is particularly important, of course. Um but with diet and exercise, uh throughout a lifespan, you want to not exclude things that are helping you. For example, during puberty, if you’re consuming dairy and then all of a sudden you cut out all dairy, dairy can help increase IGF-1 and free IGF-1. >> And what And just uh again, for our audience, maybe you just mention what IG what having enough IGF-1 can do for us that’s beneficial is >> It helps you grow. It uh helps with uh genital development, secondary sexual characteristics, and long bone growth.
Um skin growth, hair growth, a host of things. >> So, getting an array of nutrients that include dairy, what other sorts of nutrients are important during development? >> You want to have adequate vitamin D. Vitamin D helps with testosterone production. It helps again with bone mineralization and stature.
Um after an age of about 25, and there’s not a strict cut-off, but up to about age of 25, optimizing your growth hormone and IGF-1 helps with bone density and bone growth. So, uh from the dietary standpoint, you want to have enough free estrogen, not too much when you’re growing, but you want to help um basically stockpile bone to prevent a risk of osteoporosis or thin bones fractures when you’re older. >> I realize that some of this relates to ethics and food allergies and things of that sort, but would you say that on balance that most people would benefit from eating a combination of you know, quality proteins from animal sources and non-animal sources, fruits, vegetables, and starches? I mean, what do you think for instance about people following a pure carnivore or a very pure vegan diet in their 20s and 30s? >> In their late 20s, it might be a reasonable option.
In early 20s and certainly teens, it is a horrible idea because it is likely to significantly decrease your free androgens. So, you will have less testosterone acting on receptors through the body. >> Are there any other micronutrients or macronutrients that people in their 20s and 30s should emphasize? >> Fiber is going to be paramount in kind of like setting your set point of your gut microbiome the rest of your life. There is prebiotic fiber, which you can think of as fish food for your good gut microbiome.
Your gut microbiome’s kind of like an aquarium or a fish tank. Any fiber or food that you’re putting in your gut, it’s either going to it’s going to skew your gut microbiome towards something that is more beneficial or or more detrimental. >> And would you say that the prebiotic fiber and the getting essential fatty acids, that would be important to do throughout the lifespan or just for people in their 20s and 30s? >> Throughout the lifespan, um particularly important in the teenage, 20s, 30s because it helps with brain development. Um you’re certainly more of an expert than me when it comes to um brain development, but it does continue to develop through really throughout the lifespan, but certainly through the 20s and 30s as well.
In a previous discussion of ours, I asked you about um caloric restriction and testosterone. And if I recall correctly, the idea was that if somebody is overweight, they have an excess fat adipose tissue, then getting rid of some of that adipose tissue by through caloric restriction and exercise, provided it’s done not too fast in a healthy way, is going to be beneficial for testosterone in the long run. But that for individuals who are not carrying an excess of body fat, caloric restriction is actually going to lower testosterone. First of all, do I have that correct? And second, are there any um addendums to that that you’d like to to give us now?
That’s correct. Um if you look at an individual in a caloric deficit, several changes will happen. One is that they’ll have less building blocks for hormones. Another is that they will be in a catabolic state more often, so that balance of anabolism and catabolism will be different. They’ll likely have less signaling from growth hormone and IGF-1, and they’ll also have the high SHBG that we defined earlier as the binding protein, so their free androgens and free estrogens will go down.
Now, what are some of the other pillars of creating a the proper environment for hormone optimization? >> Uh stress is probably the next one. Um during uh both puberty but also the 20s and 30s, individuals are figuring out how they want to cope with stress and also figuring out what they want to choose to put their effort into. So if someone is over stressed, then it can have uh it can put all the other lifestyle pillars and then they stop dieting well, um they stop exercising, and everything else can go askew. >> What would the be some of the additional things that everybody should do?
Another one is finding what your purpose is in life. So I call this spirit, but it’s really just the self-actualization component of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, which is basically your physical needs, your mental needs, and then your purpose in life, what you really like to do. >> The idea is not to pick the end goal, it’s to pick a goal, and then once you rea