The Crackin' Backs Podcast
We are two sport chiropractors, seeking knowledge from some of the best resources in the world of health. From our perspective, health is more than just “crackin Backs” but a deep dive into philosophies on physical, mental and nutritional well-being. Join us as we talk to some of the greatest minds and discover some of the greatest gems that you can use to maintain a higher level of health.
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The Crackin' Backs Podcast
Men and their hormones - Strategies to get their Youth back- Dr. Mirela Cernaianu (Gynecologist)
In this episode of the Crackin' Backs Podcast, we welcomed back the esteemed Dr. Mirela Cernaianu, a board-certified physician with over three decades of experience in obstetrics, gynecology, anti-aging, and holistic medicine. Dr. Cernaianu, known as "Dr. C" by her patients, has dedicated her career to providing comprehensive, personalized care that focuses on the unique needs of each individual.
In this episode, we’ll explore how aging affects men's hormone levels, particularly testosterone, and the impact this has on energy, mood, and libido. Dr. C will share her insights on the signs to watch for as testosterone levels decline and discuss the best natural methods to boost hormone levels without resorting to creams or injections. We'll also delve into the often-overlooked role of estrogen in men's health, and how the balance between estrogen and testosterone can affect weight gain and sexual function.
Chronic stress, diet, exercise, and sleep are all factors that can disrupt hormone balance, and Dr. C will provide practical advice on how men can manage these aspects of their lives to support healthy hormone levels as they age. Finally, for those concerned about losing muscle mass and cognitive sharpness, Dr. C offers strategies to maintain both physical and mental health without the need for pharmaceuticals.
For more about Dr. Mirela Cernaianu and her holistic approach to health, visit Hera Health Care or listen to her podcast, "Wellness Optimizing Warrior M.D."
We are two sports chiropractors, seeking knowledge from some of the best resources in the world of health. From our perspective, health is more than just “Crackin Backs” but a deep dive into physical, mental, and nutritional well-being philosophies.
Join us as we talk to some of the greatest minds and discover some of the most incredible gems you can use to maintain a higher level of health. Crackin Backs Podcast
Welcome to the cracking backs podcast today. We're thrilled to have back on the show Dr Mirella sanayanu with us to explore the vital issues men face as they age, from understanding the impact of declining testosterone on energy and libido to uncovering natural methods for boosting hormones without the need for creams or injections. Dr sanayanu shares her expertise and will also discuss the crucial balance between estrogen and testosterone, the role of diet and exercise and stress management in maintaining peak health and strategies to preserve muscle mass and mental sharpness today for actionable insights that every man and woman needs to hear about. Oh, we are so happy to have you back. Dr C, also known as Dr Sura nainu. Now, how did I say that? Right? I've been practicing. I've been practicing for weeks. Well, all right, so we your show. The last show on women was so well received, I was actually finding myself giving it to a lot of my patients. You know, links to the show. So this time, as a gynecologist that would never, someone would never expect to go for a male issue. We're going to talk about men and their hormones today. And let's start with, you know the fact that most men would never think about going to a gynecologist, yet you do treat some male patients. Can you elaborate on that? Yeah,
Dr. C:so when I started the practice, before I actually started the practice, I went and trained in anti aging and by identical hormone replacement. So when you get the training, it's not limited to women. You actually get trained for female hormones, male hormones. You actually understand the importance of testosterone. And I'm going to have to go indoors because I got a crazy little daughter here who just wants to play constantly. So here you go, and Bye, bye. So I learned about male hormones at the beginning. When I started the practice, I really wasn't, okay, well, I only have women. So it I continued to update my knowledge. And then most women would ask me, Hey, do you treat men? And I said, Well, yeah, I can treat men. So it started from my patients bringing in their male partners, husbands. Some of them referred their fathers, grandfathers. So the practice has grown to the point where, yes, we do see male patients. And I started seeing male patients more for like, let's do an annual because I do a much more comprehensive check than the usual primary care doctor. So I look at inflammation markers, I look at other tests. And men don't really like coming to the doctor, so however, once they start coming and they get the recommendations, the treatments, and they're like, Oh, I feel great. I feel better. Then I just actually got one of my patients, who is again, the husband of a patient, came in and he was dealing with all kinds of issues. We deal, we handle those issues. And I said, Wait, let's go see a cardiologist, just because to be on the safer side. So he got a clean bill of health. But the cardiologist says, What? Who referred you to us? So what? Dr C, and what specialties? Dr C, it's an OBGYN. They said the same thing. What are you doing seeing an OB GYN? So he came back to me kind of cracking, and we did actually IV vitamin therapy that really helped him a lot. And so he was pretty much like, I don't care you were an OB GYN, as long as you fix my problem, it's I'm all good. So there's lots of physicians. For example, there are physicians who do female pellet hormones. They're er trained. So they're er physicians. There's internal medicine, and all kinds of doctors that get the pellet training, and they really have no, like no specialization in OB GYN, however, as you evolve as a physician, you can get additional training that goes beyond what you were trained in residency, and then you can apply that training to your patient base. So that's why I actually see men as an OBGYN.
Dr. Spencer Baron:What are some of the common complaints that a guy would come in with?
Dr. C:Well, number one, fatigue. Number two, there's weight gain and there's loss of muscle mass, and usually men don't like. Talking to women about erectile dysfunction, but that is a problem, and most of them do already have some kind of a treatment plan, and they take medications, but that's really auxiliary, because I don't know if that's a I'm not comfortable talking to you or, okay, yeah, I already have this, and I don't know there's nothing I can do to fix it. It's there. Or can we do something to fix it and look at the big picture? But it's basically fatigue, weight gain and just not feeling good overall, and a loss of muscle mass,
Dr. Spencer Baron:energy, energy and mood and all that. Yeah, energy, mood,
Dr. C:mental clarity. A lot of men actually are not as focused it's and, you know, to be honest with you, it's absolutely the same complaints that women have when they go through menopause. Is the same, yeah, what? What
Dr. Spencer Baron:is there? Like a common age group that you tend to see and men that this
Dr. C:actually, we have, we have very young patients. We have young males who, again, their moms is like, Oh, can you see my son? He's got some issues. And so we see anywhere from in their 20s to, I think that the oldest male I'm seeing right now, it's 17, 980, wow, that's so
Unknown:cool. Yeah.
Dr. Spencer Baron:And they also heal faster when their hormones are balanced too, you know, that's
Dr. C:right, yeah, yeah, because the hormones, when we say hormones, there's like 20 hormones in the body, but we have these major sex hormones, testosterone, and then we have the anabolic hormone, growth hormone, those are the two main anabolic hormones. All the other hormones do different things in the body. Then you have the thyroid, which is catabolic, burning things down. And then you have the cortisol, which is very catabolic. So it's burning our muscle mass, it's burning our brain. It's really messing things up. And the problems really start when you get that imbalance as a young male or female. You have youth on your side, so the younger your body is, the better it tolerates these declines. Because honestly, there's lots of young women and lots of young men who have very low sex hormone levels, young women because they're on birth control pills and they don't have any sex hormones when they're on birth control pills, like estrogen, low testosterone, low male. There's a epidemic of low testosterone in young males, and maybe we can kind of touch bases on that a little bit. So they do really well because they're young. And you have youth on your side, so you have different protein composition, your genes are not older. Your body's ability to repair is better, so you can handle that. Now. What happens is we get older, like 30s, 40s and 50s. We think, Oh, well, we did fine in our 20s and 30s. We can keep doing what we did. Unfortunately, people do not understand. They don't take into account the fact that they're decades older, and their body's ability to handle stress and ups and downs and hormone deficiencies is totally changed. So people come and say, Well, I haven't changed anything in my diet, I exercise the same, whether they're men or women, and now I'm gaining weight. Now I'm not feeling good. So what the heck changed? I didn't change anything. So it's the hormones and aging.
Dr. Spencer Baron:Can you remark on this unusual circumstance where the youth is having a problem with hormones now the young males,
Dr. C:yes, so I actually did my couple of past four or five podcasts are actually on fertility. So I started with the fertility. And obviously you can't address fertility from the standpoint of women, you have to go into the couple fertility, and 50% of couples might have a male factor in it. And you know, you do research, and you kind of look up stuff to when you record the podcast, and I came across something that's actually information that probably not a lot of people know. So the male sperm count has been decreasing steadily in the past three to four decades, to such an extent that it's estimated, and this is information available on Google. It is Google. It decreasing male sperm count. It says if we continue at this rate, by 2065 nobody will be able to reproduce, because we will not have any more sperm, viable, mobile sperm. Look it up. I'm not making this stuff up.
Dr. Spencer Baron:No, I believe you. What do you think the factors are? The Yeah, what's
Dr. C:Well, the Think about where we were 40 years ago, right before the advent of all these modern technological advances, and what we're doing now to us and to our environment. So from the moment we wake up, we have all these amenities that we surrounded ourselves with. So we have plastics everywhere, and we have come to the point where our agriculture has changed drastically in the past four or five decades. So you have all. These organophosphates and all these pesticides that are sprinkled everywhere because you don't want crops to die. It's all about making money and feeding people and making a profit, and whatever you can do with less expense, the better it is, the more profit you make. So for the sake of making things more convenient and probably for profit. We have changed the way we eat. We changed our food. We changed our environment to the point where everything is wrapped up in plastic. I mean, you have bags everywhere. You have plastic everywhere. People are very keen on convenience now, so I and I hear that a lot from my patients, male or female, I don't have time to cook, I don't have time to go shop. I don't have time to prep my food, because it takes time to go prep shop organic, prep your food, cook your food every night, and then maybe prep some food for the next day, for lunch. So people just go grab stuff that's prepped. It's easy. How many times do we eat out? We eat at the restaurant, and when we eat at the restaurant, you completely give up control over what you eat and what you put in your mouth, because you have no idea the temperature that they cook it at. Are they going to generate carcinogenic products with the temperature they're cooking it? What kind of cookware they use, what kind of spices, how many times they use that oil that they fry things in at the restaurant? You're probably going to think twice about eating out next time. So I mean, there's so many things that we, for the sake of convenience and living a modern life, are surrounding ourselves with, but mainly the plasticizers, which are endocrine hormone disruptors. So if we are interested in this, you want to get dig deeper. You can just anybody that listens to this. They can Google endocrine hormone disruptors, and it's just, it's a staggering amount of information, and there's lots of people have been talking about this for a while. So basically, what's interesting, it's about the interaction between hormones and receptors, and you have these foreign chemical substances that we get exposed to every day, that we take for granted, that it's they're safe because they're there. However, there are supposed to be 80,000 toxins that are in daily use in the environment. Nobody's regulating that, and nobody's talking about it, and that's impacting our body. And what is the most sensitive areas of our body, the brain and the reproductive tissue, so they're going to be very, very easily disrupted and affected by this so. And then these pesticides have this aromatic ring, and apparently the estrogen receptors for both men and women, which exist in the body everywhere, all they need is the ceromatic ring for a substance to latch onto the receptors and stimulate them. So people worry, oh my, I got prostate cancer from testosterone. Oh, that's horrible. I shouldn't be using testosterone, or I'm going to get breast cancer from estrogen. I shouldn't be using estrogen. And we had that conversation at the last podcast, but it's not your own hormones that are messing you up. It's the substances that attack your hormone receptors. They grab onto them and then they stimulate them, and they do the same thing that your hormone would do, but your hormones now not not able to do his job. These receptors are busy with these foreign substances, and your body doesn't know how to get rid of them, too, unless you do major detoxing, infrared sauna and sweating and you know all these things, which is why I love my hot yoga classes, because it's some sort of a detox. Then it's very hard. Then once you reach your toxic burden, then you start seeing problems. And nobody's linking that to, okay, is what I eat, is what I drink, it's what I'm surrounding myself with. Because these substances are everywhere, in our laminar flooring, in our carpet, in our furniture, in the lacquer that's spread on your furniture. I mean, it's, they're everywhere.
Dr. Terry Weyman:Hey, Doc, you know there's a there's another kind of rabbit hole of conspiracy and and you find some. Whenever I find the study this that proves that I find six oh, it's not true. And that's like the bombardment of radio waves and and Wi Fi and cellular waves and and kids and adults are wearing their cell phones in their pocket right by their their groins or in their back pocket. What's your thoughts on that? I
Dr. C:was just thinking about that as we're driving in here, because I was, like, mentally preparing a little bit, okay, so what are we going to talk about? And I was just thinking because we're talking about men and testosterone. And I was like, How many men do I see that come in and then they just pull their, you know, phone out of their pen pocket and put it next to them. And, I mean, I tell that to pregnant women when they come to see me, and I see them with the phone, and then they put their phone on their belly, and I'm like, please don't do that. You're you might be able to tolerate the phone and all of this because you have a mature, formed brain. But your baby's brain is not mature. It's not formed. And these radio magnetic frequencies and the 5g and whatever frequency they're generated. Saying it's not going to be healthy for a newly forming, sensitive brain. So yes, is this going to be good for the testicles? No, is this going to good for the ovaries? No. I mean, I wear this on the side pocket of my pant, on the thigh, and even then I'm like, I always try to put it like with this side towards me, not this side. But I mean, at this point we don't know it's just, it's better to just, I use speakerphones as much as possible to avoid things. And I was talking to one of my patients, and, you know, people know more than you do. Always, there's going to be somebody who knows more on this than you do. So she saw me with my AirPods in my ears. And she says, Don't do that. I said, Really? She says, yes, these AirPods talk to each other through your brain. She says, so I've only, I'm only ever using one at a time, so there's not the pair to talk to each other, because it's convenient. You still want the AirPod, right? So I guess her husband is in it, and he knows what he's talking about. So, yes, there's stuff that we don't even know. And these products, they're big money, big tech, so they just roll them out, and they're convenient. I mean, who doesn't love their phone? Did you read this study about they offered? They said, If you either lose your phone or would you cut off your pinky? And how many people said they would rather cut off their their pinky felons, rather than lose their phone?
Dr. Terry Weyman:I would say probably 80%
Unknown:probably a lot, right? Yeah, yeah, wow.
Dr. Spencer Baron:To add to Dr Terry's conspiracy theory, my my ex wife, is committed. She's well, she should be committed. No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. She's actually the the she has the most unbelievable stories that they're very entertained but far fetched, but she thinks that the covid vaccine had a lot to do with making people unable to get pregnant, or, you know, men to be infertile and all that. So that was another, well,
Dr. C:that's, that's a whole different conversation, yeah, but there are, we've known that the spike protein attacks things in the awry in the testicle, and unfortunately, when the vaccine was made, it's actually injecting people with some messenger RNA, but it's actually a spike protein that initiates formation of antibodies To the spike protein. So it's debatable, and at this point, I think I'm not a specialist in this, so it's not my place to talk about this. However, making a ton of antibodies to something doesn't mean your body is safe, and that's what people don't talk about. And this is what this dangerous conversation for the vaccine companies, because yes, you get the vaccine, you get a ton of antibodies, so you're protected, but are you protected? Really? It's your immune system that's supposed to defend you, not these antibodies. You just make antibodies. But there's no guarantee you're not going to get a disease for whatever they're going to protect you. So they're saying, Okay, well, the disease is going to be milder, because now you have antibodies to defend you. But what if these antibodies that are injected create a huge inflammatory response, similar to what people get when they do, they get Epstein Barr naturally, where they get Lyme disease naturally, and then Long Haul covid Naturally. It's the covid is long gone. It came and it created an initial interaction with the body's immune system. And the body's immune system, just now is going nuts, making these antibodies. So we're kind of artificially creating that with the vaccines. So that's why some people are like, Yeah, I'm not getting that vaccine again. It didn't work well for me. So they know it, they feel it. And this inflammatory response generated by the either the vaccine or the actual virus itself, it's pretty bad, and people feel it. They're foggy, they're tired, they're achy, they feel like they're not bad, they're not themselves. And it's very hard to fight that. It's very difficult,
Dr. Terry Weyman:going back to some of the testosterone in men, we see these commercials as guys on everything from TV to Instagram, of these big, strong men talking about, you know, take this testosterone supplement and you'll feel like you're 20 again, both in the gym and in the bedroom. And then so the I had the patient I was telling Spencer, I had a patient that was bought into that started going to vitamin store and getting all this testosterone and this sex stuff in spiking and their supplements. And there's that company, hims and taking all that. And then he went to a doctor and got testosterone cream and was putting that on as well. That dude flipped out. And they end up almost getting divorced. Can you talk about the supplements that were being were being told, and then these, even these sprays you put on that, they're like, oh, that's this is like, I'm gonna use a better term when, and they use it on the commercial these, this spray is a panty dropper. I mean, it's like, it'll make you smell so good that the women want you. And can you we talk about some of that, what?
Dr. Spencer Baron:Wait, let me ask you, what do you mean? Flipped out. What happened to
Dr. Terry Weyman:him? Oh, super aggressive. He just, he just wasn't himself. Shows that was not my husband, that guy. He just became this aggressive, changed violent, and then he just, he almost lost his job, he lost everything, and yet he thought he was fine.
Dr. C:The steroid rage, right? Yeah, beyond
Dr. Terry Weyman:steroid rage. So can you talk about these supplements are out there, these sprays, and where, you know everybody's talking about how they increase your sex life after 50, and then they're going to the vitamin store and they're also going to doctor, and nobody's talking so they're mixing all this crap. There is a
Dr. C:new class of drugs that it's interesting, and I learned about that them in my peptide modules, for when I did my peptide training. And I'm still doing peptide training. So there's still a lot I'm learning. And honestly, at this point, what you learn about these is more like they're bad, don't use them and tell your patients they're terrible. To stop using them. However, in order to understand that how bad they are, you have to learn something about them, because people don't just take your word for it anymore. I'm gonna tell you, before the pandemic, the relationship between patients and doctors was totally different than maybe we can revisit this subject, because people have lost confidence in doctors. So you can't just tell someone, Hey, dude or man or lady, this is really bad for you. Please stop taking it, because they don't believe you. So the marketing industry and these drugs are marketed in such a way that they promise the moon and the stars, and people fall for it because they are feeling terrible and they want something and they want something quick, and they're like, I'm going to try this. So the selective androgen receptor modulators, the SARMS, it's a class of drugs that it's kind of new, and it's been around maybe 510, years. I'm not sure when they popped on the market. They might have been on the market for a while, but people maybe were not like familiar with them. It wasn't mainstream. But now more and more people are buying it, getting it, advertising it. So they again, do what these toxins that we just talked about, are doing? They latch onto your testosterone receptor and stimulate it. So, because your body doesn't recognize these and doesn't have a enzymatic capability or detox capability or a removal capability to get rid of these medications, they prolong stimulate your receptors. And then we're still looking into this whole receptor study. So I remember doing some kind of research for one of my Posca episodes, and I was reading about these receptors. And what people don't understand is that these steroid receptors, when you combine the hormone combines with the receptor, it sinks into the cell. Imagine the invasion, the degree of invasion. It doesn't just, like, open the door and, you know, rings the doorbell and tells the cell to do some stuff. It actually sinks into the cell and now goes to your DNA in the cell and tells it to do stuff. So these drugs, again, selectively modulate the testosterone, the androgen receptors, the testosterone specifically, and yes, they can create a similar action to the natural bioidentical testosterone. Now, how safe it is. Are they this? Again? This is a new class with drug on the market. I always stay away from new stuff. I'm like, Okay, you try it out for 20 years, and then we'll see how things go. So there are dangers because it they're doing the same thing as testosterone. Again, they're not doing what testosterone is doing. As far as when you take testosterone, you inhibit your natural drive and your luteinizing hormone that actually drives the trophicity of the testicular tissue. So women that men, sorry, men that do testosterone replacement are at risk and will probably experience azospermia, which means that their body will stop producing sperm when they're on testosterone. This is one of the testosterone contraindications for young males that want to conceive, or they're like, You know what? I feel so bad. Just give me some testosterone right now. I'll figure out my fertility later. I just need to feel better, because if you can't really feel good enough, and you have low testosterone. How are you going to even father a child? Or, you know, get to where you want to get. So some men are like, I'll feel better, and then I'll worry about my sperm. But yes, so from the point of view of that, that's debatable. The studies are still out. Is it affecting it? Is it not affecting it? But that is. One downside then otherwise, testosterone doesn't compare. Testosterone is testosterone and these drugs are are fake testosterone wannabes.
Dr. Spencer Baron:I read a, oh, sorry, sorry. I just want to add to that. I read a research paper that was published about 20, maybe 25 years ago that remarked on how testosterone once a like one cc of testosterone cypionate per month for a male is more. Oh, my God. What do you contraceptive? Contraceptive than a woman on birth control, and yet nobody recognized that as a opportunity to, you know, create, have an environment for a male to have more responsibility in birth control. But that was just one, one small cc per month, and they found that that was like 98% contraceptive
Dr. C:crazy. Go ahead. Well, if you, if you use a very small amount of testosterone, and I've actually had a male patient who wanted to conceive. Well, the wife wanted to conceive. They wanted to conceive as a couple, and he had very low testosterone, and he wasn't feeling good, so he actually used HCG with very low dose testosterone. But instead of giving himself testosterone, like most men do once a week every two weeks, or some men do it twice a week, he would do a very small amount daily, and it is testosterone CP on eight, because there's nothing else available that you can do in that manner. And he actually was able to conceive with this particular the testosterone level of about 400 500 so not super low, but enough to make him feel good. So I mean there, it's not necessarily guaranteed that there, with that little amount of testosterone that are going to be infertile. So it's, it's a very hard to to use that as an actual male contraceptive. I mean, I'm just foreseen that there will be, it would be a lot of complications. You have to do a constant sperm check to make sure that, you know, nothing gets through. So, yeah, but yes, for people who want to conceive, it's very hard. For people who don't want to conceive, then it's very easy.
Dr. Terry Weyman:You know, Spence brought up earlier, and you've kind of touched on it the younger patients, you know, these younger kids in the 20s and 30s and college is starting. You know, for a lot of young kids right now, and last year, I was shocked how many kids would tell me that they go to these parties in college and they're taking Viagra, they're taking these supplements, they're taking these testosterone pills to go these parties and and you can imagine what kind of parties are going to but, you know, with college started, why are these? And I'll ask him, does your dad know of it? And I actually had one going. My dad gave me his pills. You know, what is going on with it? Can you talk about the dangers of college kids and one, why should you need this? But these college kids take in these kind of pills and supplements. Can you talk about that with college starting now?
Dr. Spencer Baron:The question is, why did they have that during my era? No, I'm kidding. Go on. Sorry
Dr. Terry Weyman:they did, but it causes, stunts your growth. That's why you're as tall as you are. Well, what
Dr. Spencer Baron:do I got to lose, man?
Dr. C:So I mean, there's a group mentality and a peer pressure to be part of the group. And I mean, we've all been young, we've all been there. So if you want to be in with a crowd, you got to do as the crowd does. And at this point you have probably one or two people that are like, you know, the hype, and they're probably targeted by either drug or these Recep these harms testosterone, like drugs. And then they get targeted and they get sold these products, because this is a great market, and it's a great way to just market it to, Hey, have a party. Feel great, feel awesome. Are you gonna pay back for it later? Yes. But when you're young and 20s, you don't think about that. None of us thought about that. I mean, we did stuff in our 20s and we didn't look back and we never looked ahead either. It's just you live in the moment, you have fun, you go to the party. So I'm gonna say that's a very sensitive crowd and very easy to target, and unless they're, you know. Grown in an environment and fostered in an environment of, hey, this is what's good, this is what's bad, and this is what's right, this is what's wrong. They will be very subject, and they will fall prey to this peer pressure to do these drugs and to do alcohol and to do all these other things which are going to have damaging consequences down the road. But they're in their 20s. I mean, you can sit them down and give them a lecture as a parent, but it's, it's going to go through here, it's going to come right out through here, like eventually, like nothing percolates, you know, because in their mind, it's all about the moments, all about how they felt, and it's all about when is the next party. So you can't fix that with a simple talk or a lecture. It's got to be. It depends on the upbringing and the relationship between their parents and their kids. And obviously, if those kids didn't get the parenting and the tight, niche relationship going, the closeness, the I have faith and I trust in You, you're the best person to have my best interest at heart, not this, you know, popular person in school, then it's going to be very hard to overcome that.
Dr. Spencer Baron:I'd love to hear your thoughts about something that most men don't know or aren't aware of, and that's the role of estrogen in a male body. And why would that be important? Even
Dr. C:so, estrogen does help, believe it or not, if the man has very low estrogen, for some reason, can actually get erectile dysfunction. So it's important to have a little bit of estrogen in the body, for the brain, for the mood, for the normal sexual function, and and nobody has really researched this. I mean, you find it here and there, kind of like a little sprinkle of information that estrogen is good for men in a very limited amount. Now, the danger with most men who do testosterone is that they will aromatize, aromatize and transfer some of that testosterone, convert it to estrogen, and they would unknowingly and unintentionally increase the amount of estrogen in their bodies to the point where it's actually a problem. And testosterone in men, I mean, I'm sorry, estrogen in men, if, again, very small amount. It's very beneficial for mood, for energy and for sexual function. However, if it's too high, then here comes the hypertrophy of the breast tissue, so the male boobs, the loft handles. So different fat disposition on the body, with some of it around the loft handles, and it's actually very bad for the prostate. So there's a lot of worry and fear over prostate cancer with testosterone, but it's actually the aromatase estrogen that is bad for the prostate and the dehydro testosterone, which is another it's a metabolite of testosterone that are bad for the prostate. So again, most men that do testosterone should have their estrogen checked, and if they have high estrogen levels with an aromatization conversion, that's over three to 4% so some of them convert 10% of their testosterone to estrogen. That's bad. And then they need to be on an aromatase inhibitor. So then they take an Astros, all they take Femara. So all these electrosol, all these medications that depends on how they can be made available, injectable, oral. And there's testosterone pellets for men who actually have anastrozole built in them. So there's actually testosterone and astrazene Pellets. So for men that have documented aromatization rates, that's beneficial. But most men, once you correct their testosterone, their metabolic conversion and their processes function much better. It's kind of when you put lube in the engine of the car, it works so much better. It's the same once the testosterone comes back on. Everything gets converted better. Like you have older women who lose all their estrogen and they don't have any testosterone, but now they start getting pimples and hair on their face. They're like, Where's this coming from? I don't have any hormones. What the heck? And it's because of their metabolic conversion to dehydrotestosterone, which is a bad testosterone. It's much higher when they don't have estrogen, so they lost their main hormone that's anabolic, and the body knows that, so it just shifts away all the stuff that it's got, the little stuff that it's got, into bad things. So you would happen with men, you would blood test
Dr. Spencer Baron:or do labs for a male to determine testosterone levels, testosterone levels, estrogen and then so part
Dr. C:of the workup. When somebody says, Well, can you please check my testosterone? I'm like, totally, let's check your testosterone. Sometimes, most of the times, I'm the one like, would you like your testosterone check? They're like, Oh, yeah, let's check it. It's part of the workup. So you have to check. Estrogen as well, whether they're young or old. And then when they're older, you also want to worry about the PSA. So it's part of the basic workup, testosterone, estradiol, PSA. And then there's other things, like metabolic hormone, lipid panel, a, CBC, complete block count. You want to look at thyroid, B, 12, vitamin D. So there's lots of labs that can give you information about how the body's functioning and processing. And you don't just want to look at testosterone, right? You want to look at the big picture too. But yes, estrogen, estradiol needs to be checked. Oh,
Unknown:I think I want
Dr. Spencer Baron:to check mine, because I cried at a Barbie movie. So I wonder if my estrogen is
Dr. C:up. Either that or the Barbie movie was really good
Dr. Spencer Baron:killed me. I had to watch like this, and my girlfriend wouldn't look over and go, are you crying? The
Dr. Terry Weyman:fact that you mentioned that on air, I think I'm going to have to get off this, this podcast with you.
Dr. C:I mean, honestly, I started watching the Barbie movie. I don't know, I don't see the attraction.
Dr. Terry Weyman:Thank God. I mean, I loved it. I think, Doctor, I'm gonna fly my partner out to see you, because obviously he has no testosterone in him at all. And so I did some out to you, yeah, and his girlfriend will also help pay because she was also like, she did not, yeah, oh yeah. She want to go Barbie movie. I mean, he wanted to go to Barbie movie. So I don't get it. So, yeah, I'm with you, Doc. You're gonna be seeing Spencer in your office.
Dr. Spencer Baron:I'm switching gears. Let's talk about chronic stress. Let's talk about chronic stress and how it disrupts hormone levels. My god, I'm drooling on myself now. Yeah, all right, so
Dr. C:I actually, I'm actually planning to, I've already had the bare bones of it. I want to do a podcast episode called Top 10 way stress is killing us slowly, so there's lots of unfortunate consequences to prolong stress. And people think, Okay, well, what the heck is stress? And I don't feel stressed. I was just talking to one of my assistants, who's a very smart, savvy reader, and she said, Actually, I listened to this podcast, and it was talking about how people get this high for being stressed, so living in a constant state of anxiety, and, you know, doing all these things, and having all these balls come at you, and you're jogging them real good, and you handle this, and you handle that, and you Live in a high stakes, high fight or flight response environment. It's actually addictive, and so that's one side of it, but chronic stress is something that we I don't know that I have a patient that comes to my office that's not stressed, because just look at the economy, and look at the financial burden that the current economy has imposed on so many people, on people, on businesses, on their jobs, on their careers. I mean, people have to work harder than they did before. There's people who don't want to work and they're just staying home and collecting disability, lucky them. And then there's people who actually have to make up for that, and they have to do the work of other people as well, because everybody's downsizing, everybody's letting people go, the people that stay behind now they have to work harder. So stress, that's work induced and financial stress, they're pretty big right now. I think everybody's experiencing that. But then on top of that, you have people who maybe stay home, they don't work, but there's a lot of family stress. There's stress related to kids and growing up kids, and having the kids go to college and, oh my God, what's going to happen in college, having people have stress over a lot of things. So people think, Well, I'm not really stressed. I don't feel stressed every time you wake up with something, when your brain goes, goes, goes, or you have difficulty shutting down at night because your brain keeps going, is because you probably overworked and overstressed. So stress is really bad for our hormones, because it puts us into this fight or flight response mode. And we have our hypothalamor, pituitary adrenergic system, our HPA axis, and you have the parasympathetic axis. So you have the Vigilant the sleep relaxation. There's two sides of how we function, mentally and metabolically in our body. So if you keep burning the candle at both ends and your high stress, high stakes environment, eventually it's going to burn out. Your the candle is going to go like this, and people don't get it until they feel the symptoms, and by the time they feel the symptoms, they're really deep down the hole. Now you're very deficient in a lot of things. Your hormones don't work. Your gut lining has been compromised. You're not absorbing any nutrients. You find out. Vitamins are deficient. Now, to get out of the hole, you have to spend a ton of money on supplements, on vitamins, IV vitamins. You have to do hormones. You have to do all this, see all these doctors that don't take your insurance and take cash only to fix your hormones. So it's important for people to have some kind of self awareness about, hey, where am I? What's going on with my stress? And you know, stress unfortunately shuts down our antibiotic hormones, because the body knows, okay, well, I don't need these hormones. We're not reproducing right now. So away with these we need a lot of cortisol, because cortisol does a lot of things. It mobilizes the sugar, and it raises your sugar, it mobilizes things and tightens your blood vessels to get more blood flow to places. And now you have high blood pressure, and cortisol is good when you live like this. It's very important, but then again, candle at both ends, and then you get all this hyper cortisol. It burns out your adrenals, then you have all these dysfunction around cortisol. So you make cortisol easily when you're in stress mode, but then on a regular basis, you don't make any your body. It's just kind of like done, and it's very hard to give you the cortisol that you need to do other things the day to day. So yes, stress is really bad. It disrupts our sleep. So without sleep, you can recover. You need that seven to eight hours of sleep. So when people go to sleep and then they wake up in the morning, they're like, Oh my God, I feel like I have a hangover and I don't feel good. You're not sleeping a restorative sleep, and that's a problem. Could it be that your cortisol is too high and you're just kind of hyper vigilant, and you really don't shut down, and you just sleep poorly and superficially. Maybe we have a obesity, overweight epidemic. Lots of people are overweight and obese. Could it be that they have sleep apnea and they don't sleep well? That's also a possibility. But again, I don't see that being addressed. And lots of physicians, they see the patient in front of them, they're like, Yeah, nobody's asking, how do you sleep? How do you eat? What do you eat? And what's your stress level and and how much do you exercise? And those four things are actually at the core of what people need to get better, and they're the four pillars of staying healthy, really. So if you invest in your exercise, in your food, in your sleep and in how you manage your stress, then you're really going to keep disease and hormonal balances away. Well, except for the fact, like I said, that whenever you go through menopause as a woman, you kind of, you know you're stuck, and it is what it is.
Dr. Spencer Baron:So I typically, well, I do not turn on the TV and don't watch the news because of the of how the news wants to create an environment of urgency and stress. What other solutions do you have? You know, you talk about sleep, which is paramount, but doctors are so quick to put you on that CPAC machine, and they don't even talk about diet. What do you what are your solutions? Well,
Dr. C:I mean, at this point, we have some great tools for weight loss. So people that are obese, they really have all kinds of ops, awesome options to consider. Seeing a weight loss clinic, seeing a weight loss specialist. Look at their hormones, look at their nutritional deficiencies, because all obese patients are actually nutritionally deficient. The typical American diet is consisting of fried, fast, quick food. Doesn't have to be fast food, but it's all quick, fast fried, and it's not healthy, and it transforms into fat, and before you know it, you just, you know again, you're in the hole as far as your weight goes. But I got distracted, oh, you talk about the sleep apnea. So I would invest first in what can we do to get you to lose weight? Because there's a lot of when you gain weight, number one, there's a fat accumulation around the throat area, but your tongue also increases in size, so it will fall back and obstruct your airway. There are other reasons why people get sleep apnea, and one of them is that the veil that hangs off the back of their palate is very large, and you have laser therapy they can actually lift and shrink that veil up and open up the airway. And then there's people who are, you know, snoring a lot, because their uvula goes through the little ding, a ling on at the back of your throat, and that can be also treated with laser therapy. So before you know it, your snoring can get better, right? But yes, it's important that you get good quality sleep. We are very sophisticated computers, and there's a lot of stuff going on in our bodies. And imagine from 7am to 10pm at night, this computer goes, goes, goes, and it gives you everything you want, you know, to do your daily life and to function, but then it has to shut down. And recover. And if you do not have that, then that's again, the young people, they're like, Oh yeah, but we go to bed at like, 1am I'm busy. That's and they keep doing the burnout the midnight oil, and they don't realize that it could actually disturb their body's circadian rhythm, the ability to wake up in the morning and go to bed easily at night, if you keep doing the I'm gonna study, I'm gonna study, I'm gonna study hard. I had a patient that was his mom is our patient, so she sent him to me, and he going to college studying really hard. And I mean sleeping till studying till 6am and then cramming in some sleep in the morning. And then I'm like, do you want? Oh, no, but it's a short term. I have to do this for short term. This is how I'm going to do it. I'm like, okay, yes, so sleep is very important, yes. And people don't understand if you don't sleep, well, I talk about this in my podcast, please see a doctor figure out what's going on early on, because once the sleep is disrupted for years on end, it's going to be very hard to reverse it, maybe impossible.
Dr. Spencer Baron:It's great. I actually when I if I stop eating three hours before, or if I have my last meal three hours before I go to bed, I go to the stomach. I go to bed with a slightly empty stomach, and I sleep fantastic, which a lot of people don't do. They they fall asleep right after they eat, and they spend all that blood is in their belly digesting instead of in the brain, bathing the brain. But let me ask you, though, the the when a male comes into your office, you know, for those who might be hesitant to go on any kind of pharmaceuticals, do you have a preliminary suggestion to them with something you maybe hear about, plant based creams and things? Or do you have any suggestions just prior to them going on, something a little more aggressive.
Dr. C:So one of the things that I noticed is that if you're well, if you're past 50 and you have low testosterone, it might be that you might be as done as a woman of menopause, that might be a problem. And most men at that point, they don't really have a whole lot of patience and time to invest in. Okay, well, what's wrong with my body? Let's look at thyroid. Let's look at adrenal let's look at gut health. Let's look at vitamins, because you can do IV vitamin therapy, you can do gut restoration supplements, and you can do lifestyle modifications that could possibly bring your body back online. Men continue to produce testosterone. They don't run out of testosterone. They continue to produce testosterone for the rest of their life, till like 80 or 90. Like I said, I remember, I had a patient that came in, brought her partner, says, you don't want to have sex, and let's check his testosterone. His testosterone was 900 and I'm like, you don't want to have sex, not because of the testosterone. There's so again, age is not it's not a given that because you're older, you're not going to make testosterone. I think that what we see now is that a lot of men in their 40s, 50s, 60s, have low testosterone for various reasons, food, diet, stress, exercise and the majority of them are on some form of medication, statin antihypertensives. There are a lot of things that are not really addressed by these medications. The medications put a bandaid on and the blood pressure, it's the drug lowers your blood pressure as long as you take it. As soon as you stop taking the blood pressure drug, your blood pressure goes right back up. Because the drugs are not doing anything to why you have high blood pressure, right? The same with the statin, they lower your cholesterol as long as you take them. As soon as you stop taking the cholesterol drug, the cholesterol comes right back up. So people don't understand, but they're looking for a quick fix, right? So what I've noticed with younger men, it's actually I've had a young man that came in and he had, comes health issues, and I did a test and he had a chronic mono. So Epstein Barr titers very high. And I said, Well, you have trying mono possibly, which means kind of like long haul covid, but caused by mono, which we knew about, these viruses causing problems long before covid came on the in the picture, but now it's made more popular, and people like, Okay, so maybe Lyme disease is not just in your brain. It's actually exists, right? It's post Lyme, post Epstein bar. So just like, Long Haul covid, right? So we did IV vitamin therapy because of the Epstein bar. And honestly, after two sessions, maybe even one session, his testosterone went from 278 to 438 just with the IV vitamins. So again, as long as your body's nutritionally fit and gets the vitamins that it needs to get, it's able to do a lot of things. It's able to detox you. It's able to give you. Better hormones. It's able to give you better sleep, it's able to do a lot of things. So I think a lot of the stuff that we ignore a lot of the times is the core problem. It's actually our gut health and how we absorb and bring our vitamins into our body, and do we break down the food to give us the necessary nutrients and again, again, a lot of us are foodies. I mean, I love food, and you eat food for the pleasure it gives you. But obviously, as a doctor that knows about all this stuff, I do a little bit of cake. I gotta spread out a bit and do foods that I don't normally eat. So the bok choy. So when I select my meals, I like to do these food services that deliver fresh food. Then you cook your own food every day. So I look for food components that are not something that I would normally eat, like bok choy being an example, and other like zucchini, like I don't normally buy zucchini and cook a zucchini, but hey, if the dish is zucchini, let's let's select it very good. So again, you can do a lot with IV vitamin therapy, a lot. Okay, so as far as testosterone goes, once your testosterone is low and you like, I don't want to deal with all this stuff, and I don't want to wait six months to feel better, even though the IV vitamins can really boost your fatigue and make you feel a lot better, then testosterone therapy is a big, big, big helper for men, and there's different ways to bring testosterone in the body. And I think in the past, the last episode of the podcast, I talked about bioavailability, and that's a crucial thing that doctors, when they review testosterone therapy with men, they don't talk about it's like, okay, let's give you some testosterone shots. Okay, let's give you some testosterone cream. Or, ik you you come to me for pellets, because you've tried the cream and you've tried the shots, and they are not helpful. So but the truth is that you have to understand, how do you bring testosterone the body? And if you inject yourself with the testosterone, you have a surge, a huge surge, in your in your bloodstream. So people check their testosterone level like the right before they gonna give themselves another shot when they go see the doctor, and the doctor says, Okay, well, come see me, and they give them the blood test, go check your testosterone levels, maybe 12 hours after you inject yourself, or 24 hours and see how high your testosterone goes. And what is your body gonna do with that surge and that testosterone access so it's not a physiologic way to do it, but it's convenient. You go to a clinic, they give it the testosterone, you pull the shot once a week out of the vial, and you inject yourself. And it's very convenient, right? But the best form to give testosterone naturally to men would be a pellet. Now that's also written, riddled with some risk, because it's a procedure. So you have to cut the skin, you have to put the trocar, and you have to deploy the pellets. Occasionally, there's a risk of infection. There's a risk of, you know, you put those pellets in men, there's like 12 pellets, and they're sizable, so the body will initiate an inflammation response around the pellets, and it hurts. It feels like somebody hit you with a small bat. And I had one male patient says, I would say it's a big bat. Well, you know, and men in pain, don't they're not friends, so, but again, that's usually lasts about a few weeks, and then you get all the benefits for four to six months, and you don't have to worry about injecting yourself once a week. So again, it's there's different ways to bring testosterone into the body, but it's not everybody's different. So everybody, there's men who do really well with the Androgel or the testosterone cream daily, and there's men who prefer shots. The difference is testosterone, CP onnate, which is the shot available form of testosterone, or an antonate. Those are not bioidentical, so your body will have to take this ester of testosterone and actually extract the testosterone, process it, processes, process it. Or the actual testosterone, CP on eight, will actually activate your hormones, which might mean they might get stimulated longer, and it might not be as safe as an actual bioidentical testosterone.
Dr. Spencer Baron:Dr, C, I got two more questions for you. One is an easy one, and that is your your information is so interesting and so massive.
Unknown:Thank you.
Dr. Spencer Baron:No thank you, actually. And I've had patients ask me if you do like a telemedicine thing, and they do the lab work and send it to you, and would you consult with them by any chance? So
Dr. C:I do telemedicine for now, as long as they're in California, I don't, I think, as a doctor, to process to see patients outside of state, you'd have to have a state license for that state license for that state. Now I can prescribe prescriptions for patients who are traveling out of California to another state when they're like, I'm stuck here. Can you send my prescription here? That's okay, but you have to have a state license. So if people are. Are out of state for the time being, no because I don't have a license, and I really my practice is focused on local and face to face. And a lot of people that have been my patients that travel all the way up north or relocate, they still come down. They're like, they still come and do their pellet therapy with me, and they come see me three times a year. They're like, I have family here. I'm going to come visit. I'm gonna get my gonna get my pellet. For example, I have a patient that is relocating to New Jersey, and her family's here, her son and her granddaughter, and she says, I'm gonna come see them on a regular basis, and I'm gonna come get my pellets, because I'm not
Dr. Spencer Baron:giving up my pellets. What about just counseling somebody based on their lab work and your time providing that information, and they could go to their local doctor and say, Hey, this is what you know. Yeah, we
Dr. C:can probably do, like an initial consultation. We do telehealth medicine for that. Yes, we do a face to face on computer, and then I kind of listen to what the problem is, and then order some blood work, and then give them some recommendations, and obviously collaborate with a with a local doctor to kind of help them out. Yes,
Dr. Spencer Baron:great, great. My last question is simply about men that have had vasectomies and how that may affect hormones. And what do you is there any suggestions for lab work and and resolving changes in hormone balances from vasectomies. So
Dr. C:ligating the vas deferens, which is a vasectomy, really just does not allow the sperm to be released anymore into the semen, so there will be no viable sperm, so the man can still ejaculate and create semen without sperm in it, so it kind of interrupts the communication, kind of like ligating the tubes in a woman, where the communication between the sperm and the ovary egg, it's interrupted. It doesn't really affect hormones, just the same as tubal ligation does not affect hormones. Now, not a whole lot of men get vasectomies. So there's not a huge study or research that I'm aware of there might be that is looking at vasectomy influencing negatively the hormones. As far as I know now, we do know for women that ligate their tubes, there is no impaction on hormones. However, a third, up to a third of women who ligate their tubes, they have some kind of heavy bleeding, and we call it the post tubal ligation syndrome. And they just, for some reason, they develop very heavy urine bleeding. We don't know why. We can't really explain it, but we know that messing with the body, and again, that doesn't mean you don't need to mess with the body. You can mess with the body, but everything has to have a price. So is, is it completely safe? It's probably safer for the woman to have her husband do a vasectomy than it is for her to get a tubal ligation. So as a couple, they have to make that decision together, right? Like, what is it? And most men that I've heard of, because I used to work at a community health clinic, and we would see a lot of women that would just tub allegation, and we would really advise them, Hey, can your husband go, oh yeah, what's the Where can he? Where can I send him? And as 50% would go see the video, and then we'll be like, Nope, I'm not doing this. You go get your tubes tight. So there is a component of, okay, is this going to mess me up? Down there? There are some risks associated with ligating a nerve or a blood vessel or something where the men could possibly have some kind of erectile dysfunction after that. That's super rare, and it's not something that's a serious concern. But I mean, like I said, we mess with the body in ways that can have unintended consequences. But vasectomy is considered to be safe, and it doesn't really impact hormones, as far as we know.
Dr. Spencer Baron:Thank you so much. And now we have to wrap it up, because we are at the end of our time, and that was fantastic. I really believe that she could continue going on, providing us with I love it. You're very captivating. And thank you so much again for our second interview with you. I don't know, but Dr Terry, there may be a third one, and that was that would be unprecedented, because I keep getting questions from people that have listened to the last one. So that's great. So thank you so much. I mean, there's lots
Dr. C:to talk about. There's lots to talk about so and it, you know, it's, it's sad, because people don't know who to trust, right, right? They have no idea who to trust. And they're like, Well, I was listening to a podcast with a doctor from on Mel Robbins's podcast, like, I think I might have mentioned that, and she was trashing fellow therapy, and you know how bad it is, but she says, I don't know anything about the pelotherapy. I don't do it so. But then you have this negative talk about something. Right? So if you're going to have the negative talk about something, hey, at least document yourself about why that thing is bad, rather than just say that thing is bad. Don't do it. And then people listen and they're like, wait, wait a minute. She said, that's bad. Why? How should I believe you that what you say is good? So it's very conflicting information, the same as the politics. You know, they say one thing, they mean another. And then at the end of the day, we're left holding the bag, and we have to fork over all these inflated dollar bills and work hard for them, and it's eroding our financial income and all the stuff, because they promise one thing and then they deliver another,
Dr. Spencer Baron:right? So true. Well, thank you so much. Again, I want to stay on the I want to stay on the line with her commentary. But thank you. Thank you again. Yeah, and
Dr. Terry Weyman:Dr Spence, you can get a quick, uh, Barbie movie in before we go the
Unknown:next one. There you go, like a little clip, yeah, that we can get. Would you all are so insensitive scene that made you cry, the very end. The very end. No, I
Dr. C:didn't watch it. I don't know the end. I don't know what else.
Dr. Spencer Baron:It's actually where, where the where Barbie talks to me. Created the Barbie, the Barbie doll featured in the movie. Look. I just got goosebumps. All right? Justina, well, thank you for listening to today's episode of The cracking backs podcast. We hope you enjoyed it. Make sure you follow us on Instagram at Kraken backs podcast. Catch new episodes every Monday. See you next time you.