Hormones play a critical role in maintaining overall health by regulating body functions such as repair, regeneration, and energy production. Testosterone, often misunderstood as a male-only hormone, is essential for both men and women, contributing to muscle mass, bone density, and cognitive function. The importance of balancing hormones like estrogen, progesterone, insulin, and thyroid hormones is emphasized, as imbalances can lead to health complications, including cancers and metabolic disorders.

Proper hormone management can significantly improve not just physical health, but also emotional well-being and relationships. By addressing hormonal deficiencies, individuals often experience improvements in libido, energy levels, and mood, which can lead to enhanced personal connections and a better quality of life. Hormonal therapy, when done correctly, has the potential to restore both physical vitality and strengthen relationships.

Highlights of the Podcast

00:04 – Introduction to Hormones

01:16 – Testosterone Overview

02:17 – Estrogen and Progesterone

05:25 – Insulin and Glucagon

08:31 – Thyroid Hormone Mismanagement

10:48 – DHEA and D3

13:04 – Hormones and Relationship Health

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:00:04] All right. So basically, Hormone, all of you will start this whenever. So. The hormones with the hormone jive hormone as if to tell the giant meat machine that we run around and what to do. Think of it like the. Code for a computer. It comes in and tells the body what to do by those those things. And so we have a host of them. And the actual path to health is getting the body to do the things it’s supposed to do, make the chemicals supposed to make and flush out the stuff it’s not supposed to have. So hormones are a giant, giant piece of staying actually healthy. And so these these are also not taught very well in medical school because, like I said, if they make you really healthy, it doesn’t make a whole lot of money for medical industry. And so that’s why there’s so much confusion about this. So let’s run through the ones that we hear the most about. We’re going to start with testosterone. Testosterone is the healing hormone. It’s what tells your body to repair, regenerate, regrow, all those other things. So, you know, the reasons linked to decrease fat, increase muscle mass, increase bone density, increase cognitive function, you know, increased sex drive is really because it helps the body regenerate, repair and heal.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:01:16] So some of the major things that it ends up doing is it will increase the body’s ability to produce oxygen hemoglobin hematocrit levels. Those will start kind of flowing through increasing function all over the body because oxygen is the number one thing we want to get in the body. And so as it starts going through and repairing that, it also helps to heal, regenerate muscle tissue inside the muscle tissue is where we have all the mitochondria. The monarchs produce all the energy for the body, what’s called ATP or the intense and triphosphate. As those start, as those little start coming up, everything, the body starts getting better. That’s why the energy comes up. That’s when everything else gets better. So that’s a really, really important piece. Now, testosterone is not a male hormone. Typically, the levels that men carry are higher than that of women. But that doesn’t mean it’s not a everybody hormone and it’s hypercritical for everybody to have. Like I said, bone density is the number one thing it does. I’ll you plastic for my sister, my testosterone. The levels are different. You’ve got to manage those better.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:02:17] But you know, it’s super, super effective for a giant amount of issues. It will also convert into estrogen. And so any hot flashes, night sweats and dazzle dryness issues you have are easily taken care of by that as a conversion to estrogen. So running that one was given estrogen real quick. Estrogen and progesterone are paired together. Those you’re you’re basically what we refer to as our female hormones because they’re very, very important for female function. So breasts, uterus, ovaries, that type of thing are really, really depends on estrogen and progesterone. The problem is, is that the way that they’re used in nature is they’re in a positive fashion. So they that a little bit in the weed hold off for a while. Look at progesterone for example progesterone. Its job is it’s increase blood flow to the uterus so that we have more oxygen, more nutrients coming in. We have more waste and bad stuff coming out. And so it makes the uterus much more viable for pregnancy, and that’s its whole purpose.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:03:17] And so that’s that’s why we use it. And so we use it a lot for pregnancy. We get people out pregnant, everything’s great, hold it throughout like it come down a little bit towards the end. Everything’s great. But it’s one of those things we use for a short period of time. What the research shows on long term estrogen and progesterone use is that they’re directly tied to all the female cancers cervical cancer, ovarian cancer, uterine cancer, breast cancer, all those type of cancers. So use for a short period of time, super fantastic, great for producing pregnancies and birth would not recommend them long term. I guess it testosterone estrogen, you get all the benefits of testosterone and you get all of the issues dealt with as far as what estrogen issues you have when you start adding back in the testosterone to get the conversion to estrogen. The problem we get into when we look at the the levels of a quote unquote, healthy woman, it’s not a healthy woman. It is a woman’s best option to produce offspring.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:04:18] So if you’re 20 or 30, those labs are pretty much accurate. If you’re 40 or 50, those labs are not accurate. Those are not where you want to be because you’re not trying to have a baby. And holding progesterone high all the time is a terrible idea because the body only has it up for a little while. And then what happens when it goes away? You have a menstrual cycle and you flush off all that stuff and it just pulled it. So if you constantly hold that stuff high, it’s you create all sorts of issues long term. And that’s what all the research shows. I don’t know why people are so giving it long term, but again, there’s confusion in how hormones work. The other two that are really, really important, there’s a whole host of them up that I always like to go into insulin and glucagon. So insulin is a storage hormone. So what ends up happening is you consume when you consume, your food breaks out into carbohydrates as carbohydrates are basically sugars. So their sugar, their glucose, those two things are the same thing. Well, when a lot of you are missing is that insulin’s primary job is to suck the and suck the sugar out of the intestine. Through the intestinal wall into the bloodstream. We talk about what happens when it gets in the bloodstream, but we don’t talk about how it got to the bloodstream to begin with.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:05:25] The vast majority of time, the increased amount of insulin function that we have in our body is pulling more sugar from our food through the intestinal wall into the bloodstream to begin with. So that’s where that’s where it gets there. And then once it’s there, it’s Java’s storage, it’s move. This insulin’s job is to move the sugar or the glucose from the blood into storage. So the first place it goes is in the muscle tissue as glycogen. The second place it goes is in the liver as glycogen. After the liver is full of glycogen, which happens pretty quick for most people, your body then stores that sugar as fat because it doesn’t want that sugar to sit around in the blood because it’s it can become problematic. So that’s where the vast majority of our fat comes from, as do the insulin pushing it into fat storage. The problem we get into is that the amount of sugar that’s supposed to be in the blood, you know that 90 to 100 range is way higher than we’re supposed to be in the brain. The is 55 to 60. And so the problem we get into is that when we have high insulin levels all the time, like diabetes and things like that, it activates the little little transport mechanism that takes it from the blood across the blood brain barrier to the brain.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:06:33] And so the higher levels of fasting insulin we have, what ends up happening is we have more and more degradation of brain tissue because we have a higher and higher drift of sugar from the blood into the cerebrospinal fluid or around the brain. So way deeper than we were going to go today. But that’s that’s where we get the dementia issues is where we get a lot of the, you know, Alzheimer’s that we get Type three diabetes is, you know, you mentioned Alzheimer’s. That’s what we’re talking about. The other side of insulin is glucagon. Glucagon is what our body uses to tell the body, hey, we’re low on sugar. I need you to burn the fat to produce the energy. And so that’s kind of how those who play, you know, you guys will see this with fasting. You’ll see this with keynote diets, you’ll see this with GLP one, peptides like Ozempic and Semaglutide and Wegovy and Trans Appetite and like all those, all the different GLP one functions that G is for glucagon. And so that’s how that function works.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:07:29] Now they’re safe to use. Everything’s fine as long as you understand what happens when glucagon gets in the body in the life, lytic or the fat burning process. Most people have not been doing fat burning very well. And so there’s a lot of support that’s required. Otherwise, they have terrible issues with eating their muscle tissue, gallstone issues, their stomach shuts down intestinal, you know, tearing like all sorts of things. But as long as you do them properly, they’re very, very safe. So those are those those ones. Thyroid hormone. You really got a couple of different hormones here. And this is this is the place I see medical docs screw up all the time. TSA h Yes, it has thyroid in the name thyroid stimulating hormone. However, it’s a brain hormone. The thyroid hormone. So if you pull your TSA and you’re like, Well, your TSA just goes, your thyroid is fine, you can never, ever make those two. There’s that assumption because the thyroid stimulating hormone comes from the territory telling your thyroid to do a job. It’s like telling your teenager, go clean your room. You’re probably going to want to go check the room and make sure it was clean.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:08:31] So that’s why we are pulling free T3 and free T4, not total T3 and T4. I see that. Too much free T3 and free T4. So you’re going to take a year to make 80% of your your thyroid hormone is going to be T4, which is not what your body uses. We use T3. So converting from T4 to 83 is the thing it’s involved. I’ll talk to you about that later. But the amount of T3 we end up having is a lot of times dependent upon the amount of iodine we have because T3 is three ions and t for us four ions. So the more items get in, the better. But that’s going to help a lot of the function of the body that we, we refer to as metabolic function. It’s going to work with energy. It’s going to help with alertness. It’s going to help with creating things like IGF one. So it helps the body kind of do a lot of energetic things, growth things, regenerative things. So thyroid is very important. Getting it in the right ranges is important. But that’s that’s one of those things people lean a little heavier on thyroid than they should, giving people synthroid and label fractions like that’s not actually the best option.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:09:34] Building that got up, building the adrenals up and letting the thyroid heal itself is usually the best option because long term those drugs do more damage than they do benefit. And that’s been that’s all over research. And you can just talk to people who’ve been on thyroid medications for a long time. They were bad medications, help for a while, and then they get to the point where it’s like, I don’t know, like I just don’t feel it because I used to. The medications are working with this to because that’s not how your body’s supposed to function with those. So those are your typical ones. LH and FH are very directed into producing testosterone and estrogen and progesterone, helping with pregnancy, helping with creation of those. DHEA is a precursor to a lot of the testosterone estrogen stuff managing the DHEA levels. It’s funny because we’ll get people who come in who women to typically who have like the darkening of facial hair and they’re starting to lose hair stuff and they come in and their testosterone levels are fine and the restoration levels are fine, but they’re taking a lot of DHEA because their doctor said DHEA is good for you. The proper amount of DHEA is good for you. And so they’re taking those. And since that’s a precursor to all those things, they have androgenic effects, which is causing the hair and lots of stuff. So DHEA is fine and it’s great as lots of fantastic things.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:10:48] The proper amount is important. One of the other hormones I like to talk about that most people don’t know as a hormone is D3. D3 is not a vitamin, it’s a hormone. The definition of vitamin is essential nutrient that cannot be made in the body. D3 is made in the body, D2 is made the liver attached. An LDL cholesterol taken to the kidneys were certainly D3. For that reason it can’t be a vitamin. Its actual job is to help direct ions. Calcium, magnesium. Potassium that goes up all over the body. Which is why the D3 is good for your bones. Give your immune system. It’s good for your energy, it’s good for everything else. It’s because it carries. It directs nutrients where they’re supposed to go in the body. So those year, those year, it’s a pretty solid overview of the typical stuff. If you guys still have more questions, you know, come see us here. Subquestions at Chalmers Monster.com. If you’re on some of these progesterone and estrogens and things like that, I would highly recommend that you do a little bit of research into it and figure out if there’s another option for you. If you’re on testosterone, estrogen, progesterone, and you’re not trying to get pregnant. I really don’t understand why you’re on all three of those, because the testosterone will do everything testosterone wants to do and everything as far as hot flashes and such and that some dryness.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:11:59] The other two are doing with the with a substantially, massively decreased risk of cancer. So I get it. Like if you compound these things are more expensive and you can make more money doing it and you have to do different blood labs and there’s there’s lots of from a business side, from medical business side, there’s a giant reason to do all the different hormones. But from an actual functional standpoint, there’s no reason to do anything besides just nostrum for about 90% of women sometimes if we’re not getting where we want to go. So instead of pumping the testosterone up, we’ll use a natural oil. I like to use progestin plus to help round out any of the symptoms. We’ve worked with lots and lots, lots of women over the past ten years and we’ve never had to we’ve never had to put any woman on estrogen to get all of the symptoms to go away and to get her to feel really good. So that’s of where that is. If you’re on that type of stuff, do the research, read into it, try to figure out why you’re on those things and if you actually need them. Because the fewer things we put in the body, the fewer levers we’ve got to mess with, the easier it is for the body to be healthy.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:13:04] So if you guys questions on that, if you’re wanting to switch change, add some stuff, give us a call. Pillars of I mean, the numbers on there, you guys can get kind of hooked up and we’ll help you guys get back where you need to be. But it’s really, really important for all sorts of things. Like the thing I love the most about testosterone is the amount of marriages we’ve been able to just either save or just radically make better. Yeah, it’s always funny when we get couples in, like they’ll come in, they’ll say kind of, you know, just like normal, like this. And then will seem at the three month mark and the people will literally move the chairs closer together and lean towards each other. Because what ends up happening is that typically with the women, usually the main sex drives. Okay? But we see that is an issue too. And we’ll we’ll help them then with sex for what it winds up happening is that orgasm function radically increase radically increases with women and their desire, their libido goes up as well. And so what ends up happening is that when the guys start having more sex, that’s our number one. Number two, love language. For most men, we feel more loved, respected and cared for. And so we end up caring for loving and being better for for our wives. And all of a sudden, the marriage is starting better and better and better.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:14:13] And people come in there like men, like what’s more peaceful at home? Like we’re having a lot more fun. Like, you know, we kind of like, you know, our marriage has picked up. We get the spark back, Everything’s going great. That’s my favorite piece. Because when you get healthy, the things that are around you that are supposed to work, right, tend to start working a little bit better, you know? So those are the things I love the most about doing This is it’s not just that I feel better, it’s the family feels better. It’s my entire life is better because now I my relationship functions are getting better. All the things in my life are supposed to get better are getting better. And that’s that’s my favorite part of doing the whole health thing. So if you guys are viewers are having questions about hormones, get them answered, get you do the research, talk to somebody who does this on a regular basis.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:15:00] You know, I would not I realize endocrinologists are supposed to be the hormone specialists, but guys, diabetes is a hormone problem. It’s super easy to fix. And so if these endocrinologists haven’t fixed diabetes yet, I I’m not I don’t know what they know about hormones. I mean, there they either don’t know what to do with hormones or that horrible people, and they’re just making people stay diabetic. I don’t know. I don’t know how else to cut that one. So I would go see somebody who’s been doing this for a while, who understands what’s going on, understands all the hormones play together. There’s a lot of guys that her Brecker goes, that type of stuff. You know, there’s a there’s a bunch of guys who know it. But again, the reason a lot of the medical doctors don’t is because it is substantially more profitable for the medical industry for you to be sick. So if there’s any questions questions that Chalmers want to Starcom or give us a call. Thanks for your time. Stuck together.

As always if you have any questions, please send them to Questions@ChalmersWellness.com

Check out Chalmers Pillarsofwellness.com for Wellness updates! And ask me any questions you have at questions@chalmerswellness.com. I answer all of them and look forward to hearing from you.

The Chalmers Wellness Stubstack just launched. Comment, Like, and Interact with other people on their wellness journey. Communities can make a difference.     DrChalmers.substack.com

Dr. Matt Chalmers

Disclaimer: This content is for informational purposes only. Before taking any action based on this information you should first consult with your physician or health care provider. This information is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health providers with any questions regarding a medical condition, your health, or wellness