Andrew Huberman Talks About Testosterone Optimization

the jurgen experience the hormone augmentation thing is always a little bit of a complicated discussion but there's so much that's happening there right now that's really interesting like what well for instance um sort of back to the topic of supplements i always say look their behaviors are the fundamental layer you have to do the right things for anything for sleep for learning for sports performance but then there's nutrition supplementation prescription drugs and then off-label stuff right and so we always think about when you hear hormones in sports you always think just the raw conversation about

anabolics all the band stuff we can talk about that stuff and how it works years ago i used to work on androgens testosterone and its derivatives and how it impacts brain development and body function fear and and also mental states but there's a category of supplements that are very interesting that for most people who aren't exploring testosterone augmentation for sport work very well to increase testosterone by about 100 to 200 points not you know 300 you know not a tripling or anything like that and the main ones are two substances one is called tongat ali

oh yeah that stuff's real huh yeah oh yeah because what happens is the testosterone molecule it it's basically carried in a cargo so it can be in its free form unbound form free testosterone and everyone says oh i want more free testosterone you want more but the these what are called sex hormone binding globulins so there's something called sex hormone bonding globulin and albumin they carry the testosterone molecule to the different tissues of the body so you don't want all your testosterone free you want some of it bound up so that it can be delivered

to the different tissues including your brain but if you have too much sex hormone bonding globulin the testosterone can't really do its things okay so tonga ali about 400 milligrams per day has the effect of raising free testosterone and overall testosterone by about 100 to 200 points and so we're not talking about full trt or blasting or now that i i'm always amused on youtube they now call it sports trt that's when you get above 200 milligrams per week sports this is basically you know you've got trt which is typically about 200 milligrams and we

say 200 milligrams when you're looking at a syringe what is that so that's is that a thousand milligrams so the typical dose of of uh testosterone replacement therapy is 200 milligrams given once every week to two weeks but when you look at a full syringe what is that so for one cc one mill right that's 200 milligrams typically of scipionate which is sold one cc a full cc is only one cc is not going to be that much it's it yeah so it depends if you have a little narrow strings okay right right but if

you have a syringe that goes up to 10. what is that that's 10 cc's that's that's 10 cc yeah that's a thousand milligrams that makes sense right so it would be two on that and that's 200 milligrams that's right so well okay so as long as we're going down like two full syringes yeah i mean i actually think that a lot of people who think they need trt when i hear about guys in their 20s and 30s look i'm in my mid-40s and i can tell you that you can get and maintain very healthy testosterone

levels without trt if you do the right things the behaviors the nutrition all the other stuff early on there's sometimes people who have hypocrinal syndromes and things like that there's a lot of issues with guys that head injuries and with head injuries and absolutely and we it'd be an interesting conversation to talk about the role of testosterone in neural repair it's very interesting but when you look at trt i mean the way that the clinics and the doctors typically do it is to give 200 milligrams and then send people out for two weeks and then

they come back because they can charge them to come back repeatedly it's clear that on a without any trt the testes normally make anywhere from seven to fifteen milligrams of testosterone per day so taking this massive dose and then waiting two weeks is absolutely foolish it doesn't it's amazing to me that the the medical profession does this because it doesn't match anything about the normal patterns of endocrinology it's just not how the body works the way it's been described to me to do it is to do it um with an insulin syringe and to do

a tiny amount every three days right that's correct yeah so 0.2 milli you know 0.2 mil so maybe you know 20 to 60 milligrams every every few days every third day or so that much more closely matches the normal pattern of release and avoids these estrogenic crashes and a lot of problems that are that are layered onto estrogen are actually problems with prolactin which is a molecule that's involved in milk letdown and lactating women but it actually shuts down the sexual desire and aggression you know when uh this is interesting about prolactin so this happens

in brooding birds and it happens in humans they've done this a study published in the journal nature which is our kind of apex journal showed that when the husbands of pregnant women because of something maybe a pheromone maybe some odor of the pregnant woman actually increases the man's prolactin when they're pregnant puts body weight on the guy starts laying down body fat presumably to prepare the father for the long sleepless nights ahead because humans have always co-parented wow am i mostly co-parented we all know women do far more but it's teachers out there who get

fat don't feel bad yeah so that's going on the dad is is it's part due to an increase in prolactin and testosterone and prolactin are kind of working in opposite fashion so it's a very interesting thing but the way you describe it is correct now for people that aren't getting prescribed trt but want the increase in testosterone there are these plant compounds like tonga ali and another one which is very interesting it's a nigerian shrub called phadoggia aggressis and it mimics luteinizing hormone which is the hormone that comes out of the hypothalamus that stimulates the

testes if you got those and your ovaries if you've got those to make more testosterone or estrogen and so those two herbal supplements together can give a significant boost in free and active testosterone so you said tongue god ali can give you 100 to 200 yeah about that what does the other one give you fadoja is usually taken at about 600 milligrams um and that can mean the most dramatic effect i've ever seen was somebody you had is testosterone down in the low twos or i think it was like low twos and it he got

it up to the 700 range which but that's it but that's an outlier right most people are gonna see about a three to four hundred point increase and that's what the two of them synergistically the dojo will actually make the testes grow it's a it's a noticeable difference so everybody wants that well the reason i know about this stuff people are probably thinking like you know huberman's running gear out of the back of his cars and that's not what this is about is that i do a certain amount of work with military and i do

a certain amount of work with professional athletes who cannot take androgen compounds out of a syringe because they'll lose their job right or they've been doing that and they want to come off although and i'm not going to out the organization but there is one major professional sports organization where let's just say if somebody gets injured they have permission to take up to 200 milligrams a week of testosterone soccer no no [ __ ] no but good guess you almost got me there because i almost countered with the actual thing that it is hockey uh

no although those guys have the head injuries so actually say that again right the head injury thing is is is a serious problem obviously so testosterone has the effects we're all aware of like deepening the voice facial hair muscle growth recovery etc mostly because testosterone increases protein synthesis you look at a young male in puberty it's a protein synthesis machine yeah they eat the aed and they just grow and grow and grow and they're putting on muscles and they're lean and you know so most often they're lean but in any case testosterone has some very

interesting effects on the brain the the major mental effect of testosterone is it makes effort feel good oh that makes sense and the reason it does it is that the amygdala this fear center in the brain this anxiety center in the brain has androgen receptors it has testosterone receptors and so the way this works in animals and in humans as well is that for most species the males of that species never get a chance to mate right so if you think about i'll probably pick an example where you'll you'll know the exception because i know

you know a lot about natural animals and animals that are hunted but if you think about animals with antlers like rams there's been a lot of research believe it or not on rams it'd be fun i'd love to work on you know rams have enormous balls and they have to fight for the right to mate yes and the fighting is a choice right and the decision to walk away is a choice usually they usually don't kill each other although i know some of the injuries can lead to death so testosterone these surges in testosterone that

happen seasonally in certain species like rams or even these little hamsters the males will rip each other's testicles off in order to fight for the right to mate so males of a given species have to actually overcome the fear of pain and punishment and the surge in testosterone is what causes the shift to the willingness to engage in battle and so when humans are taking low doses or reasonable doses of testosterone or they're increasing their testosterone or they're going through puberty effort and leaning into pain and challenge actually has the effect of making the body

feel soothed and good it's a drive just like sex is a drive or drinking water when you're thirsty as a drive this stuff is all anchored deep within the hypothalamus this isn't a cognitive thing that makes sense why young men in particular are really driven to hard exercise and sports that are very very difficult that require extreme effort completely makes sense yeah and why when people are testosterone depleted they feel depressed and when people have a surge of testosterone they feel relief and anxiety provided it's in the appropriate range catch new episodes of the joe

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