The Forgotten Hormone

I want to talk about progesterone the Forgotten hormone in men we associate progesterone with women problems menopause menstrual cycle what do progesterone do in men today I'm going to talk about the importance of progesterone in men especially as it's a precursor for testosterone what's interesting about progesterone is it helps maintain normal testosterone levels progesterone also decreases inflammation in the brain it's an anti-inflammatory it increases neurogenesis which is the creation of new brain cells progesterone definitely helps protect against dementia Parkinson's Alzheimer's progesterone also has anti-depressant effects as well that's some of the effects that progesterone does

on the brain but when someone's younger progesterone helps increase the production of sperm progesterone helps also maintain muscle mass it's involved in the immune system progesterone also helps to maintain the prostate and to prevent the enlargement of the prostate in fact the drug called finasteride is a synthetic derivative of progesterone one of the things that that drug as well as progesterone does is it inhibits the enzyme that's involved in the conversion from testosterone to something called DHT which is a more powerful form of testosterone which can then increase the size of the prostate this drug

will inhibit that enzyme to help shrink the prostate but progesterone does it also in a very natural way without the side effects another thing that progesterone does is it helps reduce the risk of breast tissue in men how do we end up with low progesterone and how do we increase the normal amounts of progesterone so then we can have more testosterone and other related hormones all of these steroid hormones come from this raw material called cholesterol and this is why cholesterol is so important especially in hormones a lot of people are on a Statin drug

which automatically shuts off your ability to make all of these really important hormones let's just start at that level and then we're going to kind of work our way down to see how we can improve this whole pathway where do you get cholesterol from you're going to get a good amount of cholesterol in sardines organ Meats like liver and you get some cholesterol in fatty meat you can also get cholesterol from cheese but not the lowfat cheese you want to get the whole milk cheese then cholesterol is then turned into what's called pregnant alone pregnant

alone is a happy hormone because it actually help helps increase other hormones the question is should you start taking pregnant alone not right away I wouldn't recommend just jumping and taking it if you were to take pregnant alone as a supplement and you can get it over the counter it's very easy to get but pregnant alone is the precursor that comes right before progesterone I would always recommend starting out maybe 5 to 10 milligram only that's very very small you might not need that but I'm just putting it out there if you try the co-actors

and it's still not working maybe you add that that a little later there are three co-actors that allow you to go from cholesterol to pregn Alone number one is magnesium people are commonly deficient in magnesium a problem with low testosterone could be easily solved just by taking enough magnesium type of magnesium I'd recommend is magnesium glycinate I would recommend taking that before you go to bed which will then open the door to allow this whole Cascade of hormones to work magnesium you can get in avocados leafy greens pumpkin seeds dark chocolate the next co-actor is

zinc many people increase their testosterone levels just by taking zinc zinc you can get shellfish oyers red meat and the last co-actor is vitamin B3 niin you can get that from nutritional yeast you can take that as a supplement take the nin that gives you the flesh it can help your heart I've given you a couple things to increase this biochemical pathway I do want to touch on things that can inhibit this biochemical pathway at different points I already mentioned the one Statin Statin is just like notoriously bad for blocking hormones okay because it blocks

the raw material to make it if you're on a Statin or your doctor wants to put you on a Statin I would step back and re-evaluate why do you really need that there are a lot of cardiologists that you can even work with they're very much against statin drugs if you wanted to balance out your lipid profile your cherol there's a lot of other ways to do it one way is just to cut down on the refined carbohydrates and sugar unfortunately the medical profession doesn't focus on that instead they give you a medication to block

cholesterol you better be taking co-enzyme Q10 very very very very important because if you don't you're going to get problems with your muscle because that's one of the big side effects is it depletes something called coin mq10 there are three other things that will inhibit this whole process number one is chronic stress how do we lower stress ashwaganda Vitamin B1 one of the biggest things that can lower stress is by increasing proding something called oxytocin by taking a certain fermented microbe which can build up your oxytocin levels and greatly reduce your stress the next thing

that can actually shut down this whole pathway is insulin this comes from consuming too many refining carbs or sugars third thing endocrine disruptors things in the environment Plastics chemicals heavy metals are things that mimic estrogen there's a couple things to help reduce some of these estrogenic effects one is to on a regular bases consume cruciferous vegetables brussels sprouts cabbage broccoli cauliflower arugula also to get a water filter that will screen out some of these Plastics that was number three there's actually number four alcohol will really shut down your testosterone I'm sorry I'm just the messenger

don't click off I'm not quite down yet and there's just one last thing that will shut down that whole pathway and that is inflammation a lot of the inflammation that happens in the body can be resolv by consuming enough vitamin D vitamin D can indirectly increase both progesterone and testosterone by decreasing inflammation and you don't want to just take small amounts you want to take at least 10,000 IUS every single day as a maintenance and if you have low testosterone or low progesterone we want to make sure we get enough sun to get the vitamin

D or just take a supplement for that about 20,000 I use of vitamin D3 every day that's really only 40 minutes in the Summer sun okay it's not that much but that vitamin D will be really crucial to drop inflammation through the body and allow these chemical Pathways to work in addition to just cholesterol if you want to increase testosterone you want to make sure that you have enough quality protein and red meat is at the top of the list I'm talking about grass-fed grassfish red meat not just talking about beef you can do lamb

if we combine that with another thing that will increase testosterone which is high-intensity interval training or resistance training couple times a week we can really add the stimulus to tell the body to make more testosterone one point with exercise as well overtraining if you overtrain you're going to take your testosterone and just drive it right into the ground why because you increase cortisol we want to do intermittent type workouts you can do long walk walks things like that you don't want to do moderate pulse rate or high pulse rate for a longer period of time

not good for testosterone I hope you know a little bit more about progesterone what it does how it's related to testosterone and if you're a man how to increase it a bit more thanks for watching and I will see you in the next video