Wellness Radio Recap: December 5, 2020

Drs. Warren continued their conversation from last week all about men’s health in support of the upcoming Men’s Metabolic Reset, hosted by Dr. Nathan Warren. 

In this episode of Wellness Radio, the focus shifted to low libido, testosterone, weight loss resistance, and stress. Here are the timestamps where you can find the discussion on each topic for even more details.

04:21 - Low Libido Causes and Recommendations

15:06 - Estrogen in Men

30:44 - The Effect of Stress and Environmental Toxins on Testosterone

45:03 - Adrenal Health

Wellness Radio is now a 2-hour show on Talk! 102.3FM. Drs. Warren shared the second hour live on Facebook, where the discussion opened on the topic of superfoods.

You can find us on Facebook under the name Drs. Warren.  We post several lives that go over these topics from the blogs, as well as other information and resources that we find helpful and applicable!

Should you be eating more superfoods like blueberries, spinach, kale, avocado, and other similarly labeled foods? It’s important to remember that those foods are only as great as your body's ability to break them down into usable nutrients, assimilate these nutrients throughout your body, then get them into your cells to build living tissue. There’s nothing particularly special about the food you’re eating, but there’s something amazing about your body’s ability to utilize the nutrients within the foods you eat. So, it’s not about eating superfoods mixed in with unhealthy options in your diet, it’s about always eating real food to support your body’s ability to heal and maintain good health. 

Libido

For a lot of men, libido is something you shy away from getting help with but it is important to maintain good health here for both sexes. Libido isn’t just about connecting with your partner and getting intimate, which is of course huge, but it also makes us connect to ourselves and our identity as a man or woman. Your sex drive is intimately connected with your hormones, your heart health, and your metabolic health. It has a lot to do with what goes on in the bedroom but it’s also an important health marker that should be kept in check as it signals bigger health issues if it is allowed to go downhill. 

In the upcoming Men’s Metabolic Reset, hosted by Dr. Nathan Warren, heart health and hormones are two things that will be of great focus. He will deep-dive into how to improve your cardiovascular health, your blood flow, and your hormones. These are health markers that are often overlooked for years, building up to a major event like a heart attack that seemingly comes out of the blue when there were signs that something was brewing for quite a while, like low libido. 

One doesn’t generally go from being exposed to toxins or eating unhealthily to a heart attack overnight. It goes from a feeling of malaise and fatigue to putting on weight around the midsection to developing anger or emotional issues to erectile dysfunction. A gradual heightening of all of these symptoms over time builds up and causes a heart attack. These are symptoms that are usually just written off as stress or aging but they are signs of deeper issues happening beneath the surface. 

Estrogen in Men

Certain chemicals and environmental toxins called xenoestrogens or exogenous estrogen can really affect a man’s estrogen levels over time. These come in the form of BPA and BPS chemicals in plastics. Plastics labeled as free of these are still harmful to our bodies! Any plastic container that you use to store food that has any abrasion such as a scrape or melt will leach chemicals into your food. Cold, heat, and aging can lead to plastics leaking into your food, as well. Chemicals from plastic will lower your testosterone levels which will then have a negative effect on your libido. That’s why we recommend removing plastic from your kitchen and overall life as much as possible to protect your health and your environment. 

Statin drugs also negatively effect your testosterone. This drug is meant to lower your cholesterol, but cholesterol is the backbone of your sex hormones. Cholesterol isn’t good or bad, it is a normal part of your physiology. Your body produces it to function in ways such as repairing vessels, protecting your brain, managing cortisol, and acting as an antioxidant. Lowering your cholesterol levels will negatively effect the levels of testosterone in your body. 

LDL which is feared at elevated levels is actually beneficial to brain diseases like Alzheimer’s and dementia. Cholesterol is not what you think it is. Peer-reviewed studies have confirmed that it is not as harmful on its own. It can be entirely possible that your body is producing more cholesterol in your body to help you manage low testosterone levels. In this case, lowering your cholesterol will leave you with low T levels which can lead to a myriad of health issues. 

Low blood flow during intimacy means low blood flow everywhere else. This is a big red flag of a brewing heart issue. You may feel at ease from the likelihood of a heart attack if you’re taking statin medications; however these medications aren’t meant to stop heart attacks from happening. They’re meant to lower cholesterol. It is entirely possible to have a heart attack even with low cholesterol. 

There’s a general consensus among men that as they age, things start to go awry with their body and they resign to the thought that that’s just the way it is. It doesn’t have to be that way. Your health is 100% in your hands and you can live life in such a way that you age in your best ever health with no nagging aches and pains and ailments tagging along. You can learn how to live life in a manner that takes control of your health in Dr. Nathan’s Men’s Metabolic Reset. 

Drs. Nathan and Rebecca Warren are both chiropractors and functional wellness practitioners. We do not issue jabs or prescribe medication, instead, they teach you how to help your body heal itself with diet and lifestyle changes. Medications are quick fixes. You learn, instead, how to get down to the root cause of your issues and illnesses to live a longer, more vital life. You learn how to eat and what times to eat for the healthiest you when you consult with them.

Stress and Toxins - Two BIG Testosterone Enemies

Stress is a major cause of low testosterone in men. You may not even think of your life as that stressful because we accept stress as normal but let’s look at the average day for most men. You wake at 5:30 am, having gone to bed at a late hour spending time in front of the television. Once you’re awake, you turn the TV back on and there’s news on, hitting you with politics, COVID cases, death, and everything alarming. You’re already stressed out and you haven’t even gotten to work yet. You might not think you’re stressed by the news, but your body is responding to your environment. Your heart rate is going up and your adrenals are going, as well. 

Then you sit in traffic worrying about getting in late. You get to work and deadlines, along with your boss’ demands hit you. You grab some coffee with milk and sugar or a coke and a donut. You eat more crappy foods for lunch and so now your body is under major stress. You head home, grab a beer to help your body wind down from a stressful day and fall asleep in front of the TV to do it all again the next day. That’s a lot of stress. 

A lack of Vitamin D is also a contributing factor to low T. Some men can go days without seeing the sun. Studies say that this wrecks your cortisol and your circadian rhythm, which negatively affects your sleep; yet another stressor on the body. 

Compounding the stress on our bodies from our external environment is the standard American diet that does nothing to support our health. Low fat has been a lie sold to us for decades. Margarine is one molecule away from plastic. Vegetable oils are rancid and canola oil is not the health food you think it is. It’s time to get back to eating real food.

Another stressor to men, one that was mainly a women’s issue in the past, is the increase of estrogen. This is coming from added plastics, environmental toxins, and chemicals in deodorants being used daily. An increase of estrogen in the body leads to a lowering of testosterone. This is why there has been an increase in men with breast cancer. 

You may be wondering how stress and low libido are linked. Here’s an example. If a tiger is chasing you, your body goes into fight or flight mode, your stress levels increase and your adrenals are activated. Your body is not thinking about sex at that moment at all. 

Well, this level of stress is what your body is under in your day-to-day life. That’s why it is so important to reduce your stress levels to enjoy a healthy sex life. 

High blood sugar, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and weight-loss resistance are all stress-related responses. 

Leaving your job and getting rid of all your environmental stressors might be difficult right now. What you can do, however, is help your body better respond to stress. The better your body’s response to stress is, the healthier you will be. That is the whole point of the Men’s Metabolic Reset. It teaches you how to better adapt to stress via lifestyle. 

Adrenal Health

We all are, at some level, being affected by stress, whether that’s emotional or physical stress. Let’s discuss the hypothalamus. This is an area of your brain that affects your adrenal glands and thyroid glands if it is experiencing dysfunction. 

Too often when people seek medical care to help with stress, their adrenals are treated with adaptogens instead of looking at the causes of the dysfunction. Sure, adaptogens can help you adapt to stress, but junk food, lack of exercise, and environmental toxins are not supporting the work of the adaptogens and so these should be looked at first. 

The first step to health is doing complete lab work. There are markers that will reveal what’s really going on in your body to help you craft an individual plan for you. 

Another thing you want to do is start your day off right. Develop a healthy morning routine that starts you off on a positive mental step instead of being drenched in negativity. 

Lastly, work on trying to get to bed at the same time each night and waking at the same time each morning. This simple step can help to reset your circadian rhythm to help you adapt better to stress.