SS 131 – Your Hormones and Your Energy – Part 2

Grant and Heavey discuss the second half of their test results from the DUTCH hormone testing they’ve recently run. Today, they specifically cover topics relating to melatonin and cortisol levels and how they’re correlated with sleep, stress, and energy. Finally, find out what treatment plan Heavey has in store for Grant and whether he’s willing to commit to it. Fingers crossed.

 

 

[01:40] One Bottle, Double the Alcohol

 

First, Grant reads an article called Gin Recalled for Having Too Much Alcohol. In Canada, Bombay Sapphire gin is being recalled because it’s supposed to have 40% alcohol but found to have been bottled at 77%. It’s basically almost twice your bottle for the price of one.

 

 

[04:00] A Review of Last Week’s Episode

 

Last week, Grant and Heavey ran some hormone testing and covered page one of the result. They got insights into their sex hormone status such as progesterone, testosterone, estrogen, and their pathways including all the metabolites coming from those hormones. This week, they discuss the second part of the test.

 

 

[06:10] Melatonin and Sleep

 

Grant has healthy melatonin level. Heavey explains it’s not uncommon to see lower levels of melatonin in people who have trouble falling asleep at night. It’s not necessarily the quality of sleep but just that act of falling asleep.

 

Interestingly, there has been considerable research on the connection between the melatonin release you get at night and caffeine consumption late in the day and/or exposure to blue light in the evening. If you’re exposed to electronics in the evening, research suggests that it’s actually going to push out your release of melatonin later and later, potentially making it difficult for you to fall asleep.

 

So if you have trouble falling asleep, it could be this whole issue with melatonin, caffeine, and/or blue light. Heavey recommends hopping off the use of electronics earlier in the night. Avoid having afternoon coffee. If you really want to use electronics at night, you can wear those nerdy blue-blocker glasses or use the night shift feature of your computers or phones.

 

 

[08:55] Total DHEA

 

In the last episode, Heavey talked about DHEA Sulfate and other DHEA metabolites. This page of the test is focused on adrenal glands so it gives an estimate of what your total DHEA production is, which is an estimate based on the DHEA sulfate and other DHEA metabolites. It’s your master androgenic hormone and your body can create testosterone and estrogens and other hormones out of it.

 

Looking at Grant’s results, his DHEA level is on the low end based on his age range. Low DHEA is associated with things like high stress, aging, opioids, diabetes, and high alcohol. A lot of these hormones walk through these pathways so you may be starving downstream hormones. It’s therefore good to have a healthy production of DHEA. Grant’s level is not super low but it’s on the lower end for his age.

 

 

[11:05] Cortisol and Stress

 

Cortisol is well-known as the stress hormone and it serves many functions in the body. When the fight or flight system is triggered in the body, the sympathetic nervous system is activated or becomes dominant. As a result, your body triggers this whole cascading release of cortisol and that helps you in that fight or flight response.

 

Cortisol is not bad but you have to be concerned about balancing it. Just like inflammation which often gets a bad rap but we need it. It’s one way we heal from injury and benefit from our workouts. So it’s depends on the healthy cycle of inflammation. As with cortisol, it’s the same thing. We need a healthy cycle of cortisol. But too little or too much of it can be a problem.

 

In situations where you have chronic exposure to stress, you can start to see cortisol getting out of its healthy range depending on how people’s bodies respond but it’s pretty correlated with energy level. When cortisol is out of whack, it’s not uncommon to have people complaining of being tired all the time or at certain times of the day. Or they may feel tired in the morning and more awake at night. Heavey has seen it in both cases where people have energy issues when it’s too high and when it’s too low. So it’s when it starts to get out of range that it starts to cause problems.

 

 

[13:25] Cortisol and Adrenal Fatigue

 

Cortisol brings up this whole notion of adrenal fatigue.  They basically advertise adrenal fatigue in a way that as you’re stressed over time, your adrenals get tired and they’re not capable of producing as much cortisol anymore. Although this is not a true depiction, Heavey believes it does capture this point that there is something to this HPA access dysfunction, which is the more appropriate way of labeling adrenal fatigue.

 

The reason this urine test is so valuable is it allows you to look at your metabolized cortisol in addition to your free cortisol. Your metabolized cortisol makes up over 90% of the total cortisol in the body. This is a much clear depiction of your adrenal function than just looking at free cortisol since it just makes up such a small percentage of your total production in the body which doesn’t give an accurate representation of what your adrenals are actually producing. Think of metabolized cortisol as the used up cortisol and the free cortisol is your unused, ready-to-be-deployed cortisol. Looking at Grant’s findings, he has normal metabolized cortisol level. This suggests that his adrenal glands are pumping out a normal amount of cortisol.

 

 

[15:55] Free Cortisol and Energy

 

Having to collect the urine four times throughout a day for this test, it allows you to look at your cortisol pattern for the day. As humans, we’re diurnal, meaning we’re awake in the day and asleep at night. We’re supposed to have a high level of free cortisol in the morning to help us wake up and get moving and active in the day. Then it’s supposed to decline until zero at night so you’re able to sleep.

 

It’s not uncommon to see higher levels of cortisol at night for people that have sleep issues such as difficulty in falling asleep or trouble staying asleep. So Grant is within the normal range although Heavey has seen tests where at night cortisol levels shoot up really high. This is not uncommon for people who work in shifts and have to keep flipping their schedule around and it screws up their body’s circadian rhythm. Unfortunately, this can lead to several unhealthy outcomes in the future. So this is definitely something to be aware of. Especially if you have energy issues throughout the day where you’re tired in the morning and more awake at night, this correlates strongly with a fucked up free cortisol pattern.

 

Again looking at Grant’s pattern, he has a high level in the morning and then drops throughout the rest of the day but the whole thing is attenuated. Heavey describes it as having the right shape but too small. This certainly illustrates a clear connection between this kind of pattern and lower energy levels. Additionally, low levels of metabolized and free cortisol are connected with things like chronic fatigue syndrome, chronic pain, mood disorders, and metabolic syndrome.

 

 

[19:29] Free Cortisone versus Free Cortisol

 

Looking at Grant’s results, his free cortisone is pretty much the same. Cortisone is the inactive form of cortisol. You can use the measurement of cortisone to either confirm or bias the measurements of cortisol. Grant’s results match well. But Heavey has seen cases of those having normal free cortisol and a super high free cortisone which shows that the body is in a protective mode where it’s dumping it’s free cortisol into cortisone to keep the levels down.

 

So this gives you clues as to what might be driving numbers out of bounds. This gives you insight into your body converting free cortisol into cortisone. It’s not uncommon for this to happen in the kidneys in order to protect you. But it means there is something happening in there so it’s something you have to try to address.

 

 

[21:15] Getting to the Root Cause

 

After this episode, Heavey is going to tell Grant the things he needs to do to try to fix it and then they’re going to wait two months to see how he feels.

 

Heavey doesn’t normally have his clients who have done this test retake it. If they run this test and look at the results, they have to understand this is outside the normal healthcare model. Their doctors are not going to run this test for them. Standard healthcare practices are centered around disease and looking for health and optimizing things fall outside of this. Just the cost of running this test is $250 and that excludes working with a coach to help you interpret them and usually this doubles the cost of the test. It’s definitely not cheap for people to do this.

 

So what Heavey does is to go based on symptoms after running the test. But the test allows them to have insight necessary to address those symptoms. You can’t go trying to knock out symptoms without understanding what might be at the root cause of it.

 

 

[23:30] Outside the Conventional Model

 

There are some suspicions that these tests come back bad and most people have some fucked up stuff going in their bodies so it’s hard for the test to come back totally normal. But it’s not really showing clear dysfunction that needs to be addressed. Again, it’s biased by the fact that the people willing to put the money into this are those who have been chewed up by conventional medicine and they don’t have sufficient answers for their issues because their doctors are not able to.

 

Grant has been complaining about sores and pains and his low energy for years, even way back in college. He has done blood tests all the time with his doctor but nothing comes of it. Heavey understands Grant may not fit within the conventional medical model for getting help but there is something clearly wrong. Heavey further contends that they can address it. So it would be interesting to see whether Grant will see any progress from this in a few months..

 

 

[26:15] Heavey’s Health Plan for Grant

 

Heavey gives an overview of his healthcare plan for Grant starting with some supplementation. He suspects there are few areas driving his discomfort and this can be tackled by supplements. If they do start making progress with this, Heavey still thinks it’s not the long-term solution and they need to understand what’s driving things out of bounds. But they can get insights into what things are out of bounds that are making him feel bad if they’re able to take this initial allopathic approach. For instance, Grant does some anti-inflammatory protocols and he starts feeling better. Then they know it’s inflammation that’s causing problems. Next is to find out what’s causing that inflammation. Being the super skeptical guy that he is, Grant, however, is willing to do what he asked to do to see if it works.

 

 

[27:33] A Taste of Green Spot Whiskey

 

On a lighter note, Grant and Heavey talk about a whiskey brand they got from the AirBnB space they’re staying at. It’s called Green Spot, an Irish whiskey similar to Redbreast they featured in a previous episode. They are both single pot still whiskeys. They’re made in a unique method and made probably by the same company.

 

Redbreast has a big following and people love it. Grant says Green Spot is quite similar to it plus it’s a little less expensive and a little lighter. What’s interesting is that comparing both, Green Spot is aged in bourbon and sherry casks. If he compares it to a scotch, Green Spot flavor is much lighter. Grant cites two reasons for this. One, this bottle has no age statement so we don’t know how old this stuff is. It could be a bit younger so it didn’t have as much time to age. However, the fact that it’s an Irish whiskey does make it taste it different than the scotch even if they have the same age because in Ireland, they use both malted and unmalted barley. Unmalted barley adds a little bit different flavor and it’s a little lighter. Most importantly, this is triple distilled and that explains its super smooth flavor as Heavey would describe it.

 

Grant finds Green Spot an awesome Irish whiskey for somebody who really likes Jameson a lot and doesn’t know how to venture off of Jameson, to try something as little more flavorful and to take that tiny next step before going to a more expensive brand. Heavey thinks it’s a good choice even if you haven’t gotten into Jameson yet and you just want to try to get into whiskey. It has a pleasant flavor and it’s not offensive so there is not a lot there to bother you.

 

Finally, Grant thinks Jameson has gotten so popular that for a lot of people, Jameson on the Rocks is the extent of their whiskey drinking. Green Spot can definitely help start that palate change for people that are drinking one of the world’s most popular drinks.

 

Links:

Gin Recalled for Having Too Much Alcohol

DUTCH Test

Green Spot

Redbreast