0:01

Welcome to stuff you should know, a production

0:04

of iHeartRadio.

0:11

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,

0:13

and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, back

0:15

again on the trip of a lifetime

0:18

and it's the Three Amigos, the Three Musketeers,

0:21

the Trace Caballeros. Stuff.

0:24

That's right, talking about

0:26

e n t Oi oi

0:29

oi.

0:30

Hey, that was pretty good, Chuck. I

0:33

was not expecting that. Sometimes sometimes

0:35

there's like a little pause in

0:38

between you talking and me responding,

0:41

and it's because I'm just astounded. And

0:43

that was a good example of that. You

0:46

did great.

0:48

Yeah, and t Baby, let's do it.

0:49

Okay. So we're talking today about

0:52

testosterone estrogen. What

0:54

people commonly think of are the

0:56

two hormones, the

1:00

female hormone the male hormone,

1:02

and that those are what divides

1:05

us. The sexes are binary,

1:07

they're bisexual, there's male, there's female.

1:09

Gender is a totally different topic, as

1:11

we'll talk about a little bit. But

1:14

if you have a lot of estrogen, you're female,

1:17

a lot of testosterone, you're a male, and it

1:19

turns out that we can trace that

1:21

that's all like generally incorrect.

1:24

It's such a such a broad

1:27

stroke explanation of

1:29

estrogen and testosterone that it actually has tripped

1:32

us up all this time. And just

1:34

from researching this, Chuck, I learned

1:36

like, wow, this is if we had just never considered

1:39

estrogen female in testosterone male,

1:42

I think our general understanding of

1:44

those two hormones would be so much deeper.

1:47

Yeah, and it's one of those things where we can

1:49

trace back to a time where

1:53

that sort of whole notion came from. And

1:56

of course, you know, it's early science. They were trying to figure

1:58

stuff out. But starting about

2:00

the mid nineteenth century is when scientists

2:02

started kind of going wild

2:05

with animals

2:07

and organs and doing things

2:09

like, hey, rat,

2:12

let me remove your testicles

2:14

and let me put some ovaries in you and see

2:16

what happens.

2:18

And there was a lot of this going on.

2:19

There was a British physiologist named Ernest

2:21

Starling who actually coined the

2:23

word hormone from the Greek

2:25

word to excite in nineteen oh five.

2:28

And this is sort of right around that time in

2:30

the early nineteen hundreds, when there were

2:32

other scientists and physiologists doing

2:35

all kinds of wacky experiments to see what happened.

2:37

Yeah, and we should say hormones are

2:40

simply chemical messengers that basically

2:42

relay messages and trigger responses

2:45

or keep responses from happening in

2:47

the body, and that estrogen

2:49

and testosterone are two kinds of hormones,

2:51

specifically steroid hormones, meaning they're

2:54

made from cholesterol, which for some reason

2:56

I find really.

2:57

Gross, so

3:01

well, you might find this gross too. Then there's

3:04

an Austrian named Eugene Steinach

3:07

who was doing these kinds of

3:09

experiments that I was just talking about, and

3:11

he was saying, like, came here, frog, let

3:13

me poke around your testicles and get

3:15

some liquid out of there. Let

3:17

me, like I said earlier, let me take this

3:19

rat, let me castrate it, let me transplant

3:22

some ovaries onto this rat, and then

3:24

observe what happens. And Steinach

3:27

was one of those early scientists who kind

3:29

of led to this sort of binary

3:33

idea that you know, if

3:36

you do this, you're going to feminize a rat, or

3:38

you're going to masculinize a rat if you do that.

3:40

Sort of the vice versa operation.

3:42

Yeah, but very very quickly there

3:44

were people even back then scientists that were

3:46

like, oh, wait a minute, this is it's

3:50

not quite as binary as you're making it out to

3:52

be. And there's plenty of examples and reasons why.

3:54

Yeah, you could almost lay the entire problem

3:56

at the feet of Eugene Steinach. That he

3:59

was the one who basically said that humans

4:01

are bisexual as how we put it, binary

4:03

sexes male female, and it depends on

4:05

whether you have testosterone or estrogen. And

4:08

like you said, he got pushedback. There was one

4:10

guy in particular, an embryologist named Carl

4:12

Moore, who was like, hey, Steinick, stop

4:15

and think about what you're saying here, Like, even

4:18

without your you know, mad

4:20

scientist experiments, female

4:22

rats do all sorts of like quote

4:25

male behaviors and vice

4:27

versa. And even with your

4:29

flip flop you know, overreason

4:32

gonad rats, they're still doing

4:34

behaviors that are are not easily

4:38

assigned to one sex or the

4:40

other. So I'm not one hundred percent

4:42

sure that it's quite as cut and dry as

4:44

you you have have explained

4:47

it. And Eugene Steinach had

4:49

Carl Moore murdered silence.

4:52

Forever not

4:55

true at least I don't think it is.

4:58

I hope, okay, I just.

4:59

Tho you might have just leaned in with a pillow and gave

5:01

him the forever Hugin.

5:03

That's right.

5:04

So flashing

5:06

forward a little bit too, about the turn of the twentieth century

5:09

is when research got a little more serious about

5:11

it, and they found that extracts

5:15

from your ovaries could have

5:17

beneficial treatments for things like hot flashes

5:19

during menopause, and it could

5:21

stimulate what's called estros, which is

5:24

where the word estrogen comes from. But estris

5:26

is like when an animal is in heat. If

5:29

you've ever seen a cat or something

5:31

or a dog in heat, it's pretty

5:33

clear that something different is

5:35

going on, right, And that

5:38

word estrogen in nineteen oh six

5:41

comes from that word estrus, which

5:43

is from the Greek word oystros,

5:46

which means mad desire.

5:47

It also sounds like a brand of.

5:49

Yogurt oysters, Yeah,

5:52

oystros. Yeah.

5:53

So once these guys like this is the

5:55

beginning of the twentieth century, very late nineteenth

5:58

but mostly the first couple decades of the twentieth

6:00

century, scientists are starting to isolate

6:02

hormones, and in particular sex

6:05

hormones, and they're like, well, what happens if you give

6:07

them to humans? Now forget the frogs and

6:10

rats and all that stuff. And

6:12

what they figured out very quickly is like you said, they

6:14

like menopause have been around for a while, and

6:17

they're like, well, women have menopause and estrogen

6:19

seems to be the woman's sex hormone. Let's

6:21

give them estrogen and see what happens. And

6:24

it actually had a pretty beneficial effect.

6:27

It's been long known that estrogen

6:31

given as like a drug can

6:34

treat symptoms of menopause, like hot flashes

6:37

and stuff. And the first estrogen, I

6:40

guess prescription drug. It's

6:42

called premarin, which says like a perfectly

6:46

legitimate, big pharma

6:49

sound to it, right, Premarin.

6:52

That's a great name for a drug. But it's

6:54

even better if you know what it stands for.

6:57

Yeah, and this is well should

6:59

we say when it stands say what it is and

7:01

then what it stands for.

7:03

I think you can do both simultaneously.

7:05

Actually, well,

7:08

it's not a synthetic estrogen.

7:09

It was actually a natural isolated

7:12

estrogen derived from the

7:15

urine of a pregnant horse. So premarin

7:17

stood for pre pregnant

7:21

mayor mayor and

7:23

the end from urine, so pre maren pregnant

7:26

horse urine.

7:27

Yeah, and it was I believe

7:29

this is nineteen thirty nine.

7:30

It was made of like ten different estrogens and

7:33

was available commercially in the US just a

7:35

few years later, and by nineteen

7:38

ninety two was the highest selling drug in

7:40

the United States.

7:41

Yeah, if you want to have a good idea

7:44

of just how crazy

7:46

the pharmaceutical market has become

7:48

in the US, Premarin

7:50

was the I think you said,

7:52

the most prescribed drug in the US.

7:56

Well, the best selling I guess sho would match.

7:58

Yeah, the hit single exactly.

8:01

So this hit single, Premarin in

8:03

nineteen ninety seven had revenues

8:06

of one billion dollars. Pretty

8:08

not shabby. It'd be about two billion dollars

8:10

today. Humera, the

8:12

second best selling drug in twenty

8:14

twenty two, had revenues of twenty one

8:16

billion dollars. In

8:19

that nuts like, that's that's just night

8:21

and day compared to how far we've I

8:24

guess how far we've come. It's one way to put it. But

8:27

the upsot is premar in was it was a

8:29

lifesaver. Men were like, hey,

8:32

I'd like you to be sexually available.

8:34

Why don't you take this horse, you're in estrogen,

8:36

And when we were like, it solves my hot flash

8:38

problems sold so it

8:41

actually, it really was very

8:43

popular for a while, and it wasn't until

8:45

I think two thousand and two that it just

8:47

dropped off precipitously.

8:48

Right, Yeah, And we should mention

8:51

too that this was you know, it was obviously

8:53

for things like hot flashes, but they were also marketing

8:55

it as a way to maintain femininity

8:58

as you age, none

9:00

other than William Masters of Masters

9:03

in Johnson's Fame Sex Crime. They

9:05

said that women should use the

9:07

drug to avoid falling into the third

9:10

sex or the neutral gender, which

9:12

is very off base, to

9:14

say the least. But yeah, in two

9:17

thousand and two, things change because there

9:20

was the Women's Tell Initiative

9:22

released a study about attitudes

9:26

that that really like changed everything when it

9:28

comes to how women or people in general

9:30

think of hormone therapy when they said

9:33

that it can cause breast

9:35

cancer, heart disease, blood clots, and

9:38

stroke if you take what

9:41

was called by this time prim pro which was Primaran

9:43

and pro Vera as a you know, sort of a cocktail.

9:47

And they they minute so

9:49

much they said, we're even stopping this study.

9:51

But it turns out there was just a lot of bad reporting

9:53

about that, right.

9:54

Yeah. There's a New York Times magazine article

9:56

about menopause by a writer named

9:59

Susan Dominus, who basically reported

10:01

that the

10:04

media just jumped all over it. There's like, there's

10:06

a twenty six percent increased risk

10:08

in developing breast cancer if

10:10

you take Prempro or

10:12

generally have hormone replacement therapy,

10:15

and that's whopping. That's a

10:17

big, a big number, a big percentage.

10:20

But in absolute numbers, it's actually

10:22

not that big. So the average woman

10:24

had a two point three to three percent

10:27

chance of developing breast cancer. If

10:29

you took Prempro, you had a two point nine

10:31

to nine percent chance, So like

10:33

that was your twenty six percent increase,

10:35

And in real terms, it sorted

10:37

out to, based on the population at the time,

10:40

an additional eight women developing breast

10:42

cancer out of every ten thousand who

10:44

were taking replacement hormones. Nothing

10:46

to sneeze at those eight women. I'm sure would much

10:48

rather prefer not to have breast cancer. But

10:51

the point was the risks

10:53

of it were grossly overstated,

10:55

and that it got but it got such a

10:57

bad rap because of the reporting that for a couple

10:59

of decades, just trust and hormone replacement

11:02

therapy dropped off and a lot of women suffered

11:04

unnecessarily as a result.

11:06

Yeah, and I think they didn't even find that the

11:10

transdermal variety was in fact much

11:12

safer than the other way

11:14

of taking it.

11:15

Yeah, absolutely so, Like if you take it orally,

11:18

which is what it was always before, pretty

11:20

much it has to go through your liver to be processed,

11:22

and while it's there it can do all sorts

11:24

of nasty stuff side effects that you don't really

11:26

want, like causing thrombosis

11:29

and blood clots, it can lead to heart disease, whereas

11:31

if you do it transdermally, it just enters the bloodstream

11:34

and it does its thing with minimal side effects.

11:36

So we've reached the point today where

11:39

your average kind of coologists is probably

11:41

going to say the benefits

11:44

if you're healthy outweigh the risk

11:46

of taking it, especially if

11:48

you are under age sixty,

11:51

and especially if you're under age seventy

11:53

and you start apparently there's a

11:56

if you have a gap between menopause

11:59

and then start hormone replacement

12:01

therapy of a decade or two, then it can

12:03

become pretty risky. And by the way,

12:05

I don't have my lab code on right now, I would

12:08

advise you not to take gecological

12:10

health advice from me. Instead,

12:12

ask your doctor. But this is what I've seen from

12:14

research.

12:15

Yeah, and that, I mean you say that virtually

12:18

every time you meet someone in person. I've heard you say those

12:20

same words.

12:21

I'm big on that for sure.

12:23

Say Hi, Josh, nice to meet you. I dude, stuff

12:25

you should know. Please don't take onecological

12:27

advice for me. Yeah, no matter what

12:29

comes out of my mouth at this dinner part.

12:31

I mean, it's just a smart thing to say.

12:33

It is.

12:34

So this is all going on on the ester's

12:36

in side, on

12:39

the testosterone side, and we're gonna, you

12:41

know, kind of bop back and forth between.

12:43

The two of these.

12:45

That was isolated, I believe in nineteen

12:47

thirty five. In

12:49

fact, that's when the name testosterone got its

12:51

name, which is sort of the big daddy

12:54

mail hormone.

12:54

And we'll talk about all the versions of these in a second.

12:57

And on its own, testosterone, you

12:59

know, wasn't doing very much.

13:02

But when they added estrone, which

13:04

is a quote unquote female hormone, it

13:06

became very powerful. And

13:09

in nineteen thirty nine, there were a couple of guys

13:11

dude, name I guess one guy,

13:13

sorry, Leopold Ruska.

13:16

Oh no, no, there were two guys and Adolph

13:19

Butenant of Germany. They won

13:22

the Nobel Prize for chemistry by

13:25

working on largely testosterone,

13:28

but you know sex hormones as a whole.

13:30

And none other than mister Adolf Hitler

13:33

was one of the early adopters

13:35

when it came to a testosterone treatment.

13:38

Yeah, he had low tit.

13:40

I meant to send you this, and I'm sorry

13:42

I didn't, but I turned up something that

13:45

there was in British

13:47

World War two military files.

13:49

There were like a bunch of ideas of

13:52

how to like basically take neutralized

13:54

Hitler, and one of them was to start

13:56

slipping estrogen into

13:58

his food and that over time

14:01

it would basically turn him from

14:03

a maniac, murderous killer

14:06

psycho to maybe

14:08

a little calmer, maybe a little more feminized.

14:12

And the whole idea was that if you put

14:14

poison in his food, he had tasters,

14:16

and the tasters would die from the

14:18

poison and he would know that he was being poisoned.

14:20

That would not happen with estrogen. It would take place

14:22

over such a long time they wouldn't be able

14:24

to taste it that that apparently it was never

14:27

even attempted, or certainly not carried

14:29

out, but that was someone's idea to take

14:31

care of Hitler. It would have been

14:33

hilarious, dude,

14:35

to see that transition,

14:37

like had they done that, and then just to be able to look

14:39

back all these years later and watch the

14:41

progression.

14:43

There's a Benny Hill sketch in there somewhere, for

14:45

sure, I think so.

14:47

So.

14:47

Initially, medically speaking,

14:50

the first use of testosterone was

14:52

to try and cure homosexuality

14:55

in males, which was a

14:57

needless to say, it spectacularly

14:59

back fired because all

15:01

it did was, you know,

15:04

it didn't alter any orientation. It just created

15:07

I guess super tops and power bottoms

15:09

and ramped up to sex drive. And

15:12

then of course trans people. This was

15:14

you know, very early in the days of

15:17

hormone therapy for trans people. It

15:19

was actually going on, and in fact, we did

15:21

a whole episode in April

15:23

twenty nineteen called Michael Dillon Trans

15:26

Pioneer about the Englishman

15:28

who was I mean, I think

15:31

probably the first person at least

15:33

from the female to male transition

15:35

to use that hormone in nineteen forty.

15:37

Yeah, yeah, it definitely was from what we could

15:39

tell.

15:40

And by the way, if you go back and listen to that episode,

15:42

if you're like, oh my goodness.

15:44

We heard from listeners.

15:45

We goofed up the pronouns on that one

15:48

because we thought, and this is five years ago,

15:50

we know better now, but we thought it would be a good

15:52

idea to sort of let the pronouns

15:55

follow the journey

15:56

of Michael

15:58

Dillon's life. And you know, we

16:00

know better now, So just take that with a

16:02

grain of salt.

16:03

Yeah, kid, co. And while we're

16:05

on that, we should probably say we're using

16:07

male and female and man and woman just

16:10

generally a shorthand, a biological

16:13

shorthand. With the advent

16:15

of trans people, there there's a

16:17

much more specific way of talking

16:19

about that. Specifically, we

16:22

would we should be saying typically developing

16:25

assigned male at birth or assigned female

16:27

at birth, people who haven't altered

16:29

their hormones. Right, that's

16:32

tough to say over and over again, rather than man

16:34

or woman. So please

16:37

forgive us for that. We're not we're not being disrespectful

16:39

in that way, and we're certainly not excluding trans people

16:41

from this, because this very much has

16:43

a lot to do with trans.

16:46

Yeah, and well you know that'll come in part too,

16:48

obviously.

16:48

For sure. I say we take a break and come back and

16:50

we'll start talking about estrogen.

16:53

Let's do it.

17:14

All right, So we're back with estrogen.

17:17

Welcome to the studio, estrogen. How

17:19

have you been doing so? That

17:22

is, usually you think of estrogen

17:24

as one of the two female sex hormones

17:27

with progesterone, and

17:30

it is actually a family of three hormones,

17:32

the first one being estrone, and

17:35

that is the that's not the

17:37

money estrogen, that's the weakest one menopause.

17:41

You know, it keeps getting produced through menopause.

17:43

It's made in the adrenal glands, it's

17:45

made in the ovaries, it's

17:47

made in fatty tissue, and it can actually

17:50

serve as a sort of a warehouse keeping

17:53

place for estrogen.

17:55

Right, yeah, for sure. So here's where

17:57

we get to the idea that it's just misguided.

18:00

Think estrogen is a woman's sex

18:02

hormone and that's it. There's so much more

18:04

to it. The whole reason you would continue

18:06

producing estrogen as a woman in some form

18:09

or fashion after menopause. I

18:11

mean, if you're not having sex, if you can't reproduce any

18:14

longer, why would you produce estrogen? You

18:16

would produce a weaker version because it's still doing

18:18

other things like it's really important

18:20

for bone growth and muscle development

18:23

and to keep yourself active. There's a

18:25

lot of stuff that estrogen does just

18:28

beyond forming the

18:30

reproductive system

18:33

or for sexing females.

18:36

Yeah, and we also did mention and this

18:38

is probably if someone wants more

18:40

quote unquote proof. Estrogen

18:42

is found in plants like rice.

18:44

Yeah, I mean, we could just end the

18:46

podcast right here.

18:49

Testosterone is not found in plants, only in the animal

18:51

world.

18:51

But we'll get to that, all right. The next one we come

18:53

to that was E one. By the way, E two

18:56

is estra diol, which

18:58

is this is the estrogen.

19:00

This is the potent one. This is made

19:03

in the ovaries of women and made

19:05

in the testes of men. Once

19:07

again, men and women both

19:09

have each in different levels. And

19:12

this is the one that really like kicks in

19:14

during puberty and then

19:17

takes a break during menopause. Not

19:19

a break but more like a retirement.

19:21

Yeah, it goes to Florida.

19:24

Yeah exactly.

19:25

Maybe yeah Flora for

19:28

once. I'm just gonna stick with my original

19:30

one. Good Astriol

19:32

is another one. This one is mostly

19:35

produced during pregnancy to

19:37

help the uterus grow, and

19:40

it also helps with breastfeedings.

19:43

It leads to most of the body changes

19:45

during pregnancy. You can thank estriol for

19:47

that. And there are other types of estrogen,

19:49

but typically it's those three. Those

19:52

are the big ones. And it's obviously

19:54

everyone knows estrogen is the reason that

19:56

you have breasts and that your hips fill out,

20:00

and that it has a lot to do with

20:02

a woman's monthly cycle, right, And

20:04

that's absolutely true. That has a lot to do

20:06

with everything, like that's what estrogen

20:08

does. But it is again it's important for

20:11

metabolizing muscles, for

20:14

preventing your muscles from injury. It

20:17

also contributes to endurance, which

20:20

if you read about ultra marathons,

20:22

women tend to dominate those I

20:24

was reading about, Like short runs,

20:27

men can outrun women very easily.

20:30

Marathons typically men win. But

20:32

then as you get further and further and further, and actually

20:34

there's a moment I think it's like

20:37

like one hundred and fifty miles or some mind

20:40

boggling amount of distance, women

20:42

start to slowly overtake men. And then

20:44

the longer you go, the further

20:47

ahead, women finish before

20:49

men in tests of

20:52

endurance like that, and they think it's because

20:54

they have higher stores of estrogen, which is

20:56

helping their muscles work better.

20:59

So you talked about good

21:01

for like you know, muscle growth and muscle formation. Sure,

21:04

Also estrogen can help facilitate

21:07

brain activity, skin

21:09

elasticity, which

21:12

you know, is that why like

21:14

wrinkles happen as you age? Is that

21:16

because of drop and among other things

21:18

in estrogen?

21:20

I would think so. I think it's also just they've

21:22

been around the block so many times,

21:26

like skin, I mean.

21:27

Yeah, yeah, So if you're a doctor, doctor

21:30

Clark.

21:31

Well, no, okay, why am I?

21:34

Why am I going wrinkley

21:36

around the eyes here? What's going on with physiologically

21:38

with my body? You know, it's been around the block?

21:41

What more? What more can I say? And also, don't

21:43

take any gynecological advice from me.

21:46

Right, I'd be like, I thought you're a dermantologist.

21:48

Oh I'm neither.

21:49

Oh boy.

21:50

So estrogen is something that can

21:52

affect mood, but you

21:54

know it's it fluctuates. I think

21:57

pre menopausal women

21:59

have a range of about thirty

22:02

to forty pikeograms per

22:04

mili liter, But it varies

22:06

from person to person. And then like

22:08

we said, it rises and falls during the menstrual

22:10

cycle. It's not like a set number. I

22:13

think Postman Apostle that

22:15

drops all the way down from literally

22:18

zero to thirty.

22:20

And then for.

22:21

Men, for guys like you and me, yeah,

22:23

we have a range of about ten to fifty. I'm

22:26

probably more like fifty five or sixty

22:28

would be my guess.

22:30

So I'm right there with you, buddy. So

22:32

again, the reason why men would have it at all

22:35

is because it's not just the woman's sex

22:38

a female sex hormone. It does other stuff.

22:40

Just I can't say this enough because

22:42

it was such a sure you can like it, It

22:46

was such an epiphany for me. I'm

22:48

just like, Oh, I had no idea that it was

22:51

this, that things overlap this

22:53

much. Yeah, I mean I didn't think it

22:55

was just like cut and dry, but I knew there was

22:57

some crossover, but I didn't realize just

22:59

how much Steinbach screwed us up with

23:03

that whole binary thing.

23:05

Yeah.

23:05

I was trying to make a joke about a

23:07

pop act that crossed over, but I couldn't

23:09

come up with it.

23:11

Just, uh, someone send in a good joke

23:13

there.

23:13

How about Bay Bay Beyonce

23:17

in the country.

23:17

I heard about that, did you hear it? Is it good? Yeah?

23:20

It's fine. I'm not huge in the country.

23:23

So it's real country then, huh.

23:25

No, it's like dance floor

23:27

line dancing hunt. Yeah,

23:30

sure it is real country. Yes, but it's

23:32

not like it's not like Hank or

23:34

anything like that. But it's like a it's more

23:36

like Garth. It's like a Garth Brooks song.

23:38

Oh geez, I need to hear it.

23:39

I thought it was more just like Hi and Beyonce

23:42

and I put on a cowboy hat.

23:43

So now, no, she's from Texas. You know

23:45

she knows what she's talking about.

23:46

Yeah, that's true. Can we

23:48

talk about the Big.

23:49

Don't please don't quote me on that. I'm not in the bay Hive.

23:53

Okay, I

23:55

went to that concert. Was great.

23:56

Yeah, I'll bet. Can we talk

23:59

about the Big t Oh we're

24:01

here? Huh yeah.

24:02

I mean we're going to go back and forth. But T needs to he

24:05

needs this tea is ready to speak.

24:06

I think before we do, I want to say one

24:08

other thing about estrogen. It apparently encourages

24:11

physical movement, and you're like, so like

24:14

with low estrogen, your

24:16

will to get up and move

24:19

or walk across the room or go take a

24:21

walk is depleted because

24:23

your estrogen is lower. It's as simple as

24:25

that Isn't that nuts? Yeah,

24:28

that's cool. So yes, now we're on to tea.

24:31

That's right, the male hormone

24:34

in.

24:35

Part, Yes, and that's

24:37

no joke. Like, for sure, estrogen

24:39

helps form females,

24:43

Testosterone helps form males, and

24:45

apparently in the uterus they're

24:48

both exposed to copious

24:50

amounts of testosterone. It's just

24:52

what differentiates females from

24:54

males or keeps females from developing

24:57

into males. Because I didn't know this either,

24:59

Chuck. We all start out as

25:01

females. Did you know that.

25:04

I think we talked about that in our puberty episode.

25:06

Okay, so just bear with me for a second. We all start

25:08

out as females, and then

25:11

we're all we're all kind of inundated

25:13

with testosterone. But females

25:16

typically have something called aromatase,

25:19

which is an enzyme that converts testosterone

25:21

into estrogen much more prevalent

25:24

in the feed in the placenta

25:26

with the fetus, and so it's basically like

25:29

batting away all the testosterone. So

25:31

the baby comes out assigned

25:33

female at birth. Pretty interesting, huh.

25:35

Like without the injection of testosterone,

25:38

we would all be females or without

25:40

the presence of aromatase, we would all be males.

25:44

That's right.

25:45

And then once things are you know, I

25:47

guess what that's around the seventh week or.

25:49

So, yeah, something like that.

25:51

That's when the testicles start to produce testosterone.

25:53

That's when the.

25:54

Factory opens up. And

25:57

I don't think we mentioned, but testosterone

25:59

is a member of a family of

26:01

androgen hormones. Uh,

26:04

boy to should we even try and say these or just say

26:06

the shorthand? I want to say them,

26:09

knock yourself out?

26:10

Uh andros stenny dione

26:14

then I practiced and st andres

26:17

steno dione.

26:18

Yeah, I think that's right.

26:19

D hydro epi andros sterone

26:22

also known as dh A sure, d

26:25

hydro epi androsterone sulfate

26:27

d h A, yes, and then dihydro

26:30

testosterone d h T.

26:31

Yeah. Nice work.

26:33

Thanks, you get to move on in

26:35

our medical competition.

26:37

You could be a doctor, but

26:39

but I'm not. So don't that's forgotten

26:42

logical.

26:42

Advice, never never or any medical advice.

26:45

Uh So, Like I said, the

26:48

test testosterone factory is open at

26:50

about seven weeks. And the reason we

26:52

went back and kind of named the others is

26:54

because some of that testosterone

26:56

at that age is converted into

26:59

the dhea.

27:02

Right, yeah, I'm not gonna say it. And

27:05

that is the sort of the

27:07

money hormone for making

27:09

the penis form and grow

27:12

in the prostate. And about seven

27:14

months in is when the

27:17

trigger is kicked off by testosterone

27:19

for testicular descent. Even

27:21

though that can happen after you're born.

27:23

It makes it hilarious. Beew sound.

27:26

Oh man, where's your slide whistle?

27:28

I don't have it on me. Maybe gerial'll

27:31

work it in.

27:32

Yeah, I think you actually isolated some slide

27:34

whistle cuts, so don't.

27:36

Tell everybody I know. Here's

27:39

one of the facts of the podcast. To me. I had no

27:42

idea about this. But so

27:45

male babies are flooded with testosterone.

27:48

They don't have a bunch of aromatase

27:50

to convert all of it into estrogen,

27:53

so they become male and all the stuff that

27:55

you just mentioned happens. But they

27:58

do have some aromatase, and some

28:00

of that testosterone is converted into estra

28:02

diol, and that estra

28:04

dial actually is what forms

28:06

the male brain. So

28:10

estrogen forms the male brain starts

28:12

out as testosterone converted into estratiol.

28:15

It causes the changes in the brain

28:17

that create.

28:18

The male brain whatever, snowflake.

28:21

I just think that's awesome. Like

28:24

it also just goes to show you, like just how

28:26

so, I mean, just imagine

28:29

what an intricate chemical dance this

28:31

is and how Yeah, you just adjust

28:34

this a little bit and adjust that a little bit and all

28:36

sorts of different outcomes can happen. It's just

28:38

fascinating, Oh for sure.

28:40

I mean, when you're a little kid, there's

28:42

not a lot of difference between your

28:45

testosterone levels. If you're a

28:47

little girl a little boy, I think usually

28:50

under ten nanograms per desolators

28:53

at puberty where things just go hog wild,

28:56

right, and little boy's testosterone

28:58

just shoots through the roof. It

29:00

rises in girls as well, but nothing like it

29:03

does in boys. Once you

29:05

become a big man, a full

29:07

grown man like us, you're

29:10

gonna have tea levels between three hundred

29:12

and a thousand, if you know, if you have

29:14

normal quote unquote normal tea. Women

29:17

have much lower levels between fifteen

29:19

and seventy. And this is

29:21

you know, in little boys, what's

29:23

gonna trigger your voice to change, your

29:26

bone and muscle mass to grow.

29:29

You're you know, all of a sudden, you're gonna have body hair and

29:31

facial hair and stuff like that. And

29:33

also, and I think we've talked about this at

29:36

some point, but it is related

29:38

to male pattern baldness. But I don't think they're

29:40

still at the level where they can say like, hey,

29:43

if you have high tee, then

29:45

you're more likely to be bald.

29:47

Yes. And that's really really important

29:49

to point out, dude, is that we are

29:52

not at a place in microbiology

29:56

or human chemistry or we're like, this is

29:58

what this hormone does, and this is what that hormone and dones.

30:00

And one of the reasons why is because the same

30:02

hormone can have wildly

30:05

different effects depending on at what

30:07

stage in a reaction it comes in, or

30:09

in what tissues or what regions

30:12

of the brain or the body it's interacting

30:14

with other things. So when you add all

30:16

these different not just other kinds of hormones,

30:18

but also like neurotransmitters or neuromodulators

30:21

and all this stuff, it just becomes exponentially

30:24

more complicated and complex. So

30:26

we're still kind of at the place where

30:28

it's like, yeah, testosterones for boys

30:31

and estrogens for girls, and

30:33

we're making tons of headway, but generally

30:36

speaking, we're still at a very basic

30:38

level and understanding what

30:40

hormones are capable of. And then also

30:43

on the flip side, looking at behavior

30:45

and saying like, oh, well, clearly aggression

30:48

is related to high levels of testosterone.

30:51

Yeah, and we'll get to that coming

30:53

up in a sect for short with there been

30:55

lots of studies, Well, we need to talk about

30:57

testosterone dropping over the years, because

31:00

men don't experience like a drop

31:02

off in testosterone like women

31:05

do with menopause and estrogen.

31:07

But it does decline

31:09

in both men and women testosterone by about

31:11

a percentage a year starting

31:14

in your thirties, sort of early to

31:16

mid thirties generally, although that can vary

31:18

as well, and it can vary

31:20

just from time to time too. A man's

31:23

level of testosterone can

31:25

go up or down fairly dramatically

31:27

for different reasons over short periods of time.

31:30

Yeah, And just like with estrogen,

31:32

testosterone is also responsible for bone

31:34

growth and development in remodeling, apparently,

31:37

the testosterone is useful for

31:40

the hard outer layers of the bone

31:42

and estrogen is for the spongy

31:44

interior layers. It's

31:46

cool and also something else that stood out to me

31:48

is men's estrogen levels

31:51

are roughly similar to women's

31:54

testosterone levels under normal circumstances.

31:57

Yeah, I guess so, right, Yeah, I think it's pretty

31:59

interest.

32:00

I think I'm looking at the numbers.

32:01

Did they add up?

32:03

Well, you were talking about aggression. I

32:06

mean, should we take a break and talk about that or should we wait?

32:09

I say we take a break. Now, we've already

32:11

the monkey's already flown the.

32:13

Coup, right, all

32:15

right, the monkey's out of the bag, the cat

32:17

is out of the cage.

32:18

We'll be right back.

32:40

Okay, Chuck, So we're back. We found

32:42

the cat, put them in the cradle with the silver spoon,

32:44

so everything's back to normal.

32:46

Sad a song?

32:48

Oh it is? It is pretty said, especially if you like

32:50

your dad.

32:52

Especially if you had problems with your dad.

32:54

Oh yeah, I guess so, I guess so.

32:56

Yeah.

32:57

Yeah. Is there any circumstance where that wouldn't

32:59

be a sad?

33:00

I don't know.

33:01

Maybe the perfect amount of care

33:05

and love from your father and

33:07

with no accompanying.

33:09

Abuse, gotcha, perfect?

33:11

I don't know.

33:12

I'm sure that's very prevalent. Yeah.

33:14

So, yeah, we're talking about testosterone, we're talking

33:16

about sex, we're talking

33:18

about aggression. All of

33:21

those things seem to be very much intertwined

33:23

in the public consciousness about

33:25

testosterone. Right, the more testosterone you have,

33:28

the more stillone esque you are,

33:30

the more likely you are to wear like a

33:33

floor length mink coat with no

33:35

shirt underneath, which I have to say, if I

33:37

could wear that, I definitely would, if I could rock

33:39

that look. It's a good look.

33:41

And Josh, I think if you remember, I

33:43

wore that exact coat in the movie, in my

33:45

film Nighthawks, is that what happens

33:47

from I think you are mink coat

33:49

in Nighthawks?

33:50

Okay, although he was a cop in Nighthawks.

33:52

You can afford a mink coat.

33:53

No way, not on a cop salary, not

33:55

an honest cop, an underrated movie.

33:58

So is it?

34:00

Yeah, I don't know if it holds up great, but I

34:02

thought it had a pretty good ending.

34:04

We won't spoil.

34:05

No, no, it's and it's definitely spoilable

34:08

for sure.

34:08

But and that was my st alone. By the way,

34:10

people are just like, what are you even talking about? Why

34:13

did Chuck slur there?

34:14

For a little while, I thought it came through loud and clear.

34:16

Okay, But the idea is that, like the

34:18

whole reason the Rambo films were

34:20

made, particularly two and three, is

34:22

because Sylvester still own experienced a

34:25

massive spike in testosterone. It had to get

34:27

it out in some productive way,

34:29

right.

34:29

Oh, I thought it was because Rambo was no expendable.

34:33

I haven't seen those movies.

34:35

Huh No, no, no, it was a joke from Rainbow two.

34:38

Oh well, he was also in the Expendables.

34:40

Yeah, I know. I wonder if that had anything to

34:42

do with that line.

34:43

Probably not, It could be at

34:46

I'm sure there's some people who are like, shut up

34:49

and talk about aggression

34:51

in testosterone, you're making me aggressive.

34:54

Well, what if you knew to a male dog.

34:56

That's a good sort of first example.

34:57

That's a great entree, Chuck. Most

35:01

people would say that if you neuter, if

35:03

you remove the testicles of a male

35:05

dog, it's going to become much more submissive,

35:08

much chiller, probably a lot

35:10

more fun at parties, will

35:12

come pick you up if your car breaks down, that

35:14

kind of thing. And there is some

35:18

data that shows that that's the case, that some

35:20

dogs are calmer once they're

35:22

neutered, But the other

35:25

studies have shown like the exact opposite is

35:27

true, that dogs can become actually

35:29

more aggressive when they're neutered,

35:31

which is a head scratcher of a puzzler

35:33

if you ask me.

35:34

Yeah, I mean I just went through this with Gibson,

35:37

and he's not more

35:40

aggressive because that's an aggressive

35:43

is a weird word, because aggressive isn't

35:45

the same thing as like, you know, heaper

35:49

now just like an excitable puppy,

35:51

Like that's not aggression necessarily. Yeah, but

35:54

it definitely did not chill him out at all.

35:57

Yeah. Yeah, I don't know that it's supposed

35:59

to, but yeah, I think some people think it

36:01

does. But the idea that it would make a

36:04

dog more aggressive, so it had

36:06

like no impact on him as far as like his energy

36:09

level is what you're saying. Yeah,

36:12

so imagine if he was generally

36:14

like that before and then you neuted him and then

36:16

he started like biting people. Yeah,

36:18

that's that's what happens with some dogs. And they're

36:20

like, well, that doesn't make any sense whatsoever. One

36:23

of the explanations is is that we

36:25

think testosterone is tied up with

36:28

confidence more than aggression, and

36:30

that a dog that has this chemical

36:33

confidence removed through neutering

36:36

can actually become more more

36:38

nervous, and nervous dogs frequently

36:40

will bite or bark more than they did

36:42

when they had confidence via

36:45

testosterone.

36:46

Yeah, and that ties in perfectly

36:48

to the fact that and this to me is

36:50

one of the facts of the show. But

36:52

they have done studies and male

36:55

athletes, like you know, superior male

36:57

athletes, actors,

37:00

it or not, blue collar workers and

37:02

confidence artists, con men, they

37:05

all have above average levels of

37:07

testosterone.

37:08

Yeah, so there you have it, so too, all

37:11

right, case closed, So too though,

37:13

And this is the state of study

37:17

right now with studying the stuff where

37:19

we're relating human behavior to hormones

37:22

like testosterone or estrogen, Like,

37:24

there's results like that out there, but that

37:27

we arrive at the question, well, wait a minute,

37:29

do people who have higher

37:31

levels of testosterone naturally

37:33

gravitate to those professions

37:36

or does being in a profession like

37:38

acting or being a con man raise

37:41

your testosterone life? Right, They're like, well, hold

37:43

on, okay, I got this. We're going to go study

37:45

prisoners, specifically violent criminal

37:48

offenders and see what their testosterone

37:50

levels are.

37:51

Like.

37:51

Sure enough, they found that their testosterone

37:53

levels were above average, But

37:56

that still raises the question do

38:00

higher levels of testosterone make

38:02

you more prone to any social violent

38:04

behavior? Or does being in prison

38:07

raise your levels of testosterone. We still

38:09

don't know at this point.

38:10

Yeah.

38:11

Yeah, it's pretty interesting because I think a lot of people, like

38:13

the generals, just the old

38:15

way of thinking was like, of course.

38:16

It does, right, And you know what they're

38:19

finding, they think is that it's

38:22

more that testosterone

38:25

is released when you need it.

38:27

Yeah, it meets the occasion.

38:29

Right, It's not the thing that's driving the behavior.

38:31

It's like, oh, this guy says it's go time, we better

38:33

release some testosterone to keep

38:35

it going.

38:36

Yeah, this next thing is super

38:38

interesting to me. You

38:41

know, moment to moment throughout your day, you're gonna your

38:44

testosterone is going to rise and fall some. And

38:48

they have found that if you lose,

38:52

like a running race or a one on or

38:54

a basketball game, or an

38:56

arm wrestling match, or even a

38:58

chess match, you

39:01

will lose testosterone. So

39:03

it's not even necessarily it can be something

39:05

as cerebral as a chess match, but losing

39:08

reduces your testosterone. Winning

39:10

increases and boosts your testosterone.

39:13

And they even found this

39:15

is crazy to me, that they

39:18

sampled male voters for like an election

39:21

and just your candidate

39:24

losing causes a drop

39:26

in testosterone.

39:28

Yeah, isn't that nuts? That

39:30

was among McCain voters because it was the

39:32

two thousand and eight election. Yeah,

39:35

it's crazy.

39:36

Yeah, it's like it's unbelievable, like winning

39:38

and losing even if you're not participating

39:42

other than voting yes.

39:43

So they also found

39:46

that they think that

39:48

social expectations can kind

39:50

of modulate behavior, right, and

39:53

this kind of ties into that idea that

39:56

testosterone kind of helps

39:58

foster a response rather than triggering

40:00

a response, right.

40:03

So essentially what they found is that with

40:06

testosterone levels, we can

40:08

correlate it as far as if

40:10

you are having if you're faced with a fight or

40:12

flight situation and you choose to

40:14

fight, you probably are experiencing

40:17

an up tick in testosterone

40:19

levels. Again that you

40:21

didn't have testosterone and now you're choosing to fight.

40:24

They think the exact opposite is true, that

40:26

you've chosen to fight and your testosterone levels

40:28

go up. On the other hand, they

40:31

found that if you choose to flee or

40:33

say not be aggressive, your cortisol

40:35

levels, your stress hormone levels increase.

40:38

So our response seems

40:40

to be based on what we think society

40:42

will either reward or punish, and

40:45

then based on our decision from that

40:47

our hormones kick in to help kind

40:49

of carry out whichever response we decide

40:51

to go with. So one other thing that

40:53

I found was that

40:55

that surprised me is that testosterone

40:58

isn't just made in like the t testies

41:00

or the ovaries depending on your sex assigned a

41:02

birth, but that it's

41:04

actually made locally in the brain,

41:07

and that testosterone can also be transformed

41:09

into different types of estrogen in the brain

41:12

too, And they think that locally

41:14

produced is what it's called testosterone

41:17

in like our neural pathways, has

41:20

much more of an effect on behavior, mood,

41:22

that kind of stuff than the stuff that's

41:24

made in the testes or the ovaries,

41:27

and that actually accounts for some of the baffling

41:29

results we've gotten where you know,

41:31

if you take a blood sample

41:33

of somebody and find that they were

41:36

just being aggressive, but their blood doesn't

41:38

show any kind of spike and testosterone,

41:40

well, that would account for that because it's not the stuff

41:42

that's floating around in their blood that's making them do that.

41:45

It's the locally produced testosterone in their

41:47

brain that's you know, connecting

41:49

with their amygdala or something like that it's making

41:52

that's helping them their aggressiveness,

41:54

I guess alone.

41:56

And now I know everyone wants to get to the part

41:59

about sex and what testosterone

42:01

does there. And testosterone

42:05

does, you know, sort of directly ramp up

42:07

the sex drive in men and women. And

42:10

they have done trials where they have shown

42:12

that it increases the libido. But just

42:16

because your tea falls doesn't

42:18

necessarily mean it's going to decrease

42:21

your libido. It can, but it

42:24

doesn't mean it has to.

42:25

Right. Yeah,

42:27

Again, that's just there's baffling

42:30

results we get sometimes from

42:33

just studies of what we presume has

42:35

to do with testosterone or estrogen, and it

42:38

just doesn't quite job.

42:40

All right, So I guess now we can sort of finish

42:42

up with some talk

42:44

of intersex people and where we stand

42:46

now with hormone therapy, right.

42:48

Yeah, because one group there's a lot of

42:50

different people besides postmenopausal

42:54

or perimenopausal women who take hormone

42:56

replacement therapy, intersex

42:59

people, people who are born with ambiguous

43:01

genditalia. Because like we'd mentioned that whole

43:03

amazingly intricate dance of chemicals

43:06

and hormones during development.

43:09

Fetal development can just take one

43:11

step to the left or one step to the right, and all of a

43:13

sudden, there's just a different outcome that

43:15

happens to some people. And some people take

43:17

hormone replacement therapy to

43:21

either become more like the

43:24

gender they presume that they would have been assigned

43:26

at birth, or the gender that they feel like they were assigned

43:28

at birth but their genitalia doesn't quite match.

43:30

There's a lot of different outcomes that

43:33

are basically considered conditions that you can

43:35

kind of help alleviate with hormone replacement.

43:37

Yeah, for sure. Another one.

43:39

And I'm pretty sure we talked about this in our female

43:42

puberty episode. Was starting

43:45

the nineteen forties, and maybe even before

43:47

that, estrogen therapy

43:49

and hormone treatment could

43:51

help. Basically what they

43:53

would say, like, you know, you don't want your daughter

43:56

to grow too tall, so they would

43:58

use a hormone block.

44:00

You don't see that as much today. It was called precocious

44:03

puberty, which is still.

44:04

A thing that can happen.

44:05

I think if you enter puberty, I think it's

44:07

like a year or two two or what's considered

44:09

too early, or you know, just with

44:12

outside of the normal range. You

44:14

can also use these hormone blocking drugs.

44:19

I mean they still use in today, but that it's not like say

44:21

you don't grow too tall. It's basically just to

44:23

save off puberty and to halt precocious

44:25

puberty in its tracks. Also,

44:28

if you are a trans kid, you

44:31

can use a hormone blocker to just

44:33

sort of hit the pause button to give you a

44:35

little time to decide what kind of puberty

44:37

to go through.

44:38

Yeah, because once you go through puberty,

44:41

particularly if you think it was the wrong

44:43

puberty for the gender you identify

44:46

with, there are going to be changes

44:48

that are essentially irreversible aside

44:50

from surgery. Like

44:52

if you go through female puberty but

44:55

you're a trans male, you're

44:58

still going to have breasts that half to be removed.

45:00

Or if you're a trans woman and you went through male

45:03

puberty, your vocal cords are gonna think you're

45:05

gonna have a deeper voice, and maybe an atom's apple surgery

45:07

will have to remove that. That's how powerful

45:10

the hormones that get released and

45:12

the amounts that they get released in during puberty.

45:15

So if you're not quite sure which

45:17

gender you belong to yet, using

45:20

hormone blockers can actually help kind of,

45:22

like you said, buy you some time until you figure

45:24

out which way you want to go.

45:26

Yeah, and as far as testosterone therapy goes,

45:29

if you have a deficiency and testosterone

45:32

because of hypogonatism or

45:35

maybe from HIV or something like that, it's

45:37

obviously gonna help with that. Also

45:40

problems like and here's where it gets

45:42

a little tricky, depression, low

45:45

muscle mass, low energy. There's

45:48

some evidence that can prove sexual function,

45:50

but not as much that it can increase your

45:52

low energy if you're just sort

45:54

of losing testosterone at that normal

45:57

rate of like one what

45:59

was it, I can't remember.

46:00

The one percent a year?

46:02

I think is it?

46:03

Yeah, one percent a year. But if you

46:05

have an actual deficiency, they've shown

46:08

that it can improve sexual

46:10

function and just don't have as much

46:12

proof with energy level.

46:14

So does that mean that the ad that has

46:16

Frank Thomas and Doug Flutie in it talking

46:18

about how they're like crushing their workouts that actually

46:20

doesn't work. Well.

46:22

I don't know if they're just saying if they're claiming

46:25

they're just having natural decline

46:27

in age, or if they had a deficiency to begin with,

46:29

because that's that seems to be the differentiating

46:31

factor.

46:32

Yeah, for sure, Yeah, who knows.

46:34

I mean, let's call up Doug Flutie in.

46:36

Let's get him on the horn exactly.

46:39

Uh, you got anything else?

46:41

Uh no, I got nothing else.

46:43

I got nothing else either. This is a very enlightening

46:45

podcast episode. I should say

46:48

a lot of stuff I didn't know about, and now I know

46:50

more, and you still shouldn't take my advice

46:52

medically speaking. Never

46:56

since Chuck said never after a nice hearty

46:58

chuckle, it means it's time for listener may.

47:03

Hey, guys, I was turned on your show about six months

47:05

ago and have been rapidly consuming

47:07

multiple episodes each day going

47:09

back and forth to work. I heard the

47:12

school bus yellow episode this morning and

47:14

thought you might not have found this little nugget

47:17

you pointed out mister Sear Sire

47:20

was credited with the standardization. I

47:22

believe you also noted some other districts had already

47:24

turned to bright paint jobs on school buses. But

47:27

on March twenty third, nineteen thirty one, the Pleasant

47:29

Hill tragedy near town Or, Colorado was

47:32

because I had a blizzard that came in that morning.

47:34

School shut down sent the kids home,

47:36

and one of the school buses ran off the road, stuck

47:39

in the snow for thirty plus hours. Resulting

47:41

in the death of five of the twenty students and the

47:43

bus driver.

47:44

Oh my god.

47:45

The aftermath theorized that a brightly painted school

47:48

bus would have been much easier to spot in the white out

47:50

and might not have sat waiting so long to be

47:52

found. So buses in Colorado adopted

47:55

the yellow standard by nineteen thirty nine, and

47:57

the proposal for Mister Sire became

48:00

a national standard. Unfortunately,

48:03

it was a reactive, not proactive solution,

48:06

brought on by a spring blizzard on

48:08

the plains of eastern Colorado. That

48:10

is from John Colts, and I

48:13

was just curious John didn't say I guess that.

48:15

School bus might have been white.

48:17

I would think so.

48:19

Yeah, not a great color.

48:20

No, No, for sure. Thanks

48:22

a lot, John, That was a really amazing email. I never

48:24

heard of that one. That's terrible. If

48:27

you want to bring us down terribly like John

48:29

did, you can send us an email, wrap

48:31

it up, spank it on the bottom, and send it off

48:33

to Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot

48:35

com.

48:39

Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.

48:42

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48:44

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48:46

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