Estrogeneration – How Estrogenics Are Making You Fat, Sick and Infertile

March 8, 2020

Listen in to learn the big difference between the estrogen our ovaries make and environmental toxic estrogens. Our guest Anthony G. Jay, PHD is author of the book Estrogeneration and an expert on the class of chemicals called estrogenics. He shares how damaging these artificial toxic estrogens are in addition to where we may be exposed to them and what we need to do to avoid them completely. 

Additional Resources:  

Similar Podcast Episodes:

• How Hormones Affect Your Breast Cancer Risk
• The Hormone Connecting to Weight Loss 

Transcript:

DARLENE: Well, welcome to Dishing Up Nutrition. Can you believe we've been doing this radio show for 15 years, Marcie? Just think of that.

MARCIE: That's amazing.

DARLENE: I have another little announcement today. My grandson, one of my favorite grandsons…

MARCIE: Oh, he must be the only one? 

DARLENE: He's turning 13 today. 

MARCIE: Oh, how fun.

DARLENE: So Rowan, happy birthday to you.

MARCIE: Oh, that's awesome.

DARLENE: I have some other good news this morning.

MARCIE: Lots of good things.

DARLENE: Yup; Dishing Up Nutrition was rated as one of the best nutrition podcasts in the country by Healthline.

MARCIE: Awesome.

DARLENE: Pretty good, isn't it?

MARCIE: I'd say. 

DARLENE: And I'm really, really, really, really pleased to say many of our listeners have sent emails or they’ve left messages and reviews to tell us how this show has changed their life.

MARCIE: Oh yeah.

DARLENE: They're eating so much better than they were when they first started listening.

MARCIE: That's right.

DARLENE: So we really appreciate, listeners, we really appreciate you sharing your comments with us because you know what? Honestly, we spend a lot of time putting this show together.

MARCIE: Yeah.

DARLENE: Because we want it to be something that will help you achieve better health. You know, I, we have a topic today I think you're going to really appreciate learning about because we have invited a hormone expert. And his name is Anthony Jay and he's going to join us this morning and share some really important information. You know, just a few months ago I received a copy of his book; this fascinating book; and you know, if I think a book is fascinating and worth sharing with you, then it must be good. And this is a good book to read.

MARCIE: It is a good book. And I know that Dar got a book for all of us at the office. So we were very thankful because it was awesome. So what is the book that we are going to be talking about today? 

DARLENE: So the title of this book is Estrogeneration: How Estrogenics Are Making You Fat, Sick and Infertile. And it's written by Anthony Jay, who is a researcher with a PhD in biochemistry and he does some of his research at the Mayo Clinic or a lot of the research at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. And really on this podcast or show, I think you want to share this with a family member or a special friend because some of the information that Anthony is going to share today is really cutting edge nutritional information. It's nothing like another book that you read about fats and carbs and all that. This is different. So I'm Darlene Kvist. I'm a Certified Nutrition Specialist.

And I've been a Licensed Nutritionist in the state of Minnesota since 1996; actually when they started licensing.

MARCIE: The first year. 

DARLENE: Yep. So joining me in studio this morning as our co-host is Marcie Vaske.

She has a master's degree in Clinical Nutrition and she often co-hosts with me; kind of keep me in line a bit; I think.

MARCIE: Well, you know, someone's got to Dar. I mean, come on. So many of you may not know, but a lot of our nutritionists and dietitians at Nutritional Weight and Wellness have taught about 75 nutrition classes just this past month. So we're always out there teaching and trying to educate everybody on the message of just eating good nutrition. We teach a lot of these classes at our seven metro locations, also local businesses, special community groups, schools, community education departments. And of course we have the classes online on our website. And you know, we really, we really understand that in order to make, you know, people make their food changes and different choices, they need to know what foods are good for them, which are, and what foods are going to be harmful to them. 

DARLENE: And really, you know, it depends on what research you read or what article you read. 

MARCIE: It changes day to day. 

DARLENE: It does. 

MARCIE: It really does. You know, and I think one of the big things when we are working with clients or teaching is that they need to know the why because I really think that helps them make change stick longer. So and make them make that commitment to themselves to follow a better food plan. And that's why each of our shows and podcasts are designed to help people make a personal commitment to feeling better.

DARLENE: It’s pretty simple and we work on that. 

MARCIE: And that's why we brought Anthony in today to help us all feel better. 

DARLENE: Right. So I think that Anthony Jay, you know, who wrote this wonderful book: it's going to help clear up some misunderstanding or even get us to understand how these artificial toxic estrogens, what they are and where they come from and what damage that they actually can do to your body. So we are really pleased that you drove off from Rochester. I actually grew up around Rochester, so I grew up in a little town outside of Rochester, so I know that place well. 

MARCIE: Yeah. 

DARLENE: First couple of years of college I went to the Rochester Junior College, so I know Rochester well. 

MARCIE: Yes. 

DARLENE: So you know, he is, I think he's, and I would think that you wrote the book to help educate people because they don't know this stuff. Do they?

ANTHONY JAY: Right on. Yeah. And thanks for having me by the way. I actually heard about your podcast from somebody in the Special Forces. I was giving a talk for the Special Forces and they said, you know, I asked them what some of your favorite podcasts? I like to ask that question. And this one was their number one podcast. So I looked it up; can't believe it's local; glad I'm here.

MARCIE: Oh that’s cool.

ANTHONY: But yeah, I think I'm an educator at heart. 

DARLENE: I think you are.

ANTHONY: I mean, I think a couple of days ago, I was, maybe two days ago I was, I was doing a Skype class for some university in New York City, so I can't resist helping out, you know, and just telling people about whatever, you know, health issues and estrogens, whatever questions they have.

DARLENE: Well, I know we've been kind of talking about excess estrogens for a number of years, but I think people kind of go, “Oh yeah, well it's just those nutritionists, you know?”

MARCIE: Yeah, making stuff up. 

DARLENE: But when a PhD researcher says this…

MARCIE: Then somebody listens.

DARLENE: And they've written a book…

MARCIE: Right.

DARLENE: It has some meaning.

MARCIE: It certainly does.

ANTHONY: Especially when you have children like I do. And, and I know you guys do. And obviously that's a bigger thing to consider because their hormones are at a more delicate stage. It's a delicate balance. 

MARCIE: Exactly. So in your book you were saying that, I'm just going to do a quick quote here, that, “Estrogenics are a clear and present danger and estrogenics relate to most of our modern health epidemics, you know, so they're really destroying us and they're really destroying the wild life.” So what, what, can you explain that? Can you explain the estrogenics? Let's just open it up.

ANTHONY: Oh yeah, yeah. I mean estrogenics are literally anything that acts like estrogen in your body. So that includes natural estrogen, right? And as you know, there's three natural estrogens. We don't even need to get that detailed, but the estrogenics also include artificial chemicals. Most people don't realize that. And like for example, BPA: that's the most classic example because everybody's heard of BPA free plastics and things like that. You see it on the label. Most people realize that's bad because why else would you want BPA-free? But they don't realize it's bad because it acts like estrogen. BPA is a problem because it acts like estrogen in your body. Now, exactly how bad that is? You know, most people don't really recognize, and they don't also don't recognize there's other chemicals besides BPA that also act like estrogen. And so these things can pile on and throw off your natural hormone balance, which is, again, a delicate balance. Children: it's delicate; adults: it’s delicate. It doesn't matter. But that ultimately can lead to a lot of health problems because like I mentioned in my book, we have estrogen receptors throughout our whole body, right? It's just like, you know, you, you have the ability to pick up signal like radio antennas, right? You have radio antennas throughout your whole body and all these different systems, you know? And so when you mess up that specific system, you're messing up your whole body in some way or other.

DARLENE: But interesting, because we teach a lot of menopause classes and women really do believe, you know, when they get into the perimenopause or menopause range or even post-menopause, they think, “Oh, this is dangerous because I don't have any estrogens left in my body.” And so they probably go to the medical doctor and they're often prescribed a hormone replacement because you know, I know what they think. They think, “If I don't take estrogen, so I'm going to get wrinkles.” I mean that's what most people think. So maybe can you kind of just talk about the difference in what we're talking about is artificial estrogens versus estrogens that your ovaries make or other parts of your body make? I think that's one of the main things that people need to kind of understand. There is a difference. 

ANTHONY: Oh yeah, yeah, for sure. And it gets complicated because some of these artificial estrogens, they're completely manmade and our ancestors were never exposed. You know, and just imagine thousands of years back, no exposures ever.

MARCIE: Right.

ANTHONY: So there's no adaptation to these chemicals.

DARLENE: So just give listeners, I mean you already did about the BPA, but just do another one that says “this makes an artificial estrogen” or “this is an artificial estrogen”.

ANTHONY: Yeah, so there's a list of them that I put together in my book. It's a top 10 list and we’ll certainly go through some of those. It's kind of an extensive list.

DARLENE: Well, just pop out one right now.

ANTHONY: Yeah, phthalates are another one that are related to BPA, right, because they're also in a lot of plastics. Plastics are problems.

DARLENE: Honestly, we have to go to break already?

MARCIE: We do already. Yes; actually.

DARLENE: Oh my gosh. 

MARCIE: So you are listening to Dishing Up Nutrition. Today we are in studio with author, Anthony Jay, who is sharing important highlights from his book, Estrogeneration: How Estrogenics Are Making You Fat, Sick and Infertile. And we'll be right back. 

BREAK 

DARLENE: Welcome back to Dishing Up Nutrition. On many, many previous shows we have discussed how broccoli and cauliflower and kale, brussels sprouts, cabbage help us detox harmful, bad estrogens. You know, that all sounds good. But if you don't know how to cook these vegetables in good, healthy fat so that they taste great…

MARCIE: Right. 

DARLENE: It's really a downer.

MARCIE: It’s disappointing.

DARLENE: So I invite you to join Marianne as she teaches our exciting new class called Cooking Basics: Kitchen Tips. Marianne will teach you the basics of cooking on March 10th, 11th and 12th at three different locations in the metro area. And so just check our website: weightandwellness.com for the times and locations or just call 651-699-3438 to ask any questions you have and to sign up. And actually one class at North Oaks is already full. 

MARCIE: Is it? Awesome; well, we've had the luxury of getting some of her food at some of our meetings and it's quite delicious; that's for sure. So everyone will learn a lot from Marianne. So we're back in studio with Anthony and talking about estrogenics in his book. And when we left, we were talking about, he was just kind of maybe going through some of his lists of the top 10 estrogenic products. And I think we ended up on phthalates when we, we went to break. So let's just keep going on down that road.

ANTHONY: Yeah. I think personal care products are a real hidden source of a lot of artificial estrogens because sometimes they put phthalates in those personal care products as fillers; they're cheap, right? Or preservatives; things like that. Another big one is oxybenzones also called benzophenones. You find them in sunscreens of course; most of the cheap sunscreens have them. I prefer just to go with the zinc if you're looking for practical suggestions here. Zinc sunscreen’s great. It's natural. But, you know, they just did a study last year finally on your blood levels of oxybenzone. So they did one application of sunscreen and this is all over the news. You can Google it. It's like “CNN Sunscreen Study” or whatever. It's all over. The blood levels: seven days after one application of sunscreen were still above the government's own recommended max limit.

MARCIE: Oh my gosh.

ANTHONY: And again, this is an estrogen.

DARLENE: And you think about all the little kids that are being…

ANTHONY: Every time they go swimming. 

MARCIE: And maybe two or three applications if they're outside for a long time.

ANTHONY: Yeah. So that was…

DARLENE: And all of those are artificial estrogens.

ANTHONY: Those are estrogen chemicals; yup.

DARLENE: I think that's hard for people to get through into their brain that these are not good for you.

ANTHONY: Right. Yeah, it's definitely that simple. I mean, the problem is they've, they've made a lot of these chemicals legal 50 years ago, 20 years ago, whatever. I mean, even BPA, they've known it acts like estrogen since the 1900s, I mean like 1905, 1910, 1920. They were investigating it as a birth control in research and then they discovered that you can make these plastics from it. And so they kind of pivoted and it's not a great birth control, but it definitely acts like estrogen. I mean, they knew that. 

DARLENE: So we know then that it's actually affecting the hormone level and it's causing, like you said in your book, it’s causing infertility.

ANTHONY: That's a big one.

DARLENE: Let's go, let's talk a little bit more about how that happens: the infertility part.

ANTHONY: Well, yeah, I mean it's, it's complicated because there's so many of these different estrogens and they're all acting on this estrogen system, but they're not doing it… They're not exactly estrogen. They're fake estrogen.

MARCIE: Right.

ANTHONY: So they're kind of hoodwinking your system into thinking you've got natural levels of hormones. And of course, when women are pregnant, for example, their natural estrogen skyrockets. So there's, there's this natural cycling of estrogen. But what's interesting, you know, because a lot of times when I talk about this, people recognize, “Oh, estrogen's bad for men.” Right? Of course it's bad for men. And just to give you some perspective, male estrogen is usually about 20 nanograms per liter. Just remember the number 20. Women are also around 20 which people don't realize. I mean, they go up to about 200 depending on the time of the month. They range from 20 to 200 but you know, it's not that far apart. If I ask people in a big audience at a lecture, “What do you think women are at in terms of their estrogen?” If men are at 20, they usually think it's thousands, right? They're swimming in estrogen.

MARCIE: For sure we are.

ANTHONY: But it's, it's actually surprisingly similar and that's one of the reasons you see issues with male fertility and female infertility when you get a lot of these exposures. And it's difficult to study because of course we're all being exposed, you know.

DARLENE: Well then what is happening to the male testosterone or even to the female testosterone? Right, the testosterone definitely goes down. In fact, I've had a lot of, probably the biggest area that I get testimonials is testosterone. Usually it takes about six weeks. You get all these artificial estrogens out of your system, out of your life, preferably using saunas and things like that like you've talked about before, eating brassicas like broccoli and kale and things like that. But you get them out of your system and you, you generally will see your testosterone rise and that's a really chronic problem in our culture. Testosterone has been declining. It's been declining so much we've been redefining the normal range for testosterone.

DARLENE: Oh tell us more.

ANTHONY: We keep lowering it.

DARLENE: What was it say, back in the 1930s or 1940s? What was the average?

ANTHONY: It was about 500 and now the average is, I mean it went down to like 400, 300. I have a research paper from the Massachusetts, Massachusetts Institute of Aging, I think it's called, and they literally show like a hundred point drop every 10 years since 1980. I mean it was like 500, 400, 300 just every 10 years. And I mean that's just the total testosterone and in women it's also declining just like that I think. But there hasn't been as much study and emphasis. They've kind of ignored it in women, unfortunately.

DARLENE: Women are not supposed to have that you know.

MARCIE: Right, what do you need that for? 

ANTHONY: It's super unfortunate because it's super important for women.

DARLENE: Yes it is.

ANTHONY: And part of the problem is women have such low levels that it's actually been difficult to detect historically. Similar to BPA; scientists used to say, “BPA doesn't leach into your water, so it's okay.” But now we can detect those levels and those levels are relevant physiologically; they’re nanograms. There's thousands of, you know, and there's like a thousand nanograms per liter in your drinking water, but that's the same units we use for estrogen. When we talk about 20 nanograms per liter of estrogen, right? So these are physiologically-relevant doses, meaning they're the dose that can actually impact your body in your drinking water. But previously they weren't measuring it. So what, what kind of the science has done is they've said, “Well now it's clear it's in your drinking water.” Right? BPA, the phthalates, and a lot of these other chemicals we haven't even gone into. So now they're kind of, a lot of scientists will say, “Yeah, but what effect do they have?” Right? “Are they really affecting you?” And even that's become more and more clear, but there's still kind of this residue of scientists that have already been telling everybody it's safe for so long that they don't…

MARCIE: They don’t want it to come back on their word or…

ANTHONY: Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of pride there.

DARLENE: So you know, one of the things that I just connected as you were talking, I was thinking, you know, like when women first become pregnant, usually their estrogen level goes up. And that's what causes morning sickness for a lot of women. But if they already start out with a lot of artificial estrogens and then they get their own estrogens, their level is really high. And so no wonder women are having so much morning sickness. I bet if we went back and did a study on that, that is true now compared much more than it was back in 1930s or something like that.

ANTHONY: Wouldn’t surprise me. 

DARLENE: Interesting. There's a lot of interesting things to put together when you, when you really know some of this stuff. 

ANTHONY: Right. And you know, have you heard of diethylstilbestrol? It's an illegal drug, so not a lot of people have heard of it.

MARCIE: Yeah, I have it at home. 

ANTHONY: Well it’s called DES (D E S) and people can look it up on Wikipedia and things like that. But we should talk about that too. They prescribed it for morning sickness until they realized all the problems it gave people.

MARCIE: Oh my goodness.

ANTHONY: For like 30 years. 

DARLENE: Yeah.

MARCIE: Wow. Crazy.

ANTHONY: I mean, and it causes multiple generations of defects in people. That's when they finally started recognizing we got to make this illegal. And again, it was a pretty common prescription back in the 70s.

DARLENE: Yes it was.

MARCIE: Oh my goodness.

DARLENE: It was; definitely.

ANTHONY: So another artificial estrogen; man-made. Of course now we don't have to worry about that. So my book, my book, excuse me, focused on the ones that we're exposed to every day that are still in our systems, that are in our culture and you know, in our plastics and all that.

MARCIE: So what are some other ones?

ANTHONY: Yeah, I mean there's, yeah, I mean soy is definitely an estrogen, right? A lot of people, a lot of people argue about soy and it's, it's an interesting discussion, but yeah, but soy definitely acts like estrogen. At least everybody agrees on that.

DARLENE: Yeah. I think, I know we have to take a break here again.

MARCIE: Yes.

DARLENE: But I do want to talk more in depth about soy and some of these other things. And also what are some of the health risks that occur? You know, I think we all know one; it has to be cancer but there are some other ones.

MARCIE: So you were listening to Dishing Up Nutrition brought to you by Nutritional Weight and Wellness. I believe our guest, author, Anthony Jay, PhD, cites research that “says soy is estrogenic”. Therefore we caution people about drinking soy milk. We caution people about using soy protein powder and we caution people about eating protein soy bars containing the soy protein. A 2014 science article reviewed by the health risk of soy…

BREAK

DARLENE: Well, welcome back to Dishing Up Nutrition. It was interesting to read that in the U.S. 80 million pounds of weed killer, atrazine, are sprayed annually onto our crops, especially corn. So now my question to you is, have you noticed that after you eat corn chips, you often have more aches and pains? So you have to ask the question, “Is it corn or is it the atrazine that leads to inflammation and pain?” Well…

MARCIE: What is it? 

DARLENE: Yes, yes. 

MARCIE: Well good thing we have the expert in studio today, Anthony Jay, to tell us all about it. So when we were going to break, we were talking about soy and I think we should come back to that because it's such a huge topic and so many conflicting, so much conflicting information out there. So I think Anthony can speak to this.

ANTHONY: Oh yeah. It’s interesting you bring up atrazine too, because they spray that on soy oftentimes. I mean, it's certainly more common in corn, but then you get a double shot of estrogen because you're getting it from the soy. And again, scientists agree that soy has phytoestrogen; plant estrogen. There's no argument about that. It's just a question of whether or not that's harmful is where some people debate. And just to give you a quick summary of that discussion, I mean it's a little bit complicated because in our bodies we have testosterone and when we have testosterone, there's only one receptor. It's called the androgen receptor. So it's pretty simple. It's a simple system. I like to say it's simple like men. Men are simple. Women it’s more complicated. With the estrogen, it's not that simple because there's three different estrogens and there's two receptors, right? There's estrone, estriol, estradiol: those are the three estrogens.

But even when you have those estrogens in your body, there are two different options for those estrogens to stick to, right; to bind. And it's called estrogen receptor alpha and estrogen receptor beta. And when you're a child developing in all of this, that alpha receptor is really active. But then after that, it's pretty much non-factor.

DARLENE: Okay.

ANTHONY: Whereas, beta, you know, that one is more active. It's protective for your arteries. It's, it has a lot of beneficial aspects to it. So you generally want to activate your beta receptor, right? That's where a lot of these benefits come from. People talk about with estrogen that you see decline in post-menopause. Right? 

DARLENE: Right. 

ANTHONY: And, so one of the problems with virtually all of these artificial estrogens we're talking about” BPA, phthalates, the sunscreen chemicals, atrazine: they act on that alpha receptor. That's the one that increases risk for breast cancer. It's the one that in men it's the prostate cancer risk. I mean, and on and on and on; infertility, right? Because you're disrupting your natural fertility; depression you see, you know, like an example of that, just briefly is BPA; higher levels of BPA in children's urine is associated with depression, even in kids. Right? So there's a lot of these kinds of connections, but you know, a lot of the vegans for some reason want to adopt soy as a positive, healthy thing for people. And again, it's not exclusive to vegans; a lot of people in general. 

DARLENE: Yes, a lot of people now.

ANTHONY: But one of the arguments that one of the most recognized vegans has proposed is that soy is okay because it acts on the beta receptor, the good receptor. And he cites a study and I said, “Oh, that's an interesting article. Let me look at that.” The actual study, it showed that in one cell, type in figure one in the paper, but then figure two, it showed soy hyperactivates the alpha receptor exclusively and not the beta receptor. So the actual publication said, “We have no idea how to interpret this. It's confusing. It's complicated. Obviously different people respond differently.” 

DARLENE: So when the alpha receptor is activated…

ANTHONY: It’s problematic. Yeah.

DARLENE: So what can happen then?

ANTHONY: That's where you get the infertility, the breast cancer risk, you know, a lot of just general, I mean even you know this postpartum depression, right? That has a lot to do with hormones of course. Right? So it's such a delicate balance. You start throwing that off with this alpha activation. And by alpha I mean estrogen receptor alpha of course. That, yeah, it's risky, right? Maybe you might not have that effect from soy, but chances are you're going to get some of that effect. And certainly when you add on all these other estrogens, you know it's additive, right? They're all acting on the same system. 

MARCIE: Right, so it’s like a buildup. 

ANTHONY: Exactly. And they try and do studies like they try and find people that aren't exposed to these estrogens like BPA. 

MARCIE: Good luck.

ANTHONY: They have to go into Northern Alaska and then you're basically studying somebody who's so different that it's hard to draw conclusions from that.

DARLENE: Right. 

ANTHONY: So that's where the research gets complicated.

DARLENE: So let's go to kind of another topic of looking at these artificial estrogens and how it affects different parts on different disease states basically. Like, you know, like obesity. So how, how, what's the connection there?

ANTHONY: Yeah. Well, again, I link it to pregnancy because pregnancy is a good model for increased estrogen because of course, natural estrogen goes up. And one of the natural things that happens, and this is a beneficial thing, is that there's increased fat storage in, in women's bodies because our ancestors didn't always have access to food, right? And fat is the most efficient storage form for energy. So of course, if you don't have food and you've got a fetus, you need that nutrition, right? You need that energy. Now, when you hijack that system and you tell your body that you're pregnant, even though you're not with all these artificial estrogens, right? You start spiking your artificial estrogen levels, you're essentially telling your body, “Hey, I’m pregnant; store fat.

MARCIE: Right.

ANTHONY: You're turning on that system, but you're not pregnant, but your body doesn't know that, right? But that's what you're communicating to your body. And so it not only tells your body to store fat, but these estrogens, they store in your fat cells. I call it the estrogenic paradox in my book because they're in your fat and they're telling your body to store more fat. So it's hard to get rid of them. Right? Because if they're there and you're not burning that fat up to get rid of them, well it's really a challenge to get them off. So that's where a lot of these weight gain plateaus can come from; because…or weight loss, excuse me, weight loss, I mean because you lose weight to a certain point and then you hit a plateau and a lot of it is these estrogen chemicals are just sitting in your fat. 

MARCIE: So it would be advantageous for them to get, go through your top 10 lists and get rid of those.

ANTHONY: Get them out of your system. Yeah.

MARCIE: And you mentioned earlier that it would take like six weeks for sure to be…

ANTHONY: That's usually what I see; yeah. Although, the average life of a fat cell is a year and a half. They've even discovered fat cells that live 10 years in people's bodies based on…

DARLENE: Oh I bet a lot of our clients say, “I’ve got a lot of those.”

MARCIE: Right!

ANTHONY: Yeah. I mean, they've done atomic bomb studies of people that were exposed to atomic bomb. And that's how they determine these fat cells can literally survive 10 years. But the average one is a year and a half. So it can be a long process to get these out of your system depending on how many you've been exposed to and what your fat type may be.

MARCIE: Well right. And then what you do to get rid of them too I would guess.

ANTHONY: Oh yeah.

MARCIE: It would be pretty advantageous to work on it.

ANTHONY: Yeah, that's why we mentioned the sauna before because I'm a huge fan of the sauna in this regard especially. And it's interesting with the sauna because there's so many benefits, you know, that you see. And then with these estrogens there's so many problems that you see. So it's an interesting reflection when you get them out, you got benefits.

MARCIE: For sure.

DARLENE: So I know this is a question just kind of off the top of my head. So, you know, we know that when, when people are trying to lose weight, if they drink alcohol, you know, so many women drink wine these days. Is that estrogenic or…?

ANTHONY: Alcohol is not estrogenic.

DARLENE: Okay. 

ANTHONY: You know, there is a compound in beer: it's called eight-PN. Eight-PN. I can't remember how to pronounce it to be honest, but they're in hops. They have some estrogen, but thankfully the microorganisms break that down. Now what's interesting about alcohol is it changes the aromatase. So it actually increases aromatization of testosterone. So basically in your body, testosterone can be converted to estrogen, which bodybuilders know; a lot of people know this. That's because if you increase your testosterone to ridiculously high levels, well then you end up getting a lot of estrogen because that testosterone gets converted over to estrogen. And alcohol: it accelerates that process. So you are actually increasing estrogen from alcohol. 

DARLENE: That’s what I’ve always thought. 

ANTHONY: It's not acting like estrogen, but it's increasing your estrogen.

DARLENE: Interesting.

MARCIE: Yeah.

DARLENE: So that's another reason that if people are wanting to lose weight, they got to quit their alcohol at least for the time that they're trying to lose some pounds.

ANTHONY: Yeah. Yeah, especially in our culture with our testosterone crisis. Right?

DARLENE: Right.

ANTHONY: And the other thing that's, you know, I talked before about how the, they've literally lowered the normal range for testosterone in the medical community because so many people are low. They've done that with the puberty range. They're working on lowering the range of puberty. I've seen arguments in the medical journal saying, “Look, puberty is getting younger and younger and younger.” Let's just redefine the normal range.

MARCIE: Oh no.

ANTHONY: And then it kind of, it masks the problem right in the future because then people say, “Well this is normal.” In reality it wasn't normal. Right now when we're talking about it's not normal, but they're trying to change it. And that's another one we might see in the future. But because we are seeing it in the normal age range lower.

MARCIE: Yes, for sure.

DARLENE: So actually as the testosterone levels go down and the estrogen levels go up, we're seeing a lot more prostate cancer, right? 

ANTHONY: Oh yeah. Yeah. 

DARLENE: Could you connect that for people that are listening?

ANTHONY: Yeah, well I think a lot of it is that the alpha receptor beta is protective on the prostate. A lot of people argue about the testosterone itself, right? But I think it's more of an estrogen-related issue. I had a discussion with Dr. Drew about this in California because he's had prostate cancer and he's really deep in the research. But you know, again, he's actually in the camp that thinks that high testosterone is actually a problem. I think that's been fairly debunked at this point. There's a researcher at Harvard who's written a whole book on this topic. And I think having natural estrogen is protective to a degree. But these artificial estrogens: completely the opposite. 

DARLENE: Okay. So how are we doing for time?

MARCIE: We're good. We have maybe one minute.

DARLENE: Okay, so let's go into, because depression is an epidemic right now.

ANTHONY: Yeah.

DARLENE: So, and even in kids.

ANTHONY: Oh yeah, which is crazy. 

DARLENE: Yes.

ANTHONY: Because they don't have all the stress and all the mortgages we have.

MARCIE: I know, right?

ANTHONY: In India too, did you know the farmers have, like in India when they brought atrazine in, which is an estrogenic herbicide, their depression levels, their suicide rate, you quantify this suicide in these studies. I mean it's literally off the charts. They're, they're panicking over there because they don't know what the cause is.

DARLENE: Wow. 

MARCIE: Yeah.

ANTHONY: And it's illegal in Europe by the way; atrazine totally illegal thankfully in Europe. But over here, over in India, it's all over the place.

MARCIE: It’s all over. Oh geez. 

DARLENE: And I know that Marcie, I know that when we come back, let's dig in a little more on cancer because that's another epidemic going on.

MARCIE: Yes for sure. So you are listening to Dishing Up Nutrition. Coming up the week of March 23rd, we are offering our Nutrition for Weight Loss program at all seven of our locations. This program includes 12 weekly interactive information-packed group classes and two one-hour individual meetings with one of our nutritionists or dietitians at Nutritional Weight and Wellness. Over the course of this 12-week Nutrition for Weight Loss program, you could lose up to 10 pounds. Maybe that's a whole dress size. You could give up your soda habit. You could break your sugar habit. You have more energy, less anxiety. Just go from no motivation to feeling great and charged up. As we always say, “food matters”. So call our office at (651) 699-3438 to sign up for this life-changing program and save $50 when you sign up by March 16th.

BREAK

DARLENE: Welcome back to Dishing Up Nutrition. We really hope you enjoyed today's show. And I know we only have about 10 minutes left of our show and we're going to cover really important things yet. You know, I really recommend that you pick up a copy of Estrogeneration: How Estrogenics Are Making You Fat, Sick and Infertile. And it's, it's a book that you actually can read, I believe. 

MARCIE: Yeah and… exactly. It's very reader-friendly.

DARLENE: And Anthony, we really appreciate that you made the drive up from Rochester because it's so much better to have you right in studio and see your face and be able to ask you questions. So thank you.

ANTHONY: Thank you guys.

DARLENE: And I hope maybe sometime in the future we could have you back because I think this is going to open up a lot of questions for people.

ANTHONY: For sure.

MARCIE: For sure. So we're jumping back in and I think we were, we were talking about depression when we went to break. So maybe we just kind of start off there and take it back in.

ANTHONY: Yeah, it's a complicated issue, right? And again, you see it when you have exposures to these artificial estrogens, but it's difficult because a lot of people lie on their medical charts and things. They don't admit to having depression. So it's hard to quantify as a scientist and anything, anytime you're working on the brain and researching the brain, it's difficult because there's no blood test you can do and say, “Oh, you've got depression”, even though it's obviously a big problem. But yeah, I mean that's one of the, like a lot of these health issues are the reason you see so many of these chemicals outlawed in Europe and then over here in America, you see them all over the place.

MARCIE: Yeah

ANTHONY: And so, you know, but, but again, the ones even in Europe, they still have the problem with soy. They actually have the, like the, a lot of the similar food problems that we have. And it's interesting too, there was a study they did in Canada: over 100 food item they tested; just all the plants, right? And they were looking for plant estrogens, which plants have estrogen. Everything was under 1,000 units of estrogen except soy and flax. Soy and flax were over 100,000.

MARCIE: Wow.

ANTHONY: So it wasn't even like in the same country; like people say ballpark. Right? It was unbelievable. Soy and flax. And so a lot of people talk about soy and estrogen, but flax is another one that gets a little bit under-looked at because you know, people see it as a healthy thing. And it is because it has omega-3, right? And a lot of people do need that and, but you know, it's got the estrogen. So it is risky thing. And one of the ways I like to think about it is in relation to your gut bacteria, because the gut bacteria, they, they're happy to break down those flax estrogens if you have gut bacteria. Yeah. If you have a good one, because historically our ancestors at least had exposures to those plant estrogens. So the gut bacteria are pretty familiar with breaking them down. But nowadays, it's such a, it's such a black box. How good are your gut bacteria? Right? And that's a risky thing to assume you've got a good gut bacteria.

DARLENE: So if you've been on antibiotics, I mean for a bladder infection or strep or ear infection or all those reasons, the gut bacteria probably is not very good.

ANTHONY: Yeah. And even there's links to stress and all kinds of other things that harm the gut bacteria. I mean, it's a touchy thing and that's difficult. Again, it's hard to test for it, right? It's hard to test whether you have good gut bacteria. There's no simple, easy, quick test you can do. So it's hard to assume that you know that you have good gut bacteria. And speaking of plants, it's also interesting; of course soy and flax are the big ones, but there are two other ones that jumped out at me when I was looking at all the research. Cannabis is one; not CBD. CBD oil has no estrogen. They've tested it. But actually smoking cannabis acts like estrogen in your body. And even the edibles don't by the way. But smoking for some reason does, because when you actually light it up, it does. And that's not vaping. It's not THC. They’ve tested pure THC. It's on your estrogen receptors that doesn't act like estrogen. So it's something about the smoking.

DARLENE: Well that's probably really why they gain weight?

ANTHONY: And, and lose fertility. If you're doing it as a teenager; smoking a lot of marijuana, you see a lot of fertility issues. Yeah; even depression sometimes.

DARLENE: Yes. Okay. 

ANTHONY: There's definitely links to a lot of this estrogen stuff that we're talking about with those issues. And the other one that I worry about a lot is lavender because there's pretty clear evidence. They even published it in the New England Journal of Medicine that lavender acts on your estrogen receptor. They did the cell studies. They showed… because they actually had children developing breasts. And obviously that's not something that, I mean we're talking like in that publication there was literally like nine-month old babies and things like that. They call it gynecomastia. And they removed all the lavender from their products and that gynecomastia resolved. It went away. Now that's pretty extreme, right? You're not going to find people that are that sensitive to estrogen. But it's still acting like estrogen even if it's not getting, giving you some extreme problem, you know, even lower levels you want to be careful with, especially if it's every day. So a lot of people that are health conscious, they're going to these lavender products every day and it starts to stack up, you know? 

MARCIE: So even like lavender oil would be a big one then because if you’re you're putting it on for bedtime, on your pillow, you’re sleeping on estrogen, people.

DARLENE: That's my intuitive sense that’s always been that these, these lavender products are not good. And I never knew why I thought that.

ANTHONY: Yeah there are multiple publications. 

DARLENE: Some of those essential oils things.

MARCIE: Yeah. 

ANTHONY: Yeah you have to be careful. And I get a lot of pushback on that one because of course, people sell it and people that are healthy also use it. But the studies, there's multiple studies. They've done different brands of hundred percent pure essential oil. So oftentimes I get, I get the response, “Well my brand is pure. That's just an impure brand.” And it's like, well, you could literally say that about any scientific study about anything if you're really going to go there, if you're going to go there because they've tested multiple brands; one-hundred percent pure. What else can you ask them to do?

MARCIE: Well right. Yes.

DARLENE: So can we talk a little bit about red number 40 or red number three, because I don't think people would connect that at all.

ANTHONY: Yeah, right. I mean, another artificial estrogen. In fact, scientists, we use artificial red dyes when we grow cells oftentimes because as the cells expand the liquid that they grow in, as, as they use up all the nutrients, the die turns from red to yellow. So it's an easy visual way to look at the cells and say, “Oh they've used up all the nutrients. We need to replace that liquid.” But scientists are also well aware that that acts like estrogen. So if we're going to study the estrogen receptor, if we're going to do estrogen studies on cells, we have to get rid of that red dye. That should be the first clue.

MARCIE: That would be your first idea.

ANTHONY: We don’t want to be drinking things that have red dye and a lot of people do and a lot of athletes do, which is hilarious, right; because you don't want to be lowering your testosterone as an athlete. But you know, and that's another reason you see a lot of these chemicals illegal in Japan for example, or they have warning labels in the UK and in Europe if you're going to use these, even red 40 if you're going to put that on your product, you have to have a big label that says, “Caution: may cause health problems.” So nobody uses it. I've been over there. I've talked, I've done podcasts with people over there and all this. And I ask them like, “Do you ever see red 40?” Because these people just like you guys are super in tune with what's on the labels and they say, “No, they use beet juice.”

MARCIE: Right.

ANTHONY: Which is what we should be doing. But just be careful with the red dye because it's unnecessary to have that exposure I think.

DARLENE: Well I would like you to spend just a few more minutes talking about the cancer risk and some of these artificial estrogens and just put it all together.

ANTHONY: Yeah. Well I mean breast cancer is up 250% since 1980. And I, I mean it's not a joking matter for sure, but I always say passing out pink ribbons and dressing up football players like newborn baby girls isn't solving the problem, right? Like what is solving the problem is understanding where the breast cancer is coming from and then, you know, and again, artificial estrogens, right? And, and then of course removing those artificial estrogens. That should be the focus instead of just raising awareness. The recognition of the problem isn't really solving the problem. 

DARLENE: It isn’t.

ANTHONY: And so, you know, I think, I think just having this fundamental knowledge is a key component of it. And you see it, right, when they bring these chemicals over to like the Philippines. Their breast cancer went up to 500%.

MARCIE: Holy buckets.

ANTHONY: So like our industrialization… a lot of times they just blamed it on industrialization and they just use that broad term. But you look at the chemicals they're bringing in and it's, it's atrazine and it's, you know, these plastic chemicals in particular. And again, it doesn't have, even BPA-free, right? Even BPA-free oftentimes has phthalates that are so high that they're acting the same way. In fact, some scientists argue that phthalates are worse than BPA. So and I think it probably is just because it's more subtle and people think they're fine because it says BPA-free. And then there's BPA analogs. Have you heard of these? Like BPS? So you can have a BPA free product. So BPA, it stands for Bisphenol A, but there's Bisphenol S, there's Bisphenol F, there's Bisphenol AF. I mean, you can literally just go down the alphabet and scientists can make it.

DARLENE: We could ask you questions all day.

MARCIE: We have to close it out, so thanks so much for being here today, Anthony.

ANTHONY: Thanks for having me.

MARCIE: Our goal at Nutritional Weight and Wellness is to help each and every person experience better health through eating real food. It's a simple yet powerful message. Eating real food is life changing. Thanks for listening today.

DARLENE: And Anthony, thank you so much.

ANTHONY: Oh, thank you.