October 21, 2017
Podcast from: https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/podcast/estrogeneration-how-estrogenics-make-you-fat-sick-infertile/
[00:00] Introduction/MeUndies
[02:57] Introducing Dr. Anthony Jay
[06:50] Why Concern about Cannabis in terms of Estrogen
[10:10] Why Concern about Lavender in terms of Estrogen
[14:30] Licorice and Phytoestrogens
[30:05] Z.E.A.s
[37:15] Quip/Organifi
[39:51] APEs
[42:40] How a Plastic Can Be BPA- Free but Still be Estrogenic
[46:20] Atrazine
[53:15] How Infertility and Obesity Issues Caused by Estrogens Can Actually be Passed on to Future Generations
[57:17] Estrogen detox
[1:06:07] End of Podcast
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Ben: Hey folks, its Ben Greenfield and I actually thought I kind of knew everything that there was to know about a horse that I thought has been kicked to death lately. That is estrogen exposure, right; we’re getting estrogen exposure, we’re getting man boobs from our shampoo and our plastic bottles, case closed. And you should wash your hair with coconut oil and drink out of glass Pellegrino bottles, and it turns out there’s a whole bunch that I didn’t know about estrogen; kinda shocking stuff. And I read this new book; it was written by a PhD, the President of the International Medical Research Collaborative, Anthony Jay. And the name of the book is “Estrogeneration”. “Estrogeneration”; see what they did there? How estrogenics are making you fat, sick, and infertile. And in the book he goes into like, lavender and cannabis and licorice and genetic triggers that can cause a parent’s choices to make a child fat or have a higher risk of breast cancer. Hidden estrogen sources I didn’t even know about that food and cosmetic manufacturers can legally hide from us and a whole lot more. So I found this book so compelling, that I decided that I needed to get Anthony on the show. And like I mentioned, he’s got a PhD and studies… what’s your PhD in, Anthony, by the way?
Anthony: It’s in Biochemistry.
Ben: Yeah biochemistry, so he knows what he’s talking about. Boston University, right?
Anthony: Correct, yeah. I actually did it in fats and cholesterol and hormones, so…
Ben: Oh wow, okay.
Anthony: My thesis.
Ben: Yeah, so you know a little bit about this stuff and I know you’re up to a whole lot of other things as well including this International Medical Research Collaborative to train and educate medical students and doctors around the globe within American hospitals and labs and you have this book. You have a great YouTube channel, all sorts of stuff that I’ll link to over in the show notes. If you all are listening in, you can go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/estrogen. That’s bengreenfieldfitness.com/estrogen to access the show notes.
Anthony: That’s where you find me, huh? (chuckles)
Ben: That’s where you’ll find Anthony Jay, on the estrogen page, that’s right. I’ll try to avoid making too many man boob jokes, by the way, coz I don’t want to offend people who actually have man boobs, but I mean hey, this is your chance to learn how to get rid of them.
Anthony: Somebody introduced me as Anthony G. “G” as in girl, Jay, on a podcast recently so… (laughs)
Ben: Anthony G. Wasn’t that your name, Anthony G. Jay?
Anthony: Yeah, yeah. It was just the “G” as in girl that was appropriate.
Ben: Oh, okay. They actually said “G” as in girl?
Anthony: That’s right, there’s been a [0:05:48] ______.
Ben: Hmm, hmm, interesting. Ok, well, let’s start here dude. Obviously the book is jam-packed full of stuff, and you actually talk early on in the book about two sources of estrogen that I personally use when I go to bed just about every night, so I had to ask you about this stuff right off the bat, First of all, I use lavender. So I sprinkle like lavender essential oil on my pillow, or sometimes I’ll diffuse lavender. And you talk about the potential of that to be estrogenic, and then you also talk about cannabis and the potential for cannabis.
You know I also use CBD, cannabidiol, extracted from organic hemp, like a capsule form or occasional vape that as well. Can you talk to me about, and I’m fine with you weaving in to your reply, you know why these estrogens would be a big deal in the first place. Tell me about lavender and cannabis, like if the dosage matters, if the source matters. Why those two things we should be aware of, coz I know a lot of my listeners use that stuff too.
Anthony: Yeah, let’s start with maybe, cannabis because these are both kind of interesting stories, and they’ve done a really good research study on cannabis specifically, and they found that only the smoke is estrogenic. So they looked at, and by the way when I say estrogenic I just mean something that acts like estrogen in your body; it acts on the estrogen receptor.
Ben: Right.
Anthony: So in other words, eating cannabis, using cannibadiol, all these kind of things, they literally tested those against the estrogen receptor and found that those did not activate the estrogen receptor; something in the smoke does. I think it’s because when you smoke, when you heat something up, you get some phenolic compounds. And that’s P-H-E-N-O-L-I-C, phenolic.
Ben: Mmhmm.
Anthony: It’s just a chemical that if you combine it with other chemicals, oftentimes that activates the estrogen receptor. I’m not sure, I’m just speculating there, but for whatever reason I would avoid the smoke if you’re concerned about estrogen.
Ben: Yeah.
Anthony: Once in a while, not a big deal.
Ben: By the way, I looked into it to. It looks like the smoke is an issue, so if you’re a weed smoker, and again I don’t want to give people the impression, especially if you’re a new listener, that this is a pot-head podcast, but I do know people are interested in cannabis as medicine. And I wanted to clarify coz I read it in your book and I was like, “Gosh is this something I need to worry about?” So it looks like smoke is an issue, coz I checked out a few of the studies on this too, like condensed marijuana smoke. And I don’t know if you saw this but, you know how a lot of people are like juicing hemp now?
Anthony: Okay.
Ben: Are you aware of this?
Anthony: No.
Ben: Yeah people do it, like they’ll grow hemp and they’ll juice it. It appears that like the crude extract that hasn’t been like decarboxylated or perhaps treated in the same way that like soy, and I want to talk to you about this in a little bit too.
Anthony: Yup.
Ben: Could potentially be more estrogenic if you don’t ferment it, or treat it properly. It appears that marijuana extract is similar to where like if you’re just like juicing the leaves and it’s not an actual extract of it, that’s another source similar to smoke that can be more estrogenic. And it looks like, for that it’s similar, like a flavonoid or a polyphenol that binds to the estrogen receptor.
Anthony: That’s right. Yeah, that’s interesting.
Ben: When something binds to the estrogen receptor, does that means it’s blocking the effects of estrogen, or does that mean it is compounding the effects of estrogen and producing estrogen dominance?
Anthony: Usually it compounds the estrogen effect.
Ben: Okay.
Anthony: And those are the chemicals I’m most interested in.
Ben: Mmhmm.
Anthony: Especially the additive effects, so my book focuses a top ten list of estrogens. I try to simplify it for people because some of these things are quite complicated, but let’s say you’re exposing yourself to a little bit of red food coloring, a little bit of phthalates from plastic, a little bit of BPA, whatever. As you expose yourself to all of these, they have additive effects because they’re all acting on the same receptor in an estrogen-like way and that’s the problem I have with most of these things. Once in a while, not a big deal; your body adapts. Hormones are, it’s such a delicate balance for our body and we tend to jump back from an estrogen exposure. If we’re exposed a little bit here and there, it’s not a big deal but, problem is when we’re constantly buffeting the estrogen receptor and activating it.
Ben: Yeah. Now, constant exposure, again, this is what I wanna ask you about coz this is another thing that I do just about every day. You talk about lavender and how lavender is estrogenic. Are we talking about lavender like, given in drinking water to rodents, are we talking about lavender diffused and used as an essential oil? I mean I’ve even put it on my kids’ pillows before they go to bed at night to help them relax. What are we looking at in terms of the issues with lavender and the source and the amount?
Anthony: So there hasn’t been a ton of studies so I’m hesitant. I don’t make any really strong recommendations but from what I’ve seen, I’m concerned about it, at least based on two big studies they did. One of them was in the New England Journal of Medicine, and you mentioned before they showed that it causes gynecomastia, which is breast tissue in males- man boobs. (chuckles)
And not only that, I mean that was kind of a case study; there were a few other cases studies that had the same exact finding. And that, specifically, those case studies were from people using lavender products, lavender in their soaps and shampoos, but the study that was most compelling to me in that same journal, New England Journal of Medicine article was they tested lavender, 100% lavender essential oil.
Ben: Okay.
Anthony: And they found that it activates the estrogen receptor and that’s kind of the basis of their claims that it has estrogenic effects, and here’s some case studies that back that up. So in other words, at the molecular level, they did find that it activates the estrogen receptor. It’s been repeated in a different journal; I did a YouTube video on it. It’s a little bit contentious; I mean some people say “Well, the source is kind of questionable. It’s 100% lavender oil from Sigma, a chemical company.”
The thing is it’s like, when scientists do these research studies, you could always question the source. If you buy 100% peppermint extract or whatever you buy, if somebody’s gonna say “Well, I don’t know about that source”, well I mean then the best you can do is use them 100% and…
Ben: Yeah.
Anthony: And you know, obviously the methodologies for extracting these things differ, but, and by the way there’s definitely benefits to lavender, so…
Ben: I looked into some of the studies too and like, I know the NIH reported on this one about how boys were getting gynecomastia from lavender, but they were actually soaps and skin lotions and shampoos, styling products that they’d added tea tree oil, which was another one that they identified as estrogenic and lavender oil too. And there’s a whole bunch of confounding variables as you know when it comes to these products they have a whole bunch of known endocrine disruptors that’s would give me pause, and then the other one that I looked in, coz I asked a naturopathic doc who, she actually works with an essential oil company admittedly, so maybe she’s a little bit jaded, but apparently they use an extremely synthetic source. Like, it wasn’t actual lavender oil from a lavender plant; they use like a synthetic lab-derived form of lavender which you can actually buy. I checked it out, you can buy it at Sigma-Aldrich labs and you can get like synthetic lavender oil that they use in lab studies, and I can drive an hour from my house and go out to these beautiful, like, purple lavender fields that they use to harvest like real lavender for essential oils.
I suspect that a) when you add it to like a full-on estrogen containing soap or shampoo or personal care product and then you use a synthetic source. That would probably be far different than just like a natural, like, 100% organic essential oil. And I’ll put some links in the show notes coz I totally don’t wanna just like use this as an excuse to say all lavender is good coz I think there probably is a law of diminishing returns. But ultimately, there’s a few interesting articles out there that this lady has written, Doctor Lobisco, that I’ll link to as well as this interesting article called “Why Lavender Essential Oil Won’t Cause Your Boy’s Breasts To Develop”.
Anthony: Yup.
Ben: So there’s some interesting things when it comes to lavender but there’s one other I wanted to ask you about too before we get into some of these plants like flax and so on and stuff like that, and that’s licorice. You mention licorice in the book, and licorice is in like a ton of digestive aids and it’s even in something that I’ll use to assist with digestion like glycyrrhetinic acid and there’s this tea made by a former podcast guest of mine, John Douillard, he recommends this “decoction tea”, like licorice and marshmallow root as a way to enhance the lymph system function. What is it about licorice and does the source matter when it comes to that?
Anthony: Yeah, sure. So, licorice, it didn’t make my top ten list because it’s not extremely high in estrogen but I found a study that was done in Canada over a hundred food items; just a huge study, it was a great study and all they were looking at was phytoestrogen content. Plant estrogen, how much plant estrogen are in all kinds of different food items and just to give you some units, the units they used were micrograms per 100 grams of the food. And you can basically ignore the units now, I just wanted to throw them out there. But with soy beans, they found over 100,000 micrograms per 100 gram, 100,000 phytoestrogen; so just really high.
Ben: Okay.
Anthony: And then with flax they found over 300,000 micrograms per 100 grams, and licorice, it was about 1,000 micrograms. So, I mean it was noteworthy, coz everything else was way under 1,000. I mean, like for example, chickpeas were 9 micrograms per 100 grams. So I mean yeah, chickpeas have a tiny bit of phytoestrogen but it’s certainly not 100,000, right? It’s not 300,000. So licorice showed up on the study but it’s certainly not a concerning level.
Ben: Yeah, I’ve been asked about this before whether licorice could lower testosterone or increase estrogens. I ran it by that guy, John Douillard, who was the guy I had on the podcast episode where I interviewed about this tea that he really recommends. It’s a great tea, it’s called a “decoction tea” and it just soothes your stomach and it’s amazing. And he dug into the research a little bit as well and he said it was about 50 grams or so of licorice that could either lower testosterone or cause some kind of a slight estrogenic effect.
Anthony: Makes sense.
Ben: And I believe the amount of actual glycyrrhetinic acid that’s in, for example like a serving of his “decoction tea”, and I might be pronouncing it, it might be glycyrrhetinic acid. Anyways, it comes out to about 1/10th of that, so again, it’s kinda like dosage matters, but it’s certainly something to bear in mind. I think, as you alluded to already a little bit earlier, if you’re doing a bunch of lavender and you’re smoking weed and you’re using licorice everyday, that’s where a lot of this stuff starts to add up. But these still aren’t the big players that you talked about.
Anthony: That’s right.
Ben: These are a few of the little things I want to get out of the way just so I’m not worrying the whole time that we’re chatting, coz then you get into the stuff that’s most estrogenic. And two that you talk about are soy and flax, as being two of the most estrogenic beans/seeds out there that we could eat. I know because I hear people talk about this all the time that the processing matters and whether or not it’s been fermented matters, etc. So, talk to me a little bit about what the issue is with flax seeds and soy beans, and then also, is there a way to eat them in their right format and a way to eat them in the wrong format when it comes to estrogenic activity.
Anthony: First of all, it depends how healthy you are to begin with, right? So if you’re struggling with fertility, if you’re pro-athlete… I tend tell people to avoid these things, but certainly if they’re fermented, there’s no issue. I mean the research is pretty clear about that, these bacteria break up the phytoestrogens.
Ben: That’s what happens when you ferment something like soy, like if I were gonna go buy soy beans, and my wife will do this sometimes, she’ll make natto out of soy beans, like the fermented natto is a source of Vitamin K too. What you’re saying is when you do that, the bacteria actually breaks down the estrogens?
Anthony: That’s right. And not only that, the metabolites, the broken down products of those phytoestrogens, are healthy for you, and that causes a lot of conflicting research because people study these lignans and these isoflavones and these other phytoestrogens from soy and flax, and they find health benefits sometimes. But then you also find studies that are just totally the opposite, they find increases in breast cancer, they find fertility issues.
I mean, a whole list of problems that you constantly see with these artificial estrogens like immune system issues, low testosterone like you mentioned, and again, so there’s a lot of conflicting research. And when you start fermenting them, it changes the game; it’s an entirely different thing. And like I said, in fact I think it’s healthy; the research indicates that.
Ben: Now what about flax? Can you actually ferment flax?
Anthony: Well the thing is people don’t eat 100 grams of flax, usually. (laughs) But if you have a healthy gut, it breaks down the flax. There’s really good, clear, scientific research on that. But if you don’t have a healthy gut, I think it’s unhealthy to eat a lot of flax. I avoid it; I prefer fish or krill oil, actually.
Ben: Okay.
Anthony: I eat a lot of hemp seeds and that sort of thing; protein powder.
Ben: Okay.
Anthony: But yeah, I mean it doesn’t seem to have that much effect. And one of the ways I think about this is our ancestors have been eating these things for thousands of years, for eons, whereas with parabens, these shampoo products with high levels of parabens, which by the way is bad because it acts like estrogen in your body and phthalates and BPA. Totally artificial chemicals that our gut bacteria, we’ve never seen these things, right?
So, you’re rubbing them on your skin, they’re going through your skin, they act like hormones, and even when you’re drinking water with these artificial estrogens, the natural ones, they definitely can be broken down, our bodies have adapted to take care of them and kind of regulate the balance of our hormones. But these unnatural ones really raise red flags for me.
Ben: Okay, got it. Now, going back to natural sources of estrogen, before we turn to some of the hidden things that you talk about in your book, I know there’s this concept of the phytoestrogens, right, which are these components that we find in plants that you’ve mentioned a couple of times that share like a structural or functional similarity to a mammalian estrogen, like the kind that we would make ourselves.
And we’ll be talking about like lignans, right, which are found in plant cell walls like berries or seeds like the flax seeds you talked about or grains or nuts or fruits. And then also these phenolic compounds which include the kind of like isoflavones that we talked about being in like really concentrated amounts in something like marijuana smoke.
Anthony: Mmhmm.
Ben: And, I know that there’s this thought out there that of course we know they act on estrogen receptors and they can be classified as estrogen receptor, I believe the technical term would be like a modulator where they’ll block excess activity if estrogen is too high.
Anthony: Yup.
Ben: Or mimic estrogen if estrogen is too low. And so they almost have like an adaptogenic-like effect in the human body. But I do know that those can also, because they modulate estrogen activity, and some of them can even increase the production of sex hormone binding globulin which kinda like bind excess estrogen. They may almost have like a regulating effect on estrogen, not necessarily be like this huge concern, for men when it comes to man boobs or women when it comes to estrogen dominance, versus synthetic forms of estrogen.
Now, what are your thoughts on this concept that phytoestrogens in plants could be a good thing and not cause things like estrogenic effects on breast tissue or cancer risks or things like that?
Anthony: Yeah, I agree. I think that’s a valid way to think about this, although I do get concerned, you know? I mean we have so much estrogen exposure, it’s hard to tell. I mean I wrote a chapter about scientific bias and spin within research because it needed to be done. I mean a lot of people ask me about this, like why is there so much research that puts soy up on a pedestal and say soy is super healthy for you, and then there’s also so much research that shows how bad it is for your health. And I think a lot of it, it’s literally corporate influence, it’s bias, it’s spin, so I wrote a chapter and I thought the editors were actually gonna take that chapter out of my book, but most of them actually told me that that’s their favorite chapter, because there is a lot of that.
So I do get worried with some of these, even the natural ones although the natural ones, I try and be really fair and just say “look, we’ve been exposed to these, our bodies can handle them.” The problem with raising SHBG, sex hormone binding globulin, is that yeah, you bind testosterone also so then you decrease your free testosterone but, so as you look at the research, that’s your common pattern that you find; you find a lot of decreases in free testosterone and total testosterone. So, yeah there’s health benefits there sometimes…
Ben: You mean like excessive consumption of phytoestrogenic rich foods, the sex hormone binding globulin increase that happens in conjunction with those would decrease the bioavailability of free testosterone?
Anthony: That’s right and that’s been shown; I did a video on that, also.
Ben: When you say that’s been shown, do you mean that’s been shown that high levels of sex hormone binding globulin can cause that or high levels of like plant intake from these plants that have phytoestrogen in them can cause that?
Anthony: Right, well the estrogens cause that, yeah, including birth control. Yeah, I mean, it’s a common pattern I think with these estrogen mimicking chemicals that they increase SHBG which also concomitantly decreases free testosterone, yeah.
Ben: Okay, and that’s why I’m curious because I mean there’s foods that contain phytoestrogens like fenugreek, is one example, and that’s taken by men to increase testosterone or testosterone availability. And there’s other ones out there, like I know sesame seeds are a pretty big source of phytoestrogens and oats and barley and some of these things that a lot of times we’ll find recommended as like healthy components of a diet, so are you saying that those, in and of themselves have enough of a phytoestrogenic load to be able to like, decrease free testosterone in guys, I mean are there bodies in the street that have been shown or?
Anthony: I think only soy and flax are the ones that were kind of on my radar based on the studies of just the amount that’s in the foods.
Ben: Okay.
Anthony: And just let me give you one other example. Brazil nuts have a lot of manganese, so there’s a lot of people who tell you to eat a lot of Brazil nuts and you’ll increase your testosterone because manganese is involved in creating testosterone, but what’s interesting is that if you eat Brazil nuts and/or supplement manganese consistently all the time, you spike your testosterone initially, but then it actually goes lower after about a week or so, it actually goes below your initial level, so you actually end up lowering your testosterone. So sometimes, too much of a good thing actually causes problems, so just doing something, especially with hormones, right?
Hormones are interesting, they’re regulated in really strange ways sometimes; it’s, again, it’s a delicate balance but with the natural chemicals, with the natural compounds, our bodies have adapted. Just like I said, just constantly doing it, constantly having it is a concern for me. I don’t think there’s enough research to say, make a really solid argument, one way or the other but it’s a concern for me. (laughs)
Ben: Okay, so the way that I understand it then, and then I do want to turn to some of these unnatural sources that I think are way bigger issues. We have phytoestrogens and those can bind to estrogen receptors and phytoestrogens are gonna be the kind of things that we would find in things like soy, flax, sesame seeds, licorice roots, a lot of legumes, I know alfalfa and clover are other sources and lots of leafy greens. But basically the idea is those would bind to estrogen receptors in the body, those phytoestrogens, and they would kind of like take up the parking spot of actual mammalian-based estrogen and keep it from exerting its effect.
Anthony: Sometimes.
Ben: And they could do that by increasing sex hormone binding globulin levels which would bind to estrogen. I know that they can decrease aromatase to a certain extent so they can prevent some testosterone from turning into estrogen and a lot of them are recommended, like diindolylmethane from broccoli, for example, for estrogen detoxification.
Anthony: Yup. Yup.
Ben: And so, what you’re talking about that we should avoid would be food sources of phytoestrogens that are orders of magnitude higher than most of the other food. So we’re talking about avoiding huge sources of flax while a little would be okay. And then avoiding just about any form of unfermented soy like edamame and tofu and soy milk and things like that.
Anthony: Exactly. Yup, that’s exactly right. Yeah.
Ben: Okay, got it. Cool. I just wanted to make sure that I could still have my natto and a little bit of flax here and there and my cup-o-broccoli.
Anthony: Yeah well, let me just jump in because even some of the soy sauce. You know, soy sauce in Japan is totally different because they actually ferment it, whereas in America we have a lot of these shortcuts and we oftentimes, it’s like the sourdough bread, you know? We do these shortcuts where we’re not actually fermenting things and that can be a problem. I mean you’re making your own natto so that’s all good, you know? (laughs) But I want people to know that.
Ben: Yeah, you’re right. A big part of it comes down to food processing as well. That’s what I always tell people is when you eat a food that’s purportedly known to be a super food or extremely healthy for you, or many plants, you must ask yourself: has this been rendered digestible? Like quinoa, for example. When you buy your organic quinoa from Costco and then complain that it gives you a stomachache or you got quinoa in your crap the next morning. Well, it’s covered in saponins, a soap-like irritant that bothers the digestive tract and that plants have in there to ensure that mammals poop them out elsewhere. And so you can make quinoa digestible, right?
Anthony: Yup.
Ben: You can rinse it and you can soak it and I love to even sprout it, it makes for a wonderful sprout, but then you could also just be a dummy and eat it without preparing it properly. So, yeah, big part of it comes down to prep methods. Now, you talked about some things that might kind of fly under the radar when it comes to estrogen sources and the first one that I wanted to talk to you about that you have in the book is actually a fungal compound. You call this Z.E.A.
Anthony: Yup.
Ben: Tell me about Z.E.A. coz that’s one I hadn’t heard of before. Why is that an issue and where would we get exposed to something like Z.E.A.?
Anthony: Yeah Z.E.A. is a bigger issue than people think. I think it’s been getting worse in the past years, in the past decades, recent decades. And the actual term is zearalenone. But yeah, I use the acronym Z.E.A. throughout my book because zearalenone is just cumbersome. And some scientists call is Z.E.N., they use that acronym. I just prefer Z.E.A., I think it sounds better and other scientists use that. But what it is, that’s mycoestrogen. Myco means mold, so essentially some of these molds actually secrete, a lot of these molds, surprising number of them, secrete Z.E.A., zearalenone. And whether you’re eating something that’s been exposed to mold, whether you’re breathing it in from the mold dust, whatever, it’s acting like estrogen in your body and it’s really, they consider it, immunotoxic. Again, reproductive toxicant, there’s a whole list and that’s, in short, that’s what it is.
And by the way, the reason mold is increasing is because we’re storing our grains and a lot of these things in bigger and bigger facilities, and natural estrogen in males is about 20 nanograms per liter; tiny, right? Nanograms is 10 to the -9, that’s not that much but get this: women have about 20-400 nanograms per liter depending on the time of the month, so it’s really not that… it’s not like men are at 20 and women are at 10,000 or something, 20-400 is not that far away.
And you start tampering with those levels, and so the difficulty with the mold is yeah, I mean the levels are really low, but we’re talking about nanograms per liter. Twenty years ago we weren’t even measuring nanograms per liter with our technology, so refining these levels and they’re causing problems. These are bioactive concentrations that mimic our natural hormone concentrations, and Europe regulates these things. Europe has incredible regulation on mycoestrogen, mold estrogen; the Unites States, absolutely no regulation, you can have as much mysoestrogen in your food. So what they do actually is they ship it over here; if they find high levels of mold estrogen in their grains, ship it over to the US.
Ben: Oh, God bless the USA.
Anthony: Yeah. (chuckles)
Ben: Well at least they’re sharing. So what you’re saying is that this would be a direct byproduct of, like, packaging foods? Packaging coffee, packaging wheat, packaging cereal, and what happens is we get like a mycotoxin, a fungus build-up when things are like packaged and stored in dark or damp conditions?
Anthony: That’s right, yeah. Even in under your sink or behind your fridge you might have it but usually it’s food.
Ben: Now how would that be different, like I took my kids out to a restaurant the other day and we had like a charcuterie plate; there was like bleu cheeses and all sorts of different kinds of like sheep and goat cheeses on there and cured meats. Are those sources or we more talking about like processed and packaged foods?
Anthony: Oh, that’s a good question. Well those sources of mold are vetted. You know, historically our ancestors have kind of, they’ve tampered with it, they’ve played with it. I don’t know how they come up with these things but our ancestors have found fermentation strains of molds, of bacteria, whatever that are non-toxic to humans that don’t secrete these chemicals. Whereas a lot of the virulent strains out in these big grain silos or whatever, I mean we’re spraying all these anti-fungicides and all these other things.
We’re actually increasing a lot of the virulence, which essentially means their aggressiveness, how aggressive they are. And so the food, the ones that we’ve been using for who knows how long with foods, with cheeses, those things are perfectly fine. They don’t secrete these same chemicals, especially mycoestrogen.
Ben: Now, is that one of the reasons that beer can give you man boobs? Because of the Z.E.A. content in that?
Anthony: No. Well, yeah it might be but I think it’s because hops actually do activate the estrogen receptor a little bit.
Ben: Okay. So hops would fall into the category of something like flax and soy as being a very very high source of phytoestrogenic compound?
Anthony: Uhh, it’s a good question, I mean I’m not sure, you know? It’s hard to tell sometimes whether it’s the hops or whether it’s the processing or whatever.
Ben: Yeah, or the chicken wings you had along with your beer.
Anthony: Yeah. (laughs)
Ben: Yeah, I have noticed that there seems to be, perhaps this is just an observational correlation but there does seem to be a high proportion of men who drink beer versus men who drink wine having man boobs, but that whole gynecomastia effect may be related other things. But we’re talking about grains, definitely in terms of storage, milling and processing and cooking, and grain products like breads and beers and like, even the processed feeds that we give to our animals in many cases.
They can be sources coz I looked this up after I read your book, and I found a pretty interesting NIH study on this Z.E.A. and they call it an estrogenic mycotoxin and they actually go as far as to call it an immunotoxic compound so apparently can shut down some immune system activity and yeah, it’s huge in terms of like processed and packaged grains and beers, as far as is prevalent.
Anthony: That’s right. Well, and let me jump in for a second, because when women are pregnant, our natural estrogen regulates the immune system really carefully because… in fact, natural estrogen is considered immunosuppressive and immunostimulative, which sounds like it totally doesn’t make sense, right? Because it suppresses the immune system and it stimulates the immune system but it has to; it has to stimulate the immune system to fight off diseases or pathogens, but it also has to suppress it so that the body doesn’t eat the fetus and Z.E.A. and a lot of these other ones, they alter your immune system because they alter that natural process.
Ben: Interesting. Okay so Z.E.A. would be one thing that we’d want to avoid and one of the best ways to do that would be to avoid like packaged grain and bread products and be careful with our beer choices.
Anthony: Yup.
Ben: Okay.
[Music Plays]
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[Music Plays]
Ben: Another one that you talk about is APEs. What are APEs and where are those coming from?
Anthony: Yeah, so there’s a class of chemicals called alkylphenols; that’s A-L-K-Y, alkylphenols. They’re an industrial chemical, and APEs, alkylphenols, that’s just the abbreviation, the acronym for alkylphenols, APEs are mainly found in soaps. So that’s just big processing, manufacturing… manufactured soaps. Not these natural soaps a lot of people are buying but these big industrial soaps.
Ben: Okay, got it. Now when you talking about these APEs, are there other sources than soaps or is it primarily what we would find in these, coz I think they’ll use them like surfactants, right, for them to give the suds in soaps?
Anthony: Yup. Yeah, I mean they’re found in some other products, like they’re found in, I don’t know, steering fluids and same of these things in the cars. They’re petroleum products.
Ben: But they’re not on the label. I think it’s what you say in the book like, we don’t actually know if the soap does or does not have this in there, how can that be?
Anthony: It’s a huge frustrating thing because of the corporate influence, and you find that a lot actually with these chemicals because what they’re allowed to do is they’re allowed to use this term fragrance and put a lot of these chemicals under this term because they consider that their secret formula so nobody else can rip that off. So that’s how they get away with it. They essentially consider it a secret ingredient and they don’t want other people to rip it off. But what it ends up doing is ends up allowing them to put stuff in. I literally buy soap that says its alkylphenol-free, and there are soaps that say that or you can find soaps that are just made with really natural products like coconut and this kinda thing and they’re not gonna have alkylphenols.
Ben: Yeah, I just don’t shower; I just use the garden hose out my backyard. That’s how I avoid all those issues.
Anthony: (laughs)
Ben: Yeah, there are natural soaps out there, obviously. I think, I’m pretty sure Doctor Bronner’s is clean. I’m pretty sure, I could be wrong, but is Doctor Bronner’s free of the triclosans and the APEs but it’s got some great reading material on the label if you wanna be blessed by the higher powers up in the stars and full of peace and love and joy while you’re taking your shower, Doctor Bronner’s is the way to go. Okay, so APEs, they can’t put those on the label but if you see triclosan or you see fragrances, or if it’s a very, very sudsy soap, it’s a pretty good indicator that it has APEs in it.
Anthony: Yup, yup. Good call. And they sneak a lot of parabens in those fragrances too.
Ben: Yeah, yeah. Exactly, which is another estrogenic source, yeah. So how about BPA-free water bottles? Can a BPA-free water bottle still be estrogenic, because from what I’m seeing in your book, it looks like it may not be as clear-cut as we think?
Anthony: That’s right. Well first of all with companies, the Federal government hasn’t done hardly anything with BPA so a lot of states, there’s 17 states that have made BPA illegal at least in children’s products, but what companies have done in those examples sometimes, is they use BPS, which is Bisphenol S or there’s another analog of BPA, I list a bunch of them in my book, which literally there are scientific studies that say that those analogs like BPS and these other bisphenols are just as estrogenic. Other words they’re just as harmful to your health. And even if they don’t do that, even if they’re not using any of the bisphenol products, phthalates are a huge concern. The name isn’t quite as sexy as BPA so people don’t remember it, especially since its spelled P-H-T-H-A-L-A-T-E-S, phthalates. So it’s a really cumbersome chemical term, but it’s found in a ton of plastic, especially plastic number 1, which is really clear plastic which looks beautiful. You see these clear jars of juice or oil or whatever, and look on the little recycling symbol on the bottom it’s usually plastic number 1.
And I tell people in my book if you have to use plastics, go with 2, 4, and 5, because those are the ones that are the least toxic. And sometimes even those have phthalates but it’s definitely plastic number 1 that has a lot of phthalates.
Ben: Okay, got it. So is there an actual, I think the one that you talk about is BPS as being something very similar to BPA in terms of estrogenic activity. Basically, if a water bottle says BPA-free, and you’re trying to be careful with BPA and with plastics, it can still have BPS in it?
Anthony: That’s right, yeah.
Ben: Okay, and is there any way to know that? Or will it say on the label if it has BPS?
Anthony: No, no. Well, if it has a little recycling symbol and it says number 7, and it’s BPA free, that means its BPS, 99% of the time.
Ben: So number 7 is the one you’d wanna look for and be careful of even if the water bottle says BPA-free.
Anthony: Exactly.
Ben: Okay, got it. Good to know. Number 7, even if it’s BPA free, avoid.
Anthony: Yup, and I like to say, I have this in the back of my book in really simple charts and things. And I also, just so people know as a reference, I have a lot of this stuff for free on my website at ajconsultingcompany.com, especially the personal care products, because I get asked this all the time. I make absolutely no money on any of the personal care products that I recommend, but I do list the ones that I use on my website just in case people wanna just say “oh what soap does he use, I’ll just buy that.” (laughs)
Ben: I do that, I do that dude but I use my Amazon affiliate links so when people actually go to Amazon to buy it puts a few coins in my hat. But, (laughs) buyer beware. Yeah, I have a whole article called “How To Detox Your Home” and that goes into like some of the things I use for water filters and for air filters and for personal care products and stuff like that. But I’ll link to that and I’ll link over to your site in the show notes here as well over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/estrogen if you guys wanna try out any alternative products. Another one that you talk about when you talk about frogs and princesses is atrazine. Tell me about atrazine and what that has to do with frogs and princesses.
Anthony: (laughs) Well, yeah I mean actually a lot of these have a lot of the same health impacts but atrazine is a chemical herbicide, again totally illegal in Europe, but in America it’s the second most used herbicide in North America after glyphosate, of course. But I mean just hundreds of millions of pounds of this stuff is used and it’s really a stable chemical; it lasts a long time, even in soil the half-life is about a year. So I mean that’s unbelievable. So it gets into your drinking water, we’re spraying it on our grains, especially the corn. I mean people should never compromise with corn; they should always get organic corn if they’re gonna be eating corn, in my opinion. And that’s because the atrazine is so high. But yeah, I mean scientists have this term they use, it’s called feminization of males. They also sometimes use demasculinization, which essentially just means that, you know the exposed frogs or fish or other animals, obviously not people but they’re doing testing with animals with these chemicals and they’re finding that whether it’s the reproductive organs or the brain, or other kind of physiological signatures, in males look feminine as you expose them to these chemicals.
Ben: Okay, gotcha. So this stuff, this atrazine, you say that there are levels that can turn male frogs into princesses?
Anthony: (laughs)
Ben: Have they actually seen sex changes in frogs from getting exposed to this stuff?
Anthony: For sure, yeah. They say about 200 nanograms per liter is where you start seeing the reproductive abnormalities, and just to give people a kind of a reference number, in cows they did a study with corn-fed cows, which is most of our cows, feed-lot cows. And they found 700,000 nanograms per liter of atrazine in the cow’s blood.
Ben: Holy cow.
Anthony: So I don’t know how much of that actually translates into the meat at the end of the day and the steak. But I guarantee you the fat is really toxic because all of these estrogens, these artificial estrogens they store in the fat. And that’s one of the problems that’s confounding a lot of scientific research today because guys like me are trying to study bacon or something in the lab, but then we’re just going to the store and picking up industrial bacon. And who knows if we’re actually studying the fat or we’re studying these artificial chemicals that are in the fat that are causing fat gains, that are causing depression, that are causing infertility. So that’s a big problem and atrazine is one of the key kind of components to that problem.
Ben: Can you filter that out of the water?
Anthony: Definitely. You can filter all of these, and charcoal is the secret. I used to use it in the lab; I’ve published peer-reviewed papers using activated charcoal. It pulls out anything that’s hydrophobic, so that includes all these hormones, includes all these artificial hormones, and it works, yeah.
Ben: You’re talking about activated charcoal filter, you’re not talking about activated charcoal capsules?
Anthony: No, I’m not but you can use those too. I just mean like a Brita filter, most of these Brita filters and these other companies. I personally use one called Berkey.
Ben: Yeah, I have a portable Berkey water bottle, like a sport water bottle that I travel with so when I’m at the airport and I don’t wanna spend $6.99 on a Pellegrino then I’ll just fill it from a water fountain and drink through this Berkey water filter. And that’s very similar to a charcoal.
Anthony: How do you do, like, these long races that you do?
Ben: What do you mean, like what do I drink when they hand you water at the…
Anthony: Yeah, do you just use plastic or do you have checkpoints?
Ben: I literally run through the checkpoint and grab whatever that volunteer happens to be handing me. And I have come back with parasites and crap from Thailand. I’ve drank some of the nastiest water on the planet; it just gets shoved down your throat when you’re in a race. There’s not a lot you can do about it. There’s this one supplement that I use called OralIV, and I race with that, and I did a podcast with actually the doctor who designed that. I’ll link to it in the show notes if you guys wanna listen in. But that allows me to drink about half as much water as I would normally need to drink during a race. I can mitigate some of those damages but yeah, you can’t, when you’re running through a race, you can’t spend like 10 seconds filling up your little Berkey water filter coz I mean, when you’re in a race and you’re running a 5½ minute mile and trying to stay in the heat, it’s not like you can just stop and ask people if you can run the water through a charcoal filter real quick.
Anthony: But what about training though? What about training because people ask me this all the time and I honestly don’t know what to say.
Ben: What do I drink when I’m training?
Anthony: Yeah, I mean how do you handle long distance endurance training and carrying water?
Ben: Oh, for that I just fill up at home. I mean at home what my water is, because I like sparkling water, I order every month a big case of Pellegrino. And then I also have a well, and my well water gets filtered through a manganese and iron filter, coz those were the two minerals that were found in very high amounts in my well, which are okay in lower amounts but they’re pretty high in my well. Believe it or not, not all water running underground is pristine. Our ancestors would have got; if I were one of our caveman ancestors, I’d have hemochromatosis from excess iron build-up. Yeah, it’s great for energy but bad for the heart. And then I also, because I’m still concerned about glyphosate run-off, speaking of atrazine, glyphosate’s another issue, from nearby farms, from crop dusters overhead, etc. There was another guy I interviewed on the show named Zac Bush, triple board certified physician who developed this stuff called Restore, which basically is a lignite-based product that protects the gut against the ravaging effects of glyphosate.
So what I do is if I’m gone off for a long training session, I’ll take my water bottle with me and that’ll be full of my camel back or how long I’m gone, of just water from my home. And then three times a day, I do a shot of that Restore stuff and then when I’m off and doing a race, when I get to wherever I’m racing, I go to the local whole foods or whatever and buy a whole bunch of glass bottled water; I drink good water. But during the race itself, I just take this OralIV, and then I use the little cups of water they hand me during the race, and then I do use some of the mitigation strategies you talk about in your book that I also wanna get into as far as de-estrogenifying my body. And that’s actually what I wanted to delve into in just a minute. But before I do, I can’t neglect asking you about this epigenetic component that you talked about. About the obesity issues caused by estrogens actually potentially being passed on to future generations. Can you fill me in on how that would work?
Anthony: Yeah, I mean people are usually confused about the title of my book until I explain that. (laughs) And what that is is it’s epigenetics, and what epigenetics are, I like to use the analogy of musical notes, which is really simple. It’s just basically if you have a staff with dots on it, musical notes say it’s the song Mary had a Little Lamb, you can pass that sheet music to somebody else and they can play Mary had a Little Lamb; super simple, super easy. That’s like your DNA, but if you play chords and put notes on top of those notes, that’s like epigenetics; those are marks on top of the DNA. You can also pass that on to future generations or to somebody else, and they can play that same song so the DNA doesn’t change, but those marks can change based on your diet, and especially based on your hormones and your artificial hormones, like these artificial estrogens.
They can literally change those marks, and scientists have shown obesity can be passed on, and what I mean by that is I mean you can be skinny, you can have skinny DNA but you can be exposed to enough of these chemicals and change your epigenetics and actually pass obesity on to future generations. But it’s not just obesity, its cancer and decreased fertility also.
Ben: Holy cow, so basically what you’re saying is if mom is like eating a bunch of edamame, drinking a bunch of soy milk, using a bunch of like paraben and phthalate infused soaps and cleaning chemicals and things like that, that she could have a child who would basically be born with estrogen dominance?
Anthony: That’s right, and in fact they discovered epigenetics because of the Dutch famine back in the 1940’s, during World War 2, the Germans. There was this Dutch famine where the people literally didn’t eat, and I mean there was over a million people. Literally, it just had a total famine for a year, and all the babies born to the mothers that were pregnant during that famine, of course were lighter and smaller, but that’s expected right? I mean they were exposed to the famine. But what was crazy was recently, and by recently I mean maybe 2003 or so, 2005, somewhere in there, they discovered that the babies of those babies were also lighter and smaller which can’t be explained by DNA. So what they found, when they started looking at it was the IGF gene, which is the insulin-like growth factor, so one of these growth factor genes was actually the methylation; the marks on the DNA were changed, and that’s been passed on to future generations, but you can also do the inverse of that. You can also increase your obesity; in this case, in that example it’s decreased weight, it’s decreased size, but you can do the inverse of that.
Ben: That’s crazy. You actually have a whole section in this where you go into a bunch of studies that have been done in fish and fish generations and fish fertility with estrogenic exposure. I think the name that you give to this is juvenile hyperestrogenism. And that would also be, would that be why a lot of girls now are going through their periods a lot earlier?
Anthony: For sure.
Ben: And are going through puberty much, much earlier, like girls at like 9 and 10 years old?
Anthony: Exactly and they’re trying to define it. What’s really maddening about it is the doctors are literally proposing to redefine the normal age range of puberty because so many are coming in at those low levels, at those low ages with puberty, especially girls. And I did a YouTube video on that too because it’s so frustrating to me because rather than actually fixing the problem we’re just trying to redefine away the problem.
Ben: Man, this is crazy. Okay, let’s talk about what we can do.
Anthony: Yeah.
Ben: What are some of your top strategies to detox ourselves from estrogen? You talked about activated charcoal as being one thing that one could use. What are some other things that we could do to clean up our bodies when we know we’ve been exposed to estrogen sources or if we’ve just not been really paying attention to it for a long time and we know stuff has built up within our body?
Anthony: Yeah, well there’s good evidence, really interesting evidence that actually Omega-3 fatty acids help to diminish estrogen and artificial estrogen levels. It’s not understood exactly why, at least I don’t understand why but it definitely happens. So that’s one thing, and the other thing is, again these things are stored in the fat cells, and I call it the estrogenic paradox in my book because these artificial estrogens they cause fat and they store in the fat, so it becomes real difficult. There’s an interesting study with mice. They had two groups of mice, exact same exercise, exact same diet, but they put low dose atrazine in one of the groups’ water supply. Low dose, I’m emphasizing that because that’s what humans are frequently exposed to. And the group with the atrazine exposure, drinking in their water, they basically had fat mice; they had fat gains.
And so, you have to eliminate a lot of these estrogens, at least the ones that you’re being exposed to on a daily basis. I mean that’s the foundation here; you gotta eliminate these things. Again, maybe an exposure here and there, not a big deal; if you’re travelling, if you’re running a race. You can take a charcoal pill, and you don’t want to constantly be taking activated charcoal pills because you could get nutrient deficiencies but once in a while you get exposed, you can take an activated charcoal pill. But the best thing that I talk about in my book, the best way to get rid of these is a sauna.
Ben: Okay, gotcha, I’ll get into the sauna in a second coz I actually have my own little protocol for that I wanna ask you about. I’m pretty sure with the Omega-3 fatty acids that basically there’s two different ways that estrogens can get metabolized: one’s like a C2 pathway and one’s a C16 pathway I think is the other one. And when they get metabolized on the C2 pathway, they get metabolized into what’s called estrone, an estradiol, and they lose a lot of their estrogenic activity. And from what I understand, what a high Omega-3 fatty acid consumption does is that it promotes metabolism of estrogens via that C2 pathway, so you basically, it helps your liver get rid of estrogens from the body a little bit more readily and converts them into a form where they’re less extremely estrogenic. Which would mean like if you’re doing a lot of, let’s say even fermented soy or flax or one of these phytoestrogens that you should be prioritizing one of the things that in my opinion goes along quite well with a plant-rich diet which is a lot of really good like wild caught fish and eggs from pastured hens or free-range hens that are high in Omega-3, so it’s a really good one-two combo in my opinion. So we do our Omega-3 fatty acids, and we use things like activated charcoal and water filters, sauna exposure. You definitely mentioned sauna exposure; I’m a huge fan of that. I hit the sauna like, when I’m home, every day.
Anthony: Nice.
Ben: I get a nice sauna. Like if I don’t get in this morning, I’ll get in there tonight. I’ll light a little incense stick and sit in there and I’ll read books that I need to catch on until I’ve lost a copious amount of sweat, and then I’ll get out and I’ll replenish with some minerals. But one of the things, and I have a whole article about this protocol, it’s at bengreenfieldfitness.com/hackedsauna. I talk about the use of like a niacin before you get into the sauna. Have you ever looked into that as far as detoxification is concerned?
Anthony: No, but it would make sense, I mean, especially because that would probably even act on your epigenetics in a positive way, and that’s something people forget, right? They think about epigenetics and how we’re changing them in the negative way especially in terms of my stuff, but yeah, you can actually change your methylation patterns in a positive way.
Ben: Really? That’s interesting. I always just did the niacin because it improves cardiovasular blood flow and it actually increases lipolysis which is the breakdown of the fats. And so when you first start doing it, I used to gets like rashes and little like zits and strange skin issues and then eventually once my body detoxified everything, now I just feel like a million bucks and I just do it coz I feel amazing when I do it.
Anthony: But methyl folate…
Ben: Yeah, the niacin taken beforehand can really accelerate this detoxification and as you mentioned, a lot of these estrogen is absorbed in fat tissue so if you lipolyse fats via something like the vibration of an infrared ray, combined with the cardiovascular blood flow of something like niacin, it’s a pretty good one-two combo.
Anthony: Or the B Vitamins.
Ben: Yeah, obviously exercise and anything that would promote lymph fluid flow, rebounding vibration platforms, as silly as it sounds I mean the things actually work. But you’re a big fan of sauna, are there any studies on sauna, by the way? That actually show sauna?
Anthony: Oh, definitely, yup. I think there’s a twenty year study actually that they did over in Finland, a scientist did in Finland. He found that essentially anything under 11 minutes, or you could just say 10 minutes just to be able to remember it. Basically anything less than 10 minutes wasn’t that efficacious, it wasn’t that effective, but once you start going above 11 minutes four times a week, that’s the sweet spot. I mean it’s unbelievably, it actually improved all-cause mortality, which basically means dying from anything you can think of, it improved that.
Ben: Yeah, and Alzheimer’s by 60%. Neurologist research they keep talking about; I go to Finland every year for this biohacking summit over there which is just one of the most amazing conferences on the face of the planet. And we always use sauna, but for like 2-3 hours every day; and you feel amazing.
Anthony: Nice.
Ben: Now granted, they don’t do infrared over there. I like infrared even more for that detoxification effect but for me, dude, every week I’m home, it’s 30 minutes, five days a week, I’m in that freaking sauna, and so it helps.
Anthony: I agree, and I specifically said that in my book about infrared. Infrared is definitely better, because it heats up from the inside-out, and heat speeds up molecules, it speeds up molecular motion which pumps out a lot of these estrogen. And by the way the scientist who did the big study on saunas that I was referring to, his name is Jari Laukkanen, and that’s J-A-R-I, Jari; in case people want to look that up I just wanna throw that in there.
Ben: Yeah, he’s got an amazing amount of content when it comes to the benefit of sauna, so absolutely. And you have an amazing amount of content in this book, man. Estrogeneration, for those of you who wanna grab it, go to the show notes because over in the show notes I’ve also put links to a lot of the stuff we talked about in terms of, some of the things about phytoestrogens versus synthetic estrogens and that article I was talking about when it comes to lavender, Anthony’s book, his website, my own how to detox your home article and my article about infrared saunas. I’ll put a whole bunch of resources in there for you, and it’s all gonna be at bengreenfieldfitness.com/estrogen. So Anthony, thanks so much for writing this book and for coming on the show and sharing all this stuff with us, man.
Anthony: Thanks Ben. Yeah, appreciate it.
Ben: Alright folks, well until next, I’m Ben Greenfield, signing out with Doctor Anthony Jay. Check out the show notes, bengreenfieldfitness.com/estrogen, and have a fantastic week.
thought I really knew everything there was to know about estrogen exposure until I read the new book written by Anthony Jay, today's podcast guest and the author of Estrogeneration: How Estrogenics Are Making You Fat, Sick, and Infertile.
In it, he delves into everything from cannabis to lavender to licorice…
…to genetic triggers that can cause a parent's choices to make a child fat or have a higher risk of breast cancer…
…to hidden estrogen sources that food and cosmetic manufacturers can legally hide from us…
…and much more.
Who is Anthony Jay?
Anthony grew up in rural Minnesota.He went to college at Ave Maria University, Florida, and earned a B.A. with a double major in Biology and Theology and a double minor in Chemistry and Classics. It was in college where he began researching inhibitors of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and where he also acquired a unique reputation as the founder of the University Shark Fishing Club. After college, Dr. Jay began working in an Alzheimer’s disease lab in Boston for the U.S. Veteran’s Affairs.
Next, Dr. Jay earned his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Boston University School of Medicine in Boston, Massachusetts, researching different types of fats and cholesterol. Today, Dr. Jay continues to lead the “AJ Consulting Company”, which he founded in 2010, where he predominantly analyzes DNA for high performing individuals. In addition, Dr. Jay is the President of the “International Medical Research Collaborative”, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that trains and educates medical students and doctors from around the globe within American hospitals and labs.
Working within the medical and research systems, Dr. Jay has become disenchanted with many aspects of the “conventional” medical and research culture in America and has become vocal about these problems and passionate about strategies for mental and physical health optimization and disease prevention. Dr. Jay is also an expert on artificial estrogen chemicals and recently published Estrogeneration: How Estrogenics Are Making You, Fat, Sick, and Infertile. Dr. Jay has other upcoming books as part of this book series called “Chagrin & Tonic” and a YouTube channel under that name, all focused on simplifying important scientific ideas
During our discussion, you'll discover:
-Why Anthony is concerned about two things I use before I go to bed at night (lavender and cannabis)…[6:10 & 10:18]
-Whether licorice can increase estrogen or decrease testosterone…[14:35]
-Which types of plants are the most estrogenic, and whether those plants can be processed in such a manner such as fermentation, that decreases the estrogens…[17:40 & 22:15]
-The little known estrogenic fungus ZEA and why Anthony talks about it in his book…[30:20]
-Why you need to be careful with any soap that creates high amounts of “suds”…[39:50]
-How a plastic can be BPA free but still be estrogenic…[42:40]
-What the chemical atrazine has to do with turning male frogs into female “princesses”…[46:20]
-How infertility and obesity issues caused by estrogens can actually be passed on to future generations…[53:15]
-Anthony's top strategies to detox ourselves from estrogens, and how long it takes…[57:10]
-And much more…
Resources from this episode:
-Estrogeneration: How Estrogenics Are Making You Fat, Sick, and Infertile
–Why Lavender Won't Give Your Boys Man Boobs
–Do Phytoestrogens Raise Estrogens and Modulate Cancer Risk?
–Ben's “How To Detox Your Home” article
-Ben's podcast about “OralIV”
–Zach Bush's “Restore” product for mitigating the effects of glyphosate
–My article on hacking an infrared sauna
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-Quip – Go to GetQuip.com/ben to get your first refill pack FREE with purchasing a Quip electric toothbrush.