Testosterone decreases with age. This causes an avalanche of other problems. Testosterone is truly the elixir of youth. With the exception of health enthusiasts, few people are even aware of the great importance of testosterone in total health and this certainly includes most doctors. Thankfully, there are ways to increase testosterone as we get older.

Testosterone Trouble

Of course, the trouble is that the line between the natural hormone and the synthetic or steroids, which are illegal, is blurred. This may be a purposeful attempt to keep natural hormones out of people’s mental awareness. The pharmaceutical companies consider hormones (not least of which is testosterone) to be their domain. But they deal in synthetics or steroids that they extract and sell as prescription drugs. This blurring and confusing of steroids with natural hormones has worked to confound the people and most doctors.

Pharmaceutical companies are masters of deceit. They create confusion that they channel in their favor. Yes, they use psychological propaganda and confusion.

The Replacements

Anything we lose as we age needs to be replaced if possible. I can think of nothing more important than testosterone. In both sexes, the body makes estrogen by converting testosterone to estrogen. When natural testosterone is not replaced as they age, men’s testosterone gets so low that their bodies can’t make much estrogen at all.

I have written about testosterone and the 5 percent cream that is available from a compounding pharmacy. This is what I use, but there are other non-prescription testosterone precursors that produce natural testosterone.

The sex hormones are made from cholesterol, and the pharmaceuticals are trying to stamp out cholesterol under the pretext of promoting heart health. It is a matter of commerce; the lowering of cholesterol is actually extremely negative for heart health. And the doctors won’t come off of this cholesterol phobia.

Insulin Imbalance

The first cause of skyrocketing cholesterol is insulin imbalance. Testosterone and the other sex hormones, estrogen and progesterone, are produced out of cholesterol, as are the sex hormone precursors DHEA (dehydroepiandrosterone) and androstenedione.

As we age, we seem to get insulin resistant. This causes weight gain and diminished testosterone and DHEA levels.

Pharmaceutical companies don’t say much about insulin because any honest insulin studies lead to the subject of the high U.S. consumption of fructose corn syrup and the health hazard it is causing, resulting in a pandemic of diabetes. Sugar creates high insulin and medical problems. Low insulin correlates with higher DHEA levels, higher testosterone levels and normal cholesterol levels.

Brain Beginnings

Well, we started with the direct relationship of the brain and sex life or sexual potency. I, like most people, think of testosterone as it relates to enhanced sex life, or diminished sex life if testosterone is low.

But Dr. Jonathan Wright wrote in his newsletter Nutrition and Healing that testosterone levels are directly related to cognitive function. He says: “The sex part is important, no doubt, but who cares about sex if you can’t remember who you’re with or what you’re doing with her?”

Wright says that natural “testosterone replacement for men is extremely important for significantly reducing the risk of Alzheimer’s disease and cognitive decline.” He also writes: “Higher serum (natural bio-identical) estrogen levels in women in their 60s are directly correlated with lower incidence of Alzheimer’s in those same women decades later.

“Testosterone for men and estrogen (that’s real, bio-identical estrogen — not horse estrogen as used in conventional medicine) for women is very protective for the entire cardiovascular system, including the blood supply to the brain.”

Nutrient Decline

Seniors, we all need to be aware of declining levels of nutrients and hormones as we age. We need iodine, DHEA, Co-Enzyme Q10, glutathione, etc. Above all, let’s try not to become insulin resistant.

Watch all sugars or sweeteners — especially fructose corn syrup, which is more dangerous to the people than a standing army.

Research at Washington University shows that people with osteoporosis (bone thinning) may be up to 22 times more likely to suffer from celiac (an autoimmune reaction to gluten) than people with normal bones.

“Our results suggest that as many as 3 to 4 percent of patients who have osteoporosis have the bone disease as a consequence of having celiac disease, which makes them unable to absorb normal amounts of calcium and vitamin D,” says principal investigator William F. Stenson, M.D.
“(In our study) bone density — which is the way bone health is measured — improved dramatically on a gluten-free diet,” Stenson adds. “We believe the diet allowed intestines to heal and that permitted normal absorption normal of calcium and vitamin D to reverse bone loss.

“One of our conclusions is that the incidence of celiac disease in patients with osteoporosis is high enough to justify screening for everybody with osteoporosis,” Stenson notes. “The idea is that if a patient has osteoporosis as a consequence of celiac disease, the most direct way to correct their bone loss would be to put them on a gluten-free diet.”

A study in Canada has found that when pharmaceutical companies market their wares to consumers on TV, online and in print media, the cost of the marketing accelerates the price increases for those drugs. As a result, prescription drug costs increased by 15.4 percent a year in the time period examined by Canadian researchers. Coincidentally, the costs of marketing all these drugs to consumers have increased more than 330 percent in recent years.

The researchers conclude that other countries that are considering following the U.S. lead in allowing drug companies to market pharmaceuticals directly to consumers should get a second opinion. It’s an expensive proposition.

A growing body of research, however, has firmly established that you may be able to restore the good bugs by taking probiotic supplements or eating fermented foods (like sauerkraut) in between your doses of antibiotics. They’re particularly helpful for alleviating diarrhea caused by antibiotics.

“We found a clear beneficial effect of probiotics in preventing or treating antibiotic-associated diarrhea,” says Sydney J. Newberry, a nutritional scientist and a researcher at RAND, a nonprofit research organization.

In Newberry’s research, use of probiotics was associated with a 42 percent lower risk of developing diarrhea when taking antibiotics as compared to not using probiotics. Experts advise taking probiotics supplements a few hours after taking antibiotics so that the medicine doesn’t kill the helpful organisms in the supplements.

I developed these exercises by combining ancient concepts from Chinese Qigong and martial arts. This video offers illustrated instructions for the movements I described in my article here.

After the original article ran, we got quite a bit of feedback from interested readers who asked me to make a video of the exercises that they could follow. I was happy to do so, and here it is.

One of my wellness clients, Greg Stevenson, performs the set in the video that I narrate. The step-by-step description below offers more details on the exercises. To read the original article in order to better understand the concept behind the exercises’ use, you can go here.

Weighted Pole Instructions:

1. Begin by standing with your feet a shoulders-width apart, knees bent.

2. Hold the bar in both hands, palms facing out, with arms by your side for one minute to get used to the weight.

3. Curl up the bar and hold it as close to your chest as possible for one minute.

4. Open your hands and slowly let the bar roll down your forearms, stopping at the bend in your elbows. Hold for one minute.

5. Slowly extend your arms forward while rotating out your elbows, balancing the bar across the crook of the elbows. Hold for two minutes.

6. Slowly tilt your forearms down a bit to allow the bar to slowly roll onto your wrists. Hold the bar in this position for two minutes. You can use your thumbs to keep the bar from rolling past your wrist.

7. Slowly roll the bar back up your arms to the elbows, turn your palms up and raise your hands to eye level. Hold this position for two minutes.

8. Rotate your elbows out and grasp the bar with both hands in the middle.

9. Hold the bar vertically in front of you with outstretched arms. Hold for one minute.

10. Finish by putting down the bar.

A national survey of students in the 5th to 10th grades shows that TV viewing is associated with unhealthy eating and bad food choices. The more television kids watch, the worse their diets become.

Researchers at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Bethesda, Md., conclude: “Television viewing time (is) associated with lower odds of consuming fruit or vegetables daily and higher odds of consuming candy and sugar-sweetened soda daily, skipping breakfast at least one day per week and eating at a fast food restaurant at least one day per week…”

Parents be warned: Letting kids watch unlimited television is sending them on a path to an unhealthy diet.

“There is something parents can do,” researcher Ronald Iannotti told The New York Times. “Limit TV time, and make sure healthy snacks, particularly fruits, are available.”

Unfortunately, the same dynamics are often at work in a hospital. But it isn’t your appetite that’s at risk; it’s your health.

Studies at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business show that when hospitals are overflowing, surgery patients are sent home before they’re healthy enough. A shockingly high number of them consequently have to be readmitted to the hospital within three days.

“Discharge decisions are made with bed-capacity constraints in mind,” says researcher Bruce Golden.

“Patient traffic jams present hospitals and medical teams with major, practical concerns, but they can find better answers than sending the patient home at the earliest possible moment,” Golden adds. “Too often, the biggest problem is that hospitals just don’t plan ahead, and this is what gets them in trouble. There are logistical alternatives to sending a patient home too soon.”

Not Just Digestion

Problems deriving from the gluten in wheat, barley and rye were once thought to be mostly digestive issues. No more. Increasingly, gluten is found to cause brain and nerve problems. Oftentimes, people who suffer these neurological injuries don’t report any stomach or intestinal symptoms.

In a study looking at a connection between gluten and mental illness, scientists examined birth records and blood samples from more than 700 children born in Sweden between 1975 and 1985. More than 200 of the children eventually developed psychoses like schizophrenia and delusional disorders. They found that the mothers who had gluten sensitivities were much more likely to give birth to children who later suffered from schizophrenia. While the researchers are not sure what links a mother’s gluten sensitivity to a child’s later illness, they believe their research points an important way to improving long-term health.

“Our research not only underscores the importance of maternal nutrition during pregnancy and its lifelong effects on the offspring, but also suggests one potential cheap and easy way to reduce risk if we were to find further proof that gluten sensitivity exacerbates or drives up schizophrenia risk,” says study lead investigator Håkan Karlsson, M.D., Ph.D., a neuroscientist at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden.

Delusional Disorder

Now when these researchers discuss delusional disorders linked to gluten, it reminds me of the strange experiences I used to have before I began my gluten-free diet in 2007. Back then, bedtime had become a delusional funhouse. Floating faces in the dark, distorted alternative universes, strange visions — my brain would be hard at work providing a side show that had me convinced I was dreaming before I was even asleep.

After I gave up gluten, my evening visions petered out. Occasionally, when I relapse and experience an unusual vision in that twilight zone between being awake and asleep, I suspect it is connected to the inadvertent consumption of a food contaminated with gluten.

Neurological Difficulties

My mental difficulties with gluten are hardly unique. Other brain and neurological problems that may be linked to gluten include:

• Dementia: When researchers at the Mayo Clinic fed a gluten-free diet to people with celiac who were suffering from memory and cognitive problems, they found significant improvement in some of the patients.
• Migraine: Researchers have reported that a migraine headache can be the first sign of celiac disease.
• Nerve damage: Studies show that up to half of all people with celiac disease (intestinal damage from gluten) suffer from peripheral neuropathy — deterioration of the nerves in the hand and feet that can cause numbness, pain, burning and tingling.
• Difficulty in walking: Known as gait ataxia, difficulty in walking caused by gluten can be a serious issue. It can interfere with your sense of balance and make you unable to stand on one foot.
• Epilepsy: Epilepsy, especially in children, is frequently linked to celiac disease.
• Autism: Research at Penn State shows that when parents of autistic children eliminate gluten and casein from children’s diets, their behaviors and physical problems often improve.

Intolerable Proteins

Despite the dangers gluten presents to large numbers of people, gluten permeates much of our food supply. If you read food labels, you’ll discover sources of gluten like wheat, barley, rye and malt (made from barley) are added to a surprising number of foods. Added to that, many foods that should be gluten-free are frequently contaminated with gluten.

So going on a gluten-free diet can be quite a challenge. But if you need to eat gluten-free to save your brain, the task is obviously well worth the effort. I know that for me, the alternative is unthinkable.

The two-year dietary study found that a high fat diet helped diabetes patients increase their HDL (good) cholesterol and dropped their blood sugar levels. They also lost about 9 pounds. A group that ate a low fat diet also lost weight but their blood sugar and cholesterol did not change.

“You could ask yourself if it really is good to recommend a low-fat diet to patients with diabetes, if despite their weight loss they get neither better lipoproteins nor blood glucose levels,” says researcher Fredrik Nyström.

Progesterone’s Health Benefits

By nature, progesterone is a calming or tranquility hormone. It can even cause you to feel a bit sleepy; that’s one reason why it is taken at night. It makes a woman feel better from the symptoms of PMS such as:

• Bloating.
• Irritability.
• Breast tenderness.
• Migraine headaches.
• Anxiety.

Progesterone is also used to reduce heavy or painful periods. In fact, symptoms of progesterone deficiency include bloating of the face, hands and feet from water retention before your period. Tension in your face and feeling a lot of pressure during this time of the month can also indicate that progesterone levels are insufficient. Breasts that are painful or develop cysts can be a sign of low progesterone, too. The same holds true for ovarian cysts and uterine fibroids.

Progesterone supplementation is also used to stop the symptoms associated with early menopause when ovarian function slows and the ovaries stop producing estrogen. The symptoms include:

• Hot flashes.
• Breast tenderness.
• Worsening PMS.
• Decreased sex drive.
• Vaginal dryness.
• Irregular periods.
• Fatigue.
• Urinary problems (leakage, urgency).
• Mood swings.
• Insomnia.

Health Protection

Beyond helping with the bothersome symptoms of PMS and perimenopause, there are more urgent reasons women use natural progesterone supplementation: Progesterone helps protect women from heart disease, cancer and osteoporosis (brittle bones). This is largely because progesterone can decrease certain ill effects of estrogen, reducing the chances of uterine cancer and breast cancer. Many scientific studies have shown that progesterone decreases breast cancer risk:

• A study reported in the Journal of Epidemiology[1] in 1981 looked at 1,083 women who were treated for infertility. The researchers followed these women for 13 to 33 years, noting their incidence of breast cancer. The premenopausal risk for breast cancer was 5.4 times higher in women with low progesterone levels compared to those with normal levels. There were 10 times more deaths from cancer in the low progesterone group compared with those with normal progesterone levels.

• A 2002 case-control study reported in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention [2] looked at third trimester progesterone levels and breast cancer risk. It found increasing levels of progesterone were associated with decreased risk of breast cancer. This association was strongest before the age of 50. They also found that those in the highest quartile of progesterone levels had a 50 percent reduction in breast cancer risk compared with those in the lowest quartile of progesterone levels.

• In 2004, a prospective study of progesterone levels and associated breast cancer risk in 5,963 women was reported in the International Journal of Cancer.[3]

• In 2008, researchers reported that they had followed 80,000 postmenopausal women for more than eight years. They showed that using progesterone along with estrogen significantly reduced breast cancer risk compared to the use of synthetic progestin.[4]

Progesterone also is beneficial to heart health. It actually has a vascular relaxation effect. The Women’s Health Initiative studies showed that progesterone (unlike progestins) increases the cardio-protective effects of estrogen and reduces the risk of heart attack and stroke. Progesterone also improves lipid profiles and helps estrogen improve lipid profiles (unlike progestins). Many studies which compare progesterone with estrogen versus progestins with estrogen prove this fact.

Dosing Guidelines

If you are sufferPMS symptoms, you can use the daily sustained release or topical cream progesterone on days 14 through 25 of your cycle. If you are having perimenopausal symptoms, the same dose of progesterone as for PMS applies, but starting on day 12 of your cycle works best to control irregular bleeding.

Vaginal suppositories also have good absorption like creams. If progesterone alone does not control your perimenopausal symptoms, you should add in bi-estrogen (estradiol plus estriol usually in a 50:50 or 20:80 ratio) in a topical cream starting at a dose of ¼ to ½ mg daily.

After Menopause

After menopause you should consider using both progesterone and estrogen even if you have no symptoms. These hormones have significant benefits for your heart, liver, brain, bones and skin. After menopause these can be taken daily or with a break for three to five days per month. You also may need the strengthening and libido-enhancing benefits of daily low dose testosterone (¼ to 1 mg) or consider taking DHEA (a precursor hormone to testosterone).

Progesterone reduces the bothersome symptoms of PMS and also of perimenopause. It improves mood and sleep. It lowers risk for breast cancer, uterine cancer and heart disease. It’s even an effective protection against osteoporosis. Progesterone supplementation can be a pretty good deal for those of you who need it. Be assured it is safe because it is not a progestin. I’ll discuss the health benefits of transdermal estrogen supplementation in my next article.

To your best health,

Michael Cutler, M.D.
Easy Health Options