There’s a lot of confusion out there about testosterone things like it causing anger or being bad for your heart. The truth is, testosterone plays an important role in supporting mood, muscle strength, and overall health when managed the right way.
It’s also not just for men women benefit from balanced levels too. With the right approach to monitoring and nutrition, testosterone can be a key part of a healthy, well-rounded lifestyle.
Highlights of the Podcast
00:01 - Testosterone Misconceptions
01:30 - Myth: Testosterone Causes Anger
03:12 - Heart Health & Red Blood Cells
05:47 - Monitoring is Key
06:50 - Testosterone is Also for Women
09:13 - Steroids & Nutrition
13:00 - Final Thoughts
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:00:04] Okay. So I was doing a talk with a bunch of mental health therapists the other day, and I mentioned testosterone and they all were, Oh, what about this? What about that? So I wanted to run through some of the questions that they asked and some of questions I get asked all the time. Um, so a lot of this started, let's go back to this one. So everybody understands where all this stuff started. Um, in the eighties, for no apparent reason, George W Bush decided that testosterone should be illegal. It was over the counter. Like you just go in and buy it. But he decided that that was a horrible thing and then it should be completely illegal to the point where it goes from like literally over the Counter to the same as crack and cocaine. Like if you get caught with a five mil vial, it's the same thing as being caught with that same five mils full of cocaine, right? Super illegal. Not because a bunch of doctors said it was bad, not because the CDC or anything, he just decided it was bad. And then he went on this giant dare campaign where they told everybody that cannabis was the worst thing in the world. Testosterone was going to make you evil, terrible, beat people, rape people. Uh, uh, psychedelics were, you know, horrible and terrible and you should never come. You never use them. So, you know that was, that was the eighties where we were all taught a bunch of lies about some of the best nutrition, best functional medicine we've got.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:01:30] Well, one of the things people I hear over and over and over again is that, you know, testosterone makes you like super angry and will make you beat people up or rate people just because you have testosterone. That is accurate in any way, shape or form. In fact, most of the guys that I know that are on the most testosterone are the nicest guys you'll ever meet. God, I mean, I know tons of bodybuilders who are just five, three, four, five times the average. Well, so the average guy that I'm testing is about 300. You're supposed to be between 800 and 1200. And some of these guys are at two, 3000. So 10 times, there's a lot of guys. I know that are 10 times higher testosterone wise art of, you know, by injection, by, by adding the exogenous hormones 10 times higher than the average guy, and they are super nice, totally cool. When people are horrible jerks to them, they usually just go whatever and they walk away. It's not a big deal, and people will. Well, I've met somebody lawyers and they were really big jerks. Did you meet him around showtime? Did you mean him like when they were on their cut and they were eating just enough to keep them alive? And keep them angry. They weren't actually fasting, but they were eating because they're based on calories. They were eating enough to just make them irritable all day long. Is that when you talk to them? Because that has nothing to do with testosterone. That is entirely to do. With their diet being messed up. So that's the thing.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:03:12] Um, it doesn't make you angry. It doesn't. Make you violent. Uh, I've never seen that occur. Uh, I've seen people who are already angry, mean, violent people get on testosterone and maintain their angry, violent meanness, um, but I've never seen somebody who was a super cool pathos pacifist, you know, everything was fine. Put them on, you know, a little bit of testosterone. Now they're violent, evil person. You know, it's just not something that we see. So the, the massive anger issues, not really a thing. Uh, that we see with testosterone. That is a hundred percent a lie. The other thing I hear a lot is that especially from cardiologists who, and most of the time you can't listen to cardiologists, which is sad because that's all they study. But they still think that LDL cholesterol on a blood test is the cause of your heart attacks. Um, and they also think that adding a little testosterone is bad for your heart, which is hilarious to me. You know, yeah. Like the thing we know about testosterone is it makes muscles stronger, healthier, and more, uh, and more virulent. And so making the mouth, the heart, which is a giant muscle stronger, heal better and produce energy easier and better. That, that actually sounds like something you would want for your heart.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:04:28] So, but anyway, they talk about how, uh testosterone increases the hemoglobin hematocrit levels. And that causes heart attacks. Um, it does increase hemoglobin hematocrit. If you're lucky. Uh, the problem is, is that most people have too low hemoglobulin hematopoietic levels. Hemoglobin, hematocrite are actually the cells in your body that carry oxygen. Uh, so while it's important to breathe, it is much more important as we found out with COVID that breathing is fantastic. Getting the oxygen from your lungs to your tissues is really where the actual issue is. That's really what you want. Um, and hemoglobin and macro levels, the things that carry the oxygen around the blood, you'll want more of those. So you want more oxygen moving through your body. So increasing hemoglobulin and hematocrit levels is actually a really important thing. And you kind of want that to happen, uh, testosterone actually tells your bone marrow to produce the adequate level or more hemoglobun and hematochrit. So that's a good thing. Now, can that become a bad thing? Sure. Uh, if we have way too much of it, your blood gets a little bit too thick and it's becomes problematic. The way that we deal with that is we check our blood every three to five months. And if it's too high, we donate blood and then the blood we donate helps save three lives.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:05:47] So yeah, just to, you know, twice a year, three times a year. You know, swing over to lab core, get your blood pulled. Or if you want to, You can buy the little hemoglobin hematocrit machines at your house and just prick your finger and test. Super easy way and I hate to tell you this, that anything that you're going to do for your health is going to require some type of maintenance. You're going have to start looking at it and checking on it or else you're not going to get where you want to go with anything. So this isn't a weird thing that's just for testosterone. You don't need to measure, monitor and make tweaks to all of your processes, your diet, your supplementation, your exercise, your sleep, all those things need to be recorded, monitored and managed. All of them. So this is just another thing. That's one of those, that's the other big piece. The idea that testosterone is not for women is also ridiculous. The levels for women need to be between 80 and 250. That's generally what we're seeing in research and what we are seeing with women. The ranges again, on the lab tests are way wrong. But those, the way that you have to understand the way we got those ranges, it's not because God came down and was like, here's the owner's manual. What we did was we took a whole bunch of people. Usually, you know, we collected whoever was around, uh, and it would let us take their blood for a cookie. Uh, and then said, okay, we tested a hundred people. They said they were healthy. And so we believed them. And so out of those hundred people, the, uh we splatter chart in all their levels, we took these people out, the people at the top out, which are the people, at the bottom out and the people in the middle, the standard deviational curve in the. That's where everybody who's supposed to be healthy needs to be.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:07:37] Okay. That was, that's how we get these ranges. And so I'm sorry, but the ranges are wrong. Um, that not optimal. So that's the other piece we get into, um, depression. The first line that I would, the first way I would treat depression, especially in men is to give them testosterone, pull their blood, see where their testosterone is, replace their testosterone levels. Um. That's going to be the primary function. That would be my primary, that is my primary thing for depression with men. Uh, secondary is we go over purpose and we go over diet and then we exercise. And that helps tremendously. Um, so that's where I would start, uh, with testosterone for men. Um, let's see what else the, um, the big thing that you gotta worry about with excessive and I'll say, I'll call excessive for men, um, keeping a, keeping your high point over a little over 2000. Uh, at your trough day, keeping it, you know, in that 13 to 1500 range is where you're going to start to see the hair loss issues, um, over time. So you got to kind of watch that women. It's going to be the androgen function is going to be a little bit lower than that. Uh, the big thing with women is that I've seen the absolute cause of the biggest issues is that they're on the right amount of test. But then you've got them on either estrogens or you got them on, um like DHEA do not, if you're a woman, do not take testosterone and DHEa. Way too many, uh, antigens, you're going to end up with facial hair or hair loss or something like that. Um, I see this kind of see this all the time. We'll get women who come in and they're like, I don't know what's going on.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:09:13] And I get their entire list from their doctors and they are on estrogen and DHEA and testosterone and progesterone. And I'm like, Oh, we're just going to give you all the things. Um. So that's me, one of those things. Remember, and this is hard. People don't notice cause people don't have physiology. Women actually create testosterone. They don't create estrogen. They make the testosterone and they convert the estrogen, the testosterone into estrogen through five alpha reductase. Um, that's important to remember. Cause like PCOS, we were like, Oh, they generate more testosterone. No, they don't. This is why it's important. To understand how the body works. The women who have PCOS don't make more testosterone than everybody else. They convert less testosterone into estrogen, which is one of the reasons they have PCO S, uh, which. We've gone over that before, um, but these are some of the things that we keep saying, well, I don't want everybody to get angry and punch holes and balls and stuff like that. It's usually not going to happen. Now, one of the other things that see a lot is especially like Winstral and Anivar and some of these Orals, people talk about how, you know, whether they're liver toxic, they're not really liver toxic. What you guys have to understand is that if you're going to ask the body to radically increase metabolic And then not feed the buddy extra nutrients to do all the chemistry. You just ask it to do. It's going to break stuff down. I don't understand how this isn't just obvious to everybody. You know, if you're like,.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:10:40] Hey, I want you to make a hundred tables and you've got the requirements to make 105 tables. You're like all right, make all the tables. Everything's great. But if you were like, hey, I need you to make 200 tables and I'm going to start taking away nutrients that you need or requirement, the building blocks, you need to build these tables, how many tables you can be able to build if you have the work, if, if you're told to make 200. And then you're given the supplies to make 50, you're able to make 200 tables. No. So what we are typically seeing is that people are starting to not under again, they don't, they think the body runs on calories because Western medicine is desperately trying to do whatever they can to not have people fix dementia and diabetes. And so they're pushing this calorie, the body runs on calories, stupidity. Uh, and so what ends up happening is that these people are trying to lose weight. So they cut their total nutrient intake back because they're worried about calories. And then they're taking these, these, uh, hormones that radically increase metabolic function, and then they were wondering whether body is breaking down. Well, it's obvious. So because you're not feeding the body, the chemicals that needs to do the job you're asking it to do, and you're forcing it to do with the, with the hormones.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:11:52] So yeah, when an interval are fantastic, you can take them without causing damage. They cause tremendous benefit to the body. They're awesome things to use if used properly. Um, and they don't damage the liver if you feed the liver proper. That's just, that's where it's at. So, you know, these are the things like a lot of the stuff that you've been told about a lot the negative things. You guys have been told about testosterone or, you know, steroids or something like that, um, is overblown. It is when used properly. A lot of these things are very, very safe and very, very effective, um and highly beneficial. Like we've got a lot guys who will come run, you know, a three, four month cycle. You know, do it properly, gain a lot of mass, lose a bunch of fat. And then they maintain that, um, you know, they've wanted their whole life to be bigger, stronger. They've wanted there whole life to, you know, there's a whole bunch of us kids who were born in the eighties, who watched Arnold and sly and those guys were like, I'd like to look like that one day. And that's been their goal for a long time. So helping them get there is really fun, but you got to go through a whole lot of lies, um to get people where they want to go.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:13:00] That's kind of where that is. Like there's, you know, I feel like I talk about this all the time, but this is one of those things that as testosterone becomes more and more prevalent, people need to know. It's, it's usually not the androgen, the testosterone or the steroids problem. It's the person who's using it, not understanding how the body works at all, which is the same thing we see with semi-glutide and same thing we see without Zempik and all the GLP ones, you have people coming like, oh, they go, they're terrible. Cause they hurt me. No, the guy who gave them to you, the woman who gave him to you. Had no idea how metabolic function work, and so they they gave you GOP ones and then talk to you about calories. Ha, you're going to use really powerful metabolic tools. And then you're gonna tell people made up fairy tales about how the body works. Like, and then you wonder why people get hurt anyway. Um, yeah. So as long as you're working with people who actually know what's going on, the, the androgens, the testosterone things like that are super safe, very, very beneficial, um, hyper critical to, uh, to wellness and to high quality of life for a long period of time, uh just make sure that you're working with somebody who actually understands what's If you guys have any questions hit us up questions at chalmerswellness.com or drop them in the comments. Thanks for your time. Have a great day
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