Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science based tools for mental health, physical health and performance.
I'm Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine.
This podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.
Before we begin today, just want to acknowledge that if you're watching this on YouTube, yes, I have a bandage on, on the left side of my face.
I was trying to cook something for Costello and I and I got burned.
Burned myself.
It was cooking accident.
I'm fine.
No need to dwell on it.
We can move on.
But I just wanted to let you know everybody's going to be okay.
He got a great meal, I got a burn and a great meal.
Today we're going to be talking about hormone optimization and we're mainly going to be focusing on estrogen and testosterone and their derivatives.
Now, estrogen and testosterone and their derivatives are what we call sex steroids.
But I just want to emphasize that estrogen and testosterone are present in everybody.
It's their ratios that determine their effects.
So today we're going to talk about how specific types of exercise, particular patterns of cold exposure, as well as particular patterns, believe it or not, of breathing can impact sex steroid hormones, both estrogen and testosterone.
So one of the first things to understand if you want to optimize your hormones is, is where they come from.
There are a lot of different glands in the body that produce hormones.
But when we're talking about the sex droid hormones, estrogen and testosterone, the major sources are ovaries for estrogen and the testes for testosterone, although the adrenals can also make testosterone.