Living Longer, Part Two:  Hormones

Our anti-aging discussion continues with the hormonal component of living longer.  The endocrine system is extremely complex and inter-dependent, each hormone affected by others and affecting others as well, so discussing what one hormone does can get a little dangerous.  It creates the illusion that it’s easy to make one change without causing any others.

But, trying to deal with them all at once is too complicated, so we do have to split things up somewhat.  The main hormones we’ll be dealing with when it comes to how to live longer are HGH (Human Growth Hormone), insulin, and the sex hormones (testosterone and estrogen).

Living Longer:  Human Growth Hormone

HGH is pretty much what the name implies.  It makes little baby people turn into big adult people, and continues to stimulate the growth process (in terms of maintenance and response to exercise) throughout adult life as well.

More specifically, HGH does stuff like:

• increase muscle mass
• mineralize (increase calcium in) bone
• boosts the immune system
• makes internal organs grow/maintain themselves
• promotes fat burning
• general increased sense of well-being

Like most hormones, HGH secretion begins to drop off with age, to the tune of about a 10-15% decline per decade after 30.  Not surprisingly, people started experimenting with hormone replacement about 20 years ago, and found that as HGH levels were restored, there were some positive effects (mostly related to that list I just went over).

Replacing HGH is tricky, though, and expensive.  I talked to an expert on this (an MD who has been doing this in his clinic for years), and here’s what he told me.  First off, the body’s levels of HGH are not constant, they’re pulsatile; your body releases it in waves about every four hours or so.  The size of the pulses varies, too, so you have to inject your HGH at very specific times (usually very early in the morning).

Over-doing it also is a problem… just look at Sylvester Stallone.  Nobody’s really sure what the safety limits are, but the side effects of too much HGH are things like a thickened jaw, finger and toes, or sometimes an acquired diabetes or impotence.  And that’s just what we know about.

The bottom line is, I’d stick with more natural methods until a lot more mistakes get made on people other than you, and those issues work themselves out.  So what can you do about your HGH levels?  Well, you can either stimulate the secretion of HGH or prevent its decline.

The best way to stimulate HGH is through intense exercise.  The more intense the exercise, the bigger the surge.  Of course, you have to be careful not to go too crazy by trying to pick up a Volkswagen or something, because then you’ll just end up hurting yourself.

An interesting stimulant of HGH is ghrelin, a hormone released due to hunger.  There’s some studies out there on caloric deprivation leading to longer life in mice, which may be as a result of increased HGH secretion due to hunger.  Not that I’m recommending starving yourself or anything, but I found that connection interesting.

Sleep is an important part of HGH secretion.  The vast majority of HGH is released during sleep, especially one hour after falling asleep.  Which leads me into how to avoid LOSING Human Growth Hormone.

There are two big hormonal antagonists to HGH- insulin and cortisol.  Insulin, of course, is the blood sugar hormone, and surges way too high on intake of refined carbs.  So sugar and bread and all that stuff not only makes you fat, but old, too.  Awesome.

Related to that, remember that your biggest surge in HGH is one hour after bedtime… so don’t have any insulin floating around messing things up at that time.  In other words, no eating before bed.  Preferably, at least three hours before bedtime.

Cortisol is a stress hormone.  It has nice short-term anti-inflammatory effects, but the long-term effects are pretty nasty.  For this discussion, we’ll stick to its effects on HGH.  Simply put, it acts as an antagonist to HGH, reducing its effectiveness.  So, stress, sleep deprivation, and overloading on caffiene, will not just make you sick, but old before your time as well.

There are some supplements called HGH secretagogues that provide the body with natural enhancers to Growth Hormone production.  The main action seems to be from arginine, an amino acid that suppresses another hormone that acts to block HGH called somatostatin.  The expert I mentioned earlier claims that he’s tested people on secretagogues that had their HGH levels increase by 10-20%, but it takes months to get up to that level.    I don’t know of any official studies backing up those findings, but there is a study on arginine and increased growth hormone levels.

How To Live Longer:  Sex Hormones

Another big area for hormone replacement is with testosterone and estrogren, the two main sex hormones.  Like HGH, both of these tend to decrease with age, with undesirable consequences.  So this is another important factor to living longer.

I’m not going to go too much into HRT (hormone replacement therapy), because it’s not really my area, but I will re-interate that HRT is a tricky business and shouldn’t be undertaken lightly.  Too much of a hormone is just as bad as too little, and there’s a bad tendency in our culture to think that if a little of something is good, more is “more good-er”.

What I will talk about is natural ways to prevent decline or other interference with the sex hormones.  Let’s start with testosterone.

Testosterone, of course, is the Manly Man hormone, that makes boys into men and men want to drink beer and kill stuff.  Seriously, though, it is the masculinazing (I think that’s a word) hormone that is responsible for all kinds of physical and behavioral effects like the building up of muscle mass and bone density, and the various secondary male characteristics like facial hair, etc.

As I mentioned, testosterone levels decrease with age, but there’s ways to increase it naturally as well.  Vigorous resistance training will increase testosterone levels.  Proper amounts of sleep also promote the release of testosterone, at least during sleep.

There’s some interesting behavioral effects on testosterone as well, mostly concerning power (really, the perception of power).  Winning competitive events increases testosterone levels, and losing them decreases testosterone. Really, any perception of an increase in power, domination, or social status has a corresponding increase on testosterone, with the opposite being true for a loss in those areas.

So I guess the lesson there is, don’t take on a challenge you can’t beat!

There’s other little things that will decrease testosterone, like a zinc deficiency or eating too much licorice (I know, that one’s a little weird, isn’t it?).  Actually, though, the big threat to testosterone is environmental.

Specifically, pro-estrogenic or estrogen-like chemicals that are present in the water, air, food- or anywhere, really- due to industrial contaminents.  These are contaminents like pesticides and herbicides as well as other chemicals, that have gotten so prevalent in our enviroment that there are places where fish are experiencing mass sex changes due to the levels of estrogenic compounds in the water.

That means pretty much every guy out there is being exposed to large levels of estrogenic compounds, which reverses the effects of testosterone.  Uh-oh.

It’s bad for women, too, by the way.  Remember, just because women need estrogen (actually, men need some too, just like women need some testosterone), doesn’t mean that more estrogen is more better-er. Sending hormones spiking out of balance is always a health problem.

So what can be done about these negative hormonal influences?  Well, the best thing is avoidance, so here’s another good reason to eat organic, whole foods… to avoid the estrogenic effects of the chemicals in refined foods.  Trying to minimize exposure to man-made chemcials in general is also a good idea… not always possible in today’s society, but the more you can avoid it, the better (you’ll remember from the last post on how to live longer that this also helps with avoiding free radicals).

Oh, and bad news for men… hops is very strongly estrogenic.  Yes, hops, as in, “used to make beer” hops.  In fact, there’s a condition called Brewer’s Droop that’s caused by a beer brewer handling so much hops that he absorbs it through his skin and begins having problems with, erm, “standing at attention”.  So if you beer drinkers want to stay being “real men”, you’d better start eating organic!

The intake of cruciferous vegetables (like broccoli) is also good for helping the body clear out toxins in general, and can help with removing excessive estrogenic compounds from the bloodstream.

All of these interventions are also obviously good for women, too, since as I mentioned, excessive estrogen is just as bad as too little.  In fact, being exposed to excessive estrogen likely reduces the body’s ability to make its own estrogen.  Any time you add extra hormones to the body from an outside source (like, say, anabolic steroids), your body begins to shut down its own production of that hormone, and eventually, the glands that produce them will atrophy (shrink up and get weak).

Soy is another plant that has pro-estrogenic compounds, and huge, raging debates go on all over the Internet about whether or not soy is a dangerous thing to consume.  To be quite honest, the evidence is conflicting and there’s no clear answer, so I’ll just say this.  Considering the potential for hormonal influence, it’s probably a good idea to avoid massive quantities of soy.  Not avoidance entirely… I don’t think that’s necessary… but if you’re guzzling down a gallon of soy milk and day and eating loads of fast food (which uses a ton of soy protein), then you might be causing problems for yourself.

So, to sum up, here’s a list of things to do to avoid problems with these major hormones involved with aging:

• Get vigorous exercise regularly
• Get sufficient sleep and don’t eat before bedtime
• Reduce your stress
• Stick to unrefined (whole) foods that are organic
• Filter your water and try to reduce exposure to man-made chemicals

Those are the major areas in which you can make a difference most easily before you go running to the doctor for HRT.  The natural methods to living longer are always the best ways.

By the way, an excellent book on testosterone, its effects on health, what can interfere with it, and details on its replacement, is The Testosterone Syndrome by Eugene Shippen.  Here’s a link to it on Amazon.  Another one I’ve read and thought was decent was The Natural Testosterone Plan, so you might want to have a look at that one as well.

Stay healthy!