Foreword

Phytoestrogens (plant oestrogens) and how to avoid them

I have often wondered about the factor common to many vegetarians. After all, it’s easy to see that vegetarians and vegans share more feminine traits (especially men) than people adhering to a mixed diet. I believe that in many cases the reason is that many vegetarians use a lot of soy (which contains a high level of phytoestrogens (although there is a lot of contradictory information on the effects of phytoestrogens on our hormonal functions)) in their diet. As a whole, a combination of foods rich in phytoestrogens and xenoestrogens is not the most balanced diet for our endocrine system.

However, at this point, there are a few issues that should be revisited and clarified. The issue with plastic, xenoestrogens, phytoestrogens and other chemicals similar to oestrogen is not that our endocrine system is disrupted if we occasionally drink water from a plastic bottle, tap on a computer’s plastic keys or eat soy strips. The issue is mainly that the whole system has become radically unbalanced. Today, the sheer amount of plastic to which we are exposed is so great that it gradually starts to create problems – in our bodies as well as the environment. If we add to the mix phytoestrogens, that is, the oestrogen-like ingredients that we consume with our food, and neglect physical exercise (especially strenuous training that triggers a strong anabolic response), testosterone can easily drop to a significantly low level. So let us go over the phytoestrogens that we get from food one more time, and then I will tell you how we can correct the balance.

Earlier, I mentioned the pronounced feminine quality noticeable amongst many vegetarians. I don’t mean it in a sexual sense; I’m talking about hormonal function. It is good to know that both men and women essentially need both sex hormones (oestrogen and testosterone). In fact, there is only a slight difference between testosterone and oestrogen, and yet their effects are very different. The operative word here is balance. And we are pretty far from it at the moment! In Eastern philosophies, the balance between forces is often depicted by yin & yang, which I think illustrates the subject very well. In the greater whole, the feminine and masculine sides are in balance but they both also need the qualities of each other. And so, even though this section by and large focuses on increasing testosterone as well as the downsides of oestrogen, it is not the intention that female readers should grow an Adam’s apple and a cute beard, nor is it to downplay the importance of oestrogen in any way, shape or form. Oestrogen is an essential hormone for the construction of our brain, for example, which is why women often have more complex and advanced thinking. (Hopefully this is enough to appease the female readers? 😉 ) In addition, it is good to know that the above-mentioned potential fears of women related to beard growth and other male traits are unnecessary because whenever we talk about the male hormones produced by your body and avoiding hormone disruptors outside the body (xenoestrogens, phytoestrogens), the end result can by no means be a distorted hormonal balance, but only an ideal state as a feminine woman or manly man to support your natural well-being, health and sexuality.

But let us move on to the actual subject. Phyto, meaning ‘plant’, comes from Latin. Thus, phytoestrogens are oestrogen-like compounds acquired from nutrition that are not good or bad in themselves. The key factor that often causes the most radical imbalances, however, is an increase in the oestrogen load due to a large and prolonged intake of foods containing phytoestrogens. In addition to the phthalates and bisphenol A contained in plastic, the most oestrogenic compounds in our body are phytoestrogens, such as soy and linseed. In my opinion, the most pronounced less masculine traits or hormonal disorders occur in people who consume large quantities of soy products over a long period of time. From time to time, the isoflavonoids (phytoestrogens) contained in soybeans surely have their place in a varied diet, but if your aim is balance and to maximise your hormonal action, I would recommend moving towards more balanced nutrition sources. The same applies to linseed (lignan).

Where possible, it is worthwhile to replace these foods with more androgenic (testosterone production/masculinity promoting) sources. After all, it is good to know that, in the light of history alone, both of the aforementioned foods have been considered to be more feminine and they have even been used to weaken virility. There is a Chinese anecdote that, in my view, perfectly describes the feminine qualities of soy. According to the story, a man cheats on his wife, after which she begins to feed him soy to weaken his sexual desire. We will return to androgenic or more masculine foods in more detail below.

Of course, it is good to understand that flaxseed, for example, is in many respects extremely high-quality food, and according to the world’s leading fat expert Udo Erasmus, a few bottles of flaxseed oil can have very therapeutic effects on normal consumers whose body fat balances are askew. However, for me, linseed is not an optimal and sustainable solution as a source of good fatty acids, fibre and nutrients, especially as most people consume their linseed in ground form where valuable fats are rancid as they have been exposed to air and light.

How to increase the testosterone level via nutrition

Since this article would be incredibly long if I were to list the foods, adaptogens and nutrients linked to testosterone production, including their uses and properties, I will resign myself at this point to listing the traditional TOP 10. With regard to these adaptogens, the effect is most evident through extended regular use, where enough high-quality herbs have been used on a regular and cyclical basis.

Androgenic food products include:

• Egg
• Raw onion
• Oysters
• Pumpkin seeds
• Watermelon seeds
• Passion fruit seeds
• Pine nuts
• Wild oats
• Wild yams
• Mushroom
• Truffles

Testosterone production-supporting adaptogens:

• Ginseng (Panax ginseng) – Asian ginseng – Korean ginseng – Red ginseng
• Siberian ginseng (Eleuetherococcus senticosus) – eleuthero – Devil’s bush
• American ginseng (Panax quinquefolius)
• Tribulus terrestris
• Rhodiola rosea – roseroot
• Ashwagandha – winter cherry
• Shatavari
• Cordyceps
• Muira puama
• Maca

Testosterone production-supporting or anti-catabolic nutrients:

• Arginine
• Ornithine
• Chrome
• Zinc
• Selenium
• Vitamin C
• HMB
• L-glutamine
• Whey
• DHEA

Liver

The liver is a workhorse that few of us know or understand anything about. It is like a small waste processing plant through which all of the blood in your body passes. It is also the most important fat burner. The liver has the ability to remove toxins, hormones, chemicals and other toxins that our bodies store in the adipose tissue, for instance. The liver also converts the fat extracted from the fat cells into energy and activates hormones that have an effect on fat burning. In addition to cleaning and regulating hormones, the liver’s tasks include regulating the metabolism of proteins, carbohydrates and fats, storing certain vitamins and minerals as well as producing certain endocrine substances, such as cholesterol. A practical example of the way the liver works is removing oestrogens with the help of vitamin B.

If the body’s nutrient balance is poor, the liver can’t do its job properly. In this case, metabolic products, chemicals and old hormones may accumulate in the body, causing many different problems, such as hormone imbalance or fat accumulation. This is why, in the case of fat burning, the use of multivitamins and a varied diet rich in vegetables and proteins is essential. And, as you already read above, the gastric acids must also be in good condition so that the important parts of the multivitamin are absorbed.

Fortunately, there is a highly effective and completely free remedy for stress – sleep. Sleep is the best gift you can grant your body when you are stressed. Just a couple of nights of high-quality, uninterrupted sleep of at least eight hours can drastically reduce the amount of cortisol that accumulates belly fat and reduce the stress experienced by the body more than a stress management course lasting several weeks. The effect of sleep on hormonal balance or fat burning should not be underestimated as sleep deprivation can badly disrupt the hormonal system. Sleep deprivation causes, e.g. a decrease in the natural secretion of testosterone, DHEA (the building block of testosterone) and growth hormones. Body’s cleansing reactions and liver function may also be negatively affected by sleep deprivation.

So how should you sleep? Good sleep means that you fall asleep quickly and the next time you open your eyes is 8–9 hours after falling asleep. As the brain regenerates especially between 10 pm and 2 am, you should be in bed, feeling calm, before 10 pm. You will wake up in the morning feeling refreshed in body and mind, and there is no need to press the snooze button. If you are a man, a lively morning erection is a sign of a healthy circadian rhythm of testosterone and cortisol. Prioritising sleep may seem more boring than fine tuning your diet, interesting supplements, or a new kind of training programme, but it can yield double the results that you can achieve with other tricks. Six hours of sleep at night has been found to cause insulin resistance, where the ability of the cells to utilise sugars from carbohydrates is reduced and fat begins to accumulate in the body. Too little sleep reduces the ability of muscles to store energy in just a week. In addition, insufficient and poor quality sleep increases insulin and cortisol secretion. It can reverse the cortisol rhythm – so that too much cortisol is secreted in the evening and at night. As a result of poor sleep, high cortisol begins to dissolve muscle mass more easily into energy.

Unfortunately, not everyone can take quality sleep for granted. The most common causes of sleep issues include the body’s stressful state due to physiological or psychological reasons. For example, nutrient deficiencies, such as magnesium deficiency, or simply worrying that leads to anxiety day after day. Of course, there is nothing you can do about your body’s stress reactions, if the source of stress is something that you can’t control – such as a car accident or some other unpleasant event. In any case, your body responds to stress by producing cortisol. But you can always try to keep a positive attitude. When it comes to nutrient deficiencies, often the most common cause of sleep issues is magnesium deficiency. This being the case, adding magnesium is definitely one of the first things to try when trying to overcome issues with sleep. One of the most important minerals, magnesium is involved in over 300 chemical reactions in the body. And as we have already learned, increased stress consumes the body’s minerals and vitamins, such as magnesium. Perhaps it is no wonder, then, that magnesium deficiency is already almost typical for us modern people. After all, we have to wrestle with nearly a hundred times the stress level of our great-great-grandparents and eat nutrient-poor vegetables grown in a relatively poor soil compared to the “good old days”. And so getting magnesium from a bottle might not be such a silly idea;) Magnesium is available in different forms, and of these – again without unnecessary theory – I would recommend the following: magnesium citrate, aspartate, lysine, malate, fumarate, glycinate, glycerophosphate, taurate and orotate.

… and in conclusion, a summary
So that was the “information overload”. Don’t worry if it was all a bit too much. As promised, I have added to the end of the section a brief summary of the things we discussed above that are easy to turn into a habit and that will really help you improve your health as well as your hormonal balance. So here comes the Top 10. We will follow it up with a beautiful and enjoyable subject many of your are already eagerly waiting for – that is, sex. But first, the list:

1. Ensure food digestion and absorption by testing your gastric acid levels (you can find the test at the end of the site) and increase the natural production of gastric acid by minimising the consumption of carbonated beverages.
2. Use probiotics to ensure the increase of a good bacterial strain in the gut.
3. Drink sufficiently. Your body needs at least 2 litres of clean water per day.
4. Take a fibre supplement every morning and night and change the source of fibre on a weekly basis (your body can quickly become allergic to a fibre, as it is in close contact with the surface of the intestines). Good sources of fibre that are readily available in grocery stores include hemp seed, ground camelina, coconut flour, psyllium and sugar beet fibre.
5. Eat raw foods (vegetables, berries and fruits), proteins and natural fats on a daily basis with several meals. Your gut loves good fats, so why not offer them to it? They include, e.g. omega-3 fish oil, cold-pressed coconut or olive oil, organic butter, nuts, seeds and avocado.
6. Find out your daily energy needs and eat accordingly, so that your thyroid works at full capacity and you do not run on fumes.
7. Minimise your consumption of dishes and foods that contain additives and preservatives. Also avoid foods that clearly give you stomach trouble.
8. Use a high-quality multivitamin product. One of the hallmarks of a good multivitamin is that you take it more than once a day (you can’t fit a sufficient amount of good quality nutrients into one tiny tablet). Consuming magnesium and zinc from a bottle is also recommended, to say the least.
9. Try to sleep at least 8 hours a night.
10. Go to the gym. 20 to 30 minutes at a time two or three times a week is enough, as long as you focus on movements involving multiple joints that comprehensively strain the body (different squats, weight lifting movements, etc.). Ask a qualified personal trainer for advice.

2.1 Physical factors

One of the best ways to experience extreme well-being, relieve stress and improve the quality of life is to have good sex. Unfortunately, not everyone can take good sex for granted but, with a little practice, we can all do it – and that includes you. So, in this section, we talk about what sexual pleasure can be at its best and what physical factors it requires from you.

Gender differences
I am all for equality, and the phrase “women first” is an essential part of my upbringing and values. However, this time, I thought I would make an exception and introduce the section for men first. I think it’s quite natural in these circumstances because unfortunately often, also in the field of sex, it tends to be the case that men, despite their polite attitude, “get their turn” first 😉 .

PC exercise for men
Exercise 1: Urinary retention: To begin, locate your PC muscle by stopping the flow of urine while peeing. Then, use more force to squeeze the urine out. You can repeat this exercise up to 75 times with a full bladder. It is a good exercise in itself. You can easily turn it into an almost unconscious habit.

Exercise 2: PC compression technique: Flex and relax the PC muscle 50 times. Remember to maintain slow and regular breathing. Then flex your PC muscle as hard as possible for 30 seconds. Repeat 7 times.

PC exercise for women
Exercise 1: Urinary retention: To begin, locate your PC muscle by stopping the flow of urine while peeing. Then, use more force to squeeze the urine out. You can repeat this exercise up to 75 times with a full bladder. It is a good exercise in itself.

Exercise 2: Pulsed contractions. These are fast contractions lasting a second. Perform ten contractions five times in a row. Repeat the exercise twice a day. To begin with, you can do as many as you like. Use the same muscles as when holding in urine or excrement.

Exercise 3: Pulsed compressions: As above, but instead of contracting inwards, flex the muscles outwards, similar to when squeezing out urine or giving birth. Rhythm as above, but gradually increase the number of exercises.

Exercise 4: PC suction: Flex the muscles as in exercise 1, but inhale slowly while doing it. Flex the muscles all the time as you exhale (for approx. 10 seconds). Gradually increase the number of exercises to 20 a day.

As is clear from the exercise programmes above, the key word for strengthening the PC muscle, especially at the early stages of training, is to identify it – to flex it in isolation. According to studies, some people are not able to identify this muscle, or they may find it hard to flex it correctly. There are many reasons for this. What’s more, an added challenge when it comes to training the PC muscle (just like any other muscle in your body) is finding motivation. Despite these potential physical or psychological deficiencies, everyone is able to train their PC muscle into a real “sex muscle” because medical science has developed commercially available devices for training and taking care of the muscle. However, said devices are fairly expensive and they are marketed as equipment for treating urinary incontinence. You see, urinary incontinence results from a weak PC muscle, and this equipment has succeeded in treating even challenging cases of urinary incontinence where specialist doctors have been unable to make the patients any promises with regard to rehabilitation. These devices are included in the genuinely useful products that I promised. I will tell you a little bit more about them in the product section of the website.