How to Optimize Your Hormones for Health & Vitality | Dr. Kyle Gillett

(uptempo music) Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today, my guest is Dr. Kyle Gillett. Dr. Gillett is dual board certified in family medicine and obesity medicine, and practices out of a clinic in Kansas and via telemedicine. He provides full-spectrum medicine, including hormone health, preventative medicine, obstetrics, which is the branch of medicine and surgery concerned with childbirth and the care of women giving birth, and pediatrics. I first learned about Dr. Gillett from a podcast, of all things, and was immediately struck by the breadth and depth of his knowledge on all things hormones and hormone optimization. As you'll see very soon today, Dr. Gillett can teach you how to optimize your hormones using behavioral tools, nutrition, exercise-based tools, supplementation, and hormone therapies if those are appropriate for you. There are many professionals out there, including many medical doctors, of course, talking about hormone health. What really sets Dr. Gillett apart from the pack is his ability to understand how the different factors that I described before, nutrition, supplementation, exercise, and hormone therapies, how those interact with one another and the safest and most rational ways to approach hormone optimization. During today's episode, you will learn how to optimize your hormones, not just testosterone and estrogen, but also prolactin and other hormone pathways that impact your mood, mental health, and physical health. Dr. Gillett is also an avid educator about hormones and other aspects of health. He does this on zero-cost-to-consumer platforms such as Instagram and other social media. On Instagram, he is kylegillettmd. That's K-Y-L-E-G-I-L-L-E-T-T, no E at the end, M-D, so kylegillettmd on Instagram. And he is gillettehealth on all other platforms, including LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and Facebook. If you go to his Instagram or his other social media, you will learn a lot about hormone health, about the latest science impacting obesity and metabolic health. He is a wealth of knowledge, and again, he's providing all that information at zero cost to you, the consumer. What you are soon to hear is a conversation between me and Dr. Gillett about all things hormones and hormone health and hormone optimization. We dive deep into mechanisms, but we are clear to establish what each word or set of concepts mean. So, if you have no background in biology, or even if you do, I'm sure that you'll come away with a wealth of valuable knowledge. We also talk about specific protocols related, again, to lifestyle factors, nutrition, supplementation, and where appropriate, hormone replacement therapy. I know there's a lot of interest about these topics. Dr. Gillett is very thorough about addressing both male and female issues and addressing hormone health for people at all stages of life. I'm sure that you will come away from this episode with the same impression that I did, which is that Dr. Gillett is an extraordinarily clear communicator and that he has tremendous compassion for his patients and that he has a deep love of understanding biology and medicine in ways that can benefit you. I'm pleased to announce that I am hosting two live events in May 2022. The first live event will take place in Seattle, Washington on May 17th. The second live event will take place in Portland, Oregon on May 18th. Both are part of a lecture series entitled The Brain-Body Contract, during which I will talk about science and science-based tools, many of which overlap with the topics covered on the Huberman Lab Podcast, but most of which will not and will be completely new topics and tools never discussed publicly before. Both live events will also include a question and answer period during which you, the audience, can ask me questions directly about any aspect of science or science-based tools, and I will attempt to answer them. Tickets for the two events, again, Seattle on May 17th and Portland on May 18th, are both available at hubermanlab.com/tour. Before we begin with today's episode, I want to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero-cost-to-consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is Thesis. Thesis makes nootropics. In fact, they make custom nootropics. Now, what is a nootropic? Technically, nootropic means smart drug. Frankly, I'm not a big fan of the word nootropics, because what is smart? I mean, there's creativity. There's focus. There's task switching. Different aspects of our brain and body engage different aspects of cognition, many of which we can call smart. There's emotional intelligence. There's analytic intelligence. There's logic. There's creativity. Thesis understands this and has designed custom nootropics designed to bring your body and brain into the specific state that you want. So for instance, they have specific nootropics for creativity, other nootropics for focus, other nootropics for motivation, and so on and so forth. In addition to that, each nootropic is custom designed for you. They use only the highest quality ingredients, things like Alpha-GPC and phosphatidylserine, which I've talked about on this podcast before. They also use ingredients like ginkgo biloba, which many people use, like, and benefit from. However, there are also people like me, who can't take ginkgo biloba because it gives me terrible headaches. I learned that a long time ago, and so I simply can't take any nootropic or any supplement for that matter that includes ginkgo biloba.I'm sure I'm not alone in the fact that some ingredients work for me and others do not. Thesis has solved this problem of individual variation by creating a brief quiz. So if you go online to takethesis.com/huberman and take a three-minute quiz, and then Thesis will send you to four different formulas that match your specific preferences. Again, that's takethesis.com/huberman, and if you use the code Huberman, you'll get 10% off your first box of custom nootropics. Today's episode is also brought to us by InsideTracker. InsideTracker is a personalized nutrition platform that analyzes data from your blood and DNA to help you better understand your body and help you reach your health goals. I've long been a believer in getting regular blood work done for the simple reason that many of the factors that impact your immediate and long-term health can only be analyzed from a quality blood test. There are a lot of blood and DNA tests out there, but a major issue with many of them is that you get numbers back about levels of hormones, metabolic factors, lipids, et cetera, but you don't know what to do with that information. InsideTracker has solved that problem by creating a personalized dashboard. So you take your blood and/or your DNA test, you get the results back, and where certain values might be too high or too low for your preference, you can click on that and it will direct you immediately to lifestyle factors, nutrition, supplementation, et cetera, that can help you bring those numbers back into the ranges that are ideal for you. So it not only gives you information about where your health stands, it gives you directives as to how to improve your health. If you'd like to try InsideTracker, go to insidetracker.com/huberman to get 20% off any of InsideTracker's plans. That's insidetracker.com/huberman to get 20% off. Today's episode is also brought to us by ROKA. ROKA makes eyeglasses and sunglasses that are of the absolute highest quality. I've spent a lifetime studying the visual system and I can tell you that your visual system is incredibly sophisticated. 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Again, that's ROKA, roka.com, and enter the code Huberman at checkout. And now for my discussion about hormone health and optimization with Dr. Kyle Gillett. Dr. Gillett, welcome.