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We all know the stereotype of the Soyboy - males lacking in manliness, utterly subservient, usually declaring themselves to be a 'male feminist' and generally wallowing in the self-hating guilt of being an oppressive male. It's a clever meme based on the conception that soy consumption leads to a feminization in men. But it's just a meme, isn't it?

As with many examples, stereotypes are sometimes based on truth. Phytoestrogens, plant compounds naturally found in some of the foods we eat that mimic the hormone estrogen, particularly prevalent in soy, have been found in many scientific studies to cause this feminization, as well as playing havoc with the hormones of women. These findings are controversial (mostly because industry funded studies often come to the opposite conclusions), but it's a safe bet that there's at least some validity to the notion. Why take the risk?

On top of soy, there are a whole host of environmental chemicals that also have an estrogen mimicking effect. Called xenoestrogens, these chemicals are found in plastics, food additives, chemicals in body-care products, pesticides and herbicides - we are literally swimming in a sea of gender-bending chemicals 24 hours a day.

Today on Objective:Health, we provide a tentative answer to the proverbial question of our times: Where have all the real men gone? We also talk about how to avoid exposure to these feminizing chemicals, offer some solutions on detoxing foreign estrogenic compounds and give tips on boosting our own testosterone.


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Running Time: 01:13:04

Download: MP3 - 62.8 MB


Here's the transcript of the show:

Elliot: Hello and welcome to this week's edition of Objective: Health. I'm going to be your host today. My name is Elliot and today I'm joined by Doug. Just the two of us.

Doug: Hello everyone. Just us two. The bro show.

Elliot: Yeah, this is the total bro show today. It's a pertinent topic that we're going to be talking about actually. It's the topic of soy boys. So for those who aren't familiar with the concept of a soy boy, soy boy or the idea of soy boys is the idea of a meme that was spread around a couple of years ago that gained some traction on social media and upset a couple of people I think.

Doug: {laughter} A couple.

Elliot: So what soy boy is referring to is the feminization of males in our modern world and how the typical image of a male, or the role of a male in society has changed in recent years, in the past couple of decades. For one, we see that testosterone levels have declined significantly and we're going to be talking about this a little bit later. But the concept of a soy boy is essentially the conglomeration of all of these feminizing factors to produce what appears to be a male but is not strictly male in the genuine sense, if that makes sense.

So according to the urban dictionary we have a very good definition actually. "A soy boy is slang used to describe males who completely and utterly lack all necessary masculine qualities. This pathetic state is usually achieved by an over-indulgence of emasculating products and/or ideologies. The origin of the term derives from the negative effects that soy consumption has been proven to have on the male physique and libido. The average soy boy is a feminist, non-athletic, has never been in a fight will probably marry the first girl that has sex with him and likely reduces all his arguments to labeling the opposition as Nazis."

We see this today. Isn't this quite familiar Doug?

Doug: Yeah. I think it is. It's what right-wingers started calling SJW men. The male feminist is the typical soy boy, the idea that he's not really acting like a man and basically being subservient, the 'yes dear' kind of person. In a way it is just a meme. There's a stereotype. But the thing is, there's no question that there's some validity to it, I'd say, because certainly this type of person exists and seems to be becoming more prevalent too.

Elliot: Yeah indeed. This is really what we're going to try to flesh out a little bit on this show. It has whipped up a lot of feathers. There has been some backlash and people have cited evidence saying, for one, 'no, soy consumption is in no way implicated in the decline in testosterone levels even though we know that that has happened but soy is not involved and all of these other factors are merely coincidental'. So today we're going to briefly look at whether soy is in fact estrogenic or not and I will preface that with yes, it is. {laughter}

But there's also lots of other things that we're coming into contact with - and this is particularly an important point I think if you're a male listening today - is that many of the environmental toxins, some things that we are coming into contact with in our diet and lifestyle are actually having a feminizing effect on the physiological level. That physiology is intimately related with how we are perceiving the world psychologically, our views on things and we're going to get into this a little bit in the show and hopefully we can reach some conclusions at the end. But we'll see how it goes.

Doug: Yeah.

Elliot: So first of all, this concept, soy. There's a very popular YouTuber, Paul Joseph Watson, and he was one of the guys who blew this up as well. He made a video about soy boys and cited some evidence which was basically showing a correlation between soy intake and feminine qualities in males but also animal research - and there's quite a lot of it - showing that soy is having an estrogenic effect on the cellular level. So it means that it's actually having an effect whereby it's activating certain receptors inside cells to have the same effect that the hormone estrogen would have. I don't want to call estrogen a female hormone because it's present in both males and females, but it is very much more predominant in females. It's a critical component of the menstrual cycle so that's why we refer to it as a female hormone.

So there's lots of research actually showing that by feeding male animals soy products, that you are having an effect where you're having an estrogenic influence on the cell. There's been lots of people who have spoken about this in the past, but since this meme came out and I think even before then somewhat, there has certainly been a lot of backlash, particularly from people - vegans, vegetarians and also I think from the big businessmen in agriculture. There have been many journal articles which have come out, supposed scientific studies, meta-analyses and whatnot, which supposedly disprove any link between soy consumption and feminization or estrogenicity.

I just want to highlight. It was a meta analysis and it came out not long ago, two years ago. If I can just find it here. This is one of the studies that many of the advocates for soy - vegan YouTubers and these kind of things - they will typically cite these studies in support of the fact that soy is actually part of a healthy, balanced diet and that we should all be eating more of it. It's called Soy and Health Update - Evaluation of the Clinical and Epidemiologic Literature. What this is concluding is that there is no estrogenic effect of soy, soy is perfectly healthy, there are no adverse consequences, in fact it's very beneficial for things like cardiovascular health. But then what we do is actually go down to the bottom of the study and we look at who was funding it, and if I can just scroll down here, it turns out that the author of the study is the executive director of the Soy Nutrition Institute {laughter}, an organization funded by the United Soybean Board and its soy industry members.

So we can safely say that this cannot be cited as evidence. There's another paper as well that, whilst I was looking at the videos, rebuttals of the soy estrogen argument, people claiming that there's no issues. There's another paper, Clinical Studies Show No Effect of Soy Protein or Soy Isoflavones On Reproductive Hormones in Men-Results of a Meta-Analysis. This is coming out and saying that they've looked at the evidence for soy protein isolates - so soy supplements and things - on male reproductive hormones to test whether there was any effect on testosterone, sex hormone-binding globulin and all sorts of things and they said that there's no connection whatsoever.

But then if we go down to the bottom of this study as well, who were they funded by? So the author is a doctoral student, received some funding from the Soy Nutrition Institute. Another one of the authors regularly consults for companies in the soy food industry. {laughter}

Doug: Yeah.

Elliot: So, what do you think?

Doug: It sounds completely trustworthy. I think that sounds like that's the god-honest truth right there! It's hardly anything surprising, really. A lot of people don't realize - when they think of soy they think of soy milk and tofu and that's about it, thinking that if you don't eat those things that you're not eating any soy - but they don't realize that the soy industry is massive, billions of dollars massive. There's soy in so much of processed food, soy oil, soy protein isolate. So many additives and things like that are being derived from soy, it is everywhere and if you're not making an effort to actually keep it out of your diet, you probably are eating it, not even to mention the amount that is being fed to livestock.

Soy is huge. So the idea that they would have an interest in not letting any negative effects of soy consumption get publicized is not surprising in the least so before you tell us we should be wearing tinfoil hats and crying conspiracy theory and all this kind of stuff, it really isn't surprising. The fact that there is a significant amount of science out there that does show an estrogenic effect, yet there are these studies coming out and saying, no, no, no, there isn't any, but they're funded by the soy industry, you've got to take those kinds of things into account.

Elliot: Yeah, totally. As you've just said, just because you're not eating tofu, doesn't mean that you're not consuming soy. If you look at practically any packaged food, especially in the United States, it's all soybean oil, soy textured modified protein, starch, whatever they call it. They'll rename it something. So it's a really prevalent thing. But then when we factor in that this is having a very strong estrogenic effect, how is this affecting male physiology? Is this soy boy meme simply a meme or is there actually something to this? It would seem as though there might be.

Doug: Yeah.

Elliot: So when we look at testosterone levels, testosterone is known as the male hormone. Again, it's not technically correct because females do have some of it, but essentially it's more predominant in males. It is responsible for things like building the musculature, building the structure of the skeleton. But it also has effects on the brain. Testosterone's one of the main things which is driving the difference in neural development of the female and the male brain. So it's one of the primary factors which determines whether someone is going to have a female brain or a male brain. It's the testosterone and that is going to form or dig in neural pathways. It's going to have effects on the whole of the brain development and shapes the male's perception of reality or how they are perceiving reality.

There are certain kinds of neural structures which are clearly different in males than they are in females and it's hypothesized that this is actually at least partially responsible for some of the behavioural differences, the characteristic male-type behaviours that are displayed in children. This flies in the face of the politically correct idea that males and females are fundamentally the same and that it's merely social influences which shape us, which is complete nonsense because when you look at the neurobiology and how that maps with behaviours, boys will play with cars, girls will play with dolls. As a general rule, there are biological underpinnings for this and everything that comes after that in the adolescents and in the adult way of behaving.

So when we factor in that in the past maybe 60 or 70 odd years, because before the 1950s, we weren't coming into contact with so much soy, with so many of the other factors, which we're going to talk about later, these past couple of decades we have just been exposed to so many of these gender-bending chemicals and influences. Surely that has had some effect on the way that males operate, the way that males exist these days. When we look at testosterone, since the 1970s it has been gradually declining each year.

Doug: Yeah. And lo and behold, we get to now and suddenly there's the rise of this soy boy idea. You can see it around. Like we said, there clearly is some validity to the idea that men are becoming more feminized in a lot of ways. Maybe we should back up a little bit and talk about why soy has this effect. The reason that it's happening is that there are substances in soy called phytoestrogens and what that means is that there are certain compounds that mimic the effect of estrogen, mostly because their structure is very similar. So it will physiologically bind to estrogen receptors in the same way that estrogen does and will actually compete for estrogen receptors.

Now phytoestrogens - phyto meaning plant - so plant estrogens are not just found in soy. They're also found in other things but soy is so much higher than almost anything else. I think flax seed is up there as well and sesame seeds as well, although sesame seeds aren't as high. But the thing is that you don't eat six ounces of flax seeds or sesame seeds in a sitting. There's a little bit in other nuts and seeds and stuff as well, but the amount is pretty miniscule. But soy, for whatever reason, is off the charts.

There are other places, as Elliot alluded to before, where we're going to come into contact with these false estrogens or estrogen-mimickers, and that's in xenoestrogens, which means estrogens coming from outside the body. One of the places where we get a lot of this is from chemicals, man made chemicals that are used in everything from plastics to food ingredients, to soaps and disinfectants. It's surrounding us. It's all over the place. Again, it doesn't seem like it's a coincidence that around the 1940s or 1950s, once the chemical industry really started to rise and more and more chemical were created and put into our environment, it just seems naïve to think that that wouldn't have an effect on everybody, of course, but on men in particular. I think that that is what we're seeing.

Elliot: Yeah, indeed. On the topic of soy, there have been I guess in the tens of thousands of cases of adolescent gynecomastia, or adult gynecomastia from the over-consumption of soy milk. It's been estimated that the babies who are put on soy milk formula are getting the equivalent dose of estrogen as two to three birth control pills each day! And that's a lot! You have to think, okay, when you've got a developing child, especially a male child and they are literally three or four months old and they are being pumped full of this stuff which is essentially having the same effect as a female hormone, that is going to have such a disruptive effect on that whole child's development. Their body is getting mixed messages all of the time. There's no case in nature when a baby would have that much estrogen!

Doug: No. But Elliot, you have to explain what gynecomastia is.

Elliot: Right, sorry. Gynecomastia being male boobs. Male man boobs.

Doug: Moobs.

Elliot: Yeah, moobs. {laughter} The deposition of fatty tissue where the nipple is. And this isn't just in obese people. It's typically associated with, if you have man boobs, you must be obese. But actually it's occurring in seemingly fit and healthy individuals who are relatively lean on every other part of their body but they've got a set of boobs.

Doug: Yeah.

Elliot: So it makes you wonder what on earth is going on here. And it's no coincidence that the people who get this generally drink soy milk.

Doug: Yeah. Certainly there are other factors that could come into it, but I think that soy is a big one. You mentioned Paul Joseph Watson before and in his video he was actually showing examples of people who were essentially the prototypical soy boy, making calls out for male feminism and calling their opponents Nazis and all this kind of stuff, then pulling up other tweets of theirs where it shows them with their carton of soy milk, drinking soy milk or having their soy latte from Starbucks and stuff like that. Obviously that's not a strong case by any sense, but it's still nonetheless kind of funny examples. There seems to be a correlation here.

Elliot: Indeed. It's very interesting. I'll just comment on what you've just said, Paul Joseph Watson, because he also made a connection, another very interesting connection actually, on the prevalence of these overly feminine males who tick all of the boxes. We know that soy is estrogenic. We know that it can increase feminization. We know it has a negative effect on testosterone. We also know that generationally speaking or over the generations, testosterone has significantly declined and continues to decline. So the modern male in their mid-20s is going to have much lower testosterone than their counterpart would have in the 1980s.

But there's a very interesting paper and it's called Testosterone, Smiling and Facial Appearance. It was a study done on testosterone. They had a panel of judges and they had the judges measure different men and their facial features and the way that they smiled. What they found was that among men, the smiles of higher testosterone subjects showed less crinkling around the eyes and less upward and outward movement of the corners of the mouth. So basically, if you had high testosterone, you were less likely to crinkle your eyes when you smiled and actually open your mouth fully. Furthermore, they found a very strong or full zygomatic arch or zygomatic muscle contraction is negatively correlated with testosterone. In simple terms what they were saying was that guys who have really large, flamboyant smiles, really large smiles, they had lower testosterone whereas the guys who have higher testosterone had much more subtle smiles and straight faces.

It's just one study, but it kind of fits in with what you would call a stereotype, right? Of the kind of manly, hunky guy who's frowning almost, with the broad chin and stuff. It's just what you think of as the typical macho guy, isn't it?

Doug: Yeah.

Elliot: You don't really see him all smiling. Paul Joseph Watson was basically making the correlation with all the people who fit the bill for the soy boy who also drank soy milk, when they took pictures, they also had these really large smiles.

Doug: Yeah. It seemed like a trend, where they had this expression on their face with their mouth wide open and smiling. I have to say this study actually made me quite self-conscious because I think I do have a very big smile and my eyes do tend to crinkle a lot. So it's like, 'maybe I'm a soy boy!' {laughter} I don't drink soy milk but maybe I need to get my testosterone levels checked. But the thing is, I think the meme of it - and they called it 'the nu male smile' - new spelled N-U, the nu male smile or the soy boy smile or something like that. It was this expression they'd have on their face that they were showing excitement and enthusiasm. There are so many examples of people with these kinds of smiles on their faces, trying to be excited about something like their soy milk or something. They're like, 'Ahhh!!!!'

But it's really funny that it can be correlated back to this study that actually found that men with lower testosterone will take on these facial features a little bit more and it really does fit the stereotype because that kind of expression is very disarmed. It's non-threatening, it's very "look at me, I'm soft, I'm approachable, I'm very agreeable" and that sort of thing. It's very much the opposite of somebody being dominant and asserting themselves, not necessarily bad things. We can get into a discussion about the toxic masculinity thing, but it does seem to conform to that kind of stereotype, the idea that somebody who does have this very broad smile is very non-intimidating, non-aggressive, soft essentially, soy boy.

Elliot: Again, it's just my personal experience but ever since reading that study, I've been looking through on my social media and it has brought back some memories as well. It seems to fit in with my personal experience. There are those males who are more feminine. Some people are naturally just more feminine or perhaps they have wider social networks which are predominantly female. That's not a bad thing. I'm not saying that. I'm not saying they're soy boys, so to speak, but I would say that the more feminine males indeed typically present that image in picture. That's just something that I've personally found.

So when we start factoring in that we've got soy, we know that that is having a really feminizing influence on people, there are these xenoestrogens as well. So it's not just coming from the food. It can be coming from what the food is packaged in for one. So we have phthalates. This has been known for a very long time. There are various researchers who have actually come right out and said that these things should be banned. Phthalates are a type of chemical which are used in plastics to prevent shattering, provide it with flexibility and malleability so to speak. A plastic bottle and a water bottle would have phthalates in them. Or a milk bottle.

In our modern world we are surrounded by plastic. Everything that we consume has touched plastic at some point. I think most of the research studies have shown that the large majority of people are holding onto some amount of phthalates in their adipose tissue or circulating in the blood or urine. So it is there. It's been shown that phthalates are anti-androgenic and testosterone is an androgen. What this means is it's anti-testosterone. But it also can be estrogenic as well in a similar way to a phytoestrogen. This one is a xenoestrogen but what this means is it's acting on a very similar mechanism whereby it's acting on those estrogen receptors and having the same effect as the hormone would on the cell.

So it's giving the cell these messages that there are elevated levels of female hormones and that the cells need to respond to that in some kind of way. It's not only in plastics. It says drugs, nutritional supplements, binders, emulsifiers, gelling agents, stabilizers, lubricants and dispersants.

Doug: Yeah.

Elliot: Though there have not only been animal studies showing that phthalates can twist the gender of fish. In fish I think that they can actually cause the fish to start producing eggs in their testicles.

Doug: Yeah. Talk about gender bending! Jeez!

Elliot: Yeah. And in rats, if I remember correctly, the phthalates were able to cause physical deformities in the vas deferens in the seminiferous tubules in the testicles, basically tanking sperm production. We know, aside from lower testosterone levels, sperm counts have tanked from what they were! They have tanked. So this is another factor. In fact there was one really interesting study that I was looking at and it was measuring the gender-typical behaviours in children. I can't see it right now. I may have to come back.

Doug: Regarding the phthalates, as a general overview of what they found with it, it increased the incidents of undescended testes and other genital birth defects, abnormal testicular function including a higher than average incidence of infertility in adult males. It's associated with changes in gender specific behaviour such as exposed males choosing to play with traditionally boy-typical toys less often, which is probably the study that you were talking about.

Elliot: Yeah, that's exactly it.

Doug: So basically boys not acting in a way typical of the way that young boys act. As you were saying earlier, there are behavioural differences between boys and girls. At a very young age they'll start to develop and the fact is that boys typically will play in a more aggressive way. They like cars. They like guns. They like soldiers, that sort of thing whereas girls tend to like dolls and stuff and even when they try to enforce more gender-neutral play, the boys will take the doll they've been given and they'll turn it into a gun and start using it as a gun or they'll start playing with it in a more aggressive kind of way. Girls will take their toy cars and make a little car family and they start having little social interactions between the cars.

So these kinds of things are set behaviours. They aren't arbitrary despite the fact that the tend now is to say that this stuff is all arbitrary and just socially conditioned, that there's no biological basis to this sort of thing. But that's not the case. When we see changes in that kind of thing, the SJWs would probably cheer on that sort of thing. "Well good, boys aren't playing with their typical boy style toys", but this is actually quite disturbing, that these kinds of changes are happening.

Elliot: Indeed because it makes you wonder if this has been established for many years and we've been coming into contact with that for many years, then how has that altered or affected the way that men are, because those men are now adults, the children who were initially exposed to these kind of chemicals which there are more of by the day. Essentially, these males have grown into adults. So how has that had any effect? Then you start looking at the kind of madness that we see on the social/political level and it makes you wonder.

When we're talking about things like transgenderism, something that was very uncommon just a couple of decades ago - and there are lots of factors here no doubt, I'm not just saying that it's gender-bending chemicals - but when we look at where we were 30-50 years ago and then in today's world where we're in a climate that is essentially trying to normalize the idea of a biological male or female at a young age having sex change surgery, so actually having their genitals mutilated, and then taking exogenous hormones to be able to artificially try and transition to the opposite sex, that has become so normalized now and we're actually having public health policy laws and things, education, many different aspects of our education society are really molding to this new phenomena, because it is a new phenomena. It's like everyone is just forced to accept that this is the new norm.

So why is this the case? Is the fact that human beings have exposed themselves to such crazy chemicals this past half century, that it's having some kind of a biological effect whereby it's skewing how we are perceiving our gender? Is that occurring in some people?

Doug: Yeah. I think that one of the interesting things about it is that it's lauded and encouraged and looked at as a good thing, the whole idea of toxic masculinity and that what are traditional male qualities are looked at as being bad and that it's actually a good thing that men are becoming more feminized, softer, not aggressive, passive. That's being looked at as a good thing. I find it really interesting actually because there certainly are people out there who are decrying the lack of male role models and male standards. Where are all the real men? Where have all the real men gone? What's being rejected is the caricature of a man, the idea that he's aggressive, intolerant, grouchy, warmongering. That's considered toxic masculinity.

But it seems like all the good traits of masculinity are being thrown aside as well and encouraged softening of men. And yeah, I think that the exposure to all the xenoestrogens goes a long way towards explaining that, explaining what exactly is going on. I just find it very curious that there aren't a lot of people out there who are disturbed by this. It does seem to divide along political lines. It seems like the left is much more into encouraging this sort of thing and much more likes the idea of more feminized men whereas conservatives seem to be more of the attitude, "No, we need our man's man!" kind of thing. I don't know. It's kind of crazy though.

Elliot: If we look at the modern fashion shows, it seems like there is a very real push to tell us that this is the way that males should be behaving now. I'll give you an example. For instance, I was looking at a 2018 or an early 2019 fashion week and you know what it seems like? It seems like the large majority of the male catwalk models were in traditionally female attire.

Doug: Yeah.

Elliot: So you had short skirts. You had weird frilly bras and just extremely feminine clothes. And then on the other hand you had the opposite for females. There were some females in dresses but some of them looked like they were designed to try and mimic guys. It was really strange. It seems even 10 years ago this wouldn't have been so acceptable. I could be wrong, but I just feel like no long ago people would have raised an outcry and said, "What the hell is this?! This is crazy!" But now it seems like you have these ideas coming from up top, so to speak, but it's almost like the ground is already fertile. The people are already ready for that and I think there's lots of factors involved there, social, ideological and various things which prime people to accept this kind of insanity. But ultimately I think one of those is also the biological or physiological effects of these chemicals.

Doug: Yeah.

Elliot: This is not a very politically correct opinion. {laughter} In fact I really commend the authors of this paper. It's one called Transgender Associations and Possible Etiology. Basically they've been brave enough to come out and look at the evidence and say, "Look, in the past 20 years transgenderism has gone up through the roof. Now it's not only social factors. Social factors can't be the only thing involved here." They can't explain it. There's got to be some kind of underlying reason. There's got to be something that we can look at to help us understand why on earth this is occurring because it seems like it's just increasing evermore by the day.

So these scientists have reviewed the literature and they've come up with some interesting things. We've spoken about how certain chemicals or phytoestrogens in plants such as soy can have this kind of estrogenic effect. But in this paper they're actually talking about other factors as well. They do talk about the role of endocrine disruptors. This is in quite a well-renowned scientific journal and they say, "Another working hypothesis involves the role of endocrine disruptors in transgender etiology." They hypothesized a role for endocrine disruptors, especially phthalates.

So what they're saying is it's been suggested that these endocrine disruptors may actually affect the gestational environment, So the balance of hormones in the womb, in utero. It's very interesting because they were talking about how the brain and then the rest of the body will develop at different stages. For instance, you can have the development of a female body but then if at a certain point during the pregnancy there is significant exposure to endocrine disruptors, some kind of surge of testosterone, surge of estrogen or whatever, then it's theorized - I don't think it's been proven but it's theorized - that actually you can have the development of a one gender in the rest of the body but then the development of the opposite gender of the brain and the nervous system. So you can essentially have a male body with a female type brain, in terms of its wiring, in terms of the way that it's structured and the way that it functions.

So you've got the female brain born into the male body. And then with the fact that it's becoming so normal these days and, quite frankly, so easy to make the transition, it's highly possible that actually one of the reasons why we're seeing this is that our hormones are completely skewed out the window because we're exposed to all this crap.

Doug: Yeah, and particularly the pregnant mothers being exposed to all this crap. High exposure at the wrong time during pregnancy could, theoretically end up having this kind of effect. Like you said, it's very politically incorrect to theorize in that way but we are Objective Health and we try to be as objective as possible, the fact that there is such a boom in this recently, in the rise of transgender, gender fluidity, all this sort of thing. Even 20 years ago this was not happening. It was a very rare thing. It was one in a million, probably more. And I don't think you can just say, "Oh yeah, it's trendy." I think there's something more going on there.

So yeah, I think that there's some basis to this theory. It's not just politically incorrect theorizing.

Elliot: And in today's social climate you can be slaughtered in the public eye for even making such a claim.

Doug: Yeah.

Elliot: We're not in any way slighting transgenders. We're saying that it's a very strong possibility and it's unfortunate for everyone because if it's not going to affect the mother in pregnancy, when we look at the effect that this is having, on females even as well, these estrogenic influences, there have been significant correlations with things like breast cancer. Premenstrual syndrome is practically the norm among almost every single female. You've got polycystic ovaries. You've got all of these different female hormonal disorders and probably metabolic disorders as well which are related to estrogen. So it seems to be affecting everyone.

Aside from the xenoestrogens and these phytoestrogens, I think also is the fact that males are generally so malnourished these days as well, I think the whole population, particularly in the western world, we live on a diet predominantly made up of grains and sugar and processed foods, less animal products and the animal products that we do eat are likely processed and mixed in with all of these grain flours, soy flours, all of this kind of stuff. When you look at testosterone, when you look at having a healthy, robust set of sex steroid hormones, 1) you need cholesterol, 2) you need zinc and other minerals, 3) you need B-6 and lots of the B vitamins. It's practically epidemic that these things are deficient because we've moved away from traditional diets. We've had all of the actual nutrition taken out of the diet and the phytic acid in the grains has taken half of the zinc so {audio problem} our ability to actually counteract this because when you're having all of this estrogenic influence it's very much anti-testosterone. But if you can boost up your testosterone then that can somewhat mitigate the effects and somewhat displace estrogen, it can somewhat counteract that effect.

If people are generally so bereft of nutrition then they're going to have a hard time making their own hormones anyway. I think that's probably involved as well.

Doug: I think it definitely is, yeah. It definitely is. It's funny that you mention grains. I've got a list here of Dr. Anthony Jay's top list of estrogenics. Dr. Anthony Jay wrote a book called Estrogeneration-How Estrogenics are Making You Fat, Sick and Infertile. He has a list of his top 10 estrogentics. Number 1 is the phytoestrogens like soy, flax, lavender is actually on that list, cannabis, oddly, is also on that list. I remember he did say that there are some medicinal effects of cannabis so obviously every different situation is going to require that you weigh the good against the bad.

But the one thing that reminded me of this actually Elliot is that you mentioned grains. He was talking about mycoestrogen which is fungus and mold that can have estrogenic properties. He was saying that grains actually harbour this when they're stored. So when they take grains and put them in silos to be stored, it can develop a mold or fungus that has these estrogenic effects. We talk a lot about eliminating grains from the diet on this show and this is actually another reason why that would be a good idea. Number 3 on his list is atrazine which is actually one of the most common herbicides used in the U.S. It's thankfully banned in most of Europe. I'm not sure where it's at in Canada but there is a strong correlation between where atrazine is heavily sprayed and where you find the most egregious examples of obesity in the U.S. You can correlate those very well. Now you can't necessarily say that that's causation but certainly it's worth looking into. But atrazine is another xenoestrogen as well.

Then there's triclosan and alkylphenols which are both found in soaps. Triclosan I think was banned in the U.S. but they allowed it in some things, one of them being Colgate Total. For some reason Colgate Total convinced them that in having Triclosan in their toothpaste that the good outweighed the bad and that they should be allowed to keep it in there and the FDA actually agreed with them. So it's for the most part banned but it's still in some products. Benzophenone and 4-methylbenzolidine camphor, so BPN and 4MBC are found in sunscreens.

Number 6 on his list was Red #40. That's the artificial red colouring agent. You find that in processed foods, candies, those sorts of things. That's estrogenic as well. Also listed is parabens which are found in fragrances and unfortunately on the labels of most things all they ever put is "fragrance". They don't actually tell you that parabens are in there so that can be a difficult one to avoid. Also listed are phthalates which we've already spoken about. You find it in plastics. BPA is another one that's found in plastics. I think it's another one that makes the plastic more malleable. The most insidious thing about this is that a lot of products will say "BPA free" on them but they've actually just started using something called BPS which is more or less the same thing. So for BPA-free, they're just using BPS so you've got to watch out for that as well.

And the last one that he had on his list, number 10, was the birth control pill which is EE2 or 17 alpha ethinylestradiol. So that's his list of the top estrogenics. It's certainly not an exhaustive list because there are other xenoestrogens out there but just from looking at this list and thinking about how many of these things that we're exposed to regularly, daily, hourly, it's kind of scary. So it's not any wonder that we're all turning into lady boys. {laughter}

Elliot: You've got that kind of attack on the biological male. You've got the attack on our biology and at the same time from all other areas you've got the guilt associated with being male as well!

Doug: Oh yeah.

Elliot: You've got ideologues who have fomented a culture or a way of thinking which views all things male, all things masculine as inherently toxic. And as you said, they've taken a caricature of a male, all of the things that people associate with bad things like aggression, violence, grouchiness, laziness, selfishness, these kinds of things and they've thrown the baby out with the bath water or many people have because actually when we look at real masculinity, it's got a bad rap. In fact there is a whole other side to masculinity and it's a driving force and has been a driving force throughout the history of humanity in that there are positive attributes that are typically masculine, that are useful adjuncts to society.

They are necessary for the growth of a community, of a family, protecting the family, protecting the loved ones, putting yourself in danger, risking your life for the ones that you love and care about, for your community, going to war for instance, against a tyrant, to protect the people back at home, having the innovation, hunting, going to hunt for the tribe, climbing up a tree for some kind of bounty in a very dangerous situation, having the drive to venture into dangerous territory and actually take risks. These are all the masculine qualities which are completely disregarded.

Doug: Yeah.

Elliot: And in fact this is what we seem to have lost - assertion, dominance, but for a good cause, actually saying no, standing up against tyranny for instance. Do we see this in today's society?

Doug: Yeah. I mean no. {laughter}

Elliot: We see flaccid, flaccid complacence, virtue signalling but there's nothing behind it in that we have spawned or produced a generation -and it's my generation I'm afraid - it's an unfortunate thing but my generation lacks those qualities, very much so and actually the ability to speak out, to speak the truth when it needs to be spoken, against things like atrocities being committed across the world by U.S. foreign policy and whatnot, people speaking out when they're required to.

Doug: I don't think it's just your generation certainly. The complacency seems to have been growing more and more as each subsequent generation takes over. Maybe somebody should plot that out against the rise of xenoestrogens just to see if there's actually a correlation there.

I was going to go into what do you think an individual can do to help with this? Obviously the best thing is to do is try and avoid exposure to xenoestrogenic things. Don't eat soy would be the number one thing, but avoiding chemicals, looking for products that are more natural, or using essential oils instead of fragrances, trying to use glass instead of plastic. There's a whole culture around trying to avoid these kinds of toxic things, understanding of course that you can't be perfect. We are literally surrounded by this stuff all the time but the more you can minimize your exposure, the better.

Another thing that we didn't mention is that they put BPA in store receipts. I don't know that every store is using receipts that have those in it, but I've seen cashiers actually wearing gloves. I presume it's because of the BPA in the receipts because you figure if a cashier is handling hundreds of those a day, it does actually absorb through the skin. So these are things for avoiding this kind of stuff but there's also a few things that you can do to boost testosterone. Intermittent fasting increases testosterone and also increases androgen receptor sensitivity. So it actually makes it so that you're not only producing more testosterone but your receptors are actually more sensitive to the testosterone that you do have. So even if you are exposed to these xenoestrogens, the fact that your receptors are more sensitive to the testosterone that you do have is going to help.

Red meat is high in carnitine and carnitine also increases androgen receptor sensitivity. I think that the stereotype of the soy boy, that he's this vegan, it seems like there's some truth to that. Red meat has carnitine. Red meat increases the sensitivity of androgen receptors.

Elliot: And it has zinc.

Doug: Yeah, red meat has zinc.

Elliot: You need zinc to make testosterone.

Doug: Yeah. Weight training is another good one. It increases free testosterone and helps with androgen receptor sensitivity. And another one I had down here was manganese because apparently if you do manganese in a cycled manner, it will actually release luteinizing hormone releasing hormone, which also helps to increase testosterone. But apparently you do get - what's the word - sensitized to it. It will stop having as much of an effect after a while. Tim Ferriss has a whole protocol on it and apparently you cycle it and that can be helpful.

Elliot: Right. I've got a couple of things to add to that. One is actually interesting, phosphatidylserine. There's a very strong negative correlation between cortisol and testosterone. So generally if there is hypercortisolism where someone is under a state of chronic stress, physiological stress, emotional stress, whatnot and there's high levels of the stress hormone cortisol, then that will actually have an effect to desensitize the testosterone receptor so you become less sensitive to testosterone so it can't exert its effects as it would usually. It actually down-regulates the production of testosterone by the sertoli cells in the testicles so it's having multiple effects at different levels. So it's shutting off feedback but it's also having a direct effect on the receptor and also an effect on the production of testosterone.

So phosphatidylserine is a phospholipid. You find it in small amounts in things like egg yolks but this is quite a high dose. I can't remember the dose. I think it's 300 mg, phosphatidylserine once or twice a day. That has been shown to reduce cortisol, so it's what people use when they're under chronic stress, but it's also been shown to improve testosterone or increase testosterone. There's also zinc which can be supplemented if you're not eating a lot of red meat. I would just eat loads of red meat. But if you're not eating a lot of red meat you can actually supplement with a small amount of zinc. I wouldn't go too high because that can cause imbalances with copper. I would stick at 5 mg. of zinc once a day. That has been shown to improve testosterone generally in most of the studies.

There's also another thing which I've yet to try out am going to try out very soon. It's actually using near infrared light. Ben Greenfield and Mike Mutzel have both done these experiments and this has been shown in the clinical research, but it's good to have this kind of firsthand experience. Actually it's been shown that after 60 days of shining red or near infrared light - and it has to be a proper one so you want to use one of the good companies to do it - red or near infrared shone directly onto the testicles for 15 minutes per day increased testosterone once by doubling it and the other by tripling it.

Doug: Wow!

Elliot: So triple and double testosterone. I think it tripled Ben Greenfield's testosterone, doubled Mike Mutzel's and then in the research generally it doubles. But that is consistent. So it can have that much of an effect if you do it consistently for at least a month or 60 days.

Just before that you were talking about what we can do about things like BPA and the cash register receipts. It's theorized that one of the main sources of exposure may actually be our skin, so transdermal, because it was once thought we absorbed loads through the gut but actually some of it is passed out into the feces. Not all of it's absorbed whereas when it goes onto your skin, the majority of it is absorbed. So if you're someone who's working at a cash register or something then yeah, you want to use some gloves or something.

But there are some things that you can do, ideally, to actually help your body to detox it. Most of these things are actually lipophilic, which means that they are attracted to your adipose tissue. So because they're attracted to your adipose tissue, it's safer for you to store them in the adipose. For instance, you don't want to store them in the organs because it could cause serious damage whereas if you store it in the adipose tissue then it's safely stored away, not very metabolically active and you can keep it where it needs to be. What you can actually do is provide your body with the necessary tools to mobilize that. One of those is going to be sweating. Sweating is a very effective method to get rid of BPA.

When you raise body temperature you raise metabolism. When you raise metabolism, you've raised the rate at which enzymes start to function, okay? What this is doing is actually liberating all of these lipophilic toxins and compounds from your adipose tissue and they are either going to go into circulation or they're going to go out through the sweat. So when you measure someone's sweat in the research, sweat is a very rich source of metals and BPA, phthalates and all of these plastics and it shows that your body can effectively get rid of that through the sweat.

For instance if you're going to do exercise, try and get really hot and sweaty. Do a sauna. If you're going to do a sauna, fantastic, but ideally, you want to have a cold shower afterward or jump into the cold pool, but at some point you want to be washing your skin off with soap because that stuff is lipophilic. It means it can be reabsorbed if it stays on your skin. So when you sweat it out, you don't want to reabsorb it. You want to wash it off immediately. Going into some cold water either in a cold pool or into a cold shower will close off your pores, make it less likely that that stuff is going to be able to absorb quickly back into your skin.

Furthermore, what you can do is use something like Epsom salts baths. You're going to get really hot and sweaty. It's going to do the same thing, liberate all of this stuff, but with the Epsom salts bath you're providing your body with magnesium but you're also providing a very rich deposit of inorganic sulphate which is a mineral that you're using in one of the phase 2 detoxification pathways in the liver called sulphation. Sulphation is actually one of the ways that you are able to get rid of BPA. BPA can be sulphated but many of these other things can be sulphated as well.

So in the liver you take the sulphate and bind it to these toxins and carry it out into the bile. An Epsom salt bath is fantastic. If you're going to do something like this, sauna, Epsom salts bath, heavy exercise, I would recommend taking some bentonite clay and charcoal 10-15 minutes before because if you're going to be dumping anything and it's going to be going into the bile into the gut, then you want to bind that.

What else?

Ah! Glutathione is apparently quite good for getting this stuff out as well. So glutathione, bitters and binders. Herbal bitters such as Swedish bitters. You can use Swedish bitters because what they do is actually activate the gallbladder to push the bile. So if you're taking something like glutathione, you take that first. You're going to prep the liver. You take the bitters to activate the bile flow into the gallbladder and liver to flush it into the gut and then you take a binder, half an hour or 40 minutes after and you're going to bind all of those bile acids and carry it out into the feces.

So that's one of the common protocols that they use for getting things like plastics out but it's a very long process. But there's lots you can do about it.

Doug: Well that's good.

Elliot: On that front, that's all that comes to mind. Have you got anything else to add Doug?

Doug: No. I think we've covered the soy boy topic.

Elliot: So in conclusion, it's never good to be a soy boy. {laughter} In conclusion there seems to be a direct link between soy consumption and male feminization and estrogenic factors. It seems it's not only soy. It's a wide variety of chemicals that we're coming into contact with these days. We can't escape them. What we can try to do is boost testosterone because we know that testosterone is depleted in our modern world. We know that there seems to be a correlation between feminization and perhaps many of the kinds of things that we're seeing today in society, the way that men are behaving, the lack of real genuine masculinity, the lack of what some people might describe as real men, so to speak. It seems like the genders are becoming mixed in many ways and it seems like that's ultimately manifesting, in some cases at least, as actual transgenderism because there seems to be some evidence that actually these chemicals, these estrogenic factors in the womb may be having an effect which is producing a bi-gendered or transgendered physiology.

So I think that that's all for today then folks. Try and do what you can. Lift some weights. Avoid the plastics. Try to do some of the things that we said. Learn about this and stay healthy.

Doug: Stay healthy.

Elliot: We'll see you next week. Thanks for tuning in.

Doug: See you next week guys.