Improve Health By Knowing Hormones

Scott: Doctor, we all have hormone levels that change as we age. How important is that to understand that and keep track of that as we get older?

Nick Delgado, PhD.: Well, I would say that once you master the understanding of hormones, and start to appreciate that hormones are signalers to how the body functions, that they coordinate almost every aspect of life. If I were to give you an order of the importance of hormones, that I have been blessed to have trained with some of the great medical doctors in the world about  nutrition and research, and I'm a Ph.D., so I picked their mind, and I asked questions, and I put the information to the test, and I tried these different theories and concepts. 

But I gotta tell you, after 30 years of working with these people's studies and research, I am astonished at how not only do hormones tend to improve a person's health, but we are actually seeing evidence of reversing the signs of aging, reducing body fat, improving insulin sensitivity, improving mental cognition. Certainly many cases of problems that are aggravated, such as chronic diseases, whether it be heart disease, which the most receptor sites in the heart are testosterone receptor sites, so as we get older and the testosterone declines, our heart function isn't quite as good as it was. So we look at ejection fraction and heart function, and heart regularity, of course all these things come together. 

So, if I want someone who's paying attention to how can I improve my health at this stage in m the environment that we're all exposed to, how to optimize the good form of estrogen compared to the bad, not just in women, but in men as well, bring that testosterone to the optimum level with a good combination of the correct herbs and supplementations, and nutritional biochemical equivalent, that is identical to what's already in the body, in very minute quantities of say, testosterone DHEA, pregnenolone, we use melatonin, we use thyroid glandulars. Basically there's at least 10 different key hormones that we measure in 24 urine tests. We start off with a saliva test to measure the 11 basic hormones, but then we start looking at all the hormone metabolites in the urine, because you collect it for 24 hours, and it shows where your levels are, and how deficient they are.

Because sometimes a blood test by itself may show at that moment either a stress reaction, the persons getting their blood drawn, and so the cortisol goes up, and they think "oh, my cortisol's always high," when in reality, their adrenals may be low, and their cortisol's usually low, and so they have symptoms of fatigue and other issues that can be resolved. So hormones, to me, are the icing on the cake. It puts the whole story together, and of course, I use a vegan cake, and it would be a sugar-free, all-natural fresh fruits and stuff on the topping, and when we have birthday parties, the kids think, "wow, we're having vegan ice cream and vegan cake, and gluten-free," and I have a recipe book now called The Delgado Diet, that just came out on Amazon. So we have all these recipes, because I don't want people to feel deprived. I want it to be a fun diet, an enjoyable diet, and I want people to experience the benefits of hormones and optimization, because, you know what, you've got one life to live, and we can wait 100 years after we've looked back through the last 100 years worth of hormone research and therapy and dietary therapy. To me, the story's already in. We know what we need to do to help people, now the question is, at what level, and how to you help people to be enlightened about this, and I think your show is part of this enlightenment.