Question: Should a female focus on lowering DHT to avoid pattern baldness? Carrie: DHT is only one of the alpha metabolites. If you just do it in serum, that’s usually what everyone test, but there are some other big ones, androsterone, and 5 alpha-androstanediol is another big one that you can test in your intestine. …
The first study on vitamin D and COVID-19 was released as a preprint* on April 23, and a second study was released as a preprint on April 26. Here’s what we can learn from the second study. The first study, which I reported on a few days ago, focused on disease severity, while the second …
Question: Is there an optimum number of meals or insulin spikes per day for optimizing thyroid function? Assuming that you’re controlling for the level of insulin sensitivity on the thyroid gland — I guess if I had to throw out a wild guess, the free fatty acid concentration is probably mostly relevant when the free …
Question: What can be done to reverse hypothyroidism other than taking thyroid medicine? Chris: I’ll throw in a couple things. If you just look at the nutrients needed to make thyroid hormone, you’re looking at enough protein in addition to enough iodine. But then also the production of thyroid hormone is a very, very dirty …
Question: Why would a woman have no cycle? Why would a woman have an anovulatory cycle? Carrie: Remember, cortisol is very, very, very potent in the brain. If the body perceives itself is under stress, whether it’s physical, mental, emotional, environmental, it doesn’t matter, then reproduction is not its primary focus anymore. I had been …
In The Food and Supplement Guide for the Coronavirus, I predicted that interferon contributes to the lung pathology of COVID-19 and could worsen the risk of severe disease and death. As a result, I screened all of the antiviral and immune support supplements I was considering for inclusion and recommended against anything that appeared to …
Today I was made aware of a preprint* that was most recently revised yesterday with specific data on vitamin D status. This is the first observational study that has, to my knowledge, addressed how vitamin D levels correlate with COVID-19 severity. A researcher from the Philippines used the data from three South Asian hospitals to …
Question: What to do about premenstrual water retention? Chris: I looked at a really good paper that showed that in women who had water retention symptoms with PMS, the main difference in their hormones was that they weren’t clearing progesterone as fast from their ovulation-related peak. I was discussing this with a different friend who …
On April 7, I reported the results of a study using a mobile app to identify which self-reported symptoms best predict a confirmable case of COVID-19, giving central importance to the loss of smell (anosmia) or the loss of taste (ageusia), with lesser importance to fever, loss of appetite, cough, diarrhea, and fatigue. The study …
Question: Dietary nutritional advice for breast cancer prevention and thoughts on HRT? Carrie: Well, that’s probably better for you when it comes to like nutrient ratios and stuff. But I will say working for an estrogen lab, we’re looking at phase one and phase two detoxification and what we’re trying to assess with estrogen. …