Pod Insights StarTalk Podcast Hormones on Steroids with Dr. Aniket Sidhaye About this episode How do hormones affect us? On this episode, Neil deGrasse Tyson and co-hosts Chuck Nice and Gary O’Reilly explore the body's endocrine system, steroids, hormones, and how we can hack it with an endocrinologist, Dr. Aniket Sidhaye.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.
0:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? This is StarTalk Sports Edition. Neil deGrasse Tyson here, your personal astrophysicist and co-host of this podcast. I got with me my two other co-hosts. Chuck Nice, Chuck, how you doing, man?
0:28 Chuck Nice? What's happening, Neil?
0:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
0:30 Chuck Nice? I'm doing hot.
0:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Again, well, it's summertime, let it be.
0:34 Chuck Nice? No, I was, I was actually just complimenting myself, Neil.
0:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No.
0:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I'm glad you feel that way about yourself. Okay. This is the first step towards recovery.
0:45 Chuck Nice? Exactly.
0:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Professional stand-up comedian, we love you here and I love you as my co-host. And we also have the only one who gives this podcast its authenticity is Gary O'Reilly, former soccer pro. Gary, always good to have you, man.
0:58 Gary O'Reilly? Oh, it's a pleasure, mine, Neil, thank you.
0:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Also professional sports commentator, which I only learned very late.
1:03 Gary O'Reilly? Oh, been doing that for years.
1:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because I was distracted by your soccer talent and I was not thinking of you in any other way, but just, plus there's a Wiki page on you in case people want to see your legs.
1:14 Chuck Nice? Yes. Check out those gams, people. You gotta, you gotta, you gotta see Gary's gams on the Wiki page.
1:24 Gary O'Reilly? Back in the day.
1:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? My boy got his soccer Wiki page, that's cool.
1:28 Chuck Nice? Sexy boy, I tell you.
1:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We're loving it.
1:30 Gary O'Reilly? Now, now, Chuck.
1:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So what we're going to talk about today is the endocrine system. Oh my gosh, we are long overdue for a show on this subject. I remember in high school, learning about biology, you know, there's a heart and a liver and lungs and all the, you have skin and blood. And then I learned about the endocrine system, it was like, oh my gosh. There's like, we don't just have stuff in our body, we have chemistry going on in our body. And so obviously none of us have this expertise. We had to reach for it as we always do, and I think we always do really well. And Gary, so set up the table here, what do you have?
2:06 Gary O'Reilly? Oh, with pleasure. Um, so we, we started this show by asking a simple question in a production meeting. How do anabolic steroids work in the human body? And then, as you were just saying, in the human body, you've got a variety of systems, a digestive system, respiratory system, immune system, and we know pretty much all about them. But the chances are, we don't really know a lot about the endocrine system. What it does, how it does its thing, what happens if it goes wrong? Can we tweak it for our own good, say with anabolic steroids? And, you know, how can we make that work? And from that initial question, we got a whole load of wow.
2:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right, so when you say tweak it, you mean how can we game it for our own? That's what you really mean there.
2:51 Gary O'Reilly? So this is, this is, this is the element of like, you know, okay, but everyone's looking for advantage. It's a competitive world, sports competitive by nature. So what if? But we needed to know more about how the whole structure works. And, you know, that's the take off point for this show. And of course, we needed an expert and I'm pleased we found this young, this young gentleman, Dr. Aniket Sidhaye from Johns Hopkins Medicine, where he is Program Director for Endocrinology and Metabolism Fellowship. He's also Associate Professor of Medicine and expert in cystic fibrosis-related endocrine disorders. So having said all of that, let's meet the good doctor.
3:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Hello, Aniket, welcome to StarTalk.
3:36 Speaker 03 Thank you very much, Neil. I'm excited to be part of this conversation and so glad to hear you all are interested in the endocrine system.
3:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, my gosh, you're so young. Oh, my God, I pinch your cheek. Good luck to you.
3:48 Gary O'Reilly? Yeah, there's a lot of jealousy this side.
3:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We'll, we'll, we'll, we'll, some old farts on here.
3:54 Speaker 03 You know, when I went for my jog this weekend, I didn't feel that young.
3:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, you know, if you're an expert on the endocrine system, you should never feel any way that you shouldn't. I'm thinking, that's just me, I don't know. So could tell us, could you just start us off? I, I want our audience to be just as mind blown as I was when I first learned what the endocrine system does. So you just give us like a, you know, a three minute overview. I know that's not much time, but you can fit it in, I'm sure. You're also a professor.
4:26 Chuck Nice? Please sum up all of your academic findings and career.
4:29 Speaker 03 That's right, right, right.
4:30 Chuck Nice? In 90 seconds.
4:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right, so what do you have?
4:33 Speaker 03 You know, in a way, it is a system by which one part of the body talks to the other, but to maintain balance. And the way it does this is by the secretion of hormones. And the definition of a hormone is pretty simple. It's a substance that's secreted in one part of the body.
4:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? A chemical.
4:52 Speaker 03 And it's a chemical. Yeah, it's a chemical. And it goes to another part of the body and tells that part of the body what to do. But what's really important about the endocrine system is that there, in almost all of the hormones, there is a feedback loop that involves control. And that's probably what helps it maintain balance in the body. So all of the hormonal systems have this sort of, we call it homeostasis, or balance effect on whatever it is that they're supposed to be regulating. Because I'll give the example of insulin, because I think a lot of people know about insulin and diabetes and blood glucose. So insulin is the hormone that helps maintain blood glucose levels in a very, very narrow range.
5:36 Speaker 03 And the way it does this is super interesting.
5:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, Anika, that glucose, that's just one of the sugars, right? They all end in O S E, last I checked, right?
5:44 Speaker 03 That's absolutely correct. Like fructose and manose and galactose.
5:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, galactose and...
5:50 Chuck Nice? Oh, galactose, you should love that one, Neil.
5:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, by the way, it's not an accident that the Milky Way galaxy, the very word galaxy, comes from its reference to milk and the Milky Way and lactose and all this. Yeah, it's very related from the Latin and of course Roman times, but ancient Rome. But go on, this is not about astronomy. This is about...
6:12 Speaker 03 Right, right.
6:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right.
6:13 Speaker 03 Yeah, so glucose actually stimulates the pancreas to make insulin. So as the glucose levels rise, the pancreas has this mechanism of increasing the amount of insulin that's secreted. And then that insulin goes to muscle and fat predominantly, but other tissues as well. And it tells those tissues to take up the glucose from the bloodstream, thereby returning the glucose back down to the normal range. As the glucose comes down, the insulin levels come down as well. So you can see it's this mechanism by which the glucose is the stimulator. The insulin goes up. Once the glucose comes back down, the insulin comes back down.
6:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? What you're saying is the pancreas doesn't know better. Because if it did, you wouldn't have all these extra overhead steps for all this to work.
6:55 Speaker 03 Yeah, I mean, I guess it would be great if it could just get it done.
6:59 Chuck Nice? But no, that's the whole point of what you're saying, right? It's it's the messaging between the two that keeps the balance.
7:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, but Chuck, that's another point of failure, of possible failure in the human body, isn't it?
7:10 Chuck Nice? That's because you're looking at it from the standpoint of some guy who shoots crap into space.
7:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I'm just saying, if we have points of failure, I want to know about it. I want to reduce them as much as possible. And you're telling me you have an endocrine system that tells something else what chemical to put in and how to take it out, and that's too many people in the command chain.
7:33 Speaker 03 Well, you know, of course, you know, when this system fails, we get diabetes.
7:37 Chuck Nice? Yep.
7:37 Speaker 03 So to your point about points of failure.
7:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
7:40 Gary O'Reilly? All right, so doctor, is there a command center? Is there some ultimate control center for all of this endocrine system? Or is it systems within systems that manage each other? Or can they cross out into other systems?
7:54 Speaker 03 Um, so they can definitely cross talk with other systems. But in terms of a command center, there happens to be one organ that controls multiple different endocrine systems.
8:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The brain.
8:06 Speaker 03 And yes, just below the brain is the pituitary.
8:09 Chuck Nice? Pituitary gland?
8:10 Speaker 03 That unit over there controls how your body makes stress steroids that help you respond to stress like cortisol.
8:18 Chuck Nice? All right.
8:18 Speaker 03 It helps you make the sex steroids, so testosterone. Yep, there you go. Um, and.
8:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Just for you, Chuck.
8:28 Chuck Nice? Yeah, of course, of course.
8:30 Speaker 03 And for all of those who have kids and want them to grow, it helps regulate the growth hormone system. So there is one gland that happens to control multiple different systems.
8:40 Chuck Nice? So what does the hypothalamus do?
8:42 Speaker 03 Oh, so super, super question. So the hypothalamus sits above the pituitary. The hypothalamus sits in the brain and it sends the signals down to the pituitary to make their hormones.
8:52 Chuck Nice? Oh, God.
8:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? See, I told you, you see? You see? You know what? I'm starting to agree with Neil about. This is a house of cards, Mark.
9:01 Chuck Nice? Our bodies are stupid.
9:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? This is a house of cards. Oh, man.
9:05 Gary O'Reilly? All right, so we've got, we've got all these little moving parts that are command centers. But are there different types of cell signaling that take place? Or is it all one mode? Or has it come with a variety of settings?
9:18 Speaker 03 No, no. So each, you're, so this gets to how do hormones actually act?
9:23 Gary O'Reilly? Mm hmm.
9:23 Speaker 03 Um, and they all act by interacting with a receptor. And that receptor either, you know, goes into DNA and regulates genes. And I know you guys have had people come and talk about genes and gene expression. Or that receptor helps change predominantly how proteins work. And so they all interact with specific receptors. And that's how you maintain specificity in each system.
9:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So do, do old WASP families in the United States have blue genes?
9:55 Gary O'Reilly? Oh, Neil.
9:58 Gary O'Reilly? There's no, that's not a mandatory answer.
10:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I'm sorry, that was.
10:02 Chuck Nice? It's so much better than Wrangler's.
10:06 Gary O'Reilly? Oh, my.
10:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Blue blood flowing through the veins.
10:09 Chuck Nice? Never catch me in a pair of Levi's.
10:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Only, all my blood runs blue in the blue.
10:15 Gary O'Reilly? So what is epigenome? Cause you talked about messaging for DNA. So what is epigenome and epigenome communication?
10:24 Speaker 03 Sure. So the gene is a code to make proteins. Um, but, you know, why should a particular gene be on or off? It turns out that our genome can have marks on it. There are other systems that can say, hey, you know what? I want this gene to be turned off. And they mark the genome in a certain way so that genes can be turned on or off. And so there are many different types of these marks, but. There are signatures for genes that are on versus off, and that is often found in the epigenome. And so hormones, for example, can regulate that.
11:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And by the way, Anika, when I was in college long ago, I took a computer science class where we learned about the role of the dip switches on the backs of the computers, where you can change certain modes of operation. And that became a very useful reference when people were talking about gene expression for about like five years, until those computers weren't around anymore. But when you say turning them on and off, I think of the back of the computer where you had these switches and you'd manipulate them, but you had to know what you were doing.
11:33 Gary O'Reilly? Does this epigenome become affected by environmental aspects and influences, such as your environment, pollutants and things?
11:44 Speaker 03 Yeah, I think that there is, you know, sort of growing interest in that. And those types of studies have been done sort of in cells, right? But, you know, then you have to take the next step of saying, okay, let's expose lots of people to a pollutant and then look at the epigenome.
12:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Or not.
12:04 Speaker 03 Yeah, it does.
12:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Or not.
12:06 Speaker 03 Or, yeah, right. If you want to connect an ethical study.
12:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes, thank you.
12:10 Speaker 03 And then see, but these occur naturally, right? Because there are flight attendants who are exposed to smoke, for example, and other people who are not.
12:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? In the day.
12:21 Speaker 03 In the day, not anymore. And so you can then look and look at their genomes and see if their epigenetic changes occurred. And there's a lot of evidence that that has occurred.
12:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
12:32 Speaker 03 Yeah, so that's the hormonal system in a nutshell, I guess.
12:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So just when you mentioned the pituitary gland, I'm reminded that some of the physical conditions that make people short or extremely tall directly come out of failures of the pituitary gland, right? I heard the term, maybe we don't say it anymore, pituitary giant. Is that still a term?
13:01 Speaker 03 Yeah, there's a term gigantism that's used. And that's when there's too much growth hormone Right. When kids are growing and then they grow up to be very, very, very tall. But you can also have extra growth hormone made after people start growing. Right. And then they don't get taller, but other parts of their bodies grow. So they, you know, they have jaws that are a little bit bigger. Yeah. Their hands become kind of wide. Barry Bonds.
13:33 Speaker 03 He was a different kind of big.
13:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's a different, that's a different, he was, he was from another planet. We'll say that for section three.
13:39 Speaker 03 Right.
13:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
13:41 Gary O'Reilly? Go back to the cell signaling modes. You know, you said about the computer switch on the back nail. What I mean, I have the notes of neuroendocrine and autocrine modes for signaling, doctor?
13:52 Speaker 03 Yeah, so what that refers to is neuroendocrine is simply like my hypothalamus and the pituitary make a hormone. They go to, for example, the adrenal gland, tell it to make more cortisol.
14:03 Gary O'Reilly? Okay.
14:03 Speaker 03 Right. But autocrine is within a single sort of tissue system where a cell makes a signal. Let's call it a growth factor, for example, and it'll go next door to a cell. So it doesn't have to enter the bloodstream and travel to some other place. Entering the bloodstream and traveling is like the traditional definition of a hormone. But autocrine is just, you know, talking to your neighbor. And
14:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
14:31 Speaker 03 And nudging them to do something a little different.
14:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So it's shopping local is what's happening.
14:35 Speaker 03 Yeah.
14:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah. We got to end this segment, but when we come back, doctor, I want to talk about all the ways that the endocrine system can fail us. Right. When it's working, you know, nobody says anything, right? You're just a
14:48 Speaker 03 Yeah.
14:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Quote, "normal" human being. And you're a doctor specializing in occasions where this, that system fails. And so I want to
14:56 Speaker 03 Yeah.
14:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Make sure we spend a whole segment on that. This is StarTalk Sports Edition. We'll be right back.
15:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We're back, StarTalk Sports Edition. An entire episode on the endocrine system. Your hormones, long overdue for a topic of interest on this show. Of course, I got Chuck and Gary. And our special guest today is Dr. Aniket Sidhaya, who is an associate professor of medicine, Johns Hopkins University. Excuse me, the Johns Hopkins University, I think they prefer. Specializing in endocrinology, an expert in cystic fibrosis and also diabetes, I think. Is that right? We'll learn more about that in a minute. But who better to keep us on this journey? And so, let me jump back in.
15:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, so here we have a system of chemistry, basically. And, and Aniket, I don't know if you know this, but some of my best friends are made of chemicals. Okay? Don't, don't tell anybody that.
16:07 Chuck Nice? Some of my best friends actually do chemicals.
16:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Do chemicals? So, we, we spent the first segment describing the glory and the majesty of our endocrine system, but I kept thinking about it from a systems engineering point of view, because when you launch something into space, everything has to work and you want to reduce the number of nodes of failure. And from your description, it sounds like there are multiple handoffs, chemical handoffs, from one location to another, to another, in order to regulate this body, which sounds to me like we have high susceptibility to failure. So what can you tell us about what happens when our hormones go bad?
16:49 Speaker 03 Yeah. Yeah, you're right. There are different points of failure and there are many, many diseases, many common diseases that are due to disruptions to the endocrine system, probably the best known as diabetes.
17:01 Chuck Nice? Oh, good.
17:02 Speaker 03 Yep, yep.
17:03 Chuck Nice? I mean, not good diabetes, that's bad, but good, you're gonna talk about.
17:07 Speaker 03 Yeah, you're gonna understand it. And diabetes is, simply means that there's a lot of sweet tasting stuff flowing through your system. That's what diabetes mellitus means. And that means your blood glucose is too high, one of the sugars that we talked about. And really, the reason that happens is because people can't make enough insulin. And you know, depending on what type of diabetes you have, the reason for that could be different, but the bottom line is there's just not enough insulin being made for your body's needs. When there's not enough insulin, there's not that signal that tells the glucose, hey, go from the bloodstream into the muscle or into the fat, right? Or very interestingly, insulin also tells the liver to stop making sugar.
17:51 Speaker 03 So that's another way in which insulin acts. But all of these things you can see, if there's not enough insulin, the blood glucose stays high. And in the same way, there are many other hormonal systems. Another common one is the thyroid system. We like the thyroid gland because you can actually feel it. It sits right on top of your trachea. And so it's a gland that you can actually feel, just like the other glands you can feel, which is your testes. So the thyroid, if the thyroid is damaged, you don't make enough thyroid hormone. And thyroid hormone, I like to describe as it kind of tells every cell in the body how fast to run the furnace. So if you don't make enough thyroid hormone, you feel cold, you feel sluggish, you can't think quite as fast, you get constipated, your skin becomes super dry.
18:35 Speaker 03 And so that's an example of when you don't make enough thyroid hormone. But you can also have the reverse. You can actually make too much of a hormone. And when you make too much thyroid hormone, for example, it's all the opposite. People feel hot, they sweat, they can't sleep, they actually feel tremulous or shaky even. Their hearts might race. And so that's an example of, you know, when you have deficient or excess thyroid hormone. We mentioned gigantism in the previous segment, and that would be an example of having too much growth hormone. A real dangerous one is when you don't make enough cortisol, because you need cortisol, it's like a stress response. Like when you're stressed, you need to make cortisol. And if you can't, then your blood pressure can't respond,
19:18 Speaker 03 your immune system, you know, can't respond, and you know, you can even die if you don't have enough cortisol.
19:23 Gary O'Reilly? Is this something called hypercortisolism?
19:27 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah, yeah. That is in fact not enough cortisol. Hypo-cortisolism.
19:32 Gary O'Reilly? So there's hypo and hyper?
19:33 Speaker 03 There's hypo and hyper, yeah.
19:35 Chuck Nice? Hyper is too much, hypo is not enough.
19:37 Speaker 03 You got it, yeah. And when you have hyper, it's a whole other set of problems. And this is just a great example of like, how many different systems one hormone can affect. So if you take hypercortisolism, people can get diabetes. Their skin gets very fragile.
19:53 Chuck Nice? Right.
19:54 Speaker 03 And they can bruise really easily. They can get fractures because it makes the bones thin and you can't absorb calcium properly from your gut to help mineralize the bones. So lots of different systems get affected by one hormone.
20:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So on the subject of words, on the subject of words, you know, we have the word hyperbole, where you're going a little too far. We should invent the word hypobole, where you're not.
20:16 Chuck Nice? See, that just sounds like you can't say hyperbole.
20:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Hypobole?
20:23 Chuck Nice? Hypobole.
20:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I say.
20:26 Chuck Nice? I say now. Hypobole.
20:30 Chuck Nice? Now listen here, boy.
20:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Hypobole would be like, you're not exaggerating enough, right? You're underselling what you could be selling.
20:39 Speaker 03 I thought that's what English people do.
20:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, the understatement. We getting blamed again? A master of hypobole. I'm gonna invent that word right now.
20:48 Chuck Nice? That boy's about as sharp as a bowling ball, always using hypobole.
20:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So Gary, take us back to sports here. That's the goal here.
20:58 Chuck Nice? Before you do, because I just want to talk about what you just said, Doc.
21:02 Speaker 03 Yeah.
21:03 Chuck Nice? So all these things you just pointed out.
21:06 Speaker 03 Yeah.
21:06 Chuck Nice? A lot of times I read these articles where it says that they're exacerbated by belly fat. So what does that have to do with anything? The fact that I'm carrying all this subcutaneous fat?
21:18 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah. It turns out that fat is not some inert depot for storage of fat, you know, like our fat tissue. It is a very active organ, almost. And it makes inflammatory signals. And those inflammatory signals can go around your body and make your pancreas not work as well, make your muscle not take up glucose. It can make the blood vessels, you know, a little reactive and make you more prone to cardiovascular disease. So the fat is secreting lots of signals that can be, can be bad for you.
21:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Such as what puts you at risk for that other kind of diabetes, correct? In later life?
21:58 Speaker 03 That's right.
21:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? If you're overweight, as I understood it.
22:01 Speaker 03 Yep. As you get more fat, your body becomes more resistant to insulin. Now, you know, if your pancreas can still deal with that resistance, you don't get diabetes. But, you know, obviously, there's a lot of people whose bodies can't react. And they get diabetes as a result.
22:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right, right.
22:19 Gary O'Reilly? Okay.
22:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So Gary, put us back on track here. So where are we taking this?
22:22 Gary O'Reilly? So the body produces its own steroids.
22:25 Speaker 03 Yes.
22:25 Gary O'Reilly? Okay. But what happens if production starts to go up too far or go down too low? And if we wanted to introduce exterior steroids into the system, how do they interact? How do they play with the endocrine system? So too much natural, too low, and then the introduction of exterior.
22:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Plus, we didn't hear officially yet what a steroid is.
22:52 Speaker 03 Yeah.
22:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Can you just give a minute on that, please?
22:54 Speaker 03 Sure, sure. So the steroid hormones are a class of hormones, and they basically, their backbone is cholesterol. So they all have cholesterol that is used to make these hormones. So cortisol is a steroid hormone, and that is the stress hormone I just talked to you about. Testosterone is a steroid hormone. That's what's really responsible for males being males. And estradiol, which is the female sex steroid, is a steroid hormone. So it's a class of hormones. So when people say steroids, they could mean different things. But from, you know, we're talking about sports. I'm thinking you're talking about androgenic steroids, that is, right? And that's the ones you're talking about.
23:39 Speaker 03 And the reason for that people obviously have a lot of interest in these is because androgens have two different effects that are linked. They help, you know, us males look like males, but they also have this anabolic effect on muscle. And they, people's muscles get bigger. And I think we all know what those folks look like. So, you know. Interestingly, there are really rare, rare situations where somebody might make too much of a sex steroid.
24:15 Chuck Nice? Tell me about it.
24:17 Speaker 03 Yeah. But most of it, you know, unless you are, you know, a comedian on a talk show radio. You know, most of them are, they're taking those androgenic steroids from outside in one way or the other to help enhance performance.
24:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So do, do, do women also make testosterone?
24:43 Speaker 03 They do, but a very, very, very small amount.
24:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And how do they make it?
24:48 Speaker 03 So that's very interesting. Estradiol, which is the female sex steroid, is actually made from testosterone.
24:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh.
24:56 Speaker 03 Yeah. Wow.
24:58 Gary O'Reilly? Yeah, I was about to ask.
24:59 Chuck Nice? Oh, wait, that's why, that's why when men get like really fat, they stop producing as much testosterone and they start growing boobs.
25:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, they're called moobs, man boobs.
25:09 Chuck Nice? Oh, that's right.
25:10 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah. So it turns out that you need an enzyme to convert that testosterone to estradiol. And when you're more fat, then you have more of that enzyme. And so you make more estradiol for that reason.
25:23 Chuck Nice? Ah.
25:24 Speaker 03 And so there's this balance between testosterone and estradiol that gets a little flipped. And once that happens, men can get breast development.
25:31 Gary O'Reilly? Everybody kind of defaults to the anabolic steroids. But is there another way that you could get a boost, similar kind of boost in performance from the endocrine system without using this anabolic steroid?
25:48 Chuck Nice? Instead of an external acceleration, why not something that prompts your body to do it on its own or prompts your body to fall out of balance so that you get all muscle-like?
26:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wait, Gary, is so, so the, the doping rules, do they specifically say you can't put a chemical from outside your body inside your body? But if I can do something inside my body that gives me all of the hormones of the steroids that I want and would have added to me, but I made it myself, is that then legal?
26:24 Gary O'Reilly? Um, there is a gray area because you know, there's always a gray area.
26:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, of course.
26:29 Gary O'Reilly? Uh, Casas semania, the, the female middle distance runner has a higher natural level of testosterone. They're going ape over this. They really are going nuts as to what to do or not to do.
26:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
26:40 Gary O'Reilly? And so, I mean, and the other thing is, if, if you remember, we did a show on horses and horsepower.
26:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
26:48 Gary O'Reilly? And then we, we, we were introduced to the fact that a horse's spleen can produce a rush of red blood cells, highly oxygenated red blood cells that help an initial burst of speed.
26:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? In that racehorse moment, yeah.
27:00 Gary O'Reilly? And I'm just wondering, do we have similar facilities for ourselves to be able to do that? And we're not quite thinking that this could be something to use.
27:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, can I sit in a lotus position and increase my spirit? Just by, just by thinking it, all right? Have that power over body.
27:20 Speaker 03 Well, you know, I think that one of the things that I think we've been talking about is that these hormonal systems are acting in the background and we're not even aware that they're acting. Right? But there are, for example, like if you're stressed, you're not going to make that much testosterone. So any amount of stress is going to reduce your testosterone to, to the extent that that testosterone is important for maintaining your muscle mass, for example, then that's going to affect your performance. Uh, for example, you know, so, you know, you would be, I guess it would be an indirect way of making sure that you're making the optimal amount of, of, in this case, testosterone. But that would be true for potentially any, any other system.
28:05 Speaker 03 But in terms of sort of natural ways of, of boosting hormone production, so, for example, in the, in, in the testosterone system, you know, if, for example, you have reduced sexual activity, you will then have reduced, slowly reduced production of testosterone. I, I guess that there's nothing that you could do to boost it that.
28:31 Speaker 03 You know, you wouldn't, you'd have to have a control mechanism. And I think that's what we're lacking. So is there a natural way for me to boost testosterone, but not let it be too high? Because, you know, I mean,
28:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You need a knob attached to your body where your body doesn't shut down the high level that it's trained to do.
28:47 Speaker 03 But the body already has the knob. So the hypothalamic pituitary system is that knob. It doesn't let you make too much or too little.
28:54 Chuck Nice? So now, what about gaining muscle? Because you always, anybody who gains muscle, they're like, the best way to increase your testosterone is to build muscle, because your body says, I gotta have more testosterone. Is that, is that real? Or is that like, something that these, these companies do to get you to buy their little muscle making stuff?
29:15 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah.
29:16 Chuck Nice? Yeah, the metabolic supplement company.
29:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Product not investigated or approved by the FDA.
29:20 Speaker 03 Yeah. I mean, you know, everybody's looking for this magic bullet to increase vitality. Let's call it that, for lack of a better word. And with that, there was this huge surge in even high school kids using anabolic steroids in the late 90s and 2000s to try and get bigger for either sports, or just even how they looked. But even prescriptions for testosterone have gone up from the late 90s, it was like $18 million worth, and now it's like $18 billion worth.
29:57 Chuck Nice? Oh, my gosh!
29:58 Speaker 03 This is big, big business. Big business. In my opinion, you should use testosterone when someone has a bona fide, organic reason for not making testosterone. Like, for example, you had a pituitary tumor, and it got taken out, but now you can't make the hormones that help you make testosterone. Okay.
30:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I'm bombarded with commercials that say, at your age, you have lower testosterone here. Buy this supplement.
30:20 Speaker 03 Low T.
30:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wait, so, so if that's correct, then you are supplementing the testosterone that you once had in your older age, right?
30:31 Speaker 03 Yeah. And this, this has been long known, this natural decline in testosterone that occurs in men at a relatively slow rate compared to women who go under menopause, and then their fall in estradiol is really very dramatic in the first year after menopause. But in men, it's this slow decline. And this is like a question, right? Like, this is just a natural thing that happens. Maybe there's a reason that this natural thing happened.
30:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, with death is natural too, but that doesn't mean I have to embrace it.
31:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Let's be clear about that.
31:02 Chuck Nice? Yeah, I'm not racing towards it.
31:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Don't say, "Nature would have it that way, and so should you." No.
31:08 Gary O'Reilly? All right, so doctor, is it now, you've talked about an amazing bump in the sale of testosterone as prescription drug. Is it not just performance enhancement or muscle growth? But people are using it as an anti-aging supplement?
31:24 Speaker 03 Yeah, and that's the major driver.
31:25 Gary O'Reilly? And it's become a fashionable trend?
31:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Let's put a pin in that until the third segment, where I want to get more into what role these hormones are playing on what it is to be male or female in the first place. So, when StarTalk Sports Edition returns.
31:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We're back, StarTalk Sports Edition. I've got a professional endocrinologist in the house, in the Zoom house, I guess we'll call it that, Dr. Aniket Sidhaya, telling us all about hormones and what we thought we knew and more stuff we didn't know we didn't know. So, let me introduce this segment, this third and final segment, by asking. You described categories of hormones that make us female, that make us male biologically. And now, we are living in a world where trans athletes are striving to be recognized in
32:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? sports, in a category, in a sex category, different from what they were assigned at birth. And so, what does your community say and think about this? Because to the extent that I've thought about it, not that I have any expertise, but I like to think of myself as rational and thoughtful, that maybe we no longer contest athletes by sex, men against men, women against women. You have categories of hormones. Hormones, how much female hormone do you have relative to male hormones? And those go into categories, then you just compete in your hormone category. And who cares whether you're male or female at that point? So what?
33:17 Speaker 03 Yeah, I mean, that's a very-
33:19 Chuck Nice? Like a hormonal weight class.
33:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes, basically. Because I used to wrestle, we had 10 fricking weight classes, right? Because you know, you can't pit people vastly different weights against each other, and you still want to have an interesting contest, right? So I can look at the 118-pound wrestlers, it'll be just as interesting as the 250-pound wrestlers, because they're matched. And why do we, any of us, watch sports? It's for the matchup. It's for the contest. It's for the suspense of not knowing who is going to win. The most boring Super Bowl ever is a blowout, okay? The advertisers hate it when the team is winning 35 to 6, right? Because no one watches the ads at that point, so...
34:02 Speaker 03 Unless it's the Eagles.
34:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay. Chuck can't shake the Eagles, Dan. Mr. Philadelphia native. So, Dr. Said-Haye, what, tell me, what's your reaction to what I said? And what, how do you guys feel in general?
34:18 Speaker 03 Yeah, I mean, I think, so at a very basic level, we know that testosterone can increase muscle mass.
34:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Of anybody, in anybody.
34:26 Speaker 03 Of anybody, that's right. And power, the power output of that muscle. So I think that that's something that society has to contend with. I think your suggestion is very interesting and creative. Like, could we have, just like you have age categories or weight categories?
34:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
34:43 Speaker 03 Could you have a testosterone level category? And I think that, you know, my initial reaction was like, wow, that'd be a great solution. But then, the problem is that the normal range of testosterone is extremely wide. And, you know, it goes from like 300 to like- 1200 in the units that we typically use to measure. And one person could be at 900 and that's normal for them. And another person could be at 400 and that's normal for them. And so I don't think that we have the measurements sophisticated enough to kind of do that type of categorization because I-
35:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wait, wait, but what you can't, but they take blood samples and urine samples every day during contests. So it's not like we don't have access to the chemistry of your body in very important athletic events. What I would ask is if your natural testosterone is 800 and mine is 400, can I beat you in an event? Can't, if we're otherwise equal, but our testosterone levels are different, are we really otherwise equal? Because, because you know, what, what is, what is professional sports if not, I will do everything I can to gain an advantage over my competitors. I will train at high altitude. I will, I will do breathing exercises. I will take all my vitamins. I will eat three squares. I will get a full night's sleep. I'll carb load if I have to.
36:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All of these are steps I'm taking to give me an advantage beyond my pure genetics.
36:11 Chuck Nice? But, but if you're relating this just to a genderized aspect, then what I think the doctor is saying is inside of that normal parameter, you're going to find that men are pretty much going to be much larger than women. And even if you have a woman who is, who is superior testosterone, who has superior testosterone than her counterparts, she's probably still going to fall at the very low end of a man.
36:43 Gary O'Reilly? Physically, in the terms of the physicality.
36:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wait, wait, wait, wait, I thought we were talking about hormones here. Because yes, there are people who are bigger than other people, right? And so big people play football, all right? I'm not saying, oh my gosh, that's not fair. You had a genetic advantage because you're 300 pounds and I'm 150 pounds. No, they play football and I pay to watch them and they entertain me, right? So we shouldn't walk into this saying, oh my gosh, some people have genetics that make them better at this, you know? Michael Phelps, does he have floppier feet and big feet that give him extra propeller blades when he's swimming? Okay. Are we saying disqualify him because of this? No.
37:21 Gary O'Reilly? All right, rather than just narrowly pinpoint testosterone, doctor, are there other hormones that we could sort of bundle in together to then use as categorization through as well as weight and physicality?
37:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wait, wait, wait, wait, Gary, he didn't answer my question yet. Could chuck the butt in. But so here it is. We'll get to what you said, Gary, because that's important. I'm simply asking, in a race of any kind, in a contest of any kind that involves strength, agility, the things that the testosterone, well, not agility, but strength, certainly, the testosterone, and speed, the testosterone may give you. If you checked everyone's testosterone level in a race, would it be ordered by how much testosterone they have statistically?
38:10 Speaker 03 That's a good question, and I think the answer to that is no.
38:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? If 800 is normal for you and 400 is normal for me, can I beat you at an event?
38:20 Speaker 03 Yes.
38:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because if I, well, okay.
38:21 Speaker 03 Right.
38:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So.
38:23 Speaker 03 There's the deal.
38:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Step so then.
38:25 Chuck Nice? So, no, so what you're saying makes perfect sense. If it's a hormonal weight class and you're able to categorize people by their testosterone number, yeah, then you just test everybody and that's your weight class.
38:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's a weight class, right.
38:39 Chuck Nice? Now, it's like, all right, how hard did I train? It's like, what is my strategy? It's like all these other factors because we are equally matched when it comes to our hormonal state.
38:51 Gary O'Reilly? You're leveling the pace.
38:52 Speaker 03 I just want to, I just want to indirect one thing that, you know, the testosterone, like I said, 400 could be normal for me, 800 could be normal for Neil, right? And then we're both normal. So that's where I think your difficulty would be coming in coming a class. So, you know, how would you make a category? 200 to 400 is one category?
39:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, it'll take some effort, yes. Somebody's got to do some research on this. Why, why, I mean, why not? If that's the direction we're going.
39:22 Chuck Nice? Yeah, and then you'll find people actually depressing their testosterone numbers.
39:28 Chuck Nice? So that they could be the superior athlete in the lower weight class.
39:32 Gary O'Reilly? So is there, are there other hormones, doctor, that we could, as I said, bundle into the testosterone group to then even better equate the playing field and level it out?
39:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And by the way, what is the pipeline for that? It's kids in school wanting to be athletes, right? And how does your profession interact with the entire pipeline of people who need hormone therapy or endocrine therapy?
40:04 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah, I guess there's sort of two questions there. One is, I think that because the purpose of the hormone system is to maintain balance, right? I think that's where this difficulty in finding this hormonal weight class will be. Because what is going to be balance in me is not exactly balance in you. So I think that people are always trying to develop prediction tools and putting in more pieces into that prediction tools. But I think it would be a big stretch to come up with some kind of multi-hormonal categorization of people to level the playing field.
40:45 Speaker 03 In terms of where we, our field interacts, I think probably the biggest place is in persons who have diabetes and
40:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You mentioned that as like the number one endocrine failure of the body, yeah?
40:59 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah, I mean, certainly in endocrinologists in practice, we take care of patients with diabetes. It's the bulk of our practice. But in terms of kids who are participating in sports, those people who also have diabetes, it's a big challenge for them. And, you know, really watching them overcome those hurdles is really, it's really kind of inspiring, to be very honest, that despite having this chronic illness, which requires a lot of work on their part to help manage themselves, they still take care of sports. And we try and help do it so that they can do it in a safe way. And, you know, talking about diabetes, diabetes is a deficiency of insulin. And so we treat it by giving back insulin to the patient. The problem is that our ways of giving back insulin
41:45 Speaker 03 Don't have the advantages that the body has. Remember, I told you about that link between how glucose stimulates insulin. Insulin goes up, and then, once glucose comes down, insulin comes down. But when we ask a patient to take an injection of insulin, we can't take it back. So even when the glucose comes down, that insulin is still there. So an athlete, so normally, when people start working out, their glucose levels fall just a little bit, and their insulin levels fall as well, normally speaking.
42:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I hadn't fully appreciated that, because as my sugar levels go up and down, my body goes in and regulates it. But if I don't have the ability to regulate it, and I put in the insulin, that's a fixed amount of insulin. And so, that's why the diabetic people always have to manage their sugar intake in the way none of the rest of us do.
42:33 Speaker 03 Yeah.
42:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's interesting.
42:35 Speaker 03 It's an amazing amount of work that patients with diabetes do.
42:37 Gary O'Reilly? Is there a technological solution to this?
42:40 Speaker 03 Yeah, I'm glad you brought it up. You know, there's both technological and biological solutions, you know, that in our field, we're just super excited about both, potentially. So we have continuous glucose monitors. So these are devices that people wear on their body, and they have little catheters that dangle just beneath the skin, and they're sampling that fluid every five minutes, and measuring the glucose. It turns out, that fluid's glucose mirrors the blood's glucose pretty closely. And the device companies have come up with now, this glucose information can be transmitted to an insulin pump.
43:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right.
43:15 Speaker 03 And the insulin pump is delivering insulin in sort of little bits at a time. And now, these insulin pumps can adjust the amount of insulin that they deliver based on the glucose information.
43:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Just as your body would have done, yeah.
43:27 Speaker 03 As your...
43:28 Chuck Nice? It's like a pacemaker for insulin.
43:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah, very good, Chuck.
43:32 Speaker 03 Yeah.
43:33 Gary O'Reilly? You microdose, because I used to have a teammate of mine, back in the day, Gary Mabber, who was an exceptional footballer, went to the very, very top of the game in English football. He would have to go away, pop a needle in his hip.
43:47 Gary O'Reilly? Jump all this insulin into his body. But now you're saying this can be kind of microdosed and regulated. So you've not got too much in your system.
43:57 Gary O'Reilly? After you've your glucose levels.
43:58 Speaker 03 That's right. So you know, now that these devices are really just coming on the market in a big way in the last two, three years, people are going to learn to use them more effectively. And there are strategies that, you know, people who study exercise and type one diabetes, that we tell patients so that they can manage their glucose better. And that's important, both for safety, you know, you obviously don't want to have a low glucose in the middle of a workout or the middle of a game, but also performance, you know, when people's glucose is are riding high for a long period of time, guess what? That glucose in the bloodstream is not doing their muscle any benefit. So now we're really optimistic.
44:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because it's in their bloodstream.
44:36 Speaker 03 That's right, and not in their muscle to help them. So these devices, I think, are going to make it easier for, you know, people and kids to participate in sports in a more safe way. Then, of course, there's these biological solutions, you know, it was in in the news recently about a stem cell based treatment, which is basically a little pancreas in a in a capsule, let's call it that, where people get injected with these cells. And these cells can respond to glucose in the bloodstream, the way the body would have. And of course, you know, maybe that is going to take a few years to to come to fruition for a large scale, but these trials are ongoing in humans right now.
45:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wow.
45:14 Speaker 03 So.
45:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? This is all very hopeful and you're like, like we all agreed you were young. And so you're going to be in this and you're going to watch this field burgeoning in so many ways. This is very fascinating. Before we close, I want to ask, I guess, what would be an ethical question. All right, we're so busy defining what is normal in this world. You know, are you the normal height, the normal weight, or your functioning? Are your organs functioning the way the average organ should? And then you get some variation in that. And the urge is to say that's abnormal. There's an entire TV show on cable that follows a family with dwarfism.
45:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I think that's what it's called, but they're called little people, right? With the shortened long bones colloquially, the little people. And everything in their life is made little to accommodate their lives. And they're getting along just fine. So who are you as an endocrinologist to say that they are abnormal?
46:18 Speaker 03 Hmm. I think that's a good question, yeah. Anytime, you know, a lot of pediatric endocrinologists obviously are often asked to see people who we say short stature is the way we say it. And, um, you know, normal and abnormal are usually defined based on some population-based data. Um, and
46:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And to be homosexual was considered abnormal in the psychiatric journals until 1987, last I remembered reading about this. And so, so this is clearly a cultural force that needs to operate on top of this, on top of whatever statistics you're finding in the population.
46:58 Speaker 03 Yeah. And I think the better way to think about all of this always is this healthy or unhealthy? Is this stature that is lower than the population norms, is it healthy or unhealthy? And for example, the story that you just described, it is not unhealthy evidently. It doesn't have any negative health consequences. We as doctors, we want to make sure that, okay, does these people who maybe have short stature, are they at increased risk of fracture 20, 30 years down the road? Or are they increased risk of heart disease 20, 30 years down the road? Or maybe not, maybe they're actually protected. So we always would then want to take this, what we're seeing and seeing, is there something unhealthier? Or maybe some advantage to that. And I think you're right. I think we have to be
47:41 Speaker 03 very careful about the labels we put on people. And I think our field, as all fields in medicine, are becoming more sensitive to that.
47:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay. All right. So there's some, there's some hope. But this is in the broader subject of inclusion, really, is what category that would come under. All right, we got to land that plane. All right. This has been StarTalk Sports Edition, all about endocrinology. Neil deGrasse Tyson here, your personal astrophysicist.
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