Dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate

And the adrenal glands produce a bunch of different hormones, including cortisol, the stress hormone.

But the adrenal androgens DHEA and DHEAS tell the body to produce thicker, oilier sweat and to grow hair in new places or thicker, darker hair in places it didn't exist.

So the thicker, more protein-rich sweat, as Cara likes to say, are a feast.

a veritable banquet for the bacteria that lives on our skin, the natural microbiome that lives on our skin, which then eats the sweat and then farts it out.

But if you go through perimenopause, we can test your hormones.

If you're still cycling regularly, but very symptomatic, I can look at your progesterone, your estrogens, your testosterone, DHEAS.

But markers, there are other markers.

There's a marker called FSH, follicle-stimulating hormone, and it tends to rise, start to rise about four to six years, like, before you go through menopause.

And that's the thing I always come back to whenever I'm discerning symptoms as well.

Oh, yeah.

So FSH and then also DHEAS.

Don't you, do you see that rising as well?

So what your body now does is it relies on the adrenal glands.

They sit above your kidneys at your lower back and they're releasing a hormone called DHEAS.

That's an acronym for dihydroandrosterone sulfate, like a really long word.

But that's an androgenic hormone that will convert estrogen some estrogen for you when your ovaries stop doing it and your fat tissue your peripheral fat tissue also does some conversion of estrogen for you after the ovaries stop so your inbuilt mechanism might be doing enough to cover you emma um however the silent things about estrogen decline um tend to be bone density that drops.

And Recovery starts with sleep.

So if your sleep is trash, then you automatically, your performance goes down, you rely on caffeine, nootropics, all sorts of stimulants to stay awake or stay focused but the greatest biohack or nootropic out there is really good sleep so focusing on good quality sleep and then there's a hormone that's called DHEAS so that's a hormone that's produced by the adrenal glands, and it acts as a stress buffer.

And they looked at studies and they found that people with low DHEA-S have higher perceived levels of stress and the keyword is perceived because stress doesn't really exist it's how we perceive it you and i can be in the same room and you could be totally calm and grounded when a fire alarm goes off and i could freak out you know pull my hair and you know be super anxious about that same environment, same room, same situation, but you and I can have a totally different response.

And I'm not saying it's all just that.

And if you can stack the odds in your favor in terms of ROI and minimize the risk factors, you're in a pretty good spot.

And the same is true here in terms of risk.

DHEAS and lowering those odds of burning out.

And at the same time, increasing the odds of peak performance.

But in fact, it's 60% from the ovaries in PCOS, 60% in the ovaries, 40% from the adrenal glands.

And the hormone, the androgen in the adrenal glands is DHEA and DHEAS, okay? And DHEA-S and DHEA-A are stimulated by ACTH, which is the pituitary hormone.

And when cortisol is chronically high, your body forms some sort of cortisol resistance like similar to insulin resistance.

And from cortisol resistance, this stimulates ACTH secretion that loses the negative feedback.

And this stimulates the adrenal glands to secrete more DHEA and DHEAS, which increases androgens and leads to PCOS symptoms.

So again, insulin, cortisol, this is the way for PCOS.

Great.

Doctors will diagnose PMOS, and I know we've talked about this in other podcast episodes, using three main signs.

Irregular periods, high androgen hormones like testosterone and DHEAS, and a certain pattern that we see on ovarian ultrasound that we call polycystic ovarian morphology or PCOM.

Those three signs are how we make the diagnosis, but they're not the whole disease.

Underneath those signs, there's something else, a body that tends towards insulin resistance, extra fat around the belly, and a less healthy cholesterol pattern.

So we can use so many different words to describe what we're talking about.

But again, let's think about the women just with the daily stressors, right? Whether it's kids stuff or work stuff or marital stuff or community stuff or in-laws or, you know, whatever those daily stressors are.

So that might be momentary stressors.

You know, like feeling a rapid heartbeat, right? A lot of racing thoughts, maybe, you know, just rushing through the day, you know, all of these things can be a part of it.

They don't have a classically labeled autoimmune disease, but they have what I'm starting to call autoimmune hypothalamitis syndrome.

which is inflammation basically coming from the level of the pituitary and the hypothalamus, driving this cortisol and then influencing what the immune system is doing.

So the immunotherapies and the bacteria and antibiotics and antivirals and all this other stuff may move the needle a little bit, but they don't really completely and holistically elicit a healing response.

I mean, there's so many different ways to go here, but I think for the listener, you know, we understand the concept of emotional stress.