Endocrine Wellness

10/29/2025

Here you go my crazy winter athletes! (I say that with love! 😉). Although I plan on doing more green tea with ginger this winter just to stay warm. 😊

A recent study found that teaming green tea with ginger gave athletes an extra edge—helping them last longer, feel warmer and recover faster, especially in the cold. Green tea alone boosted endurance but adding the ginger resulted in a significant cold-weather performance combination.

This crossover RCT (in 16 recreationally active male adults, average age 23.4 years, VO₂max 46.8 mL/kg/min) was conducted under two environmental conditions: normothermic (21–24 °C) and cold (5–7 °C).

There were four intervention arms, each tested in both environmental settings: placebo (maltodextrin), green tea extract (500 mg, ~45% EGCG), ginger (1 g), and the combined green tea + ginger.

The exercise test was submaximal time-to-exhaustion (TTE) cycling at 70% VO₂max. Outcomes measured were TTE (endurance capacity), respiratory exchange ratio (RER) reflecting substrate usage (fat vs carbohydrate), ratings of perceived exertion (RPE), thermal sensation (TSS) and muscle soreness (Visual Analogue Scale, VAS) 24 hours post-exercise.

Under normothermic conditions green tea (and the combination with ginger) significantly increased TTE versus placebo, and reduced RER (suggesting greater fat oxidation) compared to placebo. The combination also lowered RPE compared to both the placebo and ginger alone. Under cold conditions the combined herbs significantly improved TTE, lowered RER and improved TSS compared to placebo and ginger alone. Ginger by itself did not meaningfully affect TTE or RER under cold, but it did improve thermal sensation and reduce muscle soreness (VAS) relative to placebo. All treatment arms (green tea, ginger, combined) reduced muscle soreness (VAS) compared to placebo (in cold). The placebo under cold conditions had higher RPE and higher VAS (muscle soreness) than in normothermic conditions, confirming that cold imposes additional stress.

This was a well-designed exploratory trial, with each participant serving as their own control, reducing intersubject variability (crossover design). Limitations include that it was in men only, the small test number and the fact it was only a single dose study.

The take home message is that green tea extract seems to boost endurance and shift metabolism toward fat oxidation under “normal” temperatures, whereas in cold stress, combining green tea with ginger confers additive or synergistic benefits: boosting performance, improving thermal comfort and aiding recovery. In particular, ginger appears to contribute more on the perceptual/comfort/soreness side rather than on pure endurance or an energy substrate shift under cold conditions.

For more information see: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41010475/

10/28/2025

Don’t miss out on this virtual presentation coming up on Nov. 7th and 8th for health care practitioners! Visit www.endocrinewellnessgroup.com for more information and to sign up!!!

09/24/2025

Informed consent is knowing all the risks and benefits so we can make better choices. And trying to understand all the possible triggers for NDD is ALSO about making better choices. That could be cleaning up the environment, our food, better vaccine testing…spacing out vaccines…whatever is necessary to protect and keep our kids healthy. I don’t understand how anyone would be against that…

09/23/2025

09/18/2025

Eat your cabbage! But if you don’t want to do that, take Cruciferous Complete! The most natural DIM product out there because it’s actually concentrated cruciferous vegetables. It will have multiple health benefits beyond just taking a DIM supplement. 🥦

Diindolylmethane (DIM) is a metabolite naturally produced from glucobrassicin after the consumption of cabbage family vegetables. It has attracted scientific interest for its potential health benefits, particularly in hormone regulation and cancer prevention. DIM influences oestrogen metabolism by promoting the conversion of oestradiol into less potent metabolites, which may reduce oestrogen dominance-related conditions. But it also has antimicrobial properties.

In a novel finding, scientists have recently discovered that DIM can cut plaque-causing bacteria in the mouth by 90%. The human mouth provides an ideal environment for bacteria such as Streptococcus mutans, a key contributor to tooth decay. After eating, S. mutans thrives in the warm, sugary conditions inside the mouth, forming a sticky biofilm on the teeth. This biofilm leads to plaque buildup, erodes enamel and causes cavities.

The study found that DIM was able to attenuate S. mutans biofilm formation by 92%. Also, treatment with DIM lowered extracellular polymeric substance (EPS) production and decreased its durability significantly under acidic conditions. EPS is the protective, gel-like matrix secreted by bacteria that surrounds the cells in a biofilm. These anti-biofilm and anti-virulence properties of DIM against S. mutans bacteria in an "oral setting" provide clear evidence for its usefulness in reducing biofilm formation, and potentially for caries prevention.

“The molecule, which was found to have low toxicity, could be added to toothpastes and mouthwashes to greatly improve dental hygiene,” says lead author Prof. Ariel Kushmaro.

In the meantime, I guess we can chew on the tablets!

We might also wonder if DIM can exert antibiofilm properties elsewhere in the body, such as in the gut and bladder. In other test tube studies, DIM consistently prevented biofilm initiation and weakened EPS matrix production across Gram-negative, Gram-positive and fungal pathogens at low- to mid-micromolar concentrations. It was less effective against established/mature biofilms, but did show antibiotic synergy.

If you want to generate significant amounts of DIM in your digestive system (from the stomach downwards), bloodstream and ultimately urine, you will need to eat your Brassica vegetables raw and chew them well. Anyone for coleslaw?

Unfortunately, you can’t generate DIM in your mouth by chewing on cabbage; we need our stomach acid for that.

For more information see: https://scitechdaily.com/natural-molecule-wipes-out-90-of-cavity-causing-plaque/
and
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37370336/

09/14/2025

09/07/2025

Take time to listen to the whole video! It isn’t about taking away vaccines for those who want them but about making them safer.

08/21/2025

I don’t know how far they will go to research this, but it feels like a step in the right direction. This could also help explain why medications create so many vitamin and mineral deficiencies! How can you absorb nutrients when the microbiome is being affected in such a way that nasty bugs are thriving?! Think about the connection between the gut and the brain AND our immune system!!! NO drug is without side effects and maybe some they didn’t know about before now. 😳

A new and rather alarming study has found that many drug medications targeting various systems in the human body might also change our microbiome so that pathogens can colonise the gut more easily and cause infections. The study, directed by Professor Lisa Maier of the Interfaculty Institute of Microbiology and Infection Medicine Tübingen (IMIT) and the Cluster of Excellence ‘Controlling Microbes to Fight Infections’ (CMFI) at the University of Tübingen, has been published in the elite journal Nature.

The researchers studied 53 common non-antibiotics, including allergy remedies, antidepressants and hormone drugs. Their effects were tested in the laboratory in synthetic and real human gut microbial communities. About one-third of these medications promoted the growth of Salmonella, bacteria that can cause severe diarrhoea. Lisa Maier, senior author of the study, says, “The scale of it was utterly unexpected. Many of these non-antibiotics inhibit useful gut bacteria, while pathogenic microbes such as Salmonella are impervious. This gives rise to an imbalance in the microbiome, which gives an advantage to the pathogens.”

The researchers observed a similar effect in mice, where certain medications led to greater growth of Salmonella. The consequence was severe disease progression of salmonellosis, marked by rapid onset and severe inflammation. This involved many layers of molecular and ecological interactions, such as reduced total biomass of the gut microbiota, harmed biodiversity or the specific elimination of microbes that normally compete for nutrients with the pathogens.

“Our results show that when taking medications we need to observe not only the desired therapeutic effect but also the influence on the microbiome,” says lead author Anne Grießhammer.

The researchers recommend that the effect of new medications on the microbiome should be systematically included in research during development – especially for drug classes such as antihistamines, antipsychotics or selective oestrogen-receptor modulators. These findings call for pharmaceutical research to be rethought: in the future, medications should be assessed not only pharmacologically, but also microbiologically. “If you disrupt the microbiome, you open the door to pathogens – it is an integral component of our health and must be considered as such in medicine,” stresses Maier.

However, it is important to emphasise that this research is preliminary and needs to be confirmed, and its impact in humans has still not been clearly established. These findings contrast with the growing insight from herbal research indicating that many phytochemicals in medicinal plants have the opposite effect, acting as prebiotics and thereby enhancing the growth of beneficial bacteria.

For more information see: http://bit.ly/3VcNRK0

08/16/2025

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