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What is the best supplement for me? What potency is right? What does the research show? Is it worth the money? These and all of your other supplement questions are answered here. Jared St. Clair brings well researched information so that you can make more informed decisions regarding your health, specifically focused on how to effectively use natural supplements to optimize your health and Vitality. Of course supplement and food choices aren't the only factors in optimal health. Jared also shares a regular series of Emotional Vitality episodes that will help you release the negativity that may be holding you back and embrace your full potential. Vitality Radio is not JUST about health, it is about HEALTH FREEDOM. Jared provides needed insight into the current threats to your health as well as the threats coming from government agencies, pharmaceutical companies and modern medicine as a whole. With over 35 years of experience in the natural products world, and a hearty dose of wit and sarcasm, Vitality Radio isn't just educational but entertaining and enlightening.
Dr. Todd Cameron
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[00:00:00]
Jared: Welcome to Vitality Radio. I'm your host each and every week. My name is Jared St. Clair and I've got a fantastic show for you today. I spent about an hour and a half, maybe close to two hours with this gentleman just a week or so ago in his office in Salt Lake City, and uh, I thought, you know what? It's time I get this guy back on the show now.
Years ago he was on when we, it was just a radio show locally, but I might it that, that's gotta be 10 years ago or something close to that. Uh, and of course now we've got the podcast, have a much, uh, many more ears listening to the show. And I believe that everybody listening needs to, uh, learn from, uh, this gentleman.
I'm not gonna tell you who he is just yet, but I will in a moment. Uh, we're gonna talk about this though. We're gonna talk about testosterone. We're gonna talk about testosterone, not just how it applies to male health [00:01:00] and hormone balance, but also how it applies to female health and hormone balance.
We're gonna talk about blood tests and we're gonna talk about the various types of blood tests and how certain types of physicians look at blood tests differently. We're gonna talk about normal range, uh, of blood test results. We're gonna talk about a naturopathic or functional medicine approach versus the more, uh, conventional approach to, uh, looking at all these things.
That's the topic that we're talking about, and I want to tell you that if you have questions about anything you hear on the Today's Show, you can give us a call at (801) 292-6662. That's 8 0 1. 2 9 2 66 62 at Vitality Nutrition in Bountiful. You can of course come visit us if you're in the area, or you can jump on our website and we have a chat window there for you if you have questions@vitalitynutrition.com.
Okay, so now I'm gonna tell you who I'm gonna talk to. This guy happens to be my doctor. Uh, he's the guy I go to for my [00:02:00] blood work. He's the guy I go to when I'm trying to figure out what the heck's going on with my health that I can't seemingly figure out on my own. I've known him for a long, long time.
His name is Dr. Todd Cameron. He's here in, well, mill Creek, Utah now just moved to a beautiful new office that, uh, I've, uh, had the pleasure of visiting a couple of times and, uh, I am so excited to bring his wisdom to the Vitality Radio podcast. Todd, welcome to the show.
Todd: Thank you Jared. Good to be here.
Jared: So let's, uh, start off by, well, I'm sorry.
Todd: you, you want me to give you a p your, uh, listeners, a little, a little vignette about who I am and what I do.
Jared: That's what I was just gonna ask. Yeah. Give us a little bit of history. I obviously know you well, but, uh, most of these people have never heard of you. So let's, uh, let's tell 'em a little bit about your history and, and how you're practicing medicine now.
Todd: Sure. [00:03:00] Um, uh, I started as a bum in the 1970s. I was just a climbing bum. Um, uh, I got my E M t, I got my advanced emt. I never thought I'd go inside to do anything. I lived in a rural area in Idaho, started a quick response unit in a very needed needy place. Medicine was 60 miles to the south on a hundred miles to the north, so we needed a, uh, an emergency response team in my rural area.
And so I helped form that. And lo and behold, uh, years later, I was a climbing buddy of, mine's a nurse. I ended up in nursing school. I never, ever dreamt in my. I would end up as a nurse. I was an ICU nurse at Primary Children's and then just figured I'd go to med school and become an ER doc and, and just continue my bohemian lifestyle, you know, work three, four nights a week.
And, but then I left to go back. I had to finish pre-med stuff, you know, or organic chemistry and physics and I don't remember what else. So I couldn't work at the ICU anymore. And I, a friend of mine ran University Home [00:04:00] Health and I got a job in home health. I could work it around my schedule, my school schedule.
And that's when I saw the dark side of medicine, Jared. That's when I saw, I mean, emergency medicine always made sense to me. Wilder's medicine made sense. ICU medicine made sense, but, but oh my gosh, polypharmacy, uh, unneeded operations, uh, sick people getting sicker. Um, I, I, I just, I, I couldn't, I, I was despondent.
I was realizing, oh my gosh, I'm gonna go to med school. They're gonna, I'm gonna say something about too many drugs and they're gonna kick me out. So it was right about, at that time that I learned about naturopathic medicine. I didn't really know about it, and, uh, toured a couple colleges and decided, wow, this is basically the route I'm gonna take.
And, uh, and then, so I graduate, I, I got outta residency in 97, and my wife and I started Cameron Wellness Center, and boy, it's 2023. Wow. Things, things have,
Jared: so 26 years.[00:05:00]
Todd: yeah.
Jared: 26 years of doing naturopathic medicine
Todd: Well, I, I would
Jared: might as well
Todd: I, I would kind of say functional, you know, because we're gonna, you, you, yeah. In your introduction, you spoke a couple of words. I want to clarify when we get into this,
Jared: All right, so 26 years of functional medicine, which has actually, I think, become a more known term, uh, of late, I feel like it gets thrown around there, uh, a little bit more often now, uh, than it once did. Uh, so let's go ahead and talk about that. What is functional medicine versus more conventional, uh, doctoring, I guess.
Todd: Sure. And, and, and in my opinion, and this isn't a hundred percent correct, of course, and I'm, I, you know, I fully, I have oodles and gobs of respect for my MD colleagues that, uh, study and practice, uh, functional medicine. As a matter of fact, I, if, if somebody is like out of state or can't come to see me, um, but they need somebody in their area, I will ask them [00:06:00] to look for, um, I'll, I'll tell them to go to either the Institute for Functional Medicine or even better WorldLink Medical.
And find a person that was trained underneath some of my mentors in their area. Um, but it, it's, the approach is, you know, as we know the, the medical approach. I mean, like I say, you know, if I have an arrow sticking out of my. I want, I want you to take me to the emergency room and patch me up. You know, if I have a heart attack, I want you to take me to the emergency room.
There's a time and a place to engage, uh, modern medicine. Um, we're pretty darned good and science has come a long way to help, um, you know, uh, a lot of these emer emergent, um, conditions. But, but it's the long haul. It's the, it's the aging. It's the polypharmacy. It's the polypharmacy is a fancy way of saying just too many drugs.
And, you know, medical schools are funded by large pharmaceutical companies. Um, you are taught, I mean, I had a colleague when I was in medical [00:07:00] school. Um, we walked our dog at this park after school some days and, and I met this woman who always looked so sad. And we ended up, our dogs played together and she was a family practice doc.
She's quite young. Uh, family practice doc working for, uh, Kaiser Permanente and. She told me that she had 11 minutes for a new patient and six minutes for a return patient. And her job was to whip out her, her pad, write a prescription, and get on. And she had a quota, so she had to see x number of patients in her shift or else she was, her pay was docked.
And so this type of disease care is got kind of gotten outta control. And we, I, I know that your listeners are uber aware of this, right? So really just when you look at naturopathic medicine, you look at functional medicine, um, and really what you're looking at is you're working, you're, you're not, yes, you're looking at [00:08:00] numbers, of course, you need to know how to understand the numbers, the labs and the stuff like that.
It's very important. But you're also listening to your patients about how they're feeling. You're not just treating a number, you're treating. People and you, you need to communicate with those people and you need to ask them to communicate with you so that you can get the information that you need to make any changes.
Because the answer isn't all in the number. So the functional aspect of it is really you're, you're, you know, in each area of, like in my clinic we do iv a lot of IV therapy. We do a lot of thyroid stuff, a lot of hormone stuff. We do, I do a lot of regenerative injections into joints and stuff like that.
And each patient is different. Each patient is special. Each pa they don't all, you know, it's just like people don't eat the same dietary intake, you know, and one dietary intake doesn't really fit everybody. You've gotta figure out what works best for you. And it's the same thing in functional medicine, naturopathic medicine.
You've gotta, you've gotta work with a patient and so that you can get to a place [00:09:00] where not only do the numbers work, okay, and we'll talk about that in, you know, in. The minutes to come, but, but also there's, they're looking you in the eye. I had an 82 year old architect come in here yesterday and, and he says, I started him with thyroid and testosterone.
And he's going, omg. I, I didn't know how miserable I was until I'm not miserable anymore. I have, he could ride his stationary bike in the gym for 12 minutes. His wife says he can do it for 30 minutes now. No problem. I mean, and he's been doing this for eight weeks and his whole life has turned around. And you know, that's the type of medicine I'm talking about where you listen to your patients and you make changes based upon their experience as well as the numbers.
Jared: So let's talk about this just a little bit more then. What would you say on average, uh, happens in your clinic in terms a new patient comes in? How much time are you spending with that patient?
Todd: Uh, we book one hour, uh, a actually a, a new [00:10:00] patient. And, and there are caveats to this. So if you're coming in for an iv, no, I'm not gonna meet with you for an hour. You, if you're just coming in, cause you have a cold and I've never met you before, I'm gonna listen to your heart, your lungs. I'm gonna make sure you're not dying, and then I'm gonna hook you up with an iv.
Right. And that, and you're mostly just gonna be paying for the iv, but no, the, the, the ones that I'm working with, uh, for the long haul, you know, the age management, uh, they make an appointment, uh, for two hours. Uh, they pay upfront for that appointment if they can, and then they, they get one full hour. The blood draw, we do that day, that's extra.
Uh, I don't pay for their blood, their blood tests. They have to pay for their blood tests. And then we have another hour. Once we, once we get the blood test back, we have one more hour, and then we hit the ground running.
Jared: So an hour of basically assessing what's going on with the patient, then a blood draw, and then an hour going, uh uh, where you're talking to them about the results of the blood draw [00:11:00] and the approach
Todd: true. We,
Jared: is
Todd: and if I can, if I can fit it in at the end of the second hour, we talk a little bit about supplementation and dietary intake, dietary lifestyle. Um, for sure. But
Jared: So Todd, that's one of the things that, I mean, we go way back now. Uh, and I consider you, yes, you're my doctor, but you're also my friend. But one of the things that really struck me the first time I ever went to see you, uh, specifically for my own health, for a, uh, for a, a blood drawn to take a look at what was going on, I was struck and, and frankly I don't think I've ever told you this, but I thought, well, we know each other cuz we knew each other before you became my doctor a little bit.
We met through a mutual friend and I thought maybe he spent an extra time with me because of who I am, because we know each other. We're friends of friends. And then I realized that that's just how you take care of all your patients, which I thought was not only incredibly unique, but really, really incredibly valuable.
Because, [00:12:00] you know, you mentioned at the very beginning, an 11 minute intake with a patient is not enough to assess. Much of anything when it comes to how the patient's doing and to spend an hour or even two hours in this case, like I, at the very beginning of the show, I said that I just spent an hour and a half, two hours with you last week.
Well, that was because I had had my blood drawn, um, you know, a few weeks prior. And it was, it wasn't just me, I was there with my sweetheart and you were looking at both of our blood test results and, and res and uh, uh, co counseling us on, you know, the results of those tests. And that's how you do it. And that to me is.
Beautiful because it really does. I feel like I've got a relationship with you, uh, as a patient. Like you're actually listening to what the heck's going on with my body, with my symptoms, and really have a feel for what's going on. And the more often, or the, not the more often, but the more I see you, uh, the more you, I [00:13:00] feel like we're team, uh, we're teaming up on this thing, not, uh, that I'm going it alone.
And you're giving me a little ad advice along the way.
Todd: Uh, the reason I spend that second hour, uh, So this is what I do. So all of this stuff make complete and total sense to me because I do this all day long, every day I practice. But it can be very, very confusing to people that don't know what these numbers mean. What does that mean, you know? And so they're not only absorbing it, it can be, you know, I, I try and move slow enough that it's not like drinking from a fire hose.
But again, I do this every day in and out. I fully understand what I'm trying to accomplish here and what I'm trying to express and get across. But sometimes the people are, Just like a little bit blown away by, by the amount of information I'm giving them about what their blood is telling me. So you need to take that time because some people are really quick studies.
[00:14:00] Maybe they, maybe they're a nurse, maybe they're a doc, maybe they're a chiropractor, maybe they're, and they, oh yeah, they, you can get through that two hour, that, that last hour meeting and, and, and they can have a credit on their account because we only spent 30 minutes. That doesn't happen very often, but it does happen.
Um, and, but most people, they really, you know, they want, they, once I start communicating with them, they may not have even understood how badly they wanted to understand what's going on with them, but they didn't even know the right questions to ask. They just come in and say, I feel like crap. I just, I'm tired.
I'm tired in the morning. I'm tired in the afternoon. I, what's that guy's name? Where'd I park my freaking car? Um, where's my keys? They, they're just, you know, and why, why is my happy meter like going down to zero? I mean, I used to be a pretty happy person. I used to be pretty active person. Now I'm just like sitting on the couch and flipping through the channels or whatever.[00:15:00]
That's not, that's not life, you know? That's, that's, uh, so helping it, it's one thing to help them understand the numbers and then it's another thing to help them understand that they don't have to feel the way they feel and that it will change now how much it will change. That's.
Jared: Yeah, I, I gotcha. Sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off. So that brings up another really big question for me. So I do a lot of nutritional, uh, counseling at Vitality Nutrition. Um, I've actually had people call me Dr. Jared, and I'm like, no, please don't call me that. Um, but, uh, you know, they talk to me about, you know, diet stuff.
They talk to me about supplementation. They talk to me about, you know, how they're feeling and their mental, emotional health and all these different things. So I, and I, interestingly enough, I usually spend two hours with a person the first time I meet with them, because it just takes that long and I'm not even looking at a blood test result.
But what I have, what [00:16:00] I, I think is really. Kind of fascinating about this whole, what, what you just said is how much it kind of flies in the face of how modern medicine really looks at people. Because we're, we're kind of like just all in this group of, everybody's the same and we have a standard of care for this thing, you know, whatever it is, whether it's blood pressure or testosterone or whatever we're, we're talking about.
And, and it doesn't really matter who the patient is or what's going on other than if their blood says this. We do that. And to me, That makes absolutely no sense cuz we know that every one of us is going to behave a little bit differently on a different drug or even on a different vitamin or mineral herb or anything like that.
So getting a feel for what the, the patient or the client in my case is dealing with and really getting a feel for how they actually feel. Before we hit record, you said, [00:17:00] one of the things I do is I keep track of how my patients are actually feeling and I got this little smirk on my face because I thought, you know what?
I think that's actually like really unique in medicine, which to me is kind of pathetic that that's a unique thing. But the thing I hear from my clients so often is my doctor said everything is in the normal range
Todd: Yep.
Jared: and yet I don't feel good. So explain that to me.
Todd: Okay. Well, uh, the easy way to explain that is normal is a statistical entity. Normal ranges, you know, they, they exist, but a normal range from any lab under any particular subject, whether it's testosterone or, or, you know, glomerular, filtration rate, whatever. Um, there's gonna be normal ranges. And in some cases those normal ranges make a lot of sense and they're accurate and [00:18:00] it's great.
But when it comes to things like, um, especially like testosterone for example, there's no such thing as a normal range. Um, there's no standardization in the, in the laboratory industry, there is none. Uh, if you go to question, you go to LabCorp and you go to IMC and you go to, you know, Kaiser Permanente and you go to someplace else, you're gonna see different ranges.
Uh, And you're actually gonna also see different age groups study. There is no standardization. So especially with testosterone, when you talk about normal range, let me give you an example of how goofy this is Jared in lab cores. So, so I run a total and a free testosterone. A free testosterone is, I'm free, I can do stuff total, uh, uh, uh, a bound up testosterone is, Hey, I'm, I'm bound up.
I can't do anything. So the total testosterone is a combination of both the bound and unbound. Right? Okay. So it's the unbound [00:19:00] that's biologically active. The bound up stuff doesn't, it's not active. So, so the normal range for an adult female and LabCorp for free testosterone is, and I'm not making this up, 0.0 to 4.2 now.
Jared: So somewhere between none and 4.2.
Todd: Can you, I mean, for real, like w uh, I mean what rational human being, the, you don't have to be in medicine to figure out that, wait a minute, 0.0 is within normal range for an adult female. That's exactly not helpful. That is not helpful. It, it, it means, it means absolutely nothing. And so I differentiate between normal and optimal.
In the labs that I do, [00:20:00] normal does not equal optimal. But they don't teach you that in medical school. They teach you that when, well, when it comes to testosterone. Well, when it comes to sex hormones, basically they teach you that a postmenopausal woman should avoid them, uh, because they cause cancer. And maybe worsen your cardiovascular disease.
And they say men over 50 should avoid testosterone because it increases the risk of cardiovascular disease. So we have got data that shoots tho those statements down. They, but, and yet the, some of the, and I don't know if you want to go into the trouble of me naming a couple of studies, uh, cuz I can do that, um, that have colored, that, that have given hormone replacement therapy, a bad name, testosterone replacement therapy, a bad name.
But the, but the take home message is the opposite is true. We have the [00:21:00] scientific literature to prove that. And we also have the anecdotal evidence of people living longer and happier lives. Now, when you put the scientific literature together, along with your, my 26 years of practice, seeing people age more gracefully, having fun, enjoying intimacy.
Staying on the golf course for longer, all of these things, you, you're, you're left with a very, very deep impression of what is right and what is wrong in, in, in science, uh, and, and how it's interpreted in this country. And to get back to one of your points before, I, I can't abide knowing what I know, having learned from my mentors from, you know, the mid nineties.
You know, I, I can't abide, uh, n not not introducing an aging person, man or woman, to the possibilities. Of what their life could be like if they would allow it. Now, some [00:22:00] people are afraid. They're afraid. They've heard, oh, you know, I've heard my, the experts say that, you know, it causes cancer or, or it's gonna make my heart disease worse.
And it's like, well, I can unpack all of that for you very quickly and I can help you understand, and I can give you resources. I can have you go places and read things and watch videos and learn, learn what the scientific literature is actually saying. But back to the normal range things. Yeah, no, there
again, the last thing I will say about it is, yes, of course there are places in medicine where normal ranges absolutely make sense. White, B, blood cell counts, red blood cell counts, you know, kidney function, liver function. Yes, of course. But when it comes to testosterone and in a lot of cases, thyroid, it, you, you, if you can't, there is no such thing as a normal range.
Jared: Well, it's interesting too because, you know, it, it, I'm so glad we're having this conversation. It was just, uh, [00:23:00] probably two weeks ago-ish that I was in at Vitality talking to someone, a gentleman who was concerned about his testosterone, and I asked him if he'd had any. You know, labs done to find out where it was at, and he said, no, I've just been reading up on, you know, the symptoms of low testosterone and I got a whole bunch of them and so I'm wondering what I can do.
That was basically what the conversation was and I said, well, first off, you probably really do wanna know where you're at because that makes a, a big difference in knowing, you know, where you want to go, uh, as far as that goes. But I said, but also keep in mind that it depends on who you see, because if he's going to his regular doc, He's gonna get this blood test.
Uh, he was about my age. I'm 50. So he was, he was going, going to, uh, you know, his regular MD or was considering going to his regular MD And um, I see Todd different ranges, just like you said, depending on, you know, if it's a lab core or quest or whoever it is. But, uh, one that I saw [00:24:00] recently said that the, at the normal range for testosterone and a man that age was 300 to 800.
And we're talking total testosterone here, not free testosterone. Uh, that was the range that I saw on, on somebody's paper that they, they showed me. And I said, so does that seem strange to you? And he said, well, yeah, because if I'm at three 30 and that's where he was, this other customer I was talking to, and the normal range is.
300 to 800, wouldn't I feel better if I was at 800? And I said, well, yeah, probably, probably a lot better if you were at 800. Because the difference between zero and 300 is only 300 points, and the normal range is 500 points. And, and that's even if the normal range is, you know, accurate. Because we, one thing I want you to explain, if you, if you don't mind for a couple of minutes, is where these ranges come from.
Todd: Out of the blue? Uh, [00:25:00] no actually normal ranges. Normal ranges come, uh, and, and this, this is, this is very appropriate again for things like red blood cells, why blood cells, liver function, kidney, all that, it's very appropriate. But when it comes to testosterone, it's ridiculous. What you do is this, if you're LabCorp or if you're Quest, or if you're Kaiser, if you're whoever, you're required by clea.
CLEA is an entity at the government, federal level that is the laboratory certification. I even my little clinic in Mill Creek, I have to. Pay $180 every two years to have a little plaque that says, I can pull your blood and send it to LabCorp, or I can dip, stick your urine. Um, so Clea requires these labs to do statistical analysis of whatever it is that they're measuring in this case, testosterone.
So what will happen is they will take every so often, I don't know, however they have, there's a, there's a actual requirement. I don't know what that is, but it's either every five years, 10 years, something I [00:26:00] don't know. But you must take X number of patients that are already, uh, got their records in, say in this case, LabCorp.
Um, you, you have to weed out who you think is symptomatic from non-symptomatic, and then you have to bell curve, uh, that, and then calculate a 90th percentile. And that 90th percentile will be what your normal range is. So it's, it literally is coming from a statistical analysis. Of a cohort of people, a group, a studied group.
The word cohort means a group of people you study and it, it, but, but here's the reality when it comes to testosterone, I've been in practice for 26 years and 25 years ago, I would never have thought to measure a 23 year old woman's testosterone or a 25 year old man's testosterone. It didn't even occur to me until I met Jay.
I was teaching at the time in a small college down here, and one of my students said, you, [00:27:00] you gotta help my, my boyfriend. He's, he's like, I mean, I don't know what's wrong with him. So Jay comes in, I still treat him. He lives outta the state now. Uh, he comes in and, uh, yeah, of course he's, he's very, he's his, his thyroid is just, and we'll do another podcast on the thyroid, like we talked about, but he was, he was a chocolate mass and.
And so I had this little spidey sense that says, you know, let's look at your testosterone cuz this is just, you know, really low libido. 25 year old with low libido and just exhausted all the time. And his testosterone was that of a postmenopausal man or a post menopausal man. Sorry. And so I just, it, it really woke me up.
And so since then I started doing testing more young people. And this is what I have noticed over the past, especially 15 years, the ranges in their blood are coming down. They're down. Now if I even think somebody has a, a low testosterone, regardless of their age, they do. As a matter of fact, I can tell you [00:28:00] that there's been one patient in the last year that I've tested that fooled me.
He had really good testosterone levels. I said, oh, okay, good. You fooled me. Great. One person in a year. So these normal ranges. So when you, when you study a cohort, That is low suboptimal, way, suboptimal, and then you do your statistical analysis of that cohort. Your normal range is going to be low, very low.
And that's what we're up against right now.
Jared: So then a doctor that's looking at the, I'm sorry. What's that?
Todd: but they don't teach you that in that school. They teach you. At least when I was in this school,
Jared: So a standard, uh, MD traditionally trained or conventionally trained or whatever, that hasn't, uh, looked into the functional medicine side of things, they're gonna look at this normal range. And if a, a man like me goes in there, gets their blood drawn [00:29:00] and my total testosterone is at three 30, like this other gentleman I was telling you about, he's gonna say, you're in the normal range, you're fine.
Todd: yes. If, if the, if the physician is. Uh, yeah, a lot of family practice and internists will not treat a man until his total testosterone gets under 300. Can I unpack that a little bit for you? The reason for that, the reason for that may or may not be that individual doctor. The reason for that is that these normal ranges, um, are there's a consensus bias.
Consensus bias is a term to describe a certain group of, you know, like American Academy of Clinical endocrinologists or, you know, they'll, they'll set what the normal range is. Well then if you're a board certified family practice doctor or internal med doctor or whatever, then you're basically required to practice, quote unquote standard of care.
But that standard of [00:30:00] care wasn't set by you, it was set by your board. So they're basically obliged. To take, uh, an individual who's suffering and tell them in, in so many words, you're, you, you don't, you, you're not there yet. You gotta get down to two 90 before I can treat you. And it breaks my heart because it's like, well, what's functional about that?
I mean, what's, what's beneficial about that? I mean, we have so much scientific data showing that an aging male taking testosterone is much more protected. Same with females, much more protected in their, their brain, their heart, their vessels, you know, their bones, their organs, and glands and tissues. We have scientific literature that that shows that that is a, that is, so that's not, that's not Todd's opinion.
That is fact. Right. But the problem is that some of these facts are coming from [00:31:00] studies that were p very poorly designed, but because they were backed by, you know, large companies spent a lot of money. Doing these things got published in very prestigious journals and, you know, I won't do it on this show, but I, I can start rattling off studies like this.
I can talk to you about a whole bunch of them. But they weren't very well, uh, designed studies. But the data that come out of the study was basically, you know, men over 50 testosterone bad. And so that's what they're basically teaching in, in med school. So, but if you, but if you look at other studies that came out since, you know, the Tom study came out, for example, you're gonna realize, oh my gosh, it's exactly opposite of what they're saying.
But the board is set on their standard of care. And so that doctor is basically kind of stuck unless, unless they decide that they want to work outside of the box. These are the doctors, the MDs I'm talking about and dos that have taken it upon themselves [00:32:00] to study functional medicine. Go to the inter, inter, you know, the, the.
Center for Functional Medicine and start studying the, the, you know, they have a whole bunch of different programs and you just, these people begin to understand this, right? But then they're not as interested in being certified by their board anymore because they don't want that control.
Jared: Mm-hmm. Yeah, so, so, and I've, I've said that to clients for years now, that, uh, a lot of doctors are kind of hamstrung by that standard of care thing. And, and so while, I mean, you can decide who, where to place the blame, but it doesn't really matter. The fact is that that's kind of where you're at. And so they're going to pay a lot of attention to normal range and a lot less attention to how you actually feel as a patient at the number that you're at.
Right. And in many cases, they're not gonna look at all the things you mentioned earlier, um, that you are, you wanna see total testosterone, you wanna see [00:33:00] free testosterone. Um, and, and you're spec you were very specific about. I'm really paying attention to the free testosterone, the stuff that can do stuff, as you said, as you said, right.
Real simple term there. But a lot of, when I talk to a lot of people that have had their testosterone numbers drawn, the only thing that they know is their total testosterone. So let's talk a little bit about what you look for and specifically request from the lab when you're drawing blood versus what maybe a more conventional doctor that's not trained in functional medicine might be looking for.
Todd: I'm, I'm interested in, uh, so, so let's talk about a, an aging male over 50, you know, getting to be postal ish, you know, um, I'm gonna wanna
Jared: do you mind touching on post touch on Ander? Pause for me too. Everybody's heard of menopause. I don't think a lot of people know what pause is. You mentioned that a couple times. Do you mind talking
Todd: Yeah, I mean, I'm sorry, I should have been a little bit more clear. It's basically [00:34:00] male menopause, right? I mean, we go through our own change. It's sometimes not anywhere near as dramatic as a woman who is suffering through her perimenopause, getting into post-menopause. But, um, but we do still have our own.
Clima. I don't know how you want to put it, but it's, so as we age, um, as men, women as well, our, our hormones go down. So our hormones were the highest when we were the healthiest. And that's statistically speaking, uh, in the United States, uh, scientific literature, is it between 18 and 23 years old? So, um, when I, and so that's when we were the healthiest.
And so, by the way, that's where I want to get a guy's testosterone. And a gals too is where it was when she was 25 or he was 25. And that's not too much testosterone. It might look like it on the, the test because it looks like the normal range is higher than normal range. But it's like, no, that's, that's exactly where you want to [00:35:00] be, to be protective.
But uh, the ones that I want to see, especially for a guy, yeah, sure, uh, free and total testosterone. Um, but I also wanna see D H E A Dehydro, epi Androsterone, which is another androgen as a matter of fact, it. Is more ubiquitous in a human body than testosterone. I mean, it's, or estradiol or progesterone. I mean, it's, it's, in terms of sex hormones, it's uh, it's the, it's what we make the most of.
Uh, it's an androgen like testosterone. It's three enzymatic steps away from testosterone. Some of it actually will turn into testosterone, but it is very biologically active itself. So I want to see free and total testosterone estrodiol, uh, and D H e A. And the reason why estradiol is because, uh, a lot of your listeners will have heard of, uh, you know, an expert told me, or this guy in the gym said, or, you know, this other doctor who's, you know, really into body building said, uh, that, you know, you gotta do an aromatase [00:36:00] inhibitor so that we inhibit testosterone changing into estradiol.
And, and that's absolutely insane because the aromatase inhibitors. Man are, man, people get really crazy ideas. They're worried about man boobs. It's like, you're not gonna get man boobs unless you're genetically supposed to, you know? And I've got out of all my patients, Jared, sorry to get off track a little bit.
Out of all the people, all the men I'm treating, I have three guys that have gyn cotia, three out of, I don't even know how many. So you want, but what people misunderstand, especially as we're aging, you know, I mean, I just turned 68, right? And, and there's, then there's cardiovascular disease in my family. So I want to give myself the best shot.
I, I can. So the, the thing that re really surprises people,
Jared: Yeah, go ahead and grab a drink.
Todd: the thing that very much [00:37:00] surprises people is that when I teach them that probably 80 to 85% of the benefit. From doing testosterone in an aging man is because you aromatize it over to estradiol and that's very protective and it blows guys' minds and they're going, well, I don't want man boobs. And I'm like, okay, let me unpack all this for you so that you understand that if you, if you were gonna get man boobs, you would've had 'em before, so you're not gonna get 'em.
Okay. By aroma over to estradiol. We need that estradiol just as much as women do. But of course women need more than we do. We need more testosterone than they do. So, you know, but it's, um, so those numbers that, that's a starting place. We get those numbers. Now I have a baseline and now I see, and, and, and my method, I, I don't.
First of all, I don't know why other clinics and physicians do [00:38:00] just a total testosterone. It, it makes, to me, it makes no physiological sense. Um, but I know that there's clinics around this area for sure. You know, a lot of, lot of like, um, testosterone injection type clinics and stuff like that. They'll do that.
And I, and it, I just, I won't, I don't really understand why. But the point is, is that once you get a, once you get a baseline, my mantra is start low, go slow, because estro di, or I mean testosterone receptors on all of our cells in our body that have testosterone receptors, as we age and the testosterone goes down, we grow more receptor sites.
That's called receptor site up regulation. So we have on our cells lots more testosterone, re uh, grabbing receptor sites. So I want to take at least a month. To down-regulate those receptor sites to where they were when you were about 25 years old. And the way I do it is very [00:39:00] simple. You start with a little bit once a day, then you do a little bit twice a day for the next week, and then you, then you go up to like, if, if you're using a uh, cream, you know, you'll, you'll go up to two clicks in a topic, click in the morning, and one at night.
And then two and two. Now, once you get to two and two, that's, and, and I have put the concentration of testosterone in the cream lower than I think that individual needs to have it. And that way by the time we get to the point where they're using the full dose that I had prescribed, we can pull the blood again and we can run those numbers again.
And then I can adjust things very quickly once we get the individual dialed in. I, because this is fda, you, you, uh, testosterone is a controlled substance and you can't prescribe it for more than six months. And so, you know, it's once we get them dialed in, they're postmenopausal woman or a post-menopausal guy.
Uh, but, but they're dialed in, they're doing good. We know what their [00:40:00] thyroid is, we know what their, all the stuff is. I, I need to see 'em once a year for everything other than testosterone. And then I gotta see that like once a week or, uh, once a twice a year.
Jared: Yeah. And, and to be clear, you, uh, because of the regulation on testosterone from F D A, you've gotta drop blood every six months. Uh, you can prescribe it continually, but you have to have a new blood test in order to prescribe it, right?
Todd: That is correct. And we, we tell people go, don't go six months cuz you're gonna run out, go five months so you have a good month to let us get the blood test back, make adjustments that we need to, that's.
Jared: Gotcha. Okay. All right, so then let's talk a little bit about, we've got, we've got, uh, 15 minutes or so left here. Let's talk a little bit about, uh, first, what, what are your feelings? Because it's, it's funny talking to you. You know, you're on the, on the medical side, you've got the numbers that you can actually look at.
Um, when, uh, in, on my end of [00:41:00] things, I'm, you know, sitting in a, a nutrition store and people are asking me a lot of the same kind of questions they're asking you. They're complaining about a lot of the same kind of issues that they're complaining to you about, um, when it comes to testosterone. And what I have found is really interesting is a lot of times people will come into me and they'll say, um, and, and I, and this is the really fascinating part, and, and frankly concerning part, is that exactly what you just said.
That you would've never thought about looking at testosterone in a 25 year old until you did and realized, oops, there are men that are dealing with this same thing. I've got guys coming in now in their twenties and thirties that have gone to get their blood test and their testosterone is like super low.
I remember this is probably, I'm guessing, but maybe 12 years ago or something like that. I had a, a regular customer I know very well been shopping with me since we were [00:42:00] both much younger men. He's, uh, he's a little younger than me and I believe at the time he was, um, yeah, he was 39, so yeah, it's probably about 10 years ago now.
Anyway, he was 39 and his testosterone number, his total testosterone number was like one 60
Todd: Wow.
Jared: at 39 years old. That's, Crazy low, right? Uh, pretty much anybody would agree that that's low, even in the normal range, which you and I both believe is not, is, is on the low end of things. That's very, very low, especially for a 39 year old.
But now more and more, Todd, I'm seeing more and more younger men complaining about low testosterone symptoms and then they get their blood test and they are indeed very, very low. And, and not all of 'em are below that 300, but my goodness, if you're in your twenties and thirties, if you're anywhere near that, you're very, very low compared to what?
We believe anyway would be normal or [00:43:00] optimal. Uh, certainly levels. What are your thoughts on why this is happening? Because it, we know it's epidemic now. Uh, I just was listening to a podcast today if it was a political podcast of all things, and he was reading through, uh, how, you know, we're somewhere between 50 and 60% lower now, uh, in America, uh, as you know, as men versus what we were in the seventies.
What's going on? Why are so many people struggling with low testosterone in
Todd: It's, it's the chemicals, it's in what we call in the industry in the, in the bioidentical hormone replacement industry. We call it, uh, you know, endocrine disruptive chemicals. Um, and it's, you know, I mean, I, I see this like you, you used the word epidemic. Um, and, and I. I'm on board with that. I can tell you because I've, I've been doing lab tests for 26 years now, and I, I can, I can just tell you that it, it's really [00:44:00] low.
So the question we, we know why, and I, I would add to that, um, you know, like I have three sons and, uh, you know, I'm, you know, I'm all the time kind of ra, ra, you know, ragging on 'em to get their freaking phones outta their front pockets. Those are my grandchildren you're playing around with. Get that phone out of there. Cause people think, oh, well, a little bit of electromagnetic radiation doesn't hurt anything. And it's like, you guys have really no idea what you're talking about. Um, you know, it could be everything from the chemical relay, you know, I, I know it's the chemicals for sure, but I also suspect, you know, the energy in our phones and 5G and just, I mean, just everything, you know, that's, that we're bombarded with is affecting us.
The question I have, and I know I'm opening up a can of work there, I, I know, and I don't want to sound, uh, conspiratorial, but. In my, where I sit seeing what I see, I have to ask the question, [00:45:00] is this purposeful? Like, is this happening on purpose? And I know that sounds crazy, but it's like, why did it happen so abruptly over, I mean, such a small amount of time, like what is going on here?
Um, why is it that, so I have, you know, I I I end up treating families of course, cuz mom and dad come to see me or, or daughter or son or something. And then, you know, pretty much the whole family starts coming in. So here's, here's a couple, you know, uh, not my, about your age. Um, and, uh, they're super worried about their daughter and it's like, well send her in.
So she comes in and, you know, I interview her and stuff and she's, you know, very uninterested and, um, she, I mean, she has a, she has a partner, but she's not interested in. Intimacy very much. And then so, sure. You know, I mean, we do some studies, we do thyroid and testosterone and stuff. And I mean, literally her testosterone [00:46:00] was on a scale that goes up to 4.2.
It was 0.7 at 23
Jared: the normal range.
Todd: That's crazy.
Jared: That is crazy.
Todd: yeah. And so, you know, the question, we, we can answer clearly, we can speak to the endo disruptive chemicals that are in our environment that you can't get away from. You just, you know, you, you'd have to live on a, you'd have to live in a bubble, I swear you, you're just not gonna get away from 'em.
Um, and, and they're affecting us so negatively. Um, that, that, my main question is not why is it happening or, I mean, how it's happening, but why is it happening? That's where my brain goes in the middle of the night, where I'm just going, this is just. This is crazy. I mean, when I, I'm 68 now. I've been using testosterone for a lot of years, but I remember I put it off for a while.
I don't know, I just put it off, put it off. I didn't feel like I was having any problems. But then I noticed one day, um, I was in my, [00:47:00] oh, I, I can't even remember how old I was, but, you know, I was, uh, and, and, uh, you know, I mean, I'm an, I I'm an outdoor guy, you know, I mean, I've been climbing since 1974 and I realized that I didn't care if I went climbing or not.
Like, I was just like, eh, and I was like, oh, that's what got me. I was like, wait a minute. That's not me. Something's happening to me. So the very next day I went and I took my testosterone and my level, which in, and again, a lab core level, a lab core level, I wanna see above 20, 25, even 30. Um,
Jared: A free testosterone.
Todd: yeah, yeah.
But, but it, it taps depending on your age at, in between 18 and 25. And I was, uh, I was seven, 7.6. Um, and I, I just went, oh, well, no wonder I'm lethargic and my, my give a crap meter's kind of going like this. So, you know, I, you can't, I can't prescribe testosterone to myself cuz it's a [00:48:00] scheduled medication.
But, you know, I've got a friend who's a nurse practitioner and I just said, I, let's do it. And that's, I started using it and I've started feeling a whole lot better. And my, my lethargy went away, but I understand me, I'm aging, but I'm still in the same toxic environment as a 23 year old. But they're, they're, you know, all I can say is it shouldn't be like this, but it is.
Jared: Yeah. Okay. So, and, and of course there's a lot to talk about there, and I talk about endocrine disruptors and the things you can do to avoid them versus, because like you said, you know, you can keep the cell phone outta your front pocket, but you're probably not gonna not have a cell phone. Right. And you cannot build your house next to a 5G tower, but you're not gonna avoid 5g.
And the same could be said about endocrine disruptors and all these other things that you can avoid a lot of them, but you can't avoid all of them. And so we are in this kind of toxic soup. We've got a lot of factors going on. Um, and, and, [00:49:00] and we're, we're running law on time. Do it. I have so many other questions.
So let's talk about this really quick. First off, um, bioidentical, you mentioned that. What's the difference between bioidentical hormone replacement and conventional hormone replacement?
Todd: So bioidentical is exactly what it says. It's it, the molecule itself is bioidentical to the molecule that's in your body. If you take something like, um, not, not that I'm totally against this, but, uh, guys that get testosterone shots, they prefer the shots. I prefer the cream. Uh, there's a lot of reasons for that.
But that's not human bioidentical testosterone. It's usually testosterone. SIP eight or some other form of synthetic form. Does it still react with the testosterone receptor side? Of course it does. Yeah. Is there any danger to it? We don't know. We don't have long-term studies. We've got tons of long-term studies on testosterone back to before 1940, but the, the term bioidentical, so, so in a lot of the, in a lot of the studies that have shown a negative [00:50:00] light, especially with postmenopausal women, they've used prempro, which is Premarin, which is pregnant marrow urine, it's 10 conjugated estrogens, and they mix it with Provera, which is a synthetic form of progestin.
That's not progesterone, and that's not estradiol. So, you know, if you're doing birth control pills or a lot of, a lot of obs will provide estradiol, uh, like patches and stuff to their women that are having a difficult time with, with menopause. And that's great. That's, that's human bioidentical. But it's the, it's the synthetic forms that give the whole.
Industry of bioidentical hormone replacement therapy all around the world. It's the synthetic forms that basically give it a bad name. So the thing that I need to be clear with my patients about is cuz they'll say, well, did this come from a human? And it's like, no. What they do is they take like a soy plant, they, they extract the steroid backbone.
There's no soy in it, there's no yam in it, there's no nothing like that. They just extract the steroid backbone [00:51:00] and then they recreate in a lab, testosterone or progesterone or estradiol or D H E A. So it is ex, it is exactly what exists in your body. Same if you took it to a, a mass spectrometer or a liquid chroma, you know, chromatograph, you'd have exactly the same signature.
Jared: Okay. Uh, Todd, I'm gonna edit this part out, but let me just ask you, because we're, we're very low on time. Um, first off, what's your schedule like? Cuz what I'm wondering is I wanna run this on local radio as well as a podcast, uh, because local radio's gonna be much more beneficial for your practice. So I'm gonna run it on a Saturday, uh, locally and then also on the podcast.
But, um, I, there's a few more things that I think we really need to get out. Um, are you okay to record for another 15 minutes or so and we'll, what I'll tell the radio listeners is to tune into the podcast to hear the rest. Would that be okay?
Todd: Yeah.
Jared: Okay, cool. All right, so then for, because we are gonna do this on, on local [00:52:00] radio.
Let's do this really quick. I'm gonna go ahead and interject that. Uh, we're gonna continue the conversation on the podcast, but I want to ask you how people can, uh, you know, reach you, uh, get more information, you know, where your office is, all that kind of stuff. So we'll do that right now. All right, so we are running very short on time and for the local radio audience, uh, here in Salt Lake City and, uh, the surrounding areas, I wanna make sure that Dr.
Cameron's able to give you, uh, contact information and, and those details. And then what we're gonna do is we're gonna pick up the show. Uh, the, the, the podcast version of this episode will run a little longer. Uh, you can go to Vitality Radio Podcast on any of your podcast apps, uh, and you can, so that's gonna be Apple Podcast, Google, Spotify, wherever you wanna find it.
Stitcher, uh, and, uh, you can listen to the rest of this episode there, but for those of you on the local radio, um, I want to make sure, like I say that Dr. Cameron's able to, [00:53:00] uh, get his contact information out there for you. So, uh, Dr. Cameron, how do people reach out to you? Uh, how do they schedule an appointment if they want to have you take a look at what's going on with them and all that.
Todd: Thanks Jared. Uh, yeah, we're we, we, we've been a sugar house for, I was walking to work for 20 years, everybody, and then we had to move, uh, but it was a good move. We're, we're now at a, a new beautiful clinic in Mill Creek. We're at 33 78 South, 2300 East, basically off the 2300 East exit going, uh, towards Park City.
Uh, and our telephone number, we have a website, uh, Cameron Wellness Center, uh, dot net. Uh, and we, our telephone number's eight oh one, uh, 4 8 6 4 2 2 6.
Jared: Excellent. And, uh, for, for the podcast listeners, uh, you will be [00:54:00] able to, uh, find all of the contact information in the show description below. We'll have phone number and the website and all of that stuff for you. So that's great. They do have a really nice website with all the information that you'd need in there, and we'll link to that.
Uh, also, of course, if you're driving and you weren't able to write that stuff down, reach out to us at Vitality Nutrition. We'll be happy to point you in the right direction. You can call us at (801) 292-6662. That's 8 0 1 2 9 2 66 62. Uh, I want you to understand the nature of my relationship with Dr.
Cameron too. Uh, he's my doctor. He's not paying me to do this episode. We're not, we don't exchange money other than when we use each other's services. I wanted Dr. Cameron on because he is the guy that I send people to when I feel like lab work makes a lot of sense. Uh, oftentimes the guy that I send people to when I'm not quite sure how to recommend or what to recommend for them outside of, you know, [00:55:00] vitamins, minerals, herbs, and that sort of thing, he just absolutely cares about his patients.
He is a wonderful human being, and I've often said this, uh, I think he might know more about the human body than anyone I've ever met. So he's the guy that you want to go to. Uh, if you are interested in a local functional medicine doctor that's going to. Look outside of the, uh, conventional medicine box, uh, to help you out.
So I encourage you to reach out if you feel like his services would be helpful for you. So, uh, all that information will be available, like I say, um, on the podcast show description. If you're on local radio, uh, you can either call Cameron Wellness or you can call us at Vitality at eight oh one. 2 9 2 66 62 or jump on our website, vitality nutrition.com.
Uh, and you can open up a chat box and we can get you his information there as well. So, for you locally listening on the radio, I'm gonna say goodbye, uh, and thanks to, uh, Dr. [00:56:00] Cameron for joining us. But, uh, if you're on the podcast or you want to jump on the podcast after this episode, uh, we're gonna carry on talk a little bit more about testosterone, how it impacts women, how it impacts men, how to know if maybe you might have a problem and should be looking into it.
Uh, that's where we'll continue on the other side. Uh, until next week, thank you so much for listening to Vitality Radio and have a wonderful Saturday. All right, so for the podcast listeners, we're just gonna keep continuing here. Dr. Cameron, thank you so much for giving me extra bonus time. I really appreciate it.
Let's talk a little bit about, uh, because I'm really glad we talked about the bioidentical thing. I get people asking me that all the time and, and I, you described it in, uh, better clinical detail than I did, so I appreciate that very much. Um, how does somebody know if maybe testosterone is an issue? What, what are the signs on the, you, you mentioned men, you, you mentioned being lethargic, uh, feeling like your get up and go wasn't what it used to be, that kind of thing.
[00:57:00] Uh, what are we looking for on the female side?
Todd: Uh, same thing, lethargy. Uh, the, the one thing I think bubbles to the very top, um, is, uh, sex drive, libido. Um, and that, that's, uh, Probably the single most common thing, but it's not just that it mimics hypothyroidism as well. You know, people get tired, they get lethargic, uh, they get ma lazy. They, they, they're, they're, you know, the way that I describe it is literally because, because even though thyroid is not directly associated with your libido, but so much of what hypothyroidism also mimics low testosterone, which is my joke is I'm tired in the morning, I'm tired in the afternoon.
I have a general sense of fatigue. I got some lethargy. What's that guy's name? Where'd I put my keys? Where'd I park my car? Why can I gain weight so easy? Why can't I lose weight? And why is my, [00:58:00] you know, literally give a crap meter just kind of going down. Um, it, it, uh, testosterone in both males and females.
Is very important for, uh, brain function. Um, so people with low testosterone again, mimic people with low thyroid, which is they, they're not thinking as clear as they used to. Um, they may not even be aware that they are not like the, I mentioned, uh, a little while ago that this 82 year old guy and his wife finally started coming to me for treatment.
He, he was just like, he, he couldn't believe that he could feel the way that he did. He just was like, I, I'm 82 years old and I'm actually feeling good. Like I'm felt good for 50 years. You know, he had a pretty stressful job. He's an architect. Uh, he's, he's retired now, but, you know, architects and structural engineers, oh boy, they have stressful lives.
Um, because, you know, lives are at, at stake, you know, in their buildings and [00:59:00] bridges and stuff. So, um, it's, it's real similar. Uh, but if, but if you were to ask people the main. So, so when I'm treating somebody, I'm gonna tell them, look, I'm not going to ask you if your heart cell felt that protection. I'm not gonna ask you if that brain cell felt protection, cuz you're not going to feel that.
What you're gonna feel is sex drive, mood, cognition. That's what you're gonna feel change. It's going to come up, you're going to notice a change. And that's why I get intimate with my patients and questions because I have to. Cuz if, if something is not happening, then it's like, well we, we better look at the numbers again.
Something, something is shifted. I don't know what it is, but let's look at the numbers again, because something has shifted. So those are, those are the main things. Over time, of course, this takes a little bit longer, but flacid muscles, you know, like you grow older and your muscles get flabby. [01:00:00] Um, boy, after about a year of testosterone use, even if you're not working out a bunch, you're gonna, you're gonna flex your arm one day and you're gonna go, Hey, you know what, this is harder than it used to be.
It's like, yeah, it is, it's healthier, it's better. Um, and so the, the, the questions, at least in the first several months of treatment, they're around mood, cognition, and sex.
Jared: Well, I think that's really fascinating because, um, I know probably more than my share about testosterone, uh, compared to the average Joe out there, but I, and I, and I knew this, but I haven't really thought about it until you just brought it up. And I, that's one of the reasons I love doing this show. I always, uh, it's something has always sparked, uh, in my mind here, the cognition thing, because I can't tell you how many people come into vitality and their primary health concern is mad dumb brain doesn't work.
Right. I can't remember that guy's name. I don't remember where I put my keys. [01:01:00] I can't, uh, seem to focus in on the task at hand and all this stuff. And, and frankly, Todd, when I think about testosterone and I think about almost everything else you mentioned, but I don't really. Think about cognitive function.
And so I'm really glad you brought that up because it is one of the biggest concerns with age, uh, if not the biggest concern with age. Anybody that, uh, has seen anybody with dementia or Alzheimer's or something like that recognizes that's gotta be about as bad a deal as you're going to get dealt, uh, in this
Todd: In this
Jared: And yet I just don't talk about cognition with testosterone. So I'm really glad you brought that up. I think that's a really, really big deal. Uh, so thank you for that. So then if, what about women that are concerned, uh, that well testosterones primarily a, a sex hormone for men? Um, I'm gonna get too much.
I'm gonna grow facial hair or whatever it is. Uh, how, how, how do you hold that conversation?
Todd: [01:02:00] gonna, they're gonna start bar fights, Jared. Um, so what I, uh, the way that I approach it is, um, pretty basic. I go back to that whole notion that we know as human beings that we were the healthiest when all of our sex hormones were the highest. And that's, again, from a statistical perspective, it's in between 18 and and 23. Um, so when you know, so women, you know, there, there's a lot of concerns about hormones that we won't go into now, you know, women.
They're very scared of cancer. They're very scared of heart disease. They, they think that they've read, they've heard some expert told them, but the, the, the upsides of testosterone in both men and women is far outweighs the downside. But there are some downsides, you know, for example, um, but, but only in susceptible people.
[01:03:00] So, for example, a woman might find that she's growing more, she's plucking more her hairs out of her chin. Or she might get some hair growing, you know, on her ariola, on her breast, or, um, she might, um, you know, if she, I, I, I do have a very small subset about five women who I, I cannot, uh, get. Their levels to the, they're still better than they were before they came and see me, but they, I can't get their levels to, you know, four or five or even six because they become extremely aggressive.
Now, this is a personality issue. All of these women that I treat are fully aware of this is how they are. So we're hovering them around 2.5 to three, because that's as high as I can go. Or else they start making people angry at them. And so we, you know, I'm very, very cognizant. I'm careful of that. Um, [01:04:00] but, uh, but a woman just like a, just like a man thinking about, well, why would I be interested in estradiol?
Because it's cardiovascular protective and brain protective. So it, it's, so the way that I count it to both men and women, the way I actually package it up is like, look, you can think of it this way. Um, one of the problems with aging in all of our organs, glands, and tissues is this notion of inflammation, of free radical damage in all of our tissues.
Well, I'm not suggesting that giving a hormone is like giving an anti-inflammatory. Okay. What I am trying to explain to people is that people that have an optimum level in their bodies tend to lose the reason why they have to hang on to inflammation. So people that are. Optimized in their sex hormones with bioidentical hormone replacement therapy.
They're not as inflamed. They're not as, their joints don't hurt as much. Their muscles don't hurt as much. Their, their brain isn't as inflamed, [01:05:00] their gut isn't as inflamed. Now, mine, it might, it's not gonna cure their Crohn's disease or irritable bowel, but, but it certainly can make things better because you think of it as, you know, you know as well as I do that the mesenteric, the, the, the, the, uh, nervous system around your intestines.
There's more nerves there than there is in your spinal column. So when you're treating, um, with bio identical hormone replacement therapy, you're treating everything in the body that has, that has receptor sites to these hormones. And that's, It's not just our genitalia, I'm telling you that it's like a lot of different, so I'm, I'm basically teaching the woman and the man how much more benefit they're going to get in all of those tissues.
They're gonna feel better. And those are the questions I'm gonna ask them. But what they're not going to be able to describe and define and, and actually feel at least at first, is how much help the rest of their body is getting. [01:06:00] Uh, but again, in a joking way, it's like you can't, it's not like I can ask your heart, Hey heart, how's those cells doing?
You know, Hey brain, how's those cells doing? Yeah.
Jared: But we know clinically that you have all those protective benefits, uh, a a along that are not noticeable, more preventative, uh, stuff along with, of course, the more obvious things like what's going on cognitively and energy and everything else.
Todd: Yes.
Jared: All right. So then, uh, with the, the, the last couple of questions I have for you and gal, I think I could pick your brain on this for a long, long time.
Um, first off, you mentioned early on, I've got listeners all over the country and, and even up in Canada and, and believe it or not, Todd, you're gonna, you're gonna think this is pretty cool, at least I think it's cool. I'm the number 100 right now, the number 100 Alternative Health podcast [01:07:00] in South Korea. don't know how that happened,
Todd: Wow.
Jared: and I'm not sure if they can understand what we're saying, but it's pretty cool.
So, uh, I've got, I got listeners all over the globe. Uh, not, not that many in, in other countries, but yeah, it's kind of cool. I don't know how it happened. I don't know who's over there listening to me, but, but thank you. Um, but, uh, do you do, uh, telehealth stuff and if, and, and so talk about that first, and then you mentioned a couple of groups that people could Google, um, to find someone who practices medicine like you do.
Todd: Yes. Um, I do. Uh, and so I have people, um, that will fly in, uh, for a day from wherever. Um, or maybe they'll do a vacation in Utah or whatever. They'll come and see me. I'll be able to not only take their blood, but do the physical exam that I'm, you know, basically required to do with a first, first time patient.
And then, [01:08:00] uh, they'll fly back to New York or LA or wherever it is they're coming in from. So, I, I basically have patients all over the, all over the United States. Um, but, but I've seen those people at least once. And then we do everything else. We can do everything else by, um, we can do a zoom if you want.
Uh, but, or, or we can just do it by phone. We can just, you know, but, but they're, you know, we've, we've established them as a patient. Um, and, you know, I can follow their, you know, they can get their blood drawn. I can call an order into a local blood draw station, wherever they are, and, or send or send them like a, um, normally the way I do it is like, I'll, I'll take my prescription pad, you know, and I'll write up a, a lab order on it, and then, um, my front desk will scan it and we'll just email it to 'em and they take it to the, the draw center and they can get it done.
Um, the, so the, the tell. Yeah. So I, I mean, we [01:09:00] do, I, I do a, a heck of a lot of that. Um, and what was the second question? I, sorry.
Jared: Um, if, if someone's interested in a, a local practitioner that practices medicine more
Todd: Uh, thank you.
Jared: uh, what are those websites that you gave us early and we'll, and we'll link those in the show description as
Todd: Um, my, my favorite by far is, uh, WorldLink medical, uh, dot com. And, uh, on their homepage, there is a place where you can find a provider and, you know, you type in like a zip code and stuff like that. Now, this, this entity is so, like, I, like I explained at first, I've been studying hormone since 1997, but, uh, with a lot of different camps.
But I met, um, Dr. Neil Rue. This is what he, we used to look young like this. We don't anymore. We're old. But, you know, he, he, uh, this is, uh, a, a book [01:10:00] that he wrote, but he, this is one
Jared: to achieve healthy Aging
Todd: This is my main mentor. You can see him on YouTube. You can go to YouTube and learn a lot about, like, one of the, like when a woman says to me, I'm scared of cancer, I say, okay, before you even make your first appointment, go to YouTube, type in Dr.
Neil Ruay and watch the video hormones and cancer before you even walk in the door. Cuz you're gonna, you're gonna be talked off the ledge. You'll, you'll be fine by the time you get here. So there's a lot of information people can get on the, on the, on YouTube from Neil. But his, his, uh, the entity where he lectures through, uh, Neil has four levels of education and I've been going through 'em since 2003. And we, and we definitely dissect the scientific literature. I mean, we, we. Nobody doesn't like Neil. I, I mean, I, I know that other camps will say, oh yeah, we're the best, we're the best. It's like, man, I've been there. I've been to pretty much every camp in the United States, and I can tell you there's nobody like this guy.
[01:11:00] Um, and, and I know that there's other people who are gonna disagree with me, but it's like, well, I don't know if you've been, I have been to those other camps. I have learned, I have been to their seminars. I have. Okay. So I'm pretty sure I'm, I know what I'm talking about. He's, he's the, he's the guy, but WorldLink Medical is the entity where his, where he educates from.
Um, and during Covid it was, Remote, you know, but, uh, luckily for me, he does most of his stuff in the Salt Lake area, even though he's not from this area world. So it's nice for me cause I don't have to fly and rent a hotel. But the point is, is that at WorldLink Medical you can, when you look at providers, you'll at least be finding somebody who has trained under him.
Okay. So my, my second, my next favorite probably would be, uh, the Institute of Functional Medicine. Uh, for people looking for an md, um, that has studied functional [01:12:00] medicine, if somebody wants to find so, so I did not learn what I've been talking about today in naturopathic medical school. It didn't happen that way.
I looked for my mentors after I got out of school. As I was going into residency, that's when I started learning about hormones. That's when I started learning about thyroid and adrenals. And it was very different than what they taught me in med school. So, Just because you find a naturopathic medical doctor in your area, don't think that they're gonna do what I've just been talking about.
They may if they've studied, but they may not. But then the, the third place I would go is, is uh, naturopathic.org. And that's, uh, my national, the, uh, National, um, association of naturopathic physicians, it's called, uh, and you can look for a naturopath, but even, even if you get their office on the phone, you're gonna want to know, you know, like where, like what camp or if you do hormones, what camp did you learn in?
Like, where, [01:13:00] where are you coming from? Like what, what, because I'm very clear to people where I'm coming from and, you know, if they've, if they've been to patient or I'm sorry, if they've been to practitioners from other camps and they prefer that, I say, well then don't come to me because I'm gonna upset the Apple cartt.
I'm gonna flip it upside down and I'm gonna go a completely different, well, I'm not completely different direction, but it's gonna be different. So, and I'm very open and I got thick skin. I don't care, you know, if, if you know what people think of me in terms of. It doesn't, I'm doing it from the scientific literature.
I'm not doing it from my opinion. It's not Todd's opinion. And so, and I, and I'm uber clear about that to my patients, so they don't understand that I'm just selling snake oil or something.
Jared: Right. Well, it's an interesting thing and we, we can wrap this thing up, I think now. Um, but I think that there are, There are some interesting perceptions, I guess is maybe the way to put it when it comes to medicine now and, and [01:14:00] doctoring. We have a, a general concern I think that a lot of people now have, especially after the last few years and all the craziness that's been going on with medicine and C d C and F d A and everything else.
But even before that where people are increasingly, um, concerned that they're not getting the type of treatment that they'd like to get from their doctor, uh, that they're hearing over and over again. Everything's in the normal range and yet they feel like crap. Uh, and so then they're thinking, okay, I need to look outside the box.
I gotta find somebody else. But then the, for all these years, most of us, me not included, cuz my parents were crazy, uh, and, and, and didn't believe in. In conventional medicine to begin with. But most people have been led to believe that, well, you've gotta have, you know, an MD that went to a good prestigious medical school and, and uh, is, is doing it this way.
And so then when they start thinking outside the box and they look at someone [01:15:00] like you, who's a nature apathic, uh, doctor, or someone who's a functional medicine doctor, or someone who's maybe a nurse practitioner or whatever it is, that's not the standard way that it's been done, then they get a little nervous because, well, you know, I want something better or different than what I've got, but how do I know if I trust this person?
And that's one of the reasons, maybe it's the primary reason I wanted to have you on, because people, if they listen to me and it's more off the air than on the air, but I'll say it on the air, I have a really, really healthy distaste for modern medicine. Exactly like what you expressed early on. Get me to the er.
If I'm in a car accident, absolutely. If there's an emergent situation, sign me up. But if I'm going in for blood work or I'm going in for, you know, general feelings of, I don't feel that good. The last place I'm going is to a normal doctor, a conventional doctor, because I believe that what is [01:16:00] probably going to happen is I'm gonna leave with a prescription and no real, uh, useful advice on how to actually improve my health.
So what do you say to people who have already felt like they maybe have been a little bit burned by conventional medicine, but they're kind of nervous and scared about functional medicine because it's a foreign topic for them.
Todd: Sure. Um, educate, educate, educate. Um, I tell them, hold my feet to the flame. Uh, I want you to. I, same thing with my IV patients. You know, if they, I do, we do IVs all day, every day. It's like, I get it. I understand it. I, I've been doing it for fricking ever, just like what I'm talking about today, but it's like, don't take my.
Word for it. Um, like if you have, you know, go dig. I mean, go to YouTube, watch some of Neil's videos, go to, you know, Institute of Functional Medicine, read some stuff, just like, you know, if you're hungry for the information, it's, you know how it is, Jared, you'll have a client come in just [01:17:00] like, I'll have a patient come in and, uh, it's not uncommon for a patient to ask me the same question a number of times, and it's because.
They're coming into my world that I understand pretty well. And I'm always learning, of course. But you know, I would be just as confused if I, I went and shadowed them around their work. I would, I would have to ask them questions more than once to try and wrap my head around what they're actually doing.
So I'm all about education. I'm all about education, but I'm also, don't take my word for it, because it's a Todd's opinion. Hold me to the like, like hold my feet to the flame. People do it like, grill me, grill me. But in order to get questions to grill me, you're going to have to further your education. And there's places where you can do that.
And I've shared with you a couple places to do that. Um, that way
Jared: I love that.
Todd: yeah, you come back to me and [01:18:00] now you're gonna ask me some meaningful questions and, and you know, we're gonna find out where the beef really is.
Jared: Right. I, I, I'll say this to you cuz you've never heard me say it, probably, but I, I know a lot of my listeners have heard it, but I think it's really important. We've, we've been led to believe in this country, uh, specifically I think in this country, maybe more so than anywhere else, that it's not our job to take care of our health.
It's somebody else's job to take care of our health. It's the doctor's job. It's the guy in the white coat, the guy with the degree, the diploma up on the wall. And so we've kind of offloaded that. Uh, and you know, I'm, I don't consider it my job to take care of my car cuz if I was the guy fixing my car, I'd never have a car that worked.
I don't know anything about mechanics and I'm not gonna go to mechanic school. But what we live in an interesting plate, an interesting time now because we have. Incredible resources to where we really can become educated on our health. It's why I do this [01:19:00] show is to help people figure out some of these basic things that they need to understand about their health so they can take better care of themselves.
And it's time for us to start recognizing a couple of things I believe, and I, and I'd be curious and then I'm gonna let you go. I promise, uh, your opinion on this. But I think one of the things that we've gotta recognize is that we actually have an intuitive nature when it comes to our health. We have a much better read on what the heck's going on inside of our body than anybody else does.
And if we start to pay attention to that and then educate ourselves around that, we can really become great advocates for our own health. And then we can come to people like you. Who have that deeper level of knowledge and, uh, education and frankly the ability to do something about it. If there's a prescription needed or something like that, then we have this really great synergy between a patient who understands to a large degree kind of what's going on, and an expert who can help to take them the rest of the [01:20:00] way, uh, to the place that they want to be, which of course is optimal wellness.
Todd: I, I couldn't agree more. I, it's like when I'm teaching, um, you know, having been a peds I c U nurse, you know, I see, I have parents calling me when their kids are sick, right? And the first thing I say is, look, I'll, you know, I'll give you parameters and stuff like that, but I trust your intuition way more than my knowledge base with your kid.
So when I'm teaching people about bioidentical hormone replacement therapy, it's the same thing as they go. They learn to trust themselves, they learn to pay attention to themselves, and they are way more intuitive. In six months to a year than they were before they started, for the very reason that you said it's because they've been told that they will be treated for whatever issue based on what the doctor says.
And it's like, well, okay, that's again, in an emergency room situation, please. Um, but, but in, [01:21:00] but in an aging body where you are feeling like, how many times have I heard in my practice, someone come to see me, uh, and we'll go into thyroid in, in the next time. But someone, someone who's been put on the wrong medicine and comes to see me and I show 'em through the blood what the wrong medicine is, put 'em to the right medicine and they feel so much better.
And they say to me, you know what, this, my doctor's been giving me this medicine for 20 years. And I've told them every time it does not help. I feel worse. And, but because of the labs, it can't be that medicine. Uh, therefore you're depressed or whatever. And it's like, I hear this all the time. So when, when they're vindicated, when they come to see me and I can show them through certain lab tests why they feel the way they do, they just, it's like an epiphany.
And they say, they'll all, they'll say, I knew it. I knew it. But you didn't trust yourself because you knew it. Because you knew something was wrong cuz you didn't feel good. But you didn't know what, [01:22:00] because who's gonna tell you what, right. You trust your doctor. Well, it's not the doctor's fault per se, it's the way the doctor has been trained.
It's the whole system. Like we started this show with it's, or we talked before the podcast. It, it's, you know, the system's broken.
Jared: Yeah. Yeah. Yes, absolutely. And, and this is, it's been such a great conversation, uh, doc, I really, really appreciate it.
Todd: Me too.
Jared: was so excited to have you on because these are, th this is where I feel like, you know, I've got this, people listen to me know I've got a great knowledge base when it comes to vitamins and minerals.
You know, you've been doing your thing for 26 years. I've been doing my thing even longer than that. I know the things I know about, but there's a reason I go to you because you know the things that I don't know that much about. And of course, you have the ability to prescribe. And what I loved talking to you the other day, uh, as a patient, not as a podcaster.
Is that I could ask you what are [01:23:00] probably, uh, maybe a little more detailed questions than you hear from, from, uh, other people that maybe aren't quite as, uh, you know, in the know as I am. I don't know, uh, what kind of questions
Todd: No,
Jared: from the other patients, but I could ask you those. Sorry.
Todd: No, you, you were asking good questions.
Jared: Yeah. And, and I love that I can ask those questions because I feel like every other time, uh, that, or, or, or not every other time cause I've been coming to see you for years, but what I hear from the other people that come to talk to me about their doctors, and I had somebody come in just the other day that said, you know, my doctor and I decided to break up, uh, because he couldn't answer a question that I got a really easy answer to on WebMD.
And I said, well, that was probably a great decision on your part, but I hear that all the time. People so frustrated because they can't ask really simple questions and get a, an, an ed educated answer because it's just seems to be, here's the [01:24:00] symptom, here's the prescription. Don't let you, the door hit you in the butt on the way out.
And I don't think that's how medicine should be practiced. And so I honor the way that you do it. I love the way that you do it. I've look forward to coming to the doctor's office because I know I'm gonna come out more intelligent about my own health when I've am done talking to you for an hour. And I appreciate that very, very, very much.
So thank you so much for what you've done for me, for what you've done for my family, and for what you've, uh, been able to do. Educating here on Vitality Radio today.
Todd: You bet, Jared. Thanks for having me.
Jared: Absolutely. So just so you do know, we've alluded to it a couple of times, but we're gonna have a thyroid episode, much like what we did with testosterone today. I don't know when it'll be, but we'll, uh, schedule it and get, uh, Dr. Cameron back on to talk about thyroid because if you want to talk about another one that is treated really, really, Theologically, uh, in this country by modern medicine.
Well, that's a [01:25:00] biggie. And so you have that to look forward to. If you enjoyed listening to, uh, me talk with Dr. Cameron today, I'm gonna let uh, him go. I'm gonna let you go. It was a long show. I hope you enjoy it and that you learned something. All of the links for all of the things that we talked about will be in the show description, uh, including contact information for Dr.
Cameron at Cameron Wellness, uh, as well as, uh, the book, uh, that we talked about, uh, from his mentor and the, uh, organizations that you can look up online. All that stuff will be in the show description, so check it out. If you have any questions, call me at (801) 292-6662. That's 8 0 1 2 9 2 66 62 at Vitality, nutrition, and Bountiful, or jump on our website, vitality nutrition.com.
Thanks again to Dr. Cameron for joining me. I'm Jared St. Clair, and this has been Vitality Radio.