288. Herbs For Testosterone, Strength & Vitality With Logan Christopher
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Thank you for listening to the Boost Your Biology podcast. My name is Lucas Owen. I uncover the most cutting edge health information on the planet, ranging from hormones, nutrition, supplementation, fat loss, biohacking, longevity, wellness, and a whole lot more. Welcome to the Boost Your Biology podcast.

Hello ladies and gentlemen and welcome back to the boost your biology podcast today i'm thrilled to be joined in the studio with logan christopher who is an expert on herbal medicine and is actually a key authority figure in the male testosterone optimization space as well so logan welcome to the podcast

Yeah, thanks for having me on Lucas. Awesome. So maybe Logan, I mean, you have done some phenomenal work representing Lost Empire Herbs, you know, you've formulated many incredible products. Do you want to sort of let my listeners know a little bit about how you became so fascinated into I guess herbal medicine? Absolutely. Yeah, it took a very different route than most people take into herbal medicine. Most people it's

their health, some sort of issue that they're having or family members having and this is how they learn it. Unless they got raised by a grandma that used to know this stuff and that sort of thing. But for me, it was based on the idea of performance. So in addition to being an herbalist and CEO of this company, I'm a strong man. I've done some wacky and wild feats of strength such as pulling a fire truck by my hair. Just two weeks ago, I hit a new goal of tearing not one deck of cards in half, but two decks of cards.

with my hands.

So it was getting into these things, juggling flaming kettlebells, like doing some fun stuff. But I'm not naturally strong or athletic. In fact, I was like really weak and scrawny and unathletic in high school before that. So as I was getting into these things and for what a reason, I found like a real passion for them. I was looking for an edge in all sorts of different places. This led me just into basic health and nutrition, kind of learning about this stuff.

Simple reason is like if I can recover better from my workouts have better energy. I'm gonna get better results but this in turn led into herbs and

a number of different ones, but cordyceps was one of the first herbs I worked with just based, you know, some Olympic level athletes were using that and breaking records. So I was like, okay, I'm going to try that. And from that first dose in my workout, I noticed better energy. I was able to like breathe easier. So I think I was working on kettlebell snatches at the time and just came a little bit easier. So from that moment, I was hooked and continued to go further down the path and real

realize how wide of a world of herbal medicine really was. But that was really what got me started. Amazing. Yeah, no, we've actually got something very similar there, Logan. I mean, cordyceps mushroom. I keep telling this story when I jump on podcast myself is that it was one of the supplements that I used for like two and a half years straight.

when I was playing soccer and it was one of the supplements that I noticed a difference in terms of my breathing ability, my endurance. And I just felt like it was working on a deep like cellular level. And then if you look at like the TCM applications, they say that it nourishes both the yin and the yang kidney essence. So did you, did you find it fascinating looking at the TCM perspective of herbs? Yeah. So what, what,

What really kind of got me started on the herbal path was a guy, Ron Teagarden. He was talking about herbs, not just from TCM, but specifically this Taoist philosophy of herbs. And in some ways, this is a really easy way to kind of start with herbalism because the idea is there's a couple of different ideas there, but one is of superior herbalism, right? So in TCM, they'll divide herbs into the superior herbs.

the inferior herbs and then the middle herbs, right? And for if you have an acute disease, this is where you're working with those inferior herbs and they can be used to treat things. You know, of course in America or in most countries, we can't treat anything with herbs, but these would be used in those cases and they can work great for that. However, they also have some toxicity. They're not things you want to be on all the times.

With the superior herbs, these are ones that you can take when you're already healthy and they just help you become more healthier. So cordyceps is one example that I'm sure we'll talk about many others, but really looking at kind of the cream of the crop, the best of the best herbs out there. And this way you don't need to know all this information about how to like treat people with herbs, but here I was a healthy guy, right? Just trying to be healthier, just trying to perform better so I can take these herbs and begin working with those.

without having to learn, you know, go to four years of school in order to do it. So in some ways, this is like a very approachable, very easy way to work with herbs that I personally got started with. And also that I'm, you know, helping other people to do the same. Incredible. And that sort of that category, you mentioned the superior list of herbs, maybe join a share to my listeners, maybe some other ones they might be familiar with on that list.

Yeah. And first, I'll start with the idea that to be a superior herb, the herb needs to be non-toxic. So even taking in large doses or for incredible amounts of time, it's not going to really hurt you. It needs to have some sort of normalizing function. And really, this kind of blends pretty well.

Pretty close to what most people think of adaptogens these days. If you look at some of the initial Russian research, it was more limited. Everyone calls like every urban adaptogen this day, but essentially the idea is it is helping the body to normalize functions. It is going to, if things are too high, it can bring them back to normal. If it's too low, it can bring them back to normal. So something along those lines is going to help. And it's really like nonspecific. You know, with drugs, you are,

having some sort of molecule that is specifically looking at changing like a single pathway in the body and it may be very great at that however there tends to be side effects because biology is not so linear as Is the case here with herbs because you have a host of different nutrients It may be focused on one area, but it tends to have systemic effects across the body So some of the superior herbs would be many of the medicinal mushrooms reishi chaga shiitake

Lion's mane is a popular one for the cognitive benefits these days. Some of the different adaptogens, rhodiola, ashwagandha, shilajit out thrown there. Some of the testosterone boosting herbs that we'll be talking about like pine pollen, I'm sure.

antler from deer or elk. So a bunch of these different ones. And of course, this was based off the Chinese system, but you can take these ideas and really apply it to Ayurvedic herbs, Western herbs, herbs from across the world. Because the truth is, that was one of the interesting things when I got into herbs in the first place. I'm learning this Taoist system. It's like, why did the Chinese have all the good herbs over there? Like, why isn't this stuff around? And

This stuff is around. You just have to learn a bit more that really there is rich traditions of Western herbalism going back to like Greek medicine and a lot that is used in Europe and the U.S. That is available. And there it's just kind of different models of looking at the world. And honestly, there's probably more well-known Chinese herbs today in much of the West than there is the actual local herbs that are going and available there. Incredible. I think another one that I was pretty interested in

was the southern ginseng, the gynostemma pentafilum, the jugulin. There was a particular website that I came across and actually listed out a lot of the different clinical studies. And there was like, I actually saw the blog article and I remember sharing the blog article to friends at a party because I was so excited by the references. It had over 300 pages.

clinical studies referenced in the blog article. And I'm like bragging to my friends and I'm like, Hey, look at this. Look how many studies there are on this herb. Show me another herb that's more impressive. So do you want to sort of maybe talk a little bit about that? Like gynostemma pentafilum. Yeah. Gynostemma is an amazing one. It is known as he said, Southern ginseng. It is actually unique. So because ginseng is one of the most well-known plants,

Herbs in the world, everything that is like really great is known as a ginseng, right? So Ayurvedic ginseng or Indian ginseng is ashwagandha, Siberian ginseng, that's eulathera and so on and so forth. So gynostemma is not actually related to ginseng. However, it does actually contain some of the same exact saponins that

contains ginsenosides. So this is one of those great adaptogens. It's going to help your body better be able to adapt to stressors of all different sorts. Gynostemma, one of the most interesting things to me is that it is really helping with mitochondrial function. Probably a lot of your listeners know these are the powerhouses in your cells. So gynostemma is something that you can take. It's not stimulating, it doesn't have caffeine,

but taken as a tea and that's the general way of using it. Though you can certainly find it in powders, capsules and tinctures as well. But it tastes really good for grass. You can just take it throughout your day and it's gonna support your energy in amazing ways. So a lot of athletes really like this one. It can be a great thing to like sip on throughout a workout. And along with that, like I don't really like to talk about weight loss with herbs, right? Because if you don't have the foundation, it's not gonna,

And herbs not going to make a difference with doing the important things with movement in diet and like reducing toxic exposure which is a big reason people have or hold on to a lot of weight and

But something like gynostemma, this is what I consider one of the weight loss herbs that can be helpful. Just that kind of like last 5% or something. If you're taking this, it may help keep your appetite more even because it is helping the body in the different ways with the energy and just metabolism benefits. So it's a really, really amazing one out there. In fact, I wish I had a cup of gynostemma tea right now. You know, as you're talking about it, funnily enough, Logan, I feel like I can taste the herb in my mouth as we talk about it.

I used to say to friends, they used the herb a long time ago as a sugar alternative or as a sweetener. The medicinal benefits from Jaguar, and I'm glad you mentioned the... When I was looking at developing a natural fat loss stack protocol...

I did prescribe Jagulan as part of that sort of protocol alongside some other like thyroid stimulating herbs. You'd be familiar with those. And...

it seemed to like result in pretty dramatic weight loss, like within four to six weeks, it was pretty dramatic. So yeah, I'm glad you mentioned that other effect. What about in terms of, I mean, like, so we've just sort of covered gynostemma, cordyceps we have to go back to because, you know, we both have like a deep rooted love for that herb. Did you want to sort of talk about

historical applications like why were they using cordyceps in the early days and now how are we using cordyceps today right

Yes, so with cordyceps, it is known, you mentioned that it contains both the yin and yang of the Jing essence. In the Taoist system, you're looking at the three treasures of Jing, Qi, and Shen, which can be translated to essence, energy, and spirit as an easy way of describing those. Of course, it's more multidimensional than that, but that's sufficient for now.

Cordyceps is a really good Jing and Qi herb. It's phenomenal for this. And most herbs with the Jing are going to be more Yin or more Yang, while Cordyceps is one that actually covers both of those. So it's a bit rare in that combination of them. One of the more Yin ones would be like Hoshu Wu is a Yin Jing herb, while Elk Antler, very Yang Jing, for instance.

So with this, you're going to be looking at if you are having difficulties with your essence, this would be impotence or fertility, low back pain. These are some of the different things like chronic fatigue or exhaustion. These would be all tied into that essence.

essence or Jing with the Qi. Cordyceps is also very specific, not just to the kidneys, which are the storehouses of Jing, but to the lungs, which are one of the main places that stores Qi. And this is how we interact with the environment with every breath in and out. So cordyceps being good for this. And part of this can be seen with the doctrine of signatures. This is a

a fungus that attacks a caterpillar that lives up in the Himalayan mountains, right? So anything that tends to be growing up there, like some of our great herbs, like shilajit comes from high up there, cordyceps, rhodiola, these herbs that are adapted to the extremely stressful conditions and the low oxygen environment can often

times be helping when we take them with oxygen utilization within us. As you mentioned with the workouts as I did, breathing easier, increasing VO2 max, these are some of the things that cordyceps can help with.

um a lot of the people that are using them today would be like athletes or people that are looking for energy support and cordyceps is a good one in that it is both nourishing so it's it's doing those things in the background to kind of nourish your body not just giving you energy like caffeine or coffee that may be good for the moment but can lead you down into a further burnout yeah phenomenal i do remember the um pronounced like improvements in recovery following workouts i didn't feel as like

And I remember going down a rabbit hole trying to understand like, when they describe these herbs is like a kidney young tonic or a kidney yin tonic. I was like, what do they what do they mean from like a modern day medicine perspective? Like is it the fact that it supports the adrenal glands and it helps to boost cortisol aldosterone? Like, do you want to sort of talk us through what that might mean? Yeah.

It's a good question. The way I've kind of mapped it is, yeah, a lot of times with the Jing, we're looking at the hormones. So this would be the sex hormones with like testosterone, estrogen, progesterone, all these different things, but also cortisol, the stress hormones that are involved with the adrenal. So oftentimes, yes, I'm looking at Jing as that hormone.

kind of the reproductive and hormonal systems in the body it also has to do with the deep tissues like the bones themselves which contain the bone marrow which is producing all sorts of our blood cells right so this is the I like to think of gene as the kind of the deepest and most what's the word I'm looking for kind of like most refined

systems within the body right uh with chi this is much more metabolism so chi is something that we get as i was saying with the breath it's also something we get with the food and just involved in our movement so this is i would say a lot of our immune system is here definitely there's immune system tied into the jing there but immunity metabolism thyroid hormone um

So these are some of the areas I would see with the qi. And then shen would be much more of the psychological effects of what we're going for. So mood and cognition, that is going to be more in that realm. And of course, all of these do affect one another. That's a thing with a system like Chinese medicine. It's much more holistic than our reductionist frame. But having looked at these things, this is a way to kind of map them across different systems. Yeah, no, you've done a good job there, sort of summarizing that.

Let's sort of transition into another favorite of mine, which is Sistanch. I'll just quickly share my thoughts and a bit of historical understanding around this is

When I was studying naturopathy, I would go to a Chinese medicine bookstore after university. So that's after spending six hours with boring lecturers all day. Then I'd go to like a traditional Chinese medicine bookstore and I'd try and uncover like which herbs are commonly prescribed as part of like male tonic formulas or male testosterone formulas. And I kept on coming across...

uh cistanche which is oh geez the what is the tcm name rukong wrong rukong wrong i just remembered on the spot um and i was like hang on a sec this one here is being prescribed quite a lot and it's being used as part of many different male tonics and then i remember coming across a phenomenal like pubmed article that outlined um cistanche one of

a pharmaceutical gift of nature or some sort of amazing title. And I'm like, I looked into the research and I'm like, wow, upregulating the enzymatic processes responsible for converting cholesterol into pregnenolone and pregnenolone into testosterone. I'm like, I can see this being like a very popular herb in the next couple of years.

So I create a lot of content on YouTube about it and then all of a sudden everyone's talking about Shillajit. Sorry, Sysdanch. Did you want to share a little bit about Sysdanch? When did you first discover it? Yeah, good question. Actually, it...

When I first heard of it, it wasn't something that grabbed me right away, but definitely over the years, it's come to be one of my favorites. So some of the names that it has earned is the Stock Enlarger and Sustange in Your Pants.

So you were mentioning how much it was used in the formulations. At one point, I think around like the 1600s or maybe 1800s in like a Chinese manual, they looked at everything and 80% of the formulas for like sexual health had sustanche in them. That's how important of an herb this was to the system. And it's said to really direct blood flow to the genitals. That's the main thing that's done. And you know,

Personally, I always thought like people trying to get their dick bigger was just bullshit and it was stupid. However, I've heard like enough reports from a customer that this can actually happen again. Nothing, nothing really works for everyone. So you never know. But one interesting thing with Sustanch is oftentimes people will, uh,

When they're just hanging out when it's not erect they'll notice that it is larger and I've actually Once I was taking like a larger dose and kind of doing that consistently I noticed that was in effect so I was like huh very interesting to actually see that and As you mentioned there are all kinds of hormone interactions as well So going to back to what we were talking about so stench is one of the like top yang jing herbs out there just

The way to think about the difference between yin and yang, obviously there's many levels to this, but yin is more that restorative kind of internal stuff, where the yang is the driving force, the outward action. I mentioned that I started with herbs for my athletic pursuits. The same kind of herbs that help with athletics, help with sexual function. It often seems to be the same thing there.

uh with something like sustansh it can be very powerful also for me is one that I noticed it just feels like the testosterone is flowing like the confidence is there there's more pep in the step a bunch of different things so yeah having used this one regularly for a while this has become one of my favorite herbs and in terms of um like the other secondary third benefits I mean

I remember looking up some of the constituents that were found in Cisternian. I believe there was the Echinacocide, which is also present in Echinacea. Have you heard of that? Yeah, so that was an interesting one. Do you want to sort of expand upon the immune potential applications?

All right. Off the top of my head, not remembering all the details on what specifically does what thing, but there is some preliminary research, you know, beyond the sexual and hormonal function that Sustanj is helping with immunity in some different ways that it is helping with cognition. One of the things as I was looking at kind of the

the herbal energetics of these a bit more. One thing that is useful about sustanche is it is moistening. Um, so most of the herbs out there are drying in nature and dryness tends to come with just like old age, right? So if you have something that is moistening, uh,

then this is going to help with different things. So sustanche also helps with bowel movements and bowel function. And as anyone knows, if you got blocked up there, everything else is going to start to kind of break down. So it really is having so many different effects in the body. So, yeah, I'm excited to see more and more signs come out because a lot of that is like, oh, it's helping with this, but it's still cellular studies or animal stuff.

Hopefully more human trials on that will come in the future. But the few that have looked at just like anti-aging, I remember one was looking at humans that elderly that had a hard time getting around and just being on Cystans for a while, they're able to move a bit better after a little while. So different effects like this are really important for any sort of aging population. And of course you can be,

Working with it when you're younger because again, it's in that superior category of herb and it's gonna tend to deliver benefits regardless of age Yeah, amazing. Let's let's switch gears Logan and talk about another very popular herbal tonic at the moment that has a

Thankfully, thanks to you guys have published a clinical study on recently, which was the impacts of pine pollen on hormonal parameters. So did you want to sort of touch on that particular pine pollen study for my audience?

Yes, absolutely. So pine pollen has been like the number one herb that we've sold at Lost Empire Herbs for. We started in 2012 and we started on a kitchen table, real small, just really essentially it was me and my two brothers. We were doing it to fund our own supply of quality herbs. And it's grown nicely since those days. So since those early days, like pine

For me, it was cordyceps that initially grabbed me, but for my brothers, it was pine pollen and shilajit. Of course, I came to love those ones too at the time. As we were growing, it's like someday it'd be really cool to run a study on this because almost no one has heard of this herb. There literally are no human studies on it. There might be some in China that are not translated that are still in Chinese, but even of that, I haven't even been able to find anything.

Just last year I got connected with a couple of people that work out of the University of Colorado and

And we were able to put together and fund this study. And science is very expensive. So this is one thing that was always in the future, like, oh, we'll get to that someday. But the company has gotten to a point and the pricing was right for this, because even with a small trial that we had 10 participants finish the trial, that still was some large checks. Right.

Um, with this, we were looking at older and just take the pine pollen tincture, which is an alcohol extract of the pine pollen for people not familiar with. It's kind of unique of many of the herbs in that is the fairly rich source of vital androgens.

So many people have heard of phytoestrogens. These are plant compounds that have estrogenic-like effects in the body. It can be problematic if there's too much in, say, like a bunch of over-processed tofu, but you'll also find them in flax seeds and hops in beer. And it's actually in a wide variety of foods, it's just smaller amounts.

So these can actually have some very helpful effects, but nature also has phytoandrogens. So these are plant compounds. Pine pollen actually contains trace amounts of testosterone, DHEA, androstenedione, very small amounts. So one, these aren't just human hormones, although we definitely have them in larger amounts in our body. Plants are actually working off these. And then there are some other phytoandrogens like the gibberellins and racinosteroids that

are very close in nature. We don't have them within the human body, but they're still able to dock on the receptor sites for our hormones and exert hormone-like effects.

Pine pollen you can take it as a powder or in capsules and it's great. It's more of a nutritive superfood in that way It's definitely helping with the hormones and sexual function to some degree But by doing it as an alcohol extract, which you would do it in a tincture This draws the phytoandrogens out then it allows them to absorb straight into the bloodstream Bypassing digestion which is going to get rid of most of the hormone components because they're large molecules. So

So this has been, again, one of our most popular products, and we decided to put it to the test here. Based on thousands of customer results, we knew what it was going to be, but to actually finally have the science to show that was really cool. So with these 10 subjects, they were older, age 45 and older. I think there might have been an 80-year-old in there.

And they had low to moderate testosterone. None of it was like super duper low. I think there may have been some people in the two hundreds to like four hundred. And we were measuring testosterone levels, just total testosterone, because, you know, every metric like we want to measure a whole bunch of things. But every metric we add in there adds a lot of cost to the thing.

So we just measured total testosterone and did a survey, which is something used by urologists called the Q-ATOM survey. It's associated with deficiency in androgens, basically aging and loss of function. It's asking questions like,

On a scale of one to five, how would you rate your sex drive? What's the quality of your erections? What's your happiness level? How's your drive at work? So really a wide variety of questions and then just measuring the people on these.

With the results, so this was eight weeks of taking the tincture, doing cycling, which is five days on, two days off, because we want to keep the hormone system on its toes, essentially.

doing this for eight weeks, the people saw an increase in testosterone. It didn't quite reach statistical significance. It was like 0.57. So normally the, the, the Markov is 5%, but it was definitely trending in that direction. And that, that was a hard number to hit because there's just such a large variance in testosterone levels, especially with a small powered study like this with just 10 subjects. But the,

Perhaps more interesting part because testosterone, although we saw an increase, right? And although this is important, really, we're looking at the symptomatic picture much more. So this is what we want. Like, who cares if your testosterone doubles, if it doesn't lead you to be more happy, having more drive, that sort of thing, right?

So on this symptomatic picture, it was highly statistically significant. The people went from below average overall to above average. So that was pretty significant right there. And that's the summation of the study. This is an interesting subject, which is like, all right, how much do we rely upon objective blood test results versus subjective symptomology resolution? Like I've spoken about this extensively. It's like,

If a guy uses a herb notices that it resolves his symptoms, but if he does a blood test and it doesn't actually move the needle that much for testosterone, but there's no side effects of that herb, then why like don't disqualify the herb just because it didn't improve the objective parameters. So it's like, yeah. What are your thoughts on that sort of subject? Yeah. So yeah,

Science is great in it, how it can reduce things down and look at this very small lens. But oftentimes, so often it is losing the forest for the trees. Right. So although we looked at testosterone because testosterone is, you know, the hormone everyone knows, every guy wants more testosterone, essentially. Right. I mentioned that pine pollen has DHA.

EA, right? Which is a weak androgen. It doesn't have the masculizing effects that testosterone or DHT would have, but it is an effect that has systems wide. They call it the anti-aging hormone, right? So we didn't look at this measure, but what if say testosterone is flat, but your DHEA increased 50%, you'd be feeling great symptoms, right?

from this. And even though there are so many different hormones, right? And they're steamed down. We didn't measure that at all. Most people don't even think about that at all, right? But that may be because we're not as aware of its effects in the body. So although it's great to reduce down to these things, um,

We can often lose a lot of information by just looking at that. So for me, you know, I'm interested in results. People often ask about the placebo effect, right? So this study did not have a placebo control. It was a small study. It was just a pilot study, right? So that may come later in the future.

But for the average person taking herbs, like the way I like to describe it is you can have the effects of the herbs and you can have a placebo effect, like belief in the herb on top of that, right? Why not combine the two? I'm after the results. So if by believing in something, I get better results, then

I'm going to believe it, right? I'm going to really go that way. Yes, it can be great to eliminate this as a thing, doing the placebo control. I understand all that. But for your life, you are not a science experiment. You are looking to get results. So let's really aim at trying to get that.

something to also say with like, oh, should I take one herb at a time or should I try like 10 different things? Like, well, are you interested in like really trying to refine it or do you want to get results first? I usually say like throw the kitchen sink at it, right? Do a bunch of things. You can like reduce down, remove things in order to find what made the difference for you. First, get the result because your health matters, right? You made a great point as well around the androstenedione and some of those like precursor hormones and some of these like

like, neurosteroids, like, for example, if pine pollen, based on this study, didn't move testosterone that dramatically, even though it's, I would say it's still impressive, personally, because it's like, it's still quite promising. But like, what about the impact of like, okay, this particular study didn't look at the allopregnenolone levels in their brains? Oh, and we're looking in the blood, right? Not even, we can't look at receptor levels.

site health. We can't look at like specific, there's so much we cannot see that when you actually like realize that you realize it is just such a tiny snapshot and sure that snapshot can be useful, but yeah, we are missing so much just by looking at these things. That's something that I'm trying. I'm really trying my best to educate my audience about, like just try and perceive research like in a, in a specific way. And then also think about

Like it is important to merge traditional usage and like historical usage with modern day applications because like, I mean the traditional, what were the initial traditional uses for pine pollen like applications? So it's quite interesting that really pine pollen was used more like the nutritive and immune function. It wasn't used as much for the, this phytoandrogen component as it is.

And I think one of the things to understand is that our traditions do need to evolve, right? What is something that we are facing now as a human society that they were not facing a thousand years ago? The environment is filled, absolutely filled with endocrine disrupting chemicals from plastics, from skincare, in our water, in our food, pesticides, herbicides, overloaded with these. And a lot of these are persistent chemicals, right? So

One of the, my hypothesis on how pine pollen and a lot of these other herbs are working is, and there's data to back this up, is they're helping the body better handle this stuff. So let's say you have an androgen receptor or a hormone receptor and you have BPA docking onto that, right? Exerting toxic effects because that is happening. So a phytoandrogen or let's say a phytoestrogen comes in and pine

pops that off. It goes back into the bloodstream or the lymph, hopefully gets eliminated out the body, but now you have something exerting a potent effect on the cells there and you've gotten rid of these toxic effects. So some of the action of pine pollen I think is really helping to offset what is occurring to us with endocrine disrupting chemicals.

And again, there is some research. So Sustanche, this was a rat study, but they were specifically what they do in a lot of research. And it's, it's horrible is they are, uh,

torturing animals in different ways, right? So they are causing testicular damage in the rats by overloading them with BPA, which is bisphenol A. It's found in a lot of plastics and oh, if you think, oh, I get BPA free plastics, right? In a lot of cases, they're just replacing this with BPS, BPF, these other chemicals that have similar functions, right?

So in this study, they are damaging the rat's testicles, causing sperm damage, reproductive damage, hormonal damage, right? They give them sustance. It mitigates some of the effects of that BPA. It is...

acting as herbal armor to block this. So that's just a little bit of research on sustenance and BPA, but this is happening with the thousand different chemicals in the soup we live in. And this is why if you are putting herbs in your body, again, you don't have to know all the different things. If you're going with that superior herbalism mindset, this allows you to kind of mitigate some of the damage. And yes, we want to reduce our exposure to these chemicals by

you know, using glass instead of plastic, that sort of thing. Absolutely. Definitely do that. And still we're getting exposed to this. So we want to defend ourselves in these different ways. Amazing. What about in terms of, I mean, you've sort of mentioned some other incredible herbs. I mean, another one that's like, I mean, the story behind it is just unbelievable and just phenomenal. Every time I think about it, it's just like, like how we as humans even discovered to even consider consuming shilajit.

Like Shilajit, talk us through that one. Yeah. So I can answer that question, not specifically to Shilajit, but in so many cases, humans figure this out by observing nature. Simple as that. This is a story for both coffee and for horny goat weed, Epimedium, is essentially there's a farmer that has a herd of goats. He notices a

Goats go and eat these coffee beans and they get all like energized, right? Or they go and eat this horny goat weed and then they start having sex. And so he's like, I'm going to try that. He consumes it and has the similar sort of effect. So this is a story for herbs across the world. It probably is true with shilajit. There may be some animals up there that are actually going to that and

taking it. But yeah, it's a weird substance. So essentially, Shilajit is a mineral pitch. It comes out of the Himalayan mountains and it also comes out of other mountain ranges. There are some people that are finding it in the U.S. and various other places. So it tends to be a

product of mountains that this tar-like substance is coming out. And again, it's coming from this in these very rare places up high in there and taking this and then you kind of clean

clean it up across some minimal levels of processing and you'll be able to find it in a resin or pitch like substance or it can be a bit more refined and become a powder. But this is one of the top substances in Ayurvedic medicine. It was called the destroyer of weakness and the conquer of mountains. So I don't know about you, but when I first heard those terms, like I didn't need to know more. I was like,

I have to try that thing, right? Especially being a strong man. If it destroys weakness, I got to try this. So Shilajit is another one of those ones that it's kind of similar to cordyceps in that it is supporting both the yin and yang, that jing essence. But it's also a great qi one as well. I'd say a little bit of the qin effects. It definitely has nootropic cognition benefits. But yeah, it's such an amazing substance because

because it is helping to deliver nutrients better to your cells. It's detoxifying things like heavy metals or those endocrine-disrupting chemicals with the fulvic and humic acids it has in it. It's full of trace minerals. It really does a whole bunch of things. So here's another one that I include as one of the weight loss herbs.

especially in the powder where you're taking a little bit more of a dose it is having some pretty strong effects on the metabolism so people working with this again may not be as hungry or it's helping with the mitochondria and the ATP production so people

able to kind of sustain off what they get the idea with shilajit is anything you take with it it is going to help deliver to your cells better right so this could be food you can eat like a smaller meal and you're going to actually just get more of the nutrition from it or you combine it with other herbs and it's acting as sort of that shuttle service to kind of deliver everything into your cells

So that's why we have it in a couple of our different formulas for those and all the other reasons. - It's a great point you mentioned there around the shuttling aspect and enhancing the effects of other herbs. I've tried to sort of explain that to my audience as well. Like Shilajit is like a great carrier. It can amplify the effects of other herbs and tonics in the formula.

And also, I guess, like, do you think that, like, a lot of the focus is on the folvic acid, not the folic, it's folvic acid. But do you think that there's a lot more to Shilajit than just the folvic acid?

Yes. Yeah. We tend to give it that whole reductionist thing like, oh, it's this compound that does everything right. And then they standardize to that. And it's kind of ridiculous with shilajit that people will be saying like, oh, I have a 90 percent fulvic acid shilajit. And it's like one. Well, so a lot of the testing they use UV light, which is going to say a lot more stuff is fulvic acid than actually is. There are more exact tests.

methods that are used for that. Secondly, it's like, oh, okay, if we're looking for fulvic acid, let's just throw some extra fulvic acid in there and spike up there, which is going to have some benefits. But then, yeah, you're missing so much else that is in there in the shilajit. So the fulvic acids, the humic acids, there's dibenzopyrones. It actually has a natural form of C60. If you've heard of that, that's the

but for full rings, which were created in a lab, but Shilajit was found to actually have these in there. Right. Uh, so that's quite interesting. And then full of just trace minerals. So, um, yeah, fulvic acid is important. And so is the whole host of things like how many compounds are actually in Shilajit? I, I don't know, but getting the whole host of them, I think is going to be very useful. And so that's, that's one that I definitely like to take quite regularly. With the, with the effects of Shilajit, um,

You sort of mentioned there's like the fat loss potential applications metabolic enhancement Something that I've been curious to look at is like herbs that increase thyroid activity So I'm sure you probably you've had probably hundreds of customers wanting to know herbs and supplements that can help with thyroid function What what are your go-to? herbs from that standpoint

Yeah. The number one for that would be ashwagandha. Ashwagandha is helping with so many different things. I really see it primarily as helping with just the stress response and therefore lowering cortisol. But unlike some of the other adaptogens like cordyceps, rhodiola, schizandra, those can be quite stimulating. Even again, they don't have caffeine, but

It's definitely can be stimulating. I think people can't overstimulate with these, but ashwagandha on the flip side is much more calming to the system. So it's even used for supporting sleep. People take it right before bed and it's not really a knock you out herb, but some people do have that effect, especially with a bigger dose.

So this is where I like to see or I see ashwagandha primarily happening. And I think with that, just kind of that lowering cortisol, that's helping all the other systems because with pregnenolone steel, right? If all the cholesterol, the starting material is moving over to cortisol because the body's inflamed and under stress and it needs to do this because...

Even though we think of cortisol as a bad hormone. It's actually the cleanup crew It's trying to help everything out So it being chronically elevated is a sign that there's much going on that the body's doing so the body is saying hey This is a more of a priority than the sex hormones which are going to be converted from that right hand alone down the chain further So all of its going that way you don't have much left for that So by having this happen like everything else turns on I'm not sure if there's a specific mechanism

off the top of my head how that interacts with thyroid, but I think there's definitely something there. And so ashwagandha can be a good one for the hypothyroid kind of helping to bring those levels up.

I haven't gone super deep on thyroid lately. But yeah, some of these different herbs are going to be touching on the system. I think anything that's affecting the metabolism where we're going to be looking at blood sugar and insulin, but also thyroid is likely to come in across on some of those effects as well. What about in terms of, I mean, one that's heavily discussed for like the dopamine enhancement side of things is mucuna.

How did you first get introduced to Makuna and what was the context there?

Yeah, Makuna is quite an interesting one. In some ways, I still don't know exactly how to place that herb because its effects are kind of unique. So Makuna, this comes from Ayurvedic medicine, is really high in L-DOPA, which is a neurotransmitter itself, but the precursor to dopamine.

And dopamine is a neurotransmitter. It's also basically acting as a hormone. Dopamine is tied into testosterone and it's really dopamine is known as our like reward system going after things and then getting it.

So this is a very important part of our neurology and having something that is a rich source, like the Macuna extract we have, I think is 15% L-DOPA. It's funny on, it recently for us got kicked off at Amazon because they're saying, you're selling a drug. It's like, no, it's a natural substance, but they won't. I can't understand that it's not a drug. It's natural nature. So the, yeah, it,

It's interesting in its effects because, you know, anytime we play with our neurotransmitters in a way, it can have very profound effects on our psychology, right? You think of SSRIs, which are manipulating the serotonin levels in the body that can definitely affect people for good or for worse.

as well. So dopamine and having the source of L-DOPA can have that. I've had people where they feel kind of high after taking a big dose on Makuna. So definitely, it's probably that you're taking too much. But using this, it can be helpful

in just applying everything that you need dopamine for. And in our society, like, porn's a good instance where that dopamine desensitization occurs. But having seen something that is not only supplying this, but I imagine with Makuna having that and its other compounds, it's going to be kind of a tonic in helping to kind of rework the dopamine system within the body. So, yeah, it's a very interesting herb with the effects that it has. Yeah.

And what about in terms of like, I guess from a prostate health perspective, I mean, nettle root definitely has to be up there as like one of the favored herbs for prostate health.

Yeah, that is definitely my favorite for that. And we've had a lot of customers have some amazing results. So nettle root, that's the root of the stinging nettle plant. This is a fascinating plant because the leaves are great for like detoxification and diuretic and alternative cleaning the blood. They can be eaten as a food. You got to be, you know, cook them so you don't get a sting along with it. But then you have the root, which is really interesting.

helping with the hormone system, but more in the background. So this is one of those yin-jin herbs.

It is helping the testosterone stay more freely available. There's some evidence that it lowers sex hormone binding, that it lowers the aromatase, converting testosterone into estrogen, and it lowers the 5-alpha reductase, which is what converts testosterone to DHT. And DHT gets a bad name because of the prostate, but also in moral pattern baldness. But it's really important for sexual function for

for muscle growth. It's just, you know, it's a matter of the localized amounts of DHT and just your body being able to handle these different things. So, metal root's helping with the hormones in the background, but one of the big things is helping with that prostate function. So, urinary troubles, having to go to the bathroom multiple times at night or incomplete emptying, these factors are very often helped with metal root. That would be my number one go-to

for that function. Yeah, I've recommended nettle root to a number of patients who've had like, you know, they wake up during the nighttime to urinate and it pretty much resolves that a lot of the time. Like it's pretty effective in that regard. And then also like, you know, looking at prostate, general prostate hypertrophy, that side of things. I mean, it has, from a herbal medicine perspective as studying as a naturopath, like almost every single lecturer was talking about nettle root as like the male prostate herb.

You could also stack it with some other ones like pygeum and also like Swedish flower pollen as well. There's a few other ones there but...

And pine pollen is from our customers. We hear it's having some effect there. We don't have the research or anything to back that except anecdotal evidence at this with the prostate and BPH, which is the swelling of this. A lot of the early science was looking at ODHT is implicated in this because they saw that docking to the receptor sites there.

But later, more research, that's how science goes. Like, oh, we see this one thing. Therefore, this thing is bad. Therefore, let's get rid of it. Then we learn more. And then it's like, oh, that's not the complete picture. But other hormones can also be docking onto the prostate tissue, for instance, estrogens. So this goes back to our whole discussion of the endocrine disrupting chemicals and anything that's going to help with that is likely to help with prostate function to some degree.

Yeah, I definitely think if we look at the different combinations of herbs, I think one thing I'd love to sort of explore is I got asked this question the other day in a group coaching call, which was around like, what happens if you stack many different herbs that have the same mechanism of action? So it's like, let's say we're looking at testosterone and we're like, okay, we know that increasing luteinizing hormone is one strategy, either to increase it or mimic it.

Um, or, or perhaps there's another pathway, which is like upregulating that star enzyme, steroidogenic acute regulatory protein, that one there. Um, how do you go about in terms of like the combination of the herbs stacking them together? Like, yeah. How do you sort of sort of frame that? Yeah, it's a, it's a good discussion. Um, for the most part, what I recommend to people is just

kind of try things out and see what works for you. Yeah, if you want to really kind of understand those different pathways, then you're going to be able to do something like that. But for your average person out there, just kind of looking at them. And again, we have limited pictures like, okay, pine pollen has phytoandrogens.

Which exact pathways is it helping in which different ways like we don't have enough science on that whereas some things like Tomcat Ali that seems to be one that is helping with the luteinizing hormone if I'm remembering correctly But there's a whole bunch of different mechanisms in there as well It's helping with the lowering the sex hormone binding globulin lowering aromatase. So that's that's one of my favorite herbs in there and

A good way to approach things is yeah again try like a bunch of different one find what works for you because Even if it works on a pathway that doesn't necessarily mean it's gonna work on your pathway because again biology super complex We have different things going on. We only have so much of the picture even if you are running like every test freaking possible we still have a limited picture on that so and

So that can be good to definitely look at these and like, let's get something. And that's where working with a naturopath or someone who's very skilled in this, like working in that way, you'll be able to find a stack that is very appropriate for you. Other than that, it just comes down to like personal experimentation. I imagine lots of people listening to this, that's how they got into herbs and supplements and that's just what they're doing. So just kind of continue along with that.

What I would say, something that is useful is just kind of pay attention to your intuition when you're reading something or listening to something, what stands out to you. So we've talked about a bunch of different herbs here. So anyone that's listening to this can be thinking along the lines of what's the one herb from there that sounded like it suits me best of all, and throw that on top of what you're already doing and see if you notice the benefits.

If you do, great, keep going with it. Experiment with different forms or function, up the dose, lower the dose, whatever. If you don't see results with that, that doesn't mean it doesn't work. It might mean it doesn't work for you, right? And just move on to the next thing. Yeah, no, it's definitely, it's a very pragmatic way of approaching like building out a stack.

I'm curious though, Logan, have you been, I'd imagine you have had this request a lot, which is when are you guys gonna be stocking a Fedosia Agrestis? - Yes, we definitely have heard that one.

So I have personally never even tried that herb at this point. I hear great things about it. And I imagine people are getting phenomenal results. We haven't looked for that specifically. I'm kind of at the point like we have pine pollen, we have tonkat ali, we got sustanj, we got afraganda, we have a bunch of herbs that really help with these different functions. It's like how much more does it really add to throw another one in there? That being said, maybe at some point it will happen. We have...

Besides working on some capsules and some different varieties, we haven't been adding a whole bunch of new products. We're just kind of streamlining the ship and growing things in other ways at this time for the most part. So that's the answer to that question. Yeah, yeah, fair enough. One that we sort of glimpsed over, which deserves definitely a lot of attention and is very potent even after the very first dosage, it would have to be deer antler.

So, I mean, that one there, I remember the very first time I tried it within two hours after dosing, I felt a similar effect to Shilajit, deeply grounding effect and very like locked in and just zoned in sort of effect. So did you want to sort of talk a little bit about your first experiences with deer antler?

Yeah, yeah, it's a very interesting one. It's funny because with deer antler, the science is not very good on it. Like a lot of the science is saying no results. And this could have to do with a number of factors involved.

uh quality being one of them like how one extract is prepared to be completely different than another thing out there that's what i chalk it up to mostly but there is some very positive research and for me just yeah taking it i feel it's another one where i just like feel pretty amazing after it's like a energizing but in a subtle way just having kind of that driving power there

What's been very interesting to me is seeing the results of our customers. The thing we're hearing back most positively from that, which is only like a little bit surprising, is with old injuries like chronic pains and aches. The antler, and we have an elk antler, not a deer antler, though those are used interchangeably. There's also moose antler out there, but that one's hard to find. People with these old injuries are...

having pain go away. Uh, and the antler are really amazing substances in nature. And this is why they're first harvested for this use. Like people saw that it's like the antlers are growing a centimeter a day at the fastest part. So it's extremely rich in growth factors in like bone growth factors, nerve growth factors, uh, insulin, like growth factors, all sorts of different things that, uh,

really can turn on the, some of those growth factors are getting pulled into a supplement and then your body is able to utilize those in some way. Again, we don't have all the signs on exactly how this works, but it's using those to be able to kind of turn on the injury that for some reason, the healing process got turned off and it's like, Oh, these come in, let's turn that back on. That's basically how it seems to be working. It is this Yong Jing, uh,

essence that is really great and one side of the yang jing is really that the the sexual hormones the athletic drive but it also has a lot to do with the the bones and the structure of the body uh the things that hold us up that like masculine boundary within our body uh so the deer antler seems to be one of the best substances for really working in this way yeah i think um like

In terms of the musculoskeletal side of things, I mean, injuries, I think there's some pretty decent application. I know this is not medical advice, but the impact on arthritic symptoms and joint pain and sore ligaments and tendons. If you look at the traditional Chinese medicine,

What is it the TCM application and how they classify deer antler today? Do they say like it strengthens the bones and the tendons and ligaments? Yeah. The sinews would be the older word that kind of describes the tendons and ligaments. So really going into that more of the structural tissue. So, you know,

from doing my strong men stuff like a lot of the stuff that i do is it's not just about the muscles but it is about the bones the tendons and the ligaments right so these tissues that there still is turnover they don't get broken down and built back up as fast as muscle and they're definitely not going to swell to a big size i mean you could maybe double the size of your tendons over the course of a lifetime uh but it's it's not going to work in quite the same way so it's it takes longer to really develop these uh

And that also means the strength that lies with them will take a longer amount of time to kind of go away. Um, but that also means like injuries to these things. It can be harder. You know, there's less blood flow in the areas, uh, then say the muscles, right. Which are just full of the blood vessels. So this is why some of the problems begin to occur there. Uh, one of the things that I like for, uh, stuff like arthritis for, uh,

pain is not just taking the internal stuff because your body needs to then go through digestion or the bloodstream and get to that area but the topical use of You can use any tincture as a liniment might be kind of expensive but then liniments are specifically a Format that is made to go on the skin and really whatever goes on your skin is going into your body So this is going to be especially helpful in those areas

areas of like joints where a topical application is needed. So then I like to combine the topical along with the internal use. And so I guess like my final question for yourself, Logan, is what's the future for Lost Empire Herbs looking like? And what's your mission over the next like three to five years? Yeah, so...

A couple of different things we're going to continue to funding some research. We actually have the 2nd, pine pollen study underway right now looking at younger men in this 1, we're going to be looking at, in addition to total testosterone, sex, hormone binding globulin. So we'll be able to look at that along with. Free testosterone levels calculated from that. So excited for that and then after that, we might end up doing pine pollen for women because that that is a thing that.

Pine pollen has been known as a men's herb and obviously has some great results there. But one, women need testosterone, but they also need DHEA. They need the protection from the endocrine disrupting chemicals. And many women are low in testosterone. Although they have one tenth of what a man has, it's equally as important for them.

So this is something I would like to get further out into the world, you know, continue preaching the gospel of pine pollen, because still most people haven't heard of it, but also starting to get more women using this and, you know, finding these herbs as well. So pine pollen is a big thing for us and we're kind of doubling down on that and just want to take it much further than we've gone to even at this point. And, you know, we'll continue to have a whole bunch of different herbs. I also...

I've been experimenting in my lab and have some fun new products, different spagyric formulations and whatnot.

and a spray bottle delivery system so yeah i got all kinds of fun experiments and eventually that will make its way through the product pipeline into what we have available through our vip program first and then eventually uh full and regular products as well that's incredible yeah well i'll definitely be be the man to help support the the message and and also spread the word around the benefits of pine pollen on my youtube channel and and my podcast and my instagram and things like that

And I guess like, yeah, you're at that point now where the innovation starts to actually sort of explore, you know, there's different product formats, like different delivery mechanisms and vectors, which is, yeah, just an incredible position that you're at now with the company. It's like, it started from literally just what you said, like 12 years ago, you just sort of like,

playing with herbs, making them in your kitchen and now look how far and how progressed Lost Empire Herbs has become. So yeah, I just wanted to say congratulations on building out such a phenomenal brand and staying true to your mission and vision and keeping high quality herbal extracts available to the world. So yeah, thanks so much for coming on the podcast, Logan. It was an absolute pleasure chatting.

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