Now this is a question worth digging into…
Hi Logan,
What would you say are the 80/20s of increasing one’s number/capacity of androgen receptors?
All the best
Nathaniel
To answer this, I first want you to think ecologically, rather than biochemically. For example, a forest or grassland may adapt due to changes in certain species. If the population of lions doubled in the African savannah, this would send ripples of impact across the landscape. To think this way gives a more intuitive grasp of our bodies and how things operate inside them.
So, the first answer is that what traditionally helps with testosterone likely will also help with their receptors.
First and foremost would be strength training. It is likely that in addition to all the other effects, the muscle cells will upregulate their androgen receptors to be able to use testosterone, DHT and more.
I reasoned this out logically then went to see if there is research backing it up. Sure enough, this rat research used electrical stimulation to cause muscle contraction, essentially a substitute for exercise.
“These findings suggested that a rapid increase in the number of androgen receptors occurred as an early event for a practical increase in muscle mass and thus it may have contributed in part to the triggering of muscle hypertrophy by enhancing the muscle sensitivity to androgen.”
Other research in humans regarding exercise backs this up too. Rather than any increase in testosterone or other androgens systemically, what these researchers found was simply more “intramuscular androgen receptor content”, that is the hormones interacting with receptors.
What this means is that exercise may not actually increase testosterone in some cases, instead it just causes it to interact better and more easily with your muscles and bones.
My hypothesis is that this is likely the same for other testosterone-associated activities. If resistance training is activating the receptors in the muscles, does sexual activity do the same thing inside the reproductive system?
Do feelings of success activate androgen receptors in the brain and nervous system?
This study showed genetically disrupted androgen receptors within mouse nervous systems which led to less sexual motivation, performance and less aggressive behavior which are generally associated with testosterone.
Now, that’s not showing exactly what I hypothesized. But when we recognize that hormones work in feedback cycles, that hormones are often BOTH cause and effect, it may shed some light on what is going on here.
For example, as this study showed, testosterone treatment in cells itself increased androgen receptor density. Flooding the system results in higher levels of activity.
In bone cells, DHT (dihydrotestosterone) itself increases androgen receptors.
While DHT gets a bad rap in prostate issues and male pattern baldness, it’s an important and healthful hormone for other reasons including muscle mass and sexual function. (Read more about it in this three part series.)
Understand that actually testing for the receptors themselves is hard to do, much more so than the chemicals in the blood. So most of the research that even mentions receptors is talking about what they do, not how they do it.
So if we take these ideas further out, ALL the basics of hormone health include those for health in general. And so here, good sleep is likely needed to keep your receptors (not just androgen receptors but all of them) working. Hydration, diet, so on and so forth. The basics are the basics for a reason.
Essentially, all the things that support testosterone are likely to support your androgen receptors to some degree as well.
Another major area of action that comes to mind is limiting and detoxing endocrine disrupting chemicals that are blocking the receptors. It may not increase the number, but it certainly will improve capacity.
If you’re looking for an 80/20 action (i.e. high leverage) looking at what you can eliminate here (pesticides, plastics, body care products, etc.) is one of the easiest things to do. Much easier than adding an exercise program is to eliminate something that is causing harm.
Are phthalates just a disrupting androgen creation, or do they also change androgen receptor capacity or numbers as well? There is insufficient research to answer this question. But there is enough research to know it is worth your efforts to do your best to avoid these plasticizing chemicals when and where you can.
This is also why detoxification is important to hormone health. Compounds such as humic acids in Shilajit have been shown to bind to not just heavy metals but various endocrine disrupting chemicals as well.
Micronutrients likely play a role in androgen receptors and not just androgen synthesis. Zinc deficiency led to decreased androgen receptors and increased estrogen receptors in male rat’s livers.
And in the prostate’s of male rats, zinc similarly increased androgen receptors, while the combination with selenium canceled out these effects.
We’ve likely all heard of zinc’s role in testosterone synthesis, but here we see it does more than that. A wide range of nutrients likely play other roles in this area.
Now let’s turn towards herbs. There’s limited research on herbs’ effects on androgens in general (though some are much better than others such as Tongkat Ali). That is to say research on herbs effects on androgen receptors doesn’t exist.
However, lack of evidence is not the same thing as evidence of lack. Some of the herbs, and likely other supplements, upregulate receptors too.
I’m reminded of the preliminary research on Cistanche that points to it acting like a SARM.
If you don’t want to read that detailed post, then here’s the short summation. Selective androgen receptor modulators (SARMs) are compounds that selectively target and activate androgen receptors in the body. Specifically, in some mouse research they found that compounds in Cistanche, called echinacosides, would block androgen receptors in the hypothalamus. The hypothalamus is the master endocrine gland. Most hormones, testosterone included, work in the body via feedback loops. By blocking the androgen receptors in the hypothalamus, some of the feedback to lower FSH and LH production, which in turn leads to lowered testosterone production, gets stopped. That means more testosterone overall.
In summation, the way to support your androgen receptors involves:
- Doing the basics of health
- Doing the basics of hormone health
- Limiting and detoxing endocrine disrupting chemicals
- Supporting hormones with herbs
Hopefully that gives you enough insight to take action.
- Increasing Androgen Receptor Number and Capacity - April 19, 2024
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