WIL 5-Point Weekly Review #35

Weed wrecks your mitochondria, Tribulus for androgen power and more...

This is my free weekly newsletter covering 5 interesting points from the week. Subscribe (if you haven’t already) if you’d like to get it in your inbox each week!

1. Weed is straight up bad for your brain and mitochondria

I never liked weed because it made me feel so …dumb.

A paper from 2015 explains that while THC may have some therapeutic applications, it increases the risk for stroke because “THC increases oxidative stress and induces cerebral mitochondrial dysfunction” in the brain. In vitro and animal studies have found cannabinoids to inhibit mitochondrial respiration in the brian. Another paper explains that “CBD exposure exceeding 10 μM has a detrimental effect on the mitochondrial respiration of immune cells.” Another study explains the negative effects of weed, as you can tell from the title: Cannabidiol Impairs Brain Mitochondrial Metabolism and Neuronal Integrity. More specifically, they say that high doses of CBD induces neuronal death in the hippocampus and affect rodents’ learning and memory. They do acknowledge some therapeutic uses of CBD, but highlight that it is neurotoxic at high concentrations.

Lastly, a study from just this month - March 2024 found prenatal cannabis use to be associated with ADHD and autism in women’s children.

2. Scientific American won’t say the word “woman.”

In a Scientific American article from just this month, they refer to women as “birthing parents.” Of course we can’t acknowledge the biological fact that the only way to get pregnant is to be a woman… because it would be ‘mean’ to people who are not happy with their biological sex.

This is especially alarming given Canada’s newly introduced “Online Harms Act” that would give the government more power to prosecute citizens for posting things on the internet that could be interpreted as “hateful.” Is saying “woman” instead of the ludicrous “birthing person” going to be considered hateful?

I gave ChatGPT-4 a PDF of the Bill and asked it if stating that “men have better spatial cognition than women” (something confirmed widely by many lines of research in humans and animals) could lead to the prosecution. It basically said while minimal, yes.

3. Are women or men more angry more often?

An old 1995 paper titled Sex Differences in Distress: Real or Artifact investigated whether women really do experience greater distress than men or if this was simply an illusion created by a reporting bias. That is, do women really experience more distress or are they just more comfortable sharing their distress? Further, they also wanted to investigate anger because previous indexes tapped “feminine” emotions such as depression rather than “masculine” emotions like anger. This oversight would fail to note whether men were just more likely to express their distress as anger rather than depression.

The study found that neither reporting bias or lack of accounting for “masculine” emotions changed the result. Women reported feeling happy as often as men, but they experienced “distress about 30 percent more often than men.” Further, women were in fact more often angry than men. Interestingly, women experienced the so-called “masculine” emotion of anger twice as often as they did sadness. Women experienced “sadness, anxiety, malaise, and aches” more often than men.

The image that men are more frequently angry than women probably arises from the fact that men’s anger is scarier and more consequential if it gets out of hand. Of course (hopefully) most anger ends with a simple argument, but this is reflected in a study titled Sex differences in aggression between heterosexual partners: A meta-analytic review from the year 2000. It found that women were slightly more likely than men to attack their male partner and did so more frequently. Men that did resort to violence were more likely to injure their female partner. 62% of those injured by a partner were women. Women are probably more likely to use violence because they don’t expect their partner to get injured.

I came across this paper because I was investigating certain widespread ideas about testosterone. Namely, does testosterone really make men more aggressive, angry and violent regardless of the context? While androgens of course act differently on women and men, this paper seems like another piece of evidence that testosterone is much more than just the “toxic masculinity” hormone. If testosterone is a substrate to fuel anger, why do men, who have 8-15 times the testosterone of women, experience less anger?

However, pathological expression of anger by men is of course much more consequential than by women considering 78% of aggravated assault in the US is done by men (2011). Out-of-control men are more dangerous than out-of-control women.

*Something to think about is how men and women act out of the protective bubble of society. Society (if it’s not fucked up) is a very low stakes environment. We sleep with roofs over our head, we have consistent access to food, we rarely come in contact with physical violence (hopefully). Perhaps men would be much more frequently angry and aggressive than women if they were in an environment that often produced threats.

4. Red Light reduces blood sugar

A paper titled Light stimulation of mitochondria reduces blood glucose levels describes how that the blood sugar elevation resulting from a glucose tolerance test can be reduced by 27.7% with a 15 minute exposure to 670nm (red) light.

“PBM (photobiomodulation) can be used to reduce blood glucose spikes following meals. This intervention may reduce damaging fluctuations of blood glucose on the body.”

This may be because red light “speeds up” energy production in the mitochondria, as I have explained in this video.

“Photobiomodulation (PBM) with red light (670 nm) increases mitochondrial membrane potentials and adenosine triphosphate production and may increase glucose demand.”

5. Androgen “booster” I’m taking - Tribulus

Tribulus is a manly plant of the caltrop family that is found in warm climates. The amount of solid research substantiating Tribulus’s androgenic properties is limited (See also, 2). Most of the exciting claims about Tribulus come from rodent studies.

50mg/kg increased serum testosterone by 30% in rodents, 100mg/kg increased it 56%. Increased sexual behavior was observed with increasing dose. It may enhance testosterone production by protecting the testicles from oxidation damage and/or by stimulating the Leydig cells to produce testosterone.

A 2009 study tested 4 extracts of tribulus in male mice. All extracts except for the hexanic extract more than doubled the free testosterone levels in the rodents. They claim tribulus enhances luteinizing hormone production. Another rat study found tribulus saponins to increase serum testosterone to about 150% of control. Another rat study adds evidence to tribulus’s androgen increasing properties as they found tribulus to have an aphrodisiac effect even in castrated rodents.

A pilot study on 30 (human) male patients with partial androgen deficiency found 750mg/day of tribulus over 3 months. This lead to a mean increase in total testosterone of 33% and 5% increase in free testosterone. However, note that was in men with partial androgen deficiency. A 2005 study found no effect of tribulus on testosterone in young men. Another study found no effect in healthy young men.

However, we unfortunately don’t have much data on how Tribulus affects DHT in healthy men. One of the compounds in Tribulus, protodioscin works by increasing the conversion of testosterone into DHT. DHT is a more potent androgen than testosterone.

In infertile men, taking 2 pills of 250mg of dried Tribulus extract for 28 days on average increased DHT levels by 20%, rising to a 27% increase after 84 days. Fat tissue decreased on average by 1 kilogram after 84 days and lean tissue increased by 1 kilogram. No noteworthy effects on serum testosterone.

I’m currently experimenting with 800mg once a day with this brand RSP. (No affiliation) To be honest, I’m not sure if there is a better form or better brand out there. Someone comment if you know what form/brand to look out for.