"The Most Potent Phytoestrogen is in Beer"
Why do alcoholic men develop man boobs
and other feminine traits?
Well we know estrogens produce feminization,
and our liver clears estrogens from the body,
and so the original theory
was alcohol-induced liver damage
leading to the retention of excess estrogens.
The problem was that when they measured estrogen levels
they were not elevated,
and even those with cirrhosis of the liver
appeared to clear estrogens from the body normally.
And also men’s testicles started shrinking
even before serious liver disease developed.
So alternative explanations were considered.
Well if it’s not due to estrogens
produced endogenously, meaning within the body,
maybe alcoholics are being exposed
to exogenous estrogenic substances from dietary sources,
maybe from phytoestrogens in the plants
that alcoholic beverages are made from.
The discovery that plants could contain hormonal compounds
was made back in 1951 by two Australian chemists
charged with finding out the cause of an epidemic
of infertility in sheep
that was ravaging their nation’s wool industry.
It took them ten years,
but they finally figured out the cause,
a compound present in a type of clover
called genistein, the same phytoestrogen found in soybeans.
Online you can read about the dreaded clover disease
on scare-mongering websites,
but you’ll note they never talk about
the difference in dose.
To get as much as the sheep were getting from clover,
you’d have to drink more than a thousand cartons
of soymilk a day, 8,000 soy burgers,
or about 800 pounds of tofu a day.
This is not to say you can’t overdo it.
There are two case reports in the medical literature
on feminizing effects associated with eating
as few as 14 to 20 servings of soy foods a day.
But at reasonable doses,
or even considerably higher than the
one or two servings a day Asian men eat,
soy phytoestrogens do not exert
feminizing effects on men.
So anyways back in 1951,
we realized plant compounds could be estrogenic.
Ah ha, two German researchers realized,
maybe that’s why women who handle hops
start menstruating,
and indeed they found estrogenic activity in hops,
which is the bittering agent used to make beer.
They found trace amounts of the soy phytoestrogens,
but in such tiny quantities
that beer would not be expected
to have an estrogenic effect.
But then in 1999, a potent phytoestrogen
called 8-prenylnaringenin was discovered in hops -
in fact the most potent phytoestrogen found to date,
fifty times more potent than the genistein in soy,
an obvious explanation for the menstrual disturbances
in female hop workers in the past.
Now that we have machines to pick our hops,
our only exposure is likely via beer consumption,
but the levels in beer were found to be so low
that they shouldn’t cause any concern.
But then in 2001 a study on a hops-containing
dietary supplement for "breast enhancement"
raised the concern that another phytoestrogen
in hops called isoxanthohumol
might be biotransformed by our liver
into the more potent 8-PN,
which would greatly augment the estrogenic effects of hops.
But this was a study done on mice.
Thankfully a study using human estrogen receptors
found no such liver transformation
and so all seemed fine until 2005.
See, the liver is not the only transformation site
inside the human body.
The human colon contains trillions of microorganisms
with enormous metabolic potential.
It’s like a whole separate organ within our body,
with a hundred livers worth of metabolizing power.
So let’s effectively mix some beer
with some poop and see what happens.
And indeed up to a 90% conversion was achieved.
Up until then the concentration of 8-PN
in beer was considered too low
to affect human health.
However, these results show that the activity
of the intestinal microbial community
could more than 10-fold increase
the exposure concentration.
This can explain why you can detect 8-PN
in the urine of beer- drinkers for days,
because their gut bacteria keep churning it out.
Obviously, the amount of straight 8-PN in beer
is not the only source of estrogen effects
given this conversion.
So, a decade ago, the question remained,
might drinking too much beer cause estrogenic effects
and feminize men?
I'll give you the 10-year update...
in my next video.