Dr. Matthew Hill

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614 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2024 last heard Jul 2024

Dr. Matthew Hill’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Huberman Lab · How Cannabis Impacts Health & the Potential Risks | Dr. Matthew Hill · 8 Jul 2024 podcast

We'll go with cannabis.

Okay.

I mean, I understand it, but yeah, a lot of people don't know.

It's super mixed. So, I mean, you talk about something like prolactin, for example, that is another one that's obviously involved in this whole cascade stuff. Generally, I would say the bulk of the literature actually says that cannabis would suppress prolactin, not increase it. That's the majority of the literature that's out there.

Probably. I mean, the rodent work would suggest it's through dopamine that's turning off prolactin because you can reverse some of these effects by playing with dopamine signaling. So I don't doubt that's the mechanism. So typically, I would say more often, I mean, there's studies with inhalation and IV that have generally found reduced prolactin.

And in chronic cannabis users, they find somewhat lower resting states of prolactin. That's been found in one study that came out of Yale. Interesting. Testosterone gets a little bit more complicated because... There are a lot of studies that find, A, to begin with, cannabis users may have higher levels of testosterone just at rest.

I don't know. Yeah. I mean, that being said, a lot of the stuff—now, granted, this was mostly done in the 70s. And, like, this is from my previous life because my undergrad and graduate supervisor, he was a neuroendocrinologist— focused much more on sex hormones and reproductive hormones. So we've written a few reviews. So I've done like reviews on this area. And I know the literature somewhat.

It's mixed. But generally from the 70s studies, what they would often see is that if they – would serially look at testosterone after someone consumed, they would have little dips. Like that wasn't uncommon for them to find it. Not every study found it. That being said, the kind of range that testosterone stayed in was always the normative range.

Like it was never that it went so low that someone would have classified as being hypogonadal or would lead to something like gynecomastia, at least from a testosterone deficiency side in terms of the balance between testosterone and estradiol. I don't know as much about the aromatization side of it. Again, I'd say it's pretty mixed.

I mean, I don't think the gynecomastia stuff is, I mean, certainly people online might be talking about it and there might be some other components to this. I've also heard, and again, this isn't like science. This is just the same kind of stuff you see on random internet communities. People talking about, oh, well, you know, it has plant estrogens.

So maybe they're subbing in and having estrogenic effects. I don't know how valid any of this is.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, and I think that, I mean, when it comes to something like this, I've not seen any compelling evidence for it. So I can't, I certainly wouldn't say that it's a typical side effect that men would experience is like developing breast tissue in response to cannabis. I feel like if that was the case, it would be very known in the scientific community as something that comes out.

Like someone who's on steroids or something.

I don't, I mean, I'd say like, yeah, this enough studies to suggest that you might see transient drops in testosterone from cannabis. And it seems to be relatively short lived. Um, it doesn't seem to, but again, a lot of these studies also find that the basal testosterone is already kind of high to begin with. So you're staying in a normal dynamic range.

Again, it's homeostatic, just like, just like the

Yeah. So, and that's the thing. I mean, testosterone fluctuates across the day anyway. So there's already, I mean, there's other things that fluctuate. It's like cortisol. These hormones have cycles. So as long as you're in this normal range, there really shouldn't be any kind of like behavioral, like in terms of sex drive for testosterone or like physiological...

Like gynecomastia or some change in, I mean, now there are potentially effects of THC directly on the testes that could affect sperm. That could happen independent of changes in testosterone.

Yeah, I mean, a lot of the kind of in vitro stuff definitely would suggest that, some of the animal stuff as well. The human stuff is definitely a bit mixed. I mean, but again, if anything, it would be like, yeah, it could have some effect on sperm.

I would say that. I would agree on that. So I would say if someone was asking me this and they were trying to get pregnant and struggling, I would say, well, definitely cut cannabis because – Some people may be more impacted by it than others.

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