Pine Pollen, Testosterone, and Plant Spirits: In October 2020, I was a guest on Sascha Hill’s Herzkraft Podcast. Six years later, I listened to the conversation again.
When I go through the Adaptonics archive today, I keep finding things I had almost forgotten.
This conversation is part of it.
It was actually supposed to be about Pine Pollen.
And it did.
At least at the beginning.
A good hour later, we had arrived at testosterone, passionflower, plant spirits, the pineal gland, the Vatican, LSD, Cistus, and the question of why the Romans are always the enemies.
So basically, a pretty normal conversation with me.
→ Listen to the episode on the Herzkraft Podcast
From the Healing Garden to Adaptonics
What interests me about this episode today isn’t just Pine Pollen.
Sascha asked me in considerable detail how it all began.
At first, there was no sophisticated business plan or major brand. There was a piece of land in Tenerife. The idea of a Healing Garden. A few plants that fascinated me. And the rather naive idea that perhaps I could eventually make something of it.
The Healing Garden later became Adaptonics.
Pine Pollen was one of those botanical discoveries that captivated me early on—also because pine pollen is biologically far more interesting than you might initially expect from a yellow dust.
And eventually, Pino Gordo emerged from it.
Pine Pollen and Testosterone
The title of that podcast episode was rather self-assured: “Pine Pollen – natural testosterone booster.”
Today, I probably wouldn’t call it that anymore.
Not because Pine Pollen had suddenly become uninteresting. Quite the opposite.
Steroid hormones such as testosterone, epitestosterone, and androstenedione were analytically detected in pine pollen decades ago. The classic detection dates back to 1971 and concerned the pollen of the Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris). You can read the publication here.
But: The fact that a substance occurs in a plant is by no means proof that consuming that plant increases testosterone levels in humans.
I didn’t always make that distinction clearly enough in the past.
Today, I clearly distinguish between what has been analytically demonstrated, what is biologically plausible, the initial clinical evidence, and my own experiences. That’s why I’ve compiled the current state of knowledge in detail on our comprehensive Pine Pollen overview page; you can also find the studies themselves in our Pine Pollen research overview.
And then the conversation got a little wilder
Those who have only recently discovered Adaptonics might be surprised at this point.
Those who have known me longer: probably not.
At some point, we naturally talk on the podcast about my own experiences with Pine Pollen and Pino Gordo. About men and women. About testosterone and aggression. About Passiflora.
And from there, surprisingly, we make the leap to spirituality, the pineal gland, plant spirits, power structures, the Vatican, and eventually even LSD and politics.
You don’t have to agree with all of it.
Today, I probably wouldn’t sign off on every sentence exactly as I formulated it back then, either.
But that’s exactly why I find conversations like these from the past interesting.
Science or plant spirits?
I’ve never been particularly keen on having to choose between the two.
On the one hand, I’m interested in science: What is actually in a plant? Which substances can be measured? Which mechanisms are plausible? What has been studied in humans—and what hasn’t?
On the other hand, I’ve been working with plants for more than ten years. I plant them. I harvest them. I process them. I experiment.
And this gives rise to experiences, observations, and sometimes some pretty wild thoughts.
One is not a substitute for the other.
A personal experience is not a clinical study. A study, in turn, cannot reflect every individual’s experience.
What interests me is precisely what lies in between.
A conversation from the pandemic year 2020
You can also tell from the episode when it was made.
October 2020.
Corona was suddenly everywhere.
Cistus and our then still fairly new Imun Guard also appear toward the end. At that time, I was deeply preoccupied with society’s approach to health, fear, self-efficacy, and personal responsibility.
Many of the ideas from it later found their way into additional articles.
That’s also why this conversation now belongs not only in the Pine Pollen folder for me, but in the history of Adaptonics.
Would I still say it exactly that way today?
No.
Fortunately.
If you are still saying exactly the same things after six years, then either you knew everything from the start—or you didn’t learn very much along the way.
Today, I would distinguish more clearly between:
- scientifically proven,
- biologically plausible,
- used traditionally,
- experienced personally
- and simply speculated.
But I also don’t want to let old texts, videos, or podcasts disappear simply because I would express some things more precisely today.
That’s what we thought back then. That’s what we knew back then. And that’s what we know today.
That is precisely how an archive comes into being.
And sometimes you even find a one-hour conversation that begins with pine pollen and ends at the Vatican.
Listen to the podcast
→ Pine Pollen – natural testosterone booster? Herzkraft podcast with Sascha Hill and Curro Cachinero
If you’d like to explore the topic in more depth afterward, our Pine-Pollen-Adaptopedia contains the story, our self-experiments, more than ten years of articles, and the current state of research on Pine Pollen and Pino Gordo.
Note: This post documents and contextualizes a conversation from 2020. It is for general information and does not replace medical advice.