Ep. 408: Render – Real Talk About Men’s Health

00:00:14
Speaker 1: My name is Clay Nukam and this is a production of the bear Grease podcast called The bear Grease Rendered, where we render down, dive deeper, and look behind the scenes of the actual bear Grease podcast, presented by FHF Gear, American Maid, purpose built hunting and fishing gear that’s designed to be as rugged as the place as we explore.

00:00:46
Speaker 2: We’re here with doctor Adam McCall and Josh Lambridge spilmmaker. Happy New Year, by the way, Happy New Year.

00:00:53
Speaker 3: How’s it already twenty twenty six?

00:00:55
Speaker 2: You know, it’s funny you say that because first time in my life, and this may have something to do with a medical issue that I have.

00:01:02
Speaker 4: So we brought to ask our personal medical issues.

00:01:06
Speaker 2: I actually think it might have to do with some a project that I’m doing that’s gonna come out in twenty twenty seven. But I actually feel like twenty twenty six has already completed.

00:01:16
Speaker 4: Twenty six.

00:01:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like I usually have a hard time writ in the year. Yeah, you know, and when I write twenty twenty six, I think I should be writing twenty seven. Doctor. Can you tell me if there’s anything wrong with me?

00:01:32
Speaker 3: Well? I can, But is that something you want me to tell over.

00:01:36
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, we’re gonna we’re gonna remove all hippa, all hippa considerations. No, so you’re right though twenty twenty six, we’re here, this is the first render of twenty twenty six, and we’re gonna talk about men’s health.

00:01:50
Speaker 4: Yeah.

00:01:50
Speaker 3: I think it’s a big, big topic right now for sure.

00:01:53
Speaker 2: Man, it really is maybe middle aged men or prime targets for health because you know, really thinking about health. Because it feels like we all go through these stages. When you’re a kid, you’re obviously are not thinking about longevity in health. When you’re in your youth from twenty to thirty five, you’re kind of in the probably the physical prime of your life. Maybe yep, you’re you’re less likely to be thinking about health issues. Just seem a long ways away to care about much about your health.

00:02:30
Speaker 3: I think that what you see, you know, you get in that first stage at eighteen to thirty, you kind of describe as you’re a lot more of a cowboy. You’re just kind of trying to figure it out. You know, that thirty to forty year old you move into that what I call the conqueror phase, Like when you’re just trying to get it done. You’re conquering life.

00:02:48
Speaker 4: Forty is really where it starts.

00:02:50
Speaker 3: To kind of slow down a little bit, where you go, Okay, I just want to maintain what I have. And I think that that forty year old man, you wake up and you’ve got tennis elbow for the first time, you don’t know what you did. It starts, I mean, it starts a process of you going, maybe I ought to take care of myself a little bit.

00:03:06
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, and that’s why, you know, in the in the hunting space, guys like Cam Haynes back in the you know, like two thousand. I don’t know when Cam really started writing about, you know, fitness and stuff, and he probably wasn’t the first one, but he was the first one that I paid attention to, where this idea of hunting and fitness go together was kind of a new deal. And but I mean now now in twenty twenty six, it’s like it seems to be a commonplace thing. Yeah, which is which is I think a wonderful thing. Yep, that we would tack on fitness being a component of you know, living an outdoor lifestyle. And I’ve never been one to talk about, uh, I don’t think I’ve really ever talked to much about just kind of my what I do to stay in this kind of shape, Josh.

00:04:06
Speaker 4: But uh, and keep your eye canting.

00:04:09
Speaker 2: I mean, if I was like Jack, that’d be like putting pictures of me doing bench presses and stuff. I am not, but but I actually it’s top of mind for me and has been for probably ten years.

00:04:20
Speaker 3: Yeah. I remember you saying that You’re like, man, I’m getting healthy and stay healthy, and so yeah, I think that’s incredibly important. I think that I think I wonder if you’re seeing this because of the trend of go deep, go deep, go deep into the woods. That’s where you’re going to go find the bigger bucks. Like, if you’re out of shape, you can’t go deep and then drag a deer out of the woods. And so I think that because of the the nature of what hunting has has become and is becoming, is definitely playing into that. You just can’t if you’re not in shape, you don’t have the health, you can’t go you can’t go to wild places.

00:04:53
Speaker 2: It’s it’s so true. And uh, I mean it goes without but it’s such a relevant topic to talk about specifically men’s health.

00:05:06
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:05:06
Speaker 2: But I mean to me, as much as the physicality of walking up a mountain, it’s being healthy enough to have the energy, the mental energy. Because the older I see this in people, I’ve seen traces of it to myself. The older you get, the more just staying at home sounds good. Yeah, I mean, just just drank, just tired. I mean, that’s what I hear from a lot of people. My I’m forty six, Josh is sixty three. That was a joke. We had a live audience that’ll be like, ha ha, No, Josh is a couple of years older than me.

00:05:42
Speaker 4: I’m getting ready, fifty twenty twenty six is fifty for me. Yeah, And so just what you’re talking about, it’s like, you know, I’ve I’ve spent a lot of my life working physical jobs and didn’t really prioritize health just because I knew I was working. And now it’s like I’m having to back pedal a little bit to try to catch up. And so I appreciate what you’re talking about, you know.

00:06:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, My dad always told me that his buddies got old when they turned fifty, like they started acting like old men. They started not wanting to go and just just kind of and I can see, I can see how that would start, and I’m actively fighting that. So again my point being, it’s not just about like being strong enough to walk up that mountain, right, an equal component of that is having the drive, the energy, the want to to walk up that mountain. To me, that’s the biggest limiting factor that that I feel like is out there.

00:06:45
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, we were. I took I took three of my kids camping this weekend with a couple other guys and their kids, and one of the common themes that we all were talking about was don’t let the old man in.

00:06:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you know it is.

00:06:57
Speaker 3: You’ve got to constantly fight against that and realize that man, you know. I was in the car with my father in law and we were playing in a golf tournament. He’s really good. I’m not. And I said, man, we’re not doing you know, too bad, and he goes, I mean for one old guy and one middle aged guy. And I just turned forty and I looked around the car and I said, here are you calling middle aged? And he said, what do you think you are? And all of a sudden, man, there’s this deal going. I’m counting down instead of counting up at this point, And so, what what can I do and what can I tell others to do that one? Let me keep doing what I want to do for the longest that I can. And what do I got to do to keep that old man out?

00:07:34
Speaker 2: Yeah? So doctor McCall is both Josh and I’s doctor relatively new all right. My dear friend, doctor Jason Lofton, was both of our doctors. He’s long ways from here, but a great guy, a relationship, just a longtime dear friend of ours. And we were driving to We’re driving four hours to go see Jay because we liked, we loved him so much. And then he was the one who said, hey, guys, y’all should y’all y’all don’t need to drive that far.

00:08:08
Speaker 4: After he dumped us.

00:08:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know now that I’m thinking about it, now that I’m saying it out loud.

00:08:13
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, Well, I can’t say to.

00:08:16
Speaker 2: You when he when he did he pay you like of it.

00:08:20
Speaker 3: Wasn’t a lot, but it was uh, you know, he actually said, he said, hey, what do you think about taking care of one of my good friends? And I said, who’s that? And he said, a god named Clay Nukem, and immediately I was like, look, I don’t know if you know this not, but I’ve actually been courting Clay for a little bit on Facebook, like, hey, man, just so you know, I’m a doctor, take care of the whole family. Uh. And and because I knew Jess knukemb and who kind of connected this right before you signed on media her way back when in law. Yeah, and uh and so anyways, and then he reached out to me, he said, hey, I think, uh, Josh is gonna call and uh just makes gets on your schedule. And so I had to go actually pay my front staff to make that to do actually what I asked them to.

00:09:09
Speaker 2: Well, it’s it’s been Uh, it’s been great to connect with you. Yes, just a little bit that we have, sure, but uh, tell me tell me about your business and like or just I don’t know what kind of doctor are you?

00:09:20
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I do.

00:09:21
Speaker 3: I’m kind of a rarity. There’s about one to two percent of us in the US that are family physicians that still deliver babies at high volume. Really, so I do family practicing obstetrics. I deliver about one hundred babies to one hundred and twenty babies a year and do full surgery.

00:09:36
Speaker 4: So we’ve both delivered babies.

00:09:38
Speaker 3: Well, I think, well, never.

00:09:39
Speaker 2: Mind, he’s not joking.

00:09:41
Speaker 4: I’m not joking.

00:09:42
Speaker 2: Really, I delivered uh uh my youngest son unassisted in that house right there.

00:09:49
Speaker 4: That is that I delivered my daughter.

00:09:51
Speaker 2: Not to one up you doctor, year I have done one.

00:09:58
Speaker 3: Man, that’s phenomenal. There is no greater experience. And a dad getting to be a part of that.

00:10:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know.

00:10:04
Speaker 3: So I let a lot of dads that I like, ones that I don’t like.

00:10:08
Speaker 4: We’ll see.

00:10:09
Speaker 2: But didn’t mean to interrupt you, but we had to drop that stat. Josh is pretty much the same thing.

00:10:14
Speaker 3: But you need to hear that story at some point.

00:10:16
Speaker 2: So one hundred and twenty babies a year, that’s like a baby every two or three days.

00:10:20
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, it works out about like that too. Two a week is what I.

00:10:24
Speaker 4: Shoot sketch them so you can.

00:10:26
Speaker 3: Have I wish no man, they you know, that’s one thing that I’m a I’m a pretty patient individual and so and I do what’s right for the patient, and that’s to let things naturally occur unless we need to intervene otherwise.

00:10:39
Speaker 2: And uh, that means you’re having to wake up the middle of the night or something and go in Oh yeah all the time.

00:10:44
Speaker 3: Really, So I actually have have thrown around the idea of not delivering, and then my wife looks at me and she’s like, but you love it too much. I was like, you know, we’ll see what happens.

00:10:54
Speaker 5: Uh.

00:10:54
Speaker 3: But yeah, no, I’ve been doing that now for thirteen years.

00:10:57
Speaker 2: Okay, so so you’re but you’re also have.

00:11:00
Speaker 3: I do you know if I had a if I had a business card that I actually would print, I think it’d go over well and it would say womb to tomb, except I’m afraid i’d be in Target and someone to be like, hey, there’s the womb to tomb guy.

00:11:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, he’s got a womb tattoo on his chest.

00:11:18
Speaker 3: I’ll show it to you later. But yes, I’ve been doing that, and we take care of the whole family. So I’ve been doing that.

00:11:25
Speaker 4: Uh.

00:11:26
Speaker 3: Started off in Harrison, uh, and I practiced there for about five years and then have been back in Northwest.

00:11:32
Speaker 2: Where did you grow up?

00:11:33
Speaker 3: Conway, Faultner County. So I got a lot of family that lives in Fulton County, Boone County and over.

00:11:40
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, Wow, that’s cool man, tell me about your your hunting, your big outdoors man.

00:11:47
Speaker 3: Oh Man. So I you know, I grew up hunting over and in Salem or Sturky. If anybody knows what that’stury.

00:11:53
Speaker 2: I’ve heard. I really don’t know where it’s at, though, But.

00:11:55
Speaker 3: I grew u hunting away that My dad said, there’s your stand, and that stand was my stand for the next ten years. And nobody sat on it. And I didn’t go sit on anybody else’s stand. We didn’t care about which way the wind blew or you just went out there and hunted and it wasn’t super successful. And then I guess I started getting real interested in uh in bow hunting when I moved to Washington County. Uh I can’t say it was from the purest of intentions, because we live right around this three hundred acre kind of wetland habitat owned by Audubon, and uh boy, I saw some real big deer and so I thought, how how would that happen if I decided to go in there, and I got got into bowhunting. After that, it was just over. Never did do it because I realized I don’t need to be on the news at night it’s been like local dogs.

00:12:42
Speaker 2: So it wasn’t legal to do that.

00:12:43
Speaker 4: Oh, it was zero percent legal.

00:12:45
Speaker 2: So with that that thought spurred you to get into bow hunting, get into bow hunting. I got it’s been. I got it, And I started in a criminal, a criminal mind of looking at big deer. That’s probably the way a lot of us got started hunting, looking at big Yeah.

00:13:00
Speaker 4: No places where you can’t shoot it, yeah, which is where they live.

00:13:04
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so we’ve uh So then I got into turkey hunting because why not, And got into bow hunting turkeys two years ago. And I don’t I think if you’re gonna go bow hunt turkeys, your best tool that you need to have is a shotgun because those suckers are hard to kill with the bow. But no, I’m doing that, And what I love about it is it gets me in the outdoors. That’s where man, I feel like, that’s where God has intended us to live. A lot of our life is just out there with him. When I take my kids out there, teach them to love hunting, just more so for the fellowship, more so just because you can get quiet and you can get away, just from the noise that you experience. Every single day, you know.

00:13:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it is. It really is a gift to be able to to have a passion, a hobby, whatever you want to call it, that really makes you away. Yeah, you know, it takes you literally away.

00:14:03
Speaker 3: I mean it’s you know, that’s you don’t really think about how much. And this goes into even like mental health as being such a big deal. But unless you take the intentional time just to quiet your brain, you’re surrounded by noise. It doesn’t matter your cell phone, a TV, even conversations with friends. But there is some real benefit into just being quiet. Yeah, there’s a lot of a lot of things that you can you know, I wouldn’t say solved, but there’s a lot of problems that that man don’t become such a big deal whenever you can just be quiet, you know. Yeah, I think you know that plays into blood pressure and cortisol and all the things that that we struggle with as a as a nation. The hunting, I think is actually really healthy.

00:14:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I’ve always I’ve said this before, people know this. I mean, I’m a I’m an active Christian believer, very involved in our and different things. So it’s Josh and as as I understand so are you. And I’ve always not liked the way A lot of times people have portrayed the outdoors being like, the outdoors is my church, you know, like if they if they, and I get what they’re trying to say. So in some ways I’ve I’ve always been I mean, the outdoors is not my church. Like I don’t, I don’t use it in that function. I mean to me, I mean, we can talk about what a church is, but it’s but it’s people, and it’s relationship with people with the like value system and whatnot. But there I have found on extended I don’t want to over glorify this as if this is the key to life, which is way is portrayed sometimes, and it’s not like if you’re a broken person and you go into the wilderness, you’re not You’re gonna come back broken to it generally, But on extended backcountry hunts is when I have had several moments of great clarity about specific things in my life. Actually, often more than once, I’ve had a dream in the back country that I came home and talked to Misty about. And you know, I don’t think all dreams are like from God or super spiritual, but some of them absolutely are absolutely in my mind. And like when I came back from Utah just the other last month, I was in Utah for a week and Misty she said, did you have any dreams while you’re there? Like she literally was just wondered what was going on? And I didn’t that that I didn’t, but just to agree with what you’re saying that there’s something, there’s something cathartic about you know, getting away, you know, and it’s and I think it is powerful and it’s something that’s hard to do because it’s the reason I felt like in well, it’s hard to even disconnect when you hunt though, because most places you go you got sell coverage and you’re kind of like a lot of times kind of keeping the same pace. At least I do, Yeah, a lot of times we all do. It’s kind of the kind of the same pace. But sometimes on these like extended backcountry hunts with very limited connection back, I don’t know. If something does happen that’s that feels feels healthy.

00:17:23
Speaker 3: I mean, I think I went to Canada, went to North Alberta and three years ago and you know what, you had one tag we got there and I’ll be honest with you. That first morning, my feet were on fire. They were so stinking cold. It was like two degrees and spitting snow. And I saw this buck come through and I thought, I need to wait. You know, we have ten more days. I need to wait. Well, then he came back through again, and I was even a little more cold, and I thought, well, if I shoot him, I get to go inside. And so I ended up I put him in the scope and I said, oh, he’s definitely bigger than what I thought. Your brains plays what I feel like. This is my excuse of just shooting a small deer. But anyways, I killed him, and the guy came and he said he just kind of looked at He said, what the heck, man, why’d you kill this? And I was like, I’m cold. I want to go in, and he goes, You’re not going in. You’re going wolf funding now. And so for the next really, you know, nine and a half days, I didn’t have cell phone covered. And honestly that’s where I discovered I love to write because I had time to do it, you know, because every day I wanted to be able to convey, like, man, what did it sound like? Whenever that wind whipped through those aspens. What did it sound like whenever I heard a big buck coming up through the snow? And just to be able to use you know, language’s imagery. I wouldn’t ever done that. If you would have told me that, I’d have loved that without that extended time in the wilderness. I just said, Man, that is just not something that I do now. It’s one of one of the things I do, you know, at least every week is write something down that’s good.

00:19:05
Speaker 2: What do you think from a medical perspective? And eras and I don’t know if this is your expertise, but just you know, you see all this stuff about our connect our our the unhealthy connection that we have with our phones. Absolutely, like I I’m very interested in that because I’m certain that I fit into some category of that. What’s the what’s your projection of if we’re using our phones six eight hours a day? Oh yeah, what’s that going to do to us?

00:19:38
Speaker 3: I think it’s not what it does from a health standpoint. I think you can you know, project out that that’s radiation et cetera, you know, coming from your cell phone, But in all reality, what it does to you in the short term that anxiety that a lot of people get from being on their phone or playing video games is because men, they are looking for dopamine. Every time that you like or you get something liked on Facebook, Instagram, there’s a small amount of dopamine release, and so what happens is you end up dopamine searching when you’re not on that See a lot of times you’ll see people who are anxious because man, they just don’t know what to do. You’ll see people eat excessively and search for that dopamine if they’re not scrolling, liking, or playing Xbox. And so I think that that is the mental health side of that is and we’re starting to see it and it’s even being you know, there’s some laws coming out and they’re being lobbied for that actually protect children in all the way up to eighteen from having smartphones because we know that what it’s doing to that frontal cortex of the brain where we process and make decisions, it’s not good. Like it’s gonna make that smaller and make us where we’re more guttural in reaction versus actually processing information to make a decision.

00:20:48
Speaker 2: If in the year two thousand, which for me, doesn’t seem that long ago. I know, it doesn’t bother, it doesn’t seem that long ago. If you could have said in twenty twenty five, we’re gonna have these iPhones, yeah, and the people are gonna be on them for six to ten hours a day. Oh, even more, Like you couldn’t have seen it. You couldn’t you couldn’t have projected you’d been like no. I mean I remember when smartphones came out, me just thinking there’s no way I’ll ever use one of those, Like I just we had a misty got a BlackBerry years ago, Yeah, and I was just like.

00:21:29
Speaker 3: I had a full quardy keyboard on it and everything.

00:21:31
Speaker 2: Yeah. I was just like, there’s no way that I’m gonna be able to learn this and it’s gonna be something that I graft into my life. Yeah, and then here in twenty twenty five. I mean, it is it just sometimes the jumps in what humans do is just phenomenal. And that’s so normal. It’s so normal that a parent feels like they’re abusing their child if their nine year old doesn’t have a smartphone.

00:21:59
Speaker 3: Oh, we find it day. My kids will not have a smartphone. My son, my oldest son, he he’s kind of commenteered the house phone, you know, because he’s riding bicycles now further and going to see friends and so like we let him have that, but you know, we don’t play video games in our house. We don’t play smartphones. It’s either outside getting dirty or you’re inside and you’re you’re cleaning up.

00:22:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I think it’s I think it’s good sometimes for men to talk about the standards that they hold in their house because I know, for me, when I hear people that I respect say stuff, it triggers stuff in me. Then I’m like, oh, I could do that, or or I’m never gonna do that, or or you know, just like something about putting stuff out there. Yeah, and like what you said right there about just there’s a rule in your house no smartphones. At what point would you give your kid a smartphone?

00:22:54
Speaker 3: I mean, I think that there’s a lot to that just from what a smartphone gives you the access to. You know, I think from a maturity standpoint, he’s probably not going to be mature enough until he’s twenty seven. From a realistic standpoint, I mean when he’s sixteen, he’s driving. Yeah, I think we’ll give him one, but it’s going to be very limited, like we’ll put a lot of restrictions on it. But I mean, I think that eighteen, he’s you know, feel free to make his own decisions. But I think they just they offer so much access to things that we don’t need access to. And I think that you’re going to see, Man, these kids that have access to it, we already see a lot of it that is just detrimental.

00:23:35
Speaker 2: That’s pretty much the stance that we had with our kids. There was varying ages, but they were we had to fight other people’s kids getting the phones and our kids not And that’s a war that you just have to fight. Yep. It’s just like life is not about you getting what other people get. Life is about you live in this house. These are our this is way we live. And so I mean that, you know, every parent’s got to navigate that with their kids, and hopefully you’ve built the kind of respect that by the time they’re twelve thirteen and they’re starting to have that will kick in that you’ve still got the authority and the respect to be able to institute something and it stick. But that’s pretty much what we did with our kids. Yeah, and then the other thing is that we did the same thing. None of our kids ever played video games. Yeah, I mean we never never had them in the house. And that’s a tough one for a lot of people.

00:24:35
Speaker 4: I think it’s okay to go against the trend too, absolutely mean, I mean I want to say that to people, like, it’s okay to trust your gut and go against the trend. Yeah, people won’t say that. You know, everybody seems to be making a case for your kid to have access to whatever and whatever, But it’s okay. You’re not going to hurt them by not letting them have a cell phone, right.

00:24:57
Speaker 3: You do not say this is a generality in total by saying this, But usually the harder it is and the longer the fight, the better of their outcome. Like, if you’re willing to fight that that trend and it’s just in your face and your kids are coming home going, well, they got one, and they got one and they got one, that the heart of the fight, man, the more worth the fight becomes. And so I think, yeah, absolutely.

00:25:23
Speaker 2: You know, the whole what you just said there about fighting the trends, I think we can tie that back into this, this idea of health. But I think one of the biggest things that we fight against, maybe inside of a society that’s becoming more connected because of the Internet. Like I look and look on this phone and immediately see so many people’s way of life, what they do, what they think. I mean, like my exposure to other people is dramatically more than my grandfather when he was my age, just like his knowledge of what people are actually doing in their home. Yeah, and and knowledge of like the cultural trends and what you said, I mean in twenty twenty six, you’ve got to be willing to stand against the trend of the age. Yep, I mean negative trends. I mean we’ve and I want to take this into a medical sure, medical question. I think we could turn it into a medical question. Fifty percent of the people men in this country are obese. How many? Oh, no, way more, way more.

00:26:30
Speaker 3: I don’t have an exact stat but I mean you look at Washington County. We’re one of the healthier counties in Arkansas, and we’re sixty percent of.

00:26:38
Speaker 2: Bees sixty percent. So our culture has made that acceptable. Oh yeah, our culture has made that. I mean, it’s just normal to be forty fifty pounds overweight.

00:26:51
Speaker 3: Yep, and I think it’s yeah, food, exercise, that were more sedentary, I mean all that, But yeah, no, I think different culturally. I mean, when you know your granddad’s age or my granddad’s age, did you go order a double cheeseburger and then stop by and get a milkshake on the way home. I just didn’t do that. I’ll we have access to so many more foods in substance in what we’ve ever had access to before.

00:27:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that the social the social acceptedness of being that unhealthy, if I can just say it that way. And I have been that unhealthy before. Yeah, there was a time when I weighed probably well the not to get too personal, but uh, I weighed one hundred and ninety four pounds at one point in my life. I weigh about one eighty now, but it’s a healthier one eighty. Yeah, but at the time, I think I was like thirty pounds overweight. And you’re only five foot two and I’m like five foot two. So no, the it takes a lot in this day and age to be healthy. It does.

00:28:01
Speaker 3: What I mean, I think a lot of us, you know, it’s tied to our work, what we’re doing, we’re in front of computer screens, we’re not as active. And then when we get home, like you said earlier, when you hit I mean, I fu forty. It started even for me of going when I get home, the last thing I want to do is like put on some other shoes and go for a walk, you know, because you just you’re mentally exhausted with the amount of information that you’re having to juggle and make decisions about throughout the day. And I think that, I mean, you just get to that point you go tonight, I’m not going to do it. And I think that comes into those you know, we talked about New Year’s resolutions. Typically by the second Friday in January, ninety percent of people have given up on their resolution. And so I think that there’s better ways to approach that. And I said, I mean, just make some simple rules in your life. Don’t call them resolutions, just call them rules. Say I’m not going to drink any any you know, carbonated or any coke during the week. You have some on Sunday and Saturday or whatever. But just make simple rules that if people would do that, small accumulations and good result up to huge accumulations and good later, you know, And so it’s not about making these massive changes, It’s about making small investments in your health today because they pay off dividends in ten years, not tomorrow.

00:29:22
Speaker 4: I think that, I think that, you know, I’ve I’ve been one who has not taken care of himself over the years, just just transparently. And you know, I’ve been talking with doctor McCall just you know. Another thing I want to say is like, it’s not it’s never too late. It’s never too late to make adjustments, like not at all, find a medical professional who can help you. I think that’s one of the things that I’ve appreciated about doctor McCall is he really looks at things holistically, you know what I mean. There’s a there’s a physical component, there’s a mental component, there’s a spiritual component. And you can’t just you can’t just throw treatment after one thing to try to to try to get healthy. But man, it’s never too late, you know. I’m making decisions now at almost fifty, yeah, to try to to try to get in a more healthy lifestyle.

00:30:08
Speaker 3: You know. And I think, you know, there’s a lot of people out there that are starting to ask the question of not just okay, I am like this or this condition exists, but why does it exist? Let’s get to that root cause. You know, so if someone’s got if they’re really struggling with obesity, why are they struggling with obesity? Are they there anxiety? Theres or depression theirs or a past? There that so many people instead of using a phone to search for dopamine. I mean, we know food releases a huge amount of dopamine and people stress the you know, to a significant amount. That causes a lot of morbidity in their lives that they wouldn’t have to deal with if they would just deal with the why they’re doing it, not the not just that they.

00:30:48
Speaker 2: Are right, like, yeah, they actually get into the to the root cause. Yeah, of so you know, yeah, I think that’s important. I think a lot of times we deal with the symptoms so much of stuff that we don’t really deal with the with the with the real issue.

00:31:05
Speaker 3: I mean, you think I always try to try to tie in hunting and or working or what I describe a lot of conditions. Even with a flat tire on the truck, you know, you could say, man, I need a whole new set of tires. No you don’t, You really need to put a little air in it and things will actually get better kind of thing. But think about even honting, Man, when you understand if you take the time to understand thermals, it’s a game changer for how you access certain areas and how and how successful you are at harvesting animals. Same thing goes for your health. If you will do the work, you will become so much better at understanding what’s going on with your body way before anybody else does. And so I really encourage you with them and get down to what’s what’s the symptom, what’s what’s happening, and really really work through some of that hard stuff to to try to get healthy.

00:31:53
Speaker 2: What would what what would you say if an alien showed up here and said what should a human eat? If but calculated this is where we live, and money and all the factors that do play into our diets, what would you tell a human to eat? Man?

00:32:12
Speaker 3: I think that if you can grow it, if you can catch it, if you can harvest it, I think, man, you can you can eat it. But I think that what we’re seeing is that there’s the amount of processed foods and the amount of chemicals that are used to process a lot of that. They’re going to be the ones that are going to be indicted for causing most of.

00:32:32
Speaker 4: The disease, I believe.

00:32:34
Speaker 3: And so processed foods, yeah, absolutely, And I think that if you look at who are the healthiest people in the US, it’s not the ones that are injecting themselves with every imaginable amino acid or peptide that they can find. It’s the eighty year old that’s lived on her Hoffy farm her entire life and she is doing nothing but locally sourced foods. Like that’s who is the most healthy. And so I think that if you could say to that alien, your best bet at living healthy is it go find an acre and a half and be able to grow what you want to eat and be able to local outsource the rest.

00:33:10
Speaker 4: Mm.

00:33:12
Speaker 2: I think sometimes people don’t really understand what processed food is, Like we say that term a lot. Yeah, but like I heard it described one time of like you need to get the bulk of your calories from single ingredient foods. Absolutely, Like I mean like a ritz cracker is is a processed food. Cereal is processed food. I mean, clearly, all the sugary things are processed food. Pasta is processed food. I mean it’s now you could have some healthier kind of pasta that had you know, like some good good wheat flour or whatever. But I think sometimes people I find that because misty years ago as what got us, and we don’t we’ll go out to eat and eat fried food and have a big time. So I’m not like a purist when it comes to food. But at our house when when we eat, we try to eat whole foods and and and I think it’s I think it’s kept us relatively healthy. And I find that I don’t know people people are so prone to want to celebrate and eat like four nights a week. There’s a reason to like have a have a I don’t know, I’m kind of I’m kind of jumping around, but this is this is something I think about because something I had to overcome. I would have grown up in a family that would have just been a very typical like Southern American family.

00:34:51
Speaker 3: I think when you asked me earlier about why do you think we’re so obesi, I think that’s part of it. You know, Like some of the times I get patients and ass like how do I lose weight, and I say eat like you’re a nomad, not every day that you’re going to kill a buffalo and be able to eat until you don’t want to anymore. Like some days go hungry. It’s okay to go to bed a little bit hungry today, because I think that we are just constantly our bodies never get a chance to basically reset. I’ve been reading into a lot about fasting that I think that there is a huge component to do in a three day fast, and then there’s certain conditions that keep you from doing that. So I don’t throw that out there to a type one diabetic and say, oh, you should consider a three day fast. There’s other things, but I think that if people would fast more regularly, I think that you would see autoimmune disease go way down because I think that it fasting helps helps our immune system kind of reset itself. And so I think the access to food, the amount of food that we have, is really what’s driving a lot of our health in it.

00:35:51
Speaker 2: And I just think that the amount of food we eat and what we eat, if people could just get control of that, and this is something I’m working on. I mean like that I’m thinking about every day. I think about it every day because I want to be able to walk up a mountain when I’m seventy period. That’s why that’s what I want to do. And uh, I think if we controlled our portions and just took out as much possible sugar as you can, I mean, I’m pretty militant about sugar. Uh, And people all around me, including Josh Spilmakers, sometimes.

00:36:36
Speaker 4: Wow, I’m getting thrown under the bus.

00:36:38
Speaker 2: No, you’re actually not bad about sugar. I was just I can be. There’s I can be that.

00:36:44
Speaker 4: Honestly, that’s something I have to really manage too. And that’s this last year has been real important to me to to like I have sugar maybe a couple times a month now, Like maybe on a weekend I might have something, but it’s.

00:36:55
Speaker 2: Just always a reason to celebrate. Like there’s just true it’s three times a week. I’m somewhere where people are like, man, let’s have ice cream, let’s let’s let’s have some pie. I mean, and there’s a reason where I’m at a birthday party, or I’m it’s at at that you know it’s it’s New Year’s or and you start adding up all you know, you go through a calendar year and you’re like, there was one hundred and twenty days that it was worth, you know, having a bowl of ice cream or a piece of pie. And it’s like that goes back to this mentality of bucking the trends, like I don’t I have to really monitor that because I’ll I don’t know. You just can’t bend everywhere. And a man has to make a decision in his life of what kind of man he’s going to be, you know. I mean, you just have to and if you have a goal, and please don’t hear me, I am preaching because this this and I’d rarely talk about like I said, I’m not Cam Haignes like showing myself like do fittness stuff on the net, which I love, Camp Go Cam. But I think about this every single day of my life. And it’s it’s a major thing. And it has to be or or you when you’re fifty, when you’re sixty, when you’re forty, you’ll be overweight, you’ll be out of the game. Yep, you won’t be able that you won’t have the energy to walk up the mountain. You want to have the energy. And it’s not just about honey, I don’t want to make it all about honey. I want to be healthy for my family. I want to be the best I can be for them. I want to be We talked about this before we started, but I think that a core component, not the most important thing, but a component of having a healthy spiritual life is taken care of what the Bible calls our temple. Yeah, I mean, and I believe that. I believe, you know. It’s like we get this shell of flesh and bone that we is ours too steward, you know, And it’s I take that serious as a as a spiritual tenant, just like you know, I got to take care of this thing. And I just I just think people have to grind out whatever works for them, because what works for Josh probably won’t work for me. Is that what you find?

00:39:14
Speaker 3: Absolutely? I mean, it’s uh, we’re as individual as anything, and it is It’s funny how some medicines will work great for other people and not work great for the next person coming in. And so if you’re not you know, sitting down with your doctor, uh, or if you’re not sitting down with yourself and going okay, man, what’s worked and what hasn’t In developing that plan, Man, do that take the time invest in say, invest in your health. I mean that’s really a key statement, is that if you don’t invest in it, because it is a investment in time, it’s an investment of your resource. But your health is the that’s what you got. And when it’s gone, it’s gone. You know, you’re never too late to start trying to get healthier. But there’s a there’s a there’s a clock ticking, and I look at you know, I see so many people that say I didn’t know how bad I felt until I felt good again. And I watched my own dad. He struggled with obesity and he ended up hate He got a gastric bypass. Feels great now God’s on the White River trout fishing. But before that he would say, man, I just don’t think I’m gonna go I’m not gonna go hunting to day. I don’t feel like it. You tell me how good it was, you know. And so when I think that is what happens to a lot of people is they just kind of quit doing things gradually over time, and then whenever they finally get to an inflection point of going, either I’m gonna die like this or I gotta do something different. When they do something different and make a decision and they get back to living man, they go I did not really realize how bad it was until I felt good. It’s a big deal.

00:41:03
Speaker 2: Is there in your practice with men? Is there what would you say would be the I don’t know. Is there is there like one thing that would be like the the most common thing that would be And I know it’s not necessarily like a specific medical condition, but or maybe it is, but what what what would be the one one thing that would stand out to you in your practice with men?

00:41:26
Speaker 3: When I see men and they’re complaining, mostly forty five years even seen it earlier, there’s something. I’m fatigue, I don’t feel good, my libidos down, and I have zero motivation. It’s almost always going to be tied to obesity and sleep atna mm hmm. Like when I when I tell you so, I my wife and kids try to tell me for a pretty good while that I had snored. I was turkey hunting down on the buffalo with my son and he videoed me, got my phone video me, and he said that I just need you to see how bad it is. And when I watch that I thought, my gosh, that’s pathologic, like it was terrible. So I got to sleep study God on a seapat. My wife says I should sleep with it more, but I try to do pretty good. But man, when I do sleep with that thing, I wake up that next morning going, my gosh, I love morning.

00:42:20
Speaker 2: You feel.

00:42:21
Speaker 3: I feel good because I didn’t snore all night and I actually got restored of sleep. And I think that there is so much obesity that plagues men. Even if it’s twenty or thirty pounds, which isn’t a lot, it’s normal, you know. But if it’s twenty or thirty pounds, as you get older, man, that becomes more and more of an issue. On that post to your farnex and breathing in your airway, collapsing and making you wake up multiple times through the night and you don’t even know you woke up, right, You just get up in the morning. You’re just like, man, my eyes are burning, my brain doesn’t start till ten am. And man, it’s sleep out in you.

00:42:57
Speaker 2: And I see why would not to get into your mad little personal history. But let’s do this. Uh, why why do you have your your fit healthy guy? Yeah, that’s I’m surprised that you would have to use the sea patterns.

00:43:09
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I mean I wasn’t always I was.

00:43:11
Speaker 1: Uh.

00:43:12
Speaker 3: And I started graduating med school is actually going to be a general surgeon. And I gained probably fifty pounds. Used to race bicycles like rode bikes all the time. I’m not gonna say that I have an article on Sports Illustrated dot com.

00:43:25
Speaker 2: But you do, but I do.

00:43:26
Speaker 3: You should google it. And I beat Lance Armstrong up a hill. Uh, and he gave me kudos on Strava.

00:43:35
Speaker 2: And we’ve been serious huns. Oh you should we should have started with this.

00:43:38
Speaker 3: Oh why didn’t?

00:43:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you should start conversations with this, like beat Lance Armstrong up one hill.

00:43:44
Speaker 3: It’s fine. He has one testicle too, and.

00:43:49
Speaker 2: We’re gonna get to that in a minute.

00:43:51
Speaker 4: Uh.

00:43:51
Speaker 3: And he’s done some you know, cool things. But I think really all comes down to it ended up being I got treated for low test austroom, probably from bicycle racing because I probably sat on a hard box seat for six hours at a time in one hundred and eighteen eary weather. I think that’s I had low tea and part of that even could have been sleep Avenue so I treated with t worse in my sleep avenue, and I think that’s eventually why why I had it. But and I think just overtime to me. Look, I’m one ninety five, but my BMI says I probably need to be one eighty five, and it’s our last ten pounds. It plagues everybody. But yeah, you know, but I think that when you that sleep ATNUE kicked in, whether genetic or whether I’m just you know, was prone to it, I felt terrible, like I didn’t know how bad I felt until I felt good.

00:44:45
Speaker 2: Well. See, that’s the thing that I think it would be a little confusing, is if you’re just so used to something, how to you even know? I mean, I guess you just know when it gets bad.

00:44:55
Speaker 3: I think that you do. And I think that when people show up and I’ve really been kind of preaching, but when people show up and they’re like, man, I think I have a sleep at you they’re at they’re ten years into this, like they’ve driven their body down so hard they can’t stay awake at a stoplight anymore, you know. And I think that that’s when it’s that’s why it’s it’s very worse, and people seek treatment. I think it starts way before then, and.

00:45:18
Speaker 2: So how could you be producticed specifically with that?

00:45:21
Speaker 3: I think you ask yourself a question when I wake up? Do I feel good? Like does it take me now three cups of coffee where it used to only take one? And does my my waking up with a headache?

00:45:31
Speaker 2: Ever?

00:45:32
Speaker 3: Are my eyes and my mouth just dry as a beat? You know? And I think those are the questions that you start asking yourself, is, man, do I actually feel good when I wake up? And if your answer is like, yeah, I feel okay, like after a good night’s sleep, you shouldn’t wake up just feeling yeah, okay, like wake up feeling pretty good, Like let’s go.

00:45:52
Speaker 2: M You know, the older I get and the more I’ve learned about yeah, the more I realize how important it is. There was a time in my life when I thought sleep was for you know, what you do when you were dead? And what wasn’t prioritized? Man? Now, I mean I view trying to get a solid eight hours of sleep. It’s like a vital component of long term health.

00:46:23
Speaker 3: Absolutely, And it’s not always eight hours too, like people will have the different It could be six hours for some nine hours for the other they did a study on medical doctors that whenever they go through residency, so after you graduate med school you either go to train in internal medicine or family or general surgery or whatever, that after four years of residency that you can look at genetic changes and see something called telomeres, which are the protective ends of genes. That telomere is shortened as you age. That a period of time when you get relatively very little sleep, we age ten years and what other people on the age three?

00:47:02
Speaker 4: Wow wow.

00:47:03
Speaker 3: And that’s where you see the importance of regular sleep is that if you’re not getting that on a regular basis, you’re one affecting how you feel.

00:47:13
Speaker 2: Wow wow. And that’s long term stuff too. Yeah yeah, yeah, Now can you get that back, like like if you can just slow it down, just slow it down.

00:47:22
Speaker 3: No, you can’t rebuild that teemere lenk at all. And that’s why I mean, if you look at a lot of doctors, man, they quit, they die like or they die while working.

00:47:31
Speaker 4: M You know, I had a sleep study done last year because I’ve snored for years and uh it uh discovered some some stuff about I mean this it’s not always just because of you know you have apne because you have apne like I’ve got a deviated septum. I’ve got a small palette. And literally I didn’t I didn’t even have to do a seapat but I got a what they call a night guard or and I just wear this thing looks like in visil lines and it is like I used to.

00:48:03
Speaker 2: St your mouth closed.

00:48:04
Speaker 4: It keeps your jaw pushed forward and opens your airway up and just I mean literally like a like less than like teeth, like go further ye your most pushes your bottom jaw. And it’s changed my sleep. I mean, I from going from snoring like excessively to barely a snore every now and then. Just yeah, and it I mean, it’s just these simple things. And you know it might not be a full seapap machine that you have, but get get checked out. Reason it checked out.

00:48:37
Speaker 2: You said something a minute ago that made me think of this. In in my world, I know a lot of really rural men, guys that live in the backwoods and just do not want to go to the doctor.

00:48:54
Speaker 4: Yep.

00:48:55
Speaker 2: And so many people that I know waited too long to go to the doctor and uh and and either died or nearly died. I’m thinking of two guys right now that basically there’s some part of the I don’t know, just the independent, like tough American male image that like, I don’t need to go to a doctor. Like that phrase feels good coming out of my mouth. I don’t need to go to a doctor. I mean that it’s funny to me. It does. It’s it’s and I know it’s wrong, but it like it feels like something of you know, I’m not weak. Doctors are for weak people. It’s bizarre. It’s bizarre, but but you know, like, uh, one of one of my dear friends, UH had ended up with pancreatic cancer. And it could have just been taking it could have been screen he could have gone to screenings from the time he was forty five or fIF he just never did. I mean, the man didn’t go to the doctor for twenty years and finally started having symptoms and all this stuff, and and he went and it was like way too late, yep, and it had major problems that the God’s still alive, but life altering issues. And the older I get and I still see this happening, I just want to tell people, you know, get a doctor. Go to the doctor. Just do the stuff. If you love your family, if you want to have longevity, you just got to do the stuff.

00:50:35
Speaker 3: Absolutely. And I think that it’s important to find a doctor that’ll actually just listen to you for a minute second.

00:50:41
Speaker 2: You know.

00:50:41
Speaker 3: I think that you talk about that one who doesn’t want to go the doctor, Well, that’s because they either one they’re afraid of what they’re going to find.

00:50:49
Speaker 2: Probably fear based.

00:50:50
Speaker 3: Fear based, you know. And then I tell people, Look, you pay me for my advice, and that’s it, Like you don’t have to take my advice. It’s not like like this is it’s a shared decision. But what you and doctors are kind of you know, when we fight against Google a lot, now we’re fighting against chat GPT and using it even in our own practices. But I do think that man find a doctor that’s willing to hear you out and make decisions together that because it’s not a one size fits all, And that’s what I hate. We were talking about this earlier, Josh about cholesterol. Look, we’ve all seen a person who’s got a terrible cholesterol and they lived, you know, they’re like terrible colesterol. I lived, though you know, I’m still alive at ninety and you have some people that have okay cholesterol and they die of a heart attack. Why is that? I think that’s all. It’s all individually based. And I think having someone that you trust to tell how you really feel, because I think that’s another important part too, Clay, is that if you’re yeah, I feel good, I’m fine. I had a guy the other day and he’d be finally telling the story. I’ve been taking care of him for ten years and USA, many’s still doing what you want to do. And I was just looking at him because I’ve asked him that question every three months for ten years, and I watched him squam his eyes and shrug his shoulders just a little bit. He said, I’m dying. I’m fine, And I said, dude, I have asked you that question for the last ten years and you’ve never answered me like that. We had him in the cath lab within two or three days and he had another stint put in and totally revascularize and he’s like feeling great and doing everything that he wants to do now. And so part of having that relationship is a doctor who goes, why’d you answer like that? You know, and I mean that continuity of just even if you’re feeling okay, just go in and check in, because I promise you he was feeling okay multiple times for the last ten years when I asked him that, and it just took once for me to be like, hey man, what’s up. And so I think even finding a somewhat you trust in that you’re just you’re continually going to on a regular basis. I think he’s really important.

00:52:52
Speaker 2: That’s some good doctrine. Yeah, it is, that’d be that’d be like, yep, I’d be like killing a big buck.

00:52:57
Speaker 4: That story for him.

00:52:59
Speaker 2: That’s like he and his doctor buddies get around. He’s like, yeah, the other day, you know, I had a guy come in and.

00:53:06
Speaker 3: I can’t say that I haven’t bragned a little.

00:53:09
Speaker 2: No, that’s really that’s really good. But it’s it’s hard. Just like I said, I was driving four hours to a doctor. And not to say that there’s not wonderful doctors that I’m unaware of sure that are close that I didn’t know you being one of them until recently. I mean, it’s the medical system the way it is. It’s hard to find. It’s hard to find somebody that will really give you attention that you feel like you need. And it’s not doctor’s faults. It’s the systems.

00:53:37
Speaker 1: You know.

00:53:38
Speaker 2: Yeah, there’s a lot of things at play.

00:53:40
Speaker 4: But yeah, but you know, doctor McColl alluded to you know, we talked about screening. Don’t ignore stuff to you know, for me, you know, I back in two thousand and eight, I had a stomach ache and within a matter of day is that stomach ache revealed itself to be testicular cancer and uh went from from ouch, my tummy hurts to having surgery and spending three months doing chemotherapy and uh, I mean it’s just like it’s not worth it. Don’t ignore it.

00:54:21
Speaker 2: So Josh is a cancer survivor.

00:54:24
Speaker 4: I am a cancer survivor.

00:54:26
Speaker 2: What did it? What did it feel like? When you like, what what were you?

00:54:31
Speaker 4: Did?

00:54:31
Speaker 2: You kind of described it, but literally I.

00:54:33
Speaker 4: Was like thirty two years old. I was thirty two years old at the time, and.

00:54:38
Speaker 2: Can you we do something for me? Kind of kind of dull this story up a little bit, like like tell me like like I was at the speak of my life and I was, honestly, honestly, I was. You’re a bike rider.

00:54:52
Speaker 4: My early thirties. I was in my early thirties. I was working in the construction business. And I’ve I’ve always been the kind of guy that, you know, I wanted to be the guy who could just work all day long. I could lift whatever I needed to lift. I could, you know what I mean. So, you know, I felt I felt pretty good, you know, and there was a bit of invincibility that you feel at that age, you know that we talked about conquering. Yeah, And I was working in the construction business. I’d driven up to Saint Louis from here and and uh had unloaded a whole bunch of stuff off off a truck, and you know, and and my stomach started hurting. I came back. It’s like a stomach ache, just like just pain, pain in my lower stomach. And I wondered, like it started getting worse and worse and got so bad to the point where I cut my trip short and came home, went to see my doctor. And my doctor, you know, I thought maybe I’d gotten a hernia, especially after lifting all that stuff. And he’s like, you don’t seem to have a hernia. Get some blood work done. The blood work was inconclusive, he said, I want you to get a CT scan. And that was the moment where it where for me it was like, that’s for sick people. Now why it’s sick?

00:56:05
Speaker 2: Why did he want Why would he have wanted to see T scan? Do you would you know why he’d do that?

00:56:11
Speaker 3: Yeah, So if you were a lot of times you’ll get somatic pain before you get pain. That’s actually where it’s located. So you can get this pain like around your belly button that’s dull achy or something like that, and then all of a sudden it moves to your right lower quadal. Well that’s appendicitis. So you get this parasle.

00:56:27
Speaker 4: Well that’s what I thought it was. I thought it might have been appendicitis, but it was the wrong side. And so I went and got a set scan and it was on a Friday, Friday morning, and the radiologist is like, well, your doctor will probably get back with you by monday. You know, it’s the weekend. My doctor calls me thirty minutes later and says, the lymph nodes in your pelvis are twice the size that they should be. I want you to go see urologist. I go see the eurologist. So you’re like that day that that was on a Friday. I went on Monday. Were you still hurting that whole weekend? No? No, the pain it’s pretty much subsided. But I went to see the urologist and uh, he’s an interesting guy. But he comes busting in the door and he says, mister and missus Spilmmaker, I’m not gonna paint a rosy picture for you. I’m ninety five percent certain that you’ve got testicular cancer and we need to do surgery to remove your testicle. When are you free? It was like wow. I was like, well, it’s kind of something you clear your schedule for, you know, you don’t say, well maybe next month.

00:57:22
Speaker 2: Man, let me look at my exactly.

00:57:24
Speaker 4: So, I mean, within a matter of just a few days, I was having surgery and you know, it was stage three. So I actually had a tumor in the base of my neck. It had metastasized all the way up and so you know, ended up having to do some really really heavy chemotherapy. And I will say, like doing chemotherapy like that, I don’t wish on my worst enemy. It is miserable. But within a couple of weeks, even that tumor in the base of my neck was gone, and thankfully, the glory to the Lord. Within within three months, was declared cancer free, like not not in remission, completely cancer free. And so but it’s you know, there’s just things that you there were signs, there were early signs that probably I could have avoided that. Now I didn’t know and know better. But if I wasn’t going to the doctor, you know, financially, I couldn’t just go to the doctor whenever I.

00:58:20
Speaker 2: Wanted to exactly health insurance.

00:58:22
Speaker 4: Exactly, so I avoided the doctor. I was one of those guys that just avoided that, not because I was scared of it, thought it for weak people. I just couldn’t afford it. But there were there could have been ways, you know what I mean, and you just you just two.

00:58:35
Speaker 2: That’s the surprise exactly. I mean, like testicular cancer is.

00:58:41
Speaker 3: That it’s a pretty common timeframe for you.

00:58:43
Speaker 4: That it’s it’s it’s a it’s a rare kind of cancer, but that cancer is prevalent in that age group.

00:58:49
Speaker 2: Really Okay, okay, wow.

00:58:53
Speaker 4: Anyway, so get checked out. I’m gonna keep saying it, get checked out.

00:58:59
Speaker 3: Get checked out, you know, But it’s that kind of that even you being as vulnerable as what you are on a podcast about testicular cancer. Man, there’s some dude out there right now that’s going you know what, I feel that I need to go get checked out. And it’s people that me telling me a time that when you hadn’t been honest and open about where you’re at, that hadn’t changed somebody’s life.

00:59:22
Speaker 2: Man. Yeah, I mean I appreciate that.

00:59:24
Speaker 3: Man, there’s some dude out there that’s gonna be likes a little maker story.

00:59:27
Speaker 2: It’s kind of a wonder that you’ve been on the podcast this long and we hadn’t talked about that.

00:59:32
Speaker 4: We talked about it with Rich Throning a little bit.

00:59:35
Speaker 2: You’re right, we did. Usually I introduced Josh as my my friend with you know, only.

00:59:42
Speaker 4: He walks around in circles because he’s a little heavy on one side.

00:59:47
Speaker 2: Uh what about testosterone? That’s a big that’s a big.

01:00:01
Speaker 3: Absolutely, man, I’m a big believer in testosterone therapy. Primary people are like, you know what if it naturally goes down with age, we know that, why should you replace it? And I was like, well, in nineteen hundred, you were dying at fifty from a gunshot wound or dysentery. It’s like you didn’t need it, but you know, now we’re living until we’re eighty five. We want to feel good. And so there’s so many times people chase this. You know, I was talking to Josh, butir this total testosterone number. You know, I want it to be nine hundred and ninety five, And you’re like why because that makes zero difference in how you might feel. So a lot of times we’re checking free testosterone shbgs, you know, estrogen and all that, because every individual is different. And while one person may make a lot of something that binds testosterone and you do need that high number, you may not need that, but if you do need it and you’re low, man, it is a game changer when you get treated. Just you see it with energy and the ability to recover differently after after you work out or after you clown that mountain. Uh, it’s a it’s a game changer.

01:01:08
Speaker 2: What about the dangers of it? Like like I’ve heard, you know, if you get on a bunch of testosterone, your testicles shrink and they quit producing. I don’t know if this is true. This is just like what I probably read on a meme on Instagram. Your your your testicle shrink, they quit producing testosterone naturally and you become dependent on you know, this additive testosterone. Is that true?

01:01:37
Speaker 3: So I think that if you if you treat super therapeutically, absolutely it’s true.

01:01:41
Speaker 4: You show me what that means.

01:01:43
Speaker 3: Super therapeutically means that you are going above therapeutic level, so you’re not checking that free testosterone and you’re treating where your body now has.

01:01:50
Speaker 2: Like a guy that was actually just trying to get like is just.

01:01:55
Speaker 3: You know, getting ripped for his bodybuilding competition, you know.

01:02:00
Speaker 2: And so he’s got normal testosterone, but he wants it higher, he wants it higher, but you start adding to test this this artificial testosterone. Yeah, absolutely, that’s not healthy. That’s not healthy.

01:02:09
Speaker 3: So that shuts down what we call your HPA hor you’re have a ganadol access essentially where you’re not making testosterone. You shut down the petitary part of the glend that’s making F, S, H and l A. It goes into you know, a whole feedback. But once once they’re done, they’re done, they shrink up. It’s over. You know, you can sometimes you can, you can kind.

01:02:31
Speaker 4: Of like if you get to that point, there’s no recovery there.

01:02:33
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know you’re usually doing testosterone for life. Oh wow, Okay, people say, well, you know I do it, so I have to take it forever, you know, if I get on it, I’m well, I mean, if you want to feel good, like your testosterone didn’t just get low and all of a sudden it’s going to come back up. And sometimes it can. There’s not you know, and that’s not a fair statement to say that’s always a case. But if you’re you know, forty five or fifty in, your testosterone is naturally decline. And it’s not from from obesity, it’s not from excess alcohol intake. It’s not from you know, doing Roy’s back when you played football, you know, d queen. Uh And by no hint of imagination, was that related to doctor Lofton?

01:03:13
Speaker 4: Who is ripped?

01:03:15
Speaker 2: Who is?

01:03:15
Speaker 3: I mean? Have you that dude is in shape? When I had a coffee with him, he told me about his bicycle riding and what he was doing.

01:03:22
Speaker 2: He is the most active man I know.

01:03:24
Speaker 3: He honestly, I like went home wrote in my journal, like be like doctor Lofton, Mike.

01:03:31
Speaker 4: He’s putting it on a T shirt. Oh yeah, you like my doctor Lofton.

01:03:34
Speaker 2: I think I’ve got a great doctor Lawton story. But we got to finish this testosterone and so.

01:03:39
Speaker 3: But you know, you get on testosterone, well if you get off of it, well it’s going to go back down to being low. And so do you need it for the rest of your life? You don’t need it? Need it like you can still survive without it. Do you want to feel good and have muscle mass and be able to recover after you work out or you go hunting and dragon one hundred and sixty two inch deer out of the woods.

01:03:57
Speaker 4: That’s right, Absolutely you do.

01:04:02
Speaker 3: And so as you just as you get older, that that’s gonna naturally decline.

01:04:07
Speaker 2: But there’s a lot of ways. What I learned, uh, and I talked to you about this, yeah, was if you are low, there’s a lot of things you can naturally do that probably will fix it absolutely. I mean like adding muscle yep, uh, what what else can I think that?

01:04:23
Speaker 3: You know? Obviously, many eating diet, a diet that’s that’s gonna be good for muscle mass, some more protein, less less phytoestrogens and things like that that suppress so anything. A lot of times many I work cattle with some with one of my friends one day and I was like, what are you putting it in its ear? Like progesterone? Well, I was like, why, it’s because they’re increasing water weight. Sell sell barn, Like that’s why they’re doing it. And God bless him. He’s still a great guy. And I don’t know if he’s still doing progestone or not in his cattle. But I mean, there’s a big, big component in that that other hormones that we’re getting from outsourced foods are really affect and how much testosterone your body’s making.

01:05:03
Speaker 2: Is it true that the average testosterone across men in America is way lower than it would have been in like the forties, fifties, sixties.

01:05:10
Speaker 3: Oh, absolutely, because OBC plays a huge role on into that too. Okay, so because you have made.

01:05:15
Speaker 2: That’s some of the weirdest stuff I’ve ever heard. And I didn’t know if it was really true. But like the average testosterone level of a man today is I don’t know, is it is half of what it would have been. I’ve heard that said, I don’t know if it’s true.

01:05:29
Speaker 3: I think that there’s reason that you’re that we’re seeing that there’s a little bit confounding too. It is because we’re drawing more of them, right, Like before, why were we drawing so much testosterone? Well now everybody’s gone, I don’t feel good and it’s kind of the in vogue thing, but it really does.

01:05:42
Speaker 2: We just know so like we just know more about it.

01:05:45
Speaker 3: So I think it’s an information availability.

01:05:49
Speaker 4: Okay, okay, so was that I mean, could you do a testosterone test back in the thirties and forties not reliably?

01:05:56
Speaker 2: Oh okay, so maybe maybe it’s not even yeah real, So I.

01:05:59
Speaker 3: Think that that that’s a big portion of it is that the data available is just better data.

01:06:04
Speaker 2: Okay, so maybe that’s not entirely true, but no, you know, And I the more I learn about maintaining a healthy weight, adding muscle mass, getting good sleep, and having healthy levels of testosterone not not crazy, just inside the realm of healthy because there’s like when you get a test, it’s like four hundred to nine hundred, and if you’re inside of that, like you know, it’s all.

01:06:35
Speaker 3: I think that’s where it can get so over generalized. I think it’s what symptoms are you having if you’re.

01:06:42
Speaker 2: Do you feel good at somebody might feel really great at four fifty and they’re like perfect, But somebody else at four fifty might actually absolutely need they need to be running six hundred or something absolutely. Yeah.

01:06:54
Speaker 4: So it’s sometimes you need testosterone when half your testosterone makers are gone.

01:06:59
Speaker 2: Man, you gotta work, probably need to sleep more, probably, But.

01:07:04
Speaker 3: I think it’s a huge deal. And I mean, the FDA and I just took off a lot of black box warnings associated with hormone replacement therapy. Really, and so I think.

01:07:13
Speaker 2: The worst thing that’s good?

01:07:15
Speaker 4: Do you?

01:07:16
Speaker 2: Yep?

01:07:16
Speaker 3: I do? I think especially. I know we’re right here talking about women, but I see a lot of women, and we did a huge disservice to women for the last twenty four years by not being willing to do hormone replacement therapy. Yeah, and so I think that new data has come out. I think that that women are going to start feeling a lot better than what they have if they’ve got a doctor willing to jump in and look at it again.

01:07:39
Speaker 2: It’s funny you say that Misty has told me that what we know about men’s health is often like so much more historically has been kind of more research than women’s health. Is that true?

01:07:55
Speaker 3: And I think that there was a big study done in two thousand and one called the Women’s Health Initiative that really kind of pave the way for what would happen the next twenty three years in medicine. And now I think that, Man, there’s so much and just the data availability, the ease of data capturing. I think now we’re able to start really diving in to population specific data and make decisions off of them, so where we haven’t had that before. Man, having these big databases of studies and every amount of side effect and every data is tied to a tag essentially that’s submitted to registries. If people are assigned up for that. I mean, you can get a lot of a lot of good information just by a query.

01:08:42
Speaker 2: Josh, do you have any other specific questions?

01:08:44
Speaker 4: Man, I don’t think so. I think we’ve we’ve covered a lot of the stuff that I was interested in. You know, yeah, I think, well, well, go ahead.

01:08:52
Speaker 2: I want to give you an opportunity to kind of just say whatever you want at the at the end of the podcast. But I want to exhort people too to make to make some serious decisions about the way you’re going to treat your health. In twenty twenty six, I mean, it’s just it’s we have so much data, we have so much knowledge. To be reckless with your health is just it’s just kind of reckless and reckless to me. And I’m saying this not as like a preacher from a pulpit. I’m saying this as these are things I tell myself. And again I’m not like the picture of physical fitness, but I work really hard to maintain what I have. And you can’t compare yourself to people. I mean, like, to some degree, I guess you do need to get a read of of health of those around you, but I mean, like healthy for me might look a little different than healthy for you. And I’m not trying to be like this jack ripped guy. I mean you might think that, Josh, but uh uh, but I’m I mean, I’m so I’m so adam at about this because we take care of all these different components of our life. But in our culture, for some reason, health is often just like not that big a deal. And to me, being unhealthy as being overweight and eating crazy stuff that’s gonna kill you. I was in baar Neukemb’s truck the other I’m gonna throw baar Nukem under the bus and.

01:10:22
Speaker 4: Who is like one hundred and pounds.

01:10:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, he took after his mother. I’ve never been as trim and fit as Bared Oakum. But he had gone camping and he had an ice chest. And then I was going camping in Oklahoma. I was going hunting and I like raided his food to see what he had, and he had a jar of jelly which had no added sugar and it was like a pretty healthy jelly. And I was looking for peanut butter stuff and he had a jar of the cheapest peanut butter known to man. And I looked at the ingredients and it said peanuts, hydrogenated vegetable oil, sugar, and then just a bunch of filth. And I I almost got mad at him because our whole life, we’ve eaten like whole peanut butter. And I was like, Baron Nukem, what has he done? He’s bringing this peanut butter. That’s a funny thing.

01:11:24
Speaker 4: It’s like when my mom found the metallica CD in my bit.

01:11:27
Speaker 2: Exactly like that. No, I just in our house, we’ve just been like stay away from hydrogenated vegetable oils and stuff with added sugar. And my point is obesity, and then just eating crazy food all the time is just reckless. It is, and people do it all the time.

01:11:46
Speaker 3: Many earlier were going through a whole list of things, and I’m like, man, you could pretty much come do every preventative visit that I do for men age forty and over. Because you’re looking for help down there, I am actually you didn’t come down any time you want.

01:11:59
Speaker 5: What if we had we get an honorary m d Well, what if we set it up where it was just like, you know, Clay’s not a doctor, but he is giving out advice in that room over.

01:12:09
Speaker 3: There, let’s go. I think people would show up and probably do what you told him to.

01:12:15
Speaker 2: I could just give them both barrels full. They’d step in and I’d be like, step on that scale way, be like.

01:12:22
Speaker 4: That’s what he tells me.

01:12:25
Speaker 2: That would be in my chart and I’d be like, you’re way overweight. What have you been eating? Hydrogenated oild peanut butter.

01:12:32
Speaker 3: That’s I’ll tell a funny story. It’s a deer’sty. I think I even sent you. I took my son, both sons deer huno. I guess he was six, he’s twelve now, so six years ago, and we’re hunting out in No Sage and we were driving back and I said, well, yall, y’all want to hunt tomorrow morning? We didn’t seen anything, you know, and a six year old and four year old and it’s not really hunt anyways, but we’re pretending. They said sure. So we were there at King River Marble and we turn around and the Dollar General parking lot, and so I guess we have to get some breakfast food. So we went in and bought like two boxes of coffee cakes and gatorade. It seemed like, you know, best idea at the time. So we get up the next morning and go and Lucas eats. He’s probably four packages. I mean, just just burrows them down. So we’re, you know, after I’ve carried out everything. We’re fifteen minutes late and up in this deer stand and he looked at me. He goes, Dad, I gotta go like that, And I said, so we literally just got here. I’d set out in my first Montana decoy. I was super excited about played the wind right, so I was thinking, and so he goes, I said, something, just give it like see if it goes away. You know that urge. He goes all right, and five minutes later he’s like, I gotta go, and I gotta go now. So he opens up there. I hand him a plastic sack and I’m like, here, just put in your bottom and just going out. We can, you know, keep the scent. I mean, I was really thinking, you know, lord. He gets down, he lays the paper you know, or the plastic bag on the around and goes on talking and I was like, oh gosh, you know, this is after he slammed the door, and I’m like, there’s zero chance we’re gonna kill deer. So he goes, hey, Dad, what do I wipe with? But he yells at because we’re up, you know, eight foot and ten foot in this tree stand and uh, I said, just grab something around you. I didn’t think there was gonna be any poison, sou mic or anything. And he goes, It’s only pine needles, and I was like, so I get down. I stripped down to my bear Hugo’s T shirt, my favorite T shirt from fav of Arkansas. It’s a Hugo’s T shirt, and I just sacrifice it. We dig a hole and I we get back up in the in the stand he’s sick, so I’ve got a little grace for him, you know, my buddy, he probably wouldn’t have had. But uh, so, long story short, We’re sitting there and I about five minutes, I was just ready to leave, you know, because we’d eating coffee cakes and drink all the gatorade. Now it’s you know, smells terrible outside, and I said, boy, was why don’t we just why don’t we just pray that we kill big Buck. So we pray, and I.

01:14:58
Speaker 2: Mean, let’s swing for the I mean, why let’s just see what happens.

01:15:02
Speaker 3: And it wasn’t.

01:15:03
Speaker 4: I rattled a little bit.

01:15:04
Speaker 3: It wasn’t. Five minutes later that Buck came down right to that Montana equal and Luke has got his first you know, good nine point.

01:15:11
Speaker 2: Oh man, that’s cool.

01:15:12
Speaker 3: And just he goes Dad, Praying’s kind of like magic, isn’t it. And I was like, hey, you’ll learn. But today it worked, you know, and uh, prayer.

01:15:20
Speaker 4: And coffee kicks. It works every time.

01:15:22
Speaker 3: So we’re driving down to Little Rock to see the man lost for Christmas this year, and we stopped by Casey’s and he goes, Dad, let’s eat a coffee cake, and man, I ate that and it did the exact same thing to me that it did, and I got to relive that that whole story.

01:15:38
Speaker 2: Did you kill a big buck?

01:15:39
Speaker 3: I did not kill a big buck, but I made it to litter Rock in time and was able to get the job done with that and hurting too bad. But long story short, you go in, don’t eat crazy stuff. It had been such a long time that I’ve ever eaten anything like that.

01:15:52
Speaker 2: Well that’s probably shows that you’re actually that’s good.

01:15:56
Speaker 3: But man, I’m telling you, you’re right on the money. Don’t eat crazy stuff all the time and you feel better.

01:16:00
Speaker 2: Yeah.

01:16:01
Speaker 4: Yeah, what’s this Jason Lofton story? I want to really embarrass him.

01:16:05
Speaker 2: On them Well, it’s it’s embarrassing only because he’s so like put together. So we saw doctor Lofton at a basketball game the other night that they had traveled a long ways either way to go watch not their kid, but someone else’s kid that they love play basketball, which is a pretty big deal. Brought the whole family go watch this basketball game. I saw him there and I was like, I remember asking what he was doing and he he. I mean, they were just traveling all over. They got two kids playing ball.

01:16:39
Speaker 4: And they go every day and college college ball.

01:16:42
Speaker 2: Playing college ball. And as we were walking out, Missy and I just we were like, man, they just are so busy. It’s wild. They’re they’re they’re just all over, you know, I mean just kind of like how they do it. As we’re pulling out of the parking lot, I see Jason like walking real fast towards us under the light. We’re pulling out of the parking lot, and he’s got in his hand a loaf of a loaf of sourdough bread that he had baked, and he was like like trotting through the parking lot waving us down. And it’s like, hey, I have this sour dough bread for you that he made in his spare time, in his spare time. Yeah, and just gave us a load, I you know, just like no, yeah, so what a guy.

01:17:30
Speaker 4: Yep.

01:17:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, our former doctor. Sorry Jason, Sorry, sorry, thank you Jason.

01:17:37
Speaker 3: Yeah.

01:17:37
Speaker 1: Yeah.

01:17:38
Speaker 2: Well anything else in closing doctor McCall.

01:17:41
Speaker 3: Not at all. I think that if you know your local and need a good doctor, come see us that advanced primary care.

01:17:46
Speaker 2: Yeah ye out Northwest Arkansas. You’re in You’re in Springdale, Springdown, springdw Yeah. Yeah, well, uh, this is a great this has been a great New Year’s podcast. And uh, by the time you listen to this, you will probably know that I killed a giant buck yesterday. Just gonnauch. That just gonna leave it at that.

01:18:09
Speaker 4: That’s it. Foreshadowing, folks.

01:18:10
Speaker 2: Yeah, I’m like scrolling through my phone trying to find people that I haven’t texted yet. You know what, you know the feeling have you? Well, I do have.

01:18:21
Speaker 3: This is another funny story we got time. I don’t know sure sure, We’re we hunt this year and we’ve been hinding out in my Berryville and we had a really good nine point. I mean he probably scores one forty five, and not for me. That’s a really huge deer.

01:18:35
Speaker 2: Yes, And so I had.

01:18:37
Speaker 3: Him almost in bow range and bow season and he just never would, never would quarter the right way towards me. And so I told my son, I said, look me, you can’t kill any there’s a twelve point out there. There’s this one that’s got this crazy eye guard. You can it’s probably got thirteen points. You can kill that. I don’t care. But if that nine point walks out, I’m shooting that deer and he goes Okay, deal’s a deal, Dad. So he’s, well, I don’t know. It’s probably five thirty six o’clock and he goes, hey, I want to take quick now, wake me up if a buck comes in, and I said that’s fair. So you know, he starts just sawing logs and this is that alternative gun season, and he’s it’s almost dark and I see this big buck coming through the woods and I was like, oh buddy, So I wake him up and I think it’s the nine point. He’s got a little crab claw on the left and I can just see that one side. And I said, Lucas, wake up. Do I think it’s a big buck? And he goes, which one is it? I said, I think it’s the nine And I said, but you go ahead and shoot it, and he goes, nope, deal’s a deal. And I was like, are you sure he deals the deals? That buck steps out the ain’t just smoke. He just drops right there. So we’re all excited. We go down and I opened my truck door and I see that it is not. In fact, the nine point is the one with the crazy eye guard, the one that he’d been saying that he wanted to get up the entire time, and I said, son, it’s not the nine point, it’s the other one. That’s the only time that I didn’t not text any of my friends. I felt so bad about killing that deer. I was like, I don’t care. I never want to shoot another deer if I got a kid with me, because boy, that disappointment he felt it was silent.

01:20:13
Speaker 2: That’s a tough story. Man.

01:20:15
Speaker 4: It weighed bunch.

01:20:16
Speaker 2: Well, he handled it good. I mean did he.

01:20:19
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, no, he was. He was pulling my truck to the gate and have my phone open and I said, hey, Lucas, how do you feel right now? He’s like, well, you know, it turns out that we had a deal and it was Dad’s deer, and then it wasn’t. It was the one I wanted to kill. He’s like, but you know what that means. You’re tagged out and I get to kill that deer. And I was like, okay, amen, God.

01:20:38
Speaker 2: That’s cool. It sounds like you got a good relationship with your son.

01:20:41
Speaker 3: That’s cool, I do man. Cool.

01:20:43
Speaker 2: Well, Hey, thanks for coming. He appreciate it. Man. We’ll do this again.

01:20:48
Speaker 3: Absolutely.

01:20:48
Speaker 2: Yeah. We’ll keep the wild places wild because that’s where the bears live, and you got to be fit to go there and get them

01:21:03
Speaker 4: Okay.