Episode 20 - Busting the Myths of Testosterone and Aggression (Don't Take my Banana) - Ryan Parke

In this episode, Kevin Davis and Ryan Parke delve into the vital aspects of male mental health, focusing on the role of testosterone and debunking related myths. They emphasize lifestyle choices such as sleep, exercise, diet, and vitamin D, exploring the concept of dynamic testosterone and its connection to performance. The conversation touches on various topics, including the winner effect in sports, dopamine's role, intention vs. attention, and the impact of fair competition on mental health. They discuss the influence of sports results on testosterone, aggression, therapy limitations for men, problem-solving skills, financial literacy, serotonin, and goal setting. The episode underscores the correlation between men's mental health issues and societal standings, especially regarding suicide rates. Finally, they stress the importance of self-care.

*note - this episode has high level discussions on suicide (not graphic or descriptive)

Takeaways

• Male mental health deserves more attention and understanding.
• Testosterone is crucial for mental well-being and overall health.
• Sleep, exercise, diet, and sunlight maintain healthy testosterone levels.
• Dynamic testosterone explains the link between sports success and mental health.
• The winner effect underscores the importance of early success in male goal achievement.
• Dopamine affects male behavior, with extroverts seeking stimuli to maintain levels.
• Talking therapy isn't a one-size-fits-all solution; consider problem-solving skills and financial stability.
• Social hierarchy influences serotonin levels, impacting goal achievement and mental health.
• Men at the bottom of society are more prone to suicide.
• Improving men's mental health involves prioritizing sleep, exercise, nutrition, and vitamin D.
• Self-care is vital for men's well-being and their ability to care for others.
• Small steps towards self-improvement can lead to significant positive changes.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction and Setting the Tone
01:02 The Variety of Conversations
02:12 Busting Myths about Male Mental Health
03:03 Introducing Ryan Parke
04:55 Starting the Conversation with Ryan Parke
05:21 Ryan's Personal Experience with Male Mental Health
06:30 Shocking Reality of Male Mental Health
08:08 Impact of Testosterone on Mental Health
12:17 Relationship Between Testosterone and Emotions
17:07 Importance of Sleep for Testosterone Levels
20:23 Role of Exercise in Testosterone Levels
23:33 The Impact of Diet on Testosterone Levels
26:36 The Importance of Vitamin D for Testosterone Levels
32:20 Understanding Dynamic Testosterone
35:08 Relationship Between Performance and Testosterone Levels
38:17 Winner Effect in Male Sports
39:17 Role of Dopamine in Male Behavior
41:21 Battle Between Intention and Attention
45:41 Influence of Sports Results on Testosterone Levels
52:04 Relationship Between Testosterone and Aggression
58:56 Limitations of Talking Therapy for Men
01:06:20 Role of Serotonin in Male Mental Healthh
01:15:55 Men at the Bottom of Society and Suicide
01:17:48 Importance of Looking After Yourself
01:19:10 Taking the Next Step to Improve

About Ryan:

My mission is to share the science of male mental health through inclusive talks, safeguarded workshops and personalised coaching so that you never lose the men you care about to suicide.

https://www.themenscoach.co.uk/

To learn more about Maxed Out Man and to maximize your potential, visit www.maxedoutman.com or connect with us on Social Media:

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Transcript

0:00

Welcome to maxed out man helping you

0:06

become the man you were made to be hey guys it's Kevin Davis from the

0:11

MaxedOutMan Podcast this is episode number 20. I'm here with Ryan Park who is the

0:16

men's coach from the UK in England and uh Ryan Hey welcome I appreciate you

0:22

joining me I'm super interested in this I love the science of mental health and I know that's one of your Specialties so

0:28

why don't you give us a little bit more about who you are how you got into this and then let's get started I know you've

0:33

got some exciting stuff to share with us today yeah fantastic thanks Kevin Love the show couple of your episodes lately I

0:40

was a bit hooked to I was like I need to stop listening and going to a meeting for like just want to learn a little bit

0:45

more so yeah I love the show really pleased to be here and I think the best thing I can do for your listeners is

0:51

tell you what got me into all this because in June 2019 I saw a lady who I hadn't

0:58

seen in years and I was really excited to hear the latest about her son because

1:03

her son Brad was taller than me more muscular some would say slightly better looking I

1:11

disagree and I'm like you're pretty you're a pretty good looking guy you know

1:16

I think so an argument could be made though that he was better looking than me if you can believe that yeah

1:22

and he had a fast car a big house a great job and I like to think I was on the same trajectory as Brad but I was

1:29

about two years behind and then I saw the look on his mum's face and I thought what did I say and

1:36

she said oh Ryan you're asking me about Brad you don't know Brad's killed himself oh man

1:43

and it hit me like like a truck you know because I wasn't expecting it I had two

1:50

paradigms two beliefs at the time that that really summed up what I knew about

1:55

mental health at the time I thought that when men are successful they'll be happy

2:03

Ed Brad was the most successful man I knew and then the other thing that I believed

2:08

I don't know if you hear it where you are Kevin but where I am in the UK what we hear all the time is the reason why

2:14

men have worse mental health outcomes than women when it comes to suicide is because men just don't talk enough I

2:20

don't know if you hear that a lot yeah I probably had like three of those conversations this week talking about kind of the you know whether it's

2:27

relational or they're you know talking or any of that so absolutely so I used to hear that all the time I

2:34

heard what we all hear and yet Brad was the best Communicator I knew as well

2:41

so two years before he died he went to the doctors and said help I'm depressed and they put him on a course of

2:47

antidepressants and they also prescribed him therapy they referred him to a

2:52

therapist and he did a round of cognitive behavioral therapy a round of interpersonal therapy and two months

3:00

before he died his mum said Brad call me every night and tell you how tell me how you feel

3:05

so we hear all the time that men need to talk Brad did everything that we tell

3:11

men to do and yet he's not around anymore yeah and so that's why I was so shocked Kev like it didn't make sense I

3:18

thought no no he did everything he was told and Brad's Mom Jenny she lectures in

3:25

mental health and she said to me Ryan you you should you should learn about this because the Situation's similar in

3:31

the US right but over here in the UK every five hours four people die from suicide

3:37

three of them are men 74 of our suicides are met and this situation is really

3:42

similar all over the Western world right and I took what Jenny said really

3:48

seriously that was June 2019 and I set aside one day every week from then until

3:54

the end of the year to learn everything I could about my mental health and like

3:59

I'm no saint Kevin I didn't do this for everyone else I did this because I'm a man and I need to know for me right

4:06

right so the first week that I'm learning about this stuff I had no background in

4:12

mental health I had no medical training nothing like that I didn't even go to university I

4:18

left school at 15 right so I'm starting at the very top and I started with studies on men's life expectancy mm-hmm

4:28

and one of the studies I was reading just mentioned that in the US and in

4:34

Europe there's one day every year where a man's chances of having a heart attack jump up by 30 percent

4:41

and on the same day women's chances of having a heart attack go down significantly do you know what day that

4:48

is it's on the tip of my tongue but actually no I actually just had this conversation not too long ago but share

4:54

yeah no worries don't worry I didn't know and I've been asking this question for years even heart surgeons don't

5:00

answer this question properly so the one day every year where you and me and all

5:06

the men we know are 30 more likely to have a heart attack even though women are less likely is the Monday after the

5:13

clocks change and we lose an hour oh man yeah that's why I stay in bed those days

5:21

that's good advice there's other ways to combat it as well staying in bed absolutely strategy

5:29

and so I read that and I remember thinking why is that like what the hell well that study didn't have the answers

5:36

but a couple of other studies did know what caused that phenomenon so what happens

5:42

is if you miss one hour sleep what it does to you is different depending on whether you're male or

5:49

female interesting and so in a man's body missing just one hour's sleep lowers our

5:57

testosterone for days and in a man's body as testosterone goes

6:02

down our chances of having a heart attack go up and I thought that's interesting because

6:10

I was born in 1990 I was 29 at the time I'm 33 now

6:16

and my whole life I had never heard anything good about testosterone

6:21

yeah because testosterone is the evil solution that runs through men's bodies that makes us terrible right that's

6:27

exactly that's the narrative right 100 it does nothing good in fact like this

6:32

will probably make you laugh right but when I was a kid and there was a fight in my local bar my parents would say well my mom's

6:40

friends would say of course they ended up fighting the testosterone in that room was Sky High yeah yeah so I was

6:48

reading this study years ago about testosterone stopping men from having heart attacks and I thought what how can

6:56

a hormone that makes men fight in bars also protect them from having heart

7:01

attacks that's really weird so I decided next week I'm going to learn everything I can about testosterone

7:08

the first thing I decided to research is why does testosterone make men aggressive it turns out it doesn't

7:16

that myth was disproved back in the 70s so testosterone not only does it not

7:23

make men aggressive but low testosterone is associated with aggression

7:29

testosterone regulates our emotions can you go into that a little bit more I'd love the science part of that yeah so

7:36

what I'm going to do what are the myths that we're going to bust is exactly how testosterone grips your emotions and

7:42

it's really interesting because it answers a lot of questions about lifestyle but what it also does is like

7:50

do you have a friend who whenever his team loses he's in a bad mood yeah is it like just about every guy you

7:58

know yeah yeah any any of my I'm not really a huge Sports guy but I know tons

8:03

of people that are and I you know you see it on see it on uh social media and all that stuff so yeah any anybody I

8:08

know and then and in my case it's you know F1 or Nascar or whatever same same

8:14

example yeah that's it like your team loses bad move team wins good mood it

8:20

doesn't matter it doesn't matter if you scratch your your car down the wall outside if your team won you're like oh

8:26

a damaged car Super Bowl baby right whereas is when your team loses your car

8:32

being in one piece is a problem so so what we're going to do is we're going to talk about that in some detail and how

8:39

testosterone and emotions are related but actually we're I'm just going to carry on talking about General Health in

8:45

men because otherwise if we do it this way around then it when we get to emotions in men it's going to make a lot

8:51

more sense go for it and so and I and I should be full disclosure I've been on trt for like two years and I'm fifth I'm

8:59

50. so I'm you know quite a bit older than you and uh so anyway so I have an

9:04

artificial level of testosterone that puts me closer to what uh what I should be which is probably closer to where you

9:10

are naturally so well who who knows right I I'm not regularly getting my

9:16

testosterone tested but when we talk about symptoms of low testosterone then it's quite easy to know if you have a

9:21

problem when absolutely and so um yeah so we're in this

9:27

situation where I find out testosterone doesn't cause aggression and then I'm learning more about it and while I was

9:34

trying to find out why it protects a man's heart I find this other study which just mentions that the average

9:39

depressed man has 30 less testosterone than the average non-depressed man and I

9:46

thought that's really interesting because so what we're talking about these statistics are going to vary from country to country but let me tell you

9:52

about the UK in 2019 which is probably just based on you know society and diet

9:59

and exercise and all of that probably is is very similar I would think to anyone in the Western World so I would assume

10:06

that it's pretty similar in the U.S yeah absolutely it's going to be really similar and so at the time our biggest

10:13

killer from 18 to 45 in men was suicide now it's the biggest killer of men from

10:19

18 to 50 because it keeps growing wow but the biggest kill of men 18 to 45

10:26

suicide suicide is linked to depression not in all cases but in most instances according to the World Health

10:32

Organization and depression in men is linked to low testosterone

10:38

then the biggest killer of men at the time from 45 to 60 is heart disease

10:43

heart disease heart attack and heart failure in men all linked to low

10:49

testosterone and so I wondered well what happens after the age of 60 the biggest killer

10:55

of men in the UK at the time after the age of 60 is cancer was cancer still is

11:00

but it was then as well the most likely cancer a man will get is prostate cancer

11:06

directly related to testosterone exactly in fact Studies have found that men who

11:12

have low testosterone are two and a half times more likely to develop prostate cancer in the near future

11:18

that's that's super interesting because I know one of the scare tactics that they use against trt is oh you're going

11:25

to get prostate cancer if you do that which is the exact opposite of what you're saying right yeah yeah it's

11:31

really interesting and then another thing that interests me about prostate cancer is there's a level of

11:37

testosterone that if you get below this threshold then you're massively at risk of getting

11:43

prostate cancer um you might be interested in knowing because if you're on trt you probably know a little bit about the metrics but

11:49

it's 350 nanograms per deciliter so

11:54

yeah so once you get below that you're at big risk of prostate cancer well funnily enough that's the same threshold

12:01

that's been identified as the risk for depression in men so there's almost like this minimum functional level that

12:09

you need to achieve your testosterone right I was at 267 before I get on trt by the way at 46 46 years old so you

12:18

would have been like two and a half times more across Day cards than the

12:23

average guy right yeah yeah yeah so when I learned these things I was

12:28

like hold on a minute my whole life I've never heard anything good about testosterone and yeah it

12:34

turns out it's like vital for men's mental health physical health and life expectancy and just about everything

12:40

finds this there was even a study in Washington that it had blood samples of men and it tracked what happened to them

12:47

during covet and the men who had low testosterone before covid broke out were much more

12:53

likely to be hospitalized and much more likely to die from long covered or from covid and develop long covered than men

12:59

who had healthy levels so it's like the hormone that keeps Us Alive basically it's our bodies worth

13:05

knowing yeah this is an important guy keep him alive yeah and there's corollaries I'm assuming with the

13:11

coveted research with because you know one of the biggest factors they said was obesity and lack of exercise and all

13:18

that and so I'm sure that there's a corollary between low testosterone and all of those factors as well so I mean

13:23

it's like yeah it's magic I can tell you right now that if it wasn't for trt I would be in the back of my closet fat

13:29

and crying like a little baby like it it literally it changed my life so yeah

13:35

yeah and it's amazing and the conversation we're gonna have is going to be mainly it's going to be about the advantages of taking testosterone of

13:42

making testosterone rather than start taking it right yeah I understand but so for most guys it's not a case of taking

13:48

it it's a case of Lifestyle right but absolutely but yeah there are you know

13:53

there are certain circumstances where guys think yeah I should be taking it and they've got the education and they

14:00

know about it and they're willing to take it for the rest of their lives and if that's the case then you're talking to someone about taking testosterone but

14:07

for now we're talking we're talking about making it right making it yeah because in my case just there's a side

14:12

note there like I work out six days a week I lift weights six days a week I eat a high protein diet like if you look

14:17

at all of these are the factors to make good levels of testosterone I kind of

14:23

hit all of those things and still had low testosterone so then it's like okay well let's maybe let's look at doing something about it but there are so many

14:30

lifestyle options prior to that that you can do which is what you're going to talk about and so that's uh just just

14:35

that's my little disclaimer about trt and you know it's not it's not roiding out and uh trying to get to 5000 serum

14:44

level and and all that yeah absolutely yeah there's there's downsides to that right well we're

14:50

talking about when we talk about trt testosterone replacement therapy is like the amount you're told to take not what

14:56

you think hold on I wouldn't take that in nine days I was learning all these good things

15:02

about testosterone and what it does and then I thought my next question was okay so it's so important for us what are the

15:09

key ingredients for a healthy level of testosterone and so that's when I started learning about

15:15

I'd always heard that as you age when you're a man your testosterone goes down every year

15:20

but actually lifestyle is a much bigger indicator of your testosterone than your age your age is largely relevant

15:27

compared to your lifestyle absolutely and do you know what the number one affecting factor is Kevin for natural

15:33

levels of testosterone the number one key ingredient I would say nutrition but I may be wrong

15:39

uh so nutrition is really important it's definitely in the top four but it seems that the single thing that has the most

15:46

effects is it goes back to that heart attack problem from earlier it's sleep

15:51

so Studies have found that missing just one hour of sleep temporarily lowers

15:57

your testosterone by this equivalent of 12 years of age wow so I'm 33 if I miss one hour sleep

16:06

and just get seven hours my testosterone will dip so it's equivalent to a 45 year

16:12

old man who just had a good night's sleep wow and if I miss two hours it Stacks so

16:19

then I'm up to a 57 year old man who just had a good night's sleep so

16:25

Sleek is massively important for us and I didn't know that no and that's probably why I'm screwed

16:31

because I have been a poor sleeper since I was a child so like that I know it's

16:36

an I know it's a factor it's a factor that I haven't been able to solve um you know or or correct reasonably so

16:42

I that probably definitely a factor in my case I'm sure and then the compounds right because one of the symptoms of low

16:49

testosterone is post Lee right it's that vicious cycle yeah yeah and this when it

16:55

comes to Men's Health it's all Vicious Cycles and virtuous Cycles it's like when it starts going wrong it gets

17:01

harder to fix and then when you start doing it right it gets easier and easier to do the

17:08

right things there's loads of examples of this in male mental health where it's like yeah these there's about five

17:13

specific dimensions to my mental health and all of them there's vicious and virtuous Cycles in them you've just got

17:20

to kick start the right ones so the first thing is sleep and the next one is what you were speaking about a minute ago is exercise

17:28

specifically it's cardio interesting and so you know the recommendations that uh

17:35

in the UK from like our NHS who give out advice on health and they provide Health

17:40

Care to us they say every adult should be getting two and a half hours of exercise a week

17:46

and then specifically we should be doing 20 to 30 minutes a day

17:51

and so I think lots of men don't know that as well and there's there's there

17:57

was an amazing study that came out in February this year and it looked at how

18:02

130 000 people had recovered from stress anxiety and depression

18:09

and I found the one thing was much more effective than medicine

18:16

and much more effective than CBT which is a form of talk therapy that one thing

18:21

was exercise yeah it's more effective than any other treatment really and it also is much

18:29

cheaper than any other treatment I mean for the most part it can be free that's the that's the scary thing like it

18:35

doesn't it doesn't it you know for basic health it doesn't doesn't take anything yeah yeah just get Traders on and get

18:42

outside right um having said that when you're depressed you don't feel like doing it

18:47

no yeah we're not part of that cycle right yeah yeah tons of Cycles so the

18:53

first one we've got here if we want a healthy level of testosterone is we've got to be sleeping eight hours a night

18:58

the next thing is we've got to be exercising most days like at least five days out of the week and for at least 20

19:03

minutes a day and then we come to diet which you mentioned now of course the nutrients that go in

19:10

that's really important but actually one of the most important factors is whether or not you make your food yourself or

19:17

whether it's processed yes so men who make their own food have much healthier

19:22

levels of testosterone than men who eat lots of processed food because a couple of reasons number one Kevin I know you

19:28

love sugar man yeah I do I've said that multiple times and my wife is a pastry

19:34

chef and Baker so you know imagine imagine like an alcoholic living a

19:39

horror so perfect for life isn't it yeah

19:45

I'd say what happens when we're eating sugar and processed food is full of sugar but also sugary foods are full of

19:51

sugar yeah but while our body's making insulin it's no longer making testosterone

19:56

and my partner Emma she's a pharmacist and I said to her one day I was like why

20:02

would your body stop making testosterone to make insulin because testosterone is vital for your physical and mental

20:08

health and she said Ryan sugar is so bad for you it's an acid in your blood it's attacking your nerves so your body is

20:14

like screw everything screw itself Zone screw human growth hormone screw everything we need insulin and we need

20:21

it now that's crazy because most people don't think about that that as a component of the fight or flight response right that

20:28

that's but it in that case it totally is like it's the body it's body's method of

20:34

survival at the time yeah absolutely and quite interestingly actually so insulin

20:40

is takes the sugar from your blood and puts in your cells and then you mentioned fight or flight so often when we talk about fight or

20:46

flight we're talking about cortisol right cortisol does the opposite it takes it from yourselves and puts it in your blood

20:52

so it's this fight yeah exactly yeah and and it's what it does basically is by putting all of the sugar in your blood

20:58

raising your blood pressure what that means is now if you need to run or if you need to fight you've got the energy

21:04

in your system ready to go anywhere right so those two are like opposites in the in that way

21:11

and then the other problem that we have at the moment is pesticides which go a

21:17

lot more in processed foods than in Whole Foods and pesticides in our body look like estrogens

21:23

yeah so your body's getting this mixed signal of estrogens it thinks they're estrogens floating around in your blood

21:29

so it's going to make less testosterone and this is thought to be one of the reasons why levels of testosterone of

21:35

nearly half since the 50s because of the hormones and chemicals

21:41

that are going into our bodies through our diets now oh and then we've got a fourth thing as

21:47

well so after we've got sleep is really important and diet and exercise or

21:52

should I say exercise and diet the other thing is vitamin D which comes from the sun

21:58

and when I learned that list of things like I can swell this joke on again

22:04

absolutely yeah excellent so when I saw that list of

22:09

things that men need for a healthy level of testosterone I remember thinking oh

22:16

because I knew Brad who died from suicide and I know yeah he did everything we tell men to do

22:22

but really he was working so hard that sleep dire exercise and sunshine

22:30

they just wouldn't have been anywhere near his list of priorities and I started to realize that trying to be a

22:36

man is something that kills a lot of men that's interesting yeah and I I would assume on the vitamin D front there you

22:42

guys so I live in Montana which we're we're like the 45th parallel so we're you know if you look at Globe we're

22:48

similar in yours in in terms of your latitude however you guys I mean it it's

22:54

the joke right like the UK it rains all the time we have the we have these long

23:00

Winters where we don't get sunshine I used to tell people we get we put our kids on the bus at 7 30 a.m they get off

23:08

the bus and it's dark they go on the bus they get off the bus at four and it's dark like that's how short our days can

23:16

be during the winter time so getting vitamin D is is very very difficult for us and I assume the similar thing in there in the uh in the UK yeah and then

23:24

if you cast time back right most of the jobs in the past you had to be outside to do them like realistically what could

23:31

you do in your house not very much you got a farm indoors right you know there's very few jobs you can

23:36

historically that you've been able to do indoors now most jobs are indoors because you need this you need your PC

23:41

in front of you and so less even if it was overcast rainy cloudy being outdoors

23:48

in that means you're getting some sunshine right where's this now it's like it could be sunny outside you're

23:54

inside so actually the weather's becoming less relevant as we're just hiding away yeah the weather sucks in

24:00

the UK for sure but at least I'll get some of it if I'm outside right even if you have even if

24:06

you're inside with you know and you have an exposure to Sun or whatever A lot of these windows like my windows are low E

24:12

Windows on my house which limits the UV that comes through on purpose because of

24:18

heat and you know exposure and and all that so you're even getting even if you sitting there next to a window you know

24:24

and it's sunny outside you're not getting the kind of exposure UV exposure that you need yeah it's really about

24:29

getting outside and getting it on you and so this was like all we've spoken about so

24:35

far Kevin is like my first couple of days learning about male metal right and I've been I've been studying

24:42

it obsessively for four and a half years since and I I use this stuff in the coaching and the workshops are doing the

24:48

talks that kind of thing but what what we've covered so far is was this realization that hold on a minute

24:54

My Lifestyle dictates my hormones and my hormones are a big influence from

25:01

my physical and mental health so it kind of started making me realize that actually as men we've got this yeah

25:08

it's a challenge in a way but it's also an opportunity we've got a lot of ownership over our mental health in a way

25:14

because if you have the right tools then you know how to look after yourself get that testosterone up

25:19

and that's a really good thing the downside is society is so critical of testosterone at the moment for no no

25:27

actual reasons and if because of this it's like we're Society is killing a conversation that

25:33

men actually need to have about how to look after ourselves and avoid these massive Killers yeah and I don't know

25:39

how it is in the UK in terms of the numbers what they've and most people I don't think realize this and you know

25:44

feel free to correct me or talk to this but in the U.S when you get your testosterone tested

25:51

um they will look at those these numbers that they assign to normality are completely ludicrous like they they in

25:59

so over the last 70 years let's say since the 50s testosterone levels across

26:04

the board have gone down so rather than say hey wait we have a we have an issue with this this is something that we need

26:09

to be looking at and helping people fix they said let's just lower the standards so then the the old Norms became you

26:16

know they're irrelevant is that something that you found um with kind of the research you've done

26:21

yeah that is something unfound and where it's resting at the moment is it is almost like when you get belief this

26:29

level like Monsters be here bad stuff happens basically yeah so it's like what we're

26:36

trying to do at the moment is like just work out when men are past this terrible point when actually sub-optimal is is a

26:42

problem but you know the key thing about it really is just this just this realization that actually we've all got

26:49

a lot of power in our hands which is if we know what to do then we can actually start to do really

26:55

effective things for better mental health yeah and it's not like we're going to do acrobatics every day I mean

27:00

it's not it's it's really just a series of simple choices that make all the difference in the world

27:06

and so that everything I've spoken about so far everything we've spoken about so far that's all to do with let's refer to

27:13

that as like Baseline testosterone right okay based on testosterone is how much testosterone you have based on your

27:20

lifestyle assuming that your your body's functional you know assuming that your balls are working and that kind of thing

27:25

pituitary gland firing normal cylinders but then there's another aspect to testosterone as well it doesn't seem to

27:32

have a name yet so I kind of called it Dynamic testosterone for now

27:37

and this is where testosterone gets really interesting remember we were talking about the guys who feel down or

27:43

angry when their team loses well this kind of explains that and to understand Dynamic testosterone

27:50

first we're going to look at one of our cousins which is the rhesus monkey so this guy's a little monkey with a long

27:56

tail right right so he's related to us because he's a primate but they don't drive a car to work or anything like

28:02

that but they are their brains are similar in that they use hormones in similar ways

28:08

and the key the reason why it's useful to have this conversation is because the scientists know a lot about the rhesus

28:14

monkey and how he uses testosterone so let's say there's two monkeys

28:22

and they both spot one banana I'm not being stereotypical to monkeys just I

28:27

believe they even want it's just right how terrible of you to assume that the

28:33

monkey have a beta banana did you just assume my food that's right

28:39

so in that instance right we've got two male monkeys one banana before they

28:46

see the banana they both have Baseline levels of testosterone but as soon as they see the banana the testosterone

28:53

levels of both male monkeys jumps up by three four or five times wow so in

29:00

nature that's a massive increase that's like off the chart right yeah now both monkeys have a really high

29:07

level of testosterone and what happens next depends on the outcome so let's say there's I don't know a monkey called

29:14

Kevin and a monkey called Ryan and Kevin's a bit bigger and Kevin shows

29:20

Ryan his teeth and Ryan goals screw this it's just a banana

29:27

so what happens as soon as there is an outcome monkey Kevin's one when monkey Kevin's

29:34

testosterone jumps up by an additional 20 so winning has a big impact on the level

29:43

of testosterone that's in Monkey Kevin's blood now monkey Kevin's looking for the nearest female at that point probably

29:49

yeah and now monkey Ryan as soon as he loses

29:56

his testosterone plummet by 90 holy cow

30:01

so the key thing here is it's now below Baseline and what monkey Ryan does is he actually

30:11

leaves the group and isolates for a couple of days he doesn't even come out to eat so when you look at that and if

30:16

you think what would that human what would that behavior be like if that monkey was a human well it's kind of depression right yeah absolutely

30:24

so we've got this relationship in male rhesus monkeys between their performance

30:30

and you could almost say their Mental Health but then this was back in the 70s we're

30:36

talking about that these studies were done in the 80s scientists got really excited because they realized you could

30:41

measure the level of testosterone in a man's body in his blood by measuring what was in

30:47

his saliva okay so that's really exciting because not everyone will give you their blood

30:53

but anyone will spit in a bucket right right like who cares and so the next thing the scientists did

31:00

is they followed a group of male professional tennis players

31:06

into a knockout tennis tournament and what they found is two days before the game The Players had Baseline levels

31:14

of testosterone day of the game massive increase in testosterone

31:20

and then the scientists could tell with 100 accuracy just by looking at the

31:25

results which man had won and which man had lost that's crazy so the winners testosterone

31:32

jumps up further the losers comes crashing down and have you ever seen

31:38

that image Kev of like uh the male tennis player and he's so frustrated he's smashing his racket up yeah John

31:45

McEnroe so when you see this isn't this so angry

31:50

right did they just win or did they just lose right absolutely you know that they lost yeah and this is a point they may

31:58

not have lost the game but at least every you know some of those guys are doing it Point by Point yeah and this is

32:03

when scientists started to realize that actually testosterone is not associated with aggression low testosterone is

32:10

associated with aggression that's awesome because like no one wins

32:16

the game and then goes and smashes their right

32:22

and this was like back in the 80s that this was found out so this is when the news should have got out that oh no no

32:29

testosterone doesn't make men aggressive low testosterone does we'll talk in a minute about like why it looks like

32:36

testosterone does but you know so the main thing here is like scientists realize hold on a minute

32:42

willing is very good something else they found out was that a tennis match is a bit different to a

32:48

monkey fight one of the ways is different is it's played in sets yeah so the the scientists actually had

32:55

step-by-step information on testosterone and what they could see is go and you're

33:01

gonna ask something oh I was just gonna go ahead get finish your thought and then I'll ask no

33:07

worries so what they could see is the man who won the first set got a

33:12

little boost of testosterone and sixty percent of the time he went on

33:17

to win the whole match and this is interesting because this happens in male Sports all the time and

33:24

not in female sports so in female sports who wins the first set is not a good

33:30

predictor of who will win but in mayo Sports who wins the first set is a really reliable indicator of

33:36

who's going to win the match it's more reliable than their age their experience it's the best indicator and it came to

33:43

be known as the winner effect and so we can all learn from this is when you're male there's a big payoff from reaching

33:50

your goals quickly from seeing some progress right and we actually use and then if you if

33:57

you put that across everything I mean all of life is is that the more you win the more you win like it's it's almost

34:04

that kind of cover and that's interesting that they have a scientific explanation for that yeah it's like when

34:11

you win your body is going oh hold on we can do this uh give Kevin more of what he needs we want more testosterone more

34:16

better mental health better physical health more concentration absolutely relate how do those relate to

34:23

like dopamine and norepinephrine and adrenaline and and because obviously those are a response to similar stimuli

34:29

how do what how does that relate actually especially talking about uh nor epinephrine uh which I tend to call

34:36

noradrenaline uh just because you know two Nations divided by the same language right there you go all that jazz but

34:45

um so norepinephrine has a really key

34:51

um part to play in why men are aggressive when they drink um

34:56

so what what I'll do is I'll talk to you yeah I'll talk to you about sort of

35:01

these results in sports a little bit more because there's actually a way there to move across it to no

35:06

epinephrine and adrenaline and cortisol in a bit more detail hey dopamine is

35:12

that's deep man we could do a podcast about dopamine well you'll have to come back and we'll do it again yeah the main

35:18

thing to know about dopamine is I don't know how to say this but dopamine is not always your friend right

35:26

absolutely especially if you're extroverted so so scientists can tell by

35:31

looking at one part of your brain how extroverted you are because in this particular part of your

35:38

brain you have more dopamine receptors what that what that means is the more

35:43

receptors you have to something the more sensitive you are for it your body is basically hunting for it right you're so

35:49

what this means is in extroverts they are very very sensitive to dopamine

35:55

or you've got an external stimuli all the time in order to yeah or or you

36:01

could almost say it's more powerful to them so it's a big distraction right because I can work here on my own

36:07

but I almost don't have the thing that I need I'm in like a dopamine desert because I know how good it is when I

36:13

leave the desert and I'm out of autism thing so for extroverts it's like it's almost like we have this problem with

36:19

intention which is what what you're intend to do versus the first thing that's going to get your attention and give you some dopamine

36:26

that is a constant battle your intention versus your attention where then they're going in different places because you're

36:32

so sensitive to dopamine wow so yeah I went off on a bit of a tangent

36:38

there but yeah yeah I do I derailed the conversation a little bit give me no no it's so good so in my in my coaching

36:44

program it's not a plug it's just I think this is so important like we literally have a 90 minute Workshop that's just going into detail about how

36:52

dopamine screws you up oh wow uh yeah well we'll definitely but we'll we'll talk about that get the links and get

36:58

you guys uh you know get some help there for sure yeah exactly so then we looked at

37:04

tennis players right the winner his testosterone goes up so after that the

37:09

scientists that carried out those uh trials they thought well hold on a minute what if the testosterone wasn't

37:15

responding to the competition what if it was responding to the physical stimuli of playing tennis

37:22

so they decided to do another study but this time on human male chess players

37:27

yeah that's the exact opposite physically yeah exactly like it's like two complete opposites right

37:34

so these chess players they're sitting in their chair they're not running around they're not hitting a ball they don't have to be athletes maybe they are

37:40

athletes I don't know but they don't have to be and what they found is two days before their knockout chess

37:48

tournament Baseline levels of testosterone just like the tennis players well maybe different but similar

37:55

then on the day of the competition massive increase in testosterone the same as we saw with the tennis players

38:00

and then after the chess games winner jump up in testosterone loser their

38:07

testosterone falls off a cliff so you don't even need to be doing anything

38:13

physical your body is always tracking did you win or did you lose and Israel this was that's like blowing my mind

38:19

yeah and and so they found something else really

38:25

interesting in this chess tournament right which is every now and again a man won a chess game but his

38:31

testosterone didn't get that little boost afterwards they noticed that with the tennis players sometimes but

38:38

because they were just learning they didn't feel the need to ask about this specific phenomenon but now we've got to

38:44

the chess game the scientists had learned a lot more and they wanted to know what caused that

38:51

victory that didn't reward the guy so they reached out to the chess players and said can you tell us about that game

38:57

you want and in all instances the chess players said oh I shouldn't have won man

39:03

my opponent made a mistake um so there's no there was no like satisfaction in in actually doing it

39:10

yourself yeah yeah there's no satisfaction in uh not not getting it done yourself yet

39:17

so like if your opponent makes a mistake or if you win by random luck just share

39:22

chance you know your opponent Parts the black ball something like that at the same time as the white then

39:29

there's no reward for you winning fairly is really important for male Mental Health interesting

39:36

and then we move across to another study which is gets even closer to home this is the one that answers all the

39:42

questions so in 1995 scientists went to Europe because the world the soccer

39:48

World Cup was on and it was Brazil versus Italy yeah I believe that's when it happened anyway I'm not a football

39:54

fan but you know I'm not a suck with that so football we know what it is there Echo oh actually so I normally call it

40:02

soccer because I actually do follow the NFL and I'm a New Orleans Saints fan oh okay

40:08

which is really anti-social when you're in the UK but yeah you're that you're not allowed to follow American football

40:15

right yeah it's like it gets the one in the morning and I'm like oh prime time baby

40:22

her face so then when these scientists went to Europe they weren't studying football players

40:30

they were studying fans who were watching the game on TV

40:35

and what they found is 25 minutes before the game started Baseline levels of

40:40

testosterone during the game massive increase in testosterone after the end of the game

40:46

the Brazilian fans testosterone had gone up massively and the Italian fans

40:51

testosterone had gone down massively Kevin guess who won how good the Brazil

40:57

right yeah exactly because there was and so we've built this situation here where

41:03

looking at just watching your team win or lose has

41:08

a massive impact on a man's mental health you're riding a roller coaster of testosterone which is translating into a

41:14

roller coaster of emotion and it's there for a good reason because like nowadays in 2023 if I'm watching my team

41:22

lose it's because I don't know the Saints are just doing really badly this evening or something you know like oh

41:29

someone should have blocked him but ten thousand years ago if I was watching my team lose it means that like caveman

41:37

Ryan is watching caveman Kevin get ripped apart by a bear right so I can't

41:42

come over to the bear and say hey Mr bear it's nice that you came here but

41:48

would you mind leaving because this is kind of our private property and if you knew Kevin I know he's very tasty but

41:53

he's also a very nice guy like you can't do that right the bear will just eat you next right so what happens

42:00

is I see you're losing you're my team and my body is gonna lower my

42:06

testosterone really really fast and the way it's going to do that is by releasing uh well we don't need to go

42:13

into too much detail but an enzyme called aromatase is pumped around your system which breaks testosterone up into

42:19

estrogens and a man with low testosterone and high estrogen is very irritable

42:26

so when they say stop acting like a girl if you're if you're interested if you're

42:31

throwing up you know there's there's some truth to that actually yeah

42:37

you know I'm not gonna this is a man's podcast so I could say stuff like that right yeah absolutely

42:43

so yeah it's like we've got these this it's kind of okay to call it a female

42:49

hormone the reality is that men use estrogen and women use testosterone as well but actually then have like 20 to

42:56

60 times more testosterone than women so it'd be scared to say it's a male hormone but yeah it is a bit like

43:03

female hormones in men causes real problems right or at least it does

43:08

something bad that nature intends for it to do because you've got to fight a bear you need to be angry man yeah

43:15

so I was working with a guy years ago and when his when his soccer when his

43:21

football team lost he was in a terrible mood in fact he was used to be so depressed that his relationship with his

43:28

girlfriend was strained he couldn't get to the gym on Mondays and he'd be late for work and I took him through this

43:34

science and he was like ah hold on you're saying that just watching my football team win is going to boost my

43:40

testosterone I said yeah he said okay next time I see my team lose I'm gonna

43:46

watch them win I said how you can do that he's like I'm just going to go on YouTube yeah said sure try it so a week later I

43:53

get a text message of his girlfriend and she's saying like hey I don't know

44:00

what you're doing with my boyfriend but he's a new man thank you and so this is why I love male mental

44:07

health because like if you are really suffering after your football team losers and you go to a

44:12

like a psychiatrist you're probably going to be told that you care too much about football they're so wrong we need

44:18

to look into your past and work out no no no no use it if you're about to walk on stage

44:23

if you're about to do a business deal if you're about to go and visit a client you should know that watching a video of

44:29

your team win even if it's years old it's going to give you a boost

44:34

so like this last year the saints were playing like utter crap and which I

44:42

think for the Saints is you know par for the course over over the history of that team but I could have said

44:47

okay you know sorry guys love you but come on

44:54

you know brought me a bone here so so what happened last season a lot Kevin was I I

45:01

watched the sayings get their butts kicked and then I'd come home because I used to

45:06

watching my stepdad I get in bed with my fiance because it's three in the morning and Emma would say to me oh you're in a

45:13

good mood the Saints obviously won and I go no no they lost and she goes why are

45:18

you in such a good mood I say oh well I just watched them win the Super Bowl she was like wasn't that 12 years ago

45:25

you guys are weird yeah absolutely but we've got this secret weapon right and

45:30

because no one is looking at testosterone in any real detail you know most most experts don't even know this

45:37

that we've got this super weapon which is any time we want we can just watch our favorite football team win or sports

45:43

team and it's going to give us a boost to our physical and mental health that's crazy

45:48

and then if we're looking at one of the hormones that you mentioned was norepinephrine

45:55

so or I'll I'll call it new adrenaline first okay it's the same thing it's just it means that I'm used to saying it and

46:01

I won't mess it up so much so what's really interesting is

46:06

what what we hear about a lot in the UK is domestic violence and intimate part of

46:12

violence going up on game days so there's a there's a lot of evidence

46:17

of that right and then this organization years ago in the UK they started studying it

46:24

and what they found is on days in the UK when football teams played

46:30

the rates of domestic violence jumped up by like 25 and it went up even further

46:38

on days when the team lost so you look at that and it's like okay

46:44

so testosterone goes up during competition well that means surely the

46:49

testosterone is driving aggression no no no hold on let's look at this in a bit more detail right so on days where the

46:55

team plays it goes domestic violence goes up on days where the team loses that's when

47:00

testosterone goes down and that's when violence is at its highest so we've got that correlation again

47:06

which is low testosterone equals aggression but there was another thing that was noticed during this study as

47:12

well which is they managed to isolate couples where the man was a football fan but he

47:19

wasn't drinking that day and in these instances no matter what

47:24

the result no additional domestic violence whatsoever and so what happens

47:31

if we understand what happens to a man's brain when he drinks alcohol when you drink alcohol your testosterone goes

47:37

down but what goes up is neurodrenaline or

47:43

norepinephrine and that's been associated with aggression with PTSD with all kinds of

47:49

behavioral problems really in men and like we know that men who are kicked

47:55

out the U.S Marines for being too aggressive to follow orders the one thing that was different about

48:00

them and the other men in the group is really high levels of noradrenaline norepinephrine in their system

48:05

and so we've got this weird situation where in most of this most of the

48:10

circumstances where we blame testosterone for bad behavior it's not testosterone it's probably

48:16

neuropanephrine or neurodrenaline that's causing this bad behavior and we're blaming it on the hormone that's just

48:22

gone down you know as opposed to the one that's just gone up that's insane that's so crazy so I know

48:29

we covered a lot of science there um but yeah you know it's it's nice to

48:35

talk about because it really gives men I find a lot of Hope and understanding of

48:41

how their bodies work and and how they can use it as well yeah so I mean basically we're tall you know you're I

48:48

mean Lo obviously testosterone is a hugely important hormone in our in our

48:53

bodies and but it word I mean this is all brand new for me I love the science part of it I could talk

49:00

about that all day but it's it's something that is counter completely counterintuitive to what we what the

49:06

narrative you know we love to use this phrase what the narrative is now but it's it's true even the medical

49:11

community you know first of all the medical community is terrible with exercise nutrition you know all all of those

49:19

factors they don't they're not well educated they don't communicate it very well

49:24

um but especially when it comes to male hormones it doesn't really know what it

49:29

doesn't have all this information and my wife gets really frustrated too because

49:35

she's like hey look you know you have this low testosterone you can take these shots twice a week and then you're fixed

49:41

and so and she's she's 49 she's almost 52 so she's starting to deal with some

49:46

of the you know pre-menopausal and all that stuff and it just pisses it pisses her off because she's like I can't they

49:53

don't know anything about you know any of this stuff other than some base HRT stuff and

49:58

and all that but it's it's uh this I find this fascinating to know that low

50:04

testosterone is the is the culprit in in what a lot of these male related things

50:11

that uh we're dealing with yes that's right there is one thing there's one way

50:17

that testosterone can be associated with aggression and the studies that found this were looking at exogenous

50:24

testosterone so men who were injecting it taking it rather than making it right and so when you're as you'll know it is

50:31

something that you know that is discussed when you do trt is when you start taking testosterone your

50:38

body will stop making it right right now it's not the end of the world because you have your you know you're taking

50:44

testosterone anyway so you're getting it from somewhere you're just not making it yourself but the only downside with it really is

50:51

that you know we were talking about how your testosterone fluctuates when you need it because of dynamic testosterone

50:58

so you no longer have Dynamic testosterone so if you're in a challenged situation

51:03

your Corso is going to go up your adrenaline your epinephrine is going to go up and your neurodralling your no

51:09

epinephrine is going to go up as well and they're all stress factors but you no longer have the testosterone to rise

51:15

up and put the brakes on and that's when some studies found that men who were dosing on testosterone were they did

51:22

have behavioral issues that they didn't have otherwise yeah do they have a baseline number that they were kind of

51:28

working off of in terms of serum testosterone or what the what I know not

51:34

that I know of but but one of the problems with this area of research is that there just isn't that much information

51:40

around it you know and and the studies are really disjointed and often on really small groups

51:45

um but yeah so I can't guide you in terms of the serum levels or anything but it does seem that that's the only

51:51

way that you can really say oh testosterone is associated with aggression which is if you're dosing it

51:57

and you're in a really stressful situation you you tend to lose some of the calming effect that testosterone has

52:02

because normally it would rise up to protect you yeah and it's important to note that you know guys that are on as they call it

52:09

they guys are on gear yeah um which which is that so like for me for example

52:15

I'm I'll do I'll have a 200 milligram bottle um and that bottle May last me 10 weeks

52:22

right so that that that level of dosing is like I take 0.5 twice a week and that

52:28

kind of keeps my levels it goes up a little bit and then it kind of stays Because by the time it starts to dip I take another shot Monday Monday and

52:35

Thursday tons of tons of information there but the guys that are on gear these guys that are doing it as a

52:42

performance enhancing drug they're taking that every day or every two days like the you know

52:49

because a lot of people will say trt and they're like oh well you're on roids or it's like they're there's no they're not

52:55

even in the same hemisphere uh in terms of the amount of stuff that they have so I think in in terms of trying to balance

53:01

that out and trying to at least maintain some level of natural production

53:06

keeping that dosage at a at a you know quote-unquote manageable level seems to be the method

53:12

yeah that's it I mean basically one of the areas where I find

53:18

men to struggle actually in life in general is we're we're much less orientated to balance than we are to

53:23

focusing on things so if we're following something that works we tend to double gamble it and a lot of what I do is

53:29

working with guys who they've had success at work so this has become their whole world now

53:34

and then yeah yeah they're not taking holidays anymore relationships might be breaking down around there might be

53:41

financial problems um and actually that's kind of the second myth that I want to talk about is that I believed before I heard about

53:49

Brad which is this myth that men just needs to talk and I'm not saying talking's bad but I really want to go

53:56

into this and make sure that no one leaves this conversation with the

54:01

impression that just talking on its own is a solution if you're a man because absolutely and to do that I'm gonna I'm gonna jump

54:08

back into some UK statistics because I think they're it's really interesting right you know similar Society so we can

54:15

still learn things from each other I I use loads of American studies all the time because you know it's not that different right so

54:21

so in the UK in the last five years 79 of men say it's now more acceptable

54:29

to talk about mental health so that's good news right yeah it's moving in the right direction 68 of

54:37

men say that there's now less stigma around mental health so you know there's

54:42

less shame it's easier to talk about and between 2010 and 2022 men in the UK became 50

54:52

more likely to go to therapy talking therapy so it sounds like everything's moving in

54:58

the right direction right right however in the same time that men say

55:05

it's much more acceptable to talk and in the same time that men say there's less stigma and in the same time we've become

55:12

50 more likely to go to Talking therapy we've also become 11 more likely to die

55:19

by Suicide man now I am not saying therapy is a

55:25

problem where it doesn't help of course you know there's loads of evidence it does but what I am saying is we can't

55:31

rely on talking and opening up and emotions and talking therapy we can't Ally rely on that as the one Soul

55:38

solution because it's not and there was an amazing study by one of our

55:45

leading organizations 11 years ago in the UK and what they said is that generic

55:52

talking therapy doesn't address the key psychological factors that are

55:58

associated with thoughts about suicide in met you know and they vary right there there

56:04

are all kinds of things from lack of recognition to uh you know lack of Adventure we could even say

56:12

financial problems relationship problems you know traditional talking therapy isn't designed to deal with these things

56:18

right it's not designed to dive into how's your business functioning and how much debt do you have

56:23

that's another question you're going to get asked you're going to be exploring your childhood instead and so there's a really lovely example

56:31

of rather than talking about a problem I'm going to talk about a solution right which is

56:36

years ago in the UK not many years ago about two or three years ago we had an area which is called Bristol

56:43

it's on the coast it's really nice you know some guys in the us know about it it's really cool it's a nice place to go but in this area the rate of male

56:51

suicide was so much higher than the rest of the country um and the local Authority there they're

56:57

like they're like a state basically you know they're our version of mistake well they held up their hands and they were

57:03

like we don't know what's happening here like someone help us there's so much male

57:08

suicide and an organization called Second Step stepped in pardon the pun

57:14

and they said well we'll try and help and what Second Step did is they created

57:19

a program which had two components one component was

57:24

problem solving solution orientated conversations

57:29

so this is not open up Kevin and tell me about your emotions this is Kevin what

57:34

are your problems what are you gonna do about them how how are we going to fix them right right and the second part of

57:41

this program was Financial skills so the guys were learning how to fix

57:47

problems and learning how to address their finances well six months after the program ended the number of men in the

57:54

group who were still having thoughts about suicide had halved

57:59

and when I read that study I thought well that's a big typo that can't be

58:04

true because I'd never read about any intervention for suicidal men that was

58:10

that effective but it's not a typo it's just phenomenally effective and I'm not saying it's the solution but I'm using

58:16

it as an example that if we're solely reliable therapy and solely telling men

58:21

to talk the problem is we've closed our eyes to all the other solutions that are out there some of which have proven to

58:28

be more effective that we're not talking about well I mean yeah because like you know

58:34

most women don't complain about men right that we only want to fix things like when they you know women typically

58:40

I think um and this is stereotypical you know thing but they want us to just they want

58:46

to talk they they are good at the talking and it's rewarding and I think men in particular are like you know

58:53

let's fix the problem and if you're describing is is the case where it's like this is the problem this is the

58:59

solution let's move on and then obviously the financial aspect of it if if they have debt or you know that

59:06

Financial stress is is always there which is I always find ironic about

59:11

um suicidal rates when it comes in suicidal ideation when it when it comes to financial troubles it's like so what

59:17

you're doing those don't go away you know those get passed along and if you're thinking you're worth more dead

59:23

than alive well there's a suicide clause in every life insurance policy at least in the United States and um but yeah I

59:31

that's amazing that that just coming up with some very direct it's not that talking is bad it's that you need the

59:38

right kind of talk therapy in order to do it yeah and that talk therapy might not

59:44

actually be talked it might be Financial skills right and uh so something that's worth I think

59:51

really worth exploring and really interesting is it's another hormone called oxytocin

59:59

now oxytocin causes problems if you're a straight guy in a relationship because

1:00:04

you're in a relationship with someone who isn't a guy right yeah so here's the problems

1:00:10

when we talk about our problems hold hands cuddle or have sex or brain

1:00:17

releases oxytocin if you're female oxytocin reduces

1:00:23

cortisol it reduces your stress and it's really powerful so this means if you're female

1:00:29

just talking about your emotions is therapeutic it makes you feel better

1:00:35

here's the kicker oxytocin is proven to not to reduce stress in men

1:00:42

so we've got this weird situation which is the whole world is saying you need to talk you need to talk you need to talk

1:00:48

and often men have an experience where they say to their partner I don't think I need to talk I need to fix the problem

1:00:55

but their Partners heard from the doctor from the media and her own experiences

1:01:01

when she talks about her problems she feels better so she therefore will put

1:01:06

two and two together and make five which seems logical but it's like I talk about

1:01:11

my problems I'm okay you don't talk about your problems you're not okay therefore you'd be better if you spoke about your problems well it's a bit like

1:01:19

it's the same logic as saying the dinosaurs didn't talk about their problems they're all extinct therefore

1:01:27

not talking about their problems caused the dinosaurs to go extinct it's like yeah they both exist but did one cause

1:01:33

the other right yeah that's that correlation versus causality argument right yeah exact same and one of our

1:01:40

best Charities here in the UK did a study 11 years ago and that basically

1:01:47

what they came back and said is it's not opening up and talking about emotions the men who are most at risk

1:01:55

don't talk about their emotions and they definitely don't talk about their emotions regularly but neither do men

1:02:01

who have good mental health right so if we're just going to tell men to

1:02:07

talk about their emotions we're recommending something that 11 years ago was found to be ineffective and the

1:02:13

problem with that is we're blocking out all of the really good studies that tell us what we should do

1:02:18

that really works this is all when I talk on like podcasts and and talks I use all just like peer-reviewed stuff

1:02:25

but on a day-to-day basis the things I see in coaching are even more inspirational

1:02:31

it's just you know it happens with small groups of guys it's it's not as persuasive as a study with a hundred and

1:02:38

thirty thousand adults in I mean I don't know I think anecdotal evidence to me seems to you know I the whole

1:02:45

peer-reviewed study validation is is less enticing to me than it was five years ago but yeah I think that I think

1:02:52

the anecdotal side and hearing what other men are experiencing is is really important and so as an anecdote when I

1:03:01

first got into this the first group of guys that I worked with one of them he was really depressed

1:03:08

and he was two years out of work he was announced he was two years out of work and he's in

1:03:14

a really really bad place and he didn't have the money for coaching and his friend paid for it for him he was I'd

1:03:20

worked with before so you know brilliant guy and a brilliant friend and when we started working together for

1:03:27

the first six weeks he didn't do any of the things he said he was going to do we were talking about the science behind it but he wasn't using any of it right and

1:03:34

then I said to him okay we're going to stop working together because you're not doing any of this and he said oh hold on I didn't realize you'd stop that

1:03:41

okay okay I'll do it I promise so then for just six weeks he used the strategies that he and I had

1:03:48

created for him right a couple of days into it he felt a lot

1:03:54

better and the first week he said he no longer felt depressed but what was really interesting was by the end of week six he'd got two jobs with Netflix

1:04:03

and one job with the BBC here in the UK and he's one of the main characters in a drama that's on TV in the UK all the

1:04:10

time that's awesome and and that was the point where I stepped back this was 2020 right and I stepped back and I was like

1:04:16

hold on what are we doing here this was meant to be like getting men out of depression that's why I got into this

1:04:22

but actually what I found is that for men goal setting and performance is

1:04:27

mental health if you can set goals that inspire you and get them you have good mental health

1:04:35

and if you don't know what you're meant to do next or you can't reach your goals your mental health suffers it's not

1:04:42

about emotions for men it's about a sense of progress and purpose which makes total sense if you look at

1:04:49

you know if you look at how we've evolved you know gone through as a as a species and just how we are in as men in

1:04:55

general we're we're very goal oriented you know I most men I know are and by

1:05:01

not by not achieving those goals I mean I I have 12 Brands across four different

1:05:06

businesses and then I have this Max now man thing and then I'm a consultant I do some TV stuff so like I'm

1:05:12

I have enough and I call it many roads to revenue but if you put it in the context of what we're talking about it's

1:05:17

many roads to many roads to testosterone that's what I must start calling it because I have an opportunity to be

1:05:24

successful in you know with with a lot of different with a lot of different things and they all aren't all successful at one time but I think

1:05:30

that's you're really talking about you know having the goal setting as a positive step towards mental health not

1:05:36

you know we're not solving the problem of depression necessarily by talking about depression we're we're we're

1:05:43

talking through we're having successes that then deal with our depression yeah

1:05:48

and then you know like it comes to a point where people are like hold on are you saying this instead of therapy no

1:05:54

not necessarily like like this is no substitute for therapy but at the same time talking therapy is no substitute

1:06:00

for having a life that you want right like it talking therapy is no substitute

1:06:05

for exercises no substitute for sleep it's no substitute for a good lifestyle or you know being where you want to be

1:06:11

in the world it doesn't make up for it the two things you know pharmaceutical do the same thing right like we try to

1:06:17

rely on Pharmaceuticals to take the place of that stuff I think that's Western Society the US is 70 obese now

1:06:25

and you know everybody is on and because of that we don't sleep we don't exercise there's our poor nutrition and and yet

1:06:32

we want a pill to fix it versus in you know I tend to be harsh about it it's like get off your ass stop eating Big

1:06:39

Macs and fix it you know on the back end and then you can not have to take the pills but yeah I do want to know one

1:06:47

last mad fact about male mental health and hormones absolutely

1:06:52

so I mean there's so much to talk about you can probably tell right and we can't just buy clothes anyone says we're kind

1:06:59

of skimming over a little bit we'll have to do a part two maybe part three if you've got time later

1:07:04

something else is amazing is um for most of human history only a

1:07:10

minority of men who lived ever had children in fact we know from Gene analysis by

1:07:18

tracking the Y chromosome we know that 8 000 years ago for every one man that

1:07:23

became a dad 17 women became monks well that guy got around he he was a

1:07:31

busy boy right and then when I learned that that made me wonder about the other guys right

1:07:36

what happens to all the men who didn't have kids well that one guy was getting around yeah he got the banana every time

1:07:43

exactly and so the other guys didn't have the banana maybe they didn't have the

1:07:48

partner maybe they didn't have food whatever it was but we know they definitely didn't pass their genes on and so

1:07:55

when I learned about that I thought that's interesting because if we look at our closest relatives the chimpanzees

1:08:01

the females organize themselves into Social Circles it's not competitive they support one

1:08:09

and the males organize themselves into a hierarchy they do not support one

1:08:14

another they scheme against one another they team up they kill the other chimpanzees they're always battling to

1:08:19

get to the top and in other primates that operate like this as the males climb the social

1:08:25

hierarchy the level of serotonin in their brain increases

1:08:30

and you mentioned medication well one of the ways that most of the antidepressants work is they increase

1:08:36

serotonin in your brain SSRI right exactly selective serotonin reuptake

1:08:42

Inhibitors and so I wondered when I heard that does that happen in human males and the answer is

1:08:49

yes it does Studies have found that as men progress up the social hierarchy the

1:08:56

level of serotonin in their brain goes up now low serotonin is associated with

1:09:02

thoughts about suicide and with general anxiety and with an inability to act in accordance with your

1:09:10

goals so self-sabotage basically right actually

1:09:15

yeah we've got another Vicious Circle here which is that if you

1:09:20

not climbing the social hierarchy maybe it's because you're not good at

1:09:25

goal setting and if you're not good at goal setting and you're not climbing then you have low serotonin which means

1:09:32

you're worse at goal setting and implementing those goals right taking the steps necessary to achieve

1:09:38

them yeah exactly right and so this is just one of the many Loops that men need

1:09:44

to know about otherwise we can't break out of them on the plus side like when I worked with that actor lots of what we

1:09:49

did is we broke down his goals and we looked at the things that were actually holding

1:09:54

him back and then we just remove the limit so rather than putting the pressure on himself to I don't know contact 10

1:10:01

agents about work his goal was just simply to put his running shoes on and go Outdoors

1:10:08

um and you think like well why would that help well because you've just achieved your daily goal and you're only

1:10:13

10 minutes into your day do you know what that does to your testosterone your serotonin your mental health yeah

1:10:19

absolutely raise they go me up yeah when you've achieved your daily goggle before 9am you could do anything now you've got

1:10:25

the rest of the day yeah and then when he goes to the audition he has more confidence he projects that confidence

1:10:30

then he you know then he has higher testosterone than the other guys that are going out for the same part then you

1:10:36

know then he gets the banana and the other guys don't right exactly and again the banana means you get it next time as

1:10:43

well right yeah that's um man I mean they talk a lot about about goal setting

1:10:49

and how important it is with this kind of has a whole new light to it and you look at guys that are you know very

1:10:55

highly successful and you can see if you start looking at them you know across the board you can see success breed

1:11:01

success which we already kind of know about but now it puts some actual chemical markers hormone markers to that

1:11:09

and then some of this really interesting to know is again from UK statistics

1:11:14

based on what I've said right as men advanced in society the level of

1:11:20

serotonin in their brain goes up and low serotonin is associated with thoughts about suicide So based on what

1:11:28

I've said you'd expect for men at the bottom of society to be more likely to die from suicide right

1:11:35

so in the UK men at the bottom of society are ten times more likely to die by Suicide than the men at the top wow

1:11:42

and bear in mind we know as well there's no difference in the way they talk about emotions so this whole you guys you've

1:11:50

got to get better at talking about your emotions I mean I'm not saying that there's no benefits to it but it's not the sole Solutions about Mental Health

1:11:57

absolutely and I mean and that would make sense because there's you know the lower levels of society they may have

1:12:04

poorer nutrition they may have less opportunity to exercise there's you know higher Financial stress so they may

1:12:11

sleep less you know all of those factors for sure so if you were going to give kind of like these are the you know I

1:12:17

mean we kind of talked about the four right like with those four things be the first step for most men that might be

1:12:22

listening this to say how can I take the first steps to improve like is it you know sleep exercise nutrition and

1:12:29

vitamin D are those the things that we're pushing or what what what kind of advice would you give to to get started

1:12:35

if I was going to give guys one piece of advice I would say that

1:12:40

you shouldn't feel bad for looking after yourself like sometimes it's really natural

1:12:46

because everyone wants security but men want to provide security right we want to look up the people around us we want to make

1:12:53

sure our businesses function so our employees get paid we don't want to let our codices down so what we tend to do is we do a lot

1:13:00

like what Brad did which is all the time goes into work well that has loads of problems one of the problems is if

1:13:06

you're not sleeping exercising making your own food if you're not getting out in the sun

1:13:12

and you die who looks after the people around you and usually if there was one thing I

1:13:18

wanted people to take away it's the fact that if you're a man looking after yourself is really important because a

1:13:27

female endocrine system is as your partner is experiencing it's cyclical but

1:13:33

your hormones will keep you happy and healthy at least until menopause yes but

1:13:39

if you're a man that's not how hormones work your body is constantly measuring how well you look after yourself and how

1:13:45

successful you are and while you're looking after yourself it will keep you alive and if you stop

1:13:51

doing the Sleep the diet the exercise if you think that you'll first achieve all your goals and then you'll look after

1:13:57

yourself then you are massive risk of all the biggest killers of men because

1:14:02

your system is constantly assessing are you that one guy in 17 who's gonna get to have kids yeah and if it thinks

1:14:10

you're not if you're the one if you're the 16 out of 17 do we think they just sat around eating

1:14:15

resources all day no no I don't think so I think your body shuts you down and that's what people

1:14:21

need to know guys you have to look after yourself yeah one of the big goals for me with this whole thing is to get guys

1:14:27

to be you know do take that one next step to be better than you are so that you get to be the best that you can be

1:14:34

kind of the thing which is you know it's just if if that means walking 10 minutes today and you haven't ever you know you

1:14:40

don't ever get exercise you're still relying on the you know High School football you know thing that you went

1:14:46

through and and you're still you know the Ed Bundy um philosophy then yeah just get up and

1:14:52

go do something work on yourself and realize that the success breeds success for sure

1:14:59

um I mean I feel like I need to book some coaching time with you how would how do guys how do guys reach you

1:15:06

um I know you're in the UK which is not a big deal thanks to the internet and and some of these kind of things so how do how do people reach out learn more

1:15:12

about you and what you got going on yeah brilliant if you're interested in any of the things I've been talking about

1:15:17

um the best way to get in touch with me is my website which is the men's coach dot Co dot UK

1:15:24

awesome and you're on and that has links I saw to your LinkedIn and Facebook and Instagram and all your socials too so

1:15:30

you can learn learn more about that and I did notice that you have on your website some you know if you're interested in some of the bibliography

1:15:36

part of this where you can read some of the studies I saw that you have a you have links to that so if you're a science nerd like me you can go in and

1:15:43

and read some of that but hey man this has been amazing I'm you know I'm gonna beg you to come back at some point in

1:15:49

the future and talk more about this or I have to fly to the UK and have lunch with you so we can sit down and talk but

1:15:55

so all right Ryan thank you so much man have a great day yeah thanks Kevin keep

1:16:00

doing what you're doing see you soon thanks if you're looking to really maximize your life and become the man

1:16:06

you were made to be head over to maxedoutman.com and get your journey

1:16:12

started today.