Epsidoe 64 of The Living Life Well Show: Men’s Health: Lifestyle, Supplements, and Testing Hacks
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[00:00:00] Welcome to the Living Life. Well show the intersection of God's word, today's science and healthy living with common sense application, all based on the truth of the word of God. I'm your host, Dr. Jon Skelton. Now let's get straight to the truth. All right. Welcome back to The Living Life. Well Show. So I'm excited to come to you today because we're in November. November is Men's Health Month, and so this month, including this episode and the, and the next one yet to be recorded. We'll be covering. Men's health. So ladies don't, don't turn off right here.
I'm sure you have a man or maybe even a son that is soon to be a man in your life. And there's gonna be practical advice and tips for men to really [00:01:00] help be the man that they're called to be the, to be the man for where their. Family for their friends. And for whatever stage in life you're in this advice will be very practical useful, beneficial.
And I promise we won't talk too long or get way down in the weeds either. Most men are men of action. They want some actionable steps, things that they can do, and. Implement quickly and not a lot of fluff. And so we're not gonna spend a whole lot of time here today. But today I do want to talk about three different categories.
We wanna look at lifestyle interventions, things that we can do and assess for ourselves individually. Then we wanna look at the most common supplements. I end up recommending. And then finally, we're gonna look at testing. The testing is what leads me to recommend those supplements most commonly. So let's just go [00:02:00] ahead and we will, we will jump right in if that's good with you.
So, lifestyle, there's three things that I really see that are very impactful when they're right, and unfortunately very impactful when they're wrong. And so those things are sleep, movement and schedule. So let's take 'em each one by one. So, so sleep. So sleep can be a disruptor. Especially if you have sleep apnea.
We've talked about sleep apnea before. Again, I recommend if you are snoring, if you're told that you snore a lot, definitely if you stop breathing that you get an at home sleep apnea test, it's about 250 bucks. You do it at home, you can do it over two nights. Not a big deal, guys. I've done this myself, so, I'm not telling you to do anything that I don't.
Do myself. So number one is assess your sleep. So, if you, you've got an Apple [00:03:00] watch, you'll, you'll have a good idea of how much sleep you are or aren't getting especially if we are seeing differences or very low levels of deep sleep on your Apple Watch. Fitness tracker, you can notice that that's probably due to some sleep apnea.
And so sleep is gonna be very important. So number one is, is looking for possible sleep apnea. Two is going to be looking at your sleep routine. A lot of guys, and this kind of also goes into schedule a lot of guys really. They work right up until time to go to sleep. So they will work, mind will be going and it really limits that quality sleep.
So we want to get quality sleep. So the typical ways we do that is we. Back off from activities and we wind down prior to going to bed. So for some of us that means, you know, no screens whatsoever. No work, nothing that is [00:04:00] confrontational or difficult for others. You may be able to do screens a little bit longer.
But in general, the rule of thumb is we want to cut off food about three hours before bed. Drink an hour to two hours. The older you get, it's probably the two hours and then screens at least an hour. And when I'm talking to men specifically. I'm really talking about anything that has to do with work.
So that would include things like phone calls decision making processes those things that, that you are doing for your business or, or whatever the case may be. So really sleep is gonna be important. You really need to be getting that six hours to nine hours. So let me tell you, you're not a hero if you're getting by on four or.
Five hours. You really need that six hours to nine hours to be at your best for your family. If you find yourself falling asleep in meetings, if you find yourself [00:05:00] falling asleep on the couch every night if you find yourself in traffic getting honked out a lot, you've probably got some sleep issues.
At a minimum you're not getting enough. At worst case scenario, you probably have pretty significant sleep apnea. So again, really lean into and look at your sleep. Make sure that you're doing the things to help really provide that, that real good restorative sleep. So secondly is movement.
So. If you're like a lot of guys we kind of grew up with the, at least in my case grew up in the eighties with the no pain, no gain. When we go to the gym, it's gotta be heavy weights. It's gotta be significant. We've gotta be pushing large large weight, low reps. Well. Really that that's out the window.
So we don't wanna do that, especially when you get into your forties and fifties maybe even starting in thirties, especially if you've had injuries and, and different things that, that prevent you from really [00:06:00] doing anything. So guys, the number one thing is just move man. Whatever it is that you enjoy, start there.
Don't start heavy. Don't give yourself a 30 minute time limit. Don't give yourself an hour time limit. For sure. Just start. What studies show is that even just, just five minutes and, and doing that a couple of times a day can help. Generally speaking for men, high intensity interval training.
Is in general, again, this is general, this isn't to the individual is going to be very beneficial. So for guys, one of the things that, that we see quite often is testosterone influences and insulin resistance. So if you can incorporate high intensity interval training with body weight and or resistance training.
You'll be way ahead of the curve. And so to give you an [00:07:00] example of this, what I would say is, you want to take about a five minute timeframe and break that into 30 and 20 second intervals. So basically you go 30 seconds on, 20 seconds off, 30 seconds on, 20 seconds off, and alternate like that for about five minutes.
You want to do the maximum reps that you can do. While still staying under control with the exercise. So for you know me, that might mean three reps for you that might mean 15. So just really depends on where you are physically. But doing that type of, HIIT. Type workout will really help. So we're talking five minutes.
Do it five minutes before work, maybe five minutes after work. Work up to about 30 minutes a day. And you can keep it in that five minute increments. You can [00:08:00] smash it all together for 30. Just really de depends on what your schedule allows. But the big thing is we want you moving. We want you moving as quickly as you can where you are now, not where you were 10 years ago, five years ago, or, or even two weeks ago.
We want you moving to your level of fitness that you're at currently, and so HIIT. Exercises are gonna be great. So the big exercises that I recommend in that you can start just with body weight would be air squats and or dumbbell squats. If you want to do barbell, you can do that too. But. Squats.
Then we also want to look at lunges. Lunges are gonna be very important 'cause what are we doing? Real men don't skip leg day. And so leg day is very, very important. That is where the vast majority of our musculature is. The, the, the shoulders, the chest, the, the arms look nice. But really, man, it, it's where the [00:09:00] money is, it's in the legs and the butt.
In the core. And so for core, what we can do is we can do planks. You could also do things like pushups as well. Just make sure that when you're doing these, you're really holding your core tight. You're squeezing your butt and you're doing that for about that 30 seconds. You may not be able to do 30 seconds of a plank.
First. Start on your knees. Do as much as you can. Then next time. Try to go for a second longer to get up to that 30 seconds. And so you can alternate those three exercises in those 30 second intervals. And so you could do squats for 30 seconds, rest for 20, do lunges for 30 seconds, rest for 20, do a plank and or pushups for 30 seconds, rest for 20.
Start that process back over and you, you will find that you will get a ton of benefit in a very short period of. Time. So movement is going to be big. So find what you like to do, [00:10:00] incorporate those exercises and or movement somehow. If it's playing basketball, great. Before or after, do some of these exercises.
It is going to help you in your defensive stance. It's going to help you with your vertical. It's gonna allow you to block more shots, to get more jumpers. Incorporate those things and then schedule, I mentioned this with regards to sleep, but, but schedule is going to be very important. Our schedules today are so tight from going to work to extracurricular activities with kids.
Maybe you coach, maybe you teach in your, in your church or something. You've really got to create room in your schedule for yourself. You really have to do this. You cannot be everything to everybody, especially if you're not getting sleep. You're not ever moving and you are working constantly.
You have to give [00:11:00] yourself a break and so. That may look different for different people. You may need to have an hour long break every day. You may need to have a two hour break every day. You may just need to have three or four, 10 or 15 minute breaks scattered throughout the day. Each person responds differently and really needs to assess what they, what they need.
Typically speaking, the way you're going to help yourself the most is when you start early in the day and give yourself a break. Don't pick up that phone first thing and start scrolling through emails and text messages and or looking what's on your calendar for the day. Really start very calmly.
Start with that, that morning cup of coffee if you want. If you you know, don't like coffee, that's fine too. Just start somewhere. And practice really getting into God's word and leaning into what he's saying. This doesn't have to be long. It could [00:12:00] be two minutes, it could be five minutes. But start somewhere.
And again, just like with the exercise, work up, give yourself grace. Don't set a goal for 30 minutes. You are gonna have difficulty doing that and concentrating that. On that, especially if you're starting from zero. But start somewhere and just start. Really look at your schedule, find out what part of the day stresses you out the most, and then give yourself a five, 10 minute window before that starts to really calm the mind, calm your, your body before going into that phase of work.
And really look at that. Don't respond to notifications. Set a specific time that you are going to respond to notifications. And, and by gosh if your email is telling you every time you have a message. Man, shut that off. You just need to check your email a couple of times a day and limit that brain overload because that brain [00:13:00] overload is going to lead to what we're gonna talk about at the last, the testing.
Okay? So that's it for the lifestyle. Get the sleep, right, just start moving and then really own your schedule. Okay, so supplements. So again, this is, is pretty easy. So the, the things that I see that men need the most are, are vitamin D three with K two if you have a thyroid issue an ADK version. So a, a version that has vitamin A in it as beneficial as well.
We generally need B vitamins that have folate in them. And then usually most men, especially as we start aging we need some zinc. Zinc is gonna boost immunity, it's gonna boost our testosterone levels, and it's really gonna help overall. And then for most men, a, a probiotic is going to be necessary so that that gut is functioning well because that is a big producer [00:14:00] of our neurotransmitters, which help give us calm and relaxation throughout the day.
As well as really making sure that we can stay healthy in general. So those are the supplements that I recommend. Vitamin D three. With K two, it needs to have the K two so that it doesn't get hung up just within the vascular system, and it actually gets to everywhere it needs to go within your body.
We want B vitamins, but we want them methylated and we want folate in it. And we want a variety, so we're not talking just B12, just B six, or just B three. We want to get that full compliment of all the B vitamins. And then I've said this before, but when you're looking for. A probiotic. You really wanna look at something that has 15 billion colony forming units in it or afu.
And that will help to build up that gut biome there. You wanna look for things that have lactobacillus and bifiddobacterium. [00:15:00] And then a close third would be sacchromyces boulardii. Okay, so that's it for supplements. Not too bad, right? And then testing. So testing is going to be important. And these are some basic lab tests.
Save. Two. Okay. So one is you wanna look at A CB, C. We want to see what your red blood cell count is, what your hemoglobin and hematocrit is. We wanna see the size of your red blood cells, the distribution of your white blood cells and your total white blood cell count, and you'll get all that just with a simple CB.
C. Then we wanna see lipids. And so lipids, we're really talking about cholesterol, right? So we're talking about your total cholesterol number. We're talking about your HDLs, we're talking about your triglycerides and your LDLs. You can throw in VLDL two. But really. These are what we're looking at. And we also want to add in two things that are more commonly [00:16:00] being checked, but again, not always something called lipoprotein, a little a big L, little P, little a.
Big L, little p little a tells us about genetic risk for cardiovascular disease, specifically as we're looking at, at lipids being the cause of that risk. And so what that does is that helps determine if we really need a statin and lifestyle modification, or if we can just start really with lifestyle modification and appropriate supplementation.
Then we also wanna look at apo lipoprotein B. Okay. This is a molecule that's attached to cholesterol molecule, and when it is elevated, it tends to cause more damage to your blood vessels. The good news is the apo, lipoprotein B is more modifiable than the Big L, little p, little a lipoprotein a.
So the way that we can modify the [00:17:00] APO lipoprotein b. Is green veggies really looking at a lot of green veggies. And so this is one addition that I would say for you guys that are really heavy into keto or really heavy into carnivore the thing that, that you want to do is you still want to get your green veggies.
Now, if you absolutely hate 'em. Can't, can't stand them. Then look at doing that through a supplement. You wanna look primarily for green leafy veggies, things like spinach. Brussel sprouts. You can look at sugar snap peas, you can look at kale. The, these different things. You'll find there are a lot of super greens powders, things like that that you could take.
But typically I would recommend more of a capsule portion because. When you look at the powders, a lot of times what they end up doing is putting a fair amount of sugar or artificial sugars in there to help mediate the taste which is, makes it a little bit more palatable. You don't really have to worry about [00:18:00] that if you're taking a capsule per se.
So. That's lipids you really wanna look at those. And one of the things that we see quite commonly on the lipids is we see elevated triglycerides. Men tend to have higher triglycerides than women that are premenopausal because of our testosterone levels. And we tend to ca carry more fat in the abdomen.
That visceral fat, that kind of below the, the, the muscle, if you will of your. Of your abdominal wall. And so with that visceral fat that will tend to drive those triglycerides, when triglycerides are really high, they can cause a lot of damage, a lot of inflammation. And in addition, we as men tend to have one of the other things that we need to look at, a lot of insulin resistance.
And so you want to do a fasting. Insulin. So how long do you have? Fast, really about seven to eight [00:19:00] hours. Seven to eight hours is going to be a good timeframe. So does that mean you can't have coffee or anything else? Well, if you drink black coffee or unsweet tea, then yes, you can do that.
Is is fine. But otherwise just, you know, a sip of water with brushing your teeth in the morning when you go to get your, your labs drawn, we wanna look at that fasting insulin. So. Here in West Texas, which is interesting. You look on standard lab range, it's gonna tell you a quote, normal fasting insulin is gonna be 2.6 to 24.9 at least.
That's LabCorp's numbers here for West Texas. You look at more national numbers, it says two to 19. But quite honestly, guys, what this represents is if you have a fasting insulin level over five. You've got insulin resistance. Insulin resistance effectively means you're on the road to pre-diabetes or diabetes.
And the more visceral fat you have, that's a [00:20:00] good indication of insulin resistance right there. Because insulin resistance increases more with visceral fat. So go back up to what I said about lifestyle, sleep and movement are gonna be the two big factors that can help you lower your insulin resistance and lower that visceral fat.
Next thing we wanna look at is we wanna look at our liver function tests. We want to get a. CMP very basic panel has about 14 different tests on it. It is gonna tell us what your blood sugar is, your electrolytes are but specifically what we wanna look at is we wanna look at the, the liver functions.
We wanna see what your protein is. We wanna see those different types of protein, the album and the globulin. We wanna look at your alkaline phosphatase, your AST, your ALT, and your bilirubin all tell us. How well the liver is functioning. And the reason I say this is the same reason with the lipids because we as men, when we have higher triglycerides and higher lipid [00:21:00] levels, it tends to cause liver injury and or fatty liver, if you've ever heard this.
And so really taking steps to getting those greens in and really helping to start moving and getting better sleep is going to help lower. Your likelihood of having fatty liver and or elevated liver enzymes, obviously other things that will cause elevated liver enzymes. Alcohol, if you're drinking alcohol in, in excess that will cause elevated liver enzymes too.
~The recommendations for alcohol use are, are changing currently, and they're, they're really kind of lowering. But if you're a guy that likes a, a beer every now and then and doing that maybe once a week or something, typically that's going to be okay. Unless you've got fatty liver that is already showing damage to your liver, any alcohol on top of that is going to create a worse environment.~
So you just really wanna look at that so that you can know and understand how you need to alter your lifestyle to fit what's going on actually in your body. And then finally testosterone. So testosterone, the C, B, C, the liver functions and the lipids, they all go together because what we see now, quite honestly, is guys that are having a lot of fatigue, they're having maybe erectile dysfunction and these things, and, and [00:22:00] what do we think, oh, we just need more testosterone, right?
Well, the number one way to boost your testosterone is to get actually good sleep. And then two is. Lift heavy things. So those two things are going to boost your testosterone. And the reason I say that we really wanna look at the, the CBC and CMP and lipids before we ever start looking at getting on testosterone is because once you start on that artificial testosterone, that testosterone that you're injecting or in a cream if your red blood cell count is already elevated.
Guess what? It's going to elevate more many times when guys have a lot of inflammation, even if they have low testosterone. The red blood cell count will increase, which is a sign of inflammation. The liver enzymes being elevated is a sign of inflammation. High triglycerides is a sign of inflammation, and so doing things like getting restorative sleep, sleep, start moving, [00:23:00] even if it is at just at five minutes is going to be very beneficial and help boost your testosterone naturally and start getting it there.
Now, if you already have an elevated red blood cell count. What's the harm of starting on testosterone? Well, a couple things. One, you know, a lot. Clinics that are low T clinics just keep pushing testosterone, testosterone, testosterone, regardless of the level. And really not, not looking out for your best benefits.
Trying to chase, feeling good, not having fatigue. And so. When you have elevated red blood cell count, once you start adding more and more testosterone, that tends to go higher and higher. That puts you at risk for clotting off, be it within the heart, be it a pulmonary embolus, a, a blood clot in the leg whatever the case may be.
It really puts you at risk for clotting. And so the low T clinic's answer is, oh, well, you know, it's a [00:24:00] little bit high, so just go give some blood. So. That's not the way to do things, guys. Really we need to put in the work. We're here to support our families to be what our, our families need us to be be it for today, for tomorrow, for 20 years from now, 50 years from now, whatever the case may be.
And so doing and looking at these few simple things that we've discussed really can help to confer health. And longevity with good health for you, for all the days that you have. So I hope this has been beneficial. I hope this has been formative and thanks and God bless. That's it for this episode of The Living Life. Well show if you like what you've heard and want to learn more or want to know how to put this into practice for yourself, go to live life well clinic.com. Until next time, this is Dr. Jon Skelton saying Go. [00:25:00] And live the truth so you can live life Well, the preceding is for entertainment and educational purposes only.
It is not meant to be used to prevent, diagnose, treat, or cure any condition. The information contained in this show does not substitute the need for a qualified medical professional, nor is it meant to provide medical advice for services. If you feel information presented in this show may apply to you, we recommend you seek out the help of a qualified medical professional who can evaluate and treat your specific concerns.
