Health Insurance vs Care, Relationships, and Testosterone | Josh Whalen | Better Man Podcast Ep. 034

Dean Pohlman: Welcome to the Better Man podcast. I’m your host, Dean Polman, and today I have Josh Whalen with me. Josh, welcome to the show.

Josh Whalen: Thanks for having me, Dean.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah, so Josh was introduced or we were introduced by Chase Chewning, who was a previous guest of mine I’ve been on his podcast in this, and this is for I actually haven’t been on this podcast, but I will be eventually. But I was had him on the Betterment podcast chases from ever forward radio. He’s got a pretty cool story and background as a US Army veteran had some symptoms and kind of went through this really inspiring and revelatory transformation where he really acknowledged a lot of the things that we talk about on the Better Man podcast, which is acknowledging other aspects of your health, going beyond physical, going into your emotional and mental wellbeing and actually

Dean Pohlman: taking care of it and going through the hard changes, the hard processes, the, the, the difficult processes that come with that. So, so Josh, anyways, Chase introduced me to Josh and Josh is here.

Josh Whalen: Rock and roll brother.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah. So Josh were both, were both Midwestern Midwestern guys. You grew up in northern Iowa.

Josh Whalen: I went to college in northern Iowa. I was born in Cedar Falls, Iowa. So little small town in central Iowa that’s got the university and or the Iowa Panthers, Kurt Warner Tom and OK.

Dean Pohlman: All right.

Josh Whalen: Migrated over to Chicago after college for a handful of years and somehow in the back in Colorado now I’m in Nashville. I’m like this gypsy right now.

Dean Pohlman: So very nice. Yeah. I have a lot of I went to school at University of Wisconsin, so a lot of my friends live in Chicago. It being the, you know, biggest city around Wisconsin. So cool. So, you know, I, I could tell people what you do, but I think it would be more fun to really talk about, you know, just just men’s health and some of the struggles that men face and kind of just have a conversation with you, you know, as another guy who’s going through it all and I mean, I should also tell people what you do. So do you want to introduce what what blokes is and the mission of blokes?

Josh Whalen: Yeah, mission of blokes is to give rocket fuel to every man on the planet. And primarily that’s through hormone optimization and prescription peptide therapy and diagnostic labs. And I run a brand on the other side, my wife does, which is our women’s line, which is joy and you know, that man, we’re just trying to elevate men’s and every capacity and trying to do our small little part in doing that.

Dean Pohlman: Awesome. So we’ll we’ll get to that at the end eventually. We’re definitely on to talk about that. But I, but I really want people. So if you’re listening to this, I’m like, I don’t want to have to like go to testosterone therapy. I hear you like Josh is on the same page. Actually, we talked about this beforehand. We were like, Dude, I just don’t want to I don’t want to have a podcast where I’m just pitching testosterone that’s therapy.

Dean Pohlman: So we’re going to talk about a lot of other stuff. We’re going to talk about, you know, at what point do you actually need to to consider this and what are what are some signs that, you know, things are declining? What are some lifestyle changes that we can make before we decide, hey, maybe this is something that I really do need medical attention for.

Dean Pohlman: So anyways, you’re going to get a lot on this podcast, whether or not you you go with you work with blokes or not. So before this, you worked in you worked in sales, you were you were in medical device sales. And I’m assuming that that had a significant contribution to you kind of taking a different view on your health as a man and, and evolving maybe some, some, some previous beliefs surrounding that. Do you want to talk about that? And we can let’s just see where that goes.

Josh Whalen: Yeah, no, totally. So I got my start and medical devices with a probably a household name by most a company called Stryker. I was in their interventional spine division reporting spinal implants. So I was the guy in the O.R. He never saw me per se, but I was certainly in the O.R. and very, very great company, Fortune 500 company, tons of depth to their product Line, but also a leader when it comes to orthopedic and spinal implants and fusions and all that good stuff. But yeah, it was it was a it was a good transition. From the the rigorous life of hopping from job to job and, you know, being in a health care company, it certainly makes you more aware of health. And it certainly on my side of it, I was when we were treating patients, we were seeing patients that were not in good shape and didn’t take care of themselves, whether it was an acute injury or a chronic injury.

Josh Whalen: But most of it, most of it was chronic. That just led to more bigger issues over time. So you would be naive to think that if you’re in just because you’re in that company, you’re not seeing health on a day to day basis? We certainly were.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah. So it was was it being in the O.R. or was it just being around, you know, other guys in that similar role as you that you started to, you know, just just think about your health differently or I guess what what what provoked that?

Josh Whalen: I think both we Strykers, you know, whether we like it or not, it was a very male, dominant company. A lot of ex athletes. We’re talking NFL Major League Baseball guys that took care of themselves. I played rugby at a very high level. So health was always a priority, you know, as an adolescent, some, you know, post adolescence and in a professional manner.

Josh Whalen: So health was always just a topic of discussion. Take care of yourself so that you can work harder, be better for your spouse, be better for your your family. And then on the the opposite side of that and if you’re a lot of patients that we treat it that are getting large fusions, a lot of times of just not taking care of themselves and you know, they call it a downward spiral where over time they haven’t eaten healthy, they haven’t manage their environmental factors or stress factors and over time, they just their body starts to generate. And if you were on one of the tables that I happen to be in the room with, it usually wasn’t a good sign yeah.

Dean Pohlman: I mean, I think that, you know, I’ve had a lot of conversations with people who are who are trying to actively avoid surgery mostly. And I tend to find a correlation between people who regularly exercise and people who do something, you know, like, like like Man Flow Yoga, like they’re working on their, you know, they’re trying to address their their fitness comprehensively.

Dean Pohlman: They’re working on strength, they’re working on flexibility. They’re trying to work on their overall wellness and longevity. And there’s a difference between those guys and the people who go to surgery because they’re like, yeah, my back hurts. Fix it. Just like, you know, just do whatever you need to do. And they’re just like, they’re just they just kind of use, you know, modern medicine to to keep rebuilding themselves and then, OK, whatever they need back to surgery, but not a lot of lifestyle change.

Dean Pohlman: And I think there’s a at least from from my experience and from, you know, just conversations I’ve had with with that in general in life, there does seem to be this like, OK, you want to get us you want to work on your lifestyle to fix things and you really don’t want to do surgery and then there’s the OK, like just give me surgery. Like option number one, screw physical therapy, just like straight a straight straight to surgery. Have you seen that?

Josh Whalen: Yeah, totally. If and if you’re talking to a good surgeon, you know, take for example, orthopedic spine surgeons that I work with, neurosurgeons, a lot of them won’t even operate unless you’ve taken some of those those basic steps, nutrition, P.T, some type of fitness. Because, you know, when you look at surgery, a lot of that’s based off of outcomes.

Josh Whalen: And if a surgeon operates on somebody that he knows, he’s going to have an unlikely or bad outcome that just hurts him. As well as not just the patient. So there needs to be a consciousness when you do that. The same thing could be said for let’s just take a family medicine doctor or a primary care doctor. I’ve been in health care for such a long time.

Josh Whalen: I’ve somewhat become disenfranchized with so many things and when you go in and see these physicians where they see you for probably less than five to 6 minutes, I think the national average is right around nine for a primary care doctor to see you. If you’re even seeing a physician to just throw a pillow at a problem, like if you’re not sitting down with a physician and they’re talking about root causes and how you solve that, or maybe what you’re putting in and out of your mouth, are they really doing you any justice? The same thing could be for surgery.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah. I think you’ve got to find you know, I like to believe in the you know, I know. And fitness world. I think there’s a lot of I think there’s a lot of demonization of doctors. They’re they’re made out to be like I just want to give you a pill. And they don’t actually care about fixing you. They just want to get their cut from, you know, Pfizer or like whatever it is and, you know, my dad’s a doctor and I’ve you know, I know a lot of doctors.

Dean Pohlman: And that’s for the most part, I mean, you know, there’s most people they’re they’re doing they’re doing what they were trained to do. They’re using the tools that they that they were taught to use some of some of them also incorporate, you know, lifestyle changes. But I think the reality is and I’ve said this before, I think the reality is that most people coming in to a doctor’s office aren’t going to make the lifestyle changes.

Dean Pohlman: And so, you know, they’re presented with, hey, look, I’m going to have you start doing you know, you can do yoga in the mornings. I want you to start eating real food during the day and prioritizing your sleep, you know, so they could say like, hey, you can do this. Or they can say like, well, I’ve got a pill that’s going to help with that and you’re not going to listen to me anyways.

Dean Pohlman: So here, take the pill and go fuck off. You know, I don’t think it’s I don’t think it’s that bad. It’s not that bad. But I can just imagine that there is like some level of pessimism and and, you know, and with surgeons, it’s good to hear that most surgeons are you know, they want to they want to make sure that they’re that you’re you’ve tried to do things that you’ve worked on, physical therapy, that you’ve you know, that you’ve you’ve done everything you can before you get to surgery.

Dean Pohlman: As, you know, as the quote unquote last resort. My wife’s a physical therapist. And you know something that something that she’s said multiple times is that there’s actually there’s sometimes depending on the type of surgery, there is no there is no percentage there is no difference in the percentages of failure versus success. In whether you have the surgery or not.

Dean Pohlman: It’s dependent on what you do after that, what you do after the surgery, or if you do the physical therapy that you needed to do to to fix the injury. So some people need you know, maybe some people use the surgery as a way to motivate themselves to do the physical therapy that they need. And then they look back at the surgery and say, this is what fixed it. But, you know, anyways, I could could could spitball on that all day but.

Josh Whalen: Now I think you bring up a few good points. So earlier, you know, I think doctors are they come out of fellowship or residency and a lot of what they practice today is what they took with them, whether it was five years ago or ten years ago, 20 years ago. I mean, we’re just now starting to talk about gut health, which most doctors we’re probably not even talking about that ten, 15, 20 years ago.

Josh Whalen: And now that I’m an expert in gut health. But that’s a huge topic right now. That we’re realizing is so important. And I think one of the tough things for physicians and I employ physicians, I work with them, I love them. They’re part of our business model. When you start practicing with insurance and mind, you are somewhat dictated and limited to how you even treat or care for a patient and there certainly is pessimism.

Josh Whalen: I think one of the hardest things that we deal with is patients and every patient is different. It’s also one of the best things we deal with and I think as we evolve in society, I think patients need to really own that journey as much as anybody else. They need to find the right physician that can allow them to give them the right care and not just practice sick medicine. So I think there’s a lot of good as well. And you know, I think I think medicine’s really evolving as we speak.

Dean Pohlman: Mm hmm. Yeah, I definitely I’d like to I’d like to say so as well. So I didn’t that’s that’s something new to me, too. I didn’t I guess I didn’t consider how insurance can limit how you treat a patient and that can lock doctors into a certain way of practicing. Yeah. Actually, this makes me this makes me think of I’ve got a friend who actually trained his son in yoga, and he is a surgeon, and he has a friend who has a a different model of being a doctor.

Dean Pohlman: He has like a monthly subscription. And you pay to be able to talk with him. And he’ll say, like, you’re calling me like, oh, yeah, you’ve got this here. Here’s your antibiotics code, you know, so instead of having to go in. But the other part of that is let’s, you know, let’s approach your health care. And instead of looking at the existing method, I’m just, you know, I’m assuming it’s a lot different way of being treated. Yeah. As this sounds like this is something you’re familiar with.

Josh Whalen: Totally. You know, that the evolution and the emergence of what I think your friend is doing is concierge style practice. And a lot of that as a membership base allows them to really try to focus on the patient. And, you know, I gave a hint on the whole sick care model. I used to own and operate regenerative medicine clinics.

Josh Whalen: I used stem cell clinics, and we incorporate insurance for knee osteoarthritis. And I’ll give you just an example. We would have, you know, let’s say ten payers that we’re dealing with on a day to day basis, Blue Cross, Blue Shield, Humana, United, Aetna, Cigna, Medicare, Medicaid, every single one of them had different modalities and how we had to treat a patient.

Josh Whalen: And a lot of that was based off of their metrics, not necessarily based off of studies, certainly not based off a doctor preferences. They were forcing you down that pathway. The same thing is, is in all sides of medicine. You’re not even starting to see this now. In hospital systems where they’re only allowing a handful of maybe device companies that can even participate and the implant portion. So doctors are being handcuffed to some extent. And that’s why I think you’re seeing doctors also express their desires to do concierge style medicine and you’re starting to see patients say, you know what, insurance is for my sick side of me or call it my “oh shit” plan. Yeah. They’re also going that route. So that whole this didn’t happen ten years ago and you really just started to see it five years ago.

Josh Whalen: That’s what I’m really appreciated about, this consumer driven health care. At the same time, the physician burnout, dealing with insurance on a day to day basis that they’re even saying, you know, I’m done with this. I’m going to do a monthly membership model. I’m really going to focus and hone in on my patient.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah. I actually, I so I write little note cards when this is how I keep track of my thoughts as I’m doing these, these interviews and I wrote insurance versus care right before, like a few sentences before you said it because it was like, you know, well, if, if insurance is going to pay for certain things, but they’re not going to pay for other things, then maybe it’s sense you kind of have this this quasi model where you have you know, you use your you do care one way and then you do like, oh, my, oh, crap. I really need this, you know, for insurance. You do that the other way. So yeah, I mean, it’s called health insurance, right? It’s not called health care. So yeah. At the same time, there are there are certain things that I mean, maybe you’ll be familiar with this, but there are are there certain things that health insurance covers that men should be aware of, like guys who have a normal health care plan or are things that are covered by insurance that they should be utilizing?

Josh Whalen: Yeah, most insurances should be covered at least an annual physical, and most insurances should be covered in some type of of blood testing that they’re incorporating on an annual basis.

Dean Pohlman: Which is expensive.

Josh Whalen: It can be extremely expensive.

Dean Pohlman: Out of pocket.

Josh Whalen: Yeah. And especially when you’re going through insurance, like you got to understand part part of the reason that health care costs are so high on so many different scales is because there’s these things called fee schedules and a lot of times what happens is, is, you know, practices or labs or pharmacies charge above a normal fee schedule just to collect.

Josh Whalen: So if a patient doesn’t have insurance and they need to do that out of pocket through an office, they’re paying that fee schedule because that’s the legal mandate. And it really honestly, it really I think one thing that you’re seeing that’s interesting is like Mark Cuban this this cost plus 10% model with yeah. With Pharm, with with drugs.

Josh Whalen: I think it’s phenomenal. I think it’s going to disrupt the space because it takes all these fees schedules and it throws them out the window and it is convoluted and made health care really really hard to deal with. Not only is a patient like imagine calling a physician right now and any standard insurance practice and saying, hey, what’s my cost going to be for this? What’s my cost going to be for that? There’s no straightforward answer. You’ll never get that. Or better yet, let’s say you’re trying to have a kid call a hospital and say, What am I going to pay out of pocket for this cost? You can’t ever get it. And that’s it’s really kind of a disaster, my opinion. So somebody like a guy like Mark Cuban is completely disrupting the space this way.

Dean Pohlman: Hmm. Yeah, I was. So what you were saying, it brought up brought up a thought. I had a I was bitten by a tick, so I had a tick borne illness and I was in the E.R. for like a total of three days. And and I didn’t have health insurance at the time or I had I had a really terrible health insurance plan.

Dean Pohlman: That only covered one er visit per year. Yeah. And so, you know, I didn’t hear anything from anybody for like five months and like, oh, maybe they forgot about my bill. And then they sent me a bill. It was 30, I think it was $32,000. Like, what do I do with this? I’m like, this is more this is like, this is, this is, you know, I don’t know how much it was relative.

Dean Pohlman: It was, it was, it was over 50% of my annual income at the time. Wow. And this was like, so I went through there. They had like a financial assistance thing. So I went through that and I said, like, this is how much money I actually make. And then, like, everything looked like it was going through. And then it just, like, stopped, like, dead in the water, couldn’t talk to anybody, couldn’t.

Dean Pohlman: And so I just left it alone. I hopefully, hopefully. No, no. Debt collectors are listening to this podcast right now, but I was just like, I can’t pay this like I can come nowhere near to pay income, nowhere near to paying this. I emailed you, I called you, I said, Can I get set up on a payment plan or can we negotiate this and I can pay you less?

Dean Pohlman: And they’re like, No, you have to pay the full amount and it has to be within 12 months. I’m like, Well, then, yeah, sorry. I’ll just I’ll just avoid buying a house for the next seven years and I’ll try again later. Yeah. You know, fortunately, it never it never went it never went anywhere. They just they just ignored it.

Dean Pohlman: But, you know, I would assume that the reason the cost was that’s that the cost was so high because not only was I paying for my health care, I was also paying for all the other people who wouldn’t pay their bills. So they were just like throwing it all into one maybe someone will pay this. Yeah. Type of type costs.

Josh Whalen: It’s it’s a mess, man. It’s, you know, dealing, owning and operating medical clinics. And now we’re cash pay. Like, it’s so much easier. It’s so much more simple, less convoluted, especially for the consumer or the patient in a practice, the billing side of it is so convoluted. It’s so in depth. When you look at how many, they’re called ICD ten codes.

Josh Whalen: Basically there there is a code for every single thing. And, you know, in your case, God. Let me tell you a personal story. We’re still getting bills for my son, who’s almost two years old, who was born and it’s just it’s like you got an anesthesiologist allergy bill, you got a hospital bill, you got an obligation bill. And it’s like, at what point does these things ever end, you know? And part of it is just because it’s so complicated and convoluted.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah. I’m really excited that my wife does my child’s our child’s health care because yeah, I that was one thing. I’m just like, I’m not going to I can’t learn this. I’m just I’m not in a space where I can I just I please you know, I’m I’m thankful that my wife handles that part as far as what I’ll say.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah. So one other thing that I, you know, I wanted to talk about with you is you probably went through some you know, we talked about this when we first met. You know, I was like, let’s talk about some real stuff. And we’re like, well, marriage is hard. Let’s talk about that. So was there you know, you had I’m assuming you kind of had like the typical office job. What was your what was your schedule like before you before you started doing what you do now? Do you have did you have similar work hours or lifestyle or.

Josh Whalen: Yeah, I you know, I’ve been pretty darn lucky, man, since I got my job with Stryker. I’ve worked from home for the last 14, 15 years. You know, it’s it’s taught me a lot. You know, it was a tough transition. Now I’ve become so efficient in it. I have an office. I’ve always had an office I just work better from home.

Josh Whalen: I have I have my home gym, I have my coffee, I have my food. I can eat what I want to eat. So I’ve been pretty fortunate in that manner. It doesn’t mean it’s come with less stress. It doesn’t mean that it’s made life easier in every facet. But for some things like for example, let’s take a guy who works a normal corporate job and he’s got a 45 minute commute where he’s burning, what, almost 2 hours a day just in the car my it my level of efficiency.

Josh Whalen: I wake up six, almost 615, 630 every day. I get up, make coffee, do breakfast with the kids, get my workout in done. I’m productive that the rest of the day until I decide to shut it down. And that’s that’s one of the benefits that has allowed me to work from home. So I’m not your I have not been your standard corporate guy in a long time, including my corporate gig. But when you look at corporations, there’s just so much hierarchy and so much politics and that’s what I wanted to escape.

Dean Pohlman: Mm. So you talked about being productive from home, have you? You spent 14 years doing that. What are some habits that you’ve developed or some strategies you developed that you think could be helpful to the other guys working from home? Because a lot of guys are new to this. You know, we’ve I don’t need to mention why and then like 20… 2020… the last few years and, and then, you know, a lot of people working from home so what are some things that guys need to keep in mind or what are some things that strategies or tools that they can use.

Josh Whalen: Yeah, I mean for me I have kids, so that’s always something that comes into play. But the more I plan the week before, the evening before more likely, the smoother my day is going to be. I’ve had to get into a rhythm of just block, you know, personal time during the day of working out because I know I need it.

Josh Whalen: I need that physical exertion, I need to sweat whatever it is. I don’t even care if it’s just going for a walk. Make sure you’re blocking off just a little bit of time for yourself. I mean, I’m even big into these peloton workouts where you can you can dedicate 20, 30, 45 minutes, however long you want, just to get a Tabata style workout in for guys like you, Yoga, I mean, it’s huge, but planning and and not beating yourself up if it doesn’t always go to plan. But I think I think the more somebody can plan their day out, the better. And for me, it’s, it’s it’s making sure I’m planning the night before and it’s making sure I’m allotting some type A physical fitness throughout the day just so my cortisol levels can, can, I can manage my stress a little bit easier.

Josh Whalen: And that just you know, trying to be positive, man, I think we beat ourselves up too much when things don’t go our own way. And I try to be optimistic and I try to just get through it.

Dean Pohlman: Mm hmm. Yeah. I think that’s a that was, you know, one of the big reasons I started this podcast was because I think I just my self-talk was and continues to be now is just very you can do better, you can do more, you can you know, you’re you’re not doing as well as you should be doing. And for a while, I thought, like, this is this is a good way to motivate myself.

Dean Pohlman: This is like this is how I should be doing it. And I think that’s also the message that most men tend to hear is like, you just need to be tough on yourself and you need to, you know, and and I think that differs from I I’m trying to you know, I’m looking at a lot of the other men’s I don’t say I wouldn’t say men’s wellness, but I’ll say men’s, you know, men, success, focus personalities.

Dean Pohlman: And I feel like that continues to be the mentality. It’s there’s not a level of compassion for yourself. There’s it’s and they don’t even have to say it. It’s just it’s it’s almost just the the implication of how they talk and psychologist you just need to man up you just need to push yourself more, you know, embrace the grind.

Dean Pohlman: And I’m just like, oh, I’m so sick of seeing this. Like, yeah, because I’ve done this for I’ve done this since I was a kid. Like, I didn’t let myself watch TV like when I was in college because I was like, I can’t watch TV because, like, that’s just a waste of time. I don’t need that downtime. You’ve got to always be doing something. By the time I hit like 26, I was like, I’m tired and. Yeah.

Josh Whalen: Yeah, totally. Good Point, man. Like, I’ve worked around a lot of individuals where you talked about Embrace the Grind, and I think there are, I think there’s merit to that, but I also think there’s merit to taking it easy and something that I think we’re seeing more and more of is burnout due to stress and maybe over embracing that grind. And I think the popularization of social media and guys trying to compare themselves to let’s just take Jocko, for example.

Josh Whalen: Like not everybody Stocco, not everybody’s Elon Musk embrace.

Dean Pohlman: Like you can’t be David Goggins.

Josh Whalen: Exactly, dude. Like, come on, bro. You’re not going to run a hundred miles and, and videotape it and talk crap as you’re doing it. And I love that stuff. I love that it motivates me. But find out what is you find out your individual spirit, you know, if it’s, if it’s at the end of the night just decompressing, meditating, or maybe having a cocktail find out what helps you.

Josh Whalen: And as I’ve aged, I become very authentic and who I am unapologetic. And I don’t beat myself up if the day doesn’t go as I planned it the night before. We’re not always going to you know, do things the right way. And I try just not to live in that bullshit, you know, and I try to be very positive.

Josh Whalen: And sometimes you got to grind it out. Sometimes you got to reset and take it easy. I’ve been known to just say, You know what? I’m done for the week. I’m taking Friday off. I don’t want to even answer calls because I’m going to come back Monday. I’m going to be charged and I don’t dwell on the fact that I decided to cancel my day on a Friday, you know?

Dean Pohlman: Yeah, I, I actually did a similar thing on Monday. The weekends are I find often that my weekends are tougher than my weekdays.

Josh Whalen: Same thing.

Dean Pohlman: Like it’s you know, it’s I was, I met up with a friend yesterday or a couple of days ago. It was great. I got to go hang out with the, you know, bro of mine and we just sat and talked for like an hour and a half for like an hour was wonderful. And I said to him, and I’ve said this to a few other people kind of jokingly, but also kind of serious.

Dean Pohlman: Like, my weekends are harder than my weekdays. Like, I look forward to my weekdays more because, you know, the, the kind of job that I’m in like, yes, it’s busy. Like my to do is never ends. There’s no lack of ideas. I have absolutely no restrictions on what I could do. Again, that’s do it’s never ends. There’s always things that I could do to him to make more content or to improve existing content.

Dean Pohlman: But, you know, it’s it’s so different than encountering all the, all the, all the.. I don’t want to say restrictions because I think it’s mostly like self-imposed instructions that I experience in my personal life when I’m home, you know, with my wife and my two year old. I mean, there are certain things like, you know, he’s got to take a nap and I can’t I can’t run away while he’s taking a nap with my wife is going somewhere or, you know, we’ve all got to eat food.

Dean Pohlman: Like I need to figure out if I’m deciding breakfast. I have to decide that there are certain things that you can and can’t do with a child. You know, so but just see the difference there versus like my professional life is just it makes it makes it makes the weekends a lot harder, Than the weekdays.

Josh Whalen: Listen, man, I just had this conversation with my wife and I said, we have to dial in our weekends and we are fortunate enough that we have an Au pair. She’s from Brazil and we love it.

Dean Pohlman: And it’s how many how many kids do you have?

Josh Whalen: We have two.

Dean Pohlman: OK? And they’re..?

Josh Whalen: Almost five. Our daughter’s almost five. Our names, Lenny, our son, is almost two. His name’s Rowdy, OK? And he embraces every bit of that name. Name, man, we we we thought we were clever and we thought we had it for, like, a year. We’re like, he’s the sweetest little thing. Now this dude’s like a freakin full back & linebacker hit and everything breaking everything.

Josh Whalen: We’re like, we can’t keep up so to your point, my most of my professional life is Monday through Friday. You know, call it normal hours. Even though I’m working more my personal life, it’s like it becomes this chaos and we’re taking care of these two little rugrats, and you never really fully leave your job, at least I don’t.

Josh Whalen: I try to I really, really try to embrace that. But I’m coming into Monday almost more burned out. I’m like, we got to figure this out. Oh, yeah. You know, and it’s, you know, it’s $1,000,000,000 question for me because I want to figure it out. I want to write a book on the really the art of parenting, because I don’t have it down.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah. So so that was what that was my experience this last weekend. And I got to Monday, and I just was like, nope, I spent what did I watch? The patient. Oh, yeah, yeah. With, with, with Steve Carell. Yeah. I haven’t seen it with celebrity. Anyways, that’s fantastic. But that’s how I spent my that was how I spent my day.

Dean Pohlman: I still had, you know, I had a I had a team meeting. So we did our team meeting and, and, and then, you know, I did the emails that I normally do. And near the end of the day, I felt like, OK, I can do a little bit of work now. And I replied to a bunch of emails and, you know, and customers that I, that I should have replied to you know, probably the week before that.

Dean Pohlman: But I yeah. That the first part of the day, I was just like, nope, I’m just going to sit here. I’m going to have my laptop over here idly doing things that I have been interested in doing for the last couple of weeks. And yeah, like I needed that I can’t imagine how I would have felt if I had had to have gone into like a normal job that Monday.

Josh Whalen: So yeah, man. And then unapologetic about it, you know, like.

Dean Pohlman: Mm hmm.

Josh Whalen: I think I think one of the things we’re starting to learn a little bit as a society is that this, this, this portion is just as important as the physical portion. And sometimes you just need to reset and everybody’s life is different. And no matter how physically fit you are or what you’re doing and like everybody encounters these problems and you just got to deal with them and sometimes just take it easy on yourself.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah. The the interesting thing about so like I, I, I think a few years ago, I really started to say, OK, I need to like do some things to, to help myself with downtime. And recovery. And so, you know, I started doing things like journaling and I started doing restorative stretching, i.e., you know, like yoga or less intensive yoga.

Dean Pohlman: And I started doing things to kind of recharge, like going for, going for walks. And the problem was I was looking at them I was doing them with the intention of I’m doing this because it’s going to help me recharge and, you know, feel better and I’m going to be more productive instead of just enjoying the task. You know, it’s intrinsic value.

Dean Pohlman: And so like I was doing these things, but I wasn’t getting the benefit because I was like, this is just another productivity habit that I’m doing. And I, you know, so like the, the, the struggle now is to like, fortunately, I’ve, you know, done a lot of more focus on breathing sure. And sex is something that we that we talk about a lot.

Dean Pohlman: And man for yoga is breathing. Yeah. And I’ve been able to get a lot better at that. So when I’m out walking, I’m like, oh, OK. Like, this is like an opportunity to breathe and to relax or to like just be fully present. So you know, trying to get the phone away from you. Yeah. Trying to just and also trying to not record things as much, like, just like don’t record it.

Dean Pohlman: Just like just live it.

Josh Whalen: It’s like, yeah, that’s funny. You mentioned that, man. So I’m into electronic music. I’m in all kinds of music.

Dean Pohlman: OK? I just I just saw who did I just see? I saw.

Josh Whalen: Rufus.

Dean Pohlman: Swedish. I saw Swedish housewives like a couple of months ago. And I was going, I was like, it’s going to all be all these kids who are on Tick-Tock. And it was all people in their thirties like me.

Josh Whalen: So it’s like flipped on, on Swedish. But I saw those guys cheese like ten years ago and Coachella, and that can be so old. But I think one of the most admirable things there’s a deejay by the name of eight is phenomenal. If you haven’t checked him out, he’s one of my favorites. He’s out of Colorado, but he has a mandatory take your phone at the gate and it’s he’s like, I’ll try my best to explain.

Josh Whalen: It’s like these glorified Ziploc bags that.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah.

Josh Whalen: And you get the key, right? I’ve never seen this is the first time. And it was maybe a year and a half ago, I saw him at Red Rocks and it was the most memorable concert experience I think I’ve ever had. And you know why? Because he forced us to socialize. He forced us to enjoy the show and live in that moment.

Josh Whalen: And, you know, listen, you’re in social. I’m in social. We’re running businesses, we’re entrepreneurs. We’re founders. You forget to live in that moment. And it’s such it’s such a rewarding thing when you finally just sit back like my wife and I we have something called no tech time. You know, if it’s 530, whatever the time, as we say, no tech time for 2 hours.

Josh Whalen: And it’s really helped us. It’s really helped us to enjoy our time with our kids, to enjoy our time with ourselves, get the kids sound, go check the phone again, do whatever we need to, and we’re in bed, you know? But I think you really got to live in that moment. You got to really appreciate the small wins and, you know, take it back. Take a step back from all this tech.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah, I agree. So now I’m intrigued about this, you know, this agreement that you’ve created with your wife about no screen time for 2 hours. Do you have you created other other kind of I don’t know if agreements is the right word or other like other regular talks or other regular meetings or like scheduled maintenance type things that you have, you establish those types of things. Are they more informal or have you how have you? Yeah, what are some things you’ve done?

Josh Whalen: Great question. Yeah, great question. Here’s what I figured it out. When it was informal, it never happened. So when we actually were intentional about our relationship, things improved. When we’re intentional about, you know, working out, it improved. And we have one date night a week that we have carved out. It’s, you know, three or 4 hours where we just go out.

Josh Whalen: It’s not even like whether we go get dinner. We go for a walk whatever. It’s just her and I and appreciating each other. And then Saturdays we have some carve out time where we go get a workout and try to have breakfast, coffee or whatever, just ourselves so you can kind of reset from the long ass week. You know, we call it reentry and it’s just come into the weekend and then trying to be better parents.

Josh Whalen: But absolutely, men, you know, our sex life is is pretty darn good. But we even had to get in the habit at one point because of the kids, like, hey, we got to we got to schedule this stuff and cause a good, you know, good partnership that’s incorporated in that. And but what I’ve found is, is if we’re intentional about if we set schedules, we’re we’re going to do it for us. If it if we didn’t, it just kind of fell to the wayside.

Dean Pohlman: So was it was it you who kind of led that or led creating the the formalization of it or how did that start?

Josh Whalen: Yeah, I think it was me. I think it was I think it was my sensitivity of knowing what I needed and then being able to communicate that to her. I think early on in our relationship, it was her. And as we’ve grown and as we’ve gotten older, as our relationship has matured, I’ve also figured out what I need and our relationship and our partnership.

Josh Whalen: So I would say the last year has probably been more driven by me.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah, that’s interesting. That you say that because I you know, I never I never really considered my needs in the relationship. I have now. But I think initially my idea around relationships was like, what do you mean? You’re the man? You’re just like, you just do it, you know, like you just take care of her and everything will be fine.

Dean Pohlman: And then my friend was actually getting married. The friend who I went to go get lunch with yesterday or a couple days ago that I mentioned and his best man was, you know, he was talking with me. He’s like, what do you think of what do you think of, you know, the girl? You know, do you think she’s she?

Dean Pohlman: And he was really concerned. And I was like, why are you concerned? I don’t get it. Like, she she’ll be Erin will be fine. He’ll take care of himself. I’ll take care of her. And everything will be fine. I don’t understand, like, why are you concerned? And you know, that just I think that just is a good example of of my very I don’t know what the word is, but it’s a good example of my views on on men’s wellness and my previous views and what I’m trying to move away from. I just was like, nah, you’ll be you’ll be fine. You don’t deal with it.

Josh Whalen: Well, you know, it’s interesting. It’s I mean, I think you’ve you’ve probably discovered that, at least for me, I was not like that. I was I was that guy that you’re talking about. I just did whatever the wife was. I wasn’t honest about my feelings, and I just figured I’d get through it. And what I figured over time was it was probably the worst thing for a relationship.

Josh Whalen: Yeah. You know, like my my wife, for example, she’s fast. She’s a fashionably late kind of gal. And I told her, I said, listen, you can be as fashionable as you want, but I get anxiety when I’m late to a meeting. It just is what it is. If I don’t get to an airport or whatever time I think is right, I get anxiety.

Josh Whalen: Can you please just work with me? You can buy whatever clothes you want, but I just need to leave the house at this time. And it was it took time. But I got to tell you, man, it’s the little things like that can really shape a relationship. Into a very, very rewarding one.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah, I agree with you completely. I was laughing because I’m the exact opposite. I’m like the let’s see how much we can do before we get there. 5 minutes late. And it drives my wife nuts and. Yeah, but like, looking at the more important point here is, yeah, you have to be comfortable with expressing your you have to reframe this because initially I thought, I don’t want to say something to her because it’s going to make her upset.

Dean Pohlman: That was the initial. And then I realized if I don’t say this to her and let her know that I’m upset, I am going to bottle this up or I am going to I am going to build up resentment and I am going to make our relationship worse because of it, it’s this I mean, it’s the same thing with fitness.

Dean Pohlman: You can either take the short term discomfort of working out or you can take the long term results of not working out. So you can take that short term discomfort of this might you know, I might feel uncomfortable because I’m putting my wife in a potentially uncomfortable situation, saying something that she might not want to hear. Or you can just you can build up that resentment. And then when you’re on a walk around the block, she’ll say something to you and he’ll turn around and yell at her for like a completely disproportionate response. So it has taken a lot for me to and I’m still working on this, but like, yeah, it’s there’s still a lot of fear, like going up to her and saying like, hey, I really need you to do this for me this week.

Dean Pohlman: But I but I think five years ago, I would have just been like, nah, I’ll just do it myself, and I don’t need to involve you. And I think I’m just going to like, yeah, it was the like, let me just see if I can, like, go do this on my own. And she won’t notice that I’m gone. Yeah. Instead of telling her something that she just might not like, let me try to cover up the broken lamp instead of telling my parents that I broke the lamp.

Josh Whalen: Yeah, well, I think one thing that, you know, I think the other side of that coin too is if you do let it burn, like you said, and then it becomes an argument and then it becomes a fight, you know, and I learned early on that if I wasn’t honest and forthcoming, sometimes I had to sit on an idea or maybe a position a little bit longer than than normal to be able to explain it to her on my feelings.

Josh Whalen: It’s just, man, that’s made for much, much smoother relationship. But at the end of the day, you’re dealing with humans here there always is going to be some struggle. There’s always going to be some posters are going to be some pull. And marriage is, I think, probably one of the hardest things in the world.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah. I mean, what is it, 50? I don’t know what the divorce rate is. 50% here. Yeah. Yeah. And so, yeah, I was this is no, I was talking about this with my, with my my friend yesterday about the just as the struggles that you know and it’s I think it’s everybody goes through them. And I and I think that you know, there’s a there is a there’s an inclination to not talk about them because talking about them would be like somehow somehow you admitting that it’s not perfect.

Dean Pohlman: And in reality if you don’t talk about it, that’s where that’s where it can be. That’s where it will be problematic if you don’t talk about things. So and I also used to think and I think I see I won’t I won’t say I won’t put words into my wife’s mouth, pretend to assume what she thinks. But I think I used to think also that yeah, talking about things, talking about your relationship with other people was like, oh, this is like gossip.

Dean Pohlman: Like you shouldn’t be talking about your relationship with other people. And and in reality, like, you need to be able to talk about your relationship with other people. So, you know, I don’t do about it like don’t don’t talk about it to a camera on a reality TV show. Like, that’s, that’s the, that’s the difference between like, you know, before we had our phone we had thoughts to ourselves and we could, you know, write about it in a journal or we could talk about it with a friend, and they would or we could have a conversation.

Dean Pohlman: There would never be any chance that, like, someone could go look at that conversation. You said what? Right. You know, not that that’s like, you know, if you’re if you’re I won’t I don’t want to make any snap judgments and say that if you’re in a relationship where, you know, you don’t feel secure in having conversations, other people without them being read, I don’t want to say anything. But like but anyways, just I don’t know. I was going with that.

Josh Whalen: No, listen, I love it, man. I think sometimes the power of that conversation is just not knowing you’re in that boat alone. And and that could be on so many different topics, including marriage. But you know, I’ll give an example. My wife and I had a miscarriage, and it’s one of those things. We had four miscarriages. Wow. And it’s one of those things that it’s the club that nobody talks about until you’re in it.

Josh Whalen: You know, we had so many friendships that we had no idea they went through that. And it’s a really unique process. Both for the man and the woman. And you all compartmentalize your feelings one way or another. But it was hard on me. It was hard on my wife, but it was it was something we we had no idea how many of that iceberg effect was was around like everybody else and came out of the woodwork when they found out we did.

Josh Whalen: And the power of just that group, that power of that communication, man, it helped us get through a tough time like that, you know, and the same thing we’re talking about on all these fronts.

Dean Pohlman: So let’s talk about what if there were any, you know, what what what got you to start making those changes in your relationship? What we’re you know, I’m assuming that some of this wasn’t I’m assuming that you’ve had to change you know, your patterns of interaction. And what were some things that got you to that “Oh, crap. This is not OK” point.

Josh Whalen: Yeah. I mean, for me, it was probably a few things. One, it was not it was it was embracing the path of least resistance. Like if you’re constantly arguing and you’re not coming up with the solution, then what’s the point like? It’s it’s like the definition of insanity. In a relationship. And, and a lot of it was trial and error and just figuring out, like, how she responded, how I responded, and, you know, nobody wants to be in a relationship where you’re completely honest and you’re telling every every feeling, every thought.

Josh Whalen: Yeah. I think there’s some tactic to that. But for me, it was just it was it was trial and error with a better result. And nobody likes to be in a relationship or constantly bickering, concern, fighting, arguing and I certainly was no different. And I just figured that if we’re going to have a more productive relationship, that was that was one start to it. It was a minor piece to it. But it was a big piece.

Dean Pohlman: Mm hmm. Yeah. The the the the argument isn’t as important as it’s actually said this at my brother’s wedding. I said f like what you end up deciding isn’t as important as how you handle the discussion a lot of the times. And very often like I’ve also been, you know, I think as men, we also tend to like we want to we want like a we want a the beginning, the middle and, you know, conclusion to the argument.

Dean Pohlman: We’re like, OK, we’re in this. You’ve created your points. I’ve put forth my points and let’s all vote. OK, cool. I won. Great. Let’s move on from the argument and you know, aside from the fact that that’s not the point very often, like you don’t have to you don’t have to come to resolution. You just have to say, this is how I feel and this is how I feel.

Dean Pohlman: And then you go away from each other for 5 minutes and then you come back and you’re like, hey, I still love you to you know? It’s like, cool. Like, we didn’t have to come to a solution. We didn’t have to, like, hammer out the. And that’s something that I’ve really struggled with because I have this fear that if we I think I grew up in this environment where we just didn’t have these arguments and to have an argument was very like, whoa, this is a big frickin deal.

Dean Pohlman: Like, this is bad. And so I think I developed this fear that if I would have an argument that this would be like, oh, my mom’s like, she’s never going to talk to me or like, my dad is going to be disappointed in me and I’m never going to like or I don’t know. And of course, that doesn’t make logical sense.

Dean Pohlman: But that was like the that was where my emotional brain went. And so, you know, my, my wife my wife complains about this sometimes she’s like, but when you want to have a conversation and like a real conversation, it takes like an hour or it takes 45 minutes. We’ve timed it. It takes me 45 minutes to get through this because I’m so scared that, like the I’m so scared that the conversation, unless it is properly resolved, will results in her like she’s like, she’s not going to love me anymore.

Dean Pohlman: She’s done. And it’s just like, I don’t know why, but like, and that’s not like there’s no logical reason why that is or there’s no like, you know, that’s just that’s, that’s the emotional fear. It’s not even me like putting that emotional that emotion into words or into thought. It’s just like that is the fear. And that’s why there’s like so much effort and so much time added on to this unnecessarily.

Josh Whalen: Dude, that’s you, man. That’s what she married me for, probably. I mean, it’s not like she didn’t know that getting into that, you know, and you know, I think the beauty of marriage, you know, is, is, is that like being able to appreciate each other for so, so many different things. And you mentioned something earlier it’s like one of the things I’ve learned in marriages and what’s funny is this was said in one of our speeches was don’t make a mountain out of a molehill, you know?

Josh Whalen: And if anything I’ve learned from marriage, and even more so as a parent is patience and and, you know, not to be able not to have to win every single argument and just to maybe move on, you know, and know that you might just not agree on something. And that’s okay, too. And that’s the beauty of just like a relationship or a partnership.

Josh Whalen: And for me, it’s it’s it’s been it’s been a really interesting seven years as a as a husband. And it’s been even more interesting four years as a dad. You know, it’s it’s taught me a lot that I didn’t even think I possessed.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah. Patience right there. That’s what they are. When you go to weddings, they’re like, you get the 40 the 50 year old couples on and you ask them like, what’s the key to a marriage? Yeah. It’s like patience and patience and communication. It’s and then we’re I that’s not but somehow we think like, no, that’s not what I need.

Josh Whalen: You’re old. You walk five miles to school, too, didn’t you yeah.

Dean Pohlman: Exactly. Well, I also want to, you know, I also want to check in about like, what are some, what are some because you eventually went on to create, you know, blokes and I kind of want to get a sense of like, what are some things that you I just took a hard left turn there, guys stay with me.

Dean Pohlman: But I kind of want to get a sense of what were some early warning signs for you that you needed to start looking at your, your physical health.

Josh Whalen: Yeah, mine were I was not cerebral enough on my own to actually notice, believe it or not. Guy in health care. You think you were paying attention to that a lot more. The reality was it was my wife. She was ready to divorce me because my body changed my mind change. I need ten, 12 cups of coffee in the day to get through it.

Josh Whalen: My sex drive, it tanked now that I was in my mid-thirties, I was like 36-37 when this started to happen.

Dean Pohlman: And you were a former former rugby player. Yeah. Let’s just put this out.

Josh Whalen: Yeah, she’s man, I was the definition of a gym rat at one point, so I knew my body well. I knew it a change, but it happened so slowly you know, that type of change happened over a year or two years. It doesn’t bother you as much. It’s not an acute injury, right? Like you carry ACL, you know, you mess it up.

Josh Whalen: This this can be a chronic condition. And my wife was the one that noticed it the most and finally said, Hey, man, if you don’t get your stuff together, you’re out. So I think, you know, the bigger thing was for me was was the causation of that and not even understanding why it happened and why I didn’t have that sex drive.

Josh Whalen: And a lot of it happened through our fertility struggles. We had those four miscarriages, and most guys are not told in any capacity that when a woman’s body is going through that type of massive change, that the man’s body can change. Testosterone can drop by 50, 75%, estrogen levels can go up. You know, your cortisol levels go up, which is never good stresses.

Dean Pohlman: And this is specifically through the through the grief of a miscarriage. Or through pregnancy. Both.

Josh Whalen: Both. It was it was just the up and down rate. You know, we had so many miscarriages and such a lot. I mean, such a short amount of time that so many different physical changes were happening to my wife. And I was going with that. And as that happened, I wasn’t taking care of myself, you know, and we come out on the other side of that.

Josh Whalen: My wife’s like, listen, you don’t get yourself together. You’re out, you’re divorced. So for me, it was it was it was not my individual thought it was my wife, my partner saying, go get yourself together.

Dean Pohlman: Mhm. But so then you.

Josh Whalen: But there’s plenty of common symptoms that we should be looking for as men, you know, I mean belly fat you know, is how is your recovery, how your sleep, how’s your stress levels, how are you managing those mood swings, you know, are you, are you working out on a regular basis? I mean, you know, one big thing is libido, erection, strength, all those are very important factors that men should be cognizant of, especially when they start passing that 30 year old mark.

Dean Pohlman: Mhm. So what was your… you obviously started looking and didn’t find what you were looking for. So what were some of the things that you, you started doing and you know what, what it. Yeah. To, to address it.

Josh Whalen: Yeah. I mean the first thing that happened was I went, saw a primary care doctor and I told him everything that was going on in my, my marriage, everything that was going on with me physically. And of course they test you. And I came back and I had my follow up and he said, you were on the low side of this range and a guy that’s in health care, you think I would know what this proverbial range was. But I didn’t. And looking back now, I was definitely a really low categorically guy in testosterone. And, you know, I got bad guidance at that time. I was not it was not an optimization and type approach or preventative type self care. And I finally found a guy that specialized in hormones that that really got me on my way and I it out just through that process.

Josh Whalen: Like I don’t want another guy sitting in my shoes, especially somebody who who who’s more cerebral on this stuff to get this same type of guidance in the same type of advice. And I want to make it more accessible. I want to make it more convenient, and I still don’t want to lose that clinical side of it. So that’s that was my journey and then I just saw the entrepreneurial side of this business.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah. I think it’s also important to note just about your initial diagnosis that the if a doctor tells you that your levels are low, that means that your levels are really, really, really low because the range of, you know, of what a doctor looks at, something that is considered a normal range. If we were looking at this from like a human health optimization standpoint, normal range would be much smaller than than it should be.

Dean Pohlman: It would be, you what would appear low on a normal range would be considered, no, this is a problem. If you were looking at it from a let’s really address let’s really optimize your health standpoint. So, you know, for for example, for me, I’ve talked about the Sun Times, but I have really low vitamin D levels growing up in Cleveland. We just didn’t have Sun. So I’m assuming that my body never learned how to process sunlight. So, you know, I have really low vitamin D levels. So that’s something that I that I know about. And even doctors will say your vitamin D levels are pretty low. I’m like, that’s weird. So but yeah, so for you to have low and probably not OK, this is like really bad.

Josh Whalen: Yeah, it was it was an interesting when I finally sat down with the specialists and people have to understand hormones are specialized now. They’re not what they were 30 years ago and you should be seeing. So regardless of whether it’s blokes or, or anybody, make sure you’re seeing somebody that deals with hormones and you know, I look back at it, I’ll share my levels. They were, there were like 265. I was, I was I was below even the, the, the horrible range that’s presented as by LabCorp and Insurance and his, his immediate thought was is there something else going on? Like, do you have a heart issue? Do you have an autoimmune issue? You’re in your mid-thirties and you’re below 300 nanograms per deciliter.

Josh Whalen: So it is a big indication of just overall health too, you know. So yeah, I’m glad I finally figured it out. I probably saved myself a marriage and certainly got my health back on track.

Dean Pohlman: So I’m curious, like what happened when you realized that and you so I’m assuming when did you when did you start testosterone therapy or what what was what was like? What is it called? Because I don’t know if I’m saying that, right.

Josh Whalen: Yeah, it’s I mean, the hormone optimization, testosterone replacement therapy TRT is buzzwords. I’ve been I’ve been a patient for almost four years and TRT.

Dean Pohlman: And and you decided to do that right after you got the diagnosis or was there did you know what were the what were the options presented to you? Because because I’m looking at this to be fully transparent. I’m looking at this from the like, OK, you’re up. Your testosterone levels are low. What are some things that we can do before we intervene?

Josh Whalen: Totally I listen, I got I got bad guidance from from the start. You know what I was told? I was told you know, you’re on the low side of the range. I think you’re OK. There was never even like that. Here are some alternative therapies. But I will tell you what we tell people because not everybody is ready to make that plunge.

Josh Whalen: You should be worried about your diet. You should be monitoring what goes in and out of your mouth. You should be managing your overall environmental factors as much as you can. Stress is a huge piece of that. Anybody that’s living in a high stress, high cortisol, those are huge antagonists. Into just overall optimization. You should be managing your sleep, should be getting physical activity and primarily resistance training, higher interval, in fact, type stuff.

Josh Whalen: And if you’re doing all that, then then you’re giving yourself a better chance to just improve your overall day to day. And that’s regardless of testosterone. But those are things that we tell guys every single day.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah. So this is something that I heard. So I had have you heard of Judson Brandeis? By the way? He’s a he’s a man sexual medicine doctor. And he has a he has a men’s health encyclopedia book. 900 pages. Really cool. Anyways, cool guy. I haven’t had him on the podcast recently. And I learned from him that at a certain point, if your testosterone levels are low, enough, there’s not much benefit to going to the gym because you’re not able to create muscle.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah. So, you know, there must be you know, there must be some. Yes. Like let’s look at lifestyle, but there must be some level where you’re like, OK, we need this to because lifestyle isn’t going to it’s not going to work fast enough or it’s not going to be significant enough. So like what is what does that question look like?

Josh Whalen: Yeah, I mean, from, from our seat, there are certainly those guys that have crossed over into the threshold where getting off the couch is not even a factor. And you have to understand to it’s it’s not just something physical. You’re testes primarily. And men are sending these signals to your brain that’s telling your body to actually do something at work.

Josh Whalen: And then like, you know, Jutsen, I believe you said his name was there. There is an ability to to be able to maintain that by having more optimization, more, you know, called optimized testosterone levels. And your body’s just kind of gone into this cave if it’s sat there for such a long time. And I think you mentioned something about like just getting going on exercise earlier in the podcast like, you know, sometimes you got to get sore and you got to get through that.

Josh Whalen: You got to get through that discomfort and that pain. Well, that’s already happened. And some of those guys have had that happen for a very long time. So those are really to me, those are primary candidates for, for true TRT doesn’t mean you have to be on it doesn’t mean you have to stay on it the rest of your life. But you might need that nudge just to get going.

Dean Pohlman: So is so is it a myth then? I don’t know if myth or misconception is the right word. Is it a myth that you have to be on? If you start, you can never stop?

Josh Whalen: Yeah, it absolutely is a myth. Here’s what we say. If, if, if you are not at a level of optimization to get there, you’re likely never going to achieve that through lifestyle changes. Like you talked about strength and conditioning and nutrition but it doesn’t mean you have to stay on it. Most guys stay on it because they like the way they feel.

Josh Whalen: Their body has changed, their mind has changed. But there’s there’s we have guys that cycle on TRT cycle off it. There’s really good ways to do that through certain therapies. But it is it is a mess. But the bigger the bigger thing that people should be saying is, can you achieve an optimal state without it? And most most guys cannot.

Dean Pohlman: Got it. What age? Like, I mean, for you, you’re mid-thirties. Yeah.

Josh Whalen: So I was young, you know, we we typically our bulk of guys are usually in their early forties to, you know, upper fifties. 60 years old. But we’re seeing younger and younger men come in with really poor overall testosterone levels and high estrogen counts. Other things that just are off. And I think there’s a whole slew of issues there that nobody’s really talking about.

Josh Whalen: I mean, we know that testosterone levels are going down and down and down generation over generation. We know that sperm count is down. And I’m not really sure why we’re not talking about this more but it’s definitely a to me, it’s an epidemic and it’s scary at the rate we’re going, what it’s going to look like in 50 years.

Dean Pohlman: Mm hmm. Yeah. I mean, if I can just lend some maybe opinion to why the view is like that, I think maybe there is a I don’t know. Maybe there’s, there’s there’s like a little bit of a of a resistance to saying that you want to improve your testosterone because it’s like there you’re like, maybe you’re scared of the response.

Dean Pohlman: Maybe there is like, oh, well, you’re just like, you’re just you’re just like an alpha male and you’re so worried about your testosterone and like, you don’t actually need that testosterone. You just you just want to feel better. Or maybe there’s like, you know, I guess on the other end, there’s like, well, I don’t want to I don’t want to even consider the fact that I might have low testosterone because that would make me less of a man So and like like for me, for example, like, if I were to just from my perspective, if I were to like go like or even consider like I need to have my testoterone levels looked at, then I think the response to be like, dude, no, you don’t need to have your testosterone levels. You’re fine. Yeah. Like, you know, like you don’t you don’t need to optimize them more than you’re, you know, on maybe I maybe I do need to I don’t know.

Josh Whalen: I think I think that the the bigger thing is if you’re not symptomatic, you don’t need it. Like there are telltale signs that, that, that should push you down this, this pathway. The better thing for a man, in my opinion, is to be able to notice those things. But more importantly, regardless of whether you’re you’re considering any type of elective therapy, every man, especially when they cross that 30 year old mark should be getting some type of baseline labs at least once a year so that you can be looking back to that one.

Josh Whalen: I mean that the value of labs and getting ahead of any type of disease state not just optimization is so, so important as you age.

Dean Pohlman: Mm hmm. Yeah. And I will say that so those the yearly labs I know that for me that’s something that’s covered by insurance. So I can go to my my primary care doctor and I can say, I’d like to have these levels looked at and I can have all of those tests run that can have a testosterone test and I can have and you know, it’ll cost me like 50 bucks out of pocket or something like that. So that is something that, you know, guys, we do have health care plans some health insurance plans. That is something that that you can do.

Josh Whalen: So we try to make even if guys don’t have insurance, you know, we we try to make a comprehensive panel pretty affordable. I mean, couple of hundred bucks, which isn’t that much when you when you include the interpretation and you know, just to talk through with our physicians and yeah, I mean.

Dean Pohlman: That’s really low.

Josh Whalen: It is.

Dean Pohlman: And that’s really afford I mean, I’ve because I’ve looked at some other brands totally and it’s like it’s like 200 or 300 bucks to get one of the tests.

Josh Whalen: Yeah. Now we have we have almost 50 markers and a panel that cost you in dollars, you know, and they’re very essential markers, you know, not just CBC and RCMP. You’re getting into cortisal inflammation you know obviously hormones, thyroid, it’s all things that are important as you age.

Dean Pohlman: So this is what I wanted to ask. What are some indications that guys should be on the lookout for? So for you, you mentioned like you were drinking ten to 12 cups of coffee a day. I’m assuming you had a different body composition what are some things that guys should be? Because I’m assuming they’re not all maybe they’re not all related to, you know, just gaining gaining weight. I don’t know.

Josh Whalen: Yeah, you know, a big one is, is morning interactions. You know, blood flow is a very, very important thing. And the human body, especially in men. And if if you’re not getting morning erections on a regular basis, there’s probably something that’s a little off. You know, belly fat is a big one. Energy levels, you know, have you plateaued in the gym?

Josh Whalen: Have you plateaued, you know, maybe in running that you’re not achieving what you did is your recovery, is your is your soreness, is that a little off? And then obviously libido is a big one. You know, is is the sex drive there? And those are those are some really good things to start with. Obviously, muscles is a big thing. You want you want to maintain muscle. You want to burn fat. So if you’re gaining fat in the wrong areas, there’s probably something off.

Dean Pohlman: And is there a certain age where like this is all just like OK, this is happening, but I’m X amount of years old, so this is just something that I should expect to happen or.

Josh Whalen: Yeah, I, I, yes, is you’re the biology. The human body is just going to change for men and women. It’s roughly that 30 year old mark where we start seeing a one to 2% decrease in testosterone levels. Regardless of who you are, regardless of what you’re doing. It’s more alarming to say that, you know, a 50 year old man today is 30% less testosterone than he did 30 years ago. So so it can be exponential as you age, but you really should be keeping track from what I would say a diagnostic standpoint in the symptoms standpoint you know really in your early thirties.

Dean Pohlman: Mm hmm. And can you speak to what are the biggest what are the biggest negative impacts on those levels in terms of, you know, what are some what are some lifestyle? This is not that’s not the right word, but what are some regular habits or routines or just, you know, things that people do regularly or I don’t know what the report is, but you get the point.

Dean Pohlman: What are some of those things that are the biggest negative impacts when it comes to overall testosterone levels?

Josh Whalen: Yeah, I mean, I mood swings are a huge thing managing your day to day, just overall mood I mean, most people think high testosterone levels are an indication of mood swings. It’s really it’s low. I listen, the biggest thing that we get is is fatigue energy, the ability to be able to go out and work and push and workout and physical fitness those are huge things.

Josh Whalen: And, you know, most people think the catalyst is erectile dysfunction or sex. And it’s not it’s it’s fatigue. It’s just not feeling like yourself, you know, six months ago, a year ago, five years ago. And if you’re if you’re paying attention to that stuff, you should be able to notice.

Dean Pohlman: So what are what are some lifestyle I maybe ask the question anyway. So what are some sleep habits, nutrition habits, exercise habits? What are some things that can what are the things that contribute negatively to testosterone levels? So if someone does have low testosterone levels, it’s because they did these things repeatedly in their life. And what are what are those things?

Josh Whalen: Yeah, I mean, not working out is a big one, not managing your overall stress. We talked about cortisol a little bit. Cortisol is an absolute antagonist. So if you’re constantly live in a stressful environment, not managing your rest and your recovery, that’s going to lead to a high state of cortisol. Which means a lot of inflammation. We talked a little bit about diet, you know, managing what’s going in and out of your mouth as a big, big factor.

Josh Whalen: And are you getting your proteins in in a day? You know, are you managing your carbs? There’s other factors, too. That we just can’t control. Like, you know, if you live in L.A., you’re going to have a different, you know, type of pollution. Do you do drink out of plastics every day? We know that plastics are directly related to too low testosterone in men and women.

Josh Whalen: Those are things that you can clean up pretty easily. But, you know, big thing is, is is diet regulation and lifestyle meaning are you working out? Are you getting, you know, resistance training and on a regular basis?

Dean Pohlman: Yeah, it’s interesting that you bring up the plastics because that was brought up. I had Blake Bowman, who’s a really cool guy who runs something called Gorilla Zen Fitness, and he said that like plastics and initially I was like, oh, this guy’s a biohacker. Like, I don’t know if I should believe everything. Yeah, but you are the you’re saying plastics now as well.

Dean Pohlman: So yeah, so how do you minimize plastics? Like, I mean, because all of the food that I buy from the grocery store comes in plastic. Like, it’s hard and it’s unrealistic for me to buy everything from the farmer’s market. Yeah.

Josh Whalen: So, yeah, it’s hard, man. It’s especially if you don’t have the means, but the best thing to do is try to just eat whole foods, not processed foods. And you know that that in itself is going to help you eliminate it by buying good meat. But is it is hard, especially if you don’t have the means. And, you know, we’ve all been to Whole Foods and we’ve all been to the run of the mill grocery store there.

Josh Whalen: There are different presentations, but eating organic will help as well. Eliminating, you know, plastics that you drink out of is a way, but it’s just it’s not a biohacker thing, man. It’s it’s studied and just Google, you know, plastics and and, you know, testosterone, plastics and hormones and a whole slew of topics are going to come up.

Dean Pohlman: Mm hmm. Yeah. And then, you know, I used to think for a very long time that your physical health didn’t have anything to do with your mental health. And maybe I didn’t think that it was like there was nothing to do with it, but I thought that, well, if you just live a healthy life, like, you’re going to be cancer free forever, which, you know, now understanding how much stress affects your physical well-being, now I’m like, OK, you know, I can because you can.

Dean Pohlman: I mean, you can just tell when you’re stressed the impact it has on your physical state. So I guess I’m you know, I guess I’m asking, are there you know, what are some indications that you are more stressed than you should be on a regular basis?

Josh Whalen: You know, I mean, a lot of what we were talking about you know, the the lack of exercise and a lot of times when people are in high stress situations, or not managing their their nutrition well, they’re not managing their food intake well. And people tend to binge lot a lot of big things with stress leads to alcoholism or some type of addiction.

Josh Whalen: We have we have a massive amount of addiction in our society, whether it’s, you know, social media, whether it’s porno or, you know, you know, just there’s a lot of vices that are really easy and accessible. I mean, we ever phone on us at all times. And there is no doubt that that social media is definitely changing our stress levels.

Josh Whalen: And you’re seeing this this happened with kids on a daily basis. And we’re like this walking human experiment. But those are those are things that you can definitely be managing better.

Dean Pohlman: Mm hmm. Cool. Thanks for pointing that out. Well, I usually start this sooner in the podcast, but I do want to I feel like we could talk talk more, but I do want to get on to part two, which is my rapid fire questions. And then I want to go look up. I’m really curious. I’m going to go look up blokes. Yeah. And look up, you know, all the different things that you do. And I think it’s really cool that you offer that panel at the low cost that you do. I think that’s great.

Josh Whalen: So yeah, It’s under hormone and metabolic panel and it’s a really, really good deep dove that’s affordable. It’s probably our most popular panel that we offer.

Dean Pohlman: Wow, that’s great. So I think we’ve talked about a lot of these, but I’m curious to hear your definitive answers on this. What do you think is one habit, belief or mindset that has helped you the most in terms of your overall happiness.

Josh Whalen: And intentionality being intentional about everything I do.

Dean Pohlman: OK, would you say that? Would you say clarity is kind of. Yeah. Is that is that related to that somehow?

Josh Whalen: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, if you’re not clear on your intentions, then what are they?

Dean Pohlman: Right. Yeah.

Josh Whalen: You know, it’s taken me a while to be intentional about things and like we talked about earlier, just being intentional about taking time off to know tech time, you know, that to me is intentionality. And yeah, I think it’s.

Dean Pohlman: Clarity in action, not exactly acting on it.

Josh Whalen: It’s, it’s been super helpful.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah. OK, what is, what’s one thing that you do for your health that you think is overlooked or undervalued by others?

Josh Whalen: Mm. It’s good I, I think, I think I get something physical in every day, whether it’s, whether it’s walking whether it’s lifting weights. I’ve found a love again for actually pushing weights and lifting. You know, after this, I’m going to go do some squats and some cleans and just get it out. But, you know, just being physical in some capacity every day. And I think that’s a super under valuable thing because I look at it in one periscope that it’s, it’s momentum. It’s, it allows me to continue to be physical in some some capacity if it’s playing pickleball, if it’s lifting weights, if it’s going for a long walk, something that just gets me outdoors and the body moving.

Dean Pohlman: Mm hmm. Yeah. That’s a great answer. What’s the most important activity you regularly do for your stress management?

Josh Whalen: Workout.

Dean Pohlman: OK, all right. Yeah, I, I, I hear that what’s the most stressful part of your day to day life?

Josh Whalen: Not sweating the small stuff. You know, it’s it’s a it’s a big statement, but it I think we, we go in these rabbit holes of B.S., And we don’t need to. I have to tell myself this, and my my father just passed away, and everything always works out. Like, look at all the small problems and the big problems that you’ve probably sweat sweated way too much, and somehow it just figures itself out.

Josh Whalen: And sometimes it may not be exactly what you want it, but a lot of times it’s just OK and you’ll get through it. So not sweating the small stuff and just being very, very cerebral in the fact that things always work out yes.

Dean Pohlman: That’s great advice. Let’s just now it’s do it.

Josh Whalen: That’s hard part. That’s nice.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah. I love those YouTube videos. They’re titled like, Watch This and you’ll Never Do This Again. I’m like, yeah, because we’re all just logical and emotions have nothing to do with how we make decisions or take action.

Josh Whalen: We are human. We are so human in the fact that, you know, you got to work on this stuff, man. Like meditating, for example, it’s a big thing. It takes work, it takes practice. You know, I saw this this thing on social media. Guy says, practice makes what and everybody goes, it’s it’s perfect. Right now, practice makes improvement.

Josh Whalen: And the guy who meditates for an hour every day didn’t start it an hour. And the guy who does a cold plunge didn’t start at 10 minutes. He started at one. You know, there’s, you know, it’s so powerful.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah. All right, last big question. What do you think is the last question? The big question, what do you think is the biggest challenge facing men and their wellbeing right now?

Josh Whalen: So that’s a good one. Honesty. I think being honest with themselves, assessing themselves and I get this question a lot, is why don’t men take better care of themselves? And I think there’s a lot of reasons. But I think from a very young age as a kid, we were told to tough it out, but put some dirt on it. You’ll get through it, you know, and we we may have lost a little bit of vulnerability. We may have lost a little bit of being able to to show some emotion. But I think I think the more honest you are about your health, the better you’re going to be. And listen, man, I have a stepfather who just got diagnosed with stage four colon cancer, and it was a badge of honor that he hadn’t seen a physician in 12 years.

Josh Whalen: That’s a big deal. And he wasn’t honest with himself. And I and I think we probably could have got ahead of that a long time. Ago before it even happened, if he was.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah, that’s it’s unfortunate, but yeah. I mean, it’s just it also brings up questions of like, well, what is being honest with our self mean true. And, you know, anyways, well cool Josh that was, that was awesome. Thanks for being honest and being vulnerable and talking about your life and your mission with blokes. And that was, that was really does really cool for me.

Dean Pohlman: Thanks another Max for joining you for you guys. Enjoyed it as well. Yeah, hopefully. Hopefully we can do this again. But guys, thanks for joining me. What’s the best way to check out blokes by the way?

Josh Whalen: Easy peasy, man. Blokes.co – that is our website and then Active Blokes is our Instagram handle. We do a lot of good things there, a lot of great content. If you want to help the ladies out, it’s choose Joy J. Oh, I thought SEO and their Instagram handle is Joy Women’s Wellness. So lots of good options for both people.

Dean Pohlman: Awesome, cool, short and sweet. Well guys, thanks for joining me on the Better Man podcast. Joshua, thanks again and I will hope this inspires you to be a better man. I see you on the next episode.

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