This breather show is about the epidemic and steady decline in the average level of testosterone in today’s male compared to years and decades past, and what you can do if you want to avoid tanking your testosterone levels.

You will learn about a variety of factors that influence testosterone, like the health of your relationship, certain kinds of exercise, and even engaging in anger, resentment, arguing, and nitpicking. You’ll also hear some truly brilliant, life-changing advice from John Gray and learn about the importance of doing certain testosterone boosting activities.

TIMESTAMPS:

There is an epidemic in a steady decline in the average level of testosterone in today’s male. [00:38]

Much of the loss is directly tied to unhealthy living as well as to a high stress level. [03:18]

Testosterone is not only what we think of as an aggression or high-performance hormone, it is a social status hormone as well. [06:29]

Females must have an appropriate level of testosterone in order to function at her best as well. [09:36]

There is a big distinction between visceral fat and subcutaneous fat. [10:44]

There is a huge difference between exercising the right way and exercising in a manner that is too stressful. [14:26]

Research is showing several things to avoid in order to focus on testosterone levels.  One is to get away from plastics and chemicals that go into your food or your body. Anything with a scent contains chemicals is offensive to the estrogen in your body. [16:58]

Sleep, recovery, rest, and downtime are so very important. [20:45]

Junk food is one of the driving forces of this global obesity epidemic. Especially the processed seed oils do harm. [24:57]

We have to have a healthy, loving, romantic relationship to be at our best hormonally. [29:12]

The wrong kinds of exercise can tank your hormones. [34:04]

QUOTES:  “Sitting is the new smoking.”

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TRANSCRIPT:

Brad (00:00):
Welcome to the B.rad podcast, where we explore ways to pursue peak performance with passion throughout life without taking ourselves too seriously. I’m Brad Kearns, New York Times bestselling author, former number three world ranked professional triathlete and Guinness World Record Masters athlete. I connect with experts in diet, fitness, and personal growth, and deliver short breather shows where you get simple actionable tips to improve your life right away. Let’s explore beyond the hype hacks, shortcuts, and science talk to laugh, have fun and appreciate the journey. It’s time to B.rad.

Brad (00:38):
When you engage and indulge in anger, resentment, arguing, and nitpicking, you are going to tank testosterone to the level, not seen with hardly any other thing. They stuff your face with junk food. It’s probably right up there in competition with\ crappy.

Brad (00:57):
Here’s a breather show. We need to take a deep breath and listen and reflect ’cause it’s pretty heavy. It’s about the epidemic and steady decline in the average level of testosterone in today’s male compared to years and decades past. This research, way back in 2007 from the Massachusetts male aging study delivered a very disturbing finding that the average testosterone level of today’s male is dropping at a steady rate of around 1% per year, dating back to the 1980s. So we have about 40 plus years of steady decline in average testosterone level. I’m not talking about the individual decline that a person experiences as they age throughout life. And that decline can actually be mitigated quite well with healthy lifestyle behavior so that you can drop as little as zero point something percent per year as you age. Of course, an 18-year-old or a 28-year-old is gonna have generally higher testosterone levels than a 38, 48, 58, 68-year-old.

Brad (02:15):
But that decline can be quite modest if you continue to do testosterone boosting activities and healthy lifestyle patterns. I’ve reported on my testosterone levels, which I test frequently, especially in the last seven years. I’ve tested about 30 times as I’ve been enamored with this subject and tracking different lifestyle behaviors. Noticing that there’s a significant fluctuation in one’s serum testosterone level if you test frequently over time. I’ve had results ranging from 564 to 1008. 564 is pretty darn good. It’s right there in the, uh, high to, uh, quite high level, let’s say in the top 20% I guess, for males in the 50 to 60 age group as which I’ve been testing during. Uh, and 1008 is off the charts, 99th percentile even for males in the 20 to 29 category. But that’s a pretty big variation generally.

Brad (03:18):
And I’d say my average or my mean is around 725, 750. So I’m in the high sixes up to the low eights usually, again, I have about 30 test results to report dating back to 2015. And I believe that fluctuation besides just being natural, is also closely tied to one’s stress level. And in my case, the majority of my stress impact on my testosterone levels in general health comes from my training patterns. So I believe when I’ve been pushing myself a bit up to the edge and perhaps a little over the edge that represents a decline in testosterone. So maybe I’m a little cooked and I go in there and I test in the five hundreds, low six hundreds, whatever. And when I’m feeling great and really pumped up and having good training patterns and good, uh, stress, rest patterns in general life, I’ll put up some of those big numbers like that.

Brad (04:17):
Epic 1008. And I probably should admit that I think I might’ve gamed that test a little bit because I remember going to do a high intensity track workout and then pedaling my bicycle over, right over to the blood lab on the heels of a really strenuous track session. And when you do, uh, high intensity sprint workout, you get a nice immediate boost in testosterone in the bloodstream. Obviously, the adaptive hormone flooding the bloodstream when you’re asking for peak performance. And so I was probably still benefiting from that track workout when they drew the blood. Nevertheless, I’m happy to report and I feel very confirmed that my lifestyle behaviors are working when I continue to maintain a high testosterone level that’s generally in the 95th percentile and above for males of my age. But as I pat myself on the back and boast about my 95th percentile score, we must recognize that we have the fattest sickest population in the history of humanity today in modern life in developed nations, especially United States of America.

Brad (05:30):
So when I say I’m in the 95th percentile that is competing against a talent pool that can by and large be described as pathetic, especially when it comes to testosterone. And the decline that we’ve seen since the 1980s is indicative of a lot of influences in modern life. And I’m gonna list some of the main ones, but generally speaking, the experts are observing this phenomenon and actually observing it across the globe, not just America. So we have research from countries such as Denmark, Japan, and USA, that testosterone levels are on the drop. And again, I should clarify that we’re talking about the average testosterone level of males at age 25 or age 35, or age 45 or age 55 back in the eighties, the nineties, the two thousands and so forth. So it’s of males of the same age have an average testosterone level that’s about 40% lower than it was back in the eighties.

Brad (06:29):
So you have less testosterone than your dad did when he was 42 or 52 or 32 or whatever, and he had less than grandpa did <laugh>. So if you are concerned, hopefully you’ll realize that testosterone besides being the essential male hormone and the distinguishing feature between males and females, is extremely important for all aspects of general health, energy, peak performance, and longevity. It’s also directly tied to your drive to perform and achieve and excel in life. My former podcast guest, Ashley Merriman, co-author of the book Top Dog, The Science of Winning and Losing describes testosterone as the social status hormone. So testosterone helps you to excel and be the best you can be in the community setting, not just in aggressive high performance behaviors that we often associate with testosterone, like the bodybuilder is building big muscles with all that testosterone.

Brad (07:40):
It’s also seen in research that Chess Masters have high blood levels of testosterone, in fact, higher than their vanquished opponents. An amazing study that Ashley detailed where they could almost predict the winner of the chess match because one had a higher level of testosterone, which makes them concentrate better, have gives them a bigger drive to excel and achieve. And, Ashley also told a interesting story of firefighters rushing into the building to convey how testosterone works across broad areas and attributes of peak performance. And so when the firetruck arrives at the burning building, a few of the guys jump off the truck, grab the heavy ax and rush to the door to bash it open and save the injured parties inside. And they’ll do the fireman’s carry, pick the person up, carry them out, and bring ’em over to the ambulance.

Brad (08:38):
And there the EMT is required to think clearly and act quickly to, for example dispense necessary medication and track the person’s vital signs and rush them off to the hospital. So the EMT is also swimming in high blood levels of testosterone, as is called upon for this peak performance effort of being calm, cool, and collected under pressure and dispensing the right medication and taking the proper notes and carefully transitioning the patient over to the staff in the er who are also in a high testosterone peak performance state. So, testosterone helps the firefighters bash in the door as it does help the EMT carefully keep records and, and keep track of medication as they’re rushing through the streets with the siren on. Pretty interesting story, how it works. It’s not just for uh, kicking ass in a jiujitsu match, okay?

Brad (09:36):
So testosterone is important for everything we do, especially that basic and fundamental drive to achieve and excel and be the best we can be. As you probably know, females have vastly lower levels of testosterone than males by a factor of around 20 to one 20 times less testosterone. But a female must have an appropriate level of testosterone in order to function at her best and have, for example, a healthy libido, a healthy competitive drive, and a healthy desire to immerse and be the best they can be in a community setting. So, social status hormone, as Ashley described, meaning that we are doing everything we can to be the best we can be as part of the community, as one of our fundamental basic biological drives that testosterone contributes to. So, we have this global problem today, and the experts are contending that in general, the decline in testosterone goes parallel with the rise in global obesity statistics.

Brad (10:44):
So the global obesity epidemic is what’s causing, or what’s a driving factor for causing that average testosterone decline. People are fatter and less healthy today, especially when it comes to the health destructive, visceral fat or belly fat that collects around the abdominal organs. And visceral fat is distinct from the other type of fat that accumulates on the body called subcutaneous fat. That’s the problem areas where we add fat to our thighs, our butt, our flabby arms or what have you. So subcutaneous fat is largely benign when it comes to a risk to your health or your metabolic function, while visceral fat is extremely destructive, because visceral fat secretes these agents called inflammatory cytokines that cause damage and destruction to your endocrine system and your immune system and your metabolic system. So the fact that visceral fat secretes agents into the bloodstream qualifies it to be considered a separate organ.

Brad (11:50):
It’s an actual organ, just like the thyroid gland or the pituitary gland releasing agents into the bloodstream. And so these inflammatory cytokines do all kinds of damage and destruction, including promoting the aromatization of testosterone into estrogen or the conversion of testosterone into estrogen. So once you accumulate a bit of a spare tire and start producing, start secreting inflammatory cytokines into the bloodstream from the spare tire fat, the visceral fat, you have a tendency to suppress healthy testosterone levels, thereby prompting more accumulation of health, destructive visceral fat, because low testosterone status is adverse health, adverse health status will promote the accumulation of more visceral fat. What is another driving factor in the accumulation of visceral fat and the suppression of healthy testosterone production would be chronic patterns of overstress. So the chronic overproduction of stress hormones, you’ve probably heard about the preeminent stress hormone called cortisol, high cortisol levels and antagonize testosterone.

Brad (13:07):
Okay? So when you have chronically high stress levels, you have a chronic suppression of testosterone. Now, I described my sprint workout where I obviously spiked the stress hormones in order to perform. That happens every time you do a high intensity workout. But the distinguishing feature is that brief, appropriate bouts of high stress, high stress hormone production are adaptive. In other words, your body becomes stronger and more resilient from appropriate stressors, such as a sprint workout or any type of fitness experience that’s properly contemplated, such as a high intensity strength training session that is not too challenging, uh, not exhausting, not lasting for too long, where the stress hormones are coursing through the bloodstream for too long. But you know, get in and get out, go hard and go home. And that is, uh, honoring our ancestral experience, as we’ve talked about with the Primal Blueprint Fitness, uh, protocol for so many years that the human requires a blend of frequent low level movement exercise, basically walking as the centerpiece, brief intense strength training sessions, resistance exercise, and then occasional brief all out sprints.

Brad (14:26):
So you get that burst of adaptive hormones like testosterone and human growth hormone when you do a sprint workout. And then the sprint workout’s over and your body is able to quickly recalibrate back to homeostasis, where those testos where those, uh, those stress hormones now normalize after whatever the 18 minutes that you spent in total doing your sprint workout. And now that they’re going back to normal, the testosterone and the growth hormone is circulating in the bloodstream and allowed to act upon target organs or be drawn from your blood and put up a high score at the blood lab. So appropriately, brief, stressful events to make you stronger and more resilient, and getting away from the chronic stress that is so destructive to health. Also, compare, contrast the chronic overproduction of cortisol suppressing testosterone and causing the accumulation of visceral fat versus the appropriate stress inputs from exercise where you’re sending the genetic signals to build muscle, reduce excess body fat, improve immune function, rather than suppress a immune immune function that might happen with chronic endurance exercise or overly stressful exercise patterns in general.

Brad (15:39):
So there’s a huge difference between exercising the right way and exercising in a manner and living in a manner that is too stressful. So we need to correct this decline if the male species wants to continue to thrive on earth. And I’ve also read some disturbing research about sperm count going hand in hand. Of course, same driving factors that are lowering testosterone are lowering sperm count, but the stats on sperm count are even more disturbing, where the average sperm count is going down at a very distressing level to the extent that the prediction from the article suppose that in 50 years time or something like that, there would be no sperm count and the human would vanish from the face of the earth because we would be not be able to reproduce. Obviously, that’s kind of a dramatization of a predicted future, but it’s certainly valid to look at a declining line on a graph and say, Hey, if we don’t do something about this, and the sperm count continues to decline and decline, and we continue to <laugh> microwave food and plastic containers and get affected by all the estrogenic influences in our environment, we’re in big trouble.

Brad (16:58):
And we’re seeing this now with the research on global testosterone levels. So I’m gonna get into, um, four big ones that I want you to really focus on and a big takeaway, but I also should put in there that exposure to environmental estrogenic compounds. ’cause a lot of people are trumping that as a big factor in the decline of testosterone, besides that global obesity epidemic and the accumulation of excess visceral fat. But I wanna focus on stuff you can do right now. So of course, you’ve gotta get away from plastics and chemicals that go into your food or on your body. So the plastic water bottles, especially, uh, eating and, and serving food and styrofoam or plastic containers, heating them up would be the absolute worst thing you can do, because then plastic leeches into the food. So make a concerted effort to, for example, get a stainless steel water bottle and drink out of that and use non-offensive containers for everything that you eat.

Brad (17:57):
And then when you go around your home and you look at the cleaners and the detergents that you put in your clothing, that’s gonna go on your body. So that’s an important one to get the eco-friendly, uh, products that don’t have the offensive chemicals in there. Same with anything of course that you put on your skin, such as cosmetics, scents, perfumes, deodorants, things like that. I’ve talked a bit about that on the show and had some experts on. I’ll have a show with Tanya Teske talking about correcting your home environment and optimizing it to get rid of all these offensive chemicals. But a quick cheat sheet here to get some good progress in this area without having to go into deep dive is to realize that anything with a scent is quite likely offensive and has an estrogenic effect on your body.

Brad (18:52):
So these environmental estrogens, or environmental endocrine disruptors is the term that you might use. You might hear used for things that go on your skin, on your body, or into your mouth, your food. The endocrine disruptors are, one of ’em is anything with a scent, you can be sure that it contains chemicals. Of course, there are some things with a natural scent, like the deodorant that I buy from Bordeaux kitchen is vanilla. If you’re watching on the screen, I’m showing my little tube of, uh, vanilla deodorant that I got from Tanya Tekas Bordeaux kitchen page. And that vanilla comes from actual vanilla rather than a chemical that makes it smell like vanilla. But when you open up the bottle or the box of tide detergent, and you smell whatever it says on the label, the clean, fresh scent on your clothes or on your bedsheets, you are breathing in chemicals that are disrupting the endocrine system in your body.

Brad (19:51):
So anything with the smell is bad news, unless it is a verifiable, super eco-friendly product that you bought at a natural foods market that has a nice scent, such as the essential oils that a lot of ’em are most of ’em are made from natural, but some of the cheap ones are putting in chemical scents. But let’s say good candles without the, uh, offensive agents in the candles and good detergents and things that you’re putting on your on your clothes and on your skin will make a big effort toward, uh, minimizing that exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals. Obviously, once you leave your house and you start to engage with life, you’re gonna be exposed to these chemicals every which way. So you just wanna do the best you can, especially at home when you have that control. Do not pour any more Tide into the drawer on your clothes washer.

Brad (20:45):
Get a product that does not not have a scent, or if you insist on having some fresh scent, go and, and source, you know, these companies that are dedicated to providing clean products. One of my favorites is Dr. Bronner’s and the Castile soap that they’ve sold for decades as a great alternative to the scented soaps like Iris Spring or what have you that, you know, have that chemical compound that is, that is making it smell minty fresh. Okay? So, here’s some other ones with lifestyle behaviors that you can use right away to help support healthy testosterone production. And I’m gonna put sleep as number one, and I should elaborate, not just that evening sleep period and getting enough hours, but we’ll call it sleep, rest, recovery and downtime. When we have this constant hyperconnectivity with the mobile device, we interfere with all the rest, recovery and downtime that we’ve had for our entire existence for 2 million years as humans, right?

Brad (21:46):
There’s always been downtime in the day. Your grandpa, who had that high testosterone level can remember coming home from work and taking kicking off his shoes and sitting on a rocking chair in the porch and maybe talking to passers spy and living that quaint old slower moving life than we have today, where we’re going from one screen to the other, from a work screen to an entertainment screen, and not giving the brain, uh, time to disengage and breathe with that intentional nasal diaphragmatic breathing and trigger parasympathetic activity than constantly being locked in to that fight or flight. Sympathetic dominance that is required of us in hectic, high stress, competitive, modern life. So it starts with that fantastic evening sleep period, and getting the sleep you need, and also finding ways to build in more rest, recovery and downtime into your lifestyle patterns.

Brad (22:39):
I’ve talked about sleep plenty and the desire to wake up feeling refreshed and energized in the morning without an alarm clock near sunrise. So whatever it takes to get there, I don’t like people spouting off a certain hour that you need seven and a half hours of sleep according to the research, because I think there’s a tremendous amount of individual variation. My wife, Mia Moore, sleeps significantly less than I do, and is no worse for the wear and has no signs of sleep deficiency. But if I tried to hang with her and those extra hours that she stays up working on a real estate deal or whatever, I would be in big, big trouble. So I have a high sensitivity and a higher need for sleep than the person that’s in the bed with me. And so we have to make that work one way or the other.

Brad (23:27):
I have great earplugs, blindfolds, ocean sound machines and everything else, and everyone’s gotta honor their own individual need for sleep. I feel best when I’m at least nine hours per night, and that’s what I usually get in conjunction with really challenging workouts. The next day I’ll have even increased need for sleep where it’s maybe nine and a half. And if my stress level and my training output is low, I can get fine with, let’s say, on the eight and a half to nine side. But if you start getting me down to eight, which is what is widely recommended, is optimal, that’s simply not enough for me. That would be like 10 30 is my usual bedtime. I don’t like waking up at 6:30 anymore. It’s probably a combination of my age plus my insistence on doing these challenging workouts at an advanced age where I need a lot of sleep.

Brad (24:23):
So how do you determine you’re getting enough sleep? You wanna wake up feeling pretty good? I’m not saying you’re gonna jump outta bed and jump for joy because I too, uh, sometimes wake up slowly and have to drag down the hall and turn on the Mitre red light panel and expose my eyes and my body to red light, and that helps me get a little boost so I can wake up and then proceed into my morning exercise routine. But get your sleep and your rest patterns handled and prioritize them, realizing that all other health aspirations flow downstream from adequate sleep.

Brad (24:57):
Next, we have junk food, which is one of the driving forces of this global obesity epidemic and how junk food so disturbs your metabolic function, especially your ability to burn fat efficiently yourself, and manufacture energy and stabilize energy. And so when you have dysfunctional fat burning caused by the routine ingestion of refined industrial seed oils, listened to my show with Cate Shanahan about that going into detail and also, shows with Jay Feldman talking about how these, these agents and processed foods, uh, prompt the release of internal toxins, lipopolysaccharide, namely. And when you secrete these agents in the digestive tract, they interfere with your body’s ability to generate energy internally. Therefore, you become sort of dependent on additional servings of processed foods to get a quick spike in blood sugar, a quick boost of energy, and then this roller coaster of energy highs and lows throughout the day from consuming low octane food. If you go to bradkearns.com and download the New and Improved B.rad Nutrition Guide, PDF, right there on the homepage, you can download this beautiful, colorful presentation, one page presentation, and print it out and put it up on your fridge, and it’ll help you navigate to the most nutritious diet you can find and prioritizing the world’s most nutritious foods.

Brad (26:31):
And they’re in a tiered ranking system by category. So you have your oily cold water fish, and you have your grass fed beef, and you have your super foods like fruit and oysters and salmon, eggs, and liver, and it’s a great little handy guide to make sure that you’re navigating to a really nutrient dense diet that’s, I guess you would describe as ancestral inspired, animal-based, protein centric, all those great terms to show that you are sourcing the true super foods of the planet, like pastured eggs and grass fed beef, and all the other good stuff, oily cold water, fish appropriate, uh, doses of nutrient dense carbohydrates like fresh fruit and your favorite vegetables, uh, tubers, uh, my things that I throw in there for some props like bean to bar dark chocolate and so forth. So, check out that guide, print it out, and clean up your act.

Brad (27:23):
Basically, if there’s processed foods still around in your cupboards, in your refrigerator, get rid of ’em because you, again, you gotta control your home environment. We know when we dine out that we’re gonna get doses of refined industrial seed oils, because most restaurants ranging from junky fast food, roadside stuff, all the way up to the popular chains across America and even the fine dining, the finest restaurants use these seed oils routinely in food production. Even Chipotle, which does a lot of good things like sourcing local meat and having, uh, a nice clean menu. They cook their meat in rice bran oil which is on the, uh, the hateful aid as Dr. Cate Shanahan calls them, especially when these oils get heated up and turn into oxidized foods that cause damage to the cellular structure and the ability to burn body fat.

Brad (28:16):
So, clean up your home environment and, uh, especially get rid of what are widely regarded as, uh, the most offensive foods like the refined industrial seed oils, corn, canola, soybean, sunflower, safflower, and so forth, not only in the bottle that people often cook with, but also on all the packaged, processed and frozen food that contain these oils in them. That’ll be going a long way toward helping turn the corner on this steady, lifelong accumulation of visceral fat that we often see in people as they age, often to be seen as normal, that you just get a little bit more of a spare tire, more a spare tire every decade. But this is the ultimate battle that we have to fight to get rid of that spare tire so that we can continue with hormone optimization and healthy levels of testosterone rather than accelerated decline in testosterone levels.

Brad (29:12):
So that is number two. Sleep is number one. Cleaning up your diet is number two. And here’s a fun one, uh, inspired by my many shows with relationship experts like Dr. John Gray and Jillian Turecki, Susan Bratton, the Sexpert. We have to have a healthy, loving, romantic relationship to be at our best hormonally. So you get the best benefits and the best longevity boost from a healthy, loving relationship. John Gray cited research on one of his interviews that a healthy marriage healthy partnership can deliver an eight year boost in longevity, which is beyond any other attribute reported. We might want to dig deeper and argue that, uh, adhering to a fitness program can also give you an eight year boost in longevity and some of the other, uh, big pillars, you know, maintaining that muscle mass and muscle strength throughout life.

Brad (30:12):
But look, what could be more important than family, friends, loved ones, starting with your romantic partnership. There you go. So, make it work. Make it a priority. And also realize that on the flip side, a shitty relationship can be one of the biggest killers of hormone status. And one of the biggest ways to tank testosterone, diminish your longevity prospects and result in chronic overproduction of stress hormones because you have a stressful, dysfunctional relationship. And remember I said cortisol antagonizes testosterone as it does estrogen. So, as John Gray describes in great detail, the female wants to be in wonderful optimal estrogen status. The male wants to be in optimal testosterone status. And you do that with a winning, loving, caring, fun, adventurous, exciting, supportive relationship. On the flip side, when you engage and indulge in anger, resentment, arguing, and nitpicking, you are going to tank testosterone to the level not seen with hardly any other thing.

Brad (31:25):
I think stuff your face with junk food, it’s probably right up there in competition with crappy relationship dynamics. So remember John Gray’s essential assignments to act like a kung fu master at all times. Maintain control of your emotions. Don’t engage in destructive arguments. Do not engage. He says, when you’re feeling a negative emotional charge, do not speak <laugh>. What brilliant advice, life-changing advice. Instead, go off and do testosterone boosting activities Go off into your cave as John Gray first published in 1992. The advice still holds really strongly today, and that is somewhat in conflict or in opposition with some of the more woke relationship advice these days where we demand that the male be more communicative and honest and share feelings and be vulnerable. And if your feelings were hurt at the party because your partner was talking to Gary too long, in the corner, you can say on the drive home, honey, can we talk about something?

Brad (32:29):
Oh, sure. What do you, what’s on your mind? Well my feelings were a little hurt ’cause it seemed like you were talking to Gary for a long time in the corner, and, and I was standing there by myself over on the other side of the room. And I looked at you a couple times and, and, and you didn’t look at me and, and my feelings are hurt. John Gray says, when you say, when the male says, my feelings were hurt, this is, quote, death to a relationship. Your female partner wants you to be the badass, the kung fu master who is calm, cool, collected, confident, and is not going to share if his feelings were hurt because you were talking so long to Gary at the party. Maybe you can go home and look in the mirror and ask if that could perhaps be your issue rather than an innocent conversation.

Brad (33:13):
Sorry to pick on Gary, but it fits right now. Just, you know, stay kung fu master man. You get the point here, and especially when you perhaps are getting drawn into a destructive argument, realize that sometimes the female way to engage is her honoring her basic biological drive to talk things to death that might not work for you. So understand your limits and say, um, I’d rather not talk about this further, but I hear you, I understand you. And take all those other detailed tips from John Gray that he’s dispensed, uh, in all four of our fantastic interviews. So, manage relationships as your top priority and avoid that conflict and those destructive dysfunctional patterns that we see so frequently in daily life.

Brad (34:04):
Finally, the wrong kind of exercise can really tank your hormones and accelerate your rate of aging rather than delay it or optimize it. So when you engage in that chronic exercise patterns that we talk about at such detail in the book Born to Walk, this is where you’re going to suppress your endocrine function, suppress testosterone, suppress your immune function promote chronic inflammation rather than inflammatory balance and all kinds of destructive, destructive things. Even increasing cardiovascular disease risk factors when you overstress and over exercise the heart. So we wanna steer clear and run screaming away from any type of exercise pattern that even has a whiff of being overly stressful and chronic. And that can sometimes be a tough one for the highly motivated, driven, goal-oriented type, a competitive person who wants to do more workouts to get more fitter, more faster and so forth. And I’ve always tried to carefully manage my exercise stress level and screw it up over and over again throughout my life because I have that competitive edge and I want to improve and make those incremental improvements.

Brad (35:20):
So I’m thinking, well maybe I should go do a training session today, and I feel fine during the training session. And then I learn over the next 24, 36, 48 hours, Ooh, I think I pushed it a little far over the edge there. I hadn’t quite recovered, and even though I felt fine during the training session, now I feel crappy. So I have to go back and review the calendar and the patterns and make more sensible decision next time. Always learning from experience. I’d say I have a lot of experience and a lot of knowledge and awareness on the situation of how to properly train for competitive events, but it’s a constant challenge too. So I’m never going to think that I know too much and I’m always on the exploration to learn more information and learn more about myself from experience.

Brad (36:07):
So steer clear of chronic exercise. And then on the other side, if you don’t do enough exercise and enough general everyday movement, you will cause really significant metabolic and hormonal problems. This is the scientific body of research known as sitting is the new smoking. So we have the extremes on one side and we have the couch potatoes on the other side, and both of them meet in the realm, the waiting room of low testosterone. So again, to repeat, the ideal approach for hormone optimization is plenty of low level movement and extensive walking every day. Brief intense strength training sessions. The primal blueprint pyramid, communicated that you do a couple good strength training sessions per week lasting from 10 to 30 minutes where you’re doing resistance exercise with full body functional movements, big muscle groups, and then occasional brief all out sprints.

Brad (37:04):
Once every seven to 10 days is plenty, ideally, of course, sprinting on flat ground for the bone density benefits and the weight loss benefits. But you can also sprint on low or no impact options such as a stationary bike, roaring machine and so forth. So if you hit those four, you’re gonna go a long way toward optimizing your hormones and steering clear of the steady decline that we’re seeing. Again, sleep as your number one priority, cleaning up your diet, managing your relationships and nurturing positive, loving relationships, and also engaging in the right kind of exercise and avoiding the disasters of chronic exercise as well as insufficient movement and fitness attention. Yeah, let’s turn the corner, man. Let’s turn the corner starting with listeners to this show. We’re gonna go in there and get some blood tests, see how our testosterone is doing, and look to increase those numbers over time as we make more and more tweaks and incremental adjustments to our lifestyle to be healthier and fitter.

Brad (38:10):
And boy, I mean, you can Google and spend five minutes looking at the benefits of healthy hormone status and high testosterone levels and carrying those through the advancing decades when you, of course, you will get a steady modest decline. But one of the research studies I read said that they’ve seen in fit individuals a decline of like 0.8% per year. That’s fantastic, and that’s certainly acceptable for someone who’s 60 to have 40% less testosterone than someone who’s 20 provided they are still high and, and feeling great, right? So to learn more, you can download my ebook called Becoming a Modern Day Mofo at bradkearns.com. And I have these nine lifestyle assignments going into more detail on the four that I talked about here, and some other fun stuff to help you with that testosterone optimization. Thank you for listening, watching. Please send an email to podcast@bradventures.com. I’d love to cover your questions and your comments and your feedback, especially as we go into q and a shows. So thanks again.

Speaker 4 (39:21):
Thank you so much for listening to the B.rad podcast. We appreciate all feedback and suggestions. Email, podcast@bradventures.com and visit brad kearns.com to download five free eBooks and learn some great long cuts to a longer life. How to optimize testosterone naturally, become a dark chocolate connoisseur and transition to a barefoot and minimalist shoe lifestyle.

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