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Mariel Segarra (4:21)

One today you have an episode on how men and everyone really can nurture their physical identity. So what does that mean, physical identity?

Brett McKay (4:31)

So we are moving creatures, right? When we're a baby, we learn how to crawl. Eventually we learn how to walk, and then when we're kids, we run and play. The problem is, you develop this idea when you're a kid. It's like you're either an athlete or you're not an athlete. I'm sure everyone remembers when they were in elementary school or middle school, getting picked last for the dodgeball team, playing Little League baseball, and just realizing, oh, I'm not good at this. And so what happens is when you're a kid, you're like, well, I'm not an athlete, so I'm just not going to move at all.

Mariel Segarra (5:06)

Yeah.

Brett McKay (5:06)

Which I think is a shame because again, you don't have to be an athlete to move your body. And so this idea of physical identity is just seeing yourself as a creature that moves and it has a vitality. Being a person with a physical identity doesn't mean I have to Play a sport. Like, you can move your body doing other activities. You can do yoga, you can take walks. You can do all sorts of things.

Mariel Segarra (5:31)

Totally. You also suggest that people pick a physical activity they enjoy because that's what they're going to keep doing.

Brett McKay (5:38)

Yes.

Mariel Segarra (5:39)

How do you actually find it, though?

Brett McKay (5:41)

I always say if you haven't found the physical activity that you enjoyed, you haven't tried it yet. Take classes, watch a YouTube video. There's a physical activity or a physical practice out there that you're gonna love.

Mariel Segarra (5:55)

Yeah, I learned that this summer was softball. I had never really played before and work was doing some games, like NPR does a media league, very casually. And I just, I showed up. I played second base. I loved it. Now I've played 12 games. This year. I'm in.

Brett McKay (6:12)

Like, that's awesome.

Mariel Segarra (6:13)

I joined another league. I'm really into it. Who would have thought?

Brett McKay (6:18)

Yeah. So, yeah, take the jiu jitsu class that you've kind of had that hunch. Maybe I should try it. Like, just. Just follow that hunch and give it a go. And, you know, worst case scenario, you're out an hour of your time.

Mariel Segarra (6:33)

Okay, men and everyone, really. Takeaway 1. Don't forget that you have a physical identity. Whether you were good at sports in high school or not, whether you like them now or not, there are so many ways to move your body that you might not have considered. Go for hikes. Run around after your dog or your friend's dog. Try live action role play, also known as larping. Go rock climbing or bouldering. Try geocaching, which is basically an outdoor treasure hunt. Throw around a frisbee. Or play my favorite impromptu game at the office, tossing a highlighter to a friend while standing on one foot. If your office is chill and it's the end of the day, do a desk chair race. Go ice skating or snowshoeing. Play paintball or laser tag. Climb a tree, dig a hole in the sand. Okay, so another episode of yours that we loved is about muscle power and explosiveness. What do we mean by that?

Brett McKay (7:29)

So muscle power is strength expressed quickly. So you use muscle power whenever you sprint, whenever you jump, whenever you skip, or whenever you're about to fall down. You have to try to catch yourself before you you hit the ground.

Mariel Segarra (7:44)

And we tend to lose muscle power or explosiveness as we age, right?

Brett McKay (7:49)

That's correct. Between the ages of 65 and 90, like, on average, people lose about 3.5% of their muscle power per year.

Mariel Segarra (7:58)

Okay.

Brett McKay (7:59)

So it drops off faster than strength. And the Reason why it drops off so fast is that we just don't use it. And the thing with muscle power is your nervous system is also involved. And so in order for you to express power, you also have to train that your nervous system. Right. And so if your nervous system isn't used to contracting your muscles as quickly as possible, you're gonna lose that ability.

Mariel Segarra (8:23)

Yeah. And then when you need it, when you need to run really fast cause somebody's chasing you or for whatever reason to catch the bus, then you pull a hammy.

Brett McKay (8:35)

Right? You pull a hammy. Or you just don't have that oomph. A common one. Like why it's really important for particularly older people right. In their 60s or 70s, you use muscle power. It's one of the things you do to catch yourself when you're falling.

Mariel Segarra (8:47)

Yeah. Okay, well, how can we hold onto our muscle power? How can we get it back?

Brett McKay (8:54)

There's easy things you can do. Jumping rope is actually a great way to train your lower body muscle power. Cause you're just hopping up and down quickly. You can do squat jumps.

Mariel Segarra (9:04)

So.

Brett McKay (9:05)

So, right. You go down to a squat position and then when you get to the bottom, you're going to explode out of there and jump as high as you can. Just like do two sets of five before your usual workout. You can do more sprinting. Play as take up a sport where you have to express power. I think softball is a great example of that. You can do medicine ball slams. Um, so just get a medicine ball that your gym might have and just throw it on the ground as hard as you can. You do plyometric pushups. So it's. You just do a regular pushup. You're just going to explode up until your hands come a little off the ground.

Mariel Segarra (9:37)

I've been doing stuff like that. It feels good.

Brett McKay (9:40)

It does.

Mariel Segarra (9:41)

You can start to feel the difference.

Brett McKay (9:43)

That's right.

Mariel Segarra (9:46)

Takeaway 2. Muscle power, also called explosiveness, allows us to express our strength quickly. It helps us run, jump and catch ourselves so we don't fall over and we lose it when we don't use it. Especially as we age. Some ways to hold on to it. Jump rope, squat jumps, ply plyometric push ups, medicine ball snaps, and sports that require throwing and hitting. Okay, so next up, let's talk about testosterone. You did an episode on this for men. What does it mean to have a healthy level of testosterone?

Brett McKay (10:19)

So testosterone is important for men and women. So it's important for bone density, it's important for muscle mass strength. It's Important for sexual health. So libido and sexual function. Mood. Testosterone plays a big role in mood in men.

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Mariel Segarra (10:38)

And should men be getting tested for their testosterone levels regularly or how does that, how do you go about finding this out?

Brett McKay (10:44)

Anyway, so you want to see if you have low symptoms of testosterone so that those common low symptoms are low or no. Libido, erectile dysfunction, you aren't sleeping well, Low mood, fatigued, like you're after a workout. It takes you a couple days to recover from a hard workout. Brain fog. If you have those symptoms, then you would want to go to talk to your doctor about getting a testosterone test. Because, like, what happens is, let's say you're a 35 year old guy, you're feeling good, libido's great, you recover well from workouts. And, and you're scrolling Instagram and you see an ad for like, oh, get your testosterone tested, know your number. You're like, oh, okay, I want to go do that. And you do it and you get the test back and it shows that your total testosterone kind, it's on the low end. But this guy, he, he feels great, like he has no symptoms of low testosterone. If he saw that test and was like, oh, it's low, I must get on trt, then like, well, no, like, like, how are your symptoms? How are you feeling?

Mariel Segarra (11:47)

Yeah, maybe that's normal for you.

Brett McKay (11:49)

That's normal for you.

Mariel Segarra (11:50)

Maybe this is what your body needs.

Brett McKay (11:52)

Yeah, exactly, exactly. There's a saying in the medical field. You want to treat the patient, not the number. And I feel like what a lot of consumers do who are doing these blood tests on their own, like they're treating the number instead of themselves.

Mariel Segarra (12:04)

Okay. Yeah. And what are some of the common treatments for low testosterone?

Brett McKay (12:09)

A good doctor will first start off with lifestyle interventions. So if you have symptoms of low testosterone, they're going to look at your lifestyle and ask you, okay, are you exercising regularly? No. Well, you need to start doing that. Are you overweight? Yes. Okay, well, we need to lose some weight because body fat aromatizes testosterone into estrogen. It's a fancy way of saying, converts into estrogen, so it can actually reduce your testosterone but increase your estrogen levels. They're going to look at, how's your sleep? Are you sleeping well? No, I'm not. Okay, let's work on your sleep. So I would say like doing lifestyle interventions, like pulling those big levers of health. First try that and then if not, then you can talk to your doctor about potentially doing hormone replacement therapy.

Mariel Segarra (12:57)

Takeaway 3. If you're having symptoms like low libido, erectile dysfunction, low mood, long lasting fatigue after a workout, brain fog or bad sleep, talk to your doctor. They may recommend a testosterone test, among other things. I think one thing that you point out in your reporting on this is that it's not just about testosterone. Like, you also wanted your testosterone to be imbalanced with the other hormones in your body.

Brett McKay (13:27)

Yeah. So hormones, man, you can get so in the weeds with this stuff because hormones are incredibly complex. Because you also think about estrogen. Men also have estrogen. It's important for their health. It's important for heart health. It's also important hormone in libido and sexual health. And so if estrogen gets too low, well, that's not good. But then if it gets too high, well, that's not good either. I mean, so I think that's why once you, when you're looking at hormone replacement therapy, you got to have a doctor, I would have someone who's an expert on this stuff guiding you through this because as you start introducing exogenous testosterone into your body, like these other hormonal systems are also going to be affected and you have to like keep an eye on that as well.

Mariel Segarra (14:11)

After the break, we'll have more men's health tips from Brett McKay.

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Mariel Segarra (15:43)

With Brett McKay, host of the Art of Manliness. Let's shift a little bit and talk about mental health. You have written about depression, your personal experience with it, and also what the latest research says. What have you found about how depression tends to manifest in men specifically?

Brett McKay (16:02)

Oftentimes depression in men can show up as anger or irritability or alcoholism or workaholism. They spend more time working and so that's why depression in men often gets overlooked.

Additional Sponsor/Announcer (16:18)

Yeah.

Mariel Segarra (16:19)

And I feel like it can be harder to talk about if you're a man. It might be less accepted.

Brett McKay (16:25)

Yeah, yeah. You're supposed to have your stuff together. And also I think a lot of guys, they just, I think even a lot of people, not just this is not just a guy problem, a lot of people just don't even know the emotions that they're experiencing. Yeah, they don't know how to label it. Like they, they feel the thing but they don't know what it is so they can't talk about it.

Mariel Segarra (16:41)

Yeah. Well, you learned some research backed tips on how men can manage their depression. Can you share a few of those?

Brett McKay (16:49)

Yeah. So the big one is exercise, physical exercise. The research suggests that it is as effective as antidepressants and talk therapy. It's amazing. It does so much not only for our physical health, but for our mental health as well. So you know, I say if you're a guy struggling with depression, like start exercising, like it's one of the best things you can do. Socializing is another one that can help out a lot. Just being around people, talking with them can do a lot of things to help alleviate your depressive symptoms. Getting enough sleep is an important one. Eating a nutritious diet is important. If you just do the things that you, you do to be a healthy person, like it's going to help you manage your, your depression as well.

Mariel Segarra (17:40)

Yeah. Is there anything that you would share from your own experience with it?

Brett McKay (17:44)

Yeah, I mean, so I've had depression, I've had some severe moments of it, but you know, kind of just dealing with a general melancholy for most of my adult life. And I think the thing that helped me the most is I stopped looking at my depression or my melancholy as this thing I have to fix that can cause a lot of frustration to people. Say like, I'm sad, I need to be happy. So I'm going to do all these things to, to quit being sad and being happy all the time. That's never going to happen. Like there's no silver bullet for curing your depression. Like it's going to be part of your life. And how can it be part of your life so that it doesn't get in the way of you living a flourishing life? And I also think just resetting your expectations about happiness. I think in America, we have this idea of happiness being like you're in this chipper, good mood all the time. But going back to my, my love of classical culture, like the ancient Greeks had, their, their idea of happiness was eudaimonia, or just flourishing. It's like just living a good life. And you can do that even though you might not feel super ecstatic all the time. Like, you can have good relationships, you can do good work, you can be involved in your community even if you don't feel the best. And yeah, by changing those expectations, like, I'm just like, I'm less hard on myself. And so whenever I'm feeling like, like, okay, something's, I'm kind of going to like a not great place. I just do the things I know they'll make me feel better. Exercise, get together with some friends, go sit in the sauna, or go sit in the sun. Oh man, the sun. Sun can help out a lot.

Mariel Segarra (19:30)

Takeaway 4. Depression doesn't always look like sadness. For some men, it might look like anger or aggression, working too much or engaging in risky behaviors. Research shows that regular exercise can be as effective in treating depression as antidepressants or talk therapy. But this doesn't have to be either. Or exercise alongside medication and cognitive behavioral therapy leads to even better outcomes. Having positive social experiences might also help, and so can eating a healthy diet. A Mediterranean diet has been linked to lower rates of depression. But depression and treating it can look different for everybody. If you're dealing with it, talk to your doctor about what treatments make sense for you. Sort of along these lines. Like you talked about the importance of socializing. Getting outside and talking to other people can really lift your mood. And you actually have an episode about what you call the good stress of socializing. What do you mean, that it's a good stress?

Brett McKay (20:30)

Yes. This is with Jeffrey Hall. He's a professor at the University of Kansas who studies friendships and communication. And he talks about the health benefits that come from socializing. Right. It can help reduce your dementia. It can help reduce mild cognitive decline. It can help with mood like depression or anxiety. It can even help our physical health. People who have strong social ties, they tend to get sick less. And it's like, why is that? Why is socializing so good for our mental and physical health? And Jeffrey talks about how it's basically socializing Helps reduce chronic stress, which makes sense. We're designed to go to the group whenever we're stressed out, so we can just be like, oh, my gosh, I'm feeling really bad right now, but I'm with these other people. It feels good to be with these people. Like, they got my back. We're all in this together. That feels good. But the thing about socializing that Jeffrey points out is that socializing itself can be stressful.

Mariel Segarra (21:29)

Yeah.

Brett McKay (21:29)

And why is socializing stressful? Well, people can be awful sometimes, right? You're having a conversation with someone and someone says something really rude or inappropriate. People misunderstand you. There's awkward silences. You don't know where the conversation is going to go. And also, just like, planning to socialize can be stressful. And because it's so stressful and there's so much friction, oftentimes we decide, you know what? I'm just gonna stay in this weekend. I'm not gonna do anything. I'm just gonna watch Netflix. So socializing is weird thing. So it reduces chronic stress in the long, long term, but in the short term, it causes stress. And Jeffrey makes the analogy to exercise, because exercise is kind of the same thing. So in the long term, it reduces stress, it reduces inflammation. But in the short term, exercise is unpleasant and actually increases inflammation. And so exercise is a, what we call a hormetic stressor, A good stressor. You need to do a little bit of it. That acute stress to get the benefits of the reduction in chronic stress. Same thing with socializing.

Mariel Segarra (22:40)

It feels like getting the reps in.

Brett McKay (22:43)

Yeah, I think that's a great, like, the idea of doing reps. I start seeing my chances to socialize as, like, little mini workouts, like, or reps, like, oh, here's a chance to exercise. My socialization. Muscle.

Mariel Segarra (22:59)

Takeaway 5. Take advantage of the good stress of socializing. Yes, it can feel stressful in the moment, but it can also lower your levels of stress in the long term. I started a monthly dinner with a small group of friends, and we've just done our first one. We're about to do our second one. But the point for me was really to ground my community, because I have community. But, like, I wanted to ground it in routine.

Brett McKay (23:29)

Yeah, I think it's a great idea of having the standing thing. I mean, one of the big things that get in the way of people actually getting together with people is, like, you spend so much time in those groups, group chats, where you're trying to coordinate schedules. And so you just have to Accept the fact that not everyone's going to be able to come.

Mariel Segarra (23:44)

Yeah.

Brett McKay (23:45)

But just say, look, here's when we're doing it. We're always going to do it this time at this place. If you can make it, fantastic. If not, we'll love to have you the next time. I've had these standing sort of things with some groups that I've done. Like I was a part of a book club of just a bunch of guys here in town and the event was every other week on Thursday night at 8 o' clock and it's like, well, you can make it fantastic. If not, that's okay.

Mariel Segarra (24:10)

See you next time.

Sponsor/Announcer (24:11)

Yeah.

Mariel Segarra (24:11)

Yeah. Brett McKay, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Brett McKay (24:18)

Well, thanks for having me. This has been an absolute pleasure. It was so much fun.

Mariel Segarra (24:21)

Yes. Let's do it again sometime. Okay, time for a recap. Takeaway 1 Don't forget that you have a physical identity, whether you were good at sports in high school or not, whether you like them now or try out some new ways of moving your body and find out what you like. Takeaway 2 Muscle power can help us run, jump and catch ourselves so we don't fall over and we lose it when we don't use it, especially as we age. Some ways to hold onto it are to jump rope, do squat jumps, do plyometric push ups, do medicine ball snaps, and play sports that require throwing and hitting. Takeaway 3 if you're having symptoms like low libido, erectile dysfunction, low mood, long lasting fatigue after working out, brain fog and bad sleep, talk to your doctor. They might recommend a testosterone test and they'll likely start by suggesting lifestyle changes before they recommend any kind of hormone replacement therapy. Takeaway 4 Research shows that regular exercise is as effective in treating depression as antidepressants or talk therapy. Having positive social experiences can also help, and so can eating a healthy diet. But depression and treating it can look different for everyone. So if you're dealing with it, talk to your doctor about all your treatment options. Takeaway 5 Take advantage of the good stress of socializing. Yes, it can feel stressful in the moment, especially when you have to plan, but it can lower your levels of stress in the long term. Oh, one more tip from Brett about facial hair. Try a scented beard oil.

Brett McKay (25:56)

I do like to do it during Christmas time because there's beard oils that smell like Christmas trees or cinnamon. And it's just nice to have like, you know, during December. You're working, you're like, ah, it smells like the Polar Express.

Mariel Segarra (26:13)

And that's our show. Before we go, I have a favor to ask. If you have a moment, would you leave Life Kit a five star rating on your podcast app? If Life Kit has ever helped you save a little money or make a healthier choice for yourself, a five star rating is a great way to show your support. Thank you so much. This episode of Life Kit was produced by Margaret Serino. Our Visuals Editor is Beck Harlan and our Digital editor is Malika Garib. Meghan Cain is our Senior Supervising Editor and Beth Donovan is our Executive Producer. Our production team also includes Andy Taegle, Claire Marie Schneider and Sylvie Douglas. Engineering support comes from Robert Rodriguez and fact checking by Tyler Jones. I'm Mariel Segarra. Thanks for listening.

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