Transcript
So. Welcome to episode 11 of the Scafol Surveying Solutions podcast. Today I'm absolutely delighted to be joined by Ryan Park. Is it park or Parkee? Why is the E at the end of park, by the way.
It's a really good question. It is Park. I uh, would also accept parquet Park.
A. Wow. Okay, I'm going to go with park because I'm not posh enough to say parquet, um, and it'll get confused with parquet flooring. So um, yeah, today I'm joined with uh, Ryan park, also known as the men's coach. So ryan is a TEDx speaker, uh, specializing in how hormones, lifestyle and goal setting can impact, uh, can impact male health.
Uh, having created an evidence based framework and has extensive coaching experience. Ryan works with industry leaders, international schools, emergency service providers, crikey, the NHS Trust, all who want to provide effective support for men and boys. His 12 week coaching program gives him the science based tools, um, to help them take control of their health habits and happiness.
Obviously alongside, um, this his real world coaching experience. Ryan is also an international award winning speaker, a professional member of the Professional Speaking Association. Um, he's trained in mental health, first aid, suicide first aid and men's health champion with the Samaritans training in suicide prevention. That's a massive mouthful.
Um, judging by that resume, I think hopefully you'll be doing most of speaking today. Uh, not me. Um, so obviously today we're going to be discussing uh, a couple of different points, but it's mainly around um, testosterone I guess and how it's one of its linked to being one of the biggest killers of men and what you can really do about it.
But um, yeah, so firstly, big thank you for joining me. Um, not really a topic I'm uh, massively okay with. You know, it's never an area of my expertise but something I'm quite strongly, uh, I feel quite strongly about. But I guess I'll let you lead the conversation. But I think the best way to start is how did you get into this first?
You know, I've just gone through your credentials which it's probably used about 25 minutes of the uh, podcast already.
Well, thank you Rhodri, brilliant to be here. Thank you for inviting me on to episode 11, I really appreciate it and yeah, let me dive into what got me into this. So in June 2019 I bumped into a lady who I hadn't seen in years. And, and I was really excited to hear the latest about her son because Jenny's son Brad was taller than me, more muscular, some would say slightly better looking.
I know it's hard for you to believe, mate, but a strong argument could have been made. But the important thing to know is Brad had a fast car, big house, great job, plus he was a dad with a loving wife. And I like to believe at the time that I was on the same trajectory as Brad, but I was just a couple of years behind because of the age difference.
Then I saw the look on his mum's face and I thought, oh, no, what have I said to upset her? And Jenny said to me, oh, my gosh, Ryan, you're asking me how Brad is. You don't know Brad's taken his own life? Well, I was really taken aback by that, Rhodri, for a couple of reasons.
One reason was, of course, the initial loss of Brad. I just wasn't expecting that. But the other thing that really took me aback at the time was up until that point in my life, I'd always believed that the reason why men might die from suicide at, uh, higher rates than women is because they don't talk and they don't reach out for help.
And yet Brad was the most open and articulate man that I knew. In fact, I found out after his death from his mum that two years before he died, Brad decided it was time to reach out and get some help with his mental health. One of the ways that he did that is Brad went to see his doctor.
Now, Brad's doctor did what doctors are, ah, trained to do. And so Brad was referred to talking therapy and prescribed antidepressants. Brad attended talking therapy, took antidepressants, and two months before his death, his mum, Jenny, who works in mental health herself, said, brad, call me every night, tell me how you feel, because you've got to get these feelings off your chest.
Now I'd say here, please don't get me wrong, there are lots of people that reach out for help and find this kind of support is exactly what they need. But it seems it wasn't for Brad. And at the time, what struck me was here was a man who'd done all the things that we tell men in crisis to do.
And yet he still wasn't here. I wondered, what else could Brad have done? And Brad's mum, Jenny, said to me, ryan, you should learn about this. Because she told me, every five hours, four people take their own lives in the UK and Ireland. Three of Them are men. And in fact, if we bring it into something like a, uh, construction industry context, you know, yesterday I was at a meeting where lots of people were discussing the fact that in the UK construction industry in 2021, two people took their own lives every working day.
Well, 99% of those were male. I took what Jenny said really seriously there and then I set aside one day every week from June 2019 to the end of the year to learn everything that I could about male mental health. And I started just by reading scientific studies on life expectancy in men.
I thought that was as good a place to start as any. Well, during that first day of research, I bumped into a study that stopped me in my tracks because it just happened to mention there appears to be a day every year where heart attacks in men jump up by potentially as much as 30%.
And yet, on the same day of the year, heart attacks in women actually go down significantly. Rhodri, can you guess what day of the year that is?
I was gonna say Mother's Day, but I don't know.
No, that's a good guess. Maybe if a man forgets Mother's Day, that could cause heart attack. Would you like another guess?
Um, no. I probably will save my embarrassment and let you tell me.
So, the day every year where heart attacks appear to jump up significantly in men and yet on the same day of the year go down significantly in women is the Monday after the clocks jump forward by an hour. Uh, so it's the introduction of daylight savings that tends to happen in the UK at the end of March.
And when I learned that, I had to know why. How can the same thing happening impact men and women so differently? Well, no single study says what I'm about to tell you, but I spent the rest of that day, so about another six hours reading around this phenomenon, trying to understand it.
Here's some things I found that really influenced where I went next. When the clocks jump forward by an hour. So when daylight savings kicks in, in theory, we should go to bed an hour early to avoid losing sleep. But have you ever actually done that? No one does that.
When the clocks jump forward by an hour, it's like a mass science experiment where almost everyone loses an hour's sleep at the same time. Now, what happens inside your body when you lose an hour of sleep depends upon whether you're biologically male or biologically female. In a male body, losing even one hour of sleep lowers a hormone called testosterone for a few days.
And in a male body, as testosterone goes down, the chances of Having a heart attack go up. And when I learned that, I remember thinking, that's really interesting because at that point in my life, I'd never heard anything positive about testosterone. In fact, I remember when I was a kid and there was a fight in my local pub.
I remember my parents friends saying, it's no wonder they ended up fighting. There was too much testosterone in the room. Have you ever heard that? Too much testosterone, A bit of a.
Cliche, but yeah, I agree. Yeah.
It creates this image in our head that, like, testosterone's bad and if you get to a certain level of it, you become a horrible person. So I wondered, how can a hormone that causes men and boys to fight in pubs also seem to protect men from having a heart attack?
They seemed just like two totally different things to me. So I decided next week I'm going to set a whole day aside and learn about testosterone. So the following week comes around. My first research question of the day was, why does testosterone make men aggressive? And pretty quickly, probably into my first hour of research, I could see testosterone is not actually thought to make men aggressive.
In fact, there's scientific reasons to believe that testosterone has a calming effect on men and boys and on other male mammals. So testosterone is not bad. My next question was, why is it associated so strongly with heart health in men? And this is where it started to get very interesting, because five years on, there are quite a few different reasons why testosterone is important for heart health in men.
But what I found out that day is not only is it important for heart health, it's also very important for male mental health. Multiple studies have very clearly demonstrated that, on average, men who are depressed have much lower levels of testosterone than men who are not depressed. And in fact, some studies suggest the difference is as much as 33%, which is really significant when it comes to hormone.
Low testosterone has also been associated with suicide attempts in men. And certain studies have found that lower testosterone levels in men are associated with more frequent suicide attempts and more aggressive means. And only one study that I know of has ever measured the levels of testosterone in, in men who've sadly taken their own lives.
And that found those who died from suicide had extremely low levels of testosterone at the point where they died. So when I learned this, I was very interested because I'd learned the previous week that the, uh, biggest killer of men in the UK and Ireland from the age of 18 to the age of 50 is suicide, and suicide in men and depression.
Depression in men both appeared to be linked to having a low level of testosterone. But I'd also learned the week before that over the age of 50, the biggest killer of men changes from suicide to heart disease. That's not because suicide becomes less likely, it's just that heart disease becomes so much more likely.
Well, heart disease is even worldwide the biggest killer of men now, I believe. And heart disease, heart attack, heart failure, and high blood pressure in men are all linked to having a low level of testosterone. Now, the next biggest killer of men over the age of 50 in the UK and Ireland after heart disease, is cancer.
The most likely cancer that men will be diagnosed with by a long way is prostate cancer. And multiple sources show, uh, that one of the single biggest indicators that a man will be diagnosed with prostate cancer is having a low level of testosterone. In fact, there's studies from America that suggest that if we screened for testosterone more often, we'd probably detect more prostate cancer earlier when it's easier to treat.
So I always start with this story because it completely flipped what I thought male mental health was all about. Because I started out with these beliefs, these assumptions. I'd never really questioned ideas like testosterone's bad and men just need to talk. And pretty soon I could see, hold on a minute.
Testosterone isn't bad. In fact, it's vital. And all the biggest killers of men in the UK and Ireland today are all linked to having a low level of testosterone. Now, at the time, I didn't know why. I know why now. But at the time, I just knew it was an association.
Unfortunately, this is something that no one tells men. We're not made aware of this. And, uh, the other thing I could see pretty early on is it seemed too simplistic. That stereotype I believed before I started understanding it, the idea that men are dying simply because they're not reaching out for help or they're not talking.
Because it seemed to me that there's a lot more to male mental health and male well being than simply talking. You know, no amount of talking is gonna address something like a low level of testosterone. So that's what got me into it. Rhodri over the following few years, I put together a bit of a framework that I could use in my own life that addressed not only testosterone levels, but many other things.
And now I'm really proud to say I've, um, worked with amazing organizations, including NHS trusts, other emergency service providers, international schools, and brilliant companies just to help them with their, uh, well, being strategy, their EDNI strategy, their CSR Strategies really engage with the men in their team and improve their well being.
But yeah, that's what got me into it.
Crikey. I mean it's, it's a really interesting story. I mean I'll, I'll be, I'll be open and honest with myself. I, I don't know if I've ever been depressed or anything like that, but I certainly, I certainly do feel highs and lows. Um, I don't know where you'd ever draw the line or there's a definitive line as to define yourself as, you know, definitely depressed or whatever it may be.
Um, weirdly, mine's often linked. I don't, I don't know if it probably falls well outside your study, but mine's linked to seasonal. So I think there's a thing called is it sad Seasonal adjustment disorder or something. Um, and I always, weirdly, I mean I'm going way off topic here but I always spend a lot more time in the gym in the summer.
Um, because it, it helps me set my mind right. If anything it's, you know, it's not necessarily something where I go and talk to people because I don't really have anything to talk about. I don't know why I'm having a bit of a low or I don't really explain why I'm having a bit of a high.
But it's interesting when you, when you're talking through stuff like that. It did kind of couple of, couple of pieces in my head clicked and some certain things started to make a bit of sense I guess. Um, but talk, talking around the well being side of things, it's really interesting, particularly when we flip it onto kind of a, uh, perspective for a surveyor.
So one of the times I was feeling particularly low was um, I had a stint where I was doing survey. So I live in a really isolated part of the country in Cornwall. I live down in Penzance and it's miles away from, you know, the rest of civilization. Beautiful, stunning place in the world.
But when you're a surveyor and you're having to cover a large patch, this meant that I was having to drive to um, places like Plymouth and do like two surveys. Um, and the problem being in the summer that that drive to Plymouth is two and a half, three hours, so that's three hours there, three hours back.
So six hours of my day in a car, two surveys which could be anywhere between four and five hours before I've even written them up. And then I'm back at home and I'm trying To get these out and work strict timelines and deadlines. Losing a little bit of my family life and my work life.
Balance was a little bit uneven, should we say? Um, so, well being for me as a surveyor, that, that, that is a massive, that had a massive impact on, on my kind of lifestyle and my general feelings inside and outside of work. Not really a question. That's more of a statement, isn't it?
Well, it makes perfect sense. I mean, when we, you know, if you want to dive into the key ingredients for a healthy level of testosterone, you'll probably see why that lifestyle, which is important. You know, we have to. Part of our wellbeing is making sure that we have the financial security that we need and that our family needs.
You know, we need to feel like an asset to others. But at the same time, we have to also balance that with looking after this amazing hormone system that we have, because the ramifications for not doing that are pretty severe.
So I guess my next question is we've talked about, um, causes, uh, not, you know, causes and such like that, but what, what can we do about it? I guess is. That is. Is the most obvious question off the top of my head. What can we do about it?
Whether it be, you know, we don't have to necessarily look at it as a surveyor, look at, as a man or a boy in general. How can we address this issue?
Yeah, lovely question. That's also, uh, where my mind went at the very beginning of this journey. I was thinking, well, if this hormone is so important, what in the world can we do about it? So first and foremost, what we've spoken about, these biggest killers of men and low testosterone.
So far we've only spoken about association, correlation, not causation. That's for another time. But what's really clear from loads of studies is if you're male, you really don't want a low level of testosterone. It's quite important that we address that now. Bit of a disclaimer. Often when you hear people talking about the benefits of testosterone, they talk about the benefits of taking testosterone.
And that can be required, that can be necessary for some men or for some people. But when you hear me talking about the benefits of testosterone, I'm, um, talking about the benefits of a man making it in his own body naturally. And if you know how to do it, you can really quickly naturally and significantly boost testosterone levels.
I've got my own levels and m the testosterone levels of hundreds of men I've worked with over the last few years that have shown me if you know what to do, you can change testosterone levels very quickly. The first thing we have to do though is we have to address.
I don't know if I'd go so far as to call it a myth, but there's an idea which is very limiting for men, which is, you'll often hear people say that the biggest factor when it comes to testosterone levels is age. And I always hear that testosterone levels tend to fall off a cliff at about age 30.
And sometimes we hear phrases like male menopause or menopause or andropause, which gives you this idea that there's something inevitable about low testosterone. But actually, all the most important factors for testosterone are lifestyle factors. And I've worked with men in their late 50s who have higher healthier levels of testosterone than men in their late 20s.
And you can see very quickly why, when, when we start looking at their lifestyle and even when they join the call. So should we do it? Should we thrash out these key ingredients?
Yeah, let's. I'm actually genuinely interested because I'm a, I'm a 40 year old man now, um, and I, I, you know, uh, my physical kind of well being is very important to me now as well. So again, genuinely interested to hear this.
Yeah, brilliant. Well, testosterone is, it is the missing link between, well, being, physical health and mental health in males. The reason is testosterone itself is actually a marker for metabolic health, which is the thing that pins physical and mental health together. But you don't even need to know that.
You just need to know that boosting testosterone naturally is a good thing and everything else falls into place. So I'm going to give five key ingredients. Number one, first and foremost is sleep. So for every hour that men sleep, their testosterone levels increase and for every hour we're awake, testosterone levels decrease.
This is why if you do a testosterone test, you should take it in the first few hours after waking up because that's going to give you sort of your peak levels throughout the day. Now there is a 2018 study that seems to suggest that each single missed hour of sleep lowers testosterone in men by roughly the equivalent of 12 years of aging.
Rocky, just to put it in perspective. Now that's not to suggest that you have one bad night's sleep and your testosterone all disappears. Although, uh, it does feel like that sometimes as we get older. But I just use that as an illustration of just, just to blow away that myth that it's all age.
You know, age is sleep, uh, is so important that one single hour matters more than 12 years of aging, just for our perspective. So sleep's the single biggest factor.
So question on the sleep quickly. Sorry. Does the quality of sleep make a difference as well? So I only ask because, I mean, I love a good sleep. And I notice that if I've had, um, a Saturday and I've had a couple of pink gins with the lads, my sleep quality is not as good.
I might sleep for longer, but the sleep I actually get is nowhere near as deep.
Yes, it's a really good question. So it's hard to answer, uh, with a lot of clarity, because there's nothing. That much research into testosterone just in general. But from what I've seen and from my experience working with men, it seems to be good quality, uninterrupted hours that matter. Uh, the naps during the day that we might do because we're knackered, that doesn't quite cut it.
It is the uninterrupted time. Now, if you have anyone listening who like, does shift work or something, getting that seven to eight hours uninterrupted, even if you do it during the day, seems to be as good for, nearly as good for testosterone as getting it at night. But the important thing is the uninterrupted hours of sleep.
Does that make sense?
Yeah, no, absolutely, definitely.
And another thing you mentioned, there's really important because sobriety is also a key factor. And when I talk about sobriety, I don't mean never drinking again, although that's an option. That's my strategy. But everyone's different when it comes to our tolerance and how we use and enjoy alcohol. But
men who drink a lot, who identify as being quite heavy drinkers, have extremely low levels of testosterone. And those low levels of testosterone can stay for months after they stop drinking alcohol. So it's really important that we understand there's this feedback mechanism, there's this loop, which is alcohol lowers testosterone in men.
Men with lower testosterone are much more likely to be depressed. And what do depressed men often like to do?
Uh, drink.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Vicious circle, isn't it? I guess.
Yeah. And it's, it's made worse by the stigma that's around testosterone. You know, like the, just as we hear, like, oh, men are fighting, they must have high levels of testosterone or there's too much testosterone. There's also this idea sometimes about like testosterone fueled drinking environments, but the more men drink, the lower their testosterone levels, uh, are.
So, uh, you have to not really understand testosterone to, to propagate stigma like that, if that makes sense.
No, there's, there is a lot of stigma around, around the kind of, the testosterone in general as well. So I'm very naive when it comes to testosterone. And for me it just, it, I only ever related it to, um, the physical attributes it can help you with. So, you know, they say the main difference between a male and the women is that, uh, added testosterone that gives them the advantage of being able to train hard or grow muscle bigger or so on and so forth.
And I'm, I'm talking about that in a very naive, you know, stereotypical way as opposed to anything else. And I've Never, ever related it to anything that you've said. And I've never even given it thought as to where it comes from and how you can increase it or decrease it.
Yeah, and that's a really normal approach. I mean, my wife Emma's a pharmacist. And when we had our first date together in September 2020, I was talking to her about what I was doing and, you know, the men I was working with and some of the results they were finding.
And Emma listened politely. But then on our third D, she basically said, ryan, Ryan. Ryan is really cute. These theories you have, but just so you know, you're full of rubbish. I've never heard any of this. Um, but she said, I'll do you a favor. I'll go away and do some research, and when we meet again on Saturday, I'll show you why you're wrong so you don't embarrass yourself.
Anyway, when she came around that following Saturday, got knock on the door, open the door, and I saw m in her face. Something was up. I was like, what? And she's like, I don't want to talk about it. And what it was is she had. She had spent like six or seven hours.
She'd made a list of some of the things I'd said, and she'd gone away to, like, you know, debunk it, prove it all wrong. And she ended up coming back saying, no, you're right. Um, this is where the evidence is suggested. This is where it's taken us, basically. And she said, like, I didn't know any of this.
I wasn't trained any of this as becoming a pharmacist. So, yes, this is. It's not new information, but it hasn't. It's just not being connected for people to understand. So we have sleep, we have sobriety. Should we. Should we thrash out the other three as well? So we know.
Yeah, let's.
So the next key ingredient, sleep, sobriety, the next one, it's diet. It's what we eat now, specifically, and I, uh, won't go too far into the reasons for this, but men who have a healthy level of testosterone tend to eat a low level of carbohydrates. It's not all carbohydrates.
It's sugar and starch, the ones that raise our blood sugars. So this is. This means a very, very low level or no sugary drinks, energy drinks, that kind of rubbish. Have to park that. But we kind of know that. We know we're meant to not drink those energy drinks.
Yeah.
But then the other thing as well is, of course, if, like, you're on a. If you're a surveyor and you're traveling a lot, you might be getting your food while you're on the road. So you might be eating a lot of bread, a lot of pastries, sandwiches. And then when you're back in the evening, convenience food.
There might be a lot of rice, lot of pasta, that kind of thing. These are, uh, the foods that contain a lot of starch, which raises our blood sugar levels. And in the long run, these high carbohydrate diets are a problem for testosterone levels and lots of other hormones.
But let's stick to testosterone for now. And so we're talking about a relatively low level of carbohydrates. We need enough fat in our diet. Low fat diets significantly reduce testosterone. And we need greenery in our diet because the dark green vegetables, the exciting things that we were told to eat with kids, the broccoli, the cabbage, the spinach, the kale, they contain vitamins and minerals, some of which actually act like a bodyguard inside your blood and protect the testosterone that you make so that it lasts for longer.
So what a low carbohydrate, high fat with plenty of green diet looks like in real life is whole foods. It's the way nature made it. It's the things like the avocado, it's the butter, it's the coconut oil. It's all those natural, fatty foods and not the things that come in a packet that you have to boil before they become edible.
The processed food, the processed pasta, that kind of thing.
The ingredients that you can't pronounce on the back of the tin.
Yeah, exactly, exactly. And then, yeah, you know, when I talk about, like, the sugary drinks, then we sometimes think, oh, well, I'll go sugar free. And it's like, oh, well, look at those chemicals, you know, and some of them we could easily argue, uh, as bad for us as sugar, but I could.
We don't want to get stuck in the what to eat. I have a whole two hour training on what to eat. So this is just a high level.
Stuff, though, because coffee is a deal breaker for me. I is my life fuel. Is this gonna restrict my testosterone levels if I drink copious amounts of coffee?
So copious amounts of coffee are gonna impact another chemical messenger in your body, which is called dopamine. Uh, almost everything you've heard about dopamine is relating to dopamine inside your brain, even though it has lots of other important roles in our body. But almost everything you've ever heard about dopamine relates to dopamine in your brain, where it's associated with motivation, with movement and with the creation of new memories.
But different conversation for a different day. Maybe. Maybe there'll be Sometime around episode 30, maybe you'll get me back and we'll talk about dopamine.
Sounds like a plan. So we've got sobriety, sleep, diet, looking at, uh, greenery and, uh, fatty kind of proteiny kind of foods. What else have we got?
So then our other two key ingredients that we need to know about. One is exercise. Yep. Now, there's a bit of a threshold when it comes to exercise, which is about 150 minutes a week or about 20 minutes a day. So why is that important? Well, firstly, that is the amount of exercise that the NHS say all adults should have as a minimum.
You know, even if you're, even if you're older, even if you're pregnant, even if you're disabled, that is the amount of exercise that your body needs as a minimum for positive mental health and well being. Now, there's a, there's lots of examples of this, but I'm going to use just one.
About two years ago, there was a meta analysis, which is a study of studies. They bring together different studies and they look at the themes. This, uh, meta analysis included over 100,000 people and it found that once you get to 150 minutes of exercise a week, exercise appears to be about one and a half times more effective than antidepressants and one and a half times more effective than cbt, talking therapy for the treatment of depression, stress and anxiety.
Now, I think this is really important because if you have a friend who goes to see their doctor today because perhaps they're feeling depressed, it's likely that your friend might leave that, uh, doctor's appointment with a referral for talking therapy and a prescription for antidepressants, just like Brad did.
Now, the study I've just mentioned doesn't take anything away from the effectiveness of antidepressants or talking therapy. But it puts things in perspective. And your friend who's just done the right thing, reached out for help, still might not yet know that the single most effective thing that they can do is something that has no waiting list, no lead times, no side effects, no cost, is to put on some comfortable shoes and be physically active for about 20 minutes a day.
And in terms of what counts towards that exercise, it's any physical thing you're doing that causes you to not be able to sing because you're kind of out of puff. You know, you can still talk, but you wouldn't be able to sing. If you can sing while you're doing it, you're not exerting yourself enough for its count as moderate intensity exercise.
And then we have one more key ingredient. Now, there are lots of different deficiencies that are associated with low testosterone in men or with testosterone not being able to do its job properly. But probably the most common is a lack of vitamin D.
Is that the sun one?
Yes, yes.
I'm sure it's not called that, but.
Yeah, the sun one, yeah. Yeah. Well, arguably, uh, its name's wrong anyway because it's called vitamin D, but it's actually a pro hormone. Just when it was found, I thought, oh, it's a vitamin. They didn't realize that we make it at the time. So it's. A pro hormone that you can get from food.
So D3 is the one that animals make from being in the sun. Now, like testosterone, D3 is made out of cholesterol and vitamin D3 has loads of important roles in our body, but one of the things it does is it actually helps with the manufacturing of testosterone. So men who have low D3 tend to have low testosterone, but high levels of the raw ingredients needed to make testosterone, like the production process is backing up basically.
Now, D3, your body is very efficient at making it. During the summer months, all you probably need is about 10 minutes of midday sun, especially in Penzance. Beautiful. But,
but during the winter months, you, you might need as much as two hours of midday sun for a healthy level of vitamin D3 because we wrap up more warmly and, you know, Cornwall, um, yeah, um, so actually most of us can't get that because at midday we've got things to do, we've got to work, you know, for our well being.
As we've spoken about, that's also important. So many adults around the world are D3 deficient. Rnhs recommend that most adults would probably benefit from supplementing vitamin D3 throughout the winter months. But there's something that many people aren't aware of, which is D3, like many other important vitamins, is actually fat soluble, which means it's absorbed in fat.
And it's been found through studies where some people took an enormous dose of D3 with fat and some without. If you don't have enough fat in the meal, when you take the supplement, you don't absorb any of the D3. Uh, okay, so based on studies, you need to have at least 25 grams of fat in a meal to absorb vitamin D3.
Um, but most people don't know that. So lots of people are probably taking vitamin D3 supplements but not getting enough fat in their diet to, number one, absorb the D3 and number two, make a healthy level of testosterone. So understanding how these modern diets are impacting our hormones is really important.
And when I see that list, saw that list for the first time of key ingredients for a healthy level of testosterone. And this was after months of putting different pieces of research together. But when I first saw that list, I remember thinking, oh, crap. Because I knew Brad and I know that, yeah, he did all the things we tell men in crisis to do.
He reached out for help, he went to see his doctor, he attended talking therapy, he took antidepressants, and he called his mum every night and told her how he was feeling. But no One that Brad spoke to, seemed to realize that Brad was spending all of his time working towards the next deadline, finishing that project, you know, burning the candle at both ends, trying to get everything done for the deadline tomorrow.
And I knew um, him well enough to know that sleep, healthy, diet, exercise, sunshine and sobriety, they just weren't on Brad's list of priorities. And I realized at the time they weren't on mine either. And I came to believe that sometimes it's trying to be a man that kills a lot of men.
It's really interesting. So I, I'm, I'm a rugby player. Believe it or not. Even at my age I'm still playing and I would say rugby is one of the, one of the sports that you'd automatically taking. Testosterone is that cliche, uh, that we've obviously talked about is probably one of the first sports you'd link to high test drone in rugby players.
But ironically they probably go against everything that you've just said. So, so rugby players, you know, when they're in their 20s, they drink a lot, they probably don't get a lot of sleep because you know they're playing rugby, going out, then getting up early and working. Their diets aren't great.
I promise you, I've been there. I mean unless you're a professional sportsman, if you're just an amateur rugby player, their diets aren't great. Um, yes, they'll get a bit of exercise but again it's not probably to the levels that is required, um, which I think is quite ironic. Um, but flipping it more back to the surveying side of things.
So I'm going to try and summarize. If you're a surveyor and you find yourself feeling again, I won't define where the levels of depression and stuff are, but if you're having, I call it myself, I call it like I have highs and lows. If you feel yourself in a bit of a low, you need to take into account those things.
I mean I said when I was driving and doing those, you know, six hour round trips to Plymouth to do some work, doing it two, three, four times a week. My diet was awful. I was waking up at 5, uh, 30, uh, in the morning to make sure I can get to the first appointment by the required time.
I um, wasn't drinking. I'm um, not a heavy drinker myself but you know, sleep wise I wasn't getting what I needed. My diet was awful. I was getting meal deal from you know, sugary drink, a sandwich or a wrap and a packet of Crisps for my lunch, which, which is really bad.
Now you've said it. Um, and because I was doing all that waking up early, getting back late, doing what I didn't have time to exercise. So it, you know, I'm kind of personally putting all the pieces of the puzzle together and realizing, crikey, no wonder I was feeling low.
Because obviously everything you've explained about the testosterone levels and all that all points to the fact that that. And also it was in the middle of winter. Uh, so I'm stuck in a car driving. I'm not getting vitamin D. I've got a poor diet. So four out of the five things equals me feeling low.
But then flip on his head. In the summer. In the summer, last summer. I've spent a lot of my time, um, where I've got a slightly different kind of line. I do less surveys and more kind of administrative kind of stuff nowadays, which is cool. But I make sure in the summer, because of where I live, I can walk to the beach in or.
Crikey. It's about 30 meters away from my office, so, uh, I make sure I'll go every lunch. If the sun's out, I'm off on a walk. I've got a little portable coffee machine. Another conversation. But, um, you know, I make sure I get exercise, I get good sleep, I've got a good work life balance.
And I, I, you know, I don't feel like that lows anymore. I feel high. I go to the gym, um, I get exercise every day. Um, some say it's a midlife crisis, but if anything, it's a, it's, it's, it's a decision I've made to. Not based on anything you've told me.
But all of a sudden I'm understanding why. I was feeling low then and I don't feel that same feeling now. I have stresses, don't get me wrong. But it's. Is generally a really interesting conversation. So for surveyors, if you're having any of these kind of like low feelings or you're just finding things hard and you're a bit down, I guess is the best way of explaining it.
I said I've never really tried to define where that level of depression is defined at. But, you know, I'm assuming that it's a spectrum, I guess. So if you're feeling at that point, you need to take into account some of those five things, which I'm going to try and rattle them off again.
Sleep, sobriety, diet, exercise, and vitamin D. Is that all right?
Yep.
Well, I didn't even put notes down. Now I've just. I remembered that. So my dopamine metals aren't that bad. So that's my summary. Have you got anything you kind of want to conclude with or any advice, uh, off the back of what you've said or anything like that? I'm just aware of the time and, um, I don't want to rush you off.
I could speak to you for another hour if I could. But, uh, yeah. Have you got any kind of final thoughts or a summary you'd like to kind of wrap up with?
I would say one thing to just reiterate is some people, when they hear these kind of conversations, get a bit panicked or excited that we're talking about this rather than the kind of general method of support, and we're really not. Nothing we've spoken about in this session today is an alternative to talking therapy or to going seeing your doctor.
But at the same time, those things aren't an alternative to actually looking after yourself. And actually what we tend to do, and especially what. What busy men tend to do, that I've seen a lot in the last couple of years, is there tends to be an expectation that, you know, if we go to someone else, they give us the solution and then we can get back to our busy lives.
And we're missing out the fact that if we don't look after our body and our brain, it does have these serious ramifications. So, yeah, I would say nothing we've spoken about here. Looking after yourself is not an alternative to reaching out for help, but reaching out for help is not an alternative to looking after yourself.
You actually have to do both and you have to balance it. And the main thing that I would say, and hopefully if there's a takeaway from today, it's that, uh, this hormone inside our body is a useful marker that we can use. I find it phenomenally useful when I'm working with men because it's a really easy way to measure metabolic, um, health, physical health, and that has a ramification on mental health.
And it also motivates men as well. And the last thing I'd say is everyone's different. What works for one person might not work for another. And so if you found that, uh, what you need isn't out there at the moment, keep trying, don't give up, because, you know, the solution you need could just be around the corner.
Perfect. Well, mate, I genuinely appreciate your time. Thank you so much for coming on. Like I said, I think this particular subject is something that is definitely worth people in the surveying industry listening to as well, because I. I obviously just gave a belief, brief explanation of as though higher.
I kind of fell into, ah, a trap similar, um, to lifestyle choices that you said. Um, so, yeah, hopefully some people listen to this. Hopefully some people will get from this.
Um.
Um. So, yeah, just once again, thank you so much for your time. It's very much appreciated. And again, maybe we'll have another conversation later down the line and we can talk about some other subjects that involve me quitting coffee. But, um, thank you so much. Um, it's been an absolute pleasure.
Thank you, Rhodri.
Book a Demo