Dr. Judson Brandeis

80 – Dr. Judson Brandeis

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[00:00:00] Tony Winyard: Habits Health episode 80.

[00:00:13] Tony Winyard: Welcome to another edition of Habits & health. My guess today, Dr Judson Brandeis, who is a surgeon and a board-certified urologist who currently practice’s men’s health and sexual medicine in Northern California. And he’s all about helping men in many different areas, he’s written a fantastic book together with many other experts which is all about helping men. The book is called 21st century, man. And we’re going to find out a little more about the book. And his approach to his work and that’s coming up very soon. If you know anyone. Who would get some value from this episode, please do share the episode with them, especially if you know any older guys, most guys, we don’t tend to, to go and see a doctor or, seek out health help when we need it. So this could be a very useful episode. For men in general, but especially for older guys.

Habits & health, my guest today Judson Brandeis. How you doing judson?,

[00:01:14] Dr. Judson Brandeis: Oh, I’m doing fantastic, Tony.

[00:01:16] Tony Winyard: and so we’re in California today.

[00:01:19] Dr. Judson Brandeis: yeah, Northern California.

[00:01:20] Tony Winyard: And are you from Northern California?

[00:01:23] Dr. Judson Brandeis: I grew up in New York, but I’ve lived all over the place.

[00:01:25] Tony Winyard: Cool. And before we recorded, we were chatting nd your family hails from Switzerland?

[00:01:30] Dr. Judson Brandeis: Originally, yeah.

[00:01:31] Tony Winyard: And so you’ve been all over Europe, but not to Switzerland yet?

[00:01:35] Dr. Judson Brandeis: Yeah, I’ve been all over the UK. So England Wales, Northern Ireland, Southern Ireland Scotland. And we were talking, I’m a big British history buff.

[00:01:44] Tony Winyard: And it sounds like you’re quite a traveler as well. I just got that impression. It sounds like you’ve been to quite a few places.

[00:01:49] Dr. Judson Brandeis: Oh yeah. I think it’s really important for, to understand people. You have to understand where they come.

And you really for, I see patients, at five days a week. And so in order to really take care of patients, you have to be able to connect with them over something. And having traveled really extensively and lived all over the United States and interested in history and it.

There you have to form some sort of bond with patients and get them to trust you. Not only that, you know what you’re doing, but actually genuinely care about them. And so that’s a really good way to connect with someone.

[00:02:20] Tony Winyard: And there’s also evidence showing that once you’ve built rapport with a patient, they’re more likely to trust you and then it’s more likely to work, whatever it is you’ve helped them with as well.

[00:02:28] Dr. Judson Brandeis: Exactly. Well, I mean, The thing is we all know what to do. Don’t drink, don’t smoke. Don’t do drugs exercise every day, don’t eat too much stretch in the morning. Meditate, be nice to other people. If you do that, you’re ahead of 90, 95% of people you’ll be pretty healthy.

The problem is that life gets in the way and we need crutches or we need there’s pressure or, we listen to advertising.

And so we, we tend to do the wrong things for our.

[00:02:55] Tony Winyard: So you’ve talked about you’re a doctor. Do you specialize in any particular area?

[00:02:59] Dr. Judson Brandeis: Yeah, so I’m a urologist. So I’m a surgeon who specializes in the genital urinary system. And I pioneered surgical robotics. I built a kidney stone center. I was a pelvic reconstructive surgeon for women. I pioneered prostate MRI for diagnosing prostate cancer. So I’ve done a.

Really interesting stuff. But about three years ago, I became really interested in regenerative urology. So helping men who no longer are able to get enough blood flow into the penis to cause a rigid erection, helping them rebuild blood vessels and regenerate the signal that they need to to achieve erections.

[00:03:40] Tony Winyard: and what was it that led you to that path?

[00:03:44] Dr. Judson Brandeis: Oh I, I always like to be the first on the block for anything. And so there’s a technology called low intensity shock wave therapy. And then another technology called platelet-rich plasma that are leading the way to helping men grow new blood vessels.

[00:03:59] Tony Winyard: And so have you, you just been helping mostly men now?

[00:04:03] Dr. Judson Brandeis: I only see men patients,

[00:04:05] Tony Winyard: cause you’ve got this wonderful book the 21st century, man.

[00:04:09] Dr. Judson Brandeis: I self-published. It’s slowly rolling out. If you have a big publisher they do a big grand opening and whatever, but it was me and 50 or 60 of my friends and colleagues from my journey through medical school and undergraduate and practice.

And, the thing is I’m one of those people that I don’t know everything about everything. But I know someone who knows about it. We had experts in all aspects of medicine in nutrition, in exercise, in health insurance, in aesthetics, in lifestyle, it, it really, it ended up, it started out about 20 chapters that ended up as 101 chapter.

In over 900 pages because every time a patient would come in with a problem, I was like, that’s a really good chapter.

Someone comes in, they’re having problems with sleep and they’re having erectile dysfunction because of their problems with sleep. And I’m like, we need to write a chapter on sleep.

And so that’s how a lot of these chapters came to be.

[00:05:01] Tony Winyard: So what was the original idea behind the book?

[00:05:04] Dr. Judson Brandeis: It was just to write a book about sexual medicine. Because I’m an expert in sexual medicine and I do clinical research and sexual medicine. In fact, I was the first person to identify a technology to improve the intensity and duration of orgasms in men

[00:05:19] Tony Winyard: okay.

[00:05:19] Dr. Judson Brandeis: ejaculation. And then hopefully this year I’ll present my paper on a technology to improve the length girth and function of a guy’s penis.

And so we’re doing some interesting stuff.

[00:05:31] Tony Winyard: And so I get the impression, it’s not a book that’s meant to be read from page one to page 900. But it’s just, you use a chapter as, and when you need it kind of thing.

[00:05:41] Dr. Judson Brandeis: Exactly. What I recommend is for people to read the introduction and part of the introduction is how to use the book and what’s in the book. And then the first chapter of the book is called the hero’s journey, which is based on a concept of Joseph Campbell. And really, I believe that.

For men, you need to see yourself as the hero of your own journey. And when you see yourself as the hero of your own journey, the decisions that you make really come from that, right? Because a lot of people are out there thinking, oh, tiger woods is a hero. Or Johnny Depp is a hero or will Smith is a hero.

Over the past couple years, we’ve seen how flawed these people are and how D. their own interpersonal lives are. And don’t look at someone else and think that they have it easy, just really focus on yourself and the decisions that you make, what you put in your body, how you treat other people, how you take care of yourself.

And you’ll be a lot better off.

[00:06:43] Tony Winyard: and I guess one challenge for you with this book is men don’t really seem to go to the doctor unless it, unless they’re life being threatened almost. They’re just so reluctant to go to a doctor.

[00:06:54] Dr. Judson Brandeis: Yeah. In the United States, our health system is not the British, system’s got its issues, but the American health system is really messed up and men are 50% less likely than their female counterparts that go to the doctor. And we don’t go to the doctor until something’s broken, if you break a car, you can either buy a new car or you just swap out the parts, but with a human that’s different, if you’re arteries are clogged, you can’t just strip out the arteries and put new ones in.

[00:07:24] Tony Winyard: so do you, can you see a solution to that or a way to change that?

[00:07:28] Dr. Judson Brandeis: That’s what the book is all about. The book is all about prevention and early intervention of the issues that affect men.

And the thing is men are different than women. These are all generalities, of course, but you can’t tell a man what to do. Especially in the United States. If you tell a guy what to do, it’ll be like screw you.

I don’t, who are you? I’m gonna do whatever I wanna do. So I don’t tell guys what to do. For example, like I wanted a patient to lose weight and he was drinking two glasses of wine a day.

This is one of my favorite things to do and, I’m up in near Napa valley. lot of people in the area drink wine.

A lot of people are in the wine business and this guy was having trouble losing 25 pounds. And so I said how many calories do you think are in a glass of wine? And so we looked it up on Google. It’s 125 calories in a glass of red wine. And you drink two glasses of wine a day, right?

So that’s 250 calories multiply that times 365. And then divided by 3,500, which is the number of calories per pound of human fat. I said, what number do you get? He said, 26. I said, what does that represent? So I said, what it represents is the number of pounds of fat that you’re putting on your body each year from drinking wine. He said, oh, okay. I guess I should. Like, I didn’t have to tell him what to do. I just gave him the data and then he made a decision on his own. So what this book is packed with is information like that. And it’s not one of these like 900 page books that you could summarize in 10 pages. It’s 900 pages that you could only summarize in 900 pages.

It’s that information dense on every aspect of men’s health that, that there is really. And now if you have diabetes go to the doctor,

Don’t read my book, go to the doctor and get your diabetes taken care of. It’s not like it’s not to substitute for the doctor. It’s how to take care of yourself so that you need the doctor less often, that you can live a healthier, more prosperous, happier.

[00:09:45] Tony Winyard: We’ve established men are much more reluctant to go and see a doctor. Do you think they would there be reluctance in buying a book like this in the first place for any of them?

[00:09:56] Dr. Judson Brandeis: That’s a great question. And, I hope people like, like you and myself on podcasts and so on and so forth can spread the word. And I hope that when guys hear me. I’m not coming from a place of judgment. I’m not coming from a place of shaming people. I’m coming from a place of I’m providing people information. I’ve gone to some of the top institutions in the United States. My, my training is as good as it gets. I’ve been, I’ve worked with Nobel prize winning scientists and. I feel like I have an obligation to give back, and this is one of the ways that I’m giving back, from the privilege of having an incredible education is to write down really everything that I’ve learned over the past 25 years and the professional network that I’ve created and distill it down into one book.

And then I’m a, I’m pretty good writer and we made it really. Fun. We put patient stories in there. I have quotes in front of each chapter that kind of resonate. There’s a whole addiction section. So like the chapter on cocaine, I had a quote from Robin Williams. Cocaine’s, God’s way of telling you, you have too much money, things like that.

People can relate to.

[00:11:08] Tony Winyard: When you’ve got it as an audio book as well, isn’t it. So for people who maybe are more comfortable with listening, rather than reading,

[00:11:15] Dr. Judson Brandeis: Yeah. I had a lot of patients tell me, listen, I listen to stuff in, in when I commute, okay, we’ll do an audio book. And then other people say I don’t wanna bring a four pound book when I’m flying. I said, good. We’ll make an ebook. So I didn’t. I gave people no excuse. not to access the information in the.

[00:11:36] Tony Winyard: And now what’s the reaction been since you published it in November,

[00:11:39] Dr. Judson Brandeis: Oh, it’s really gratifying. So many people have reached out to me either personally or through email and just said, there were chapters in that book that really turned their life around and helped them see their health in a different way.

[00:11:54] Tony Winyard: Are you familiar with any particular stories of how it’s helped?

[00:11:57] Dr. Judson Brandeis: Oh, yeah. I had a patient who was gonna get a regular prostate biopsy and in my prostate chapter, I said, there’s, you shouldn’t get a regular prostate biopsy anymore. You should get an MRI first. And then. Get a prostate biopsy. And so this guy got an MRI. It turns out he did not prostate cancer and he didn’t get a prostate biopsy.

I had another patient who contacted me turns out that he did have prostate cancer. On the MRI. But he had already had two previous prostate biopsies done the regular way and they were both negative. And it turns out on MRI that his prostate was in a more difficult to access place. But by having a targeted MRI, got it, prostate biopsy they found the prostate cancer.

And that’s just, that’s just one chapter. There’s. I wrote a chapter. There’s so many chapters in the book that I’ve never seen in the literature before. Like the number three cause of death for men in the United States is accidental death. But no one ever talks about that. You hear about cancer, you hear about heart disease, you hear about diabetes, but it’s, guys doing stupid stuff. So 90% of eye injuries in the United States are preventable by wearing safety Goggle. Or sunglasses or glass, some sort of eye protection, right?

Why should somebody permanently blind themselves in one eye because they’re too stupid or too proud to wear safety goggles, but it’s just those reminders.

Sometimes it’s just the simple stuff. Or 50% of hand injuries are preventable by wearing gloves. But these are statistics. You go out into the backyard with your saw all with no gloves and no glasses. And you think nothing bad is gonna happen to me. But what I’m coming from is the big picture of statistics.

If a thousand people go out into the backyard saying nothing bad is gonna happen to me at the end of the day, three of you are gonna end up in the emergency.

[00:13:56] Tony Winyard: There’s 900 pages. How many chapters did you say there

[00:14:00] Dr. Judson Brandeis: 101 chapters.

[00:14:01] Tony Winyard: of those 101, which chapter do you think would surprise guys the most

[00:14:08] Dr. Judson Brandeis: there are some amazing, like one chapter that guys really need to read, but I’ve never seen in the men’s literature is what men need to know about menopause.

[00:14:17] Tony Winyard: right.

[00:14:18] Dr. Judson Brandeis: . What do guys know about menopause? It’s a women’s problem, right? But if you don’t understand it, it’s your problem say you’re 56 years old and your wife is 53 years old.

And one day you have a pretty good relationship with her. One day you come home and you don’t recognize your wife she’s acting in ways that are totally foreign to you. If you don’t understand that she’s going through menopause. you go out and to the golf course, and she goes to the tennis court and, you complain to your golfing buddies about your wife and your wife complains to her tennis buddies about you and you guys go in different directions.

You know, You’re still under the same roof, but you’re on different planets. But if you understand, okay, my wife is going through menopause. It’s a hormonal thing. She’s lost her estrogen. Maybe we should, I should talk to her about estrogen replacement, because I know about that because of this amazing chapter in the 21st century man written by a board certified gynecologist who teaches about the subject lectures nationally about the subject and wrote this amazing chapter or even, about the aging vagina. The vagina changes that’s when it goes through menopause. And if you don’t use proper lubrication, it’s gonna hurt your wife or your spouse, and she’s not gonna wanna have sex with you. And so just simple things like that. If you actually understand the changes that are naturally occurring in life for a woman you’ll come out ahead.

And if you don’t, you’ll come out way behind.

[00:15:47] Tony Winyard: Is this gonna be a more value to say men 50 plus, but it would still be a value, to guys in their thirties and forties, but maybe more value to 50 plus,

[00:15:56] Dr. Judson Brandeis: Yeah, I think 40 plus, the other thing is you wanna get into healthy Habits,

[00:16:00] Tony Winyard: right.

[00:16:01] Dr. Judson Brandeis: right? So you want, when you’re 50 or 55, you wanna be like, wow. That Tony, when he was 25, he was really doing the right thing. And I really wanna thank that 25 year old Tony, because I’m 55 and I’m in really good shape.

And I, whereas I see a lot of folks who really messed themselves up when they’re in their twenties and thirties. Let’s be honest when you’re in your twenties and thirties, you’re pretty much indestructible.

I would, when I was a. We would go out till two or three o’clock in the morning, and then I’d show up the next day at work at six o’clock in the morning and put in a full day. And you have that vitality of youth and energy and testosterone that you could get through the day. But if you do that too much, you beat your body up too much. You’re gonna be like, yes, 20 year old, Tony really set me back. I see a lot of professional athletes, football players, guys in their fifties and sixties. And so many of these guys have really horrible orthopedic injuries that they got when they were playing football. Now I’m, I don’t know that they would necessarily.

My 20 or 25 year old self that played professional football really screwed me up. But to a certain extent, that’s true. And when you’re 55, 60 years old, maybe you’re saying, gosh, I really shouldn’t have done what I did because it really affected the rest of my life in a really adverse.

[00:17:40] Tony Winyard: Before we, we talked about the, because there are so many chapters, it’s more of a book rather than reading it from page one to, to the end of reading the chapters that you need at. Particular times, but then isn’t there a possibility that’s a very kind of reactive way to look at it.

And there’s some things that really, you should be a bit more proactive so that you don’t get the issue in the first place, but how would someone know which chapters they really should be reading to be proactive so they don’t get the issue in the first place.

[00:18:09] Dr. Judson Brandeis: Yeah. There, there are some definitely some sort of more general interest chapters. And if you go through the table of contents you’ll see those, circulation. I have a vascular surgeon writing a chapter on circulation, so there’s something called a deep venous thrombosis. So blood clots in your leg. And so I would tell a story about a patient, all the stories in the book come from patients, a patient of mine who was coming back from a business trip from Asia and a very successful business trip coming back to see his family fell asleep in his his airplane seat after drinking maybe a little bit too much and then woke. Couldn’t go to the bathroom cuz they were flying. So it was basically sedentary for 12, 16 hours in the plane. And then in the cab started to feel leg pain and then started getting shortness of breath, got to the hospital and he had a blood clot that left his leg and lodged up into the chest. and a lot of people each year and, hundreds or thousands of people in the United States each year, die of blood clots that float up to the from the legs to the lungs. And that’s something that’s really important to understand, circulation affects every one of us. Now, a lot of people don’t have cocaine addiction.

So don’t read the chapter about cocaine, but just go through and pick and choose, there’s a chapter on. Hair replacement written by Miguel canals, who is one of the top hair surgeons in the United States. He’s has got his name on 11 patents on a robotic hair replacement.

And someone like myself, that would be a good chapter for me to read. But there are plenty of folks out there with plenty of hair that don’t really need to read this chapter. So it’s really it’s not a one size fits all, but it’s an all encompassing book. And then at the end of the book, there’s chapters on inspiration written by Brian band Miller.

Who’s a national news correspondent. Someone who’s interviewed every president over the past five or six administrations in the United States. There’s a chapter on gratitude. That’s something that really is beneficial to all of us to reflect on all the great things that we’ve been given. And then a chapter on legacy.

What do we want people to think about us and say about us after we’re gone?

[00:20:25] Tony Winyard: You touched upon circulation just now. And obviously earlier, we were talking about sort of sexual health and so on. And erectile dysfunction is not just simply a matter of not being able to perform as well sexually. That’s a warning sign for many other things. Isn’t it?

[00:20:39] Dr. Judson Brandeis: Absolutely. A lot of times I talk on podcasts about morning erections, right? Because morning erections are the first sign that things may not necessarily be as good as you think that they are. So in your twenties, we all wake up in the morning. We have good erections, but by the time you hit your thirties or forties or fifties, depending on what your overall health and circulatory health is, you’ll begin to lose those morning erections.

That’s your first signal that you should be paying more attention to your health. So 10 years after you lose morning erections, you begin to lose erections when you wanna get them. And that’s a really important sign because 10 years after that, you’ll more likely have some sort of cardiovascular event, a heart attack, a stroke you’ll need angioplasty or you have chest pain.

And so really the good Lord is giving you 20 years of lead time before that happens. But if you pretend that doesn’t exist or you just order some Viagra online to put a bandaid on the problem. You’re really doing yourself a disservice.

[00:21:45] Tony Winyard: And so if someone is listening to this and they are in that 20 year window, maybe they’re 10 years in 15, whatever it might be, what steps would you say they should take?

[00:21:57] Dr. Judson Brandeis: The most basic steps are the ones that I talked about in the beginning. Don’t drink, don’t smoke. Don’t do drugs. Don’t eat too much exercise every day, stretch every day, do a little meditation, be nice to other people, be nice to other people brings your stress levels down.

And so what stress does, right?

So it’s not just being nice to people, right? If you’re nice to other people, you’ll likely have less stress, stress produces hormones. One is adrenaline. That’s the hormone that you get. If you’re being chased by a bear and the other is Cortisol. So cortisol is a chronic stress hormone, right? And those stress hormones will narrow blood vessels

By narrowing blood vessels.

Your blood pressure will go up and your heart will have to pump harder and that will affect your longevity. And that will affect delivery of blood flow to the periphery, to the legs, to the feet, to the hands, to the genitals. So it’s. being nice to people, is nice, but also being nice to people will decrease your stress levels and decreasing stress levels will make you healthier.

So our, the, our psychology is very closely linked to our physiology.

[00:23:11] Tony Winyard: . And what about people who say, are being, I don’t think sensible is the right word, but they are say maybe going to the gym, they are working out they’re they feel that they’re pretty fit, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re not gonna get any health issues. What sort of things maybe should people be on the lookout for, even if they do think.

[00:23:32] Dr. Judson Brandeis: Oh, yeah. That’s that’s foundational. And then there’s, the book has tons of stuff. That sort of, that goes beyond that, in terms of screening test, you’re screening for colon cancer screening for prostate cancer screening for lung cancer. There’s chapters on eye health, there’s certain vitamins like Lidian that you should be taking for eye health.

There’s. There’s certain supplements and thing and medications that you should be taking for cardiovascular health. So each of these things really delves into a specific subject. So you may exercise, but you may have obstructive sleep apnea. That affects your sleep and sleep is, it’s such an important part of overall health that people don’t quite understand.

So for example, sleep is when you get nighttime erections. So it’s what helps keep the penis in shape. There are different phases of sleep, but the middle phase of sleep is physical revitalization rejuvenation. So when you’re actually working out in the gym, you’re not actually building. What you’re doing is creating micro tears or damage to the muscle that during sleep, you repair.

And that’s how you build muscle, right? If you’re not getting good sleep, but you’re going to the gym all the time. Guess what? You’re not gonna build muscle. And then the third part of sleep is psychological rejuvenation. So if you’re missing that third part of sleep, that dream sleep, that’s when you replay all the events of the day and psychologically process those things, if you don’t get that part, all of those psychological issues that occur during the day are gonna linger.

the other thing that happens during, at night when you’re sleep is you produce testosterone, right? So when is your testosterone highest, first thing in the morning, right? Eight o’clock in the morning. And as the day goes down, your testosterone goes down till about three, four, o’clock when your testosterone bottoms out.

Which is in Spain where they go take a siesta, but there’s a reason for that, right? Because you get tired cuz your testosterone’s low, the day’s getting along and your testosterone doesn’t start to go back up until you go back to. And then when you go back to sleep, your testosterone goes back up till eight o’clock in the morning, you wake up and then your testosterone’s back to normal, right?

So if you’re not sleeping,

You’re not revitalizing your testosterone. So there, there’s so many our body is such a complicated complex system. And so you really it’s to be running on all cylinders. You have to understand. How to optimally take care of yourself. And even when one little thing goes wrong, how many times have you gotten a paper cut?

And it just like bothers you, or something goes wrong with a tooth or you bite your tongue. And one of those, one of those little things just throws you off.

Humans are different if you ever, I love watching nature program.

And I’m really inspired by nature.

And when you watch these nature programs, the animals on these programs are just so incredible and majestic and optimal physical condition. Because if they’re not, they die, they get eaten by something, humans are different, you can be a hundred pounds or 200 pounds overweight and no, no one’s gonna eat you.

[00:26:43] Tony Winyard: Yeah.

[00:26:45] Dr. Judson Brandeis: But, nature really is pushing us towards being optimized physically, mentally, emotionally.

[00:26:53] Tony Winyard: You talked about just now about supplements and as men get older, there’s a greater need for things like protein. Isn’t.

[00:27:02] Dr. Judson Brandeis: Absolutely. I recommend for my patients to take their weight and pounds divided by two and eat that many grams of protein a day, or just take that number of kilograms, eat that as a baseline. Don’t eat any less than if you’re a 70 kilogram guy eats 70 grams of protein a day.

[00:27:22] Tony Winyard: And in what.

[00:27:24] Dr. Judson Brandeis: That’s up to you, I’m that in the book, there are nutritional recommendations. I’m not a nutritionist. And so I, what I know is people try to make it too complic.

[00:27:35] Tony Winyard: right.

[00:27:36] Dr. Judson Brandeis: At the end of the day, proteins get broken down into amino acids and then amino acids are the building box of proteins.

So it doesn’t matter whether you get protein from beef, pork eggs, fish, lentils, at the end of the day, it’s gonna be broken down into amino acids. And then those amino acids are the building blocks of the proteins that you’re gonna build that you need. I don’t know necessarily that any one protein is better than other proteins.

Yeah. I’m sure there are gonna be people out there that will disagree with me. And it’s just really based on my own sort of ignorance of nutrition.

But at the end of the day, I see tremendous athletes who eat. I see tremendous athletes that are vegan. I see tremendous athletes that are, eat both.

What’s the answer. I don’t know.

[00:28:26] Tony Winyard: There’s we hear a lot about older. As people get older, they should, grip strength is important. It’s important to be building muscles, but a lot of people maybe don’t understand what, why it’s important. What would you say is the

[00:28:38] Dr. Judson Brandeis: Oh gosh. That’s the, that’s critically important. So I have a something called the Brandeis MD mail rejuvenation protocol. And if you’re interested in, I have a free ebook. If you go to my if you go to my website, which is Brandeis md.com and then go to media and then drop down to eBooks, it’s a free ebook.

And so the thing, the first thing you gotta is everyone dies. Everyone gets weaker and. That really begins to accelerate at the age of 60. So if you look at the, one of the slides that I put up for in a lot of my talks and for when I see a lot of my patients is the world record for the a hundred yard dash in running right from 20 to 60.

It’s relatively flat, right? 60 year old can run really fast down the track, but after the age of 60, there’s a pretty significant decline. In the world record, right? So just, you have to accept when you turn 60, you’re gonna physically decline. Even if you’re in, you’re working out three, four hours a day, you have trainers, you’re taking the right supplements.

You’re eating the right foods. Even the people that are doing everything right. Decline at a much greater rate than you did between 20 and 60. And then after 80. That decline accelerates even faster,

[00:30:04] Tony Winyard: Right.

[00:30:05] Dr. Judson Brandeis: right? So you wanna get to age 60 in optimal physical condition. And what I see a lot is men, cuz I have a very sophisticated body composition analysis machine in my office.

People have weak legs and they’re 20, 30, 40 pounds over. okay. And so what happens, a lot of guys focus on upper body, right? Cuz it’s a little bit easier to build, right? And chicks love guys with, big packs and big arms and but at the end of the day, that’s fairly useless when you get to 60 years old, what really gives you quality of life is the quality of your glutes, your quads, your calves, because that supports your. And then the more weight that you have to support, the more difficult it’s gonna be for you to get around, the more exhausted you’re gonna be at the end of the day. I have a little backpack that I put on my patients. That’s about 30 or 40 pounds. And I said, this is what you’re carrying around all day, every day.

If I had to carry that around all day, every day, I’d be exhausted. And they’re like, yeah I’m exhausted at the end of the day. So really what I focus on with my patients is building muscle, especially in the core, cuz that’s really important for spine health and for the legs, cuz that’s important for, getting up and out of a chair walking up and down, traveling, playing with the grandkids.

And. Getting rid of that weight, because if you have weak legs and you’re top heavy, guess what happens you fall. And when you fall, there’s a 50% chance. You’ll be dead in five years.

And even if you’re not, you don’t recover when you’re older, like you did when you were younger and how come? There’s a number of reasons, right?

You’re not as physically active. Your hormones have declined. Your nerves don’t work as well as they used to your mitochondria don’t work as well as they used to. They don’t produce as much ATP. Your GI tract doesn’t absorb protein. Like we talked about the way that it used to doesn’t absorb macronutrients, like vitamins and minerals, right?

And then we live in a world with all this sort of toxic sludge floating around us and processed foods. And I’m not an expert on that. But I know it really can’t be good for you. It was really interesting. I saw an article started to, to digress, but I saw an article and I’m blessed to live in California where we grow a lot of the food in the United States.

And so the nutritional quality of the food in California is much. Than it is in most of the other parts of the United States. And that’s because you pick food and it sits in a cold room for a couple of weeks and then it gets transported. And by the time it reaches North Dakota the nutritional content is depleted significantly.

[00:33:03] Tony Winyard: and the soil quality is much less than it used to be as well. Isn’t it?

[00:33:08] Dr. Judson Brandeis: I, I actually I know a little bit about that because I have patients who are in that space and absolutely there’s actually it has a lot to do with bacteria. So pesticides kill bacteria and fungus are really critically important for helping produce. Better produce helping the roots of trees.

And so I have a patient who has a company that produces the bacteria that helps soil. And when they spread that in soil, in the central valley the yield crop yields double.

[00:33:37] Tony Winyard: So you touched upon just now how the importance for older people to be maintaining fitness, but doing some kind of exercises, what kind. What forms of exercise do you typically recommend to older people?

[00:33:52] Dr. Judson Brandeis: Yeah, so I have a as part of my physical rejuvenation protocol, it’s called ABC, right? Ambulate. So do something with, on your feet. Whether it’s walking, running elliptical, StairMaster something, and you gotta sweat. If you’re not sweating, it doesn’t count. And I use the American heart association recommendations, which is 220 minus your age, times 0.75.

So you gotta get your heart rate up and it’s, it’s a very simple formula and the American heart association recommend. 160 minutes of cardiovascular exercise a week. So if you do four days a week, 40 minutes, so a is ambulate B is bike, right? So get on a bike, whether you’re getting on a bike or a spinner bike or whatever, and you can substitute swimming for this, you can substitute rowing for this.

I just, I like the ABC

Ambulate bike. And then the third day is circuit training. So choose a bunch of muscles, biceps, triceps. Pecks glutes. And you can do it without weight. You can do it with weight. You can do it with bands. I don’t care how you do it. Just do it. And do 40 minutes of just string these exercise together, do it as a circuit.

Don’t take too much time between exercises so that you get a cardiovascular workout at the same time. The thing is the reason for ABC C. That you need three days to recover from a workout. If you’re, my, my son he’s 16, he doesn’t need any time to recover from. He needs 24 hours to recover from workout, but I’m 55.

I need three days to recover from a workout, because I’m tearing muscle down and then I’m rebuilding that muscle. If I keep, all those poor people that got pelotons during COVID and were just riding the Peloton every day or every day, they got cardiovascular fitness, but they didn’t build muscle in their legs because they keep tearing down muscle.

And during COVID, it was really hard to get protein. We were eating a lot of carbs. , but it was really hard to get fresh fish, fresh meat and so on and so forth. Cuz we weren’t going to the grocery stores as much and the supply chains and all that kind of stuff. So all these people are eating basically complex sugars, hoping to build muscle, but doesn’t work that way. You need amino acids.

[00:36:17] Tony Winyard: And what about when people turn around and say, oh, that’s too difficult. That’s too much. I can’t do that. I can’t do it with all that circuit trainer.

[00:36:23] Dr. Judson Brandeis: Sorry. I look my patients in the eye and say, listen, I’m not your mother. I’m not gonna go home with you. I’m not gonna henpeck you. And tell you to do this. I got my own problems. I got all sorts of stuff. I got four teenagers and I got a wife and I got three companies. And I don’t have time.

I can let, what I’m doing for you right now is I’m laying. A program, a plan based on 25 years of practicing medicine based on really genuinely caring for patients based on doing clinical research at American red cross at Harvard, at UCLA based on, reading, going to meetings, exploring new technology, I feel like I’m as qualified as. To produce a really solid plan for helping men rejuvenate themselves to get themselves back into shape. But if you don’t follow it, that’s your problem. It’s not my problem. I don’t have, there’s not enough hours in the day for me to worry about your problems.

[00:37:19] Tony Winyard: Right.

[00:37:20] Dr. Judson Brandeis: You gotta be the hero of your own journey.

[00:37:22] Tony Winyard: We’ve been talking about this amazing book, the 21st century man. So while we are on the topic of books, is there a book that comes to mind that’s really moved you for any reason?

[00:37:33] Dr. Judson Brandeis: Oh boy. That’s a that, there’s so many books, but at the same time, I don’t read nearly as much as I need to cause I’m so busy sort of creating content.

you know, the, The one book that really inspired me, I think, was tools for Titans written by Tim Ferris and that there was just a series of interviews with really outstanding, interesting people.

And so I picked and choose from. From all of those folks, I really like books that are densely packed with information. And if you look at my book and Tim Ferris’s book, they’re exactly the same size. They’re, there’s exactly the same layout. I just, I like the way that he presented the information.

I like the way he laid it out and and so that’s probably the book that’s influenced me the most over the past or 10 or 15.

[00:38:22] Tony Winyard: So if people wanna find out more about you, they wanna get the book, they wanna maybe contact you on social media. Where should I.

[00:38:29] Dr. Judson Brandeis: Yeah. So the website for the book is called the 21st century man, all written out in letters. So the 21st century man.com and there’s information on the authors, there’s me reading certain chapters in the book. So you get all sorts of good information about the book, and there’s a way to purchase the book either as an ebook, a hardcover book, I recommend the hardcover book.

There’s just something very visceral about, holding a four pound solid hardcover book. And my book will never go in a limp soft cover. It’s always gonna be a hardcover book. And then also an ebook. And then my medical practice website is Brandis md.com. B R a N D E I S md.com.

And then I have a line of men’s health supplements called the firm science. So it’s a F I R M science.com. And then I have Instagram and I have. LinkedIn and, oh, my YouTube channel’s really good. Just go to Brandeis MD, B R a N D E I S md.com. So I put a lot of my lectures there and my my clinical research lectures and my patient lectures.

So a lot of the stuff that I do I’ll put up there.

[00:39:40] Tony Winyard: And we’ll have all of those links in the show notes as well. So finally to finish is there a quote that, that you particularly like for any reason,

[00:39:50] Dr. Judson Brandeis: Yeah. The one I keep coming back to is you are the hero of your own life’s journey,

to me that really says it all, at the end of the day, if you don’t wanna follow anything in the book, there are consequences, I’m, I’m here as a physician to to help you understand what to do.

It’d be like if I went to my financial advisor and he said it’s important to have a diversified portfolio and have some stocks, have some bonds, have some real estate, have a little cash on hand. And I said, yeah, that’s great. Thanks a lot. But I’m gonna put all of my money in Netflix.

because I think Netflix is great. And then, and then Netflix drops 80% the next day. And now I have 20% of the money that I used to.

You know that’s my fault. It’s not anyone else’s fault. I feel like I’m really well qualified to help men live a healthier, better, happier life based on all the things that I’ve learned over the past 25 years.

But at the end of the day, if you don’t follow the advice in the book, there are consequences of those kind of decisions.

[00:40:54] Tony Winyard: Judson, thank you for coming on and sharing, such great information and thanks for this wonderful book as well. Cause I, mean, there’s so much information in there. It’s incredible. So this should be really helpful to it’s just, as you say, getting a message out to guys, to actually buy the book in the first

[00:41:10] Dr. Judson Brandeis: Absolutely. Thanks a lot for having me on. I really appreciate it. You were you asked fantastic questions.

[00:41:15] Tony Winyard: place. Thank you.

Okay, next week is episode 81 we’ve Sheryl Carroll, who is an ex banking professional turned integrative health practitioner and health coach. And she’s very passionate about supporting women in perimenopause and menopause. To live with radiant energy and to feel strong and sexy and body and mind. And she’s been running 1 to 1, and group coaching programs to help women achieve this goal. So we’re going to talk a lot more around menopause and perimenopause and hormonal shifts and, and much more. So that’s next week, episode 81 with Sheryl Carroll. Hope you enjoy this week’s episode with Judson. If you know anyone who would get some value from this, especially if you know any older guys, because there’s so much valuable information that a lot of older men really should listen to, then please do share it with them. And hope you have a great week