567: Josh Whalen on Peptides, Hormones, Aging-Backwards and Saving Relationships

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Katie: Hello and welcome to the Wellness Mama Podcast. I’m Katie from wellnessmama.com, and wellnesse.com. That’s “Wellness” with an “E” at the end. And this episode is all about peptides, hormones, aging backwards and saving relationships. I am here with Josh Whalen, who is an expert in some of these topics. He’s the founder of Blokes and a new company called Joi, which is J-O-I. And he, through his own experience, started feeling not great, and he had low energy, lack of focus, dwindling drive, and a lot of other issues. And he reached out to find his own answers to this, and it led to what is now a business helping a lot of people do the same.

And we talk about a lot of these things today. A fun story about how he’s met two of the most recognizable people in the world, and then we go deep on how we can drastically improve the divorce rate in the U.S. by optimizing couples’ hormones and how he learned this from his personal experience, why 10% to 20% of relationships are sexless and how this can be remedied, steps to testing and optimizing hormones, the four major hormone markers we should be looking at, what peptides are, and how we can use them to our advantage, including a couple really fascinating new ones, some simple factors that can make a big difference in optimizing hormones, the peptides he takes on a regular basis and recommends, and so much more. So, without further ado, let’s join Josh. Josh, welcome. Thanks for being here.

Josh: Thank you for having me, Katie.

Katie: I’m excited to chat, and we’re gonna go deep on peptides and hormones and some other topics. But before we do, I always send, in my research for these episodes, questions about unknown facts about you, and you have one that you have met two of the most famous or recognizable people in the world, and I am so curious to know who they are.

Josh: All right. One is a famous Beatle, Sir Paul McCartney. And the other is Elon Musk.

Katie: Wow. Definitely two recognizable ones. I bet those were cool experiences.

Josh: Yeah. One was backstage Coachella at OutKast. Obviously, that was Sir Paul McCartney. And there’s a really funny story behind it, but we don’t have enough time. And then the other one was Super Bowl, with Denver Broncos and the Carolina Panthers, in San Francisco, and I ran into Elon Musk, and I got a selfie with him. I think I’m one of the very few people that got a selfie with him. I’ve never shared it, per his request, but if Elon Musk is watching, I have a selfie with you, buddy.

Katie: That’s really cool. Well, also in that list of questions, I love to send the question if you were gonna give a TED talk in a week, what would it be about? And you responded that “How we Could Drastically Improve the Divorce Rate in the U.S. by Optimizing Couples’ Hormones,” and I think this is actually a perfect jumping in point for some of our conversations today, so I would love to just hear your kind of 10,000-foot overview of why that’s the case.

Josh: Well, it starts with me personally. One of the reasons I started Blokes, and then Joi came to be, is my wife pretty much said to me, “Hey, Josh, if you don’t get your hormones dialed in, and you don’t get your sex drive dialed in, I’m gonna divorce you.” So I had an ultimatum in my relationship. And, you know, eventually I figured out how to get those dialed in, but it allowed me to do some research… It allowed me to do some research into divorces, and I didn’t realize that anywhere from 10% to 20% of all relationships are sexless, which, you know, can’t be good for any productive relationship. Secondly, you know, I just, I, after my personal experience, after getting my hormones dialed in, I realized how important the sex drive was, and how much it was satisfying my partner and her needs, and I think every relationship should do that before they start going down that route.

Katie: I’m curious what that actually looked like, because that statistic is pretty staggering, and I wouldn’t have even guessed it was up to 10% to 20% of people, and this seems like, as you said, it would be a big problem. What are some of those steps, or how do people begin to even start addressing them?

Josh: Well, I think the first part is just being honest with yourself. A lot of times, I think, in a relationship, partners are not fully cognizant of your other partner’s needs. For me, it started with my wife giving me a huge nudge, and that was going to see a physician. And my process was probably different than a lot of people’s. It wasn’t that great. But getting your hormones checked, getting baseline labs, and really understanding what the heck is going on. Because a lot of times, people are going through these problems, I call them chronic issues, not acute issues, meaning it’s happened over time, and there’s a lot of things that can affect a man’s, you know, hormones, and a lot of things that can affect a woman’s hormones, and you just may not know it.

But starting with baseline labs, being really honest with that person who you’re sitting in front of, whether it’s a nurse practitioner or a physician’s assistant, or an actual physician, but being honest about where you’re struggling in your relationship.

Katie: And on that note, I think we’re luckily in a time when getting lab testing is easier than it has been in the past, and there’s much more availability of this than perhaps previous generations have had, or at least more easy availability. But there are also stats quoted, for instance, that men today have a third of the testosterone than their grandfathers at the same age, and you’ve talked about normal ranges, and I’ve run into this, too, in the thyroid realm, of you might end up with labs that look like normal ranges by today’s standards, or among the people getting tested, but this doesn’t always necessarily give you a complete snapshot of information, or tell you anything about optimal. So let’s talk about how sometimes looking at normal ranges can keep us from getting the answers we’re looking for.

Josh: Yeah. That’s a great point. First and foremost, any time you get a lab test, it’s a snapshot in that one particular time, and there are so many factors that can be affected. You know, for men, we always advise our men to not have their testosterone checked within 48 hours of sex, because it can drop substantially. Same thing with working out, and the same thing can affect women. But at the end of the day, any time you’re doing a blood test, it’s a snapshot in that time. Getting into ranges, it’s one of my pet peeves in healthcare, and it’s really, really hard to measure somebody’s performance or their optimization when you’re being across a standard of, you know, thousands or hundreds of thousands of different people that are getting that same lab test. So, you know, talking about optimization, I think it’s an extremely, extremely important thing. Nobody wants to live in a range.

And when you start talking about those ranges, they’re so vast. I mean, looking at the men’s testosterone range, it’s somewhere between 300 and 1000 nanograms per deciliter, and comparing those two is like comparing a Ford to a Ferrari.

Katie: That makes sense. And why are men’s testosterone levels decreasing, and so drastically? This seems like a really quick time period for that to be happening.

Josh: Yeah, and you pointed out a really good stat that your audience should know about. A 50-year old man 30 years ago has 30% less testosterone. There’s a multitude of factors, and we were just talking about this last week, and real, really in-depth conversations. But one is environmental factors. The plastics that are, you know, around us, that are in our system. You know, stress, pollution, guys are working out less and less, women taking more of an active role in the household plays a factor in that. Guys are just less masculine, healthy lifestyles. All those things play a major role in why men’s testosterones are dropping. But it’s not just one. It’s a multitude of factors.

Katie: Yeah, and on the lab testing and the normal ranges side, like I said, I experienced this in the thyroid realm, where I knew something was wrong, and I went to multiple doctors and asked for tests, and found out they weren’t testing the entirety of a thyroid panel, they were just looking at a couple measurements first, and that they would say, well, those are within normal range. And when you do deep dive, you realize that normal range is actually determined by averages of people who get tested. People who get tested or people who think that they might have an issue, and typically people who are elderly. And so, the normal ranges are often not telling you what a young, healthy person needs to feel optimal. They’re telling you what is considered clinically problematic for someone in the elderly population.

And so, I think understanding that at least is a good starting point for delving deeper into what actually is going on. I think, also, maybe something that you ran into, women, typically, from my understanding, are more likely to go to the doctor and be proactive and speak vulnerably about what’s going on, and it seems like guys can have trouble, or be more reluctant to do that. What do you think are some of the reasons there, and/or ways to overcome that?

Josh: Well, that’s just not, you know, speculative response. It’s actually true. Men are 25% less likely than a woman to go see a physician. I read a stat that men 18 and older haven’t seen a physician in 40…are 45% less likely to see a physician in a year than a woman. I think, you know, this is another one where there’s a ton of different noise, and there’s a ton of different factors, but I think the thing for me that resided the most is that when we’re young boys, young men, we’re told to deal with pain, to not be vulnerable, and I think that carries over when you have decades, when you’re in your 20s, your 30s, your 40s, and 50s, and all of a sudden, you have pain, or maybe something doesn’t feel right, and you’re just less apt to go to the doctor.

There’s plenty of reasons, like maybe a bad experience. Maybe it’s financial means. But the one that resides with me the most is that when we’re very, very young as men, we’re just less likely to deal with pain, or even show that we have pain.

Katie: That makes sense. And then, ironically, is an interesting corollary to that. Women weren’t even included in medical research until 1993, so we have men who are reluctant to go to the doctor, and women who are trying to go to the doctor but can’t get answers because most of the research was done on men. And so there’s obviously some things that I think a lot of people like you and like many awesome doctors out there are working to overcome some of these now known issues that we have when it comes to testing. But I think understanding this is the first step toward improving this, and I’m curious, both for you personally, and what you recommend for people who maybe are identifying some of these similar problems, what are those first steps to testing and to improving those levels? Is it hormone optimization therapy? Is it other, like, more interventive diet and lifestyle stuff? What kind of approach do you take?

Josh: Yeah, I think there’s a lot of different factors. Some of it depends on your age, and where you’re at. Some of it’s just being honest. I mean, you know if you’re doing good for your body or bad for your body. You know, smoking cigarettes is obviously not good. You know, drinking alcohol on a repetitive and ongoing basis is not good. But if you feel that something is off, it probably is off. And I think the first step is getting baseline labs. And that can start with your primary care. That can start with any functional medicine expert. It can start with, you know, somebody in the hormone space. And if it truly is hormones, you should be seeing somebody who’s extremely dialed in and an expert in hormones. And I always tell patients, whether they’re going to us or not, when you’re going through this process, understand the physician that you’re sitting across, and if hormone optimization is a very big factor in their practice, because if it is, then you’re probably, you’re likely in good hands.

Katie: Another interesting fact I learned from you in researching this episode is that men’s hormones can actually change in response to their partner, especially during pregnancy. Can you explain what’s going on when that happens?

Josh: So, this is kind of a funny one, because I and, my wife and I, we had major fertility struggles. From the time I was 35 to almost 38, we had four miscarriages. And this was the onslaught of my hormones just, you know, going down. And I had no idea why. So, afterwards, I did some research on my own. I started talking to physicians who specialize in hormones, and there’s four major markers you should be looking for. One is testosterone, another one is estrogen, another one is prolactin, and the last and certainly not least is cortisol. All those can change as your partner is going through pregnancy. Men’s testosterone can decrease as much as, anywhere from 40% to 75%. Their cortisol levels could go up, their estrogen can actually increase as well, which could lead to belly fat, and just different mood swings.

And then, prolactin, this is kind of an interesting one, but obviously, prolactin’s a great marker for women because it helps aid in, you know, breast milk. But for men, there’s some studies that have showed that it actually helps aid in the fact that it makes him more alert as a father. So, all those things played a major role in me, my testosterone levels. I wished I would have known what they were before, as the baseline, and this is why I tell so many guys, and women, this, but I can tell you, where I started in my hormone journey was, you know, below 300 nanograms per deciliter, which is considered hypogonadism. And for a guy who’s in his mid-30s, that’s really, really low.

Katie: Wow. And when we’re talking about now understanding these normal ranges and why we want to focus on optimization, and not just baseline normal, that’s potentially from problematic populations to begin with, what are some of those factors that we should focus on for optimization, especially people who want to perform at a high level?

Josh: Right? I mean, when you talk about hormone, it’s testosterone replacement for men, hormone optimization for women. When we talk about replacement, that’s truly what we’re doing. We’re talking about what we feel you should be there at a certain age, whether you’re in your 30s, your 40s, your 50s. Most guys that come to us, we’re focused somewhere between 800 and 1200 nanograms per deciliter. There’s other things that you can do, just in general. You know, have an active lifestyle. Get out in the sun more often. You know, eat healthier, get rid of the plastics in your house. You know, focus on stress, focused on exercise, focus on high impact interval training, do squats, all kinds of things that just, you know, allow your body to not adapt, and kind of shock it over time, so…

Katie: Yeah, several key points there. I think I’m a big proponent, this is one of my soapboxes, of the importance of sun exposure, and obviously not to the point of damaging your skin, but getting out…my key times are immediately after waking up, to signal all the important hormone cascade that comes from early morning sunlight. And people often underestimate how big of a difference this can make when we’re talking about hormones, because it affects cortisol, which is a master hormone. It also affects light signaling. It affects your circadian patterns, and all of those come into play with your body and production of all of your sex hormones and everything else, and you also mentioned reducing plastics, which is another big topic for me as well. I also always put sleep on the list, because if you’re not sleeping…

Josh: Oh, my god. Yep.

Katie: …you’re not gonna have optimal hormones, period. And then, I love the idea of also, in resistance training and lifting heavy things, especially for women, I feel like, at least for guys, there’s more of a focus on that, and women are often, tend to shy away from the really heavy weights, but I think that’s a really critical piece for both men and women. Another topic that I know you have some expertise in, and I would love to learn from you on today, is the topic of peptides, because these have become somewhat of a buzzword lately. I’d love for you to start broad, and explain what peptides are, then maybe let’s go into some of the roles they play in this bigger conversation.

Josh: Sure. Peptides, flowing through our body naturally. We have 7000 of them. If your audience is a little baffled on peptides, these are a little bit more than what you throw in your shake or your coffee. These are short chain of amino acids, the stepping stones for proteins. They are extremely, extremely powerful. I like to say, a lot of low-risk, high-reward peptides, unlike hormones, are very, very focused in what they can solve. You have peptides that can solve weight issues, mental issues, growth hormone issues. Just overall stress. Peptides, I think, are, you know, the next big thing in healthcare. One thing that a lot of people don’t even realize is insulin, something that our body relies on every day, and especially if you’re type 1, type 2 diabetic, insulin is the peptide, it’s the world’s most largely produced peptide. And I’m very, very bullish on where peptides are going as a whole. I take them on a regular basis, and they’ve changed my life.

Katie: Are you open to sharing some of the ones you’ve experimented with and take regularly?

Josh: Absolutely. Yeah. No, I… There’s quite a few peptides I take. BPC-157 is something that’s for gut health and inflammation. I take that…I kind of cycle on that, cycle off of it. I always take a growth hormone peptide. Ipamorelin, sermorelin. One that I’ve been taking on a lower dose is semaglutide. It’s a GLP-1 medication, that is just kind of taking the U.S. by storm. There’s actually a global shortage on this medication, and why? Because it works. It’s for weight loss. It slows down the digestive tract, and it’s a phenomenal, phenomenal drug. It’s FDA-approved. And then I take one for mental health called Semax. It’s a nootropic peptide that helps with anxiety and stress, and just that neurocognition, so…

Katie: And are you taking these orally, or injecting? I know, like, BPC, for instance, is, there’s oral and injectable. Some are only injectable. Do you see it different as far as how effective they are with one type versus the other?

Josh: There’s definitely studies that showed certain efficacy between some over the other. We always kind of make it patient-dependent. I mean, some people just are simply not comfortable with needles, and then maybe oral is your best option. But we find a lot of patients do extremely well with oral options. I would say half of mine are oral, half of mine are injections. The beauty of peptides, in most instances, when you’re injecting, you’re using a very, very small 31-29 gauge insulin needle, so you barely even feel it most of the time, and a little bit goes a long ways. We often get patients calling us saying, “Hey, I don’t think I have enough in here,” but, you know, for example, semaglutide, you know, 10 units of that, which is a miniscule amount, can really, really affect the body.

Katie: And I’ve experimented with these some as well, and I noticed, especially with the injectable ones, the effects seem to be extremely rapid, and where a lot of supplements, you might have to take them for a while before you notice an effect. These seem to have a very noticeable, almost immediate effect, and most of our listeners today are women, so we’d love to hear from you specifics on, for women hormone optimization, if there are particular peptides that can be helpful, if there are lifestyle factors you recommend, or supplements, as well as maybe let’s talk about women and testosterone, because I think women often don’t think about optimizing their testosterone, but it seems like this can be a big piece.

Josh: Yeah. No. It’s…I’m glad you brought that up. Number one, testosterone’s a phenomenal drug for women. Just like men, they need to be in an optimal range, and one of our medical advisors, Dr. Melissa Loseke, who’s been practicing in the hormone space for, you know, 15 years, and she’s a well-known figure, I ask her every time, what’s your favorite drug for women and optimization? She says testosterone, testosterone, testosterone. It is by far one of the biggest catalysts for us, and it’s one of the biggest ones that shows pretty rapid change, but very balanced change, and we think women should be somewhere between 100 and 300 nanograms per deciliter when it comes to an optimal range. And it’s one of the ones that’s neglected. There’s no FDA-approved indication for women and testosterone, and I’m still kind of baffled at this one. I think it shows how much we are evolving in women’s health and hormone health. And we’re still not there, but it’s something that I think we need to get an FDA-approved indication for women.

On the peptide side, same thing as men. Listen, as we age, men and women, things change. Growth hormone changes. I love growth hormones for women, from an anti-aging standpoint, from a skin elasticity standpoint, I love, love, love semaglutide for any woman who’s trying to improve, you know, their weight. It helps with a lot of things outside of just weight, blood pressure, heart rate, you know, waist size. There’s so many good things about semaglutide, and, you know, the obvious is, you know, if you stay on that drug for anywhere from six months to a year, most patients lose anywhere from 10% to 15% of their body weight.

Katie: And I know after a statement like that, we’re gonna get this question. Is this something that you can work with people on that I can send, I’ll put your website, of course, in the show notes, but I’m sure we’re gonna have people asking where do you get this? How can I get it?

Josh: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I’ll give your audience the…it’s an absolute yes. We can help. I think more importantly for your audience, if they are seeking out semaglutide, or any one of the name-brand medications, you know, such as Wegovy or Trulicity, make sure it’s coming from the right source. I’m starting to see a lot of noise in the industry, and a lot of people doing cash grabs, and make sure it’s coming from a compounding pharmacy, or make sure you’re getting the name-branded version, and you’re under medical supervision. Like you said, and like you mentioned, you know, these things can affect you pretty quickly. Semaglutide’s an extremely, extremely powerful peptide, and if you don’t take it under medical supervision, or you’re taking it the wrong way, it can really lead to really bad acid reflux, heart rate variability. You won’t be able to sleep. You know, there’s just a lot of things that you want under medical supervision. But yes, we can take care of your audience, for sure.

Katie: And that’s an important caveat for any of this conversation, is do all of these things under the guidance of a medical professional who knows what they’re doing. And also, I always tell people, be your own primary health care provider, and be well-researched, and look into the pros and cons yourself, have a good picture of this before you even ask the questions. I very firmly believe the best outcomes happen when we have informed patients working with doctors and practitioners who have specific knowledge in very specific areas. And you mentioned testosterone being one of the most impactful things that women can do. What’s the delivery method for something like testosterone?

Josh: Well, right now, there’s quite a few. Pellet therapy. That’s a very common one for women. I’m, you know, 50/50 on pellet therapy. I think it works really, really well. The other is injections, just like men. Because you’re doing a lot less, we often have women do subcutaneous injections, oftentimes twice a week. The great thing about an injection for women with testosterone is you can control that dosage really well, based off symptomatic feedback, based off of labs. Certainly, last not least, is troches, you know, something that dissolves under your tongue, and cream. But my wife has been on a healthy dose of testosterone for almost a year and a half now, ever since she stopped breastfeeding. And she takes injections twice a week, and she loves it.

Katie: That’s something that’s been on my list to actually look into a little bit more. I have done it one time in the past, when I was in the thick of Hashimoto’s, before I recovered. My hormones were incredibly low, and they said, like, dangerous levels, so I did the pellets of testosterone in small amount, and they apparently discovered I’m a pretty fast, I guess, metabolizer-absorber of that, so I got a big influx of testosterone all in one day, and I remember thinking, like, “Oh, wow, do you guys feel like this all the time?” Because I wanted to punch a wall. And I had never in my life wanted to punch a wall.

Josh: Well, mood swings is something that’s usually a symptom of not optimal testosterone. So, maybe your body was reacting differently? I will tell you, with pellets, it’s a one-size-fits-all method, right? Once that thing is injected, or once it’s inserted, there’s kind of no turning back. That’s why I love injections so much, because we’re oftentimes increasing doses every two weeks. And, you know, we incorporate a ton of different lab panels to ensure that you’re getting the right dose, you’re feeling the right way, because the last thing you want to do is getting into any type of hormone optimization and feel crappier, you know? So, I think it’s important for your viewers to know there’s other options than just pellet therapy.

Katie: And another part of the conversation that I feel like comes into play when we’re talking about some of these things is anti-aging. And this is a top-of-mind topic. It’s become more so for me as I’ve gotten older, and I know a lot of my listeners, that it’s top of mind for them as well, and so I also love to talk about, like, the deep cellular side of anti-aging, because I think the mainstream conversation focuses on topical, or things injectable, things like Botox, or things that are kind of treating surface level, whereas my theory has always been that aging is a cellular process, and we wanna actually be looking at the cells of our body are kind of the foundational things, and that what we see in our skin or our hair, whatever, is an expression of what’s going on at a deeper level. But I would love to hear your take on this, and if there’s anything you’ve found that actually really meaningfully works in slowing aging.

Josh: Yeah. This is a hot topic right now, the whole anti-aging push. And, you know, we talk about this oftentimes with our patients, you know, longevity and vitality. I think they go hand in hand. What we provide a lot of is vitality, and I think patients have the ability to make better decisions for longevity, but they’re interwoven. Any time you can slow down your metabolic rate, you’re slowing down that aging process. Any time you can control your caloric intake, you’re slowing down that aging process. You know, eating healthier, working out more. You talked about it earlier, getting out in the sunshine is so important for longevity and vitality, and, you know, something that we tell our patients every day, go outside right away, first thing in the morning. Not necessarily look at the sun, but be in sunlight, get that exposure. Those are all things to help with vitality and longevity.

Katie: Yeah, and I think there’s also the nuance to the conversation of aging slowly and gracefully, versus trying not to age at all, which, looking slightly older is actually a normal thing, as we get slightly older. And I had to realize that too, of, like, I’m not trying to look 20 anymore when I’m, you know, have a 16-year-old son and have 6 kids. I want to age gracefully for the age that I am, and more importantly, keep my body functioning and feeling as healthy as possible, so that hopefully, when I have great grandkids, I’m still outside playing with them. And I love…I think this does take a more kind of root cause holistic approach when you’re thinking of it that way, versus I want to look like I’m 20, because you’re gonna address all the root cause stuff.

And you mentioned caloric restriction. I love this topic, because I’ve talked quite a bit about time-restricted eating, and I’ve had Dr. Satchin Panda on here. I think often that gets, for women at least, kind of tied into the dieting conversation, and it can have a lot of emotions attached to it. But there’s so much cool science about how we know, long-term, that lowering your calorie intake increases longevity. There’s a very strong correlation there. But eating less food at every single meal takes a tremendous amount of willpower for a lot of people.

Josh: It does.

Katie: So, Dr. Panda’s work is that if you can even just shorten the window in which you’re eating in a given day, a little bit, not even drastically, you can get a lot of these same cascades of benefit without feeling like you’re eating less food, because you’ve just shortened to the amount of time that you’re eating. So, this is one thing I think that can be really helpful. Obviously, you don’t want to do it in such a narrow window, if you’re female, that you’re creating stress hormone responses in the body and becoming counterproductive to what you want.

But I’ve found a lot of benefit from that, from hydration, and then, to reiterate one more time, the sun. I think avoiding the sun too much has actually been a huge disservice to our generation, and I think appropriate sun exposure is a big factor in mitochondrial health, in hormone health, and that we could benefit more from making sure we’re getting that in a healthy range, but what would you add to that conversation?

Josh: No, I think you nailed it. I think when people start talking about fasting, they kind of cringe, right? I look at fasting, and knowing your body, and caloric restriction is good, and it is kind of a bad word. But if you focus on certain intervals of eating, it’s so much easier to just manage. You know, I looked at, you know, any time I’ve been in a diet mode, and just, you know, if I’m just eating loosely, or not having snacks around, I’m eating everything, you know? So, if you can manage that process and know your body, I think you’re gonna have a lot better success. You know, and if you do have, you know, just really off hormones, and you have struggle with eating habits, you know, there are resources. I think semaglutide is a phenomenal option to control those cravings and appetite.

Katie: And as a follow-up to that, are there any supplements that you commonly recommend that…I know that there’s a lot of individualization and personalization in this area for every person, but are there things that, on average, or in large groups of people seem to be beneficial?

Josh: Yeah. I mean, it seems everybody’s lacking vitamin D. You know, we always are suggesting vitamin D. A Lot of people lack B12. Those are all things that can help with energy levels and mood. We don’t have supplements, but those are things that we are commonly telling our people to get on. Another thing right now that’s really bit is NAD+, with cellular function. We prescribe that on a regular basis. That seems to give people a lot of energy boost, helps with skin elasticity, cellularity. Those are probably our most common things.

Katie: I did an experiment on myself with IV NAD, and I did notice a benefit from it, and I did a cycle of it where I was doing the slow IV that took us several hours. And then, I had heard, I think it was Ben Greenfield had done basically a push IV of it, and I was like, “Well if Ben can do it, I’m sure I can do it.” And did that and it was one of the less comfortable experiences of my life, so I definitely wouldn’t recommend push IV’ing that, for anybody listening. They were like, “Yeah, if you ever feel like this, you’re having a heart attack.” And I was like, “Okay. Good to know.” But I think it can be really helpful. Just another one of work with people who know what they’re doing, and do it the right way.

Josh: Yeah. Ben’s a freak, too, right? I mean, guys like him, they know their bodies really well, and there’s this push in the community of who can do it the fastest. For me, I just do simple injections. I do subcutaneous injections of NAD, anywhere from 100 to 300 milligrams. It gives you a little bit of jolt if you haven’t done it, but it gives me a ton of, ton of energy, and just a lot of mental focus and clarity throughout the rest of the day and the week.

Katie: Yeah. I stick to those now after that. I think I did the entire dose that they would normally do in an IV in about 20 seconds, and I’ve had babies naturally, and that was pretty high up on the things I don’t wanna repeat ever, so…

Josh: I believe it. And you know what’s funny. A lot of people feel paralyzed when that happens. Like, they can’t move, and they’d stiffen up. And that’s not a good feeling.

Katie: Not at all. I was in fetal position on the floor for a few minutes, for sure.

Josh: Oh. Ouch.

 

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Katie: Well, like I said, a lot of our listeners are female, and a lot of them have been kind of following my journey and going on this journey with me of moving past health problems and now into trying to really optimize health, and I’m now in a phase in my own life where I’m training for a pentathlon, and kind of becoming an athlete for the first time in my life. So, I’m curious if there are any other factors that you would recommend, specific to women, that can really help optimize on any of these fronts, or things that just aren’t parts of the mainstream normal conversation.

Josh: Yeah, I mean I think we talked about a lot of those things for men, but, you know, healthy habits, knowing that you’re doing good, and eliminating the bad. I mean, we say that, and it seems like, you know, such a soft thing, but it’s huge. Like, you know if you’re going out too much and you’re drinking, you’re eating crappy foods. You know what you’re putting in your body. Just know that more good is better than less. You know, exercise. We talked about, you know, women doing a lot of weight training. That’s huge for women. Boosting that testosterone. We see, I would say if we saw, you know, 10 female patients at Joi, I would say 9 out of 10 of them are lacking what we would consider optimized testosterone. So, once again, getting those baseline checks. A lot of women are feeling low energy, very fatigued. You know, lack of mental clarity. And a lot of that can be solved just through hormone optimization.

Katie: Yeah, I noticed a drastic difference in my energy levels when I started eating enough protein. So, I’ve realized as a woman I was drastically undereating protein, but thinking I was actually consuming enough protein. And when I tracked it, I realized I was not even probably hitting enough for maintenance level of metabolic function, and so really increasing my protein helped a lot. And then I added pretty heavy weight lifting to that, and I had always kind of, when I was younger, but in that camp of women aren’t supposed to lift heavy weights, so you don’t get bulky. And it’s funny now to me to even think that I thought that, because I’ve noticed lifting heavier weights, I’ve gotten leaner, and my body shape has changed, but I certainly didn’t get bulky, and I recently was able to split squat 345 pounds. So, I’m, like, lifting pretty substantially, and not getting bulky. So I would give that encouragement to women.

You mentioned baseline labs. What are some of the things you guys put on a normal, like, everyone-should-keep-track-of-these baseline labs?

Josh: Yeah. I mean, CBCs, CMP. There’s so much good things with just basic markers like a CBC and a CMP that can tell you a lot about a patient’s health. For men and women, estrogen and testosterone. You know, for men, PSA is always something that we wanna be checking on a regular basis. For women, progesterone, and then, once again, estrogen. Those are all really good markers that you should be checking on a regular basis. And unfortunately, you’re probably not getting that from your standard family medicine doc or your primary care doc. A lot of doctors now practice medicine based off of what insurance is gonna cover, and it’s called reactive testing. So they’ll run one or two markers, and if something’s off, then they’ll run multiple markers beyond that, but they’re oftentimes not gonna give you what I would consider a full baseline lab.

Katie: Got it. And, also, you guys, you run companies, you have Blokes, and also, I believe Joi is the female version? Can you explain what those are and what you guys do?

Josh: Yeah. blokes.co is our website. Focus on hormone optimization, prescription peptide therapy, hair loss, weight loss, the same thing for men. It’s choosejoi.co. Hormone optimization for women, prescription peptides, that focus on weight loss, anti-aging, sex, skin elasticity, the whole nine yards. And we’re growing, and we’re expanding as we speak, and we’re gonna be doing a lot of great things.

Katie: These kind of things excite me a lot, because I think a part of the thing that we’ve run into in the past is people like, for me, as a thyroid patient, I had researched and figured out I was pretty sure what was going on, but it was difficult to find a practitioner who was knowledgeable, who was willing to work with me, and try the stuff I wanted to try. And it’s, like, I’m really excited that people can now find more customized solutions like you guys, who are taking the whole patient into account, and who are knowledgeable about some of these cutting-edge therapies, and about hormones, which seems to be one that I hear a whole lot about from women right now. And like we talked about in the beginning of the episode, we know that hormone-related issues are on the rise for men, but also for women. And so I think this is a very, very timely and important thing that you guys are doing.

Josh: Absolutely. This is our jam. We’re an inch wide, a mile deep when it comes to hormone optimization, and it should be a front-and-center topic.

Katie: And a few other questions related to that, that I would love to get your take on, the first being, what your personal 80/20 is when it comes to your own health. What are your non-negotiables that you do all the time, that you think have the biggest impact for your health?

Josh: Well, number one now, it’s testosterone. It’s something that changed my life. It saved my marriage. Eating healthy is something that’s very important to me. And then I have to at least get out in the sun at least two, three days a week, where I’m doing something. My wife and I, we love to play pickleball, and then certainly last not least, I still like to get in the gym and throw weights around. Those are kind of my non-negotiables. Every once in a while, you have to cheat, just like everybody else, but you gotta get right back on the bike after you’re done doing that.

Katie: Yeah. I’m actually now, I think…like, I don’t even use the word “cheat,” but I think, like, “deviating from the plan” at times actually helps you stay adaptable. And if it’s just at apt times, and not a normal thing, I think it can actually be beneficial for the body to do that sometimes, rather than getting our body so used to only one… And I even don’t take any supplement every single day. I have a rule to cycle everything, just because my goal is metabolic adaptability. I also love that we’ve talked about the sunshine again. We actually moved to where we live specifically for, one of the major reasons was for year-round sun exposure, because I think that is so important. And you mentioned at the beginning that you have kids as well, so I’m curious if there are any specifics that you have, you and your wife, for raising healthy kids.

Josh: Well, my wife is the captain of that boat. And I’m very fortunate, but I don’t think my kids have put anything in their body that is not organic. I mean, we even go as far to give them goat milk, because it’s easier to process. You know, eating healthy is such a big catalyst, and, you know, there’s so many things that tie to kids’ health. You know, gut health is something that’s extremely important. We give our kids probiotics, we give them vitamins, we give them supplements on a regular basis, but my wife is so phenomenal at that, ensuring that what’s going in their body is as good as what we’re putting in our body.

Katie: Absolutely. That’s been my approach as well, and realizing just how capable kids are of understanding, even from a young age, and so, making sure I just educated them, without fear or any kind of negativity, but just educated them about how foods affect your body in different ways. And it’s been fun to see that my older ones, our teenagers, how they’ve really taken ownership for that. And I don’t restrict their food when they’re not in my house. I just cook healthy at home, and they choose to follow…because that’s what their bodies are used to, and that’s how they feel good. And I think often, we don’t give kids enough credit when we give them things like kids menus that are all junk food, and assume that’s all they’re gonna wanna eat, because they’re so amazingly capable of learning and understanding, at such a young age.

Josh: Totally. And you know what? Make it fun. Make it a lot of fun for them. We are on the tail end of a heavy metal detox for our kiddos, and we have a one-and-a-half-year-old boy and a four-and-a-half-year-old girl, and they both love it at the end of the night. We give them their little spray, and, you know, we’re almost done with it, but we’ve made it fun. And when you make it fun for them, it’s just, you know, it’s just part of the game. It’s part of living.

Katie: Yeah. And I think that’s a valuable lesson from kids, is do that for yourself, too. If you’re trying to improve your health, gamify it, and make it fun. Don’t make it the mindset about restriction, or about what you can’t have, or about depriving yourself or thinking that you’re punishing yourself into looking or feeling a certain way, but make it fun, and make it game-oriented and goal-oriented, and do that for yourself as well.

Josh: Absolutely.

Katie: Another question I love to ask is if there is a book or a number of books that have profoundly impacted your life, and if so, what they are and why?

Josh: Yeah. It might sound a little weird, but I’m, even though I’m in healthcare, I’m a big believer in economics, any of the Malcolm Gladwell series is my go-to. I’ve read them all at least a few times. I love to know why there’s an action, and then there’s a reaction. And then the same thing goes with the body, you know, so I think that’s why…those are my books of choice that I read. And then every once in a while, it’s just something in healthcare.

Katie: I really enjoyed his books as well. I’ll link to those in the show notes, as well as to Blokes and choosejoi…

Josh: So good.

Katie: …so you guys can find those and keep learning more. I know you have resources available online as well, so you guys can check those out. And then, lastly, any parting advice for the listeners today that could be related to something we’ve talked about, or entirely unrelated?

Josh: I think you nailed something that I give our viewers all the time. Own your own health journey, and own your own success, whether that be, you know, an entrepreneurial-type route, a business route, and health should be the same way. You know, know that, you know, there’s a lot of noise. As a consumer, it’s even sometimes hard for me to navigate through so much noise, with so much advertisement and marketing. But own that journey. Find the right practitioner for you, because there’s one out there for everybody. And do some research.

Katie: Awesome. Well, I think that’s a perfect place to wrap up for today. Thank you so much for your time. I’m glad we got to go deep on some of these more fun, kind of, sciency topics that I haven’t gotten to talk about much, and I learned a lot. I know our listeners did too, so thank you for being here.

Josh: You bet. Thank you so much, Katie.

Katie: And thanks as always to all of you for listening and sharing your most valuable resources, your time, your energy, and your attention with us today. We’re both so grateful that you did, and I hope that you’ll join me again on the next episode of “The Wellness Mama Podcast.”

 

If you’re enjoying these interviews, would you please take two minutes to leave a rating or review on iTunes for me? Doing this helps more people to find the podcast, which means even more moms and families could benefit from the information. I really appreciate your time, and thanks as always for listening.