What Men Should Know About Their 50s: Health, Sexual Wellness, and Longevity | Dr. Judson Brandeis | Better Man Podcast Ep. 050

Dean Pohlman: Hey, guys, it’s Dean. Welcome to the Better Man podcast. In today’s episode, we explore what men need to know about their fifties. If you’re not there yet, hopefully you’re going to get there one day. If you’re already there or you’re already be on there, This is still going to be some really helpful information. In order to do this, I bring back Dr. Judson Brandeis, a sexual medicine urologist who has dedicated the second half of his career in medicine to optimizing manhood.

Dean Pohlman: He is extremely knowledgeable and experienced when it comes to helping men with their longevity physically, sexually and otherwise. In this episode, we discuss the three things you need to know about entering your fifties as a man. Why muscle is so important to maintaining our longevity. Why you’re not safe from heart disease, which is the number one killer of men, even if you’re relatively healthy.

Dean Pohlman: Nine Simple practices to help you be healthier than 95% of other guys out there and the only medically proven technique to increasing the length and the girth of your penis. I’m not joking. So whether you’re already in your fifties, whether you’ve already passed them, you’re going to be there later on. I know that this is going to help you with your longevity.

Dean Pohlman: There’s a lot of really great information in here. And as always, Dr. Justin Brandeis is a great guest to have. So I hope this episode inspires you. I hope it gives you some useful information and inspires you to be a better man. Welcome to the Better Man podcast. I’m your host, Dean Pearlman, founder of Man Flow Yoga. And here we are redefining what it means to be better as a man successful but also true to himself, physically fit, but also mentally and emotionally healthy, improving in all areas of life, but recognizing that it means nothing without deeper, more meaningful connections.

Dean Pohlman: Join me in the Better Man podcast as we explore the practices, the beliefs and the processes that enable us to strive for our goals while also comprehensively caring for our own health and well-being. I hope this show inspires you.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: To be the better version.

Dean Pohlman: Of yourself. Hey, guys, it’s Dean. Welcome to the Better Man podcast. Today I am joined by Dr. Judson Brandeis, who is a repeat guest, Dr. Judson Brandeis is a board certified urologist, surgeon, medical researcher and physician educator of his focuses on sexual wellness or sexual medicine. I believe, is the right term. And he had actually, I think, one of the most popular episodes ever on the Better Man podcast when he joined us last time.

Dean Pohlman: And today we’re going to specifically focus on health for men in their fifties, things that we need to know as guys get older. I know many of you guys listening in are in this specific demographic and we’re all going to get there hopefully one day if you’re not already. So, Dr. Brett, thanks again for coming in. I’m really looking forward to this conversation.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Oh, man, it’s an honor to be here. I love being on your podcast and I love doing your yoga programs. It’s as I get older, like I’m coming up on 56, like I told you, it’s really important to incorporate those kind of things into your into your daily routines and shift you know, it’s interesting. I have a body composition analysis scan and I talk to my patients, especially my guys over 50 and shifting their physique.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: So a lot of guys come in with what I call a beach body. So their arms are big, their upper body, their torso is big and their legs are weak. And as you get older, you need to start beginning to prepare for your sixties, seventies, eighties. And if you want to maintain that quality of life, you need to begin to work on flexibility.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: On balance and building your lower extremities. You know, your legs, your core strength and your arms become much, much less important. So I, I talk to my patients about going from a, a beach body to a T rex body.

Dean Pohlman: Okay. T-Rex Rex is.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: A little with a little arms.

Dean Pohlman: That’s the new aspiration for men over 50. Are you in t rex money? That’s funny. Yeah. Ideally, you are not skipping leg day at the gym. The sooner the better. It sounds like. So today. I think it’d be cool to talk about. You mentioned we’ve you know we’ve had a lot of conversations. We’ve done some work together. You put out this really awesome book for men’s health, the 21st.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: 21st century man.

Dean Pohlman: Oh, yeah, there it is. Look right in the photo. 21st century. Man Yeah. And from this, you’ve kind of distilled nine things that can make you healthier than most men. I’d love to get into those. There things that I was. I was I was glad to see that. I mostly do pretty well, I think. And I’d love to talk about them kind of in the context of, you know, men in their fifties.

Dean Pohlman: But I think a good starting point here. What are some of the biggest concerns that you see guys in their fifties changes that they’re noticing coming in to see you about their health?

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Yeah, I mean, the first thing to consider is that men’s health is a total disaster. Okay. So 100 years ago, women lived one year longer than men. Now women live five years longer than men, right? I mean, that’s a big change in 100 years. Yeah. Second of all, the longevity of middle aged men in the United States is actually declining and was in decline even before COVID.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: And the reason for that was alcohol, opioids and suicide. Why? What we call diseases of despair. So, I mean, think about that. You know, in in quote, civilized society with increases in technology, longevity should increase. But longevity is not increasing. And these are self-inflicted ways of of dying alcohol, opioids and and suicide. And part of it also is that men are half as likely as women to go to the doctor.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Right. So and part of the reason for that is that women are much more integrated into the medical system because they have babies. So by definition, they have to go to an obstetrician gynecologist because they’re having babies. So they have a doctor. And then a lot of times women are more likely to take their kids to the pediatrician.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: And so they’re they’re more integrated. They don’t they they actually know where the their health insurance card is. They might know that if they have a PPO or an HMO, like I had a guy the other day, he’s a PhD scientist at Lawrence Livermore Labs, you know, shooting missiles out of the sky. You know, he’s got, I think, two or three PhDs.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: And I was like, you know, do you have an HMO, RPO? And it’s like, I don’t know, what’s the difference? I mean, this guy’s like, you know, triple doctor certified, but he doesn’t know the simple difference between an HMO and a PPO.

Dean Pohlman: So I don’t know if I could explain that either. And and my wife does handle the health insurance so that that that jives with me.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Yeah. And so I mean, if you’re a reasonably healthy guy, you’re probably not going to need a doctor for until you’re 40 or 45 or 50 years old. But, you know, after 15, especially after 60, if you look at it’s really interesting. If you look at the world record for the 100 yard freestyle or the 100 yard dash in running or really any sport, the times are fairly stable until the age of 60.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Right. So the difference between the world record holder for the 100 yard dash at the age of 60 and the hundred yard dash at the age of 20, fairly similar. But after 60 the slope changes.

Dean Pohlman: Mm.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Right. And you begin to decline much, much faster. And then at 80 there’s another break point. Right. And these are like top athletes on the world. Right. So they’re training for three or 4 hours a day and they have misuses and physical therapists and they’re eating right and they’re sleeping and so on and so forth. And so, you know, I mean, Jim Morrison said, no one gets out of here alive, right?

Dr. Judson Brandeis: So we’re all going to die at some point. But what you want to do is you want to get as close to that elite athlete decline curve, Right. And most of us aren’t on that curve. So instead of declining at 60, we decline at 50. Or if you’re not taking care of yourself, you decline at 40 or even 30.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: I mean, I have lots of heart to heart talks with guys in their thirties about you got to lose 20 or £30 and you got to start exercising because it’s not going to get easier. Every year. It gets harder and harder.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah, you know, I we get a lot of people, you know, in 50 6070s and men for yoga. And so someone comes to me and they say, you know, Dina, I’m 52. I don’t know if this is right for me or I, I don’t know. I think it’s all over for you. I mean, like now, man, you got a long time.

Dean Pohlman: You’re you’re young, you’re relatively young. You’ve got it. You’ve got a you’ve got a long time before things.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: I mean, I’m just flashing back to Animal House. Remember that scene at the end of Animal House? And it’s like.

Dean Pohlman: Do you think it’s over?

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Nothing’s over until we think it is.

Dean Pohlman: And what we need now.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Is a stupid and futile gesture. Maybe you’re not as big an fan of Animal House as I am.

Dean Pohlman: I’ve seen it. I’ve seen it once. Oh, and it was a yeah, I’m going to have to be honest and say that was that was the animal house of my time is old school.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Oh yeah. I guess I am older than you are. Yeah. Go back and review Animal House.

Dean Pohlman: I will ask my. Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: But nothing is over until we say it is.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah. I, I, I think that a big point of me saying that like I think you know guys in their fifties like it really hasn’t I see so many people who are being you know strong in their sixties and seventies that you know there and there’s this and there’s also just this big idea that, you know, age is like the age is the not just the correlation.

Dean Pohlman: Right. But it’s like it is the it is the most important thing in terms of your health and wellness. And, you know, they think that they can’t strength train anymore. Like weights are bad beyond a certain age and and it’s yeah you know I hope I hope that we can change that perception and show guys well.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: I mean you know you have to be smart right? You know the thing is like I tell my patients, you know, to build muscle in a 20 year old, send them to McDonald’s and send them to the gym. Right. It’s easy to build muscle when you’re 20, Right. But over 50, like I have the Brandeis, M.D. email rejuvenation protocol.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Right. And and my focus is building muscle and burning fat right now. Educate my patients about it’s not weight, it’s your ratio of muscle to fat that you’re really working on. And so, you know, a critical aspect of that for anyone over the age of 50 is get your testosterone checked.

Dean Pohlman: Mhm.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: You know, testosterone in men is getting lower and lower every year. Right. Because we’re relatively sedentary, you know, we don’t have to kill our food. We can just go to an app and have our food delivered to our house. And so, you know, the statistics are that testosterone globally is around 30% less than it used to be. And testosterone helps you build muscle.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: It’s the most important growth factor in men. It helps you build muscle. It helps you get rid of fat, it helps your libido, it helps your cognition, it helps your sleep. I mean, testosterone is like the perfect growth hormone for men. I mean, anyone with a bat and two balls is going to do better with higher testosterone. The lower testosterone.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: And it’s it’s very, very safe. Yeah, We.

Dean Pohlman: Had a we had a really good conversation about this on the last episode that we did. And, you know, initially, me coming into the the idea that of testosterone replacement therapy, I was kind of coming into it thinking like, well, what if they just, like, change their lifestyle, right? What if they just start living a better lifestyle? What if they start eating better?

Dean Pohlman: What if they start managing their stress? What if they start sleeping better then and exercising? Then their testosterone will go up, Right? And the answer that you gave me, which kind of surprised me, was, well, maybe not. You know, maybe they actually do need to get testosterone therapy, kind of this whole the whole chicken before the egg, you know, argument here.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Yeah. I mean, the thing is, if your testosterone is like 150, you don’t feel like going to the gym.

Dean Pohlman: Mm hmm.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: So, you know, for some of those guys, especially my younger guys, I put them on testosterone with the hopes that one day I don’t need to have them on testosterone anymore. And if you take something like KM ACG, then you can support testicular testosterone production and you don’t lose that production once you go off testosterone. And so sometimes people just need like a little jumpstart, you know, a year of testosterone and then then they’ve lost £20, They built muscle, they’re sleeping better, and then you can transition them off of it.

Dean Pohlman: MM Yeah, that’s cool. And that’s another, you know, that’s another myth that you need to once you’re on it, you’re on it forever. So I think that’s a big reason. I think a lot of guys are resistant to medical intervention and they don’t want to, you know, there’s other there’s other types of guys, right? There are some guys who are like, give me all the surgeries, give me all the medical intervention.

Dean Pohlman: But then there are guys who are like, I don’t want to take any sort of medication. I don’t want to get reliant on something. So knowing that, you know, this is a could potentially be a temporary intervention and not a forever one.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Yeah. Or, you know, sometimes like for guys whose fertility is still an issue, I’ll just put them on. KM ACG And you get a testosterone boost from those medications and that’s not giving someone testosterone. It’s more like over stimulating their production that they have already. But, you know, that’s one of the major things that declines in men after the age of 50.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: And so that’s something you really it’s not what we’re taught in medical school to repeat, to check. Right. It’s not a standard thing that people check, but it’s it’s one of those interventions like we check a whole bunch of labs for like no reason. You know, like check, we check chloride, we check CO2, we check all these these things that you get like every we checked neutrophils, which I mean, we checked so many things that are just basically useless because there’s some variability and we don’t check testosterone with something that actually declines and it’s something you can actually do something about.

Dean Pohlman: Mm.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: What’s like I get fired up about these things. You.

Dean Pohlman: You do, you, you must have good testosterone levels. Ha ha. I would hope I do. It’s good. Yeah. So I, I’m curious about other other things. So what are some other things that happen to guys in their fifties. Testosterone. One thing. Yeah.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: I mean, so you get a reduction in human growth hormone and IGF one insulin like growth factor. So, you know, all of these things that are that are telling your body to, you know, grow and improve are winding down. Another thing that winds down is endogenous production of nitric oxide. Nitric oxide is a really important neurochemical in your body that’s released by nerves onto blood vessels that open up blood vessels.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: And I actually produce a supplement called Affirm. That’s a nitric oxide booster that helps boost circulation to the brain, to muscles that a lot of elite athletes and especially endurance athletes take these, it improves penile circulation and works synergistically with Viagra and Cialis and even decreases blood pressure. So, you know, you get what’s called Sarcopenia, which is just a fancy medical term for a reduction in muscle as you get older.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: And it it has to do with a reduction in neurochemicals like like nitric oxide also has to do a reduction in growth. Factors like testosterone, IGF one, human growth hormone also has to do with nerve dysfunction. Right. So your nerves aren’t working as well. It has to do with mitochondrial dysfunction, has to do with, you know, a breakdown in in DNA.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: It has to do with, you know, insulin, inflammation in the gut. You’re not absorbing proteins. It has to do with the way that you eat. There’s a whole host of reasons why you lose muscle as you get older. And so between 40 and 60, 40 and 70, you lose about 1% of your muscle mass per year, and after 70 you’ll lose about one and a half to 2% of your muscle mass per year.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: And that’s, you know, that’s your quality of life.

Dean Pohlman: Hmm.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: If you can’t walk up stairs or you can’t get out of a chair or you can’t walk around, then you can’t travel, you can’t play with your grandkids. And so what I tell my guys that are in their fifties is you’ve got to be preparing for the sixties and seventies and eighties if you want to have a good quality of life.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: For me, it’s not about lifespan. It’s not about how long I live. It’s about health span, it’s about how healthy I can be into my seventies and eighties. And I’m, you know, I’m turning 56 in June and I’m really totally focused on building muscle by 60. You know, at the age of 60, I want to have as much muscle as I possibly can, knowing that whatever I do, it’s going to start to decline at a faster rate.

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Dean Pohlman: So again, I hope you can take me up on this offer, use that link in the show notes for 20% savings and squeeze out thighs out that kind of Listen to the next question is, you know, we can we can it sounds like there are things that we can do that we should be able to maintain as we get older.

Dean Pohlman: But what are some things that happened in our fifties that are things that changes that we should kind of respect and accept? And what are they as a result of those changes? What changes do we need to make to our lifestyle?

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Yeah, well, you know, first of all, there’s some actually real medical stuff that starts happening at the age of 50, right? So at the age of 50, you should probably get a PSA check, Right? It’s just a lab test to look for the possibility of prostate cancer because, you know, after the age of 50, especially if you’re African-American or especially if you have a family history of prostate cancer, you can get prostate cancer at the age of 50.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: You should get a colonoscopy or do at least a stool test for blood or for cancer cells. Right. Because colon cancer happens and especially it happens after the age of 50. You know, you should get a full checkup with a full set of labs. Right. You know, maybe not in your thirties, maybe not in your forties. If, you know, if you’re just doctor phobic or you’re adverse to going to the doctor, you don’t you think that you’re invincible and you don’t want to have health insurance.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Right? But at the age of 50, you really need to go to the doctor and have a full checkup with full labs. I mean, I personally I get a full body CAT scan every five or six years, right? Because I’ve had patients and I’ve had friends show up with all sorts of weird, unexpected cancers. And I just don’t want to ever have to have that kind of surprise.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: And so, you know, at the age of 50, you know, get check in with a doctor, please.

Dean Pohlman: What are some reasons I was going to say what are some reasons that you think men are avoiding going to the doctor?

Dr. Judson Brandeis: You know, men think they’re invincible. You know, men are all talk now, you know, be strong, you know, tough it out on that whole kind of messaging that we all get and a lot of us buy into it that it’s a sign of weakness to to go to a doctor, to go to a therapist, to go to, you know, anyone that’s in the business of trying to help help you help him improve you.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: But you know that people are there to help you and and not to judge you and really take advantage of that because that’s super critically important.

Dean Pohlman: MM Yeah, I’m, you know, I don’t know if I go to the doctor as much as I used to because I’m just in a, you know, I moved away from the hospital system that I was in when I was growing up and, and then I had better health insurance. So like going to see a doctor wasn’t fun. I think I better I might have much better health insurance now.

Dean Pohlman: I do have a doctor, but I normally go to him for if I need antibiotics. Like, okay, I’ve got a I’ve had an infection for like a week now. It’s been two weeks. It’s time for my time for my buy buy or my, my biannual antibiotic dose. But I think a big reason I don’t go maybe as much as I should.

Dean Pohlman: I mean, I think even even my age, my health, I think I should be going at least once a year, at least once a year or.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Maybe every every other year is probably fine. I mean, I’m maybe flies in the face of what, you know, doctors say. But, you know, I mean, if you’re a young, healthy guy, there’s not a whole host of stuff that’s going to go wrong.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah, but.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Yeah, I mean, at 50, stuff does start going wrong. I mean, I had a patient the other day, right? So I treat a lot of guys for erectile dysfunction. I have a whole host of things that I do for them. Low intensity shockwave therapy and PRP and firm and, and you know but if, if it doesn’t work, my radar goes up it’s I had a patient the other day 52 year old guy like built like you know strong guy works out five or six days a week and everything that I was throwing at him really wasn’t working for erectile dysfunction.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Right now, erectile dysfunction is a precursor for cardiovascular disease, right? So it’s about ten years from the time you develop erectile dysfunction. So if you start using Viagra, Cialis, that kind of stuff, you need to be cautious that you’re developing cardiovascular disease. And so I sent this guy, as I send a lot of my patients for a heart calcium score, right?

Dr. Judson Brandeis: A super simple test. It’s just a CAT scan of your heart. It takes literally one minute, costs a couple hundred bucks. But his calcium score was 1200. Right? My score is zero. I guarantee you your score is zero. Right. At 1200, this guy could keel over at any minute and die.

Dean Pohlman: Wow.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Right. Just to give you an example, I because people don’t really understand the numbers. My brother in law is 53, right? He’s got a strong family history of heart disease. And he wasn’t feeling great. And so he went to his doctor who ordered a heart calcium score. His heart calcium score was 800. They sent him to the cardiologist who called up the cardiothoracic surgeon and he had a six vessel heart bypass three days later.

Dean Pohlman: Wow.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Right. With a heart calcium score of 800. So I told my patient, because he’s a Kaiser patient, the Kaiser was like, oh, well, we don’t really believe in that. You should get a stress test. You know, we’ll set schedule it for six or eight weeks from now. So I told my patient, you know, I mean, he’s a smart guy.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: He’s a great job. I said, You go to the cardiology office at Kaiser at 9:00 in the morning and you sit there until somebody sees you. So I don’t want you to leave that office up being seen that day and. Right. That’s what a heart scan of 1200 means. But that, you know, if you looked at this guy, you’d be like, Oh, that guy in his buff, he’s in looks like he’s in great shape.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: You would never know that he had a ticking time bomb inside of him. Right. So for guys over 50, the first sign of cardiovascular disease in a quarter of men is death.

Dean Pohlman: Uh, wow.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: And, you know, it’s not unusual for me to have these kind of patients. Yeah, this just this. The guy that came in two weeks ago. But, I mean, I have dozens and dozens of similar stories.

Dean Pohlman: You know, I used to think a few years ago. I think I used to think that as long as you worked out regularly and you ate well and you slept well, that you’d be healthy. And now I’m learning like, okay, there are some other things at play here, and stress is way more important than we thought. It was early, you know, maybe intuitively some other cultures or some other medical practices or medicine practices understood the impact of stress and and other lifestyle things.

Dean Pohlman: And, you know, we also know now that our our social life is way more important than you and I talked about this. But this the Harvard Longevity study proved that the most important thing to our overall health and happiness is the quality of our relationships. More than like what we eat or sleep or like our work out. You know, there’s a.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: There’s an amazing TED talk on that from the the the curator of the the Harvard longevity study. So it was a study that was started over 75 years ago. And they took like a thousand Harvard students and a thousand guys from kind of rough neighborhoods in Boston. And they just followed them and they followed every aspect of their life, you know, their labs, their health, their X-rays, you know, famous people like John F Kennedy Jr were in there that study.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: And they compared the, you know, the health and happiness of all these folks, rich and educated and poor and uneducated. And the number one thing that determines happiness and a healthy, good life is the quality of your relationships, you know, your close relationships and your friend relationships.

Dean Pohlman: Mm hmm.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: And that’s, you know, that’s that’s a challenge a lot of times to maintain those relationships, especially, you know, I’m married, I’ve got four kids, I have three companies. It’s hard to maintain a work life balance, you know, That’s why there’s a work life balance chapter in in my book. It’s hard to maintain those those personal connections and to give time to relationships when you’re trying to build businesses and you’re trying to stay in shape and you’re trying to be, you know, X, Y, and Z.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah, And that’s that’s kind of what I wanted to ask you about. And I also so, by the way, heart disease or cardiovascular disease, this is is this still the number one killer of men?

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Okay. That’s number one.

Dean Pohlman: What do you think is causing you know, if we look at, you know, I’m assuming that it’s stats that we can look at, Well, what’s causing heart disease, in your opinion?

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Yeah, I mean, Wolf, we we sit down and don’t do much all day. Mm hmm. Right. I mean, most of our our occupations are sedentary. You know, we’re not farmers anymore. Mm hmm. And then the quality of the food that we eat, you know, obesity, I think by 20, 30, half of the country will be obese.

Dean Pohlman: Wow.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: I mean, that’s just insane. And the quality of the food that we eat, you know, it’s high cholesterol. High fat. Mm hmm. And, you know, people aren’t exercising as much as they they used to be. But, you know, there’s a there’s a big divide. There’s people that are educated and informed and motivated. And those people are living better and healthier than than ever, you know?

Dr. Judson Brandeis: And then there’s the rest of the folks that, you know, their testosterone is low and they’re overweight and they have bad habits. They’re they’re drinking, they’re on opioids, they’re smoking. Not as much anymore, thank God. But, you know, it’s just like like the cell phone. Right. Some people use the cell phone to to accumulate knowledge and become really informed and educated and so on and so forth.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: And some people use it to play Angry Birds.

Dean Pohlman: Mm hmm.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah. So I’m I’m I’m curious about the you know, because I have a is high blood pressure and heart disease are are these two things related?

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Yeah. I mean, I can sort of explain to you what high blood pressure is.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah. Because I know it’s, you know, it’s something that I know a lot of people who are really, you know, fit active guys are they’re, you know, they look healthy and then they say, oh, I have got high blood pressure, though. So, you know, I guess I’m you know, I’m kind of thinking you could be fit and you can be like you look like you’re in physically great condition, but, you know, if you have high blood pressure, what does that mean?

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Right. So your heart’s a pump.

Dean Pohlman: Right?

Dr. Judson Brandeis: And the job of the heart is to pump blood all throughout the body. Right. And when you pump, you create pressure and there are about 50,000 miles of blood vessels in our body. Half our arteries have four veins, right? Arteries have muscular walls. And when the heart pumps, it sends that blood into the elastic, muscular walls of blood vessels.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: So the blood vessels will stretch. Right. That’s called the systolic blood pressure. And then because there’s muscular walls, the arteries pump, they push the blood. And when the blood is pushed out, then you have a diastolic blood pressure. Right. So you have a high blood, a high number and a low number. The high number represents potential energy. Right.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Because it’s stretch and the low number represents kinetic energy. Right. Of the the blood flowing through. Right. And when the heart is pumping, what determines the pressure is one how hard the the heart is pumping. But second and more important is how wide or narrow are the blood vessels that it’s pumping through. Right. So if you think about a hose.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Right. If a hose is is running freely, it’s low pressure when the water is coming out. But if you put your finger over the tip of the hose, then that water is coming out of the hose at much, much higher pressure. Right. Lower flow, but higher pressure. And so your body has two places that it detects blood pressure.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Okay. One is your neck, right? You have this thing called the carotid body on the carotid artery, which goes up to your brain. And that has a sensor, because if you lose blood pressure to your brain, then you’re dead.

Dean Pohlman: Mm hmm.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Okay. The other blood pressure sensor in your body is in your kidney, right? Because your kidney monitors electrolytes and it monitors fluid balance. And so it’s really important for your kidney to know and to get blood pressure. So those are the only two places in your body that really matter if you’re not getting good blood pressure to your fingers or your nose or your eyes or your liver, your body doesn’t care.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: It’s all about the brain and the kidneys. Right. And so when the brain and the kidneys are saying, I don’t have enough flow, then what happens? Your heart starts to pump faster. Their heart starts to pump harder. And you get what’s called vasoconstriction, meaning that the blood vessels in the rest of the body and all the parts that you don’t really care about except the carotid and brain and the kidney, those will dilate.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Right. And that’s what causes the higher blood pressure is the narrowing of the arteries. That makes it harder for the heart to pump blood where it needs to go. Right. So what causes narrowing of the arteries? Well, you know, first of all, cholesterol smoking, because smoking damages to endothelium or the inner lining of blood vessels, you know, blood clots.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: But another thing that causes narrowing is stress.

Dean Pohlman: Mm hmm.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Right. Because what’s stress? Stress is a response to danger. Right. Stress is running away from a bear. Right. When you’re running away from a bear, all your peripheral arteries are clamped down and you get blood flow to your muscles, to your heart, to your eyes and to your brain.

Dean Pohlman: Right.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: And all the other blood vessels are constricting. They’re becoming more narrow. Right now, if you’re stressed at work or if you’re stressed in your marriage or stressed in some other way, your body only has one system and that’s adrenaline. And cortisol. Those are your stress hormones. So whether you’re running away from a bear or you’re chronically stressed at work, your body’s producing adrenaline and and cortisol, which is narrowing those blood vessels.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: And so in order for your heart to get blood flow where it needs to go, the heart has to pump harder. Which raises your blood pressure.

Dean Pohlman: Mm hmm.

Dean Pohlman: That makes how you. Yeah. So. So basically, you could be in really good physical shape. You could be doing all the things you could be eating well, you could be sleeping well, you could be exercising. But if you live a lifestyle in which you are chronically stressed, that means that you’re going to have high blood pressure. That means that you could be at risk.

Dean Pohlman: I mean, does does having high blood pressure mean that you’re at a higher risk for heart disease? Does it mean that you can have a heart attack.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Because it means your blood vessels are more narrow and it means your heart’s working harder? Right. I mean, the you know, the the heart has a warranty on it, you know, 70, 80 some odd years. But if you make it work harder, you know, it’s just like an engine in your car. You know, if you’re driving on the city streets, your engine’s not going to last as long.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: You maybe get 30 or 40 or 50,000 miles on it. If you’re driving easily on the highway, you know, you might get 200,000 miles out of that engine.

Dean Pohlman: Mm hmm.

Dean Pohlman: My dad my dad had a teacher in medical school who used to say that your heart only has a finite amount of beats, so you shouldn’t exercise, because.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: And he didn’t take that class for too long.

Dean Pohlman: No, I think he was. It was definitely a joke. Okay. Definitely a joke. But. Yeah. Is it was this is justification for for not he didn’t want to exercise so I think he was is probably really healthy. He was probably a really happy healthy guy. Honestly, he’s one of those, you know, again, kind of kind of indirectly proving what I’m trying to say here, which is that your physical health is not as important as whether or not you’re like you’re just a happy guy.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Well, I mean, you know, that’s multiple, multiple factors. And, you know, genetics also plays a big factor.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah, I think a lot. To what extent does that help? To what extent does genetics play a factor in, you know, high blood pressure? Like if if my like my grandpa, for example, he had a heart attack when he was 64, I think. And I don’t really know him that well. I think he was. From what I understand he was maybe a bit a bit odd, I guess is the right term.

Dean Pohlman: One way to describe it. I think he had his own business. So he was a vet. And I don’t know if he lived a relatively stressful life or if he had like a stressful childhood that went with him into his adulthood. But I kind of you know, I look at him and I’m kind of curious like, well, if he had a heart attack when he was 64, was that, you know, to what extent is that genetics and how is that going to affect me and to what extent is that he just had a really stressful lifestyle and he kind of grew up in the era of, you know, just be a man and do what

Dean Pohlman: you need to do and you’re, you know, different, different time, right? So like, to what extent is that the factor? And so, yeah.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Yeah. But I mean, there are also certain ethnic groups like, for example, you know, because I’m in Northern California and there are a lot of South Asians now, a lot of Indians that come over to code for Google and Facebook and Oracle and all the companies that are in our area. So I have a ton of of South Asian patients.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: And the cardiovascular risk of a an Indian guy is similar to a white guy with diabetes.

Dean Pohlman: Mm hmm.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: It’s pretty amazing. Well, they just have smaller blood vessels. In fact, I had a patient a couple of months ago. A young guy like 47 years old, came in with erectile dysfunction. You know, I do this whole sort of eating, lifestyle, building muscle, losing fat kind of thing with with my patients in addition to sexual medicine stuff and and I said you need to get a heart calcium score because you’re too young to have these issues.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: And so he actually was exercising and eating better and trying to lose weight, doing all the right things. And one day he didn’t show up for his is a shockwave therapy appointment for erectile dysfunction. And two days later, we got a call from his wife said, oh, you know, he had a heart attack.

Dean Pohlman: Wow.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Like what? So the patient came in like a couple of weeks later and you know who was riding his bike? Like I told him to. And he hadn’t gotten his heart calcium score. But he was smart enough to remember that when you have some chest pain, call the doctor. And so he called his wife. He got taken to the local hospital and they ended up getting to stents in.

Dean Pohlman: Hmm.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Right. And his main risk factor, I mean, he was at 20, £25 overweight. He was relatively sedentary. He had some stress in his life. But his main risk factor really was he was South Asian.

Dean Pohlman: Hmm.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: And so, you know, there are families there, Caucasian families, African-American families that have early heart disease. And a lot of those folks all recommend getting a heart calcium score on South Asians. I’ll recommend getting a heart calcium score. African-Americans, for whatever reason, have a much higher incidence of high blood pressure. So, you know, it’s it’s really important to to know your numbers.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: I mean, it’s super simple to get your blood pressure checked.

Dean Pohlman: Hmm. Wow.

Dean Pohlman: You know, it was making me think that also, I think people who people who I think what I’ve what I the specific example I’m thinking of is, is is Japanese people. I think when they lived in Japan, they had this higher life expectancy. They had, you know, a certain way of living their life. They had a certain diet.

Dean Pohlman: They had, you know, and then moving to the United States, I think they had like a much I think the lifestyle change is what, you know, just the different the different the different food, different, you know, different different movement throughout the day caused them to have a dramatically lower life span. And so there’s you know, there’s a lot of at least back when I was like kind of more involved in this world, there was this movement to figure out what your ancestors were eating right, so that you could you could eat based upon your your genetics.

Dean Pohlman: I don’t know if that that’s just what I thought of when you were talking about that.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Yeah, I did. There’s a bunch of companies now that do sort of genetic testing and then give you nutritional recommendations based on that. Mm hmm. You know, to be honest, I didn’t really find it super valuable.

Dean Pohlman: Okay. Yeah, there’s.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: There’s just, you know, the thing is, there’s a lot of low hanging fruit out there. Like, a lot of us are, like, searching for these, like, miracle cures or, like, you know, great epiphany, light bulb moments. I had a patient that flew in from Florida to see me all the way out in California, and he wanted to talk about like peptides and and, you know, all these like, you know, stuff that you’ll hear on like podcast.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Mm hmm. And I looked at him and I’m like, Dude, you got to lose £50. It’s like, forget the peptides stop eating so much and go to the gym. You know, it’s like really a simple concept. If you lose £50 and you’re going to the gym and you want to get to that next level, we can talk about, you know, DP 57 and 5141 and Alpha one Antitrypsin and all these peptides that are out there.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: But most of the stuff is actually pretty simple. I mean, if you’re doing yoga for an hour a day, you’re going to get yourself into great shape, You’re going to feel a lot better. There are some meditation in on there, and that doesn’t cost anything.

Dean Pohlman: Mm hmm.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: And you’re not taking a foreign substance and putting it in your body. So, I mean, most of the stuff that’s out there for people is actually pretty simple. And most of it is. You know, the Beatles said the best things in life are free. And yeah, I would I would agree with that. You know, the best things in in health are aren’t you free.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah. And I think this is a good time to go into your nine things to make you healthier than 95% of men. And I think we did this on the last podcast. So I’m going to sum it up and then and then I’ll ask some some questions about this. But no drinking, no smoking, no hard drug use. Don’t overeat.

Dean Pohlman: Exercise daily. Stretch daily. Meditate daily and be nice to people.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: And sleep.

Dean Pohlman: And sleep. Steve Very important. Important. Have you read Why We Sleep? Have you heard that? No. From Matthew Walker. Matthew Anyway, that was a book that was super popular a few years ago and that for me was like, Well, sleep is important. And the difference between 6 hours of sleep and seven and a half hours of sleep is incredible.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Is big.

Dean Pohlman: So my my question to, you know, because a lot of the things that we’re talking about, like, you know, there’s a reason why guys find it difficult to change their diet and go to the gym or more often, there’s a reason why guys are dying sooner because of substance abuse. What are you know, what do you think are the reasons why men are turning to substances to cope with life as opposed to you know, dealing with the issues themselves?

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Yeah, I mean, you know, my own personal theory is that we have outrageous expectations for life. Right. And that’s informed by what we see on TV, what we see on the Internet, what we see on Facebook, what we see on Tik-tok. You know, everyone’s beautiful. Everyone’s got a perfect life. Everyone, you know, gets along. Everyone’s got, you know, a Lamborghini and, you know, a French bulldog.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: But I mean, that’s just not the way that life works. I mean, I, I see some really high end patients where, you know, if you look at these guys, you’d be like, oh, man, these guys, they got all their shit together. But you know what? I know their dirty little secrets. Hmm. And, you know, everyone’s everyone’s not everyone’s life is messed up, But, I mean, just focus on your own life.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Don’t don’t set your expectations for life based on what you see in a magazine or the Internet or TV comparisons.

Dean Pohlman: The season of Joy.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Yeah. I mean, you know, like, I felt bad for. Was it Brad Pitt, the pirate, you know, when he was in that lawsuit with that and Amber heard.

Dean Pohlman: Oh, yeah. Johnny Depp. Yeah.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Johnny Depp. Johnny Depp. Yeah. Sorry. I’m not good at celebrities. Right, Right. So, like, I mean, here’s this, like, really good looking guy and he’s got tons of money and he’s got celebrities and he’s, you know, and there’s like women waiting by the courthouse with signs and stuff like that. But this guy’s life is so messed up.

Dean Pohlman: He.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Like you could hear the recordings of the fights that he was having with his his his wife or girlfriend at that time. And I’m like, man, I wouldn’t trade my life for his any day. Right, Right. So, I mean, but, you know, you would look at him and, ah, you know, Arnold Schwarzenegger, right? I mean, like, the guy’s a you know, a legend, whatever.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: But, you know, he slept with this maid and he’s got you know, he’s got a son floating around out there. You know, everyone’s life has problems. And so, you know, don’t set your expectations based on what you think life should be like or what other people’s lives are. Quote, like, just focus on your own life and doing what you need to do to do the best you possibly can.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: And and hope for the best.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah.

Dean Pohlman: So I want to I want to ask some other questions about, you know, some of those those nine things, which, you know, I’ve got my own tips. But like, what are your recommendations for when you tell people they need to exercise daily? What are the what are the tips that you give them to? Like, here’s how you can start getting into a habit of exercising daily.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Yeah, perfect. So I do ABC, right? I try to do simple things. A is for ambulate. So on day one walk run treadmill, elliptical, something on your feet, Stairmaster and I go by the American Heart Association Association recommendations, which is get your heart rate to 20 minus your age. And then I usually ask people to get about three quarters of that.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Right. So, you know, if you’re 60 years old to 20 months, your age is 160.

Dean Pohlman: Mm hmm.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Right. And then you divide that by three quarters, you get 120. So get a heart monitor. They’re cheap these days trying to get your heart rate up close to one toe while you’re exercising. Right. And if you exercise for an hour, you burn 500 calories. Right. Because I ask people to count calories. So that’s that’s a busy bike.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: So get yourself an exercise bike, get a heart rate monitor, get your heart rate up. You can do some high intensity interval training on a bike. Bikes are really nice because, you know, they’re not they’re not stressing your you don’t get stress fractures from from the bike and then see a circuit training so you know get a whole bunch of different exercises, squats, leg lifts, abs, biceps, triceps and then just do it in rapid succession and do it with high reps, low weight.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Right. Because as you get older, after the age of 50, your tendons and ligaments dry out and so you’re much more likely to tear or mess up, strain a muscle or a ligament than you are when you’re younger. You know, you you watch a I’ve been watching Masters track, right? You watch these 50, 67 year old guys at the starting line kind of jumping up and down.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: There’s no springing this to their legs. You watch these 20 year olds, they’re just like bouncing on on on pogo sticks. It’s it’s amazing you lose that last elasticity. Right. And you got to understand, it takes 2 to 3 days to recover from a hard workout. That’s why you don’t want to run two days in a row or bike two days in a row.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: That’s why it’s ABC, because it’s day one, day to day three and then you recycle back to day one, day to day three. And then also understand you got to sleep because muscle building happens when you sleep. You got to take a nitric oxide booster because you got to get blood flow to those muscles. I put a lot of my guys on creatine, right?

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Just a little bit of creatine, like maybe two grams before or two grams after a workout. Right? They all have to get heart rate monitors and they all have to eat high amounts of protein. Right? You can’t build muscle out of carbs. You need protein. You need amino acids to build muscle. So 80 to 100 grams of protein, that should be the cornerstone of of of your diet if you’re over the age of 50.

Dean Pohlman: Mm.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: So that’s, you know, that’s sort of the strategy that I implement with people.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah. Are there any other supplements that for, you know, for guys over 50 that are, that are really important that can be super helpful like, like Chandra conjugating is one glucosamine. I’m thinking of.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: The ones you know honestly I’m really not super familiar with that data. I mean glucosamine and can do right and are basically used to make cartilage but how that gets from the GI system to the cartilage, I don’t know. You know, you intuitively you would think well, if you know, if you take it in orally, it’s going to somehow get into the blood.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: If it’s in the blood, then somehow it’s going to get into the cartilage. But I don’t know how that pathway works.

Dean Pohlman: Mm hmm.

Dean Pohlman: Okay. Meditation daily. So that’s one. What are your do you do you tell people, you know, this is how I meditate and this is a way that you can do it. Or do you say, go find a meditation practice? Here are a few examples. Or how do you you know, what is, what does meditation look like to your recommendations?

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Yeah, I mean, I, I do maybe two or 3 minutes of meditation. That’s it. I wish I knew more. I wish I did more. There’s a book that I read called Search Inside Yourself. It’s about one of the the early employees of Google. And now we’re like, search inside yourself. That’s like a whole institution that they rolled out outside of Google.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: But it’s basically like mindfulness for engineers and scientific types. Yeah. And what I just do is I try to take five or ten breaths without any thoughts intruding into my brain. And that’s really hard to do.

Dean Pohlman: It’s incredibly hard for me.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: It sounds like so simple. Just take five or ten breaths and all you’re doing is just focusing on breathing the air, going in the air, going out and just clearing out your brain. And it’s, you know, for anyone out there that’s never meditated before, I challenge you to try to do that, you’ll find that it’s incredibly difficult. It’s also a really, really good way to put yourself to sleep If you’re having trouble sleeping, just just entirely focus on breathing and try to and try not to let any thoughts get into your consciousness and and it can be really tough to do.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah, I’ve heard meditation described as like flossing your teeth or brushing your teeth. It’s just something that you do before bed and speaking to how difficult meditation can be. One of the most difficult meditations that I’ve tried is just being present and listening to sounds and being aware of the things that you’re being aware of your senses and not being aware of thoughts.

Dean Pohlman: So if you really want to challenge yourself, meditation go outside at night and like sit on your porch or like sit somewhere, close your eyes and just all you do is pay attention to the sounds like listen to like the cars driving by a mile away or like, you know, maybe a bird chirping or something, but only focusing on like the sounds and not letting thoughts come up.

Dean Pohlman: And I’m like, I get one minute into that and I’m like, okay, I’m done. That was hard.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Yeah. And it’s you know, it’s interesting. Like, like my wife and kids watch the Today show every morning and it’s like I watch the opening credits of today’s show and it’s like every one second they flash a new image.

Dean Pohlman: Mm hmm.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: It’s like. It’s unbelievable. Like.

Dean Pohlman: Like it’s down to a science class.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Yeah. I mean, it’s just an assault on our senses. No wonder we’re all stressed out.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah, I mean, I. You know, I. I have a son. Well, I have a daughter now, too, but, you know. Thank you. But we watch, like, you know, we’ve gone through cocomelon phases, which is like, if you are a parent, it’s just awful. TV with songs that sounds like they were created by chat, but the animation is like they know what they’re doing.

Dean Pohlman: They know that they’re supposed to use certain colors. They know that they’re supposed to change the scene every x amount of seconds so that it keeps the children engaged. And it works like you can put a child in front of cocomelon for, you know, hours and just leave them and like they would still be watching it because people understand how to captivate your senses.

Dean Pohlman: And I think it’s gotten I think, you know, as long as you’re talking about things that are making people less healthy, for me, I think the ability to focus, the ability to be with your thoughts without stimulation because because it’s so easy to stimulate your thoughts is something that is dramatically hurting our overall health. And it’s even like a really good example of this is like looking at movies, you know, like you and I were talking about.

Dean Pohlman: We talked about animals before, Go watch Animal House and then go watch like a movie, a college fraternity movie from like this year. And you’ll see how much more engaging the newer movie is like, how much more quickly the scenes are changing, the different like the lighting, just like the effects. And, you know, we have less, you know, it’s even apparent in movies how much less focus we have in movies today versus like movies that were created, you know, in the eighties.

Dean Pohlman: It’s just it’s crazy.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Well, and also, you know, if you watch old TV shows, they’re actually really engaging because they had, like, real characters and real dialog. Whereas a lot of the stuff today, it’s just it’s just special effects and scene changes and colors and that kind of stuff. And it’s fun to watch those old movies that really like it was a craft.

Dean Pohlman: But for many people it’s going to be a challenge to have the mindfulness to watch an old movie because it actually does. It actually demands focus as opposed to like watching, you know, I love Marvel and I love Captain America, but those movies are easy to watch because they’re just extremely stimulating. Yeah. So I wanted to ask a question about, you know, we talked about this Harvard longevity study, the importance of relationships.

Dean Pohlman: What are tips that you give to people to improving the quality of their relationship?

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Oh, gosh, I’m not an expert at that.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: That’s my my tip would be to find an expert.

Dean Pohlman: It’s an area of opportunity for me as well. Yeah, definitely an every opportunity. Yeah.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: You know, it’s there’s in my book, one of my friends who used to be the president of the California Psychology Association, Robert von Bonfiglio, wrote a chapter on work life balance. And, you know, it’s such an important thing to me that I wrote like a two page kind of side note on it. And I call it the work life pendulum, right?

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Because it’s rare that I’m like, perfectly balanced on any given day, right? Yeah, it’s a pendulum. So, you know, there are days when I work too hard in their days that, you know, I spend a lot of time with my family. Right. And if you if you work way too hard on that pendulum, you know, your family’s going to you know, your wife’s going to divorce you, you know, and your kids aren’t going to know you.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: And if you don’t work and you spend all your time with your family and your kids, then you know you’ll be homeless.

Dean Pohlman: So you want.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: You just want yeah, you want it. You want to keep it somewhere in the middle, you know, not get divorced and not be homeless. And just hope that hope that you’re you’re doing the best that you can to to meet everyone else. Everyone’s needs. And your own.

Dean Pohlman: New life goal is somewhere between divorce, not divorce and not homeless.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Yeah. There you go.

Dean Pohlman: Get some matching. Yeah, I get some bumper stickers that say that.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: There you go.

Dean Pohlman: All right, So I wanted to you know, we’ve done this. We’ve done this interview before, or you and I have done an interview before. I ask you the part two questions before I move on, though, is there anything else that you think we we should cover when it comes to health for men in their fifties, things that they.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Well, you know, so I have an exciting new project that we were talking a little bit about before called Pylon.

Dean Pohlman: Uh oh, here it comes. Is it possible?

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Yeah. I mean, is it possible to grow guys penises? Yeah. And the short answer is yes. And the longer answer is, as a urologist.

Dean Pohlman: And I hope it’s a I hope it’s a longer answer.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Yeah. And thicker answer.

Dean Pohlman: Yes.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: So, you know, as a urologist and a sexual medicine specialist, I would see a lot of guys that came in who had tried other technologies for increasing the size of their penis. Mm hmm. And met with disastrous consequences. Right. So you can do fillers, but fillers are expensive. And they go away in a year or two and you end up with a lumpy, bumpy penis.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Or you can do fat transfers, which is expensive, and you end up with what I call a pig in a blanket penis. So a thick penis with a little head. Or you can use a traction device to stretch the penis, but you get a long, thin penis, which is what I call a pencil penis. Or you can do a variety of different surgeries for penile long Asian, but some of those guys are miserably unhappy and they end up with scar tissue and a nonfunctioning penis.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: So as a regenerative urologist, I was like, There’s got to be a better way. And so I created a protocol using what’s called platelet rich plasma. So platelet rich plasma uses the growth factors that are naturally in platelets to help excess rate the growth of tissue. And then we use a traction device that was developed by the Mayo Clinic called the Restore Rex device and a suction device from Dr. Joel Kaplan.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: So the traction device gives you length, the suction device gives you girth and then boost circulation and erections using the firm nitric oxide boosting supplement. And I did that study for six months. I got Institutional Review Board approval. So, you know, this was an official study. It was listed by niche on clinicaltrials.gov. And I presented the results at the International Society of Sexual Medicine.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: So, you know, this was presented in front of the scientific community. And what I found is that I could go grow over six months. I could grow guys penises about an inch in length, about a half an inch in girth, and everyone experienced better function.

Dean Pohlman: Wow. So my my question is to at what what size should be like should guys be at what size ranges should guys be concerned?

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Yeah. So, you know, the average American penis is like 5.1, 5.2 inches, you know, erect penis. And you know, at the end of the day, I don’t really care how long guys penises are, right? That’s a personal choice. I would never tell anyone to make their penis bigger. Right. As long as you’re able to urinate and have intercourse, your penis is long enough, right?

Dr. Judson Brandeis: There is something called micro penis, which is if your erect penis is less than three inches, you know, then you might have some problems doing those two things. But, you know, anything over about three, three and a half inches, you know, typically it’s not a problem. But the thing is, guys just want it, you know, 300,000 women every year in the United States get breast implants.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Mm. They don’t all have breast cancer, right? So there’s no function of a breast implant other than for cosmetic purposes. And so you know, I mean, one of the most common searches on the Internet is how can I make my penis bigger? But it’s something that you survey guys, 50% plus of guys want a bigger penis. Right? And so what I just tried to do is to create a way to do it safely and naturally and symmetrically at a much lower cost than the technologies that are out there.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: And so we created the long study, which you can read about at P Dash long dot com, and I created a network of providers around the country so that people don’t have all have to fly out to California. You know, from New York we have a provider you’re in Canada, we have a provider. If you’re in Texas, we have providers.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: If you’re in Florida, we have I mean, all over the country, we have providers. And it’s you know, we don’t judge people if that’s something that people want and, you know, they have a couple thousand bucks lying around is a it’s a great option for well, for doing that.

Dean Pohlman: Well, that’s going to be huge, excuse the pun. I hope so.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Well, you know, really what I want to do is to kind of get people, if they want to do it, to not do fillers, to not do fat transfers, to not do.

Dean Pohlman: To do something that’s effective and safe, to.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Do something that’s effective and safe and you won’t regret. Mm. Years down the road, you know, And if it’s a thousand people a year that do that, great. If it’s 5000, if it’s 10,000, if it’s 50,000 people a year that do that, you know, that’s entirely up to you. I’m not here to tell you that your penis is not big enough.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: I’m here to tell you that if you’re concerned that your penis is not big enough or I mean, I got guys in the study, you know, I had two guys in the study. They outgrew their the the traction device. You know, they started with pretty good sized penises and they just wanted a bigger, you know, I mean, guys go to the gym and get huge muscles like.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Right. You know, some guys, you know, it’s not like, oh, you know, your muscles are big enough.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: You guys want bigger muscles, You know, I don’t judge them.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah, there might.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: But that’s what’s important to you. Great.

Dean Pohlman: My might never be big enough and. Exactly. Yeah. So I want to. Well, that’s. That’s really cool. Now, I want to ask some questions about being a doctor that or being in the medical field that you know, that people might not understand that you maybe not. Is like an entire representative of the entire medical field. But I think a very respected and, you know, good one.

Dean Pohlman: What’s something that you would like people to know, the general population to know about doctors and maybe the struggles that struggles.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Yeah, well, no, I mean, so there’s a video on the the 21st century. MANKOFF website, which is how to prepare for your doctor’s visit. Right. So if you go to the 21st century man dot com all written out in it teaches you how to go to the doctor because the thing is what people don’t understand is that, you know, to become a doctor, you have to go to high school, college, medical school, which is another four years after college and then residency, which is anywhere from three to 6 to 7 years.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: And then some people even do fellowships, which are even more. Some specialize for another year or two. Yeah. So, you know, you’re 30 to 35 years old. By the time you get out. And most doctors have hundreds of thousands of dollars of of loans to pay off. Right. And then the medical system is pushing doctors to see more and more patients and shorter and shorter periods of time.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Right. So when they did this study on by Cerner, which is one of the EMR companies, the medical record companies looked at 100 million doctor visits and they found that the average doctor visit was 16 minutes and 14 seconds. Right. So, you know, you don’t have a lot of time with your doctor.

Dean Pohlman: Mm hmm.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: So what you really need to do is to prepare for that doctor visit. Right? So what you want to do is, first of all, don’t talk to your doctor about sports. Don’t talk to your doctor about whether don’t talk to your doctor about anything other than you.

Dean Pohlman: Write in here.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: And then write down your medical history. You should have a document with your own medical history, your medical issues, your have you had surgeries? Do you drink? Do you smoke? What are your medications? You should have a list of all the labs that you’ve gotten in your life. Just put it in a book. You should have a list of all of the imaging studies that you’ve ever had, right?

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Put it in a book or put it in your computer. Right. And then if you’re going to the doctor for a specific purpose, write down your medical history, because that’s the first the doctor is going to ask you, you know, if like say you have a back pain. Mm. Right. You should write down. Well my back pain started a week ago.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: It’s on the left side, it radiates down my leg. It’s worse when I’m standing, it’s better when I’m sitting. I don’t have it at all when I’m lying down. I’ve taken Advil. Advil seems to work. I’ve taken Tylenol. Tylenol doesn’t seem to work. I had similar back pain two years ago and I needed an epidural. And this is the name of the doctor that did the epidural and I oh, by the way, I had surgery on my back ten years ago because I had a car accident at that.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: You know, all those details.

Dean Pohlman: Are these things mostly maintained by electronic medical records at this point or are those things that you do need to keep track of yourself somehow?

Dr. Judson Brandeis: I mean, are you going to rely on someone else to do that for you? You know or say you’re traveling somewhere or.

Dean Pohlman: Personally if something can be automated, I do rely on something else. So if it’s not going to be automated, then I should I should know about that and I won’t or.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: If you have, you know, a lot of emails have portals.

Dean Pohlman: Mm hmm.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: So print a copy of your most recent note and that should have your medical, you know, a good part of your medical history. But at least the the part of why you’re out the doctor, you should definitely write down as much about that as possible and then write down questions. You know, what are the questions that I want this doctor to ask for me to answer for me, and then hand that to the doctor.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Because you know, what I what I people should know about doctors is that, you know, they’re not mind readers. They’re they’re humans like everyone else. Yeah, they’re not, you know, they have pressures and other responsibilities. They’re not going to be up to date on every last little thing. If you bring an article from the Internet, they may not have read it and they’re being pushed by the system to see people faster and faster and faster and faster.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: And so unless you prepare for that doctor visit, it’s really unlikely that you’re going to get your needs met from that visit.

Dean Pohlman: Gotcha. Yeah, that’s really helpful to know. I think I think, you know, because many of us do prepare like a list of questions, ask the doctor. But we put those together and then we leave. They’re like, Oh, you know, we forgot to ask these two questions. So I think that’s I think that advice is like giving.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: It that hand it.

Dean Pohlman: That’s a great idea. Well, that’s really good information. I also want to know what are what are the like? What are your struggles as, a doctor that like people just don’t you know, we don’t give you enough patients for, well, there’s another time we don’t give you enough patients for or we don’t, you know, we don’t give you well maybe we don’t treat you as well as we could have because we what are some things that you’re going through that we just don’t get?

Dean Pohlman: You know, like think of and think of what is like a general conception of what a doctor is. Right? I’m just going to put out, like, the worst one. Doctors are there to give you the right medication the right medication. They don’t care whether or not you change your lifestyle. They just want to give you the medication, give you the next pill, and then send you on your way.

Dean Pohlman: Doctors make a lot of money. They don’t care about you. They just want to get paid. And then you go home and do their fun stuff like I’ve so, you know, that’s like, that’s the worst perception I can. Yeah. Like, so what would you.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: I think, you know, point number one is actually, you know, fairly accurate, to be perfectly honest with you. You know, doctors don’t focus on lifestyle because focusing on lifestyle takes a long time. You know, it’s hard to focus on lifestyle in 15 minutes. Yeah, Doctors have metrics that they have to hit, right? So your patients have to have good blood pressure.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: And if you don’t, you’re patients don’t have good blood pressure, then you get dinged. And so patients come in and you put them on blood pressure medication. You know, would it be better to talk to them about losing £20 and start exercising? Yeah, but it’s hard to do and it’s hard to make those changes. So in order to hit that metric, you give them blood pressure medication.

Dean Pohlman: So for most for most people, your doctor is not going to be the person giving you advice on lifestyle.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Yeah, although they’ll say, you know, Oh, you should exercise more.

Dean Pohlman: But they’re not going to guide that. They’re not going to break down your nutrition and your workout plan and your like.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: I mean, the thing is like and the other thing is like, I’m brutally honest with my patients, You know, I mean, I had a patient yesterday. I told them I was like, if you don’t lose £80 in the next year and a half, then you’re going to fall and. Break your hip because you have weak legs and a lot of edema, and within five years you’re going to be dead.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: And he just like, stared by, said, You know, you may not have heard that from someone before, but I’ve seen that a lot. And that’s what’s going to happen. You unless you unless you do something about it. Right. People are a little afraid of of being brutally honest with people. You know, they’re we’re not taught that in medical school, But, you know, I’ve evolved in that way.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: The other thing is I don’t have I don’t accept insurance as reimbursement so I can spend more time with my patients. You know, when I see a patient for the first time, I spend an hour with them. Mm hmm. You know, and I, I, I ask really personal questions and I ask them, you know, like if they say, well, I’m retired, how many times a week you exercise maybe once or twice.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: And I’ll say, okay, what’s your roadblocks? How come you’re not doing that, even though you know that you need to do that?

Dean Pohlman: Mm hmm.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: You know, everyone’s got roadblocks. And I don’t think doctors really dig into why their patients aren’t motivated. And a lot of it’s because you. You got throughput. Mm hmm. You don’t have time to do that. Check blood pressure or blood pressures to hire here. Take a blood pressure medication. You know. You know I can’t P Okay, Here, take a know a prostate pill.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: It’s a lot harder to effect change in someone’s behavior. You have to really understand human behavior. Yeah. You know, in terms of money stuff, they did studies looking at physician the life time, how much money doctors, lawyers, accountants and like UPS drivers made over their lifetime. Right. Because there’s a huge opportunity cost in becoming a doctor. So doctors aren’t making money really till they’re 30 or 35 years old, whereas, you know, business people are making money when they’re 25 years old and lawyers are making money when they’re 28 years old.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: And UPS drivers are making money when they’re 20 years. And so I think doctors came out really on the bottom on that of that study in terms of what are what are your lifetime financial upsides? And it just gets worse and worse for doctors every year. So I don’t think you’re going to see doctors driving and fancy cars for too much longer.

Dean Pohlman: Mm hmm.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: You know, most doctors in this country are employees now.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah. Anything else you want people to know about, doc?

Dr. Judson Brandeis: I mean, I think, you know, I mean, I know lots and lots of doctors. I went to medical school and residency with them, and for the most part, they’re really, really good people and they really mean the best for their patients. And if you have a bad health outcome, it’s not because your doctor didn’t care about you, because, you know, almost every doctor that I know really actually genuinely cares about their patients.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: It’s because, you know, sometimes things happen or sometimes you have to rush too fast and you miss things. But I think in in general doctors are really well-meaning, genuine people.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah. I mean, you you’d have to be to, you know, some of the the work schedules like my, my dad’s, you know, my dad’s a doctor. I’ve talked about this. He’s an oncologist and he left every day at like 430 or 5:00 and he got home at 730. This is like every day. And now he’s he’s, you know, he’s 64 and he’s still doing that.

Dean Pohlman: He’s getting up. You know, he’s going to work at five now instead of 430. He’s going out five. And he gets home at like, you know, 630, 7:00. And I call him on the weekends like, hey, what are you up to? He’s like, I’m at the office like, it’s Saturday at 2:00. Go home. You’re in your sixties. Go enjoy your life.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah. Know, I’m working so you know, just crazy.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: I mean, the thing is, like, but, you know, when he’s working, his goal is to help people. Yeah, And then he gets paid for that. Like my friends that are on Wall Street, you know, that that are, you know, do D.C. and all that. So their goal, entire goal is to make money. Right. And they’re judged by making money, whereas doctors go to work to help people and they get paid for it.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Yeah. So it’s it’s it’s a different paradigm.

Dean Pohlman: Yeah. Well, cool. Thanks for sharing that with me and with us. I think that’s I think that’s a good ending point. So do you have anything else you want to mention or any stuff that people should know about you and where they can find you and learn more about what you do?

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Yeah. So, you know, if you’re interested in our book. Oh yeah. First thing we.

Dean Pohlman: Did, just add this. We’re in the process of adding this the Mansfield yoga website, by the way.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Fantastic. Yeah. I mean, it’s, it the feedback that I get from the book is that it’s transformative for men. You know, there’s really it’s the most complete, comprehensive and medically accurate men’s health book ever written, and it covers not just physical health, it covers esthetics, it covers addiction, it covers lifestyle, it covers sexual health, it covers legacy. I there’s so many aspects of relationships, emotional health, mental health.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: It’s all in there. And It’s a book that kind of grows with you. And it’s not a textbook. It’s it’s really an advice book.

Dean Pohlman: Hmm.

Dean Pohlman: By the way, I am in that book as well. I wrote a book. I wrote a section of yoga.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: So. And mindfulness.

Dean Pohlman: Yes. It’s been a long time. So I forgot exactly what I wrote. Wrote in there. Write a lot.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Yeah. And then my supplement website is affirm Science dot com a FFI arm science dot com. And that’s where you can get our nitric oxide booster. We have a supplement called Support for testosterone. We have a supplement called pre long for premature ejaculation or we have a supplement called spunk for prostate health. And then for those men who are interested in increasing the length, girth and function of their penis just go to p dash along ecom.

Dean Pohlman: Cool.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: And then anyone that wants to see me as a patient just go to Brandeis, M.D., Brandeis Medical. And I think I got I got a YouTube, I got Instagram, much other stuff.

Dean Pohlman: And there’s a few tiktoks of you dancing right there.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Tiktoks of me when you dance.

Dean Pohlman: I haven’t gotten there yet. Yeah, maybe.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: And nobody wants to see me dance.

Dean Pohlman: Or we don’t. We don’t know. They might. Maybe your gear, your kids might, maybe they’d get a kick out of that someday. All right. Another area, another area of opportunity. All right. Well, Dr. Brandeis Joseph, thanks again for joining me on the Betterment podcast. Guys, if you’re listening in, I hope you had a got a lot out of this conversation, as always.

Dean Pohlman: I know I did, and I hope it inspires you to be a better man. So thanks again.

Dr. Judson Brandeis: Awesome. Hey, thank you so much, Dean. I really appreciate it.

Dean Pohlman: Until next time. All right, guys, I hope you enjoy that episode. Dr. Brandeis has an amazing resource that he compiled, including contributions from yours truly called The 21st Century Man. This is an encyclopedia of men’s health that you can use for years and years to come. This is a resource that I highly recommend every guy purchases. You can get this at the link in the description of this podcast or just go to the 21st century man dot.com all spelled.

Dean Pohlman: If you enjoyed this podcast, I want to invite you to leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts on Apple Podcasts on Spotify or Google Cloud. Google Podcasts. Otherwise, if you haven’t already done so, please help me out. We’re getting really close to 100 reviews and I’d love to see us hit that milestone. Lastly, if you haven’t already, one of the best ways to implement the kind of things we’re talking about in the Betterment podcast is to get into a habit of consistent exercise.

Dean Pohlman: And one of the easiest ways to do that is through my mental yoga app and members area. This allows you to easily follow a program. Actually, we have a set path of programs now you can use to do the workouts to follow along at your own pace and get noticeable results within your first few weeks. We recently made some incredible updates to our Getting Started series, which basically is a three month onboarding experience to make it as easy as possible for you to start mental yoga and get results.

Dean Pohlman: You can learn more and sign up at MFY.tv/join. All right, guys, hope this was a good episode for you. As always. I hope it inspires you to be a better man and I’ll see you on the next episode. Thanks for listening to the Better Man podcast guys, if you haven’t already, please subscribe that way.

Dean Pohlman: New episodes are automatically downloaded to your device as soon as they’re released. It also helps with the success of the show and I greatly appreciate your support. If you want access to the show notes, including exclusive content and links to all the resources mentioned as well as info on video recordings of the episodes, visit Manolo Yoga Dotcom. If you have any feedback or comments on the show, I’d love to hear from you.

Dean Pohlman: Just email me at [email protected] or send me a message on social media and I’ll do my best to get back to you. Lastly, if you haven’t already and you’re curious about why this podcast was started, head to man for yoga dot com slash join to learn more about the band flow yoga app and members area fitness has the power to be a major catalyst in personal growth and transformation and manual yoga will help you work toward your fitness goals.

Dean Pohlman: All you have to do is follow a program, open the app, press play and do your best as you follow along to a workout three times or more per week. Start a free seven day trial today by visiting mental yoga dot com slash Join. Thanks again for listening and I’ll catch you next week for another episode of The Better Man podcast.