Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: I'm Dr. Andrew Sun. And on Naked Conversations, we bring honesty back into the conversation. We talk about what's beneath the surface, the places where fear, meaning, emotion and identity intersect. Naked conversation the Now Media Television.
Welcome to Naked Conversations. I'm Dr. Andrew Sun. On this show, we create space for the conversations that many men avoid. Conversations about sexual health, hormones, stress, performance, confidence and the body's signals. These topics are personal, but they're also part of everyday health and they deserve to be discussed with respect, clarity and compassion. Today, we're looking at men's sexual health through a broader performance lens. What does sleep have to do with libido and recovery? How do stress, movement, nutrition and mindset affect confidence, energy and intimacy?
And how can men begin to see their bodies not as something to ignore until there's a problem, but as a living system that needs attention? My guest is Jen Gaudet, a human performance strategist with more than 20 years in sports medicine working with elite athletes. Her work now helps entrepreneurs and executives become what she calls human performance coach business athletes.
People who bring the same discipline, awareness and fundamentals of high performance into their health, leadership and life. This will be a respectful, practical conversation about the relationship between whole body performance and sexual wellness and how men can build stronger foundations for energy, focus, resilience and long term health. Jen Gaudet, welcome to Naked Conversations.
[00:01:43] Speaker B: Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.
[00:01:46] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. Would you mind just beginning by telling us sort of your story and what you do?
[00:01:51] Speaker B: Yeah. So these days I'm pretty much a human performance specialist and I work with entrepreneurs to become elite business athletes.
But I come from sports medicine. I have a background working with elite athletes and I've just married the human physiology, now the psychology, all of those kind of aspects with elite athletes to the business strategy and tactics. Because the reality is you can't separate one thing from the other. And in business, you know, if you're not peak performing as a human being, if you're not dialed in with your sleep, your nutrition, everything that we've talked about, that you talked about in the beginning of the show, then you're not the best CEO or founder, you're not gonna make the best decisions and your business is going to suffer no matter how amazing your business strategy and tactics are. So I'm really about that whole human performance aspect of life.
[00:02:42] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. I think we see that every day in our clinic patients as well. We work with a lot of high performance people. But if you're not taking care of your health you're certainly going to suffer in every other respect. After 20 plus years in sports medicine and elite athletes, what did all that teach you about the body and performance recovery, self awareness, you know.
[00:03:03] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I'm, I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be 1000% honest and frank. I am a no BS kind of girl. Elite human performance, it's not about max effort every day. And I think some people have a misconception about this. They think they have to be blowing and going give it 150% every single day in order to be that peak performer. But that's not correct. It really is the right load followed by the right recovery. In sports medicine, I watched elite athletes study signals that everybody tends to ignore. It's their quality of sleep.
It's, am I sore today? What's my mood? Am I stressed out because I just had something, some bad news because that's going to put me at risk of injury? Like, it's those kind of things that all play in to how they're performing on the field on any given Sunday, for example, in the football.
The other, the other side of this is if there's pain or there's a change in their physiology, they are dialed in and notice it.
And when they, when they notice these things, they don't think that's a weakness. And I think that's a different lens. You know, the general population, when they have something happen, we kind of like bottle it up or we don't talk about it, or we think it's just going to go away and we shouldn't talk about these things. But, but the reality is any time you have a signal from your body, that's just data, it's input. And the best athletes had the best coaches, mental medical practitioners and recovery plans. And they, they really knew that. I just tough this out. Whether it's a mindset thing, a stress thing, or it was an energy thing or a muscular thing. They knew to reach out for help as soon as that body signaled that this isn't quite right.
And that really is the difference because it's not about judgment, it's not about shame. It really is about understanding the scoreboard, identifying what that weak link is and getting the right help to adjust without having any drama.
[00:05:02] Speaker A: I think one of the things you said that really resonates is that a lot of guys think that they have to somehow be at 100% all day, every day. You know, I see a lot of guys in my clinic for, and it's usually the same complaint, which is fatigued which is immediately thought to be like low testosterone. But I'm like, are you tired one day of the week after, like, you know, having a really hard, it's like kind of normal, you know, but certainly the rest and recovery portion is massive. You had mentioned sleep as well. Can you just kind of briefly touch on how important it is?
[00:05:33] Speaker B: Yeah. So I'm, I'm going to get on my soapbox now. Sleep is literally the foundation of health. Sleep is when our body recovers, when it restores, when it rejuvenates, when it resets our whole hormonal aspect. It's where we build muscle. Believe it or not, some people don't realize that we build in the recovery period.
And the reality is, is if we're not sleeping and we're not allowing our body and our mind to rest and recover, then what you said earlier was, you know, if we have to go 90 to nothing all week, it's normal by the end of the week to be tired. But if you never get that recovery and it doesn't matter how we fuel our body, doesn't matter how we move our body, it's. It doesn't matter what we do, if we're pushing ourselves to the limit and not giving our body the recovery it needs, it is going to break. Whether it's a stress induced break or whether it's a physical one, it will manifest in our bodies in a health disorder.
[00:06:28] Speaker A: Yeah. One of the things I also tell my patients is that essentially the single most important activity you do any day is sleep. And we'll definitely get into that more in our next segment. One of the things that we do on this show specifically is talk about sexual health and how that relates to overall health from your perspective. You know, a lot of guys, they seem to separate their like, athletic performance from their sexual health. But, you know, can you talk about why that may not be the right way to look at it?
[00:06:56] Speaker B: Yeah. So I'll probably use some analogies here. But the reality is sexual health is not a separate department in your body.
Like, if you're having sexual health issues, it is going to impact other things. Because one of the things that's, and this is a little bit different in female and male athletes, female athletes, it doesn't impact us quite as rapidly as with men. But when men have sexual health issues, it immediately corresponds to a resultant performance issue.
It may not be a big enough issue that it causes an injury or that they notice it immediately, for example, in the gym with what they can lift, but it impacts their confidence, which Means it gets in their head and then they start to focus or think about this in other times. And that's like a stress cascade. It's a snowball effect.
And so, like folks, if you're listening and there's a change in your sexual function, male or female, it's more than a bedroom issue.
It's something. If it's impacting you and it's impacting other areas of your life where you're thinking about it throughout the day, that's the time to go find your clinician and get some advice, some medical advice on this. Because if we notice the change and it's enough to disrupt and us think about it in other ways, it's going to cascade down in everything else we do in life.
[00:08:15] Speaker A: I couldn't agree more.
From your perspective, if a guy's wondering, hey, look, I might be experiencing some lower energy or lower confidence, how do they begin to look at the bigger picture? Or where would they start?
[00:08:30] Speaker B: Yeah. So I'm going to be a coach. This is my coach hat. This is my performance hat on. You're going to start with the facts, folks. Don't make a verdict about your masculinity. This has nothing to do with your identity. Even though it tends to link. The first thing to do is ask, what changed? And anytime we have a body change what changed? When did it begin?
Is it consistent or is it situational? And that's really important because if it's only happening on a Thursday, when you've had stress, Monday through Thursday of the week, then maybe that's a stress and a fatigue issue. Unless it goes on for a long period of time. Right. So what else is happening with your sleep, with your stress, with your mood, with your exercise, alcohol, other symptoms? And then what you do is you just audit it and pay attention. Because when you're paying attention to these things, if it is something that is persistent and actually advances and we need to get care, then you have a log that you can provide your clinician with, and that's great information with them. But the other side of this is it's just looking at data as facts. This is not, I'm just getting older, but you're actually sleeping five hours a week, living on caffeine, traveling constantly, and you've got some underlying medical condition. Okay. Like if we have the data, we can remove the shame and the things that we're telling ourselves, or I'm just not as much of a man or whatever is going on. I'm using that example because I have literally heard that Example, you know, take the shame and the judgment out of it. Just look at that audit log. Because those facts are what's going to tell you. Do I need to take an action? Is it a lifestyle action? Is it something that I have within my control? Do I need to see a clinician about this?
[00:10:12] Speaker A: I'm wondering how you would talk to a guy where, you know, I'm sure you hear this all the time where he's like, well, I just figured that this is part of getting older. You know,
[00:10:22] Speaker B: I'm going to call a great big fat BS on that.
And, and the reason is because I know 80 year old men who can run circles around 26 year old boys men. But I mean, you know, I call anybody younger than my daughter a child at this point in time. That's my fault.
The reality is I'm just getting older is not a good reason to not get an assessment.
And I'm a, I'm a hard stickler on this. If somebody comes up and they're like, hey, I just can't, I can't do this anymore. I'm just getting old. My answer is that is never the answer. That means that we have something broken, whether it's the, the sleep, the nutrition, what, maybe we're training too hard, maybe it's stress. There's some, or there's something underlying and that's a, that's a signal to us that we have something that we can tweak and optimize.
So that's kind of my, my go to and I'm just going to share like I'm 50 and I can, I can run circles around the 25 year old self of me in some respects. In other respects, not so much. So it's not in my vocabulary.
The just getting older as a, as an excuse for dysfunction.
[00:11:33] Speaker A: I love it. I think that's a great start. Thanks so much. We got a lot more to get into about stress and sleep and hormones and sexual function and whatnot. So stay tuned.
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Welcome back. In this segment, I want to get practical. For many men, performance is not just about one moment or one symptom. It's Built every day through sleep, stress regulation, movement, fuel recovery, and, and the habits that support hormonal and sexual wellness. We briefly mentioned you know, the importance of sleep as like the fundamental activity. In the first segment in your work you emphasize the fundamentals of physiology.
Why are sleep, stress management, movement and nutrition, four things so essential for performance?
[00:13:12] Speaker B: So I don't know a different way to say this than those are the fundamentals of your health.
They're essential because they affect everything in our body. How we produce energy, it impacts our focus, our recovery. Of course, your sexual function as we're talking about on this show. And the reality is you can't separate the brain from the body or some of these building blocks from peak human performance.
Sleep deficits equals attention issues, mood issues. It impacts heart health, blood sugar regulation and recovery. We already talked a little bit about that. Physical activity improves your health across all of your systems. It's blood flow, folks. If you cut off your blood flow or your circulation to your arm, your arm goes numb. That happens everywhere in our body. So of course we want to move our bodies, what we're eating, how we're fueling our body, the quality of our nutrition impacts our metabolic health. It impacts our cardiovascular health and our ability to perform chronic stress. I'm huge on how are we mitigating our negative stress because it disrupts our sleep, it impacts our mood, it makes us irritable, it impacts our willpower, our daily behaviors. And I want to speak a little bit to high performers and high achievers because that's who I work with all the time. And if you're watching and, and you are one, you're going to hear this in you. When we are pushing and we're like 90 to nothing and we're on day 17 of, of travel and work and all of the things that we're trying to do and we're like, we're pounding caffeine to stay awake, we're trying to go to the gym with more intensity. So we have that bump that keeps going for a little while. But if you've ever taken a break or gotten home for the weekend, have you noticed that that's when you get sick? That's a signal, folks, that you over overextended yourself, your body screaming at you for a rest.
So maybe it's keeping your calendar moving right now, but it's not restoring your capacity. And the reality is the fundamentals give you that baseline. And if that baseline is up here, you have a lot more capacity than if you're not fueling, not Sleeping, et cetera.
[00:15:24] Speaker A: One of the other things that I mentioned to patients from a hormonal level is that testosterone is also produced while you sleep.
And the number one. Well, the number one, number two cause of low testosterone in the modern world are lack of sleep, sleep and being overweight, which is, of course, going back to movement and nutrition. So it's not just how you feel, but it's also regulating the hormones, stress, cortisol, all of the above. Which all sounds good in theory, but I'm sure, especially with the clientele that you work with, one of the first things they're gonna say is, well, yeah, I would love to sleep eight hours a night, but I'm just too busy. You know, I've got all this stuff to do. I don't have time to go to the gym. What do you say when people say that? Cause I'm sure it's like 99% of people.
[00:16:05] Speaker B: It's. It's almost 100% of the people that I work with. And like, the way it. The way it comes to me is I'll sleep when I'm dead, or I'll sleep when I exit this business, or I'll sleep when I get to that next thing that never, ever happens, because you kick that to the curb. And I'm. Let me be clear.
Chronic stress from these kind of activities, from not sleeping, from not regulating, it usually shows up as a collection of very small changes that you, as a high performer, have just normalized. Oh, I always wake up at 3am oh, coffee to get for my day.
But the other signals are when you're done with your workday and you go home to your family, you're not physically present at home, your mind is still at work. You try to go to bed, you're thinking about all the things that you didn't get done during your business day, you know? And. And what does that look like? It looks like your shoulders are kind of up here. You know, you're tense all the time. People are asking you, what's wrong? People who care about you and know you, when they start asking, hey, what's up? What's wrong? It's because they can see that physical tension, right?
And let's. Let's talk about the sexual dysfunction part of this. You lose interest when you're that tense, you're that tired, and you're that stressed out. You know, either you lose interest, or there is no emotional tie in your relationship so that your partner loses interest. Right? There's so many things that are tying in together. You know, and the reality is the one or two doesn't maybe move the needle enough for you to say, hey, wait, I got to do something about this. But when they all cascade, that total load has exceeded your ability to recover in any way, shape or form, or form. So, like, what I would like you to do, if you, if you're like, yeah, that sounds like me in some respects, but I can still handle it and keep going, no, stop.
Ask yourself, when are you using a stimulant, alcohol, doom scrolling on social media, other kinds of distraction or even extra work to override your fatigue? Because that is something that is common and we use it as an excuse, but it literally has an impact on our health.
[00:18:19] Speaker A: I think these things are so important.
If you, you know, for the people out there watching, if you had a few very simple practical tips that they could start doing tonight to help improve their sleep, what would they be?
[00:18:33] Speaker B: Well, first and foremost, I'm going to give you a couple of things that could help. Do not try to do all of them. We are not trying to redesign our entire life in one night. Pick one thing and that's what you're going to do for the next seven days until it becomes a habit. Okay, so a few things that I like to talk about is your good night's sleep happens early in the day.
So it's about consistency. Have a wake time that is the time that you get up so that you can start to train your body. And second of that, second to that is set an alarm for your sleep time when you're going to start your PM routine to wind down. Okay, so just the timing can, can help improve your sleep quantity or quality. The next thing is if you, if you are screen free for at least an hour before you want to actually be sleeping. That is so incredibly important. I know there's like blue light glasses and all those things, folks, we don't need to be plugged in right up until when we're looking to go to bed. And if this is you and you are the one who's scrolling in bed because you think it's calming you down, it really isn't. And maybe you need to start with 15 minutes before bedtime, that's fine too.
A couple of other things that are really good is making sure that you get a walk in, even if it's just 10 minutes after your meals. That helps you to bring the blood sugar down from the meals. That helps you to regulate a little bit better. It also helps you to, to calm, to calm your body after a busy Day. You know, I'm a huge fan of cutting alcohol. Three hours before bed at a minimum. Like cut it out altogether if you can. But you know, three hours before bed. Don't eat too close to your bedtime because if you're digesting then you can't get that real quality sleep. There's so many things, but the blue light, like the unplugging, that's a big one. The timing and find something that's relaxing for you. For a lot of people it's doing some gentle stretches, some neck stretches and then if you're the busy person who can't turn their brain off, listen, I hear you. I run multiple businesses myself. Have a little notepad by your bed and just brain dump everything that's in your head before you try to go to sleep. Because what that does, if you do it consistently, your brain starts to realize, oh, it's there, it's in that pad. Even if you never look at it again, it doesn't matter.
After about 7 to 14 days you no longer have those thoughts just going through your brain.
That works really well. Especially if, if you tend to wake up at 2 o' clock in the morning thinking about all the things you didn't get done.
[00:21:11] Speaker A: Very good practical advice. You know, I think one of the things that it looks like there's some societal trend towards is that younger generations are drinking much less alcohol than previously now. Interesting. They're also smoking a lot more marijuana, but they are drinking a lot less alcohol. And I think that anybody who has ever had a drink can immediately tell you how bad it is for your sleep. Like it's just remarkably bad.
Now obviously some people, you know, it's part of like lifestyle, but I always emphasize to the patients how terrible it is. Do you advise people to use like health trackers, like you know, whoops or aura rings or these kinds of things.
[00:21:47] Speaker B: So I'm going to say this is a dual edged sword. If you were going to obsess over your metrics every single day, you're better off without it. It. I've actually seen it become a stressor. I'm a huge fan of wearables. I have, I have mine on all the time.
But I also know that I'm going to look at the trends. I'm not going to obsess over one day that deviates.
I've seen with athletes, we track everything.
With high performers, we track sleep quality and quantity, like the number of REM cycles, for example, how much deep sleep, because that's really important. And, and if they're going to obsess about numbers. I want them to obsess about that number.
[00:22:31] Speaker A: Fair enough. Fair enough. Yeah. I also like it a lot. I wear the ring mostly for, for sleep tracking, but I have definitely seen people make it. Like they come into clinic and they have their like garment thing on and they're like, yeah, man, I feel terrible because last night my score was only this. I'm like, you probably just need to chill out.
It can become a point of stress and certainly that's going to vary from person to person. But I think, you know, focusing on the fact that of how important slee sleep is and I can, especially for busy, high performance people who tend to make that the last thing that they do versus the first thing that they do.
We'll talk more in detail, but what do you think about if you had a few words about sort of diet and nutrition generally?
[00:23:14] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, if you're not going to eat anything green, please supplement, but take a test and know what you need to supplement. I can't stand people who think they can just supplement their way out of this because our body just doesn't absorb that way.
I'm a big fan of the four corners of the, of the grocery eat whole foods.
And I'm also a huge proponent of the right amount of protein for your body and for your weight because a lot of people actually under eat their protein and that can have a tremendous impact on so many other systems.
So I'm, I'm a huge fan on your. What you put in is what you're going to get out. So you really do need to fuel your body. But if you're not sleeping, like, like I said earlier, sleep's the number one. Fix the sleep first, then the nutrition and the movement and everything else and one habit at a time.
[00:24:08] Speaker A: I love it. I think this gives a lot of guys a practical entry point and you know, before making the conversation more complicated, they can start beginning with the fundamentals. Rest, stress, movement, nutrition and of course, a willingness to notice when something's happening and talk about it.
All right, welcome back. Well, we, I wanted to continue a little bit where we were going before. We talked in depth about sleep and nutrition. Nutrition is a big topic. There's lots of controversy there. But I think it'd be very valuable to at least talk generally about some easy practical tips that men could. Men and women can consider for, with regards to their nutrition. So do you have any main points on that aspect?
[00:25:13] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm a huge fan of protein. At your first meal Protein at every meal.
Most of us do not get the right amount of protein for our body, especially as we are training and, or at a certain stage. But I'm, I keep it really simple. Whole foods, vegetables, protein, fat, fiber, protein. If you and the fat in that is healthy fat, think like avocados and other healthy sources of fat. Because you know, in, in the news you hear all these like the whole low fat thing was, was horrible for us as a population because the reality is we have fat soluble vitamins. We need fat in our diets in order to absor absorb all of our nutrition, our nutrients. So you know, that's really simple. It's fat, fiber, protein at every meal. And if you think about this as your meals, also think about your snacks. One of the things that all of my athletes and all of the executives that I work with is, you know, we, we tend to do three big meals a day. But our last meal, or our last snack if you will, should be a protein heavy one. Because what that does is it keeps you full longer and, and sates you throughout the, the night. And then I'm just going to speak to hydration because this goes in sometimes people separate it out, but hydration is essential. If we're not fully hydrated and I'm going to be crass, I guess, do the urine test. What color is it folks? Like that's the best way for you to know how your hydration is.
Look it up, Google it. It'll be very graphic if you want it to be.
But you know, if we're not fully hydrated, none of our systems are working well. And especially in the Texas heat. Holy cow. Like, let's make sure we're keeping our hydration. The first thing you should do when you wake up in the morning is to hydrate, preferably with a little bit of sodium or electrolytes.
[00:27:07] Speaker A: You're speaking my language as a urologist. You know, people always ask me like, how much do I drink? And I always tell them, you know, the standard, like six to eight glasses or something that's agnostic to what your size is. And one of the sayings that we have is that the dumbest kidney is still smarter than the smartest nephrologist. Meaning your urine color is going to tell you what your hydration status is. And everybody knows your urine color is usually at its darkest first thing in the morning because we're all sort of obligately dehydrated for eight hours a night, every night, right? So yeah, absolutely. I keep a bottle of water at my nightstand and my first thing in the morning is just to pound the bottle of water and there's electrolyte powder dissolved in it. After reading some of these same things that you're referencing, you know, it's very important in terms of nutrition.
You know, I think a lot of people get a little enthusiastic about certain fad diets, but certainly I think one of the things that you had mentioned is just that, like the idea of whole, like real foods and protein intake. Do you have like a recommendation for your athletes in terms of like grams per kg of protein or is it variable?
[00:28:11] Speaker B: So that varies.
That is very variable based off of what is their output, what sport they are. Like a soccer player needs something very different. They need a lot more carbohydrates, for example, than a power lifter.
So it really is variable.
But you know, I think that anybody who's getting only 0.7, which is like the low end of the range of recommendation grams per kilogram, like that's not enough, folks. Like even most people, it's, it's 1.2, it's bigger, it's more than what you think it is.
You know, I don't give advice because it really is individual based on what, what is the requirement that you have for your body.
But the most important thing is to get it from whole foods. If you can't physically eat enough, which this is actually a thing, especially if you're stressed out. If you can't physically eat enough to get your protein in, then a really high quality, a really high quality protein shake is okay. But I have several nutritionist friends and, and the person who wrote the book on sports nutrition is a friend of mine. And we just absorb it better if it's whole food.
[00:29:29] Speaker A: Yeah, great advice. I think, you know, one of the things that we see more commonly these days is people taking GLP1s.
Yes, your Ozempic, WeGovy, those kinds of things. And they can't bring themselves to eat that much volume. But they're also, because they're so calorie deficient, they're especially protein deficient. And then they get muscle wasting. So I generally recommend them all to drink some whey protein shakes because that's usually how they can get it. But certainly if they can eat the chicken, that's great too. Or better, I suppose.
[00:29:58] Speaker B: Yeah. I look for the NSF certified ones that are triple tested, manufacturer tested, like the, the higher standard. They're more expensive, but it's quality ingredients and you know what you're getting.
There's A lot of garbage out there and. And they load them up with sugar sometimes. So I look for. Because of sports medicine, NSF certified means that, you know, you're not going to get into trouble anywhere. And. And I'd look for those clean ingredients.
[00:30:22] Speaker A: Yeah, Yeah. I have one more question on the nutrition piece. Because you're a person that works with athletes, what are your thoughts on creatine?
[00:30:31] Speaker B: Okay, so I am not speaking from, you know, the highest level of expertise, but every single person should be taking creatine.
Like, let's just be real. Especially as we age, the impact on brain health alone is more than worth that. I mean, I take it, I think the, you know, everybody's got different ideas right now from the research. I actually have seen some studies where people were taking two and three times the recommended amount and it improved their memory and their focus. I'm not going to get behind that and recommend that. I'm not here to make physical recommendations. Educate yourself. But I think that it's well researched and it has benefits that far exceed muscle recovery.
[00:31:16] Speaker A: I couldn't agree more. I think, especially in the last year or two, I mean, it's been around forever, but there's definitely been like sort of a renaissance of research and popular recommendations of all of the ancillary benefits. You know, I took it in college when I was rowing, but now I take it every day. 5 grams for brain and for muscle, of course, but the health. There's emerging data on dementia, like so many different things.
So very powerful thing for everyone, but especially, you know, I think this audience so kind of switching gears a little bit. We're talking about a lot of sort of high performance habits and things.
I would ask, how does that not only support your business life, I guess that should be pretty obvious, but also emotional health, relationships, intimacy. Any ideas there?
[00:32:06] Speaker B: Yeah. So let's start with the intimacy and the relationship health piece of that.
If you are taking care of your health and you feel better in your body, it naturally imparts better confidence.
And when we're taking care of our physiology, we're sleeping, we're moving our body, we're fueling our body appropriately, we're hydrated.
Our baseline is up here, which. What does that mean, Jen? That means this is what we can handle in a given day. We can get that much stress before we sort of go over the top. Right.
So the better your lifestyle habits are, the higher that baseline is for you, which, I mean, better decisions, better focus, better efficiency with everything you do, better workouts, but also bleeds into your Performance in the bedroom, your performance in your relationships, in life. And so what that also equates to is better resiliency from a stress management standpoint. If our physiological stress is through the roof because we're not feeling our body and our baseline is way down here, it's very easy for us to bump about that against that in it, to impact us in other ways. We get short, we're irritable, we maybe are distracted and not present. So as you build good lifestyle habits and that baseline goes up, you're able to have better, calmer conversations with the people that you care about, whether it's in your business, whether it's in your life.
And I do want to speak to this because a lot of people are uncomfortable talking about what's happening sexually in their bodies with their partner. And I'm going to speak as a woman and as a woman who's married to a man and as someone who. This comes up all the time because I'm confident of the people who I work with.
And if you are going to freeze out and not talk to your partner, your partner is going to go into a spiral. They're going to think, what's wrong with me? You're not interested in me? Are you cheating? Like all the things, just because you're not comfortable having the conversation? And this sounds like, Jen, you're being harsh. But the reality is, cut the bs.
This is not something that's abnormal. Most people go through some sort of issues in the bedroom at some point in time. And if you don't talk to your partner about it, if you don't talk to your healthcare provider about it. We're not mind readers. None of us are mind readers. And so we can't help you address the problem. We do not operate in life in a vacuum. We have a support network. Our partners, our families, our caregivers, all of these people are part of our support network. So that right there, that communication is essential. But, Jen, I don't want to talk about it. It's embarrassing. Actually, it's not. It's just data.
Hey, I've noticed this is happening. This has been happening for six months.
My wife's crabby and she thinks I'm cheating on her. Yeah, we need to address that, folks. Like, it's time. The time is today. If you're watching this and you're like, oh, my gosh, that's me, or, oh, my gosh, that's my husband, it's time to open that conversation not from a place of judgment, but from curiosity. Hey, look, this is happening. It has nothing to do with X, Y or Z, but it's been happening for some time. What do you think? And a lot of times your spouse, your partner, the person who you're around will help support you and even go to your appointment with you. I mean, like, let's be real. And if you have a hard time, and we talk about this on Vital Signs all the time, if you have a hard time talking to your caregiver about this topic, write it down. Write down the symptoms, how long it's been. We talked about the audit sort of in the first segment today. Write it down and hand that note to your provider. Or if you're digitally entering the notes, write it in there because your provider doesn't know if you don't tell them.
That's the basics, long and short of it.
[00:36:05] Speaker A: I think that's incredible advice.
So many of my best patient consults have been when the couple comes in together and there's so much misinformation because they're just not talking to each other.
The number one perceived cause of erectile dysfunction in men by their female partners is infidelity, and that's number 50 on the list. Number one is probably diabetes, obesity, aging, vascular disease, everything else possible, possible.
But that's exactly why we started this show and why naked Conversations exist. It's to make space for these honest conversations and reduce the shame that may help men take constructive steps towards better health and confidence.
[00:36:57] Speaker B: Foreign.
[00:37:11] Speaker A: Welcome back to Naked Conversations. Stay connected to this show and every NOW Media TV favorite live or on demand, anytime you like. Download the free Now Media TV app on Roku or iOS and unlock non stop bilingual programming in English and Spanish on the move. Catch the podcast version at www.nowmedia.tv. from Health and wellness to business, leadership, culture, innovation and beyond, NOW Media TV is streaming around the clock. Ready whenever you are.
Welcome back to our final segment. I want to bring this conversation into prevention and practical steps and how men can stop waiting for a crisis, start paying attention to their bodies and seek the right support with confidence and respect.
One of the things that I think we see a lot of times is that or I'll give a statistic. You know, prior to the industrial revolution, men and women had the same life expectancy. Since then, female life expectancy now outpaces men by about seven years. A lot of that is because there is no such thing as an OB GYN specifically for men. And so after age 18, men just stop going to the doctor until their leg is literally falling off. Right? And so there's this gap from age 18 to like 50 where all of these things happen. But men are just very bad about actually bringing it up and seeking help when they need it.
I'll start with that, which is, let's say a guy's watching this and he's like, that sounds like me. Well, what about his partners or families or coaches or healthcare professionals or how is their.
What resources can a guy use in terms of building a team to support themselves in this journey?
[00:38:49] Speaker B: Yeah, so I'm going to sort of go to.
There's a team approach for this.
If you have not been to a physician for a wellness checkup in 20 years, that's step number one, folks. Like, the reason that we go for an annual exam and most insurances cover an annual exam is that we can have something called early detection, because there's usually signs and symptoms and we can correct them really quickly. So one of your team members is that medical professional, that trusted health care provider who is going to just do a physical for you once a year, you know, basic blood work, whatever, so that you have that in your pocket. Then you have family or friends or a support network. If you do not, today's the day to build that.
Your family is great because they see you a lot.
So people who see you regularly should be someone who, when they come and they say, hey, how are you feeling? Or you're looking tired today, you take notice of that.
Okay. Those are signals. That's feedback. That's not them judging you, that's them noticing because they don't know how to articulate their concern. Okay.
From a coaching perspective, coaches help with behaviors and accountabilities.
So we're not here to diagnose hormone problems. We're not here to replace physicians.
We're in medical expertise is where we are. Medical expertise. And coaches fit in the lifestyle and daily habits so that you can make your performance, your health, better arena. And so that should be sort of your support network. And the reason for an outside, whether you're using a fitness coach or some sort of a health coach or a life coach or performance coach on the other side of, of this equation, it's important because the one thing that our family and our loved ones won't do is if we feel hurt by something they say they're going to not tell us again, they're going to tell us what they want to hear. But a good coach, just like in the gym, if you've ever had a trainer, they're going to tell you what you need to do. And make sure that you do it and hold your feet to the fire. Whereas our spouse is not the best person to hold our feet to the fire because then we're perceived as, you know, a nag or whatever that emotional tie may be. So that's why you want sort of that external pair of eyes so that you can move forward.
[00:41:17] Speaker A: I certainly think there's a lot of people out there who could benefit from that. Some of the, even just the terminology, coaching, you know, coming from the world of athletes whom you've worked with extensively, I imagine in our audience we have a lot of professionals. Maybe some of them are athletes, maybe not. But what would you say are some things that elite athletes understand about mindset that can translate into those of us who may not be very sports oriented but you know, have executives and that such thing?
[00:41:45] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. So one thing that elite athletes do is they, they're able to separate feedback from their identity. And I think this is one of the things I work with a lot of entrepreneurs, founders, executives. This is one thing that's very hard for most people if they don't have that athletic background. You know, athletes look at a bad performance, like let's, let's take a baseball pitcher and mlb, they may be a great pitcher and then they pitch just like a horror. They have a horrible couple of innings.
That bad performance is information to them. It's not a perfect permanent label. They don't say, oh well, I shouldn't be in the MLB because I just had a bad game. That does not equal occur to them. What they do is they watch film, they review what happened, they adjust the process, they look at what is the weak link. Was it recovery? I need more recovery. Is it that I didn't get my right nutrition in? They address that weak link with the help of their coaches and then they go on to live another day, to pitch another day. Okay. The other thing they understand. Athletes understand that confidence is truly built through preparation and evidence, not noise.
So for health, this is the same method and we went over this earlier, but I think it's worth reiterating. If something's not working right in your body, what happened? Is it a one time event or is it a pattern? What changed in my life? Did I just lose somebody I care about and I'm in a grieving process? Well, of course I'm going to have other impacts because I'm stressed, right? What has changed?
And, and when we do that, the next question becomes what should I do next? If it's something that's a new Onset it or it's been continually happening or it's getting worse. See a medical practitioner. That's when you see a provider. If it's a one time thing and you know that you haven't slept and you know you've been up for 72 hours, heaven forbid, and your stress is through the roof. What do I need to do to bring myself back to baseline?
Okay, that keeps your mind in problem solving mode instead of applying shame or attacking your identity. You're not less of a man or less of a woman because you're having an issue somewhere along the line. Data is feedback. It's not a reflection on your worth or who you are or really your future performance.
[00:44:10] Speaker A: I think a lot of men probably listening would resonate with a lot of those things, but unfortunately there's probably still a lot of hesitancy for them to seek help. You know, you think there's anything specific that jumps out to you that's like, hey, if like this is the point at which you really want to like, you know, do something, like what's something that would appeal to guys to be like, okay, this is when I'm finally going to go ask for help, get a coach, like do my whatnot, you know.
[00:44:37] Speaker B: Well, first I'm going to say this. Getting a coach is not a weakness. It's actually a courageous first step towards getting your life in order. There is, there are so many individuals. Every athlete has coaches. All, almost every elite business individual has coaches because we recognize, I have coaches, I have seven coaches.
We recognize that we have blind spots and that we need accountability in certain areas. We all have weaknesses or weak spots where we're going to procrastinate or whatnot. Have an honest conversation with yourself. Look at yourself in the mirror and, and what's the thing that you keep setting as your New Year's resolution example? And why hasn't it happened? Like it hasn't happened because you didn't have the follow through because you, you know, motivation only takes you so far. You know, we need to, we need to truly up level. We need people in our corner. We need people in our corner in that support network.
No one goes it alone, folks. Like that's, that's a reality. And I want to, I want to talk a little bit about honest conversations because when we're talking about especially sexual dysfunction, that's fear. We have fear around that and that's a personal, private fear that in our culture we don't talk about enough, there's stigma to it. And so if we're able to have an honest conversation with our healthcare provider, with our coach, with our family or whomever is in our support, then we can turn that fear into a solution or brainstorm solutions so we can better understand and address it. If we keep silent, it leaves room for both parties to invent explanations. And you talked about this earlier with regards to sexual health, like in the infidelity. But the other side of that is if you're stressed over sexual health issues and you go to a physician because you have high blood pressure and some of these other things, well, that sexual dysfunction could be creating more stress because it's in your mind. If you don't disclose, that clinician doesn't know to even test that or go in that direction. So it's really important to be specific and be honest about things so that you can look at the whole picture. Because like we said at the very beginning of this show is we don't operate in our vacuum and our body systems all interrelate and work together.
[00:46:58] Speaker A: Excellent advice. I think so many people can benefit from that. I'll ask one last question, which is what is one practical action that you would encourage men to take this week to improve their energy, health or their overall performance?
[00:47:11] Speaker B: Justin? I would say, I would say audit it. Do a 7 day personal audit every day. How many hours are you sleeping? What is your energy? On a scale of 1 to 10, what is your stress? On a scale of 1 to 10,what is your movement? Did you have any alcohol intake? And is there any change in mood or sexual function? If you have a baseline, then you can then say, okay, we're not going to judge the score. We're going to look for a pattern at the end of the week. Choose one of the foundations we talked about today to improve for the next seven days. If you're not sleeping, start there. That's the best way to have the biggest bang for your buck.
And if you identify a newer persistent symptom, that's the time to go get medical assessments.
[00:47:54] Speaker A: I love it. Then that's where I come in sometimes.
A lot of times we see the guys because they haven't had a SUV PCP in a long time, but they come in for their sexual function. But that's fantastic. Thank you so much for being here. And for viewers who want to learn more or connect with you, how can they find you or reach you?
[00:48:12] Speaker B: So the easiest way to find me is on LinkedIn. Jen Goade. You'll see me and Dr. Phil at the top of my profile. I am very responsive to LinkedIn I don't have that managed by other people.
You can also email me@jen godayngodaycoaching.com or you can check out this show's vital signs and or power CEOs right here on Now Media TV.
[00:48:33] Speaker A: Awesome. Well, thank you for bringing such a respectful and practical perspective to this conversation. Today reminded us that men's sexual health is part of whole person health connected to physiology, stress, sleep, movement, nutrition, mindset and the courage to have honest conversations for our viewers. This conversation is not a substitute for medical care, but it's an invitation to pay attention. Attention. If something has changed about your sexual health, energy, mood, sleep or confidence, speak with a qualified healthcare professional and begin looking at the whole picture. Thank you for watching naked conversations. I'm Dr. Andrew Sun. Better Health starts with honest dialogue and we'll see you next time on NOW Media tv.
