Join the conversation about men’s health with James Monte who is a top pharmaceutical rep with IBSA. He specializes in thyroid function and endocrine optimization and has a passion for helping others. He’s a dedicated family man and husband, with three children ages 16, 7, and 4. He’s been a Type 1 Diabetic for more than 35 years. In his free time, he coaches his son’s baseball and is a “cheer dad” for his youngest. He has extensive knowledge of the mental health space as he was diagnosed with depression in 2011 and was on several depression medications throughout the years. In August of 2024, he “quit” his medications cold turkey and is thriving without the use of pharmaceuticals. We don’t suggest you quit your medications, please seek help from your doctor. Listen to the conversation about why men do NOT like going to the doctor. How delaying seeing the right doctor can impact a man’s health and can lead to invasive treatments. If men can get professional medical help and taking preventative measures can help prevent chronic disease. Men don’t be embarrassed or afraid, get help early on.
Disclosure: This content is for educational purposes; this is not intended to treat anyone medically. Speak to your doctor for further guidance.
Episode 47 Podcast Transcript
Welcome to Physician Heal Thyself, the podcast empowering you to take a whole-person approach to your wellbeing, spirit, soul, and body. Join me, your host, Dr. Ana Lara, naturopathic doctor, entrepreneur, and a servant of Jesus Christ. We are not just a body. We are spirit and soul. It’s time to integrate medicine and spirituality into our healing. Let’s get started.
Welcome back to Physician Heal Thyself, the podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Ana Lara. Today I have a guest. His name is James Monty and he’s a top pharmaceutical rep with IBSA. He specializes in thyroid function and endocrine optimization and is passionate about helping others. He’s a dedicated family man, a husband with three children, ages 16, seven, and four, and he’s been a type one diabetic for over 35 years. In his free time, he coaches his son’s baseball team and is his youngest’s cheer dad. He has extensive knowledge of the mental health space as he was diagnosed with depression in 2011 and was on several depression medications throughout the years. In August of 2024, he quit his medications cold Turkey and is thriving without the use of pharmaceutical drugs. Please help me welcome James. Hi.
Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.
Welcome. I invited you on the podcast for many different reasons. We naturally have great conversations.
I agree.
Now what our audience should know, and you already know, is that I befriend everyone who walks into my office, most of them.
Okay, that’s fair.
I do. I don’t care if it’s a sales representative or the UPS guy. I treat everyone with kindness and respect completely because I know what it feels like to be on the sales end of things from my past experiences, and I just don’t believe in being mean, cold and nasty to people. I always want to be welcoming.
It’s one of the reasons why I absolutely love coming in to see you.
Yeah, we enjoy, me and my assistant, we enjoy when you come. We have conversations and I know it usually is not even geared towards the product or what you’re there for. It just winds up happening organically, which is really nice.
It is.
It’s a nice break from always being on the clinical side of things to just come in and be able to sit with you and talk. It’s really nice. It’s really, really nice about life and experiences. You’ve had kids and everything.
One of the things, James, that impressed me the most was being a man, being a married man with family, how open you were to being open and transparent about who you are, and what your experiences have been in life. We’ve talked a lot about mental health and physical health and many other things. I want to dedicate this episode to men’s health, the top reason men are driven to see their doctor. It blows my mind that men will wait to address health issues and they wait to go see a doctor until they have sexual dysfunction.
That doesn’t surprise me at all.
The moment they have erectile dysfunction, that’s when they’re like, something’s wrong.
Absolutely. Absolutely.
I have also had many conversations with men and their top reasons of not going to the doctor, which I understand most of them will say, I don’t like doctors. The other reason they say they won’t go see a doctor is that they don’t want to know what’s going on.
Okay. Ignorance is bliss.
Ignorance is bliss. But the sad part of that, James, is that men will live life not seeing a doctor, not getting help, not working on the prevention side. Then when they do have to see a doctor, they’re forced to go.
They end up in the emergency rooms, having to do invasive therapies.
Absolutely.
But at that point, you have to do this forever.
Well, I think that one of the issues is that generationally men have always been told basically suck it up, deal with it. You’ll figure it out on your own, rub some dirt in it, you’re going to be okay. And so there’s this stigma of getting help and I don’t subscribe to that because for me, I don’t want to wait. I don’t want to wait until it’s too late until I need those invasive procedures. So I’ve been very big for years on as soon as something is going on. If I can’t do it on my own, my next step is always to get professional help, which is basically what I’ve done over the years is not weighted. I think also being diabetic, my knowledge of waiting for things to exacerbate is critical. I don’t have that luxury of waiting. I have to act. That’s really from a medical side and then also just from a personal side, professionals are there to help and we shouldn’t be, men should not be embarrassed to go and get help. I mean, it literally could be the difference between life and death.
Absolutely. Tell us a little bit about your experience when were you diagnosed with type one diabetes?
Sure. So I think I was two when I got diagnosed. 2, 3, 4 like that. Very, very young though. My father was in the pharmaceutical space very, very, very early on. He worked at a drug store. This is back in Brooklyn. Over the years he saw a lot of the same symptoms come in. Kids were coming in, they were constantly thirsty, always had ear infections or some type of virus, rapid mood swings, hunger all the time, and wetting the bed. On a vacation, my dad started noticing that I was exhibiting those symptoms and immediately just put two and two together. We left the vacation, flew home, went to Cedars-Sinai, and then I remember for hours getting poked and prodded until they came back with a diagnosis that I was diabetic.
Wow. Because that’s often an assumption people make, they just don’t know. There are all these symptoms and I tell people signs and symptoms are a way that your physical body is alluring, that something is often inside and times are changing where people are more, they’re more aware of what signs and symptoms are. But back then, I mean, you’re still pretty young, but even back then, it wasn’t something. So the fact that your dad was able to put these things together was lifesaving for you because absolutely.
Had you gone any longer without realizing you had type one diabetes, which is different by the way, guys type one diabetes, you’re not making insulin, you’re probably looking at him and he’s like, he doesn’t look diabetic. That’s the other the issue is that people think assume that diabetics are overweight and there are two types. There’s type one and type two. Type one, oftentimes the pancreas is not making enough insulin. So that could be detrimental over time where type two diabetes, which is what we call the one that you can reverse, is usually induced by diet and lifestyle.
A hundred percent.
But this is not something that you did.
I’m not reversing this, and this is not going away. I appreciate the compliment. I do try and take very good care of myself, but to I said earlier about my dad recognizing the signs and symptoms, it wasn’t something that he was willing to wait for. I’m glad that he didn’t wait because it again could have been the difference between life and death. For me, getting professional help early was pivotal to my life. I got that comment quite a bit when talking about type one and type two. Well, you don’t look like you’re diabetic. I appreciate that. But there definitely is a misconception where people seem to think that you have to look a certain way to have something and that’s just not the case.
Are people surprised when you share that you’re type one diabetic?
I think they are because I think that there is such a misconception in society and in the community that diabetics are overweight and don’t take care of themselves. That’s just not the case. It’s not the case for me, it’s not the case for many people. It is the case for some, and I understand where people come from with that, but I think that that needs to change
Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune. There are different causes of it, and there’s still a lot more research to really do on this. Like with anything, we don’t fully understand exactly how the body works and what causes these things. But there are certain viruses that can affect the pancreas and then it starts to affect the production of insulin. There are autoimmune conditions that can affect the function of the pancreas. It starts to detect the beta cells of the pancreas, and that’s where the insulin is made. That’s why a person with type 1 diabetes might not be able to make enough insulin. Some people make some, not enough, and some people don’t make any at all.
My pancreas has just taken up space in my body right now.
I’m fine with it.
It’s space for you.
I’m fine with it.
Thank God for medical interventions.
I’ve had this for so long that it’s just become second. It’s part of my life. I don’t know anything different. For me, it’s just maintaining it, which is relatively easy. When I was younger, I had wanted to write a book and the book was going to be, diabetes is a disease, not a disability. So I see a lot of people say, well, I can’t do that. I can’t do that because I’m diabetic. But that’s just not the case. I’ve done everything.
You should write that book.
I don’t know if I could.
I think you can. I believe in you.
I appreciate that. The blue engine that could.
They think they can.
It’s not something that is debilitating. It’s only debilitating if you let it evolve or devolve into that. Diabetes is very manageable. With technology and a continuous glucose monitor, I have the insulin pumps that have all this great technology and it just keeps evolving. So it’s not something that I think was a death sentence. I think now with all of the medical interventions and the technology that we have, it’s not as scary as it used to be. Not at all. My sister and I, who are also diabetic, and so is my mother,
Are they type 1 diabetics also?
Also type 1. So we’re all types of fun.
So we used to go to a diabetes camp and you’re surrounded by counselors and med staff who are diabetic and you’re surrounded by kids who are also diabetic. You think that you’re the only person in the world who has this disease, where you’re not supposed to eat sugar and you have to count carbs and you’ve got to take shots. Then you realize there are millions, millions of people that have this exact same situation and they’re out there and they’re having fun and they’re playing sports and they’re jumping out of planes and they’re playing professional sports and everything. So it’s not a disability or it’s really not. It’s a disability.
If you let it be, it’s your mindset, your perception of that thing, is not going to overpower life and how you control your life.
Yeah, if you’re an uncontrolled diabetic, you’re probably going to be overweight. You’re not going to want to do things. You’re going to have vascular issues. You could have edema. There are all these myriad of other things that come from uncontrolled diabetes, but with controlled diabetes, you should have a problem doing anything.
You still work out.
You manage your well, how you eat, work out, live life, and all those things. Yeah,
I’m a normal person. I just have to take shots. That’s it.
Different types of shots.
Definitely different types of shots.
Yeah, got to correct that. So I’m like, oh, he’s taking shots. Good. Growing up, was it difficult for you to manage that?
When I was really young, and I think that this is probably fair to say on a holistic level, the entire diabetic community, when you’re a young child, your parents are maintaining your diabetes, they’re managing it for you. As I got older, it became more manageable because the responsibility could then be put on me to check my sugar, to take the correct insulin, to eat the right things. But early on, I didn’t think I had a big say in it. I think it was my parents controlling it until of course, I was old enough to really grasp what I needed to do, which took some time.
I mean, it definitely took some time before I think my parents were comfortable with me taking over the disease state. Still, I think it also relieved them that it was no longer something that they had to really helicopter over me. Of course, as a parent, they’re still very concerned with ensuring my sugars are in range and I have the right snacks. There are some scary moments in there. Blood sugars drop in the middle of the night, and this was before continuous glucose monitors and alarms. So there were several occasions of me passing out and waking up to the fire department standing over me or paramedics injecting me with D50 and glucagon. But as time has gone on and I’ve gotten a little bit older and wiser, I think it has become more manageable.
Yeah, it is no joke when your blood sugar drops.
No, it’s not.
You are dying. It feels terrible. Unfortunately, it happened to me when I was pregnant with my oldest and I could never forget that feeling. It is a terrible feeling. It’s panic. It is. That’s your nervous system alerting that something’s wrong. We don’t have enough glucose in the brain. You’re dying and people can go into a diabetic coma and not make it out of that. So it is a very serious thing. What are some things that you would say there are many men out there. I’ll tell you this, though, I will disclose just in my practice, which does not depict the whole world or the country.
But I have seen more men, especially after COVID, start taking their health more seriously. That fear of I don’t want this virus to take me out, really shifted many men, not just to take themselves physically but mentally. We’re going to have you on the next episode, and we’re going to talk about mental health. But on this one for physical wellness and wellbeing, where do men start to feel safe to move in that direction of finding the right? I always say you’ve got to find the right doctor. I get that they’re afraid of being judged. From a male perspective, what do you think men tend to fear about going into see a doctor?
It goes back to what I first said is that there’s a stigma that if you go and seek professional help, you can’t handle it on your own.
There is a level of onus that men have to want to be able to handle things on their own. I don’t need anybody’s help. I can do it on my own. I find myself doing it with projects around the house. My wife gets mad at me because it’s jig rigging things together, but I can do it on my own until I can’t and then I need to call in professionals. The body of men in general feel very much this way. I can handle it on my own until I can’t. They may be getting outside influence. Maybe it’s their significant other that’s telling them, why don’t we go to the gym? Why don’t we start a fitness program? Why don’t we start eating better? And that’s great. Sometimes it takes an outside factor to really make you flip that switch, where I need to start doing something different.
You could go to a doctor and you get your labs back and they say, your LDL is super high and you have high cholesterol. Now we want to put you on a statin or your TSH is really high. We need to get you on a hypothyroid medication. Sometimes those things factor into it. Other times, guys just realize on their own, I’ve got to do something different. Maybe they wake up in the morning, they look at themselves in the mirror and they’re 10, 15, 20, 30, 40, 50 pounds overweight and they don’t like the way that they look anymore. Maybe they’re fresh off of a breakup. What’s the best way to overcome that feeling of loss or rejection? Let me get in the best shape of my life. Sometimes it takes that.
Something that I’ve never heard anyone say, but men are designed to figure it out. I mean, you’re the head of the house. You’re the leader. You’re supposed to be, even if women don’t like it. I mean, there are just men and women who are designed differently and we’re not going to get into the whole gender identity, none of that. This is just real talk about men are wired to figure it out. I don’t want to be married to someone who can’t figure it out. But there is a fine line between when you’ve done things on your own to a point, like you said, I’ve done this, I tried to do this on my own and now I just can’t figure it out. I’m not a man. Maybe because I grew up around boys a lot, my brothers, I feel the same way. I feel it. I can figure it out.
I got this, I can figure it out. But once I can’t figure it out, then I have to look for someone that can help me. But you can be stubborn in that, get stuck in that and be stubborn that you don’t need help from anyone. I got this. I’ll push through. But what happens, unfortunately, like I said, I see this too often is that as men get into these older ages, 50, 67 years old, even younger than that, they start to develop serious chronic conditions. Now their kidneys are failing. Now you need dialysis, and you’re having serious heart issues. Now you’re having to go see the cardiologist. If you don’t want to work with those doctors, if you don’t want to take those medications, then take them before. One of the things that I like in working with men and health is that I can be straightforward and direct with them, and they’re not going to be sensitive about it either because women are different. But I can use a lot of analogies. I grew up around my brothers a lot being on cars and things like that. So I always use car analogies and I always say the fatigue, the weight gain, that you not able to sleep, all of these things that you’re experiencing, these signs and symptoms that you’re experiencing, it’s like the red engine light in your car turning on. You wouldn’t avoid that, would you?
Some people would. Some people would.
Some people put a piece of tape over it.
And then they just keep driving their car and then their car breaks down. Now they have a five, seven, $8,000 bill to fix that car. Had they.
The cost to repair is always more than the cost to maintain.
Yes.
If there is one thing that is taken away from this, it is the cost of repair is always going to be more expensive than the cost of maintenance. Always.
Always. One of the things that I tell patients, and both men and women, young, old, it doesn’t matter. You pay the price now or you pay it later with interest.
Absolutely.
So you might as well make the changes now. Start eating. Well move your body, sleep well get rid of the vices, things like that. Those are things that you could do at home for free on your own. But the problem is that many don’t.
No.
I remember having this Hispanic male, James, in my clinic about three years ago. He hadn’t been to a doctor in years. He owned his own painting company, painting houses, and he’s like, man, I’m really worn out. I cannot function. He’s been pushing, pushing, pushing. He can’t push. He can’t do it anymore. So finally, the wife made him come in. He’s a very Mexican male chauvinist, you know what? I tell him, okay, well, here’s the blood work. Do the blood work. He comes back, he’s like stage four, kidney disease, super diabetic type two, just all these issues. So I go through the diet and he disclosed to me. I’m going through a diet recall. What are you eating throughout the day? He is eating 20 tortillas per meal, which is 60 tortillas per meal. I calculate it, the carbs for him. I’m like, this is a lot.
This is why you’re diabetic, this and all the other stuff. So I told him, look, if you want to live, this is how you will eat. You can still eat two tortillas per meal, but not 20. You got to add more protein. So I started telling him how he had to eat, what he had to do, what he had to take, natural things to take. I told him, and it’s up to you if you want to live because you still have an 8-year-old daughter, you want to see her grow up and all of that. Then, if you can’t do it for you, do it for her. But this is what it is. You can reverse this. I’m giving you hope that you can reverse this, but you’ve got to come into the change. He said he was funny. He made me laugh. He said, for the first time in my life, I will listen to a woman. I said, so you haven’t been listening to your wife? I said, do you realize if you die, she’s the one who’s impacted most when you go through a health crisis. She’s the one impacted the most.
Her and your daughter. So I’ll take that as a compliment, but let’s get on board. He made the changes. Hemoglobin A1C was dropping, sugars were normalizing, and kidney function was increasing. The problem with men like this is that once they see progress, they stop and fall off the face of the earth. It didn’t help that it was the holidays either. So I couldn’t get in contact with him. I told him, you are steps away from dialysis. If you don’t do this, you will be on dialysis.
Terrible.
Time went by. Maybe nine months later, I get a call from him. Hey, it’s me. I’m in the hospital. I’m getting dialysis. Is there anything you could do to help me? I’m like, that ship has sailed my friend.
That ship has sailed.
It’s like a heart. My heart is just punctured with a knife. I don’t want to see people get to that point, men or women. There’s that stubbornness in men.
It takes those outside forces to push you to make a change. Some guys are very good at doing it independently for whatever their reasons. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of reasons why somebody would self-change. Sometimes, though, it does take a catastrophic event for you to realize what I’m doing is not working. And sometimes at that point it’s too late, unfortunately it’s too late.
What are some key things that men should consider, whether it’s changing the mindset around their health or things they can start doing health-wise for themselves? What are things you do?
That’s a great question. It starts with activity. And I’ll preface this by saying that this is something that I do. These are not the beliefs of anybody else. This is just me. That activity and getting moving is really helpful. The next show, when we talk about men’s mental health, this’ll be a big factor in that, but getting your body moving, lifting weights, has been shown to increase your life expectancy significantly. Cardio is wonderful, and fasting is great. I don’t do that. I can’t really do that. But exercise, I think, is pivotal. Exercise plays a major role in your health, in your mental health, in your even spiritual health. So being active, moving around, lifting weights is essential. Supplementation is really, really good. I’m really, really big on Gary Brecka right now. So, shout out to Gary Brecka, your hydrogen water, and your Baha gold salt. So supplementation is really important too. One of the things that I noticed was that one of the products that I sell is B12 and D3, and I was suffering from some really, really bad migraines. And as soon as I started supplementing with B12, D3, EG1 or any of the super food, super greens, I haven’t had a migraine in a long time. So supplementation moving around, obviously, diet plays a big role in health. Not everybody can do the ultra-organic shopping at Sprouts, shopping at whole paycheck or Whole Foods, and it’s no dis to them. Still, everything that is healthy, typically, again, speaking in generalities, is a lot more expensive.
But I think that there are ways around that you can cut certain things out of your diet in lieu of putting things into it. So you can cut out super sugary foods, you can cut out high-density carbs, you can cut out all of the really, really, really high saturated fat foods. All of these play a role if you can afford the organic, healthy stuff. My family has pretty much made a switch to a lot of the nonchemical component foods and my kids seem to feel better. My kids are acting differently. I’ll have to get back to you on exactly what it was that we cut out, but I think it was either folic acid or folic nitrate. I forget what the compound was, but we were told that by taking it out, the kids would respond differently. And I have to say, shout out to my wife. You were absolutely right.
The wife is always right.
My wife is always right. My kids have started acting differently. The sleep regression, which was really big for my son, who’s seven, is not really the case anymore. He’s sleeping better cognitively, he’s doing a lot better. He understands deeper and in a more mature context. So food moving around, supplementation. I think that those are all the key things.
Then on top of that, I think social. We need a community. Women have a lot, and again, I don’t want to be chauvinistic but it seems as though women have a lot more connectedness than men do.So we’re usually kind of by ourselves. And it’s important to have a network of people that you can call up, Hey bud, just want to tell you I love you. Hey man, how are you doing today? What’s new? What’s happening when you are in a community of people or you’re surrounded by your friends, typically, you’re feeling pretty good. Men need that.
Guys need to have a community around them. We need things we can do as guys that bring us together. That sense of community really bolsters mental health and physical health.
I agree. I agree. That’s one of the big differences between men and women, which is that women, naturally, want community. I do see more men creating community. I think it’s still something that needs to be almost given permission. It’s okay. My parents, they grew up in Mexico in a very, very small farm community. I remember the first time I went to visit, I was six years old and every year in the summer we would visit, and I remember there was a community and men there. So I don’t think it’s a male. It’s like a male is not okay. Not for men to do that.
I think it’s a cultural thing in our country because they called it the four corners. And men would work their fields and at the end of the day and the evening, they would meet at that corner, the four corners, and they would sit around and they would talk and it was just men and it was known that was a community little hub. They would meet there and talk and you will arrive whenever you wanted to. You’d leave whenever you wanted to. That was their circle. And you’re talking about it. I’m like, there’s something very different in this country. I’ve traveled to other countries, Peru, I’ve traveled to a lot of Central South America and some of the communities that are not in the city, they’re in the more smaller towns. There’s a lot of community that happens in these cultures that we don’t have that here. It’s always work, work, work. And we just consume our time with things that don’t really feed into us physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. There is about having that community, that person or people. I say at least have one person that you can turn to, that you can talk that’s outside of your relationship, that is needed. And it’s okay.
I would prefer my husband to have someone to talk to and process whatever it is, instead of just feeling like he doesn’t have any friends or social circle.
A thousand percent. I had a community college course with a guy, and I’ll make a long story very short. I’ve been friends with my buddy Dennis for more than 20 years. Dennis is a leader in the community, but more specifically, he’s a leader in men’s awareness and that kind of community feel. So Dennis started something called Real Talk Men’s Club. It’s all guys all walks of life. There are probably 20 or 30 members. We have members who are in different countries.
Oh wow.
We’re all part of a big group chat and we’ll just chat with each other. We’re just checking in. More than half of us have never met the other half. We don’t even know where they live. But it’s a community of guys that at least locally meet up, try to about once a month we just shoot the breeze, just hanging out, just surrounded by each other. No preconceived notion. It’s just us with other guys. We could talk about any issues we want, but it’s really nice to have that sense of community. Even in a really, really small confined group of let’s say 10 to 12, you still feel like just feels really nice.
I think the misconceptions sometimes with people is that they feel like community is a large group, and actually the larger it is, the more you tend to see the quiet people just there.
They stay quiet.
They stay quiet. And the point of a small group, even if it’s one or two people, is that it makes you speak. You just like you’re going to share. You’re going to talk about something. And I agree. You mentioned earlier how a lot of it is culturally, and I know this kind of touches on the mental health, and it’s hard to separate the two, though. Physical health and mental health are all one body.
Whatever’s going on physically can impact our mental health. So if you’re not eating well, because eating a lot of sugar and crappy food, it’s going to make you feel icky and you start cleaning up the diet, you’re going to feel better now. The brain has the right food and the body has the right food to help you feel optimal. Moving your body. That’s medicine in itself. It’s not even about physical appearance. It is mental health. For me, it is spiritual. It just makes you feel like you emotionally and mentally detox. And whether you work out in the morning or in the evening, I tell people, figure out what works for you. Don’t worry about what anyone else is doing because not everyone will be able to work out at four or five in the morning. It just doesn’t work for everyone. Find out what works for you. Don’t compare yourself to other people. Just those two things can really shift men physically and mentally, and emotionally.
What’s really sad, James, that I’m really concerned is I see people of all ages from newborns to geriatrics, men and women. I purposely set up my practice. I didn’t want to just work with women. I didn’t just want to work with one population. I wanted to work with the whole family. I see this in both genders. Still, really young men, their testosterone levels are dangerously low compared to, I mean, yeah, some men in their forties and fifties might have lower testosterone. Still, it’s concerning when you have a 20-year-old with testosterone of a 50 or 60-year-old, but then you have the 50-year-old that has naturally better testosterone than the 20-year-old. And once again, it’s the diet. It’s what they’re eating. They’re eating junk. They’re not moving. Men have more muscle. You need more protein. You need activity, physical exertion to maintain your muscle mass. When those testosterone levels start to drop and estrogen comes up in men, you don’t feel well. So sometimes your mental health issue is really a physiological issue. Change the diet, move your body, and balance out your hormones. You’ll feel better that it could be just that. It could be just your hormones.
It’s all interconnected to what you just said. It’s mental health that plays into the physical. The physical plays into the mental. When your mental health is good, when you’re happy or in a good mood, you’re more likely to want to go out and do things. Conversely, if you’re physically active, you tend to feel better post your workout. Absolutely. And again, you’re in a good mental headspace, feeling good, and ready to tackle the day. Whether you can get it in the morning or you can get it in the evening, it doesn’t need to be some two or three hours.
You’re not training for Iron Man, or maybe you are. God bless you for doing that. But 30, 40 minutes of just moving around is really good. If you can lift heavy weight in that 30 or 40 minutes, do it. Your joints are going to thank you later in life. There’s so much they will, scientific data that supports lifting heavy things. You’re going to live longer. It’s just going to happen.
Fasting and lifting weights has the same effect on the body when it comes to anti-aging. So it’s happening at the cellular level. It’s the same thing. So I like to eat food, so I would rather lift heavy.
I agree. I’m on that same boat.
Yeah, there’s a lot of intermittent fasting. There’s a time and place for that, but I’m not typical. It’s spiritual reasons.
Nothing. And anecdotally, lifting fasted versus lifting with a carb load, it’s night and day different. It shouldn’t even be. It’s not even apples to apples. Nope. You’re comparing rocks to fruit.
The other thing is that when people lift heavy, they start to realize how important what they’re eating, how much they’re eating, what they’re eating, how much it matters. Because you cannot, especially as women, we cannot lift. If we don’t have enough protein, you’ll feel weak. We don’t have to say muscle mass. We don’t have to testosterone the way men do, and that gives us strength. But you’re right; as you get older, your body will thank you for doing this right now. And there is no, it’s never too late. So if someone is 50, 60, 70 years old, I see many people that are 60, 70 and they start their fitness journey and wow, what a transformation. I think one thing that I really want to share with men is not to feel embarrassed or ashamed of where they’re at because that fear, that shame, that embarrassment, you’re going to get stuck and not taking that next step.
A thousand percent.
Oftentimes, you’re your own worst critic. You’re judging yourself. I do tell people to find the right doctor. If you find the right doctor, they’re not going to make you feel bad. The moment they make you feel bad, guess what?
That’s the wrong doctor.
That’s the wrong doctor. And you can fire them. So if you go in with that mindset that if my interaction with this doctor is not kind and respectful, I can fire them. I just won’t come back and just go find another one until you find the person. There’s nothing wrong with you communicating with the doctor about what you’re looking for.
You might have to teach them as a sales professional. I don’t want to say I’ve taught because that would be inaccurate. I’ve shared my experience in pushing back against providers sometimes, at least in the sales world, and it all ties together. Trust me.
We see an MD, right? We see an MD and we think, oh, this person knows more than I do. So we blindly trust what they say. But that’s not always the case in the healthcare system that we live in. Your practice is very different. But generally, providers have about seven minutes or eight minutes with a patient. They go in, we listen to what they say, we trust what they’re going to prescribe to us, and that’s it. Then we leave. But we need to be able to push back. We’re in an age of technology where we can do much of our own research and go there with an informed decision. I call it suggestive medicine, where you go in and you tell your provider, Hey, I think I might be hypothyroid. Hey, I think I might be diabetic. This is what I’m looking for. Can you run this test on me? Sometimes a provider’s not thinking that route, or they come in there and are so slammed, and you present them with symptoms, A, B, and C. Well, A, B, and C mirror this disease state. Let’s treat you for that.
We don’t always have to listen to what the provider says, and I’m not trying to shoot us in the foot here, but I think there needs to be a responsibility in the population to do some research. I’ll give you an example. My dad has had multiple hip surgeries, but my dad does all the research ahead of time. So when he goes in to see the providers, he’s already talking their language. He’s already saying, Can you aspirate the SI joint? Can you go in and do this? Are we going to go posterior? Are we going to go lateral? Are we going to go medial? Are we going to go anterior? And providers oftentimes appreciate an informed population. It also takes some of the guesswork and the clinical work out of what you have to do. If you come in and somebody says, here’s A, B, and C. Here’s why I think it’s A, B, and C, you may look at it and say, oh, you’re absolutely right. I don’t need to run additional testing.
You’ve already shown me that these symptoms align with what I had initially thought. So I think part of it comes down to us pushing back on the provider. They’re not always going to be the right fit for you.
And they’re not always going to have the answers because MDs have such a short time to be with people, and sometimes assumptions are made. One of the things that I really encourage people, primarily through this podcast, the purpose of this podcast is for people to advocate for themselves. Before I take on a patient, I interview them, tell them how I work with them, and let them know that they’re in the driver’s seat of their healthcare, not me. They’re responsible for the decision-making and how they want to proceed. I am guiding them. My job is to listen, take their history and make based on what’s presenting lab work, all that, make suggestions off of that. But at the end of the day, it is their choice. And I do that because I remember being on the other side as a patient not being given the options.
Naturopaths do this in general. We present options and let the person pick for themselves because they feel heard, respected, and empowered. I’ll tell ’em if there’s something, and you got to be careful because there’s so much on social media, but there’s something you did research, not because you saw a TikTok, but you did some research and you think that might resonate with your situation. You want to get tested. I am all for it. When people come to my practice and present options of testing or looking into that, they will know more than I do about their body. James, I’m not in their body. I’m not experiencing the symptoms that they’re experiencing. So my job is to listen, be curious and say, yes, this would be a good thing to do, or Let’s wait to do that. But either way, if it’s something that makes sense, let’s do it. It is going to save me time. They’re already coming in thinking that this might be something to look into. Let’s do it. What’s the big deal of running a full thyroid panel on people?
There’s no harm in doing it.
Back in 2006, it was like wrestling with the doctor for me. I couldn’t get them to do more than a TSH, but that was many years ago, and things have changed and evolved. Technology. There’s way more information on thyroid health now than ever before.
Agreed.
And there’s information on a lot of things, but I agree. You don’t believe everything or anybody. The best advice that one of my older brothers gave me when I was in kindergarten, I think I was in kindergarten, he said, Don’t believe everything that people tell you and everything you read.
Sure.
You can question things. Think for yourself.
A hundred percent.
Advocate.
And if you don’t know, ask the same thing. If you have questions on your lab work on the diagnosis you’ve got, ask the doctor. If they don’t have time for you in that visit, then say, okay, I’ll make another appointment so we can make time for that conversation and they will do it. More doctors are more open and flexible to doing that. As we get here. To wrap up this episode, are there any takeaways that you want to share with men that might be watching this and they know they need to change, they’re scared. What would be the loving kind nudge that they need?
The loving kind, or maybe you just need to punch them in the face, get out there.
Some of them may need a punch in the face.
The biggest takeaway is your body. You know what you’re experiencing. If you’re not feeling right, and whatever you’re trying to do to mitigate that feeling is still not working, stop wasting time. Go and seek professional help. There is nothing wrong with getting professional help. They’re professionals for a reason. You specialize in these things. If your foot broke, you would not just wait for it to heal. You would go and you would seek out an orthopedic surgeon. The same thing holds true to every other facet of a man’s body. If we’re not feeling right, go and get help. Again, it goes back to what we were saying before. The cost of repair is always going to be more expensive than the cost of maintenance. Go and get your blood work done, eat healthy, drink a lot of water, but don’t wait for the problem to be so bad that you’ll have to go and get those invasive procedures done. If you recognize something early on, attack it early on. It’s like life. Don’t wait until it’s too late.
Yeah. Don’t wait until it’s too late. I like that. Well, I will be tagging some past episodes on the pillars of health and nutrition, exercise, stress management, just the importance of the pillars of health and how you can do that for free. It’s free education. So if men or women are watching this video and you feel your husband or partner should hear this conversation, please share this video with him. And I think, James, I believe there was a special shout-out.
There is a special shout-out for any doctors, physicians, PAs, MAs out there who are single and successful. I’d like to shout out my sister, Gina. You can find her on Instagram at lil LIL, MISS, Monty, M-O-N-T-E. She’s beautiful, she’s talented, she’s single, and she’s ready for you.
Oh, wow.
Shameless plug.
There you go, sis. You’re going to get hit up. Well, thank you, James. We will continue this conversation in Men’s Mental Health in the next episode, so you want to stay tuned for that. Until next time, be blessed guys. Thank you for listening to Physician Heal Thyself, the podcast. If you like what you’ve heard, please like, share and subscribe, help this message reach more people who may need to hear it. Leave your comments. I want to know what you think. If you’re interested in learning more about Raices, visit our website. Until next time, be blessed.