Bear Grease - Ep. 408: Render - Real Talk About Men's Health

Episode Date: January 7, 2026

In this episode of the Bear Grease Render, host Clay Newcomb and Josh “Landbridge” Spielmaker are joined by their primary care physician, Dr. Adam McCall, for a wide-ranging conversation on men’s health—physical, mental, and spiritual. With so much conflicting advice circulating online and across social media, it can be difficult to know what actually matters. Together, they offer a balanced, practical perspective on staying fit, healthy, and grounded in the modern world. If you have comments on the show, send us a note to [e-mail] Connect with Clay and MeatEater Clay on Instagram MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Youtube Clips MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube Shop Bear Grease MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Built to perform, built to last. Check out. First Light's new field. Worldware Gear at firstlight.com. My name is Clay Newcomb, and this is a production of the Bear Grease podcast called the Bear Grease Render, where we render down, dive deeper, and look behind the scenes of the actual bear grease podcast. Presented by FHF Gear, American Made, Purpose Built, Hunting and Fishing Gear that's designed

to be as rugged as the places we explore. We're here with Dr. Adam McCall and Josh Lambridge spillmaker. Happy New Year, by the way. Happy New Year. How's it already, 2026? You know, it's funny you say that because first time of my life, and this may have something to do with a medical issue that I have. So we brought you here out just to ask our personal medical issues.

I actually think it might have to do with a project that I'm doing that's going to come out in 2027. But I actually feel like 2026 has already completed. Is this six? Yeah. Like I usually have a hard time writing a year. Yeah. You know? And when I write 2026, I think I should be writing 27.

Doctor, can you tell me if there's anything wrong with me? Well, I can, but is that something you want me to tell over? Okay, yeah, we're going to remove all HIPAA considerations. No, so you're right, though. Yeah. So, 2022. We're here.

This is the first render of 2026. And we're going to talk about men's health. Yeah. I think it's a big topic right now, for sure. Man, it really is. Maybe middle-aged men are prime targets for health because,

you know, really thinking about health because it feels like we all go through these stages. When you're a kid, you obviously are not thinking about longevity and health. When you're in your youth, from 20 to 35, you're kind of in the, probably the physical prime of your life, maybe. Yeah. You're less likely to be thinking about health.

Health issues just seem a long ways away or to care about much about your health. I think that what you see, you know, you get in that first stage at 18 to 30, you kind of describes as, you know, more of a cowboy. You're just kind of trying to figure it out, you know, that 30 to 40-year-old, you move into that, what I call the conquer. phase like when you're just trying to get it done. You're conquering life. 40 is really where it starts to kind of slow down a little bit where you go, okay, I just want to maintain, maintain what I have. And I think that that 40-year-old man, you wake up and you've got tennis elbow for the first

time and you don't know what you did, it starts, I mean, it starts a process of you going maybe I ought to take care of myself a little bit. Yeah. Well, and that's why, you know, in the hunting space, guys like Cam Haynes, Back in the, you know, like 2000, I don't know when Cam really started writing about, you know, fitness and stuff. And he probably wasn't the first one, but he was the first one that I paid attention to where this idea of hunting and fitness go together was kind of a new deal. And but, I mean, now, now in 2026, it's like it seems to be a commonplace thing. Yeah.

Which is, I think, a wonderful thing that we would tack on fitness being a component of, you know, living an outdoor lifestyle. And I've never been one to talk about, I don't think I've really ever talked much about just kind of what I do to stay in this kind of shape, Josh. And keep your eye candy. I mean, if I was like jacked, I'd be like putting pictures. of me doing bench presses and stuff. I am not. But I actually, it's top of mind for me

and has been for probably 10 years. Yeah. I remember you saying that. You're like, man, I'm getting healthy and staying healthy. And so, yeah. I think that's incredibly important. I think that,

I wonder if you're seeing this because of the trend of go deep, go deep, go deep into the woods. That's where you're going to go find the bigger bucks. Like, if you're out of shape, you can't go deep

and then drag a deer out of the woods. And so I think that because of the nature of what hunting has become and is becoming is definitely playing into that. You just can't, if you're not in shape, you don't have the health. You can't go to wild places. It's so true. And I mean, it goes without saying, but it's such a relevant topic to talk about specifically men's health. Yeah.

But, I mean, to me, as much as the physicality of walking up a mountain. is being healthy enough to have the energy, the mental energy. Because the older, I see this in people, I've seen traces of it to myself. The older you get, the more just staying at home sounds good. Yeah. I mean, just drank, just tired. I mean, that's what I hear from a lot of people. My age, I'm 46.

Josh is 63. That was a joke. That was a joke. We had a live audience that would be like, ha-ha. Now, Josh, a couple years older than me. I'm getting ready. 50. 20, 26 is 50 for me.

Yeah. And so just what you're talking about, it's like, you know, I've spent a lot of my life working physical jobs and didn't really prioritize health just because I knew I was working. And now it's like I'm having to backpedal a little bit to try to catch up. Yeah. And so I appreciate what you're talking about, you know. Yeah. My dad always told me that his buddies got old when they talked.

turn 50. Like they started acting like old men. They started not wanting to go and just just kind of. And I can see, I can see how that would start. And I'm actively fighting that. So again, my point being, it's not just about like being strong enough to walk up that mountain. Right. An equal component of that is having the drive, the energy, the want to, to walk up that mountain. To me, that's the biggest limiting factor that that I feel like is out there. Oh yeah. We were, I took, uh, I took three of my kids camping this weekend with a couple other guys and, and their kids. And one of the common themes that we all were talking about was don't let the old man in. Yeah, yeah. You know, it was that you've got to constantly fight against that and

realize that, man, you know, I was in the car with my father-in-law and we were playing in a golf tournament. He's really good. I'm not. And I said, man, we're not doing, you know, too bad. And he goes, I mean, for one old guy and one middle-aged guy, and I just turned 40, and I looked around the car, and I said, who are you calling middle-aged? And he said, what do you think you are? And all of a sudden, man, there's this deal going. I'm counting down instead of counting up at this point. And so what can I do and what can I tell others to do that, one, let me keep doing what I want to do for the longest that I can? And what do I got to do to keep that old man out? Yeah. So Dr. McCall is both Josh and I's doctor relatively new.

My dear friend, Dr. Jason Lofton, was both of our doctors. He's the long ways from here. But a great guy. It was a long-distance relationship. Bear Grace listener, just a dear, long-time dear friend of ours. And we were driving to, we're driving four hours to go see Jason because we loved him so much. And then he was the one who said, hey, guys, y'all should, y'all don't need to drive that far. Maybe he dumped us.

Yeah, you know, now that I'm thinking about it, or now that I'm saying it out loud. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I can't take. What do you say to you when he, when he, uh. Did he pay you, like, take us off of his? It wasn't a lot, but it was a minute. You know, he actually said, he said, hey, what do you think about taking care of one of my good friends?

I said, who's that? And he said, a guy named Clay Newcomb. And immediately, I was like, look, I don't know if you know this is not, but I've actually been courting clay for a little bit on Facebook. Like, hey, man, just so you know. know, I'm a doctor, take care of a whole family. And because I knew Jess Newcomb, who kind of connected this right before you signed on a meeting her way back when. That's close.

Sister-in-law. Yeah. And so anyways, and then he reached out to me. He said, hey, I think Josh is going to call and just make sure he gets on your schedule. And so I had to go actually pay my front staff to make that to do actually what I asked them to. Well, it's been it's been great to connect with you. Just a little bit that we have.

Sure. But tell me about your business and like, or just, I don't know, what kind of doctor are you? Yeah, so I do, I'm kind of a rarity. There's about one to two percent of us in the U.S. That are family physicians that still deliver babies at high volume. Really? So I do family practice and obstetrics. I deliver about 100 babies to 120 babies a year and do full surgeries.

We've both delivered. babies. Well, I think, well, never. Fine. He's not joking. I'm not joking. Really? I delivered my youngest son unassisted in that house right there.

That is actually. I delivered my daughter-in-up you, doctor. Who just said he does 120 a year. You got no doubt. I have done one. Oh, man, that's phenomenal. There is no greater experience than a dad getting to be a part of that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know, so I let a lot of dads that I like. Ones that I don't like. Yeah, we'll see. I didn't mean to interrupt you, but we had to drop that stat. Josh didn't pretty much the same thing. I need to hear that story at some point. So 120 babies a year. That's like a baby every two or three days?

Well, yeah, it works out about like that. Two a week is what I shoot for. Do you schedule them? I wish. No, man, you know, that's one thing that I'm a pretty patient individual. And so, and I do what's right for the patient. And that's to let things naturally occur, unless we need to intervene otherwise.

So that means you're having to wake up in the middle of the night or something and go in? Oh, yeah, all the time. Really? So I actually have thrown around the idea of not delivering, and then my wife looks at me, and she's like, but she love it too much. I was like, you know, we'll see what happens. But yeah, no, I've been doing that now for 13 years. Okay.

So. But you're also having. I do. You know, if I had a business card that I actually would print, I think it would go over well, and they would say womb to tomb. Except for I'm afraid I'd be in Target and someone to be like, hey, there's the womb to tomb guy. Moom to tomb.

See your face on the bench. He's got a womb to tomb tattoo on his chest. I'll show it to you later. But yes, I've been doing that and we take care of the whole family. So I've been doing that. Started off in Harrison. I practiced there for about five years and then I've been back in Northwest. Where'd you grow up?

Conway, Faulkner County. Okay. So I got a lot of family that lives in Fulton County, Boone County, and over. Yeah. Yeah. Wow, that's cool, man. Tell me about your hunting, your big outdoorsman. Oh, man, so I grew up hunting over in Salem or Sterky, if anybody knows what that's...

Sturkey? I've heard the name. I really don't know where it's at, though. But I grew up hunting in a way that my dad said, there's your stand, and that stand was my stand for the next 10 years, and nobody sat on it, and I didn't go sit on anybody else's stand. We didn't care about which way the wind blew or you just went out there and hunted and it wasn't super successful. And then I guess I started getting real interested in bow hunting when I moved to Washington County. I can't say it was from the purest of intentions because we live right around this 300-acre kind of wetland habitat owned by Audubon. And, well, I saw some real big deer.

And so I thought, how would that happen if I decided to go in there? and I got into bohunting. And after that, it was just over. Never did do it because I realized I don't need to be on the news at night. It's been like local doctor. Okay. So it wasn't legal to do this. Oh, it was zero percent legal.

Okay. So. But that thought spurred you to get into bo hunting. Get into bohunting. I got it. It's been an absolute. Started in a criminal mind of looking at big deer. That's probably the way a lot of us got started hunting, looking at big deer.

Yeah. No. In places where you can't shoot them. Yeah, which is where. they live. Yeah. And so we've, so then I got into turkey hunting because why not. And got into bow hunting turkeys two years ago. And I don't, I think if you're going to go bow hunt turkeys, your best tool that you need to have is a shotgun because those suckers are hard to kill with a bow. But no, I'm doing that. And what I love about it is it gets me in

the outdoors. That's where, man, I feel like that's where God has intended us to live a lot of our life is just out there with him. When I take my kids out there, teach them to love hunting, just more so for the fellowship, more so just because you can get quiet and you can get away just from the noise that you experience every single day, you know? Yeah, yeah. It really is a gift to be able to have a passion, a hobby, whatever you want to call it, that really takes you away.

Yeah. You know, takes you literally away. I mean, it's, you know, that's, you don't really think about how much, and this goes into even like mental health as being such a big deal. But unless you take the intentional time just to quiet your brain, you're surrounded by noise. It doesn't matter your cell phone, a TV, even conversations with friends. But there is some real benefit into just being quiet. Yeah.

There's a lot of, a lot of things that you can, you know, I wouldn't say solve, but there's a lot of problems that, that, man, don't become such a big deal whenever you can just be quiet, you know? Yeah.

So I think, you know, that plays into blood pressure and cortisol and all the things that we struggle with as a nation. So hunting,

I think, is actually really healthy. Yeah. You know, I've always, I've said this before. People know this. I mean,

I'm a, I'm a active Christian believer, very involved in our church and different things. so is Josh. And as I understand, so are you. Yeah.

And I've always not liked the way a lot of times people have portrayed the outdoors being like, the outdoors is my church. You know, like if they, if they, and I get what they're trying to say. So in some ways, I've always been, I mean, the outdoors is not my church. Like I don't, I don't use it in that function. I mean, to me, I mean, we can talk about what. churches, but it's people and its relationship with people with the like value system and whatnot.

But I have found on extended, I don't want to over-glorify this as if this is the key to life, which is the way it's portrayed sometimes, and it's not. Like if you're a broken person and you go into the wilderness, you're going to come back broken to it generally. But on extended backcountry hunts is when I have had. several moments of great clarity about specific things in my life. Actually, often, more than once, I've had a dream in the back country that I came home and talked to Misty about.

And, you know, I don't think all dreams are like from God or super spiritual. But some of them absolutely are in my mind. And like when I came back from Utah, just the other last month I was in Utah for a week. Oh, wow. And Misty, she said, did you have any dreams while you're there? Like, she literally was just wondered what was going on. And I didn't. I didn't.

But just to agree with what you're saying, there's something, there's something cathartic about, you know, getting away, you know. And I think it is powerful. And it's something that's hard to do. Because it's the reason I felt like in, well, it's hard to even disembate. connect when you hunt though because most places you go you got cell coverage and you're kind of like a lot of times kind of keeping the same pace at least i do yeah a lot of times we all do it's kind of the kind of the same pace but sometimes on these like extended back country hunts with very limited

connection back i don't know something does happen that's that feels feels healthy i mean i think i went to canada i went to northern alberta three years ago and you know you had one tag we got there and I'll be honest with you at first morning my feet were on fire they were so stinking cold it was like two degrees and spitting snow and I saw this buck come through and I thought oh he's I need to wait you know we have 10 more days I need to wait well then he came back through again and I was even a little more cold and I thought well if I shoot him I get to go inside and so I ended up I put him in the scope and I said oh he's definitely bigger than what I thought I mean, your brain just plays those, what I feel like.

This is my excuse of just shooting a small deer. But anyways, I killed him. The guy came and he said, he just kind of looked at him. He said, what the heck, man? Why did you kill this? And I was like, I'm cold. I want to go in. And he goes, you're not going in.

You're going wolf hunting now. So for the next really, you know, nine and a half days, I didn't have cell phone coverage. And honestly, that's where I discovered I loved to write because I had time to do it, you know, because every day I wanted to be able to convey like, man, What did it sound like whenever that wind whipped through those aspens? What did it sound like whenever I heard a big buck coming up through the snow? And just to be able to use language as imagery, I would never have done that. If you would have told me that I'd have loved that without that extended time in the wilderness,

I'd have said, man, that is just not something that I do. Now it's one of the things I do, you know, at least every week is write something down. That's good. On blood trails, the stories don't end when the hunt is over. They just get darker. I've seen something in the road. I instantly thought it was a sleeping bed. And there was a full of blood.

Oh my God, he doesn't have a head. Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors. Where the terrain is unforgiving, the evidence is scarce, and the truth gets buried under brush and silence. Indications were he should be right there, but he wasn't. This season, we're going deeper. From cold case files to whispered suspicions, from remote mountains to frozen backwards. Each story begins in the wilderness and ends in darkness.

Because out here, there are no witnesses, no cameras, just fragments and the people left behind trying to piece them back together. He's not an honest person. He's incapable of being honest. Somebody somewhere knows something. I'm Jordan Sillers. Season two of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, Iheart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. What do you think from a medical perspective and ERIS? And I don't know if this is your expertise, but just, you know,

you see all this stuff about the unhealthy connection that we have with our phones. Oh, absolutely. Like, I'm very interested in that because I've certain that I fit into some category of that. what's the what's your projection of if we're using our phones six eight hours a day oh yeah what's that going to do to us i think it's not what it does from a health standpoint i think you can you know project out that that's radiation etc you know coming from your cell phone but in all reality what it does to you in the short term that anxiety that a lot of people get from being on their phone or playing video games is because man they are looking for dopamine every time that

you like or you get something liked on Facebook, Instagram, there's a small amount of dopamine release. And so what happens is you end up dopamine searching when you're not on that. So a lot of times you'll see people who are anxious because, man, they just don't know what to do. You'll see people eat excessively and search for that dopamine if they're not scrolling, liking, or play in Xbox. And so I think that that is the mental health side of that is, and we're starting to see it.

And it's even being, you know, there's some laws coming out. and they're being lobbied for that actually protect children and all the way up to 18 from having smartphones because we know that what it's doing to that frontal cortex of the brain where we process and make decisions, it's not good. Like it's going to make that smaller and make us where we're more guttural in reaction versus actually processing information to make a decision. If in the year 2000, which for me doesn't seem that long ago. I don't know it doesn't. It doesn't seem that long ago.

If you could have said in 2025, we're going to have these iPhones. Yeah. And people are going to be on them for six to ten hours a day. Oh, even more. Like, you couldn't have seen it. No. You couldn't have projected, you'd been like, no. I mean, I remember when smartphones came out, me just thinking, there's no way I'll ever use one of those.

Like I just, we had a Misty got a Blackberry years ago. Oh, yeah. And I was just like... I had the full QWERTY keyboard on it and everything. Yeah. I was just like, there's no way that I'm going to be able to learn this. And it's going to be something that I grafted into my life. Yeah.

And then here in 2025, I mean, it is... It just... Sometimes the jumps in what humans do is just phenomenal. And now it's so normal. It's so normal that a parent feels like they're abusing their child. if their nine-year-old doesn't have a smartphone. We fight it. My kids will not have a smartphone.

My son, my oldest son, he's kind of commandeered the house phone, you know, because he's riding bicycles now further and going to see friends. And so, like, we let him have that. But, you know, we don't play video games in our house. They don't play smartphones. It's either you're outside getting dirty or you're inside and you're cleaning up. Yeah. You know, I think it's good sometimes for men.

to talk about the standards that they hold in their house because I know for me, when I hear people that I respect say stuff, it triggers stuff in me. Then I'm like, oh, I could do that. Or I'm never going to do that. Or just like something about putting stuff out there. Yeah. And like what you said right there about just there's a rule in your house, no smartphones. At what point would you give your kid a smartphone?

I mean, I think that there's a lot to that. just from what a smartphone gives you the access to, you know, I think from a maturity standpoint, he's probably not going to be mature enough until he's 27. From a realistic standpoint, I mean, when he's 16, he's driving, I think we'll give him one, but it's going to be very limited. Like, we'll put a lot of restrictions on it. But, I mean, I think that 18, he's, you know, feel free to make his own decisions. But I think they just, they offer so much access to things that we don't need.

access to. Yeah. And I think that you're going to see, man, these kids that have had access to it. And we already see a lot of it. That is just detrimental. Yeah. That's pretty much the stance that we had with our kids. There was varying ages, but they were, we had to fight other people's kids getting the

phones and our kids not. And that's a war that you just have to fight. Yeah. Yeah. It's just like life is not about you getting what other. people get. Life is about you live in this house. These are our, this is the way we live. And so, I mean, that, you know, every parent's got to navigate that with their kids. And hopefully you've built the kind of respect that by the time they're 12, 13, and they're starting to have that

will kick in that you've still got the authority and the respect to be able to institute something and it stick. But that's pretty much what we did with our kids. Yeah. And then the other thing is that we did the same thing. None of our kids ever played video games. I mean, we never, never had them in the house. And that's a tough one for a lot of people, I think. It's okay to go against the trend, too. You know what I mean? I want to say that to people. Like, it's okay to trust your gut and go against the trend. Yeah. People won't say that. You know, everybody seems to be making a case for your kid to have access to whatever and whatever. But it's okay. You're not going to hurt them by not letting them have a cell phone.

Right. You know, I'd say this is a generality in total by saying this, but usually the harder it is and the longer the fight, the better of their outcome. Like if you're willing to fight that trend and it's just in your face and your kids are coming home going, well, they got one and they got one and they got one. That the heart of their fight, man, the more worth the fight becomes. And so I think, you know, absolutely. You know, the whole what you just said there about, fight.

fighting the trends. I think we can tie that back into this idea of health. But I think one of the biggest things that we fight against, maybe inside of a society that's becoming more connected because of the internet, like I can look on this phone and immediately see so many people's way of life, what they do, what they think. I mean, like my exposure to other people is dramatically more than my grandfather when he was my age, just like his knowledge of what people are actually doing in their home. Yeah. And knowledge of like the cultural trends.

And what you said, I mean, in 2026, you've got to be willing to stand against the trend of the age. Yep. I mean, negative trends. I mean, we've, and I want to take this into a medical question. I think we could turn it into a medical question. 50% of the people, men in this country are obese. How many? Oh, no.

Way more. Way more. I don't have an exact stat. But, I mean, you look at Washington County, we're one of the healthier counties in Arkansas, and we're 60% obese. 60% obese. So our culture has made that acceptable. Oh, yeah.

Our culture has made that, I mean, it's just normal to be 40, 50 pounds over weight. Yep. And I think it's, yeah, food, exercise that were more sedentary. I mean, all of that. But yeah, no, I think definitely culturally, I mean, when, you know, in your granddad's age, or my granddad's age, did you go order a double cheeseburger and then stop by and get a milkshake on the way home? Like, you just didn't do that. We have access to so many more foods and substance than what we've ever had access to before. Yeah. And that the social, the social, the social, Acceptedness of Being that unhealthy if I can just say it that way and I have been that unhealthy before. Yeah, there was a time when I weighed probably Well, the not to get too personal, but I weighed a hundred and ninety four pounds at one point in my life. I weigh about 180 now, but it's a healthier 180

Yeah, but at the time I think I was like 30 pounds overweight and only five foot two. And I'm like five foot two. So, no, the, it takes a lot in this day and age to be healthy. It does. Well, I mean, I think a lot of us, you know, it's tied to our work, what we're doing. We're in front of computer screens.

We're not as active. And then when we get home, like you said earlier, when you hit, I mean, I feel like 40, it started even for me of going, when I get home, the last thing I want to do is, like, put on some other shoes and go for a walk. You know, because you just, you're mentally exhausted with the amount of information that you're having to juggle and make decisions about throughout the day. And I think that, I mean, you just get to that point. You go, tonight I'm not going to do it. And I think that comes into those, you know, we talked about New Year's resolutions.

Typically, by the second Friday in January, 90% of people have given up on their resolution. And so I think that there's better ways to approach that. And I said, I mean, just make some simple rules in your life. Don't call them resolutions. Just call them rules. So I'm not going to drink any, you know, carbonated or any Coke during the week. You have some on Sunday and Saturday or whatever. But just make simple rules that if people would do that, small accumulations and good result up to huge accumulations and good later, you know.

And so it's not about making these massive changes. It's about making small investments in your health today because they pay off dividends in 10 years. years. They don't, not tomorrow. I think that, I think that, you know, I've, I've been one who has not taken care of himself over the years, just, just transparently. And, you know, I've been talking with Dr. McCall, just, you know, another thing I want to say is, like, it's not, it's never too late. It's never too late to make adjustments. Like, not at all. Find a medical professional who can help you. I think that's one of the things that I've appreciated about Dr. McCall is he really looks at things holistically. You know what I mean? And there's a physical component.

There's a mental component. There's a spiritual component. And you can't just throw treatment after one thing to try to try to get healthy. But man, it's never too late. You know, I'm making decisions now at almost 50 to try to get in a more healthy lifestyle. You know, I think, you know, there's a lot of people out there that are starting to ask the question of not just, okay, I am like this or this condition exists, but why does it exist? Let's get to that root cause. You know, so if someone's got, if they're really struggling with obesity, why are they struggling with obesity?

Are there anxiety there? Is there a depression there? Is there a past there that so many people, instead of using a phone to search for dopamine? We know food releases a huge amount of dopamine. People stress eat, you know, to a significant amount. That causes a lot of morbidity in their lives that they wouldn't have to deal with if they would just deal with the why they're doing it, not the, not generally. that they are. Right.

Like, yeah, the, actually getting to the, to the root cause. Yeah. So, you know, yeah, I think that's important. I think a lot of times we deal with the symptoms so much of stuff that we don't really deal with the, with the real issue. I mean, you think, I always try to tie in hunting or working or what I describe a lot of conditions even with a flat tire on the truck, you know. You could say, man, I needed a whole new set of tires.

No, you don't. He's really need to put a little air in it and things will actually get better kind of thing. But think about even hunting, man, when you understand, if you take the time to understand thermals, it's a game changer for how you access certain areas and how successful you are at harvesting animals. Same thing goes for your health. If you will do the work, you will become so much better at understanding what's going on with your body way before anybody else does. And so I really encourage you, I mean, get down to what's the, symptom what's what's happening and really really work through some of that hard stuff to to try to get

healthy what would what would you say if an alien showed up here and said what should a human eat if but calculated this is where we live and money and all the factors that do play into our diets what would you tell a human to eat man i think that if you can grow it if you can catch it if you can harvest it, I think, man, you can eat it. But I think that what we're seeing is that there's the amount of processed foods and the amount of chemicals that are used to process a lot of that, they're going to be the ones that are going to be indicted for causing most of the disease, I believe. And so processed foods. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that if you look at who are the healthiest people in the U.S., it's not the ones that are injecting themselves with every imaginable

amino acid or peptide that they can find. It's the 80-year-old that's lived on her hobby farm her entire life, and she's doing nothing but locally sourced foods. Like, that's who is the most healthy. And so I think that if you could say to that alien, your best bet at living healthy is to go find an acre and a half and be able to grow what you want to eat and be able to local outsource the rest. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. I think sometimes people don't really understand. what processed food is. Like, we say that term a lot. Yeah. But, like, I heard it described one time of, like, you need to get the bulk of your calories from single ingredient foods. Absolutely.

Like, I mean, like, a ritz cracker is processed food. Cereal is processed food. I mean, clearly all the sugary things are processed food. Pasta is processed food. Yeah. I mean, it's, now you could have. have some healthier kind of pasta that had, you know, like some good, good wheat flour or whatever. But I think sometimes people, I find that because Misty years ago has what got us.

And we'll go out to eat and eat fried food and have a big time. So I'm not like a purist when it comes to food. But at our house, when we eat, we try to eat whole foods. and I think it's kept us relatively healthy. And I find that people are so prone to want to celebrate and eat like four nights a week. There's a reason to like have a, I don't know, I don't know, I'm kind of jumping around. But this is something I think about because something I had to over. come. I would have grown up in a family that would have just been a very typical, like,

Southern American family. I think when you asked me earlier about why do you think we're so obese, I think that's part of it. You know, some of the times I get patients and ask like, how do I lose weight? And I say, eat like you're a nomad. Not every day that you're going to kill a buffalo and be able to eat until you don't want to anymore. Like, some days go hungry. It's okay to go to bed a little bit hungry today because I think that we are just constantly, our bodies never get a chance to basically reset. I've been reading into a lot about fasting that I think that there is a huge component to do a three-day fast. And then there's certain conditions that that keep you from doing that. So I don't throw that out there to a top one diabetic and say, oh, you should consider a three-day fast. Like,

there's other things. But I think that if people would fast more regularly, I think that you would see autoimmune disease go way down because I think that it fasting helps helps our immune system kind of reset itself. And so I think the access to food, the amount of food that we have is really what's driving a lot of our health. I just think that the amount of food we eat and what we eat, if people could just get control of that. And this is something I'm working on.

I mean, like that I'm thinking about every day. I think about it every day. because I want to be able to walk up a mountain when I'm 70, period. That's what I want to do. And I think if we controlled our portions and just took out as much possible sugar as you can, I mean, I'm pretty militant about sugar. And people all around me, including Josh Spillmaker sometimes, Wow, I'm getting thrown under the bus today.

No, you're actually not bad about sugar. I was just... I can be... I can be... Honestly, that's something I have to really manage, too, and this last year's been real important to me to... Like, I have sugar maybe a couple times a month now. Like, maybe on a weekend I might have something, but...

There's just always a reason to celebrate. Like, there's just... It's true. It's true. Three times a week, I'm somewhere where people are like, man, let's have ice cream. Let's... let's have some pie.

I mean, and there's a reason where I'm at a birthday party, or I'm, it's at, you know, it's, it's new years. And you start adding up all, you know, go through a calendar a year, and you're like, there was 120 days that it was worth, you know, having a bowl of ice cream or a piece of pie. And it's like, that goes back to this mentality of bucking the trend. Absolutely. It's like, I don't, I have to really monitor that because,

all, I don't know, you just can't bend everywhere. And a man has to make a decision in his life of what kind of man he's going to be, you know? I mean, you just have to, and if you have a goal, and please don't hear me, I am preaching because this, and I rarely talk, like I said, I'm not Cam Haynes like showing myself, like do fitness stuff on, on the net, which I love Cam, go Cam. But I think about this every single day of my life. and it's a major thing and it has to be. It has to be. Or you, when you're 50, when you're 60, when you're 40, you'll be overweight, you'll be out of the game.

Yep. You won't be able to, you won't have the energy to walk up the mountain. You want to have the energy. And it's not just about hunting. I don't want to make it all about honey. I want to be healthy for my family. I want to be the best I can be for them. I want to be, we talked about this before we started, but I think that a core component

not the most important thing, but a component of having a healthy spiritual life is taken care of what the Bible calls our temple. Yeah. I mean, and I believe that. I believe, you know, it's like we get this shell of flesh and bone that we is ours too steward, you know, and I take that serious as a spiritual tenant,

just like, you know, I got to take care of this thing. And I just think people have to grind out whatever works for them. Because what works for Josh probably won't work for me. Is that what you find? Absolutely. I mean, we're as individual as anything. And it's funny how some medicines will work great for other people and not work great for the next person coming in. And so if you're not sitting down with your doctor or if you're not sitting down with yourself and going, okay, what's worked and what hasn't,

and develop in that plan, man, do that. Take the time, invest in, and I say invest in your health. I mean, that's really a key statement is that if you don't invest in it, because it is a investment in time. It's an investment of your resource. But your health is the, that's what you got. And when it's gone, it's gone.

You know, you're never too late to start trying to get healthier. But there's a, there's a clock ticking. And I look at, you know, I see so many people to say I didn't know how bad I felt until I felt good again. And I watched my own dad. He struggled with obesity. And he ended up, he got a gastric bypass.

Feels great now. God's on the White River trout fishing. But before that, he would say, man, I just don't think I'm going to go hunting today. I just don't feel like it. You tell me how good it was, you know? Yeah.

And so I think that is what happens to a lot of people is they just kind of quit doing things gradually over time. And then whenever they finally get to an inflection point of going, either I'm going to die like this or I've got to do something different, when they do something different and make a decision and they get back to living, man, they go, I did not really realize how bad it was until I felt good. That's a big deal. On blood trails, the stories don't end when the hunt is over.

They just get darker. I've seen something in the road. I instantly thought it was a sleeping bag. and there was a full of blood. Oh my God, he doesn't have a head. Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors, where the terrain is unforgiving, the evidence is scarce,

and the truth gets buried under brush and silence. Indications were he should be right there, but he wasn't. This season, we're going deeper, from cold case files to whispered suspicions, from remote mountains to frozen backwoods. Each story begins in the wilderness, and ends in darkness. Because out here, there are no witnesses, no cameras,

just fragments and the people left behind trying to piece them back together. He's not an honest person. He's incapable of being honest. Somebody somewhere knows something. I'm Jordan Sillers. Season 2 of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, Iheart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Is there in your practice with men, Is there, what would you say would be the, I don't know, is there like one thing that would be like the most common thing that would be, and I know it's not necessarily like a specific medical condition, but, or maybe it is, but what would be the one one thing that would stand out to you in your practice with men?

When I see men and they're complaining mostly 45 years, even seen it earlier, they're saying, and I'm, I'm, fatigue. I don't feel good. My libido's down and I have zero motivation. It's almost always going to be tied to obesity and sleep apnea. Like when I tell you, so I, my wife and kids try to tell me for a pretty good while that I had snored. I was turkey hunting down on the buffalo with my son and he videoed me, got my phone, videoed me and he said, Dad, I just need you to see how bad it is. And when I watch that, I thought, my gosh, that's pathologic. Like, it was terrible. So I got a sleep study, got on a CPAP.

My wife says I should sleep with it more, but I try to do pretty good. But, man, when I do sleep with that thing, I wake up that next morning going, my gosh, I love morning. You feel good. I feel good because I didn't snore all night and I actually got restorative sleep. And I think that there is so much obesity that that plagues men, even if it's 20 or 30 pounds, which isn't a lot. lot. Right. It's normal, you know, but then it's 20 or 30 pounds. As you get older, man, that becomes more and more of an issue on that posterior fairnex and breathing and your airway collapsing and making you wake up multiple times through the night. And you don't even know

you woke up, right? You just get up in the morning. You're just like, man, my eyes are burning. My brain doesn't start until 10 a.m. And man, it's sleep happening. And I see that. Now, why would not to get into your medical personal history, but let's do this. Why do you have your fit, healthy guy? I'm surprised that you would have to use a CPAP machine. Yeah, you know, I mean, I wasn't always. I was, and I started, graduated med school, was actually going to be a general surgeon,

and I gained probably 50 pounds. Used to race bicycles, like road bikes all the time. I'm not going to say that I have an article on Sports Illustrated.com. But you do? But I do. You should Google it. Adam McCall. I beat Lance Armstrong up a hill.

And he gave me kudos on Strava. Are you being serious? 100%. Oh, we should start with this. Oh, why didn't we? Yeah, you should start your conversations with this. Like, I'm out of my call. I beat Lance Armstrong up one hill.

It's fine. He has one testicle two. Oh, segue. We're going to get to that in a minute. And he's done some, you know, cool things. But I think really it all comes down to it. It ended up being, I got treated for low testosterone, probably from bicycle racing, because I probably sat on a hard bike seat for six hours out of time in 118-degree weather.

I think that's, I had low T. And part of that even could have been sleep apnea. So I treated with T worse than my sleep apnea. And I think that's eventually why I had it. And I think just over time, too, me, look, I'm 195, but my BMI says I probably need to be 185. And it's our last 10 pounds. it plagues everybody. But I think that when you, that sleep apathy and you kicked in, whether genetic or

whether I'm just, you know, was prone to it, I felt terrible. Like, I didn't know how bad I felt until I felt good again. Well, see, that's the thing that I think it would be a little confusing is if you're just so used to something, how do you even know, I mean, I guess you just know when it gets bad. I think that you do. And I think that when people show up and I've really been kind of preaching this, but when people show up and they're like, man, I think I have sleep apnea. They're at, they're, they're, they're 10 years into this.

Oh. Like, they've driven their body down so hard that they can't stay awake at a stoplight anymore. You know, and I think that that's when it's, that's why it's, it's very worse and people seek treatment. I think it starts way before then. So how could you be proactive specifically with that? I think you ask yourself the question. When I wake up, do I feel good?

Like, does it take me now, three cups of coffee where it used to only take one? And does my waking up with a headache ever or my eyes and my mouth just dries as a beat? And I think those are the questions that you start asking yourself is, man, do I actually feel good when I wake up? And if your answer is like, yeah, I feel okay. Like after a good night's sleep, you shouldn't wake up just feeling okay. Like, you wake up feeling pretty good. Like, let's go. Hmm.

Hmm. You know, the older I get and the more I've learned about sleep, the more I realize how important it is. There was a time in my life when I thought sleep was for, you know, what you do when you were dead. Yeah. And this wasn't prioritized. Man, now, I mean, I view trying to get a solid eight hours of sleep as like a vital component of long-term health. Absolutely. And it's not always eight hours, too. Like, people have that different. It could be six hours for some, nine hours for the other. They did a study on medical doctors that whenever they go through residency. So after you graduate med school, you either go to train in internal medicine or family or general surgery or whatever. That after four years of residency, that you can look at genetic changes and see something called telomeres, which are the protective ends of genes, that telomeres are. shorten as you age, that a period of time where you get relatively very little sleep,

we age 10 years and what other people only age three. Wow. Wow. And that's where you see the importance of regular sleep is that if you're not getting that on a regular basis, you're 100% affecting how you feel. Wow. Wow. And that's long-term stuff too.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Now, can you get that back? Like if... You can just slow it down. Just slow it down. Yeah. No, you can't, like, really.

rebuild that telomere length at all and that's why i mean if you look at a lot of doctors man they quit they die like or they die while working you know i had a sleep study done last year because i've snored for years and uh it uh i discovered some some stuff about i mean this it's not always just because of you know you have apnea because you have apnea like i've got a deviated septum yeah i've got a small palate and literally i didn't i didn't even have to do a CPAP, but I got a, what they call a night guard, and I just wear this thing. It looks like invisalines. And it is like, I used to snore. Keep your mouth closed. It keeps your jaw push forward and opens your airway up. And just, I mean, literally like a, like, less than a quarter

than it. Like, makes your teeth like go further? Yep. Yep. Moose pushes your bottom jaw. And it's changed my sleep. I mean, I, from going from snoring like, excessively, to barely a snore every now and then. I mean, it's just these simple things. And it might not be a full CPAP machine that you've got to have, but get it checked out. No reason to get it checked out. You said something a minute ago that made me think of this.

In my world, I know a lot of really rural men, guys that live in the backwoods and just do not want to go to the doctor. Yep. And so many people that I know waited too long to go to the doctor and either died or nearly died. I'm thinking of two guys right now that basically there's some part of the, I don't know, just the independent, like, tough American male image that, like, I don't need to go to a doctor.

Yeah. Like that phrase feels good coming out of my mouth. Yeah. I don't need to go to a doctor. Yeah. I mean, that, it's funny. To me, it does. It's, I know it's wrong, but it, like, it feels like something of, you know, I'm not weak.

Doctors are for weak people. It's bizarre. It's bizarre. But, you know, like, one of my dear friends had ended up with pancreatic cancer. and it could have just been taking, it could have been screen, he could have gone to screenings from the time he was 45 or 50.

Yeah, and he just never did. I mean, the man didn't go to the doctor for 20 years. Yeah. And finally started having symptoms and all this stuff

and he went and it was like way too late. Yep. And it had major problems. The guy's still alive, but life altering issues. Yeah. And the older I get,

and I still see this happening, I mean, I just want to tell people, you know, get a doctor, go to the doctor. Yeah. Just do the stuff. Yep. If you love your family, if you want to have longevity, you just got to do the stuff. Absolutely. And I think that it's important to find a doctor that will actually just listen to you for a minute second.

You know, I think that you talk about that one who doesn't want to go to the doctor. Well, that's because either one, they're afraid of what they're going to find. Probably fear-based. Fear-based, you know, and then I tell people, look, you pay me for. my advice and that's it. Like, you don't have to take my advice. It's not like, like this is a shared decision, but what you, and doctors are kind of, you know, when we fight against Google a lot.

Now we're fighting against chat GPT or using it, even in our own practices. But I do think that, man, find a doctor that's willing to hear you out and make decisions together that because it's not a one size fits all. And that's what I hate, we were talking about this earlier, Josh, about cholesterol. Look, we've all seen a person who's got a terrible. cholesterol and they lived a, you know, they're like, terrible cholesterol and I live, you know, I'm still alive at 90. And you have some people that have okay cholesterol and they die of a heart attack.

Why is that? Well, I think it's all, it's all individually based. And I think having someone that you trust to tell how you really feel, because I think that's another important, you know, important part too, Clay, is that if you're like, yeah, I feel good, I'm fine. I had a guy the other day and he'd be fine me telling this story. I've been taking care of him for 10 years and I said, man, he's still doing what you want to do. And I was just looking at him because I've asked him that question every three

months for 10 years. And I watched him squint his eyes and shrug his shoulders just a little bit. He said, I'm dying. I'm fine. I said, dude, I've asked you that question for the last 10 years and you've never answered me like that. We had him in the cath lab within two or three days and he had another stint put in and totally revascularized. And he's like feeling great and doing everything that he wants to do now. And so part of having that relationship is a doctor who goes, why'd you answer like that? You know, and so, I mean, at continuity of just even if you're feeling okay, just go in and check in because I promise you, he was feeling okay multiple times for the last 10 years when I asked

him that. And it just took once for me to be like, hey, man, what's up? Yeah. And so I think even finding someone that you trust in that you're just, you're continually going to on a regular basis, I think he's really important. That's some good doctrine. Yeah, it is. That'd be like killing a big buck that story.

For him, that's like killing a record. When he and his doctor buddies get around, he's like, yeah, the other day, you know, I had a guy come in. I can't say that I haven't bragged a little. No, that's really good. But it's hard. Just like I said, I was driving four hours to a doctor. And not to say that there's not wonderful doctors that I don't.

I'm unaware of. Sure. That are close that I didn't know. You being one of them until recently. Yeah. I mean, it's the medical system, the way it is,

it's hard to find. It's hard to find somebody that will really give you attention that you feel like you need. And it's not doctor's fault. It's the systems. Yeah. There's a lot of things at play. Yeah. But,

you know, Dr. McCall alluded to, you know, we talked about screening. Don't ignore. stuff too. You know, for me, you know, back in 2008, I had a stomachache. And within a matter of days, that stomachache revealed itself to be testicular cancer and went from, from ouch, my tummy hurts

to having surgery and spending three months doing chemotherapy. And, I mean, it's just like it's not worth it don't ignore it so josh is a cancer survivor i am a cancer survivor what did it what did it what did it you like what you did you kind of described it but you literally i was 32 years old i was 32 years old at the time and can you we do something for me kind of kind of doll the story up a little bit like like like tell me like like i was at the peak of my life and i was Honestly, I would say, I don't know, if you're a bike rider, my early 30s, I was in my early 30s. I was working in the construction business. And I've always been the kind of guy that, you know, I wanted to be the guy who could just work all day long. I could lift whatever I needed to lift. I could, you know what I mean? So, you know, I felt, I felt pretty good. You know what I'm invincible. There was a bit of invincibility that you feel at that age, you know, that we talked about conquering. Yeah. And I was working in the construction business. I had driven up to St. Louis from here and had unloaded a whole bunch of stuff off a truck and, you know, and my stomach started hurting. I came back.

It's like a stomach egg. Just like common stomachache. Just pain in my lower stomach. And I wondered like it started getting worse and worse and got so bad to the point where I cut my trip short and came home, went to see my doctor. And my doctor, you know, I thought maybe. Maybe I'd have gotten a hernia, especially after lifting all that stuff. And he's like, you don't seem to have a hernia, get some blood work done. The blood work was inconclusive. He said, I want you to get a CT scan. And that was the moment where it worked for me, it was like, that's for sick people. Now, why did he, why would he have wanted a CT scan? Would you know why he'd do that?

Yeah. So if you were a lot of times, you'll get somatic pain before you get pain that's actually where it's located. You get this pain like around your belly button. That's dull, achy or something like that. And then all of a sudden it moves to your rottal quadrant. Well, that's appendicitis. So you get this paris.

Well, that's what I thought it was. I thought it might have been appendicitis, but it was the wrong side. And so I went and got a CT scan. And it was on a Friday morning. And the radiologist was like, well, your doctor will probably get back with you by Monday. You know, it's the weekend. My doctor calls me 30 minutes later and says, the lymph nodes in your pelvis are twice the size that they should be.

I want you to go see urologist. I go see the urologist. Like that day? That was on a Friday. I went on Monday. Were you still hurting that whole weekend? No, the pain, it's pretty much subsided. Okay.

But I went to see the urologist, and he's an interesting guy, but he comes busting in the door. And he says, Mr. and Mrs. Spielmaker, I'm not going to paint a rosy picture for you. I'm 95% certain that you've got testicular cancer and we need to do surgery to remove your testicle. When are you free? Wow. I was like, well, it's kind of something you clear your schedule for, you know. You don't say, well, maybe next month. Let me look at my schedule.

Exactly. So, I mean, within a matter of just a few days, I was having surgery. And, you know, it was stage three. So I actually had a tumor in the base of my neck. It had metastasize all the way up. And so, you know, ended up having to do some really, really heavy chemotherapy. And I will say, like, doing chemotherapy like that, I don't wish on my worst enemy.

It is miserable. But within a couple of weeks, even that tumor in the base of my neck was gone. And thankfully, glory to the Lord, within three months, I was declared cancer-free. Like, not in remission completely cancer-free. And so, but it's, you know, there's just things that you, there were signs, there were early signs that probably I could have avoided that. Now, I didn't know better, but if I wasn't going to be. into the doctor, you know, financially, I couldn't just go to the doctor whenever I wanted to.

Self-employed, probably didn't go to health insurance. Exactly. So I avoided the doctor. I was one of those guys that just avoided the, not because I was scared of it, thought it's for weak people. I just couldn't afford it. Yeah. But there will, there could have been ways. You know what I mean? And you just, you just, you just don't want to. 32, that's a surprise. Exactly. I mean, like, was testicular cancer is that? That's a pretty common time frame for you. That, it's, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a kind of cancer, but that cancer is prevalent in that age group. Really? Okay. Yeah.

Okay. Wow. Anyway, so, get checked out. I'm going to keep saying it. Get checked out. Yeah. Get checked out. No, but it's that kind of, that, even you being as vulnerable as what you are on a

podcast about testicular cancer, man, there's some dude out there right now that's going, you know what? I feel that. I need to go get checked out. And it's people that, me, you tell me a time that when you hadn't been honest and open about where you're at that hadn't changed somebody's life. Man, I mean, I appreciate that. I mean, there's some dude out there that's going to be like Josh Stillmaker's story changed my life. Well, it's kind of a wonder that you've been on the podcast this long and we hadn't talked about this.

I didn't we talk about it with Rich Froning a little bit. Oh, we may have. You're right. We did. Usually I introduced Josh as my friend with, you know, only one. He walks around in circles because he's a little heavy on me. one side. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps game calls

in building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called prime cuts. Now, I'm going to tell you, I love mine because it's easy to use. I'm not going to go, I'm not going to win a turkey calling contest. It's just not going to happen. But when I run this call, I get the sounds that gobblers are looking for. I have a great turkey hunting track record. If you go listen to real turkeys. out in the woods, they're not going to win calling

contests, right? That's who I listen to. I can make those sounds on my cut. I also hunt with Phelps's cut and I hunt with Clay's cut because they're all three great cuts. Check out prime cuts at Phelps gamecalls.com.

I think you'll be glad you did and you'll find out that the Steve Rinella cut is an easy to use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action. What about testosterone?

That's a big thing. Absolutely. I'm a big believer in testosterone therapy. Primary people are like, you know, well, if it naturally goes down with age, we know that. Why should you replace it? And I was like, well, in 1900, you were dying at 50 from a gunshot wound or dysentery. It's like, you didn't need it.

But, you know, now we're living until we're 85. We want to feel good. And so there's so many times people chase this, you know, I was talking to Josh Blair, this total testosterone number. I want it to be 995. And you're like, why? Because that makes zero difference in how you might feel. So a lot of times we're checking free testosterone, SHBG, estrogen, and all that.

Because every individual is different. And while one person may make a lot of something that binds testosterone and you do need that high number, you may not need that. But if you do need it and you're low, man, it is. It is a game changer when you get treated. Just you see it with energy and the ability to recover differently after you work out or after you climb that mountain. It's a game changer. What about the dangers of it?

Like I've heard, you know, if you get on a bunch of testosterone, your testicles shrink and they quit producing. I don't know if this is true. This is just like what I probably read on a meme on Instagram. Your testicles shrink, they quit producing testosterone naturally and you become dependent on, you know, this additive testosterone. Is that true? So I think that if you treat super therapeutically, absolutely it's true. Tell me what that means. Super therapeutically means that you are going above therapeutic level.

So you're not checking that free testosterone. And you're treating where your body now has like a guy that was actually just trying to get like jacked. Yeah, like if he is just, you know, getting ripped for his bodybuilding competition. Okay. And so he's got normal testosterone, but he wants it higher. He wants it higher because. And you start adding this artificial testosterone. Yeah, absolutely.

That's not healthy. That's not healthy. So that shuts down what we call your HPA. Okay. Or your habogynatal axis, essentially, where you're not making testosterone. You've shut down the pituitary part of the gland that's making FSA. And it goes into, you know, a whole feedback. But once they're done, they're done.

They shrink up. It's over. Yeah, you can sometimes, you can kind of. Oh, like if you get to that point, there's no recovery there. Yeah, no, you're usually doing testosterone for life. Oh, wow. Okay. People say, well, you know, so I have to take it forever.

You know, if I get on it, I'm like, well, I mean, if you want to feel good, like your testosterone didn't just get low and all of a sudden it's going to come back up. And sometimes it can. There's not, you know, and that's not a fair statement to say that's, always the case. But if you're, you know, 45 or 50 and your testosterone's naturally declined and it's not from, from obesity, it's not from excess alcohol intake, it's not from, you know, doing Roy's back when you played football, you know, D-Queen. And by no hint of imagination, was that related to Dr. Lofton?

Who is ripped, by the way. I mean, that dude is in shape. When I had a coffee with him, he told me about his bicycle riding and what he was doing. He is the most active man I know. Honestly, I went home and wrote in my journal, like, be like Dr. Lofton. Nike's putting it on a t-shirt. Oh, yeah. You like Dr. Lofton.

I think it. Oh, I've got a great Dr. Lofton story, but we've got to finish this testosterone. Yeah. And so, but, you know, you get on testosterone. Well, if you get off of it, well, it's going to go back down to being low. And so do you need it for the rest of your life? You don't need it, need it. Like, you can still survive without it.

Do you want to feel good and have muscle mass and, be able to recover after you work out or you go hunting and drag a 162-inched out of the woods. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely you do. And so as you get older, that's going to naturally decline. But there's a lot of ways what I learned, and I talked to you about this, was if you are low, there's a lot of things you can naturally do that probably will fix it.

Absolutely. I mean like adding muscle. Yep. What else? I think that, you know, obviously, man, eating diet that's going to be good for muscle mass, some more protein, less phytoestrogens and things like that that suppress. So anything, a lot of times, many, I worked cattle with some, with one of my friends one day, and I was like, where are you all putting in its ear?

They're like, progesterone. Well, I was like, why? Well, it's because they're increasing water weight to sell the cell barn. Like, that's why they're doing it. And God bless him, he's still a great guy. And I don't know if he's still doing progesterone or not in his cattle. But, I mean, there's a big component in that. The other hormones that we're getting from outsourced foods are really affecting how much testosterone your body's making.

Is it true that the average testosterone across men in America is way lower than it would have been in like the 40s, 50s, 60s? Oh, absolutely, because obesity plays a huge role in that, too. Okay. So, because you have, you make it. That's some of the weirdest stuff I've ever heard. And I didn't know if it was really true, but like the average testosterone level of a man today is, I don't know, is it half of what it would have been? I've heard that said. I don't know if that's true.

I think that there's a reason that you're, that we're seeing that. And there's a little bit confounding, too, it's because we're drawing more of them, right? Like before, why were we drawn so much testosterone? Well, now everybody's going, I don't feel good. And it's kind of the invoked thing. But it really does. We just know. So it's kind of like we just know more about it.

Right. I think it's a, uh, information. availability. Okay. Okay. So. Was that, I mean, could you do a testosterone test back in the 30s and 40s? Not reliably.

Oh, okay. So maybe, maybe it's not even real. So I think that that's a big portion of it. Is that the data available is just better data? Okay. So maybe that's not entirely true. But no, you know, the more I learn about maintaining a healthy weight. Yep.

adding muscle mass 100% getting good sleep yep and having healthy levels of testosterone not not crazy just inside the realm of healthy because there's like

when you get a test it's like 400 to 900 and if you're inside of that like you know it's all I think that's where it can get so overgeneralized I think it's how what what symptoms are you having

if you're like do you feel good somebody might feel really great at 450 and they're like Perfect. But somebody else at $450 might actually. Absolutely. And they need to be running $600 or something. Absolutely.

Yeah. So it's. Sometimes you need testosterone on half your testosterone makers are gone. Man, you got to work. You probably need to sleep more. Probably. But I think it's a huge deal.

I mean, the FDA just took off a lot of black box warnings associated with hormone replacement therapy. Really? And so I think that we're seeing. You think that's good? Do you? Yep.

I do, I think, especially, I know we're not here to talk about women, but I see a lot of women, and we did a huge disservice to women for the last 24 years by not being willing to do hormone replacement therapy. Yeah. And so I think that new data has come out. I think that women are going to start feeling a lot better than what they have if they've got a doctor willing to jump in and look at it again. It's funny you say that Misty has told me that what we know about, men's health is often like so much more historically has been kind of more research than women's health. Is that true?

And I think that there was a big study done in 2001 called the Women's Health Initiative that really kind of paved the way for what happened the next 23 years in medicine. And now I think that, man, there's so much. And just the data availability, the ease of data capturing, I think now we're able to start really diving in to population. specific data and make decisions off of them. So where we haven't had that before, man, having these big databases of studies and in every amount of side effect and every data is tied to a tag essentially that's submitted to registries of people

are signed up for that, and you can get a lot of good information just by a query. Josh, do you have any other specific questions? Man, I don't think so. I think we've kind of. covered a lot of the stuff that I was interested in. Yeah.

Well, go ahead. I want to give you an opportunity to kind of just say whatever you want at the end of the podcast. But I want to exhort people to make some serious decisions about the way you're going to treat your health in 2026. I mean, it's just we have so much data. We have so much knowledge. to be reckless with your health is just kind of reckless. And reckless to me. And I'm saying this not as like a preacher from a pulpit.

I'm saying this as these are things I tell myself. Yeah. And again, I'm not like the picture of physical fitness, but I work really hard to maintain what I have. And you can't compare yourself to people. I mean, like, to some degree, I guess you do need to get a read of health of those around you. But, I mean, like, healthy for me might look a little different than healthy for you. And I'm not trying to be like this jacked, ripped guy.

I mean, you might think that, Josh. But I mean, I'm so adamant about this because we take care of all these different components of our life. But in our culture, for some reason, health is often just like not that big a deal. And to me, being unhealthy is being overweight. and eating crazy stuff that's going to kill you. I was in Bear Newcomb's truck the other. I'm going to throw Bar Nukham under the bus. Who is like 100-0-0-0-0-pound.

Yeah, he took after his mother. I've never been as trim and fit as Barry-Nochem. But he had gone camping, and he had an ice chest, and then I was going camping in Oklahoma. I was going hunting, and I raided his food to see what he had. and he had a jar of jelly, which had no added sugar, and it was like a pretty healthy jelly. And I was looking for peanut butter stuff.

And he had a jar of the cheapest peanut butter known to man. And I looked at the ingredients and it said peanuts, hydrogenated vegetable oil, sugar, and then just a bunch of filth. And I almost got mad at him. because our whole life we've eaten like whole peanut butter right and i was like bear newcomb what is he done he's bringing this peanut butter um that's a funny thing it's like when my mom found a metallic a cd in my bedroom exactly like that no i just in our house we've just been like stay away from hydrogenated vegetable oils and stuff with added sugar and my point is obesity and then just eating crazy food all the time is just eating crazy food all the time is just just reckless. It is. And people do it all the time. Man, earlier you were going through a whole list of things. And I'm like, man, you could pretty much come to do every preventative visit that I do for me and age 40 and over because

you literally. Looking for help down there? I am actually. You didn't come down any time. What if we had a little... Let me get an honorary MD. Well, what if we set it up where it was just like, you know, Clay's not a doctor? But he is giving out advice in that room over there. Let's go. I think people are. would show up. Probably do what you told them to. I could just give them both barrels full.

They'd step in and I'd be like, step on that scale, fat boy. Be like. That's what he tells me when I come. He's got a scale here in the office. I'd have a BMI chart. And I'd be like, you're way overweight. You've been eating hydrogenated oil peanut butter? I'll tell a funny story.

It's a deer story. I think I even sent you. I took my son, both sons, deer. I know, I guess he was six. He's 12. now so six years ago and we're hunting out in Osage and we were driving back and I said boys y'all want to hunt tomorrow morning we didn't see anything you know I'm a six-year-old and four-year-old so we're not really hunting anyways but we're pretending they said sure so we're there at

king's river marble and we turned around in the dollar general parking lot and so I guess we'll have to get some breakfast food so we went in and bought like two boxes of coffee cakes and gatorade it seemed like you know, best I did at the time. So we get up the next morning and go and Lucas eats, he eats probably four packages. I mean, just, just barrels them down. So we're, you know, after I've carried out everything, we're 15 minutes late and up in this deer stand. And he looked at me, he goes, Dad, I got to go like that.

And I said, son, we literally just got here. I'd set out in my first Montana decoy. I was super excited about, played the wind, right? So I was thinking. And so he goes, I said, son, just give it. see if it goes away, you know, that urge. He goes, all right. And five minutes later, he's like, I got to go and I got to go now.

So he opens up thing, I hand him a plastic sack, and I'm like, here, just putting it into your bottom and just going out. We can, you know, keep the scent. I mean, I was really thinking, you know. Or he gets down, he lays the paper, you know, or the plastic bag on the ground and goes on top. And I was like, oh, gosh, you know, this is after he slammed the door. And I'm like, there's zero chance we're going to kill deer. So he goes, hey, dad, what do I wipe with? but he yells it because we're up, you know,

eight foot and ten foot in this tree stand. And I said, just grab something around you. I didn't think there was going to be any poison soup mack or anything. And he goes, it's only pine needles. And I was like, so I get down and I strip down to my bear Hugo's t-shirt.

My favorite t-shirt from Fayetteville, Arkansas is a Hugo's T-shirt. And I just sacrifice it. We dig a hole and I, we get back up in the stand. He's six. I've got a little grace for him, you know. My buddy, he probably wouldn't have had. But so long story short, we're sitting there, and about five minutes, I was just ready to leave, you know,

because we'd eating coffee cakes and drink all the Gatorade. Now it's, you know, smells terrible outside. And I said, boys, why don't we just, why don't we just pray that we kill Big Buck? So we pray. And I mean, let's swing for the fence. I mean, why not? Let's just see what happens. And it wouldn't.

I rattled a little bit. It wasn't five minutes later. That buck came down right to that Montana decoy and Luke has got his first, you know, You know, it was good nine point. Oh, man, that's cool. And he goes, Dad, praying's kind of like magic, isn't it? And I was like, you'll learn, but today it worked, you know. Prayer and coffee cakes.

Works every time. So we're driving down to Litterock to see a Maine Loss for Christmas this year, and we stopped by Casey's. And he goes, Dad, let's eat a coffee cake. And, man, I ate that, and it did the exact same thing to me that it did that. And I got to relive that, that whole story. Did you kill a big buck? I did not kill a big buck, but I made it to Litterock in time and was able to get the job done without hurting too bad. But long story short, you go, man, don't eat crazy stuff.

It had been such a long time that I've ever eaten anything like that. Well, that's probably shows that you're actually, that's good. But, man, I'm telling you, you're right on the money. Don't eat crazy stuff all the time and you'll feel better. Yeah, yeah. What's this Jason Lofton story? I want to embarrass them on the... Well, it's embarrassing only because...

because he's so, like, put together. So we saw Dr. Lofton at a basketball game the other night that they had traveled a long ways out of their way to go watch not their kid, but someone else's kid that they love. Right. Play basketball, which is a pretty big deal. Brought the whole family to go watch this basketball game.

I saw him there, and I was like, I remember asking what he was doing, and, I mean, they were just traveling all over. They got two kids playing ball, and they go to every game. And a daughter in college playing college ball. Playing college ball. And as we were walking out, Misty and I just, we were like, man, they just are so busy.

It's wild. They're just all over, you know what I mean? Just kind of like, wow, how'd they do it? As we're pulling out of the parking lot, I see Jason like walking real fast towards us under the light. We're pulling out of the parking lot, and he's got in his hand a loaf of sourdough bread. that he had baked. And he was like trotting through the parking lot, waving us down. And it's like, hey, I have this sourdough bread for you that he made.

In his spare time. In his spare time. Yeah. And just gave us a loaf of. That's how he rolls. I mean, you know, just like. No pun intended. Yeah.

Yeah. So what a guy. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Our former doctor. Sorry, Jason. Sorry, sorry.

Thank you, Jason. Yeah. Yeah. Well, anything else in closing, Dr. McCall? Not at all. I think that if, you know, you're local and need a good doctor, come see us at advanced primary care. Yeah. Yeah, Northwest Arkansas.

You're in Springdale. Springdale. Springdale. Yeah. Yeah. Well, this is a great, this has been a great New Year's podcast. Yep. And by the time you listen to this, you will probably know that I killed a giant buck yesterday.

Just going to look at that. just going to leave it at that that's it foreshadowing folks yeah i've i i'm like scrolling through my phone trying to find people that i haven't texted yet you know what you know the feeling have you well i do have this is another funny story if we got time i don't know sure sure we're we hunt this year and we've been hunting out of berryville and we had a really good nine point i mean he probably scores 145 and i for me that's a really huge deer huge deer yes and so i'd had him almost in range in bow season and he just never would never would quarter the right way towards me and so I told my son I said look mean you can kill any there's a 12 point out there

there's this one that's got this crazy eye guard you can get it's probably got 13 points you can kill that I don't care but if that nine point walks out I'm shooting that deer and he goes okay deal's a deal dad so he's well I don't know it's probably 5.36 o'clock he goes hey I want to take quick now wake me up if a buck comes in and I said that's fair so So, you know, he starts just sawing logs, and this is that alternative gun season, and he's, it's almost dark. And I see this big buck coming through the woods, and I was like, oh, buddy. So I wake him up. And I think it's the nine point.

He's got a little crab claw on the left, and I can just see that one side. And I said, Lucas, wake up, dude, I think it's a big buck. And he goes, which one is it? I said, I think it's the nine. And I said, but you go ahead and shoot it. He goes, nope, deals a deal. And I was like, are you sure? He deals a deal.

that buck steps out. I ain't just smoke. He just drops right there. So we're all excited. We go down and I open my truck door and I see that it is not, in fact, the nine point is the one with the crazy eye guard, the one that he'd been saying that he wanted to kill the entire time. And I said, son, it's not the nine point. It's the other one. That's the only time that I did not text any of my friends.

I felt so bad about killing that deer. I was like, I don't care. I never want to shoot another deer if I got a kid with me because, boy, that disappointment he felt. It was something. Wow, that's a tough story, man. It was way heavy. Well, he handled it good. I mean, did he.

Oh, yeah, no, he was pulling my truck to the gate and had my phone open. And I said, hey, Lucas, how you feel right now? He's like, well, you know, it turns out that we had a deal and it was dad's deer. And then it wasn't. It was the one I wanted to kill. He was like, but you know what that means? You're tagged out. And I get to kill that deer.

And I was like, okay. Amen. That's cool. Sounds like you got a good relationship with your son. That's cool. I do, man. It's great kid. That's cool.

Well, hey, thanks for coming. Hey, thanks for having you on. Yeah, really appreciate it, man. We'll do this again. Absolutely. Yeah. We'll keep the wild places wild because that's where the bears live. And you've got to be fit to go up there and get them.

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