#9 - 03/28/2025

and thriving physically, mentally and emotionally. We bring you expert advice, real life stories, and actionable strategies to help you strive confidently into a future of vitality and fulfillment. So now please welcome the host of Walk with Wisdom, Genevieve Wisdom.

that somewhere. We'll figure out where I heard that, But it has a ring to it. When women go through the change, men also goes through a change. And I'm so grateful to have you, Andrew and Bruce talk about things like effective strategies to maintain testosterone health, muscle mass, and overall well being. Now I'm going to introduce Andrew specifically. So Andrew Manawera is a physician, educator and product specialist

with Canbra of Naturals and Cido Matrix. He specializes in detailing medical doctors, natural pathic physicians and pharmacists on clinical, effective natural health products so they can navigate the increasingly complex supplement industry and find the right products for their patients. Andrew became involved in the natural health and supplement industries in nineteen ninety two.

it's more like a category. The first category that I wanted to start off with is the changes that men go through. Let's say forty and over, because that's our demographic. By the way, everyone thank you for the younger demographic who tunes in so Andrew Bruce knows this. We have younger people of course in the Perry menopause stage. Perry menopause stage, but you want to start taking care of your health earlier before you get to over forty.

functions fairly well and we take that for granted. And then as the years go by, slowly but slowly, you realize, Wow, I'm sore, or that's not healing, or I feel a little off, and that happens more and more and more, and then one day you notice, wow, I'm a little fat in the mid midsection, or I can't do the things that I used to do. I don't have the energy. Now,

all of these changes are gradual. So for example, the statistic that's used in medical profession is that usually after about the age of forty eight mans testosterone will drop about one percent per year.

can't control. In other words, there is more that you can do to control how you age and your what we call your health span in your lifespan, because you want to a really big health span to encompass your life span. If you have a very short health span in which in which you're healthy and then the rest of your life you're battling disease and dysfunction, that is a short health span. So you want a big health

span to complement a long life span. So, because we can't control how long we're going to live, but we can control how we live, and so this has more How you look and how you feel and how you're able to move has more to do with Number one is exercise. So if you're sedentary, that is going to be the biggest risk factor for dropping your testosterone because testosterone. Actually one of the biggest ways to reduce testosterone or to increase testosterone is still lose body fat. So as

we become older, we also become more sedentary. And sometimes we know that we're sedentary other times we actually aren't aware of what a difference our bodies are movement patterns are from when we were younger. So to answer your question, I think the age related changes that we notice are not due to some definable event in men like menopause

is in women. It's due to accumulative effect of being sedentary, not eating enough nutrient dense food at the right time, and then having a high stress level coupled with poor sleep patterns.

you get through any kind of roadblock. And I kind of whenever I'm stopped or I don't want to do something, I think about it So the formula is big P equals little P minus I. So what this means is big P is performance, and performance can mean anything that you want to achieve. It could be a goal. So you in the original version of the formula it was P, but I substitute goals. The second so equals little P little P is potential. So it's you know, what are

your capabilities, what are your skills? What do you bring to the table right now? Minus I and I is the most important thing thing in you getting your big P. It's not your potential, but it's your eye. And I is interference, and what is interference? Interference are the things internally in your own mind, usually evidenced by a self talk pattern. Usually we talk ourselves into and out of things.

So if you say, hey, I want to go do a run, like Bruce was saying, instantly we'll generate some conversation around it in our mind, that's I. If that's not supporting us, that's I. If it's supporting us, it's not I. So I is interference. And interestingly, most of us focus a lot of our time and our energy trying to acquire information skills, and those are all in

the little P category that's increasing your potential. So you can read all the books, you can learn all the theory, but unless you get into action by reducing that, I nothing's going to happen because the big P isn't going to change. Does that make sense?

testosterone levels, improve your muscle mass, is to exercise. To get us to exercise, what I find is the most effective is as soon as you roll out of bed, have your shoes, your socks, and your workout gear right on your bed, so you roll into that, put that on. Don't put your slippers on, don't put your pajamas on, don't put your robe on, because you're not going to be in the right mindset and then go for a walk. Got to get yourself moving. Now, if you have a dog,

this is a lot easier. I have a dog. He loves to get up in the morning and raise hell, so I don't have a choice. And then from there I have my cup of coffee good or bad, and then I head out. How do you exercise now? When you're young and young can be You're as young as you feel, but biologically young. You know, in your twenties, let's say you can get up and you can start doing intense training programs with very few side effects other than muscle soreness. You know, you might pull a muscle,

but you're going to recover, you'll live. As you get older and more sedentary, there is a higher risk of tearing things that don't fix as easily, so ligaments tendons. I remember going to a Pure Pharmacy bowling party and I bruceaid, I don't know where that you were there, but I just started. I just started training, and I felt pretty confident about myself because I was able to train consistently for four weeks after a layoff, and I was bowling like crazy and the next day both my

knees were so inflamed I could barely walk. So that was a wake up call. So again, as we age, I think it's important to start things off slowly and maybe have a functional trainer or a coach assess your body in conjunction with a physician to say, hey, look, this is your limit. These are the things you got to watch out for. These are the movements you don't

want to do. These are the exercises and the type of activity you want to stay away from, because the goal is to get from where you are to where you want to end up. But you might have to take a different route than another person. So like on a map, if you want to get from here to Calgary, it depends where you start off to determine your route. And so everybody is starting off at a different place,

especially if you're older and you've been sedentary. A lot of what you have to develop is mobility, stability, and you know basic core ligament fascial strength. You don't want to jump into something where you're exerting your muscles and trying to build them up too quickly, or you don't want to run out there and do hit training when you don't have a basic aerobic base. So gradual slow.

You want to balance the nervous system. There's a part of your nervous system that's a break called a parasympathetic, and a part that's called the accelerator, which is as sympathetic. You want to balance those as your training. You know, you need to rest, you need to stress and rest stress. So that's the long and short of it, because the biggest mistake I see is people have a long layoff. They're like, it's New Year's I want to do something.

We'll start the diet, and then bang they head out for a run, not realizing that maybe their ankle articulation is not that great, maybe they have really tight calves and they end up injuring their achilles or their calf, and then of course they're hobbling around and you know they give up or worse, you get a knee injury. Rights terror, Right, these are all really important things to look at, and that's why I recommend people get a movement coach when they're starting off from being sedentary.

It's our podcast, it's our Walk with Wisdom. We get to talk and walk, but go to your primary care practitioner and everything that we talk about here is having a conversation to help you understand why they may recommend certain things. So, Bruce, I would love to hear what you have to add about what Andrew said.

stress part. So I was thinking, I was just wondering because you know, I'm in this stage his life as well, right and I'm starting to lose my muscle mass and I'm starting to put on a belly, And what's a good way to start, Like do you I know you can't just say do these things because you don't know our health levels, but like it's biking a good pedal biking a good way to get into it, or swimming, or what's a good easy exercise that everybody could do

everybody but safely do if you're in some form of relative shape.

can do other things. I happen to be a cycling geek, so I love cycling, but I would urge people to get strong first, because an activity which you're talking about doesn't necessarily translate into improvement of strength and stability and mobility. To do that, you have to consciously work on some specific things. So what I would look at is working

on stabilizing your structure from the bottom up. And one of the things that I'm very aware of is how people mess up their calves, their feet, wearing improper shoes, women with high heel shoes. But we're talking about guys. But I mean some guys wear high heel shoes. So I'm not judging right, not pointing at anybody else here. But if you do happen to have issues with your heels and your feet, one of the things you want to do is to make sure you do heel drops.

So you find a stare and you gradually drop your heels one at a time and stretch out that that tendon and the ligaments in your lower legs. It feels like it feels like the bottom of a calf raise, and once you get stronger then you can start to do calf raises, So a heel drop at minimum to calf raises. The other thing we want to do is we want to practice walking, and when you walk, you want to try and keep your feet straight and walk heel toe. When you run, you run in a different

movement patterns. We won't get into that, but walking, I think is a phenomenal thing to start off with. And the other important thing with walking is a lot of people can get shoulder injuries from walking because their thumbs are not pointed straight ahead. So when you're walking, keep your thumbs pointed straight ahead of your body instead of like this. And that's one of the reasons why I

like using walking sticks. So if you have walking sticks and you can do trails hikes where you're walking on soft ground. We evolved and walking on soft surfaces, not on hard concrete. So walking in nature on a gravel trail would be much better for you than walking on the sidewalk. But if the sidewalks all you got start there. So that's one number two is you need to be able to do so.

people don't realize it. And that's one of the reasons I'm going to recommend some exercises to do using something called a TRX and a TRX is or you can use bands. Either. I carry a TRX and bands around in a backpack in my car, so I can train anywhere in a playground in uh, you know, a park.

I just wrapped the band or the TRX around and there are some basic movements that you want to do to make sure that you're you know, your posture is such that when you put your hands to your side, your thumbs point straight ahead and not your palms facing forward or backwards. So so the basic exercises other than the heel drop calph raises number one would be something like a squat. So you need to be able to

squat and come back up. So that's one movement you need to be able to do because if you cannot maintain any of these movements as you age, you will lose your ability to move eventually, and the two things that take away our freedom and our autonomy will be losing your mobility and losing your mind. And the two

are linked. So as we get right, like it's when you're young, you take for granted that you're you're strong and you can recover, but you know, hey, get a knee injury, twist your ankle, you realize, you know just how intricate everything is linked. So squat is one exercise. The second is a hinging movement, and a hinging movement is anything where your bumb goes back. First, you need to stay in the same position and something like in

the functional training world we call it a deadlift. So you need to be able to do a deadlifting hinging movement because that works the rear chain of muscles. The third thing is you need to be able to properly contract your core, and so every exercise you do you need to be able to create a brace with your core and that tightens up all the abdominal cavity and

takes a stress off your lower back. Because a lot of people don't know how to do the basic you know, another time when I come on, I can talk to people about what I learned from my coach about how to do a brace so that you're not putting yourself at risk for a low back injury or a discarnation when you are doing basic movements. The third movement you want to be able to do is a pressing movement,

so like a bench press, so that's really important. Another movement you need to be able to do is a pulling movement like a bent over row, because you need to be able to push in it. You need to be able to pull your upper body. And the last one is a movement overhead, so like a pressing over your head like this. So these are the basic movements that you're going to be able to You need to be able to do in order to be functional for

your life. And then you need some cardiovascular fitness, and that would be starting with the walking, and I would recommend something where you're actually putting your spine under load because that's how you maintain your bone density as well. Interestingly, swimming does not maintain your bone density because of the

buoyancy effect of water. So if you are say osteoproduct or you're losing your bone mass and it does happen to men too, then swimming it might be a good start, but you need to add in other things like walking elliptical training. Running may not be the best way to get your active in the beginning until you get strong enough because running requires actually a lot of coaching so that you're not getting you're not landing on your heels and creating a lot of trauma for your low back.

There's a way to run where you're using the springiness of your tendons and ligaments to drive yourself forward with a lot of kinetic energy. But unfortunately most people.

band work. You need to be able to lift at some point challenge yourself so that you're going to failure and you need to lift quickly as well or lift slowly. But you need to lift so that the rule is you either lift quickly or you lift slow and heavy, and either of those can cause injury if you're just coming off a layoff. So you need to build up to that by increasing your connective tissue strings and your cardiovascular base. So it's a little bit of a like unwrapping,

you know, a knotted shoelace. You can't just you know, go in there and pull on it because it's just going to get tighter.

great for young people. What I would recommend is going to somebody like the trainer I have who's also a naturopathic physician, and she does movement screens and she'll actually look at your body at rest and moving and say, okay, well these are this is your imbalance and then this is how you compensate when you move. You have to know this, and when you know this, you can work around it and get yourself back into balance. And then you can start to challenge yourself and then you won't

get injured. You'll just make progress. That's the goal.

know if it's true or not. Maybe you can support me on this or back me up, Andrew, but people over sixty A greater percentage of people who are sixty can't get off the ground without assistance of grabbing a coffee table or a chair or something. And if you go back to what you're talking about with stabilizing and the different exercises you're talking about, all of these would help someone be able to get off off the ground, which is very important because then you've got a fallen

I can't get up scenario. And so is that kind of that is that sort of an accurate thing? Have you heard that before?

of an issue as you get older. So yeah, I see it, and you know, when I got injured or when I get it sedentary, the first thing that tightens up is my low back, and it's tough to tie my shoelaces, put my shoes on, even getting into your pants can be hard. So you know, this is a very functional thing to pay attention to as we get older.

around it. And Andrew, pause is actually when the testosterone level drops to a level to a lowest, to a low level where you actually notice that you are putting weight on that you don't have energy that you're cranky all the time, that you're losing muscle mass, and you generally are getting weaker, and it's gotten to a point where the effects have stacked and your level is low enough that you have a noticeable difference from saying a year before, or two years before or three years before.

So it's where it becomes noticeable that men think, oh, I'm an andropause. But actually it's a gradual decline in testosterone coupled with being sedentary and high stress and poor eating patterns. So that's the good news. The good news is it isn't a definable condition. It has more to do with what you're not doing and it than what's happening with your body particularly well.

eating more proteins. You will start to notice a difference in your testosterone level. And the first thing you will notice when your testosterone level improves is that your personality you'll become. You'll develop a sense of humor again, you won't be as cranky, you will start to have more energy, you will not be as depressed, you will actually be able to focus. Because the all of these things are

related to testosterone. Now they could be related to other hormones and neurotransmitters, but when a testosterone is a mixture of a couple of different ingredients, some of them are nutrients which are correlated as low when you have low testosterone, So things like zinc inviting in B six and magnesium and the two big ingredients that do all the he be lifting. One is called ogonda. And I'm sure some of your viewers or most of them must know, oshwaganda.

It's a it's a botanical that comes from India from the arivetic system of medicine. And this is an extract. And this extract actually has been shown in clinical studies to actually improve strength, stamina, and testosterone levels in published studies. So the dosage used is usually the equivalent of what you would find in three capsules of testosterone matrix. You

will actually start to see a change in cortisol. There's a reduction in the study period which was I believe some of the studies were eight weeks, some of them were twelve weeks. You can see a cortisol reduction. In cortisol's your stress hormone. It gets reduced by about twenty eight percent. You need to start to see self reported scales of depression improving by eighty percent. You also start to see other trials they've shown and that strength increases substantially.

So for example, testosteron levels went up, body fat percentage went down, and muscle size went up as evidenced by

increased muscle strength and muscle size. So these I would say, with this particular formula, you probably want to be on it at the label dose of one capsule three times per day for a minimum of about a month before you start seeing changes it's and again again it's not going to be like getting a shot of testosterone, because that is an actual hormone that has a negative feedback where it actually cuts down on your normal testosterone production.

And this is a great product for men who are still making testosterone whose level has kind of decreased, and there will come a time in your life where you might need the actual hormone. But with activity, keeping your body composition lean and cutting out the sugar, you can probably prolong that as long as possible. I hope that answers your question.

the morning, and your motivation. So yes, I would say it is, but it's not going to be as as tremendous as if you are training and exercising, just because when you're exercising and you're moving, anything you do becomes amplified. So but yes, when I work with clinics and then bring the product in, they notice a definite difference within the first four week period.

that pickleball racket and think what a great idea. You'll blow out your ankles, you'll blowt your knees or potentially, so get the screen. Start exercise, start stretching, and move slowly into it.

they're in a situation and they don't know what to do. So, ladies, all of you have as we've been talking about menopause and youthful aging, please let the men in your life know about this now, Andrew and Bruce knows this. The whole promise of this podcast is youthful aging, looking good and feeling amazing beauty from the outside in. So when we started talking about this podcast, those of us who know me like you know that I have an organic skincare line and they were just going, you have to

talk about the skincare line and soul. I'm going to talk about skincare a little bit for men, you know, on the men a Pause side. If you look good, if you have great skin, even if you're sweating, you've gained weight, now you've got lines. But if you have an organic skincare, organic being important that it doesn't put all the stuff in your body that now your liver and your gut and all the other things have to detoxify.

Your skin looks amazing, you feel good. There is something that the men actually like.

cell face wash. But what he loves Is this toner because you just sprayed on, it's not greasy for you guys, but it.

not a bad thing. Reserve trolls an antioxidant. So I would suggest looking at what you're putting on your skin because it won't look good if you keep putting chemicals on it.

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