177: 5 Personal Health Stats That Matter

Scot: If there's one thing I know about guys, it's that guys love stats. We love statistics about things. I could probably talk to any guy and go, "Tell me some statistics about your favorite thing," and they'd be able to rattle off a whole bunch of them.

Dr. Smith, give me some statistics about your favorite thing.

Dr. Smith: I don't know. I do a lot of sports stuff and I know a lot of really useless things, like basketball was created in Canada by Naismith. They used to play it with peach baskets, and initially they used a soccer ball instead of a basketball. Everybody bags on soccer. So I use that as my plug of, "Hey, basketball used to be played with a soccer ball, so you can suck it."

And then I know a bunch of useless facts of that kind of stuff of . . . I mean, a lot of different sports stuff.

Scot: All right. Mitch, statistics about your favorite thing.

Mitch: So I know a lot about Pokémon. I've been playing it since I was 8 with my friends and family. We still, to this day, in our late 30s play together online. And so I know a lot about that.

Scot: Give me a stat. Give me a Pokémon stat.

Mitch: We are up to 1,025 different ones that you can catch. However, in the most recent edition, after they did a bunch of weird stuff, you can only get about 750.

Scot: That's good. When I was younger, I was into muscle cars. Not so much now, but I still remember some stuff. And my favorite was a 1967 GTO. That was my dream car, Pontiac GTO. And in 1967, it went from the 389 motor with the six-pack carb system to a 400-cubic-inch with a four barrel. There were three different versions of it. The high output one had 360 horsepower, 5,100 RPM, and 438 pound-foot of torque at 3,600 rpm. How about that?

Dr. Smith: What was the dry weight on that, Scot?

Scot: I don't remember the dry . . . I had books on the GTO with all those stats. So guys do know a bunch of statistics and numbers from sports cars to "Star Wars," but what about the stats that really matter? And I'm talking about our health stats.

Yeah, there's a little bit of silence in the room on that one. Which ones should we know and what do they mean to us? So today, health stats every man should know about themselves and you should be able to rattle off just as easy as we rattled off our stats.

This is "Who Cares About Men's Health," with information, inspiration, and a different interpretation of men's health. My name is Scot. I bring the BS. The MD to my BS is Dr. John Smith.

Dr. Smith: Howdy.

Scot: And he's an "I care about my health" convert. It's Producer Mitch.

Mitch: Hey there.

Scot: All right. So Dr. Smith, we asked him this question. We asked him, "What are the top five stats in your medical opinion that every man should know about their health and why?"

So we do want you to keep something in mind. This is Dr. Smith's medical opinion and other providers might have opinions that may vary, but that would be a good point of conversation with your doctor about these stats. I mean, debating, "Does this stat even belong there or not?" that's something guys love to do, but why don't we do it with our health?

So we're just going to go through the list here, five to one, in no particular order. Number five on the big five stats men should know about their health and be able to rattle off as easy as stats about their favorite thing, what is it?

Dr. Smith: So I think one of the most important to me is your lipid panel. There are some other just regular labs that your doctor is probably going to draw when you go in for your regular physical, but I think the lipid panel has a bigger impact on a lot of the things that we do in a . . .

Scot: And what is the lipid panel? What is that even?

Dr. Smith: Man, you skipped ahead like you already have the slideshow in front of you.

Scot: I mean, I want to know first so I know what we're talking about here.

Dr. Smith: So, in a lipid panel, it's your total cholesterol and then there's . . . You've heard of good cholesterol and bad cholesterol. The low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, or LDL, gets known as the bad cholesterol. And then you've got the HDL cholesterol, which is the good cholesterol. And then you've got triglycerides, and then there are a few others. Depending on the panel that your doctor draws, we'll have a few others. But those are the big four that you'll see in there.

The numbers that they have are there. The total cholesterol, optimal is less than 200. Your LDL is supposed to be less than 130. Your HDL, they like it to be higher. The higher your HDL, the better. The top end of optimal, I'm giving you optimal numbers, would be 60 or greater. And then triglycerides would be less than 150 in a fasting state.

And then you've got kind of the intermediate range for some of those. The LDL would be 130 to 160, and then anything above 160 would be considered high. HDL cholesterol, you're going in a lower number. So instead of 60 or more, you're going to be 40 to 60 or less than 40.

And so those would be the things to look out for because you want higher HDL cholesterol. It's cardio protective when you consider it to the others. And so those are the things that you're going to want to look for. Those would be the optimal ranges of those things.

Now why . . .

Scot: You know what? I've got to tell you. I'm already getting bored. Mitch, can you tell me a little bit more about Pokémon stats?

Mitch: Oh my god. So the very first Pokémon that was ever created was actually Rhydon.

Scot: No, Dr. Smith, I'm sorry. I know I shouldn't be bored, but I think a lot of guys do kind of get bored with this. So tell me, why should I care about my cholesterol and lipid panels?

Dr. Smith: Damn you, you cut me off. I was getting there.

Scot: Well, I had to be a smart aleck, so that required cutting you off.

Dr. Smith: I had to get through the nerd portion of the show because you asked me to bring the heat.

Scot: Yeah, I know I did. And these are good things. I mean, we should know these things. We should have some concept anyway.

Dr. Smith: I mean, we can go with the "just trust me from now on" and I can just do the fun stuff if that's all right. I don't mind.

The reason that the whole lipid thing is important is cardiovascular events. Nobody wants to have a heart attack or stroke. And keeping your heart healthy, this is directly correlated to kind of the plaque that's going to build up in your arteries over time.

Now, we're all going to have some of that just living and having an American diet, and having that burger once in a while. But we can obviously do our best to keep our body as healthy as possible. And keeping these numbers in a good range is going to help you do that and reduce your risk of cardiovascular events like heart attack and stroke.

Scot: I mean, it's kind of like on the dashboard of my GTO if I had the cholesterol lipid panel gauge, the higher that thing gets with the bad cholesterol and the lower it gets with the good cholesterol, the more likely the heart is going to have a problem,

Dr. Smith: The more likely you're going to do damage over time. Yeah.

Scot: Oh, okay. Got it.

Dr. Smith: And this is a long-term play, right? So the lipid panel isn't like, "Hey, it's good in my 30s and it's absolutely a dumpster fire in my 50s and 60s." You want to try to keep it in a good range the whole time.

Scot: All right. So the big five stats men should know about their health and why. Cholesterol/lipid panel is number five. Number four, what do you think that should be?

Dr. Smith: Number four, nobody loves to hear this, but I think looking at our weight and our BMI, or body fat percentage, to me is a big one, because all cause mortality. Here's the boring stuff again. So Scot, you can take a quick snooze.

Scot: I'm going to pay attention. I'm going to really try.

Dr. Smith: Well, just the overall health benefits of maintaining a healthy weight is the number one thing you can do to reduce your risk of cancer, to reduce your risk of heart disease, to reduce your risk of arthritis. All these diseases that you have that we see, keeping and maintaining a good healthy weight decreases your risk for all of them.

I mean, if we were going to look at one of them, it might be my number one because of the fact of how important it is. And if your body is able to maintain a good healthy weight, you're likely a lot healthier than those around you just based on that alone.

So there are two things that you'll usually hear your doctor talk about. They'll talk about your body mass index, and there are a lot of people who hate the body mass index. It kind of judges you by being underweight, normal weight, overweight, or obese.

What they do is they take your height and your weight and they get a number for it. So mine, for instance, I'm roughly six feet tall and right now I weigh about 210 pounds. That's my fighting weight. So my BMI, if we put it into the calculator, is 28.5.

And if we look at the calculator over here, underweight is less than 18.5, normal weight is 18.5 to 24.9 or 25, overweight is 25 to 29.9, and then obese is anything over 30. I mean, I'm pushing the upper limit there and I probably need to drop some pounds.

I was two years ago at 260, 265, so I'm down a little bit. I know that there's room for me to go. I'm not at a crazy unhealthy weight.

But a lot of times people look at this BMI and they're like, "It's just not attainable." I look at these people at the gym and the guys that are super jacked at the gym have BMIs in 27, 28, 29, even 30 because they're bulk versus their height. And that's why people don't love the BMI.

However, it's a good benchmark just to look at and go, "Hey, there's some room for improvement." A lot of the people who are going to be your bodybuilders and your people that are big fitness folks are going to look at more of a body fat percentage, because they feel like the lean body mass is the more important thing.

How much of your body is a body percent fat? There are a lot of ways to do it. Your gym sometimes will have a guy that does calipers or they'll have water thing that they can do, where they'll submerge you in water and they'll calculate your body fat percentage and you can kind of work off that.

And a lot of people who are very fit but also have a lot of muscle bulk prefer that to look at their health statistics rather than a BMI. But if you're just the guy getting off the couch, getting ready to run your first 5K since you were 25, a BMI is not a bad place to start.

Mitch: I'm glad you said that, because a lot of times in the back of my head . . . I've read one or two articles that are like, "BMI, that's not that good for your health." But at the same time, it is a good benchmark to kind of tell, "Hey, where are you at? What do you need?"

And if you need to, maybe go and get one of these other caliper tests or they do those BOD POD things or whatever to really kind of get your exact numbers if you need it.

Scot: I'm sorry, I'm not a doctor and this is not a doctor's opinion, and Dr. Smith can slap me down if I get way out of line here. I just get so annoyed, because I think Mitch is absolutely right. A BMI is a good kind of starting stat. It's the body fat that causes these metabolic issues, right, Dr. Smith?

Dr. Smith:Right.

Scot:It's not because I've got a ton of muscle and I'm on the upper end of the BMI. I think those guys know, right?

Dr. Smith: Well, that or they're in denial, one of the two.

Scot: Yeah. I think it's a good benchmark. Although I did see a research paper that talked about one of the other dangers of BMI is for people that are within a normal BMI range, that's on the other end of the spectrum. They don't have as much lean muscle mass, but they have a lot of body fat. They're kind of skinny fat, like I consider myself. My BMI was in somewhat of a normal range. It was on the upper end, but my body fat percentage was a little bit of a different story.

So anyway, I think with BMI, I can squeeze around my middle and tell you if that's right or not. But I think the bottom line of what I'm hearing from this is if you're carrying around excess body fat, you might want to try to lose that excess body fat because that can lead to some health conditions.

Dr. Smith: Right. I mean, you can grab your belly and say, "Is there a truck tire there or a kid's bike tire?" And you kind of know, right?

Scot: Yeah, if you're being honest with yourself.

Dr. Smith: But at the same time, here's the other part of it too. The BMI came to prominence in my mind because it's a super easy thing I can do at my office. I can get your height, I can get your weight, I can put it into this calculator, and I can say, "Hey, Scot, you're a little bit heavier than you should be based on these metrics."

We can all look at somebody who's healthy and has a higher BMI, right? Could I stand to lose a few more pounds and improve my BMI? Absolutely.

And so again, I think it's a good starting point, that conversation to start the conversation. It's a good place to start. But I think once you get on a fitness journey and you start to do a little bit more, getting a little bit more in depth and getting maybe a body fat percentage or looking at some of those other options is probably a really nice way to help propel your fitness journey further.

Scot: Yep. And it's very motivating too because then you can kind of track that, right?

Dr. Smith: Absolutely.

Scot: All right. Cool. What about number three on the list of the big five stats guys should know about their health?

Dr. Smith: So number three for me is sleep.

Scot: Oh, a big one. One of our Core Four.

Dr. Smith: To me, if you leave sleep off your list, I don't know, man. Going through residency, going through all the stuff that you do, I realize how much sleep can really impact things. When you're up for a 30-hour call in residency, you literally get in your car and you're like, "I don't know where I live."

With sleep, I think it's important, and there are so many things you can do to track your sleep. I mean, there's the Sleep Number beds. There's WHOOP and Oura and all these different tools that we have today that will help look at actual sleep patterns of deep sleep, REM sleep, the very restful types of sleep that you're looking at. And I think, to me, I can tell you a huge difference when my body is rested and I actually get restful sleep.

Scot: Of course, there's another tool you can use, and that's the clock.

Dr. Smith: Well, the clock doesn't always help. There are certain things people don't realize. And I'm sure all of our listeners are savvy, but alcohol use will inhibit your body from getting into the deep sleep.

Scot: Oh, got it.

Dr. Smith: So on nights where you may be out and you had a few drinks too many watching the Stanley Cup Final, you come home and you're not able to get that restful sleep, so you feel really dragged the next morning. There are those certain things that are not going to allow your body to be as rested as it can be.

Mitch: And to back that up, I was in bed and sleeping for a decent amount of time for a very long time until I actually got a sleep study done and found out I had severe restless leg syndrome. I remember Kelly Baron was like, "Oh, no, these numbers," or whatever it was.

But John, do you think that these devices can at least give us a little bit more information than just the hours that you're sleeping? What is that one stat that we're really looking for to make sure that you are getting the most health benefits?

Dr. Smith: I mean, I think Scot's right on the clock, but I think if you have the disposable income to get some of these pieces of equipment, looking at your deep sleep and REM sleep can really make a big difference, and then looking at ways to optimize that.

And you bring up restless leg. I have a lot of guys come to my office wanting to talk about testosterone because they're gassed and they're like, "I fall asleep in the middle of the day, blah, blah, blah." A lot of them have sleep apnea. And so that's another one where your body is not getting restful sleep because every time you start to fall asleep, you have difficulty with breathing. You may not wake up all the way.

But those are things that you could talk to your doctor about and say, "Hey, I want to optimize these things. My wife says I snore really loud," or, "I live with roommates and they're like, 'Dude, you sounded like the air didn't stand a chance in that room. You were punishing that air all night.'"

Those are the things where you may want to look at it and go, "Hey, I need to get in and just get checked out." And then, like you said, the restless leg, if you feel like there's something inhibiting your sleep, try to figure it out because it makes a huge difference.

Scot: So what are the hours for an adult of nightly sleep that we're kind of shooting for? I'd imagine that's the first thing that I'm going to get asked in the doctor's office.

Dr. Smith: Six to eight hours. Obviously, eight is better.

Now, here's another thing. As you age, your body tends to need less sleep. And so what we find is that older individuals don't need as much sleep. You kind of have to look at it and really gauge by how the person is feeling. If the person is getting sleep, you kind of look at the quality of the sleep at some point as well. But the good benchmark is six to eight hours.

Scot: So based on my experience on this podcast, and we have had a sleep expert on, Kelly Baron, a couple of times, you're going to want to try to shoot for that six to eight, maybe even nine hours a night.

I know that I was lying to myself about how much sleep I was really getting. I thought, "Oh, I go to bed at 10:00 and get up at 6:00." And then I got one of those devices that actually said, "No, you weren't probably going to bed until 10:45, 11:00."

So I think making sure that you've got the hours, and then if you're not feeling rested the next day, that's when maybe a conversation with a doctor or a sleep expert might help.

All right. Number four on the list. What do you have here for the big five stats men should know about their health?

Dr. Smith: So, for active men, the number of minutes to exercise a week, and to not underdo it or overdo it, because you can kind of wear your body out. They have these measured METs of how much you should exercise and do. To me, I think if you're going to be healthy and you're going to be active, you need to do some strength training and cardiovascular exercise. You shouldn't overwork yourself, but you also should make sure that you're actually doing it too.

Scot: What's kind of the minutes should we be shooting for on this type of stuff?

Dr. Smith: So a lot of the stuff depends on what you're doing. The cardiovascular space, what I generally tell people to do is to go look at your age. It's usually 220 minus your age as far as your target heart rate for when you're doing cardiovascular work. And that should be your max target heart rate if you're going to work out. And then you try to do 75% to 80% of that number when you're trying to get in a good space for a cardio workout.

And so those are the things that are just easy kind of numbers to do, is just take 220 minus your age and then kind of go from there.

Scot: Seventy percent to 75% of that then.

Dr. Smith: Exactly, 75% to 80%. But then I usually tell guys that are just getting started, "Hey, start with 15 minutes a day. Just get off your can, and go do 15 minutes of something. I don't care what it is. Take a brisk walk in the neighborhood."

And a brisk walk is just like right now, where you're walking quick enough where you can still have a conversation, but you might feel a little winded while you're doing it. That's a good pace for just getting your blood moving. And there's science behind getting your blood moving and moving all of the things that are there.

Start with that, and then maybe start with 5 pushups or 10 pushups, and then move from there. Just do something. And that's my main thing, is move your body. Your body was meant to move. The reason that we get sore and old and creaky is we don't move anymore.

Scot: And how many minutes? So we want to kind of start out with what you can at a brisk pace where it's a little difficult to talk, you're a little winded. Eventually move up to . . . what is it? One hundred and fifty minutes per week? Is that kind of what it is?

Dr. Smith: I mean, that's a great range to be at, and especially for people who are busy, it's a really nice thing to do. If you want to work it to 20 to 30 minutes a day where you're getting 200 minutes, that's fine.

But again, the 150 mark is good if you're just looking to maintain your health and you don't have a lot of time and/or desire to do it. I mean, that's going to at least give you something to hang your hat on.

Scot: Yeah. And we've discussed on this podcast before physical activity. Even just getting up and moving for five minutes, for people that are completely sedentary, can make a world of difference.

Dr. Smith:Huge difference.

Scot:We tend to discount, but research has shown that that can help. So that really leads into if you're not doing a lot, shoot for the 5 to 10 minutes. I mean, that's better than nothing. And the change it can have in your health according to research is quite a bit.

Dr. Smith: Right. Even people, when you're under the weather, getting up and moving and getting your blood moving actually helps to bring the healing factors. And some of those larger lymphocytes and things like that that kind of hang out in the larger vessels, it moves them through and helps them get where they need to go.

There's actually some research that shows that light to moderate exercise when you're not feeling well is actually beneficial to help you heal.

Now, you can overdo it really quickly, but just getting up and actually moving your body has been shown to be beneficial.

Scot: The Matthew McConaughey rule. Are you familiar with the Matthew McConaughey rule, Dr. Smith?

Dr. Smith: No.

Scot: Oh, that's just get up and do something that makes you sweat for 30 minutes a day.

Dr. Smith: Oh, yeah, I like that.

Scot: That's his rule.

Mitch: And then he adds an "all right, all right, all right."

Dr. Smith: I thought that's what was coming actually. I thought it kind of felt like a trap.

Scot: No, it wasn't.

Dr. Smith: I was like, "He's about to okie-doke me."

Scot: All right. The big five stats men should know about their health. We've covered four of them. That means we've got our very last one here. What is that? What are these numbers we need to know?

Dr. Smith: So mine is diet, the calories that you eat. It's funny how many people come in . . . Really, weight is a calories in, calories out game. And I think a lot of people think that they eat really lean and really healthy, but then they look at how many calories they're actually taking in, and it's a lot.

I mean, that's literally how I dropped the weight that I've dropped, the 50 pounds that I've lost. I literally cut 500 calories a day out of my diet. Five hundred calories a day over a week is 3,500 calories, and 3,500 calories is a pound. Did you fall asleep for that stat, Scot?

Scot: No. I'm curious, how many calories were you eating before and how many calories are you at now? For that stat of average calories eaten, where are you at?

Dr. Smith: So I was probably eating 3,500 to 3,700 calories a day, if we're being honest. And now I average between 2,200 and 2,700 a day depending on the day and my exercise routine on average. And so I've actually cut a little bit more down, but my goal initially was cutting about 500 calories a day, which means that I'll lose a pound a week.

Scot: Got it. The thing that surprised me about average calories eaten is really how little calories we need. I think we think we need all these calories, but is there kind of an average range for your average guy that they should be shooting for?

Dr. Smith: Yeah, I think it depends on what you're doing too. I mean, the guys that we have that are listening that are really in tune with that, they may need more calories during a bulking phase if they're trying to get whatever.

You hear the 2,000-calorie diet a day. Between 1,800 and 2,200 calories depending on your size is usually a pretty good benchmark. And then if you're trying to lose weight, you obviously go up or down on those number of calories.

But a lot of my patients who come in, they're like, "Yeah, man, I've had a really hard time losing weight." I say, "Dude, keep a diary of what you eat. Look at it honestly. Don't just tell me that you eat clean and then come back and tell me that you ate 5,000 calories of bacon in one day."

Mitch: Yeah. That was one of the . . . There have been a few times I've been trying to get my numbers down, and actually keeping a diary was when I started to realize, "I'm eating clean, but I can't have a bowl of nuts for a snack because that's a crap ton of calories."

It was this, "I know that the food I was eating was good food. It was whole food. It was not processed. It was a healthier good fiber, blah, blah, blah." But yeah, those calories were really the thing that was kind of fighting against me.

Dr. Smith: A lot of times.

Scot: I used to eat a peanut butter spoon every day. It would be this big spoon of peanut butter. Then I looked at the container, and I was probably eating, I don't know, 250 calories of peanut butter in two seconds off of that spoon. A tablespoon of peanut butter is 190 calories, and that adds up pretty quickly.

Mitch:Whoa.

Dr. Smith: Yeah. And another thing that I think a lot of people don't realize is the beverages they consume. That glass of orange juice in the morning is like 300 calories. If you've got a nice real glass of orange juice or milk or whatever, a lot of those things will . . .

"I drink diet drinks." Well, you don't drink diet drinks all the time. And so a lot of those things do make a huge difference. If you think about it, 200 calories a day extra is close to a half a pound a week.

Scot: Of putting on weight if you're above what you need to survive.

Dr. Smith: Right. Most of your full-sugar energy drinks, if you're like, "Oh, man, I'm gassed," that's 200 calories. And so it's a simple thing just like that. That's 200 calories right there, that one beverage that you had when you got off work, and you're like, "I've got to have this to go to the gym," or whatever. I mean, those 200 calories are the reason you're not losing weight.

Scot: Getting those average calories eaten, getting that stat, it can be a bit of a pain because you do have to be honest. You do have to log your food, and your drinks. And if you're having a couple beers a night, there's another 400 calories you're not counting for.

Dr. Smith: Even light beer is 96 calories per. I mean, that's 200 calories if you have two beers.

Scot: And that can add up fast if you're already eating at a maintenance level and then you're having an extra couple hundred calories. To get to that 3,500 calories, it's an extra pound of fat. After a year, you're 5, 10 pounds heavier.

Dr. Smith:Exactly.

Scot:Calories, I think that's a huge one. That was a huge one for me too. It's a number that's hard to get, but it's a number worth having.

Dr. Smith: Yeah. To me, it's important. Those are the little things that make the big difference long-term.

Scot: All right. Well, that was a great list, Dr. Smith. I love that. Thank you very much for giving us the big five stats men should know about their health.

So our challenge to you is to start gathering your stats. If you've been to the doctor recently, you can often get these stats, like your cholesterol, your lipid panel, your BMI, through your healthcare provider's online portal if you don't remember what they were when you were at the doctor.

If you don't know them, or you can't remember the last time you had them checked, or even been to the doctor, an annual physical would be a good place to start. Bring in this list, and just say, "Hey, I want to know these numbers." Then ask your doctor, "Are there other numbers that are important to me?" and you can have a conversation about those stats with your provider and kind of see where you're at.

And if you have any questions, maybe even a story about how knowing your stats changed your life or you have a different take, we would love hearing from you. It's hello@thescoperadio.com.

Thanks for listening, and thanks for caring about men's health.