Mindfully Masculine: Personal Growth and Mental Health for Men
Charles and Dan are just two guys talking about relationships, masculinity, and authenticity. Join them as they discuss books and media, as well as their (sometimes messy) personal stories, to encourage men to join the fight for their mental, physical, and emotional health--because a world of healthy, resilient men is a thriving and more secure world for everyone.
Mindfully Masculine: Personal Growth and Mental Health for Men
From Crown to Crotch: Navigating Baldness and Grooming
In this exciting episode, Charles and Dan dive deep into the topics of hair loss and body image, pulling insights from the book "Self-Care for Men" by Garrett Muntz. They explore societal perceptions, personal reactions to baldness, and share personal anecdotes and advice on managing both the hair you want and the hair you don't. Join us as we discuss how baldness affects social standing, the impact of celebrity culture on hair loss stigma, and practical tips for those experiencing thinning hair.
Topics covered include:
- Discussion on hair loss: How it's perceived socially and its effects on personal and professional life.
- The psychological aspect of dealing with baldness and body weight; societal pressures and personal acceptance.
- [Celebrity influences on the perception of baldness, featuring examples like The Rock, Vin Diesel, and Jason Statham.
- Deep dive into the causes of hair loss, including genetics, stress, and lifestyle factors.
- Health and nutrition tips that can potentially slow down hair loss.
- Discussion on manscaping and personal grooming—how it affects personal hygiene and social interactions.
- The risks and benefits of various hair removal techniques, including shaving, waxing, and laser treatments.
- Closing thoughts: Emphasizing the importance of self-acceptance and focusing on overall health over appearance.
Recommended Resources:
- "Self-Care for Men" by Garrett Muntz
- Episode 72 for a deeper discussion on baldness and attraction
Welcome to the Mindfully Masculine Podcast. This is Charles, okay. In this episode, we will continue our review and discussion of self-care for men by Garrett Muntz, and this week's topic is hair the hair on your head and the hair below your belt, and what to do if you have less hair than you want in some places and more hair than you would like in others. To do if you have less hair than you want in some places and more hair than you would like in others? Please follow or subscribe to our podcast on your chosen podcast app. Just look for Mindfully Masculine, and you can also check out our full episodes with video on YouTube. Thanks and enjoy. Good morning, charles. How are you? Hey, dan, I'm well. Thank you, welcome back. Yeah, it's been a while. Yeah, we haven't recorded one of these in a long time. You were in New Jersey for what? 10, 12 days, something like that. Yeah, it was almost two weeks.
Dan:Yeah.
Charles:How's New Jersey?
Dan:Jersey was warmer than expected. Had a little, yeah, warm spell, which was nice. Got to see a lot of family and a few friends and spend some time over Easter break in New York. Got to eat some chocolate babka and, yeah, had the girlfriend fly up and meet the family for the first time and that went really well.
Charles:Surprisingly Not really surprisingly- Because your family's awful, your girlfriend's awful.
Dan:Pretty much, yeah, and I'm awful Between the three of us. No, actually. No, it worked out really well. I was even better than I had hoped. Actually, no, it worked out really well. I was even better than I had hoped. Actually, that's good. It reassured me and I made some good decisions this time. Yeah, I like the last one better. That happened, listen, not with this one, but it did happen to me. Yeah, previously when I went to take a girlfriend to Germany. She said it and my grandmother said it in front of her at the table, and the other girl had just walked in, like the one. She was like, oh, you should have been. Why didn't you ever date this girl? And yeah, it was a neighbor that I had grown up with and, yeah, it was awkward and she didn't speak german, but she knew what was going on. I could feel the heat. It was bad.
Charles:It was bad there was a guy that I went to church with who sometimes go into Bible college fairly local to where I grew up and where I went to church. When you meet a new girl, one of the things you do is take her to church with you. Oh, and there was a guy in my church who loved saying boy, she's a lot prettier than the girl you had here last week and he was a sweet old guy but he thought they the girls always thought it was funny. It was like I hear this every time I bring a girl some of whom were just my friends, yeah Church with me. This guy wants to use that joke every time hey, that was fun, one trick pony, whatever. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I can relate now.
Dan:Yeah, and you were also in New York.
Charles:Yeah, I was in New York briefly. I am done with flying Frontier or Spirit in or out of LaGuardia. Why? Because they share, at least I think Frontier is changing to a good terminal, but right now they're in the worst Terminal. A is like the worst terminal and it's a small terminal where it's just for frontier and spirit and just the lining up and getting through security is a nightmare and, yeah, it's just. I won't do it again and I probably won't do spirit ever again, because I believe spirit is getting that terminal to themselves and frontier is moving to the new nice terminal. Okay, and yeah, it was just just standing there not knowing if you're in the right line.
Dan:Oh, not having signs, not having employees making announcements, it's yeah, so we ran into that with Spirit on the way to no, it was. Frontier went to DC a couple of weeks ago. Okay, it was beginning of spring break and it was a 5 am flight, figured, no problem, get there at three. Uh-uh, same thing, not sure if we're in the right line. We ended up missing the flight because we didn't check in an hour, we couldn't check our bags an hour before. We missed it by eight minutes, oh boy. And then they sat us in a different line to talk to a manager and we sat in that line for three hours waiting for another flight to get rebooked on. Yeah, yeah, turns out the person we talked to wasn't a manager, so they were going to charge us because of the flight that we bought. So they're going to charge us to change the flight. Wow, we ended up talking to the manager. They changed us, but we had to wait another hour after that to actually talk to the manager.
Charles:It was yeah, yeah, those value carriers. You're paying. One way or another. You get what you pay for. Yeah, that was a little frustrating. On the flight home I was like, yeah, this is bad enough that I'm not going to do it again. So if I have to pay double my yeah, eighty dollar round trip to fly a jet blue or something.
Dan:I'll do that, yeah. Or look at delta. Like delta had some really cheap flights too, that we ended up taking a delta flight home and yeah, instead of spirit or whatever. Yeah, and they were in the ballpark, okay, so it wasn't twice as much.
Charles:I don't think I told you I'm going to this not this weekend. This starts tomorrow or I guess today. Next weekend I'm doing another trip, going to Nebraska for the Omaha zoo, which is one of the best in the country, nice, so I got a great deal on a round trip ticket. I'm flying a Legion out of Sanford, okay, which I love flying, and out of Sanford and Daytona is a dream, because just nobody uses those airports. Yeah, you get through security super fast. Parking's cheap, nice, yeah, so I'm going to go to Omaha, nebraska, for three days to check out their zoo.
Dan:For a little monkey business, I don't know what sort of privates they have.
Charles:But monkey business is always on the agenda. I love going to a new city and seeing what their food is and what's the traditional dish that they're known for, and I'll probably see if I can go on a food tour and stuff like that. I would love to do a food tour in Nebraska. I know they're known for steak. That's a big thing. They're known for home-office steak. Sure, yeah, I'm probably going to do a steak dinner a couple of nights while I'm in town. The zoo is supposed to be great. I went to the Bronx Zoo when I was in New York this last time. Oh great, never been before. Okay, and it's up there, it's pretty good. It's not Cincinnati. Cincinnati is probably my favorite zoo so far, but Bronx is up there. Put it above Philadelphia, below Cincinnati, below Chicago, but it's good.
Dan:Sanford Zoo Come Chicago, but it's good. Sanford Zoo Come on. Where's that? Where's that go? The Central Florida Come on. Not even on the same, not even in the same ballpark.
Charles:If you're pursuing zoo-like conditions in Central Florida, you go to Disney's Animal Kingdom. It is it's head and shoulders above any. I thought you were just going to say Disney. Well, yeah, zoo-like conditions, animal Kingdom yeah, really great.
Charles:The thing I love them is, uh, there's hardly any fences at animal kingdom. Oh, that's cool, because they do the thing where they basically dig a trench, a giant trench. They put, yeah, it's under the trench and then they fill it in with water so you don't see. Visually, you rarely see any fences. They use moats with fences that are buried. Interesting, that's what keeps the animals all in their spaces. Yeah, they went into how they do that. On the dis's Magic of Animals I didn't know that. On like Nat Geo, oh, cool, and that's, yeah, that's the best experience for the animals and for the customers, because you don't have to stare at fences between you and the animals. Yeah, oh, that's great. And so some zoos have stuff like that going on glass. Yeah, where with disney, they, they don't do that, and so that's, oh, that's cool, that's really cool. But I'm looking forward to to omaha next week. I'm going to be there for three days and I was in new york. I also checked out. I saw the harry potter play on broadway oh, how was that?
Charles:it was good the the story. It just it's not quality wise. It's not on the level of the books, yeah, which I could understand. They have a limited amount of time and apparently before covid it was a two-part thing where you would go to the matinee for part one and then go back at night to see part two. Oh, interesting, since covid they combined it into one longer play, which I'm glad about that. I'm glad I didn't have to go because the ticket was 120 dollars. So doing that twice is I'm a little. I'm into this. Enough to it. Oh, they were charging. Yeah, you had to go to two different places so it wasn't like one.
Dan:Oh yeah, I didn't realize two completely.
Charles:I thought it was just like like a long intermission kind of oh no, part one and part two and how I had to go to each one of them. So instead of that it was like a two hour and 50 minute play with an intermission, when I I saw the whole story in one sitting. Okay, it was good I I liked it, but yeah, just compared to the quality of the writing of the books and the movies, it wasn't quite there. Got it, I'm still glad I saw it, but it wasn't, I think. The other thing I I thought about going to see book of mormon. I still haven't seen it that was really good I saw years.
Charles:I heard it there were some good deals on tickets while I was. Yeah, but I was like I'm already going to one broadway plan, I want to go to two, and so next time I go to new york I'll check out book of mormon. But it was a fun trip. It was a fast trip. My I stayed at my usual hostel on the upper west side and there was a fire. They had to evacuate the building, which was a little frustrating the way they handled that.
Charles:The fire alarm starts going off off. I'm like, oh boy, okay, here we go. And I was just about to go jump in the shower when the fire alarm started. It was in the morning and I was like, okay, I guess I got to just get dressed and go downstairs. You'll be wet, you'll be fine, yeah, but yeah, they never have problems with fires on boats, right, because there's all that water. Yeah, there you go. So then they make an announcement like it's a false alarm, you can disregard it. I was like, okay, great, I started getting undressed to go take the shower. And then, not a minute later, they're like disregard the last announcement, everybody needs to evacuate. It's okay, this is not run the way that I wish it was being run, and so I ended up just getting dressed and going to the dunkin donuts across the street and then all the fire trucks show up. At one point I did pop my head out the door and something was definitely burning. Before they made the false alarm announcement, I could smell something burning. Now I don't know it could have been somebody microwaved popcorn too long, but there was definitely a smell of something burning. When they made the announcement of, oh, it's a false alarm, I'm thinking, no, it's not, there's something going on here, yeah, and yeah, yeah, it was a little frustrating.
Charles:I'm going to try a new hostel next time I go up there. There's one down in Chelsea that actually rents private rooms, where you have your own room with a bed in it, a little twin size bed, but it's a shared restroom somewhere on the floor. How much more expensive is that one? Any idea? Not too much more, I think I paid 65 or 70 a night at the one I usually stay at, and for this one, a private room, is like 90 to 100 a night sold.
Charles:I just don't know the conditions I've never like. The one that I stay at is run by hostels international and they keep it extremely clean, but the the smallest room they have is an eight person room, which, again, the more people in your room, the greater chance there's going to be somebody who doesn't know how to socialize with other humans, either by their undiagnosed sleep apnea, or they come in after the club at three o'clock and flip on the overhead light. So I've those are the things I've dealt with and, yeah, so the smaller the room is, the less chance that guy is going to be in the room with you. Sure, and yeah, my favorite hostels are the ones I stay at where it's mixed gender. Yeah, because, generally speaking, women care about stuff like that, where guys don't, and they have four bedrooms.
Charles:Okay, and the other thing is that the place I usually stay, their bunks are made out of metal, whether you're on the lower or weren't in prison dude, it's nice, but if you're on the top bunk or the bottom bunk, when somebody has to climb up, you hear a lot of creaking and stuff. Yeah, where my favorite hostels that I've stayed at in like denver and in chattanooga, tennessee uh, their bunks are made out of like big heavy two by sixes that are bolted together. Yes, and so you feel nothing. You hear nothing when the person climbs the ladder to get in the upper bunk. Those are great, but when they're made out of metal, like metal tubing, it's yes, Now, when you're booking a hostel, can you choose your bed bottom?
Dan:Do you get a preference? Or like how do you know Some you can?
Charles:Some you can ask for the specific bed, some you just get to pick the room that you're in, which was based on whether it's men only, women only or mixed gender, and then how many beds are in the room, so you can pick the kind of room that you want. Other hostels you can say I want that exact bed and it's all the even numbered beds, are lower bunks and all the odd numbered beds or upper bunks or vice versa, whatever. And so I like that when you can say this is exactly like the one I stay at in DC, which is a capsule hotel. Yeah, there's multiple beds in a room, but every bed you basically close the little shade on and you're in this little area by yourself, but it's big enough where you can get partially dressed or undressed in there. And that one you could say specifically I want this pod in this room number Got it.
Charles:And then, yeah, where the one that I stay at I stayed at this time and when I usually stay there, in the notes section I'll say, hey, I would prefer a lower bunk if it's available, but it's not required. Usually they're able to accommodate that. Sometimes they can't, because if somebody has got a legit mobility issue, I would rather they get the lower bunk. Yeah sure, it's more comfortable to be in the lower bunk than the upper bunk. Yeah, yeah, that's where my but in Omaha this week I'm staying in an actual hotel downtown. Ooh shit, I was able to get a good deal on Priceline.
Dan:Okay.
Charles:And so, yeah, I'm staying at like an old, classic Omaha hotel called the Monarch or something like that Okay, I forget exactly what it's called the masterpiece, the majestic Something starts with an M and I'm staying in downtown Omaha. And, again, my main thing is checking out the zoo. I will spend one or two days at the zoo, depending on how big it is. Yeah, that sounds great, dude. Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. And then I've got a lot of other trips planned this year that we've talked about. How are you feeling about the Tony Robbins thing? You think you're going to go up for that or not?
Dan:I'm more likely going to than not.
Charles:Excellent, I like that, and I saw Renata this week in New York and I keep trying to sell her that her and her husband need to go to the Tony Robbins event too.
Dan:Yeah, and I was just thinking about it, even when I don't see something exactly. When I'm reading the itinerary of anything, I always pull something out of it surprisingly, like that surprises me. I should say so, even though some of the concepts he's talked about I'm like yeah, I really don't need that or want that or whatever, but I'm always going to pick up something, even if it's not from him. Just networking with those type of people who might be attending, I'm going to overhear something that could absolutely transform me or motivate me to do what I want to do.
Charles:Yeah, just.
Dan:I haven't heard the you know.
Charles:Being in the room doing the exercises, being with other people that think it's worth $600 to take days and it's not a lot of money for four days yeah.
Charles:Or three and a half, I think it's. Yeah, I think it's three or four. Yeah, it's in Newark, which staying in Newark is cheaper for me than staying in the city. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, and so I think, yeah, I'm going to reach out to them and see if I can find out. I don't think they've announced the exact venue. I imagine it's probably a hotel. No, I'm thinking it's probably like an arena. Oh, you're right.
Dan:It's probably.
Charles:Newark is a fairly new arena there, yeah it's pretty nice, yeah, so then, finding a hotel close walking distance to the arena or close to, I don't know? Does New Jersey have a subway system in Newark?
Dan:Yes.
Charles:Okay, yeah, even if I could just get something that would be easier to travel to, I don't know, but I'm still. I'm pretty hyped about that. I'm hyped about I'm sure we talked about I didn't get Mount Whitney this year either, so I'm going to try to do Machu Picchu instead. And then I've got Europe in August, machu Picchu in September, tony Robbins in November. It's a busy year. Yeah, we'll hear more about that in some future episodes, I'm sure. Yeah, no doubt.
Charles:Okay, so let's talk about we're continuing with Self-Care for Men by Garrett Muntz. We're going to combine two chapters, or we're going to try to combine two chapters into one this week, because they're both about hair here, that hair you wish you had and hair you wish you didn't. We'll start with the idea that you're losing your hair and we we covered this a bit in episode 72 when we were reviewing atomic attraction and covering some of the anxiety that the men will experience when they're losing their hair and some of their options for what to do about that. And, as we said in that episode, for the most part, your social standing, whether that's in your romantic relationships or your career or whatever, is not good impacted by whether or not you're bald or going bald.
Dan:It's impacted with how you react to your baldness I think how you react to everything yes, do you own it exactly, or is it bothering you? And I think you're going to be teaching people how to treat you right on your own reaction to yourself with it. So, if you got a couple extra pounds, you're walking around with your shoulders down and you're slouched over and hunched over or whatever, versus saying, hey look, yeah, I'm not perfect, I know I'll have to lose a couple pounds, but you stand with your shoulders up straight. You're proud of yourself. Yes, that's how people are going to treat you right.
Charles:Yeah, and the only reason that I would say that carrying a few extra pounds, which we both do on occasion.
Dan:Most of us do these days are Americans, right, yeah.
Charles:It may have a little more of a negative impact on you because it's thought of whether it's true or not. It's thought of to be connected to behavior in a way that going bald is not. If you're carrying a few extra pounds, somebody could look at you and say, okay, yes, you're carrying a few extra pounds, as many of us are, but if you were motivated enough, maybe you could do something about that again. That may not be true, but that's the perception that most people have when you're carrying some extra weight around your gut. Fair where I think we, evolutionarily and societally, we understand that you don't go bald because you are lazy. You made some poor lifestyle choices. That's completely out of your control whether or not you lose your hair, and so I think that's part of the reason that men who are bald don't have the deck stacked against them in quite the same way that men who are carrying a few extra pounds do Valid points. And we see every seems like every other year, people Magazine's sexiest man alive is a guy who's bald.
Dan:Oh, I haven't been keeping up with that.
Charles:Really the Rock and Vin Diesel and Jason Statham.
Charles:They're getting those titles pretty frequently for the rest of us to look at it and say, oh man, I'm bald, I'll never be able to get the woman I want.
Charles:It just isn't the case. Some of the most bankable box office stars are guys that don't have any hair, and so in those cases it's definitely about how you're carrying yourself, way more than just the fact that you don't have hair. But again, we talk about that in detail on episode 72. So hair loss happens because of things like age, genetics, stress, some medical conditions, and the stress is the one that you can try to manage proactively, but again, it's going to be, for the most part, out of your control. Do know that the healthier you are, if you're predisposed for baldness, you might be able to drag out the process a little bit more, based on how well you eat, how much you abstain from smoking and from alcohol and how active you are. I think he says in this chapter that excessive exercise can have a negative impact on baldness, but an appropriate amount of exercise can help you stave off hair loss.
Dan:Yeah, it's interesting, I think about feeding the hair follicles the nutrients it needs. You need to move. You get that blood pumping through there, yeah, but then I guess too much exercise can affect your hormone levels at that point and you are then straining and under perpetual stress. Right, and I know that's obviously not, yeah.
Charles:Men and women who have eating disorders, which could include exercise bulimia, where you exercise excessively. Their hair thinning and falling out is one of the many health challenges that they have to deal with.
Dan:It's not rocket science. Basically, if you're not eating, if you're eating a lot less calories and nutrients than what your body needs, your body is going to use it for the things to keep you alive. You don't need hair to stay alive, right. Your heart needs to pump, your lungs need to breathe and move, brain needs to function right. That's where all those calories and nutrients are then going, and so then all the external stuff, your nails, your hair that's gone. We don't have the juice to keep that going.
Charles:Right. So yeah, it's a system that has worked for so long. I wish it was easier, where we could just eat as much as we wanted to and look exactly the way we need to without making any efforts. But the whole effort part is that, as a thing, I had to look the way that society wants you to look and to look the way that you just feel your best as well. It takes work. It's not going to happen automatically. You can't eat the cheapest, tastiest food for your whole life and expect your body to be at its best possible condition. It just doesn't work that way for sure. Boy do I wish it did. Oh yeah, up in new york, man, I had a uh, peanut butter, banana cream, donut from donut plant. Oh, wow, yeah. And elvis, yeah. While I was eating it I was like this is not. This tastes, but it doesn't taste good enough for the impact it's having on my diet goals.
Dan:That's the thing right, you know, enjoy it. Your body can handle it, but it's not an everyday thing. Exactly, and I think that's the problem. Our biggest fallacy is our biggest problem is we enjoy it so much, it's all. I want to do it again. So much, it's all. I want to do it again. I want to do it again, again.
Charles:So we fall into our natural human tendency and before we know it, I got. Now it's a problem. I did as good as that donut sounds, I did get more pleasure out of the best bagel I've ever eaten in my life that I told you about before we started. Yeah, it was a plain egg bagel with scallion and bacon cream cheese and it was the bagel by itself was the best bagel I've ever had. The cream cheese was the best I ever had and I put them together and just walking down a sidewalk in new york on a brisk spring morning eating the best bagel you've ever had in your life, it doesn't get much better. It doesn't get much better than that.
Dan:All right, I gotta get to the brass tacks. Here is the bacon. Okay, we're talking bacon bits or we're talking real bacon. And was it chewy or was it crispy? Did they do the bacon right? They pull that off bacon with cream cheese.
Charles:I would say they were probably bacon pieces. All right, um, that probably came out of a bag, but I've had really good, like the hormel bacon pieces that I buy at Lug's when I want a bacon omelet. The idea of cooking my own bacon and then breaking it up into bits and putting the again bacon bits I don't like. They're too small, yeah, but bacon pieces that you can get in, yeah, and I'm sure there's like a commercial version of that when they're not super crunchy I don't like the super crunchy ones but they're also not super floppy Like they're. You know the bacon hasn't been cooked enough.
Charles:Yeah, I find the bagged bacon pieces are about the perfect thing and that's what this is probably. Whatever the Cisco commercial restaurant quality version, that is All right. It was just about perfect and that's something I couldn't make, because I I do keep green onions around for my omelets. I keep bacon pieces around for my omelets. Yeah, I keep cream cheese around. A bagel for breakfast is not my usual go-to, but yeah, boy, it was so good I put a fried egg on that oh, that's what I would do because you don't have the egg.
Dan:If you don't have an egg base like an everything bagel, I would do everything bagel with the, the fried egg on that, and then to do the bacon.
Charles:Oh, you cheat, that's good. I haven't had breakfast this morning. We're already. It's almost. It's almost, dude, I haven't had breakfast that I am starving, okay, so let's keep talking about bacon.
Charles:About hair, there is no magic pill as of now for curing baldness. You don't just take a pill and, oh, my hair is all growing back. It is one of our forms of testosterone. Is what leads to baldness, correct? Dht? Yep, yep. Now, that's interesting because I look, you and I have talked. We're both on testosterone replacement therapy. We've both been on it for a long time. Yeah, and we both have. I don't have quite as much. My hairline's not quite as far down my forehead as it used to be. Same thing with me my hair is thinning out at a pace that I'm very comfortable with. That I don't even notice on a daily or weekly or monthly basis. Yeah, why is it that you and I are supplementing our testosterone but we don't have all of our hair falling out, which some bodybuilders do report that they think that's one of the downsides. Number one we're not doing the volume of testosterone you just answered your question.
Charles:We're not Arnold at Pumping Iron, where he grabs a handful of Dianapol and just puts it in his mouth, right? Yeah, look man, we're on the therapy dose, we're not on the body dose. Yeah, that's the difference. And plus, our genetics probably are not predisposed for Obviously. Yeah, solidness too.
Charles:That always comes into play with almost everything, but yeah, I know, when I was contemplating getting on TRT back in the day and I was doing my research into it, a lot of the feedback from guys on Reddit who had chosen not to do TRT were like oh, you're going to get bald and you're going to get prostate cancer, and those seem to be.
Dan:Oh the urologists hanging out on that forum. Yeah, uh-huh.
Charles:The bro science reasons to not do, and so far I have not had any problems with my PSA levels or baldness Me either. So what is it about DHT that specifically makes it's not just having high testosterone in your system, right yeah.
Dan:So I guess it converts to DHT. So what happens is, if you have too much testosterone, it converts to DHT and that is what causes you to lose hair. Okay, high.
Charles:DHT levels. So I guess that could happen as a result of just your genetics or if you're taking too much exogenous testosterone, that level can go too high as well. Yeah, yep, and I would imagine everybody's physiology is different, where there are some bodies some male bodies are able to take a higher level of testosterone and convert it to DHT, but not a high enough DHT level that it actually makes your hair fall out.
Dan:Yeah, all those things are specific.
Charles:And they're uncontrollable for the best part. Okay, like we said, there is no magic pill. You can go to your dermatologist or your doctor to say, hey, I'm losing my hair and I'm not okay with it, what can I do? And hopefully they will explain to you what your options are and what the potential side effects are, because I hear a lot of stories about the side effects of medications that are made to prevent hair loss and what they do to your body, yeah so, yeah, finasteride is one of them, yeah, so, basically, it actually destroys testosterone in your body, so they give it to prostate cancer patients.
Dan:My dad actually was put on a dose of that because they saw that testosterone was affiliated with prostate cancer, and since then, like the medical communities, just run with it for whatever reason, but that's not actually the case these days. So the problem, though, is the finasteride. You get rid of testosterone in your body. You are basically, you're becoming sterile. You're going to have sexual dysfunction. The testosterone is critical for men. That is what they give women who want to become men.
Charles:That is testosterone. Not only that, they also give it to women in menopause who are suffering from a lower sex drive. Yes, it's testosterone that they give them to make them get their sex drive back.
Dan:That is, the women in women. That is the largest amount of any hormone in a woman. Is testosterone Right, it is a lot lower than a man, yes, but it is. It is still more than estrogen. Everything is still down the hormone and yeah, and so a lot more surprised to learn that great urologist I just watched this video about finasteride and what they're seeing is in his practice is that the people who go on finasteride it propitias the brand name of that right Correct, Like the most people probably.
Dan:And what they did was they said they looked at a bunch of studies and also in the practice, it didn't matter whether you took finasteride orally, injected or put it on your head. The bottom line is it did affect your testosterone levels and they're seeing a number of patients who have more than like a year or two. They're having side effects, sexual dysfunction, side effects, rectal dysfunction and things like that after stopping finasteride. So what they're looking at is possibly this could be altering your genes in some way. It could be turning on a gene or turning off whatever. That is then long-term effects, and it's enough people to where it's a concern. It's not everybody, but it is a concern. The other piece of that is and I don't know the details, but they were saying finasteride doesn't affect just testosterone. It affects a whole bunch of other hormones progesterone, other things like that in the body and so it's doing all these other things as well and there's no clear evidence that shows that you need to destroy all the testosterone to get rid of prostate cancer.
Charles:Yeah, or destroy all the testosterone to keep your hair. But I would say again, you could say, oh, this is easy for you guys to say you both have most of your hair still, which okay, legitimate. But I would say a healthy man with a healthy endocrine system and a high level of testosterone will have a better life than a man who does not have those things, regardless of what's going on the top of his head, Right.
Dan:And here's the thing is, you touched on this is owning it, right. So you know, don't do the comb war, the Homer Simpson, where you got three, three strands or whatever going. No, shave it and you can make it look good, and some women even prefer it, oh for sure yeah, and have fantasies and fetishes about bald guys and stuff.
Charles:Hey, same same as gray hairs. I say, whether, whether that's on your hair or your face, no hair. There's people out there. It's a big world with a lot of preferences, and being bald or being gray is not the deal breaker that your own mind might want to turn it into.
Dan:Yeah, and that's the challenge, right. But if you don't feel like you're attractive bald head, then you've got some work for yourself to do to get to that point, because you're going to push away anybody who might be into it. You're not going to find someone knocking at your door going I love your bald head. Let me talk you into why you should love yourself, right? That's not going to happen.
Charles:Yeah, there's no less attractive man than the man who thinks he's not attractive.
Dan:Ooh, quotable.
Charles:Okay, I again there. There are some, some potential remedies whether that's homeopathic, over-the-counter or medical that are covered in this chapter. Honestly, I'm not going to spend the time to go into detail on them, because I do say that do all the things we've already talked about as far as taking care of your hair and your scalp, and if you have benefits to those things. Where it delays your going bald, then great. It delays your going bald, then great. But again, just I would focus more on building a healthy, exciting life, and how much hair you have on the top of your head will turn out to be one of the least interesting or important things about you.
Dan:which was interesting is it looks like it's a platelet-rich plasma therapy which basically they centrifuge down your blood to get these platelets and they inject that into your head for hair growth. They've been doing that for joints and knees and things like that as well. It says it's the gold standard.
Charles:I have not heard about it until reading it here, yeah, and I don't know anybody who's talked about using that.
Dan:Oh, I've had great results. Yeah, I have not either. I had a friend who got a hair transplant, basically got the back of his head here, and this was when he was early, 20. Yeah, I felt so bad for him and he had it basically implanted on the top of his head and now I mean he's in his forties and that's going now too. You know, so far, the only he had to get it done in Canada. It was a big deal 20 years ago.
Charles:It seems to have taken for Elon Musk and Steve Carell and those are the only two people I know of that got hair transplants and I'm like, yeah, it still looks pretty good. You know they're getting older. Steve Carell has some of the best hair of any mature man in Hollywood. He looks amazing and I know he got it between like season one and season two of the office.
Dan:So I guess maybe they're doing some follow-up therapy to that. Yeah, I don't know.
Charles:But yeah, if you're Steve Carell, if you're a professional actor and you're getting jobs based on how you look, then maybe I could.
Dan:Money's not an object, yeah.
Charles:And maybe it's worth it to you. But if you're just concerned about your social standing, then I would say don't. Yeah, it's got money to buy. Risks are pretty Sure. Joe Rogan got hair transplants and they did not work out for him and I think he's still doing okay, he's doing all right. Yeah, I would say a lot of these things that could potentially help, like sleeping more, eating better, reducing your stress, exercising those are good ideas, no matter what problem you're trying to solve. And I would say look, if you're obsessed about staving off male pattern baldness, then your obsession is going to be the thing that makes you unattractive, not the fact that you don't have hair on your head.
Dan:Now did he talk about like wearing hats? Because I have heard and I don't know if that's an urban myth or whatever but like wearing a lot of hats quite often could contribute to losing hair. I've heard that too and I wasn't sure how much validity?
Charles:I don't remember. I read this chapter originally a while ago. I don't remember if he addressed that or not. I could see how wearing tight hats could be harmful for your scalp, and obviously if something's bad for your scalp, it's going to be bad for your hair. Yeah, but yeah, I don't know if that is, if there's you know, any kind of real data on that, or if it's just something we've been, we've been told there is. Certainly, if you're a frequent hat wear, especially as a man in your 30s, 40s, 50s, people will see you with the hat on and assume that you're bald. Yeah, and I just don't like the way hats feel as much as the way just having my hair out there feels. So, unless it's really cold, yeah, or unless I'm growing my hair out and You're in the awkward stage. I'm in the awkward stage where it has grown out and I just had to leave the house without time to style it. Then maybe I'll pop on my favorite ball cap, but that's very rare. For the most part, I don't like putting hats on.
Dan:Yeah, I think, if there's something to that like baseball players and that's true.
Charles:They'd all be. They'd be like a pen, an epidemic of maybe but no. But a ball player has what? Four games a week, and they last two and a half hours plus a practice where they're wearing a hat, probably they probably do wear the hats at practice, yeah they're probably one of the biggest hat wearers.
Dan:Yeah, you're probably right. Maybe there's not so much, I just remember hearing it yeah, yeah, interesting.
Charles:Yeah, I don. All right, let's transition to the other hair that we're going to talk about, which is the hair down there. Manscaping is important for a few reasons. Number one I find managing the level of growth down there feels more comfortable than letting it just go wild. It also, when you're sharing that part of yourself with someone else, looking like you put effort into it is also important, like I don't just let this go willy nilly.
Charles:I'd say the same thing is true for a beard. Yeah, like when you see a guy whose beard is just overgrown and not really under control. When I grow my beard a little longer it's getting a little longer right now, yeah, and I go to my barber and I get a beard trip and he says okay, what would you like us to do with your beard? The answer I always give is make it look like I groom my beard, like I don't really care exactly what length you make it, I just want it to look like I have taken some effort to make it look like I've done something with it, like I care how it looks. Yeah, and the same would be true about what's going on down below. Sure, I think, no matter what you what method you you lean toward or you prefer. The biggest thing is make it look like you're putting some effort into maintaining Yep. Okay, so let's talk about the the few ways that you can manage your hair down there. Now, dan, you're a bit more experimental with this than I am. You've tried out more of these methods that I have I have, and so I'm looking forward to hearing your perspective on it.
Charles:The first one we'll talk about is shaving. I am proud not proud. I am happy to share. I haven't had a blade down there since I lost my foreskin. Oh, all right. When it comes to actually having an open blade in my genital area, yeah, I've never used electric. I only use trimmers with a guard. Gotcha, I've never, I've never actually taken it down to the skin, and even when I use a trimmer with a guard, I don't go too low because I I have very wiry, coarse hair all over my body okay and so when I go too low with even the trimmers like a one guard, then it's a little too pokey.
Dan:Yeah.
Charles:For the other person's Around your pokey Area that I could be in contact with, because, yeah, it's, it could be. Yeah, that's a sensitive area, so having steel wool poking you in that area is not comfortable. Yeah, so you have a little stencil like a cappuccino. You make a little heart something down there? No, absolutely not. No, no, I just I generally go with a two or three guard all over the whole area, okay, and call it a day and, and I usually will do that. I don't know once every 10 days or so is about how frequently. Okay, I like to to do that, but yes that my preferred method is trimming. You have used a razor. I always use it. You always use a razor Every time.
Dan:I've used a trimmer, I've ended up cutting myself or getting something caught a little bit. But yeah, you know what? Though? I was trying to get it really short with the trimmer and I wasn't using a guard.
Charles:Okay, gotcha, that makes sense. Yeah, now, I've never. One of the main advertisers on podcasts that I listened to is the manscape company. They have their lawnmower or whatever they call their groomer. I've never used one of those, I've only, and I think they sell those at target now too. Okay, I've only used, like Phillips, norelco, some of the main trimmer companies and again, as long as I'm using using a guard, I've never had a problem with cutting myself. But apparently, manscape or manscape or whatever they the name of it is, they claim to be very good, even going very close, without causing like. They. They say that whatever the method they use is, you will not cut yourself yeah, I like wood floor, like a basketball court, like smooth.
Dan:You know what I'm saying so.
Charles:So, yeah, so I go down to the skin. How often do you have to do that?
Dan:I don't grow hair down there that fast. So every four or five days I start to get a little stubble down there, and it's not super coarse and maybe that's because I used to get waxed down there as well and that does thin out hair and make it a little bit softer as well.
Charles:Yeah, Some of those follicles that have been ripped out. They're like okay, I'm retiring, I'm not coming back.
Dan:Yeah, and what does come back is typically a little thinner, so it's not super coarse. But I don't recommend waxing, even though I did it for a couple of months. It is a little painful, it will cause a little bit of bleeding and stuff like that from time to time, and not all the waxers that I had put all the proper preparation on, like in terms of the powder and the technique, was a little bit off a little bit. Yeah, it's uh, sure yeah let's go, let's go.
Charles:do you just, do you just use like your body wash to like lather up that area?
Dan:Okay, so you don't use like a shaving cream. I don't use shaving cream either on my face we talked about that but in the shower I just use soap. I have a moisturizing soap and I just soap that up and usually, yeah, no problems.
Charles:Now are you using the same blade on your face as you are on your? Gym, I have a dedicated razor Different, handle different blade different.
Dan:Yeah, but it's basically the same blade, same kind of blade, but it's a separate shaver that I just keep, a razor I keep in the shower, and are they different handles? Which is which I don't shave in the shower, I shave at my sink and then, yeah, the pubes are in the shower.
Charles:Okay, you shave your body in the shower, but you shave your face at the sink. Okay, gotcha, I shave almost exclusively in the shower. My trimmer I use before I go in the shower when I'm dealing with either my chest or my genitals, but my face and again, since I'm growing the beard, I only really have to shave my neck and my cheeks, and I do that in the shower. I've got a shaving mirror mounted in my shower that is supposed to be fog free. Those never work, though. You still always have to. I take it off of the hook and I put some hot water on the back of the front and then it stays fog free for two minutes and then I have to do it again.
Charles:Yeah, I've tried those fog free mirrors of them where it actually reroutes the water. No, yeah, there's like ones that like it connects to the piping or the hose of your shower head and it runs hot water right behind the surface of the mirror, and I've heard those are pretty good. I can see that, but that's a lot more work to install. Abuse. Yeah, exactly, yeah, but okay. So, yeah, you're using like a. What is Gillette is Exactly.
Dan:Okay, so you're using that Mach 95. Yeah, okay, 95 blades on it, whatever yeah.
Charles:Okay.
Dan:But I get to get to the lubricating strips on top and the bottom. I know I know them well, but it does such a good job on my face and I feel actually the skin on my face is being exposed to the elements on a regular basis.
Charles:Where your skin down there? Yeah, not so much but but it's.
Dan:It leaves this smooth and down there also smooth. I do use a from european wax. I got a exfoliating scrub that also helps slow down hair growth as well. Oh, so that's yeah. Who knows what kind of chemicals I'm putting on there. You know what I'm saying and I don't know if it really works, but the exfoliation does help with razor bumps and stuff. Is it? Is it chemical?
Charles:exfoliate, or are there little beads? There's little beads in there. Okay, gotcha, yeah, all right, are you? Do you have to try to pull everything as tight as you can to get a good shave? Okay, yeah, oh yeah, I know with my face if I'm taking the time to. Oh, you got to get rid of those wrinkles. Huh, pulling I get a better shave than if I'm doing this. Yeah, definitely, yep, wow, hats off to you. I lack the courage to do what you do Now.
Charles:Waxing wise, I will say I, the only areas I wax and I don't have to do it very much was the space between my eyebrows. I waxed that for years and it definitely comes in way finer than for the most part. I'll only get like one hair that I can see in the mirror and I'll just pull it out. But when I was like in high school and college, this area was almost as thick as the rest of my eyebrows. Oh, my God. I think for years and years of using little wax strips, I think I have pretty much trained my hair. Just don't bother growing. That's great, yeah, that is great. But and then I went to a professional waxing center once to do my back and shoulders and I got so many ingrown hairs after that I cannot imagine ever letting somebody down in that area. Yeah, it was my back and shoulder. Imagine ever letting somebody down in that area.
Dan:Yeah, it was I mean my back and shoulder, it was so irritated. You got to exfoliate the dead skin cells, so that that really helps with that. And so I'm sure I'm disciplined with that, because when I wasn't and I got it, I did get a lot of ingrown hairs down there, a lot waxing, even though even with the exfoliation so I I had. I'm wondering if it's just a certain generation of guys that are a little bit more concerned about this. So I was dating a girl years ago.
Dan:Her dad pulled me aside for some strange conversation and he, he and one of his buddies and he pulls me aside and he told me this story about one of his friends went in for surgery and before he went in they he, he told the, the surgeon told me he needed a shave down there and he's again his tonsils out and, yeah, like that nurse, that nurse may have been, may have had some issues so he needed to shoot in there for some procedure and he's it was so weird because he didn't just shave his penis, he shaved the whole thing and his balls.
Dan:And he was like laughing and laughing and I was like why did you? And this was. It wasn't like this conversation came out of the blue, it wasn't like yeah.
Dan:And I was just like what's going on and I was thinking it's possible that my girlfriend at the time may have said something to him that I shave everything down there. And he was looking for my reaction to his story and I was just like I just gave him a funny look and I walked away because he thought was hilarious and he shaved everything at the time I'm shaving everything so so I bet you he didn't believe my girlfriend that I shaved everything. And so he was like and maybe or maybe it was her mom complaining about how hairy the guy was italian, maybe how hairy he was down there suggested oh, maybe you could trim that up. No, guy trims up his hair. Oh, guess what? Dan trims his hair. No, he doesn't. I'll find out. I'll find out. I'm playing this whole story in my mind of what actually went down behind this.
Charles:That's very much what a guy would do to be like, not, not, not be willing to just say, hey, I hear you trim down there, I don't what's that?
Dan:that's my daughter was telling me about your penis area. Right, that's for a dad. That's a tough conversation to have with a boyfriend, I think.
Charles:Probably is yeah, so he did it his way.
Dan:That's funny. I hope he got the answer though.
Charles:Okay, now how about laser hair removal? Have you messed with that at all?
Dan:I armpits. I did like a couple of weeks years ago and I went in. I didn't even do the full six or eight treatments, I just did a four. It was not pleasant, but I hear it's not so bad now these days with the new lasers. But everything grows in a lot thinner under there, for sure from. I don't have no hair, but it doesn't grow longer, doesn't? It's not thick, it's manageable, yeah, so, uh, I'd recommend it and I've heard also, if you're going to do any type of hair removal down there, consider doing laser as well. Have you? I have, and compared to the waxing pain that you have that.
Charles:But for you you don't find the shaving is enough of a burden to now to go do the laser, to even try the laser thing. No, okay, yeah, I can see that. Yeah, and for me trimming it is not. It's just so easy to just do it a couple minutes. I don't feel any motivation to switch it up and try anything else. But again, all different guys can have different interests. I would say the only thing that you may, that your partner may find unappealing, is just an unmanned like an area where you just don't do anything it looks dirty or could trap.
Charles:Some smells things like that and that's what probably what it's for right. Evolutionarily, it's probably there to trap smells. So when you think about it, like why else would it be there though?
Dan:yeah, maybe it could be protection when you're rubbing against with sex, right? Maybe I don't know.
Charles:Some sort of Anti-chafing? Yeah, maybe I feel like odor retention is probably more likely though.
Dan:Yeah, for smells and pheromones and stuff like that it could be more than one thing right, Multi right, the little pocket knife of body.
Charles:Yeah, I don't know, but yeah, I would say just letting it go completely unmanaged is probably the least recommended thing, I would say, of all these methods. I mean, I think the lowest barrier entry is probably and the least likely to go wrong is a trimmer with a guard on it.
Dan:This makes me think of when did oral sex get invented, because that would be more of an issue if your face is close to the smell part. Right, that's true, yeah, primitive times.
Charles:When did oral sex get invented, like probably the first time a person Like I have an ear right here, like that needs to go in my mouth- Really I don't.
Dan:That's not. That's like looking at a cow and going, oh, let me drink that from under their, from their teat, kind of thing. Like I feel like that doesn't just happen. It's not the first thing that comes to mind. I don't know, man, I don't know. Maybe not Like where did oral sex come from? I'm curious. What's the history of that? Was there a revolution and like?
Charles:all of a sudden became it was like the thing to do it was invented by a man named Stu Oral and they named it after him. I don't know, but I German chocolate cake, right, right, yeah, I, yeah, I would say that happened pretty early on. Yeah, I don't know, I think oral sex and anal sex were probably pretty Anal, pretty early innovation.
Dan:I could see anal, because the hole is right there where the other one is. Wait a second.
Charles:So chimps have oral sex. Don't they?
Dan:I don't know. I'll bet they do. You're the one going to Molly's place with monkey business. I don't know. You don't masturbate, absolutely that one we all know about. I'll do that, yeah, yeah.
Charles:But do they? They do, yes, okay, I remember hearing that dolphins do. That could have been a punchline to a joke, though let's check real quick. We'll do a quick Google search here. Animals oral sex. I imagine AI will make something up for us Exactly. They call it non-reproductive sexual behavior in animals. Lions again, this is is those teeths? This is not. It's non-productive. We don't know for sure that it's actual, oh, actual oral sex. Yeah, gotcha, I'm trying to see if it's specific to sharks barracuda piranhas yeah, the the sharp tooth ones would probably have to be pretty careful.
Charles:Yeah, they're more into the masturbating, I think. Okay, here we go. National Geographic has documented something. But oboes, which are chimps that are the closest to us, they do engage in oral sex. Okay. All right, yeah, the fact that monkeys are doing it, yeah, apes, yeah, I would imagine that we've been doing it pretty long, I'm sure yeah, I was wondering like, yeah, was that? Yeah, probably before any type of written record, I'm sure yeah, I'm sure before we were writing things down or drawing pictures, we were probably kissing yeah, body parts.
Dan:Wonder if there's any caveman drawings of of that happening yeah, first, pornography, who knows?
Charles:maybe, yeah, yeah, but that's a good question. Yeah, and that I would say that a well-groomed area, hair wise is, is probably preferable for that kind of activity even more than any of the other activities. Yeah, I've been known to send food back at a restaurant if there's a hair in it, not knowing whether it's from the top or the bottom. I'm just saying things, things you want to put in your mouth. Generally, hair is not one of the top requirements. Oh boy, I wish that more air. Agree, okay, good time. Definitely, this will be explicit. We'll notate it accordingly. Yeah, and maybe don't listen to this one with your kids, and if you're listening to the rest of them with your kids, you can probably stop doing that too. Good advice, all right, thanks, dan. I will talk to you soon, and our next episode that we record will be about spirituality and some real fun topics.
Dan:Yeah.
Charles:I started reading some of these yesterday and I was like, oh my gosh, I didn't think anything would make me want to go back to talking about masturbation. But some of his, some of these spirituality topics, I'm just like, oh man, this is gonna be rough for me to not perpetually roll my eyes for all right. Well, good thing we're how I can make it through. Let's document that. Yeah, absolutely all right, take it easy. All right, bye-bye, bye. Wow, you made it through the whole thing, so you must like us at least a little bit, in which case you should definitely follow or subscribe to our show in your chosen podcast app. Thanks, we'll talk to you next time.
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