REIA 268 Joshua Whalen: Why all Entrepreneurs and Real Estate Investors need to optimize....

Welcome to Real Estate Investing Abundance, the show for busy, fulfilled professionals like you to learn how to develop financial independence built on solid passive real estate investments. Now here is your host, Dr. Allen Lomax.

Hello, enlightened investors. Welcome back to the show. So happy to be with you again today. As we take a look at Why all entrepreneurs and real estate investors need to optimize their health to grow their business and investments. With us today is Josh Whalen, who is a serial entrepreneur and real estate investor. He is a husband, a dad, and a thrill seeker. He has some wonderful stories and tales for us today. So, Josh, take us off. And share a memorable experience from your formative years that helped you to be who you are today.

Sure. And thanks for having me. It's great to be with your audience. You know, there's so many, but if I had to look at one primary thing that shifted my life was my entry into medical device sales with a company called Stryker. It was a massive interview process amongst massive amounts of talent. I think there were about 500 different individuals that applied for that same position. I got it. Lots of hard work. Lots of interviews, lots of back and forth. And then my second thing, because I think this is important as well, is just when I left Stryker and when I decided to see if the grass is greener on the other side as an entrepreneur in healthcare. And it certainly was for me. It's been really green pastures. But those were two moments that shifted my life completely. One was knowing that I could play with the big boys at a big medical device company, a Fortune 500 company. And then the second, certainly just as important, was Doing something on my own and relying on that one internal person for every decision. And it's been, it's been a fun journey.

Well, sounds like a very challenging experience. How did you get into medical device sales? And I mean, what took you to Stryker in the first place?

I was like probably many 20-somethings struggling with my identity and trying to figure out what the heck I was doing in life. I lived in the big city of Chicago. Which was fantastic, but also so big that you could get lost. At that moment, I was hopping around career to career. I got my first job out of college was with a window manufacturer called Pella Windows. I'm sure all the real estate people know about that. I failed that miserably, and I happened to be hanging out with a good friend of mine who played football at the University of Northern Iowa, and we're sitting there having a beer, and he knew I was just in this weird transition. He said, hey man, I found a really great home with this medical device company called Stryker. Have you heard of it? I said, yeah, I've definitely heard of it. They're massive. They're amongst the big boys like Medtronic. He said, there's a position in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. You want it? You want to go get it? I said, why not? I lived in Chicago. It was an hour and a half north. I applied. He gave me a nice referral. I found out how grueling the interview process was. They even put you through this thing called the Gallup poll. Every individual goes through the Gallup poll within Stryker. It's a pass or fail, and that obviously has you on the edge of your seat. I passed it, and then I got the job. So that was the start of it.

Wow. Interesting. I've been in Chicago one time. Never had any really particular interest to go to Chicago, but once I was there, it was a really interesting city. I was surprised at everything that Chicago has to offer. I was surprised at all of the work that Frank Lloyd Wright did there and was able to tour a number of those buildings. Quite fascinating. Not his best work, actually, but he did a lot of work there.

Yeah, you're right. I think he lived right out— I don't remember the You probably know it, but he lived right outside of Chicago, and he's got a ton, a ton of influence and a ton of projects throughout the Midwest and up and down Lake Michigan. So I've seen a handful of them, but yeah, he's got a huge influence in that market.

Well, Josh, tell us about why it is that it's so important for entrepreneurs and investors to maintain their health.

Yeah, I mean, I think it's important for every human. I think hormones are a human issue. It's not a male or female thing. I think that when you look at longevity and vitality and making big decisions, or even little decisions that can end up being part of a bigger question or problem, you have to have a level of cerebral ability. You have to have the energy and the stamina to be able to keep up with those type of decisions. And the reality is hormones are the chemical messengers in our body that allow us to make those decisions and make them well. And it's not just testosterone for men, it's testosterone for women, it's estrogen, progesterone. And then that big thing that people deal with every day called stress, that is a hormone that is called cortisol. Managing those levels on a day-to-day basis only makes you stronger and make better decisions. It changed my life. It saved my marriage. I realized how good I was before it, but I realized how much better I am now that I'm fully optimized and fully dialed in and understanding how much hormones play a role in our everyday lives.

Well, as you mentioned, you said that hormones have saved your marriage. Tell us a little bit about that. Give us some background into why that was and How that all came about?

Surely. My mid-30s, my wife and I got married. We've been married 7 years. When I was 36, 37 is when we decided to join the, the ranks of trying to be parents. Like many, we had fertility issues. We had 4 miscarriages about 3 years. What many guys, many women don't know is that when the partner is conceiving The man's hormones can adjust and change dramatically with the spouse. In most cases for men, testosterone levels can drop anywhere from 50 to 75%. Estrogen levels can increase or go up, and cortisol goes up. That's your stress marker. So what happened to me was over time, it was more chronic. It wasn't something that I noticed right away. And my partner, my wife, noticed. And she noticed the toll it was taking on our marriage. She noticed the changes in my body, the changes in me mentally, the changes in my sex drive. I went from, you know, being a rugby athlete that knew my body so well to being so out of touch with it. And like many, I went through probably a very traditional process. First person I went and saw was the white coat, my primary care doctor. And I asked him, I said, hey, I don't feel right. Something's off. Can you check my testosterone levels? Can you check these certain hormone markers? And he said, you know, we can. I doubt it's going to come back and show anything that's going to change my opinion. But we went through that process and I was told I was on the low side of a range, and I knew something was off. Nobody wants to be told they're on the low side of anything, and nobody wants to be told they're in a range. So I finally sought out a hormone specialist that, that changed my whole outlook, changed my whole life. It saved my marriage because at that time my wife said, hey, if you don't get yourself together, I'm going to divorce you. That was not once, that was not twice, that was many times. And, you know, I give this analogy and it's kind of a funny one, but it's like your sleeping partner, whoever that is. If you snore and they don't, they're the ones that truly suffer. My case, I was not giving enough to my partner that allowed us to have a harmonious and vital marriage. And I saw an opportunity at that same point. I said, God, I got bad advice. The process was cumbersome. I had to sit in this stale waiting room for 30, 45 minutes. I had to go get my labs God knows where. And then I get bad guidance and I get bad advice. And I— everybody knows their body, right? We may not be physicians, we may not be able to prescribe, but you know your body. You were a consumer at heart, you were a patient at heart. And I knew I could connect the dots differently, and I knew I could connect it better. And that's how our companies were born. That's how I got into hormones.

So you got bad advice, I guess, from your primary care physician.

Yeah.

You said that you then went to a hormone specialist. Was this hormone specialist a physician that specializes in hormone therapy, or what was that?

He was actually a physician's assistant. He had been a physician's assistant to a neurosurgeon for about 20 years, and he left the neurosurgery practice. His name is Paul Battle. He's one of the thought leaders in hormones, and he's a very, very big thought leader when it comes to a lot of things in medicine. And I always caution people to say that you can only get care from a physician because that's not true. Sometimes, sometimes your best care can be within a nurse. It can be with a nurse practitioner. It could be a PA. But that's who I saw. He had a great reputation. Asked me very basic questions. What the first question he said is, Josh, when you wake up in the morning, do you have an erection? Do you get morning wood? And this is a, this is a very good question when you start talking about health. And I had to think about it. I didn't realize that it was— things have changed in my body. And early, that's an early stage of ED that can lead to so many different things. And if you look at ED, it's just blood flow. That's all we're talking about there. And we're talking about heart health is blood flow. But that's who got me started. The beauty of the program is I told him I was going to go start this venture because I was so passionate about it. And he supported me. He said, hey, if you ever need help, guidance, you know, let me know. And that was who started me in this.

Well, Josh, help me connect the dots here. Like, like you had mentioned, ED is actually a manifestation of heart issues, and you started taking testosterone, which I'm not understanding how the testosterone is relating to heart health.

Well, back in the day, there was a lot of studies that were I would call negative in terms of testosterone and understanding it, truly understanding it. Believe it or not, most people don't even realize that testosterone is, is a biomarker that's extremely important in women, not just men. First of all, testosterone is a massive, massive hormone that deals with inflammation. And if you think about inflammation, there's so many things that start and end there. You look at autoimmune diseases, you look at cancer, We look at heart health. When you are on testosterone, you typically have better blood flow, and pushing, pushing blood through your arteries and your veins is a very, very important thing. And those studies have been debunked since, but I think a root cause is that is optimal testosterone in a man's body and a woman's body helps with inflammation.

What mechanisms is it doing? What, what is the testosterone doing that it is reducing That's probably a better question for our clinicians.

I don't want to give the wrong answer, but the biomechanics and the molecular side of it would probably be more leaned on one of those people.

Okay. So you're talking about hormones and peptide therapy. Take us into a little bit more detail and tell us what that therapy involves. Is it a pill? Is it injections? What are we doing here?

Yeah, well, hormones can be compounded, can be administered in a few different fashions. One is pellets, one is injections that can be done in intramuscular injection, a subcutaneous injection. It can also be done in creams and an oral version called troches. It's basically a tablet that dissolves under your tongue. The same can be said for, for certain peptides. Some can be done subcutaneously, This very small insulin syringe. It can be done in creams, it can be done troches, gels, etc. The administration is truly up to you and your physician, what you are most comfortable with and what gives you potentially the best results, depending on, let's say, some of your symptoms and biological markers.

So you said creams. I am surprised that, that would have any effect on testosterone levels?

It is clinically not as effective as an injection or pellet, but it is extremely effective. You know, the absorption gets into your, your skin and your bloodstream just like it would taking something, you know, through your oral aspect or injection. I, I struggled with the creams personally just because I didn't get enough of a lift, and then I switched to injections, very small insulin syringes. And it changed my whole outlook on the process.

So, I suppose there's a frequency level in terms of whether it's the pills, the tablets, or the injections or creams or whatever that is.

Sure.

So, and I suspect that it's going to vary from individual to individual depending upon their anatomy and their natural production of these hormones. But what is kind of a typical timeline for this?

Sure, I'll walk you through mine. And you're right, every, every journey is different, every patient's different. My— I, I do 2 testosterone injections a week. We split them up every— most of our patients go twice a week. The peptides I take that are for weight management and gut health and stress, I take 3 to 4 times a week, just depending on the week and if I remember. But that's, that's typical of those, of those therapies. You know, it really is going to just depend on the individual, the dose, and, and what makes the most sense. You know, sometimes creams have to be applied daily. Sometimes troches have to be taken daily. The injections you can usually space out just because of the absorption rate.

Another question I have here, and this might be a more clinical question as well, but the Longitudinal aspects of this. Can you get into that a tad bit? Is this— do we have enough longitudinal studies to know whether this is actually beneficial? Does it have any effect actually upon the aging process and age-related diseases?

Yeah. First and foremost, there is no longitudinal 10-plus-year study on hormones, or let's say testosterone, for example, What we know in the anti-aging community is that testosterone is extremely vital. Optimized testosterone. I like to give the example of a bell curve. And let's say the middle of the bell curve, the peak, is an optimal level. What we know through clinical studies is that you're on one side of the range, the low side, it can lead to a dramatic increase in certain disease states, cancer, prostate cancer, heart issues. But we also know is on the contralateral side, it can also do that, but more on the low side. You know, this is not something I talk about regular— on a regular basis, but there's now studies that are saying that there were more men that were susceptible to COVID that had low testosterone scores than higher testosterone scores. And the only thing I can think of or extrapolate from that is that COVID wanted to live in adipose tissue. Or fat. And typically, when you are not optimal with testosterone, your body shape is different and you just can't respond. And like I mentioned earlier, it's a phenomenal, phenomenal biomarker for inflammation. Your body's likely already living in some type of inflamed state. So I know that doesn't give you the perfect answer. What we do know right now is that it doesn't harm you from a long-term perspective.

Is the lack of longitudinal studies due to the fact that There are just not that many practitioners doing this. What is it with the lack of the healthcare community and their lack of interest in this?

That's a billion-dollar question. I'll give you the business side of it, and I probably won't have an answer on the clinical because I think we need it. But the business side is it's already been approved by the FDA. Why would they need to go any further to get any more approval? This therapy has been around for years. I mean, there's somewhere around 12 million men that are treated Every year with low testosterone. So it's— there's an abundant amount of people out there that do this, but I, I would think that all the money was put forth on the very front end to get the clinical indication for hypogonadism, which is low testosterone, and the work is done. I think to create a study like this would be phenomenal to know, but I don't know if it would separate you from a business side. I don't know if there would be a financial component because it's already approved. It can be compounded. So So that might be a little naysay on Western medicine. It probably is. But that's, I think, probably the reason why.

Are we talking about naturally occurring hormones in terms of whatever application is, whether it's pellets, tablets, or injections and creams? Are they using a naturally occurring product?

You got it. So there's a lot of bad understanding about testosterone, estrogen, progesterone. And you have to know the history of, of those hormones. And, and they're so important, both men and women, but they're originally extracted from animals. They were originally extracted from cows and bulls and horses because they had an abundant supply of them. And now, at least when you're getting them through a credible source— and I can't speak to anything that maybe somebody's getting on the black market— But if you're getting it from a US-based pharmacy, a US-based compounding pharmacy, they're going to be bioidentical, meaning they're going to get in your body and they're going to mimic your body's natural molecules and cellular levels. And now we figured out how to extract these hormones through plants. So yes, they are bioidentical, but there are plenty, plenty of people that are probably injecting Synthetic versions that are not good for them.

So I'm just wondering, with all the millions of people out there, why there aren't longitudinal studies. And, and I'm, I'm thinking that the pharmaceutical industry makes their money through drug therapies. And I'm assuming this is not a manufactured drug, is what I'm assuming.

What I will tell you is it's a manufactured drug. And it's a compounded drug. It's also past its patent, so it is a generic.

I see. Okay.

You know, I guess the equivalent would be like the Hims and the Romans of the world that are popping up, and you can buy erectile dysfunction medication so easy. The primary basis of that business is generics, and testosterone falls in that. When you start looking at doing longitudinal studies with something that's been on the market for so long, it takes the profit mechanism out of it. You see this all the time in medicine. We saw it during COVID and you have to prove that that is a different therapy that has a different indication to then get that patent. And it's a hard and more importantly, extremely expensive process.

Well, yeah, that would explain. There's just no profit motive in it at this point in time.

And I think to add to that, I've been in healthcare for 15 years. I've seen so many different sides of this business. Whether it's laboratories, whether it's hospitals, whether it's pharmaceutical companies, whether it's, you know, regenerative medicine, stem cells. Healthcare is a business. It is not always about the patient as much as we would like to think. And a lot of these companies that they have shareholders, and I would love to see it because I'm neck deep in it. I take it every day. I take it every week. I will never stop taking it, but I would love to know how this would impact me 40 years from now.

Yeah, I'm sure that would be very, very nice to know for all of us who might be thinking about these. Well, Josh, let's take a moment here and share with our audience what exactly you have to offer and how it is that we can get in touch with you to take advantage of that.

Sure. There's 2 websites. For the men, it's blokes.co. That's B-L-O-K-E-S.co. It's super easy. Sign up online, schedule your online consultation. Fill out some basic demographic information, sign our health history forms, sign our telehealth and HIPAA forms. Our team contacts you Monday through Friday, normal business hours. We'll get back to you if you sign up on the weekend on that following Monday. For women, it's choosejoy.coosejoi.co, and it's the exact same process. Everything is done through a licensed MD, DO, physician's assistant or nurse practitioner. And everything comes from US-based licensed PCAP-qualified pharmaceutical companies and compounding pharmacies.

And all of that information will be in our show notes. So be sure to take advantage of that, folks. And Josh, what is your last words of wisdom for our viewers and listeners?

Health is wealth and own that journey. I think we live in a really interesting time period as consumers, and I get confused with the information overload. And I think health is now in that same sphere of oversaturation. But it's important that we as patients, we as consumers, do our own due diligence when you're doing anything in health. And getting one or two opinions is a good thing. Just own that journey and And your health, and you'll have a lot, lot better years, a lot more years with vitality. And I think that that's a, that's a really good starting point for anybody.

Well, there's a lot of tremendous amounts of research going on in the medical world and lots of new information coming around. I mean, amazing things within the last 20 years, particularly in the field of neuropsychology. So you probably don't have an answer to this, but certainly hormones are connected to our neural network, intimately connected to that. So the question is, have there been any studies in conjunction with dementia, Alzheimer's disease, and those aging diseases that affect our brains so intimately?

From a clinical standpoint, yes, there are plenty of studies that are being done. Is there a therapy that matches that study? And from my knowledge, no. But what I will tell you is there's a peptide that we actually deal with that is technically indicated for type 2 diabetes and chronic obesity called semaglutide, that they are doing studies from a neuroprotection standpoint to understand if it can slow down the process or maybe even not even engage the process of Alzheimer's. What's also interesting is they're doing these same studies with Viagra and Cialis, because what they know is that when that process starts to happen, there's usually a lack of blood flow in the brain. And you can easily Google these, that these studies are taking place right now. So to answer your question, I don't think there's anything clinically that we're using to treat it that's been FDA approved. But I know these studies are in the work with these Well, it's been great having you, Josh.

Very informative conversation. Thanks so much for being on our show. Viewers and listeners, thank you for being with us, and I look forward to being with you in our next episode.

Thank you so much.

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