3 Things You Should Do To Stop Erectile Dysfunction with Dr. Siri Chand Khalsa MD MS

Hello there. I am so excited on today's episode I am talking with Dr. Siri Chan and we're going to talk about how sleep plant based eating and Ayurveda is going to help you in your bedroom performance. So stay tuned to the whole episode because she's going to give you tips that you can make a healthy meal in literally 10 minutes. This podcast is for you. The Modern Man I'm Dr. Anne Truong, your host. I'm an intimate health medical doctor doctor and best selling author of the book Erectile Dysfunction Fix. I'll do a deep dive into sexual health and performance and how it affects men of all ages and backgrounds. So let's get started and be sure to visit my website@sexualhealthformenpodcast.com for more information and resources from the show. See you on the inside. Hi, how are you today? I'm so glad you're here to join us today. Dr. Siri Chan, how are you?

I'm doing great and so grateful to be invited. Thank you for creating the time for us to have this conversation.

Well, I've been looking forward to talking with you mainly because you know in the same the group that we're in. But I wanted to bring Dr. Sean in because she has such innovative ideas on how to live a healthy lifestyle and she makes it so simple. So I'm going to introduce her. She has had a long time interest in mindful living as a basis for long term vitality of the mind and the body and the spirit. She's actually a male trained clinic doctor and board certified in internal medicine, integrative medicine, lifestyle medicine and hospice and palliative medicine. That's four different board certification guides. That takes a long time to do. I only did two and I thought that was the end of that so but that's not it. She also studied on health and healing and she's also a yoga instructor in the Reiki Master and has intensive training in the Ayurvedic Institute in Albuquerque and India. She worked as integrative medicine doctor and she also an instructor at the University of Arizona Integrative Medicine Fellowship for physician and she is also a medical consultant for other physician as well. Her passion is educating simple things such as a daily choice and what you make and how that affects your health and your vitality. And her her mission is to teach physician new ways of healing through using techniques in Ayurveda, yoga, mindfulness and plant based nutrition. I want her to coach me on how to do that so we'll, we'll touch base offline on how to do that. So I'm so grateful for you to be here. And I kind of want to start out first and kind of, you know, touch upon what is Ayurveda? What, what is that?

I love this question. And it's a great, it's a great place to start. So Ayurveda is an ancient tradition of medicine. It started in the subcontinent of India as an oral tradition passed down through observation. And as I say, the human body hasn't changed that much in the last several thousand years. But our perspectives around it in the modern era have taken us a little bit away from an appreciation of how much managing our physiology with the choices we make every day impacts our health long term. And the Ayurvedic physicians were studying that day in and day out. And they looked to nature and to an external world to inform them about the internal world. For example, the heat and fire of the summer is similar to the heat and fire of digestion and enzymes that break things apart. And the air in the sky is like the air that moves through our lungs, the tree, the breath of the lungs, the internal, the shape of the tissue in the lungs. And Ayurveda translates literally as the science of life. So it was a process that looked at all aspects of life. Sometimes people associate it with a religion, either Hindu or Buddhist, but it's really not that. It's grounded in practical daily solutions. And one doesn't have to be connected to a spiritual tradition to be able to benefit from the knowledge. And in fact, many of the practices that we do now in this modern time, yoga, mindfulness, plant based eating, internal rhythm modulation, you know, keeping our control over that, come from those teachings. And they've been adapted and transformed in the modern era to language that feels more familiar, that's not written in the original tongue that it was. You say, one would say offered in which was Sanskrit.

So why, why was somebody being modernized in that? What did they get out of learning and practicing Ayurveda?

The beautiful thing about it is that you, I always say the human body didn't come with any sort of instruction manual, right? You might be waking up, you're 45, 50 years old, you've got some creaky hips, your digestion's not so good, you might not sleep so well, you might find yourself prone to depression, anxiety. Your performance in the bedroom may not be what it was when you were 30, and yet nobody's really ever handed you a sense of your own uniqueness. You get some guidelines that are on websites or from doctors. But Ayurveda gives you, through a clinical relationship with Ayurvedic physician, the ability to explore your unique constitution and how to improve that. Doing simple things in your daily life that includes mindfulness, yoga, how you eat, your relationship to the, to nature. So really simple, easy steps that one, anyone could incorporate that. These days, the neuroscience and the research is really starting to show us, oh well, what they understood through just observation is starting to have some scientific basis as well.

So what, what, what would a person expect to see when they start integrating Ayurveda into their life? What physical improvement that they, they actually see?

Well, what I love about this question is some of your listeners and probably yourself have come to understand what a powerful role the microbiome and digestive health play. And I'm going to date myself here for a second. But when I first came out of training in the early 2000s and in medical school, there really was not a strong link between digestive health and systemic health. But these days we've come to understand that the microbiome and the, all the information that comes from this collection of genes and bacteria that live in our gastrointestinal system, in our gut, are actually creating messages to our external body, to our brain, to our hormonal system, to our, you know, body, all the body parts. And it can actually take us towards inflammation or away from inflammation. And so the first step, almost everyone does in an Ayurvedic consultation is improve their digestive health. And we do that through very simple teas, through modifying the diet, through reducing. Sometimes it might even look a little bit like fasting plans that people do. It just depends. It's very different for everybody. And incorporating fermented food to introduce the healthy bacteria to. So the first step is almost always improving digestive health. And very often people will notice pretty significant improvements in things they didn't expect with that. Say, for example, they might sleep a little bit better, they might have more energy, they might feel more resilient.

So resilient. Feel resilient. Feel more energy with digestive health. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, exactly. So all of those pieces can really add up to really contribute to people starting to feel like, wow, I can't imagine how I didn't know these things. And that's what I would hear more often than not. And interestingly, for example, a lot of people are probably overeating and undernourishing, right? Here's this paradox. You, your, your belly is very full, but you haven't even fully met your nutrient requirements for the day because the meal is of a more processed nature. And so by fine tuning those choices to more nutrient dense food and smaller portions, the digestive tract begins to sort of, I say, come back online. Like a computer that was turned off, wasn't able to do its job as well. You reboot it, it comes back online and it gives information to the rest of the system in a different way.

Right. So essentially gut health is essential for all your other system to be working properly. So that's why sometimes it's okay to be a little dirty. Right. You don't have to be totally clean because you're, you need those bacteria in your gut to help you, you know, filter out the bad stuff and to help you let in the good stuff. And it's, it's a symbiotic relationship. Right? You need them and they need you.

Absolutely.

They need you. So when every time you take an antibiotic that's not good for your, your gut, right. You want to fill it up again.

Exactly.

So if you Ayurveda, you improve your digestive health, which then improves your sleep, your energy, you become more resilient and you're feeding your body the nutrients that it needs and yet be full at the same time versus if you don't, if you don't take care of your digestive, how you'll be feeling full but yet be nutrient deficit. And how soon would someone notice these improvement?

I've seen people improve within a week, to be perfectly honest with you. But typically in the Ayurvedic model. And as an aside, many of these principles are also in the lifestyle medicine. So if one was saying, well, I'm not sure if Ayurveda links for me lifestyle medicine does these very similar principles. Ayurveda has some slightly different perspectives around it that are more bio unique, like unique to each person. And lifestyle medicine is a bit more generalized, but the principles overlap tremendously. So I just wanted to, you know, just in case someone was wondering, like maybe this isn't for me, but the lifestyle medicine literature and practitioners are very knowledgeable on the modifying the diet in this very similar way. And so it's a really impressive thing how quickly people can start to feel better. You might look at a couple of things. You might look at, I say three areas move the needle very quickly and we can dive into these.

Yes, let, let us, let us know what are the three, three areas that move the needle quickly. We want something quick that works fast.

That's right. So the first one is fine tuning your relationship to sleep and really letting the. Your relationship to light. So a lot of people think about sleep as just getting in bed. But in the Ayurvedic model and in some of the lifestyle medicine, it's our relationship to light that actually really helps us sleep more deeply and more resoundly. The second is managing stress. However, one decides to have an approach for that. Mindfulness meditation, walks in nature, hobbies, singing, dancing, movement. And the third would be the nutritional pieces. I find that those three together, you start working on those three things and of course I always preface it by saying this is educational material. And of course each person would work with a practitioner to determine their best outcomes. And I never recommend stopping medicines or anything like that. It's really just promoting health so that the body can be at its best. And I think that becomes, you know, just such a powerful tool for transformation.

Agree. And I, and I want to actually dive deep into that because that's the area that we want to, that's the area that I promote too for men, you know, that want to reverse their. And it optimize their sexual health. Talk about sleep. And I love the way you said the relationship to light. You didn't say sleep, you said to light. What does that mean? Can you elaborate on that?

Absolutely. Well, one of the things, there's two pieces to this. One is our, the sun and ostensibly the moon, the light that comes from them. And the other is the relationship to the artificial light, the blue light, the computer screens, the phone, the tv. These two things actually provide the brain through the retinal pathways, through the pathways of the cells of the eye. Really different pieces of information. It's very fascinating. The color spectrum actually impacts what hormones are made, what bio, what rhythms the brain is diving into. And chronobiology is this science that looks at, you know, the, the relationship of light to biology, light and rhythm, light and cycles, if you will, to biology. And so for example, one of my favorite things to recommend to people to do is to look at the very early morning light. Now you would ask why would early morning light be more valuable than midday light? Well, what's interesting about this is that in the early morning or early evening, both are true. The yellow and blue contrast in the sky is greatest is you've ever maybe noticed like the, the subtle differences of light between dawn, midday and dusk that actually activates a very particular neurologic pathway, the super chiasmatic nucleus for the science nerds among us, which is the master circadian rhythm generator in the body. So that early morning can Be as little as 5. But I say minimum is 10. That I hope for.

So what. What time is early morning? What. What time is that time frame?

Well, it will vary where you live and what time of year. So what we're talking about is a half hour after the sun. You know, anywhere from sunrise to about half hour, an hour after the sunrise.

Okay.

Still, going out after that is perfectly fine. I mean, that you'll still have medicine, don't get me wrong. And the beauty of getting out into that early morning light, which is what all of our ancestors did, the Ayurvedic teachers did, it allows for this rhythm generator in the brain to start saying, well, these are the hormones that will keep you optimally healthy with good focus. It helps actually that some data has actually shown that it helps with sex hormone release. So of course, that improves the performance and the presence of those master sex hormones, testosterone, estrogen, it helps with dopamine regulation, and it helps with melatonin and cortisol. So these are all those little messengers that tell the body, be awake, handle stress, time for sleep, time to build muscle, time to maintain tissue. All of that can be set by this very simple practice. The alternative to that, which is blue screens, has a very detrimental impact. And now everyone has different opinions about how detrimental. But there's certainly data that's starting to come out to suggest that, for example, in the evening, being on the screen before bed actually impacts melatonin production, which gives us that deep and restful restorative sleep cycle. So we can go deep into our sleep with this hormone present in higher levels. And it's not quite the same to just take the hormone by mouth, but sometimes, of course, that provides a benefit. So this is this polarity between managing our artificial blue light exposure and making sure that we're getting exposure to the light outside.

How much light should we need outside? Can we go?

I would say if you can. Minimum 10 minutes up to 30.

All right, so 10 to 30, minimum 10 minutes, half an hour after sunrise, wherever what season you're at. And then when should. Exactly when should we decrease the blue light, the computer light, the bad stuff in the day, what time should we stop that?

But that's also a tough one, right? Because a lot of people wind down with their phone in bed these days. And so the biggest thing that I like to tell people is that if there's any way you can transition that to reading a book or a magazine or not doing anything, a lot of the sleep experts actually say it's okay to go to Bed and be in bed before you sleep for 15 to 20 minutes. But a lot of us aren't really sure what to do with our minds in that 15 to 20 minutes. We want to be occupied. And so that's sometimes when you can do the mindfulness or a guided meditation. There's some great apps out now, Insight Timers, another resource available, Calm app. In Buddhify, there's just so many great calm. I think I said that. But there's so many different apps that people can use to perhaps that half hour, 45 minutes before they want to go to bed to do a 5 to 10 minute guided wind down meditation so that when they get in bed the mind is less active and it's easier to fall asleep. So this is a dilemma. I appreciate, you know, I, ideally people wouldn't be on their phones much, you know, 90 minutes before bedtime. But the data really suggests that it's very detrimental to have that blue light with no other light on in the room for our, just our focus, our concentration, our mood.

So what happened with the blue light? The blue light stimulates what, what type of things in your brain, to be realistic, it stimulates so it let it actually make your melatonin less. Right?

It makes melatonin less and the different pathways that help us sort of wind down and go to sleep. The other thing that it does, which I think is really interesting, is that it can create eye strain. Right. So we've got the lights on really low and that can lead to headaches and muscle tension, jaw clenching. You know, there's this kind of like focusing to read in the low light or no light with the phone. So there's, you know, it's really dimensional, but the, the main point being really that that light interferes with that rhythm that the body's trying to establish to go deeply into sleep. One way that it does it is through shifting melatonin. I imagine there are other ways that as science improves we'll understand more and more. But the data certainly suggests that people who are on their phones right up into bed or falling asleep with the phone in hand are at risk. Now for other health issues that stem from not sleeping deeply or long enough. And even if you're sleeping enough, sometimes it can be linked to changes in your mood.

How about watching tv?

More tense.

How about watching TV before you fall asleep?

Yeah.

Is that considered a blue light?

It's a similar, it is considered a blue light. So I am a realistic person. I know most people on the phone watch TV kindle before bed, but I'm, as I say, I'm just the, I'm just the mouthpiece. We know that it's the day that's telling us that, you know, repeatedly that people are not probably benefiting from winding down.

And I think, you know, the old fashioned paradox, the book out and. Yeah, and then read it, you know, and, and read it and that way your eyes get tired and your melatonin starts ticking up. Because melatonin actually starts rising around like 10:00pm, right. Start to rise and it's highest and then it goes down in the morning and then your cortisol level goes up in the morning and then it goes down, you know, gradually around after 12:00pm so you know, cortisol and melatonin are almost like opposite. And so the bottom line is first wake up in the morning the first 30 minutes after sunrise where it enjoy the sun because that's the yellow and the blue light that that is outside will stimulate, really normalize our hormone that gets released from the eyes and going into your brain, right? Yeah, that's only 30 minutes from 10 to 30 minutes. And then. Well not to say that you also get your vitamin D also.

Yeah, exactly. There's other benefits and just as a small aside, we're not saying look into.

The sun just for the record. No, you don't want to look.

Just want to be clear some go.

Take a walk, right?

Take a walk. You can even sit outside. You can walk, you know, be outside with if you had a garden or if you're in a large city environment, it's a little tougher for shift workers. But then if they can get that afternoon light depending on when their sleep cycle is. So it's always a question that comes up, what about shift workers?

Yeah, but some light is better than no light, right? At all. Especially you know, when you have now people working indoors and with the fall winter weather weather coming up, you know, I myself, you know, the only sunlight I get exposed to is to go going outside the building, outside of my house, getting to my car and driving and getting somewhere. So I don't even think that's going to be enough, even 10 minutes of exposure. So satellite is what we need and then you know, really no technology really.

But if you can, I mean I, as I said, I'm realistic. I live in the modern world. I'm not asking people that. It's more just, it's information to digest for oneself. It's like if you want an outcome of increased performance, increased focus, more, more deliverable in your life on all fronts. These are health optimization tools. It's just that simple. You may or may not experience less or more disease by sort of tuning into some of these things. My bias is that you're more apt to make well informed health choices through your day when you feel relaxed, rested, creative, intuitive than when you feel stressed out, tired and unengaged.

I love that you know the light, right?

So the light in and of itself may not be the deciding factor, but it helps create the rhythm for the day that gets you to the outcomes you want.

Absolutely. And I've always heard that, you know, first thing in the morning, get the light that you need. Now I understand why the chronobiology, like you said, the second thing I want to go into is stress. And you said, you know, these are the three movers. All right. And totally agree with that. The three fast mover. One is sleep, which we talked about already, your relationship to light. Second is stress. Stress. And you know, with using guided meditation. Can we talk a little bit about that and how somebody that never really meditate, why that that's helpful. Why decrease in stress helpful. And how can you kind of quickly learn how to meditate?

This is a great question because there, there's a continuum between mindfulness and meditation. And the first thing I want to do is dispel a very common myth. So a lot of times people will start meditating and their mind is very active. There's no Zen in it, nothing is present. But that's actually normal. It's very normal in a meditation practice to experience a lot of thoughts, a lot of feelings, a lot of emotions. And the practice itself allows for a. A more attuned relationship to our emotional thinking world. And so this is something that's really powerful to recognize that in these ancient traditions that when we don't deny our thoughts and feelings, that when we develop a relationship to them, it actually brings more relaxation into our lives. And that by staying busy, staying in a perfectionist mindset, stay, staying in the overachiever, complete type A. I'm all for achieving all your big audacious goals in life, but being able to take that pause and know how to rest, know how to de. Stress is as critical as anything for managing big visions. You know, I imagine a lot of your audience are visionaries and very successful people. And they're looking to have that full performance sexually, emotionally, physically. And one has to understand that. Though we don't fully understand the link, stress actually drives inflammation. Inflammation is what begins to crowd out the good vascular supply, the good blood supply, the delivery of Energy and life giving oxygen to that vital tissue that maintains the performance. And so this is something that's so key to understand that the type A person is with the stress unmanaged, you can be type A and manage your stress. I want to make that abundantly clear.

Well, you manage your type A, you went to med school, you did all that stuff, went to resi. We're all type A, right? And look at her now. I can feel them on the meditation through you. So yeah, and we all know the stress is not good. And it's a lot of things that unknown and how stress can cause inflammation. We know that. But how can somebody like I, I know when I started doing meditation, I have a hard time doing that myself. And using app, I use calm, I use, you know, double app. But I find myself, my thoughts racing, thinking about what I need to do the next day and thinking about, oh my God, I'm so uncomfortable sitting here, I want to move. So how, how can somebody, you know, get into that?

You know, but really, what's really interesting to me about this is that there are actually movement based meditations. Now hang out here with me for a second. So from an ayurvedic standpoint, there are different body types. There are different core elements in all of us. One person might do really well with say qigong or yoga as their meditative practice. Another person might actually need to sit and be very still to bring balance to who they, who, what's happening. So I say usually for meditation practice, sometimes having a course like the MBSR curriculum, which goes through all sorts of a body scan, movement based gives you an opportunity. There's the five senses that you can meditate with. There are many different courses. I recommend people finding a course that has a range of meditation techniques so that you find the one that your body, your spirit, your mind goes, I could do, I can do this. This feels like something.

What, what I can do. Somebody find that course.

Yeah, so mbsr, Mindful Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction. Sorry, I mean the acronym.

A little. Okay, so yeah, so is that my mbsr.com?

Oh yes.

Okay.

They can just Google MBSR and so it'll be an eight week course. There's. There's one. It sounds true. That's a prerecorded one. I tend to like when a structured instructor is there. But it's mindfulness based stress reduction and the data and publications for that are so powerful. The reduction in anxiety, chronic stress, sleep. It also seems to help with things that aren't as intuitive like blood sugar Control and musculoskeletal pain and diabetes. So you know, it's really interesting how meditation techniques can actually have beyond just what we might think of as mind or emotional based benefit.

Right. I mean there's a tight connection between the mind and the body. And I'm so glad I, I found this resource that you told me about. So mbsr.com it's an eight week course.

I don't think, I don't know that there's actually a dot com. But when you search mbsr there'll be a number of different. So what happens is the University of Massachusetts, Jon Kabat Zinn founded the research and the program and so they are sort of the foundation. But many people have trained to become guides under their program and now all those programs. And so if you could find one local to you where you could meet with the instructor. That's my favorite to be from a good.

Oh yes, that I definitely like the one to one touch there because you're right, not everybody can sit still like myself. You know, I love yoga, I love Qiyang and when I, when I'm distracted and doing something, I don't think about other things. You know, I'm too busy trying to get my balance, too busy trying to, you know, trying to do a pigeon stretch and. But I don't know that I'm actually doing meditation. You know, when I sit down I, my, my, I just tend to like, I, my mind wanders. But so this, what this course does is that it help you choose which type is for you that will work for you.

Yeah, I think too, you know, a lot of people have this idea from Hollywood or TV or greeting cards that the only way to utilize mindfulness is sitting still somewhere in a field with a zen, you know, fingers and gyan mudra. Like in this, you know, I'm perfectly at ease in my. No, mindfulness can actually just be fully being fully present and not having a hundred tabs open in your mind. Mindfulness is a practice of non judgmentally noticing your around your surroundings, having an awareness of your body and, and a connection to that as opposed to what a lot of us do, especially in the stress state which is just override all of that to accomplish whatever's in front of us. And it could be something as simple as getting a parking lot space. Right. Suddenly we may have to use the bathroom, the kid might be crying, but suddenly there's this unilateral focus to get a parking lot space. It's a very small example, but we become so focused on A goal in front of us that we've lost connection with our body. And in that loss of connection, it actually has not been shown to be so beneficial to our overall health.

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And this is the. The beauty of it. It's a remembrance. Meditation, in some ways, is a continual remembrance of our essential nature, which is a sort of an esoteric principle. But what it really boils down to is being aware of our sensory input, be aware of our thoughts and feelings. I always remind people what one of the things that meditation can do. Imagine if you had a Rolodex of thoughts spinning, right? Remember those old cards where you had the Rolodex and you could spin it? Imagine the Rolodex spinning, and there's a thought after thought after thought. So many of us believe all the thoughts as the Rolodex is spinning. And it could be a wide range of things. I'm not a cook. I'm not healthy. I'll never be enough. I don't. I won't get what I want in life. My medical problems will never be solved. My business partner will always be a jerk, whatever that Rolodex. But not all of those thoughts are true, and not all those thoughts are helpful. And some of those thoughts actually drive the stress response. If you imagine two thoughts around a particular situation, you could have two very different physiologic responses to the same situation based on which thoughts you decide to sort of go with. If that makes sense. I could probably come up with an example. But you know, that. That ability to sort of say, okay, this thought said A and this thought said B. If I. If I go with B, I'm gonna. My heart's gonna race, my cortisol levels are gonna start pounding, I'm gonna get angry, I'm gonna yell at somebody. But if I choose A, I'm going to have a different point of view. I'm going to assume the best in the person or the situation. I'm going to share facts, not feelings. When I need to solve a problem and suddenly the situation is resolved in a really different way, as opposed to all of the fire that comes from a stress response. So, again, that's a simplified.

Can you give an example of what you mean by that? Like a situation?

Yeah, absolutely. So let's say, for example, let's use the family, right? So the family situation is this. Mother gives son or daughter the. Or father gives son or daughter the credit card. And they say, okay, I'd like you to pick out an Airbnb for us. And the child says, oh, great. And the parent says, here's the budget. It's $800. And the child finds this incredible house, but the budget is $990. But the child has actually been thinking about all these other variables that would make that other house really amazing. And so when the parent sees the bill on the credit card, one response is, what an irresponsible child. I've failed them. The other response is curiosity. I wonder why they picked this other house. When we had agreed on the budget, then you would say to the child, I'd like to understand better why you made this choice, as opposed to, you jerk. How stupid were you to not listen to me? Why didn't you follow my instructions and do exactly what I said? So there's these two thoughts that one can have. One thought is, I failed them as a parent. They don't understand. It's simple instructions I give them. They're only defiant. And the other thought is, could I be curious about why they made this choice and what.

And the curiosity, it doesn't bring you stress. It doesn't bring you judgment. It's like, I'm curious. I want to learn what. What go through your mind when you make this decision. And then, like. And then you learn, oh, you know, he was really looking out for us. This place had, you know, a lot of perks that would save us money and, oh, that makes sense. Instead of jumping to conclusion about that person.

Exactly. And really letting this thought. That might be a troubling dynamic in the relationship. They don't listen. I'm not a good parent. You know, we all have subtle subconscious insecurities, like, I'm failing this trial somehow, that they can't follow simple instruction with curiosity. You can also say to them, next time you make an adjustment in the budget, please let me know first, because it's important for me and the budget to be able to make a decision with you as opposed to just saying, you know, how come you did this? I'm never giving you the credit card again. Because you can feel the cortisol surge, the amygdala kicks in. Rage is there. What we want to do for that stress response is, is enter into a situation with more curiosity. But both of those thoughts can be existing in that Rolodex. So which thought do you want? Which thought do you want to physiologically track with? The one that elicits the rage response or the one that keeps you calm, centered, grounded, relaxed? You Know, because a lot of times you'll have a rage response. I'm just using this metaphorically. Then you'll have the dip afterwards, right? As all the physiology is trying to reset and you question yourself, you feel bad, energy's low, focus is low, you don't feel good about what happened. Do you have regret, shame? Oh, gosh, suddenly there's all this energy that's gone into mitigating that response. Whereas just by entertaining curiosity, you then have a different pathway through a problem that you forget. You forget that all those other things that you used to have to deal with are now no longer on the table. Now, I'm not saying that happens overnight with mindfulness or meditation, but this is the process of having the pause to react over, respond. I mean, to respond over reacting, pause.

To reacting, pause to react. So let's, let's, let's. I want to kind of use it for a situation that I encounter a lot with my patient is. And I love that we're probably to react is that, you know, they have this performance anxiety. You know, they. Yeah, you know, they're 50, you know, a man, 55, and, you know, he's not the same as he was. He was in his twenties and he, you know, meet a beautiful woman who's very, you know, very interested. And she interested in him. And he used to take Viagra. He's not on Viagra. But he has to sense, oh God, you know, Viagra is going to help me with my confidence. I need to, you know, I need that so I can perform. But what. That's not the case at all. So how can he approach the situation where he feels that he needs to have that medication for him to be his best self with her? And how can he turn it around and say, hey, I can do this, I can reverse that. So how would he. Her thought will be. Yeah.

How would he approach that? Well, one of the things that I think this is me just brainstorming here, but I think one of the things that happens as we're aging is that we mature simultaneously in both sexual performance and intimacy. And intimacy is deep and lasting connection. And there's a deep connection that happens between people. And I think having an appreciation that a partner or a process is as much looking for intimacy as performance. And that that intimacy will bring more relaxation. Relaxation brings more capacity for erection, maintenance of erection. So I would probably talk to them a bit about exploring what intimacy really means. And that intimacy as we age has this other, deeper, more powerful. Well, that's actually a little bit More fulfilling in some ways than pure performance and the. The act of intercourse. That there's this quality of closeness, of connection, of safety, of, you know, this rhythmic nature. And that cultivating that in the partnerships could be a really deeply fulfilling and unknowingly fulfilling aspect of their lives. And when that happens, there's this thought that could emerge. So one thought that is, there is I. She won't like me if I can't perform enough. Right. Another thought is, well, if I'm. If I'm feeling a little anxious or my performance isn't where I want it, let me try getting to know her in a different way so that I become more relaxed and she's more relaxed. Let's explore each other's interests. And of course, that's not true for everyone. Some people are at a space where pleasure is the primary foundation, and then perhaps Viagra is part of their solution. But I find that that richer experience where you're really developing connection because that deeper connection allows for more, I believe, a more profound sexual exploration with a partner, whether same sex or opposite sex. And so the ability to relax, the real. The ability to have trust in oneself that what's being offered is enough. I think that men have a lot of unpacking to do around their enoughness. And sometimes really just exploring that it's not something all men want to embrace. But through the unpacking of this feeling of am I enough? A lot of really rich emotional vulnerability could be present, which in my book actually builds connection. And the capacity for trust and trust in sexual relationships creates really the deepest intimacy and connection and positive experience. At least that's been my right.

I know everyone's different, but that's so well said, is that men need to unpack what is enough. And that's different for every man. And they also need to know that intimacy is not what you see in porn. That's not intimacy. That's not even performance. That's fantasy. That's acting. That's not real life. And I love the way how you said, because you have to be relaxed and intimacy is connection, communication, relax, trust, closeness. And that. That on the level where. What I'm trying to get at is that. That emotional connection with the person. Because when that happened, you know, I. I have a system. I have six systems of. Of the six system of arousal and performance is that the brain is the largest sexual organ. It's. It's not. It's. It's not the genital. It's the brain and it's the senses. Right? What you see what you smell, what you taste, what you touch, what you hear. And what you see in that woman, the communication with that partner, it sends those positive messages to your brain. And then you have to be in a relaxed state. You know, if you're in an anxious state or you're in a depressed state, that muddles what, what the sensory input is. And that in order for you to, in order for your penis to really be able to get an erection, they have to, the muscle itself has to be in a relaxed state. You, you yourself have to be in a relaxed state. And the muscle has to be in a relaxed state in order for it to be able to physically be, you know, firm enough. So what men think about is, oh my God, I'm going to get firm. But they're worried about the process of trying to, getting, getting enough firmness when they should be relaxed and dive into what you said, the connection, the intimate and you know, get, unpack what, you know, what, what they need to do. And that will lead into better performance. So if you focus more on the intimacy part, that will be, that will lead into the performance part without having to put performance first. Right. Because you're putting performance first.

Right, exactly.

And you are, you, you're, you're, you're stressed out about your result. It's like preparing for, preparing for race. And all you want to do is just focus on, you know, this and that where you should be attuning to your body.

The metal.

Exactly. Exactly. And it's like I'm thinking, oh my God, I got to get this transcribed. Because the words you were saying, unpacking, so true. And on point of that, and I hope, I hope, guys, when you're listening to this and you're getting to the 45 minute mark that this is gold. Because putting intimacy before performance is what counts and what gets you out of that medication cycle, that cycle of, you know, anxiety and performance dependency. Because women in the end doesn't really care. They care that you care about them. And sometimes it doesn't have to be, it doesn't have to be a penetrative sexual experience to ask as gratification. So I want to touch on the next important point is nutrition. Oh my goodness. And, and I know this is your, your area and so it's the last two, but nutrition. And that is part of the three movers. What you know, number one is sleep.

The move, the lever. Exactly.

Stress. And we talk about meditation and going on finding out by MBSR and then nutrition. And let's talk about nutrition. And plant based nutrition.

Yeah. So the whole food plant based approach, these are diets that are rich in whole grains, fresh fruits and vegetables. You know, it's a really very nutrient dense food that's minimally processed. There's legumes, seeds and basically plants. And I think that the idea here. And again we'll circle back to something we said at the beginning, which is nutrient poor calorie rich diets malinform the body. So imagine that you were, you're as, imagine some of your audience are CEO. They're, they're in positions of where they command a presence and they've got two departments and you notice that when you give one department clear instruction, the job they get done is excellent. You're so satisfied. And the other one has a manager who's really horrible at communicating with his team and their outcomes are always dismal. And you just wish that the manager B could learn from manager A. We could think about that in the same way with this diet. When you give yourself this nutrient dense diet, the information lets the system perform its executive function so much better than the confusing messaging that happens with the standard American diet that's rich in processed food and nutrient poor. Say pizza, pasta, chicken dishes with pasta, sodas. Drinkable calories form the preponderance of the American caloric intake. Potatoes, french fries, sort of all that sort of near the top. But there's also just this large body of food that's legumes, nuts, seeds, whole grains. Plant based typically means no meat. But I encourage people to understand that you can be plant forward still enjoy your steak, your salmon, your pork, but also simultaneously look at really introducing nutrient dense plant food. Sauteed greens, baked vegetables, sauteed vegetables, pureed soups, lots of ways to approach that and think about it. But these nutrient rich diets have actually been shown to improve insulin resistance, obesity, improve markers of diabetes and inflammation. And it's safe. It's so safe. There's so much funny data right now about plant anti nutrients and how it's not safe for us to eat legumes because of lectins and phytates. And the, the data just really doesn't bear that out. These are some more sensationalized health influencers that may not really understand the whole picture.

Or you know, they're, they're pushing the Atkins or the keto and. Yeah, yeah, or they have a right, right, right. Or you know, they have some other motive. But you know what I see with, with my patient, when they're on the keto diet, their Cholesterol goes up, inflammation level goes up because they're eating all this red meat. It's like all meat focused and less, you know, and not so much fat. Right. And unsaturated fat and less vegetables. So plant based, you know. You know, my husband is a meat and potato guy. He's like, oh, I got plant based quinoa. You know, he doesn't even know what that is, doesn't know what, you know, the grain is and so forth. So how can a man who, like, cook for himself, how can he like, okay, I don't know what plant based is, but just tell me what, what are the, you know, what I can do to, to, you know, to prepare 10 minutes to eat healthy.

Yeah. So I'll give two examples. One is for the person who probably doesn't as much consider themselves a cook. Limited time and even limited budget. So one of the best things that you can do is get frozen vegetables, broccoli, cauliflower, root vegetables like squash and corn. If you have those frozen vegetables on hand, you can always have a process, which I'll talk about here in a second, that segues that into great addition to many dishes. So just going to Costco, getting a reserve of frozen root vegetables, frozen cauliflower and broccoli and corn, and just having that in the freezer and at the same time, purchasing some whole grains, rice, quinoa, fairly easy. Learn to cook. And you can batch cook grains, meaning make one big batch at the beginning of the week. Keep it in the fridge to use at different intervals. So here's what I recommend people do. If you're a little bit more into thyme, you want to bring those mindfulness techniques into the kitchen. Use your hands a little, play with the senses. You can purchase those fresh and cut them up, but the next step is what's called sheet pan cooking. And basically you set a timer on the oven so you can Multitask anywhere between 30 to 45 minutes, depending on how much spice or how much size and type of vegetable you've put onto the tray. But you put your root vegetables, your broccoli, your cauliflower and your corn, a little bit of olive oil and fresh Italian spice, if you have it, or Mexican spice, whatever spice blend you have. Low, lower on the salt side because you want to salt at the end. Put that into the oven. You can cover it or not cover it with, you know, whatever process you might have in your kitchen. Just a regular baking pan is fine though when that comes out of the oven, there's many things you can do with those vegetables. You can make it directly into a stir fry and have it with pasta. You could have it with in a grain bowl. So you've got your quinoa in the fridge. You take a serving of those vegetables, warm them up. So at the beginning of the week, you just do a big sheet pan of vegetables. Takes you. If it's frozen, it takes you two minutes to get it on the tray.

And you, you bake it at what degrees? 350 or 300.

350? Yeah, 350. You may need some adjustments timing for your own oven, but 30 to 60 minutes just depends on the size, how big the pieces are, how hot your oven bakes, what type of pan you're using. Just test it out. 30, 40, 50 minutes, stick your fork in. Once you've done it the first time, it'll be there every time after that, just make a little note for yourself, what tasted good, what worked well. And then you can use those vegetables to make a burrito. You can add some canned beans in your grain. You can make a grain bowl and add some fresh greens. So you can store those cooked veggies in the fridge for several days. So that combination sheet pan, greens and rabs, you can take some of those vegetables and throw them into soup, if you like, with a broth and add fresh grains to that. So you have this incredible opportunity. You just do that sheet pan cooking. You have a nice big mixture of cooked vegetables that you can put onto salads, into already prepared soups, on sandwiches, in wraps, in grain bowls. You can even take some of those and puree them into spreads with, say, chickpeas to make a flavored hummus. If you put red peppers onto the tray, so there's a lot of variation. It's hard to dive into it full speed ahead on, you know, a shorter time limit. But just understand that sheet pan cooking, Having frozen vegetables will always get you a meal within a, you know, 30, 45 minutes from getting home. You could start the greens at the same time. It's very nourishing. You could have a little bit of protein of choice. Legumes, you know, canned beans are fine, tofu is fine. Your, your other meat, a little bit of fish, salmon, whatever, whatever your protein source is. And I usually say if you divide the bowl into four, one quarter is the protein, half are the veggies, and a quarter is your grain or, you know, your wrap your bread of some kind.

Right.

You won't go too wrong with that power plate approach.

Oh, I love it.

It's Pretty easy, pretty straightforward.

Love it. So let. So let me recap. So you will get frozen vegetable, but root, root vegetables like cauliflower, broccoli, corn, squash, and then your grain is quinoa. And what else? Quinoa.

Yeah, quinoa. Quinoa. Brown rice, basmati rice, amaranth, barley, farron.

Oh, I love farro. Farro. So then you can throw it on a sheet pan, add a little bit of olive oil on top. You can add a little bit of Mexican spice or Italian spice on top, put it in the oven at 350 for about 30 to 60 minutes, depending on your oven. You cook it and then you take it out and you can either make it into a stir fry, add it with your kiwa, make it and put it into soup. You can make it as a hummus and add. Add chickpeas to it. And you can add legume or tofu or fish or salmon and make like a. A wrap or, you know, a wrap. Or also put it on salad as well. And believe it or not, I did try this, and it's very fulfilling. My husband, the meat and potato guy, and, well, now that he, you know, he's a lot better. I've, I've, I've changed. And I actually made a power bowl for him with that. You know, the lettuce, the quinoa and all the vegetables. He loved it. We did add a little bit of chicken on top. Loved it. Ate the whole thing. I thought. I thought he was going to puke when he saw it. Normally.

Normally.

And he would look at it. He can't even pronounce the word kiwa, that right. He said if he can't pronounce it, he's not going to eat it.

Maybe not going to eat it. Yeah, I hear you.

I know. So that. So now, do you have a cookbook? Do you have. Do you have this in, like, a book?

I know I have been asked for a cookbook for years, and it's. It's like my top of my to do list is to pull all of the things that. But you can certainly find. I post recipes that are simple and straightforward like this on Instagram, and I have a Facebook group that people can join for free where I just put all of the little tips that I do that keep me. I always like to say I'm 50, so something's working right. No makeup. I haven't had any procedures. You know, I look bit younger than my years, and that's really from using these principles in my own life. And interestingly, Too we're definitely seeing the link with COVID improvement and disease severity with diet. And so some of the. If you have a long haul Covid or a chronic kind of COVID picture, you may want to really look at these nutrient dense diets, stress reduction, sleep improvement, because there's no other intervention that's working at this point per se. It's really about understanding how to lead the body back towards health from this state of imbalance. And it's, this is the beauty of these practices from Ayurveda is that they are healthy, promoting, they're thousands of years old and they were followed over millions of lifetimes. So it's not like I'm making any of this up or these are my theories. This was observed in the human condition. Lifetimes of passing on observations and then codifying, clarifying, adjusting until a body of knowledge emerged that said this, this helps, this.

And so you know, you, you, you have to follow her on Instagram because I saw some of the pictures that she posts. They're delicious and they're, and even though they're plant based and they're nutritious, but they look delicious. Where can our, our audience find you on Instagram?

Yes. So spell out the, the word Dr. Dr. D O C T O R S I R I C H a n d. Dr. Siri Chand. Dr. Siri.

Okay. Dr. Dr. Siri Tran. And I will actually put that in the show note as well. And what is your website so slightly different?

It's just VR Siri chand.com but if you Google my name, Siri Chand Khalsa, my website will be right near the top of the search.

Right, right. And I, I will put her contact information actually on there as well. And I'm looking forward to that book. And, and, and also, you know, a video on how to make it. Fun video on how to make it and you know, get on a YouTube channel. Maybe we'll do something together on YouTube. We'll, we'll do like a zoom session.

I do have some, There are some YouTube videos that are longer than Instagram also. So there are, that's also Dr. Siri Chen handle on YouTube. Not a huge body, but there are some recipes there from some live cooking demos that I've done.

Oh, wow. Wow. And, and what she says is you can do this. Okay. And it's actually doable. And I know because sometimes I don't have the time for it as well, but can definitely eat healthy food that are tasty and they look very tasty. So having Said that we unpack a lot of good information. That is gold. And I want to recap the three biggest movers that you want to get. Better performance, better mindfulness, just feeling better, more confident, sleep better have better digestion. Is getting adequate sleep. All right. And more sunlight. Get more first sunlight in the morning. If you're not a morning person like I am, I'm not a morning person. At least go out and have 30 minutes of sunlight one way or another and meditate and decrease your stress. And, you know, think about a plant based diet or even a Mediterranean diet which focuses more on lean meat and fish and fruits and vegetables and explore mindfulness techniques and which one will work for you. MBSR and you don't have to sit still to be meditating. You can actually be doing movement and still meditating. And you said something about unpacking what, what unpacking what performances and you know, look at intimacy first before performance. And I have to kind of talk about what intimate the next episode. What is intimacy is and what is performance. That's a good topic to kind of unpack in more detail. And I appreciate your being here with me today and our audience. And do you have any closing comment before we close?

I just wanted to thank you for the invitation to be here and to share some of this insight. And I think, you know, the most important thing I would close with is that if you take a look at the thought that you're having, is that going to get you to the outcome you want and notice those connections. Meaning I don't know how to cook, I don't know how to move, I'm not a meditator. I, you know these other issues. Remember that those thoughts are going to track you to your outcome. Is that the outcome you want? And I think that's so important to remember.

Very good. It's like the word curiosity. I love that word because when you say curiosity, it makes me think, oh, I need to step back a little bit and find out what's going on. To me, that's what curiosity, instead of being judgmental, being reactive, it's that step back and take a breather and what type of person you want to show up as. Right? You want to show up at this curious, nonjudgmental, open, communicative, or you want to show up at judgmental and reactive and stressed out. And I need to kind of think about that as well because sometimes we get stressed out, we revert to our reflective personality, which is most oftentimes the stressed personality. But learned so much today with you, Dr. Chen, and I definitely going to be contacting you for myself as well. And I'm looking forward to that book. That hardbound book? No, it's spiral. Spiral bound book. All right, take care. We'll see you next time. Thanks for listening to the Sexual Health for Men podcast. If you love this episode then please take a screenshot on your phone and post it on Facebook, Instagram with wherever you post. And be sure to tag me and let me know why you like this episode and what you like to hear in the future that will help me know what's great for you. And I would love to give you the most incredible free gift design to help you improve performance quickly. Go to my website@sexualhealthformenpodcast.com to get the book the Five Common Costly Mistakes Men Make When Facing Ed. I would appreciate it if you subscribe, leave a review on Apple Podcast or wherever you listen and just know that you can have sexual vitality for life. I appreciate you. Until next time.