Testosterone Myths & Facts: Dr. Rudolph Eberwein's Deep Dive on The Dr. Joy Kong Podcast

What do you think is going on with men and testosterone in this modern world?

We have a slew, an epidemic of low testosterone. So over the past 40 years, testosterone has dropped about 30 to 40%. Sperm count decreased 52% over 40 years.

What would be your approach when somebody comes in with low T?

It's the whole entourage of nutrition, exercise, sleep, supplements, connection, all of this plus testosterone.

Hello everybody. Welcome Back to the Dr. Joy Khan podcast. You know, the purpose of the show is to enhance your health and your wellness and it's all about, you know, my mission in the world is to bring up the happiness index of the world, whether or not it's through enhancing of our physical body for our psychological and spiritual body. So I'm bringing in experts in various fields and thought leaders. So I'm really excited today that I'm bringing in Dr. Rudolph Eberwine. But he's known as Dr. Rudy, so that's a lot easier. I just want to introduce him a little bit. He has over 20 years of experience working as internal medicine physician. He's multifaceted. He's a media personality, educator, writer and a biohacker. As a dedicated physician specializing in internal medicine, functional medicine, weight loss and testosterone therapy. And, and with a passion for helping individuals achieve their optimal health and well being, he has focused his expertise in these areas to provide comprehensive and personalized care. He has incorporated evidence based research and novel therapeutics into his practice. And Dr. Rudy ensures that his patients receive the highest standard of care. His passion is sharing information and educating the community in order to inspire everyone to live their best lives. So Dr. Rudy, thank you so much for coming onto the podcast.

Dr. Kong, what a pleasure. After meeting you at Radfest, I could not wait to do this interview. I've been listening to all of your podcasts, your interview, you're amazing at what you do.

Oh, thank you. You're so kind. Yeah, it was such a pleasure meeting you. I could tell that you have so much knowledge to share and lots of passion. So I understand. You know, we started talking about testosterone because that's definitely, you know, some a subject of huge interest and, and, and both for both men and women. But let's, let's talk about men first. What do you think is going on with men and testosterone in this modern world?

Yeah, so, you know, it's funny, when I went to medical school, I'm going to age myself. Back in the 90s, we knew nothing about testosterone replacement. All the education we got was that testosterone was bad and will give you prostate cancer or if you needed testosterone as a man, we recognize what we call late onset hypogonadism, meaning that you need testosterone at the end of your years. You're 55, 60, 70 years old. Yeah, you know, hormones go down almost like postmenopausal, but not really recognized. Men may need testosterone at those ages, but we always knew do not use testosterone. And what we're finding ourselves now, 40 years later is that, my God, we have a slew, an epidemic of low testosterone. You cannot turn the TV on and watch a sports game without seeing advertisement for either testosterone or ED medications. What's going on? You know, that's always been the thing. How did we go from, you know, maybe very few older guys need testosterone to now every man is talking about being on testosterone. What happened? So this is where the disconnect was for me. So when I finished my internal medicine training, I first went into and worked as a hospitalist in the hospital doing ER work, ICU work, grueling work. I had the code beeper with me all the time, was amazing. I really liked it. And you talk a lot about this also how traditional western modern medicine is amazing at treating acute conditions. We're really good at this. I got amazing training at this. But we're not great at prevention. We're not great at trying to prevent this onslaught of chronic diseases that we're seeing. So I went from the hospital to first opening a weight loss clinic because to me, nutrition is the lowest hanging fruit of wellness. My undergrad major, me and my wife, it's in nutrition, which is kind of unusual. You know, I went to the md, I didn't go, I didn't do the typical biochemistry or this. I did nutrition. It's like I knew I was going to go into this and open my weight loss clinic for the past 18 years. So we helped a lot of people just with nutrition, behavior modification, medication when we need to. And we helped a lot of people that now prevent them from going to the hospital. But then a lot of my patients would get stuck. And yeah, they change their eating, their exercising, but they will get stuck. And that's when I discovered the world of hormones, which I never learned in med school. So I went to all the conferences, fomg, you know, trained with some of the mentors in the field. I got board certified with AMMG just to know how to do it and then started incorporating hormone into my treatment. Now I got much better results. And then as I kept going into how do we help optimize patient right, what's the goal why are we here? It's to self actualize, be the better version of ourselves. So all of those things I'm talking about, they're all tools. Because at the end of the day, what do we want as humans is to be the best version of ourselves. My Instagram name is Dr. Rudy Best Life. Because what I'm trying to do for myself and my patients, how do you live your best life? And then you need all those tools. But I did not realize how important hormones are. Women realize this more because when you go through menopause, a woman's personality will change completely. So I thought growing up personality, character was static. Women knew that more that if when you, you, you lose your hormones, your personality may change. And that's when you know, like, like it's, it's a difficult subject. Women don't want to hear that it's your hormones. But it's true. There's absolutely no question that more anxiety. You tend to have a different way of seeing things until the woman goes into the hormone replacement or does whatever is necessary. You know, whether it's stem cells, nutrition, energetic medicine, anything you can do to optimize your hormones. But hormones define who you are and how you react to the world. And men never used to have to deal with this before now. When a guy, you give a, you put a guy into a hypogonadal state, low testosterone, it's a completely different person. I heard, I hear you. That you work with, with veterans after they've had, you know, traumatic brain injury, but that's traumatic brain injury to men is that a lot of their hormones are not the same, whether it's testosterone, growth hormone, thyroid hormones. So you can take a man that was a, a beast of a man, a leader in the, in the combat field, and then he has PTSD and not ptsd, he has traumatic brain injury, hormonal imbalance, and then he becomes a shell of himself. You replace his hormones and he becomes back that self motivated, great guy. So really our personality is not static. So, you know, like when I was thinking about doing this talk with you, I listened to who you've talked to before. Great guys. You know, Jay Campbell went really deep into the intricacies of testosterone treatment. You spoke about another guy about how to increase your testosterone naturally. Those are great. I really wanted to come and really talk about first making people aware that there is an epidemic of Lotus.

So what do you think caused the epidemic?

So it is like everything in medicine, right? Multifactorial, no questions. Again, men never had to deal with this because not like women, we don't have a time when we start having periods and then the hormones jump down a cliff. For men, it's something that is more progressive. Again, that's why again, we recognize late onset hypogonadism. But now this is not happening. We're seeing guys in their 40s, 50s, 30s, 20s, teens with true low testosterone numbers and symptoms. So multifactorial. But one of the most important things that I've seen, I did a really good talk at the MMG and I pointed that. So over the past 40 years, testosterone had dropped about 30 to 40%. Sperm count decreased 52% over 40 years. You can see that the physiology, the anatomy, the look of men has changed over those years. What has changed? Is it a gene pool? Did our genes change that quickly? You know, genes evolve very slowly. It cannot be our genes that's too fast. It has to be the environment. It has to be a toxic world. And there's an amazing book by Dr. Shanna Swan, she's an epidemiologist at Harvard that we interviewed and she has an amazing book called Countdown. She's the one who did the study of the decrease, 52% decrease of sperm count in men over the past 40 years. And she was able to link it directly to endocrine disruptors. So endocrine disruptors are causing or affecting the male fetus and the male biology and physiology way more. Because most of these endocrine disruptors are estrogenics in nature. So it's almost like you bathing men in into a sea of estrogen now. So, you know, endocrine disrupting compounds have many ways that they can affect our hormones. They can block the androgen receptors, they can mimic estrogen, they can create the negative feedback loop to the pituitary and cause secondary hypogonadism. They can be cytotoxic to the testicles and cause primary hypogonadism. They can cause androgen resistance, meaning they block the androgens. So there are so many mechanisms of action of this that for sure we can't underestimate the impact of biology on what we're seeing now. Of course, there are social, cultural changes that have happened also. The world nowadays is not a physical world like we used to. Men are not out there lifting heavy things, doing heavy work. The world is changing a lot. So there's a lot of factors that play into this. But there's no questions that the biology and all toxic world is affecting this. Those numbers have gone down too quickly. So now when you See a guy with low testosterone, you know, testosterone, we always think it's sex and muscles, right? A lot of guys will tell you, oh no, I don't need testosterone. It still works great. A lot of muscles, it still works great. Testosterone is, was one of the most important psychoactive medication. It regulates the serotonin receptor. So when you have low testosterone, actually one of the first symptoms, it's low energy, but also low motivation. Testosterone, when they've done studies, whether it's in animals, in primates or in humans, it wants you. Testosterone pushes you to lead, to go and discover it was the Saturn, pushes you to increase your social status. It gives you drive, it gives you that umph that, you know, that. That youthful zest and exuberance that you want. So as you get older, it is biologically and evolutionary advantages for older men to have lower testosterone because let the young guys come in. But what if this happens to you at 30? What if that happens to you at 25 when, when you had the top years of your life and this is happening. There's another study that was done at University of Miami and we interviewed also Dr. Ramasan, he was part of the author. So he looked at adolescents and young adult men between the age of 15 and 39, and he saw that there was a 20% incidence of low testosterone. So listen to this again. 15 to 39, 20% incidence of low T. And the symptoms of lots in that category were not sexual. Mostly most of the symptoms were decreased energy, tired, and no motivation. And now let's look around and look at a lot of our young men. What's happening out there? You see decreased motivation, decreased drive. There's actually a concept in Japan called hikikomori. Hikikomori, it's when a lot of young people, men and women, but it's mostly young men who decide they're no longer going to take part of society. They don't, they cannot deal with the pressures of the corporate world. They don't want to date, so they just decide to lay flat. They stay in their room, they play video games, they watch porn, they, they do Nothing. It's about 6 million of men like this were diagnosed in, in Japan and in the US we're seeing more and more and more of this. So we're in a society now. It's almost a post feminist world that again, I have twin girls. I'm. I'm a girl, dad. I'm all for girl power, but we can't forget about your boys and our young men.

Yeah. So what would be Your approach when somebody comes in with low T. Yeah.

So, so the first thing, it's always, and I love doing this because most of the patients I, I get to, they would have gone to their primary care doctor first. Right. And the symptoms of LOTI tend to be varied, but the ones that are more common, it's feeling tired, no energy, it's having decreased motivation, decreased drive. A lot of my guys will describe feeling blah. It's not a depression, although there's a lot of depression with low testosterone. But it's just, just feeling like you don't get pleasure in things anymore. Decreased sex, decrease erection, strength, Ed. All of those things are so crushing for men. Men don't even like to go to the doctor. So a man is experienced, those things. You know, he either went on in by himself, he read the forums, or his wife forced him to go. He goes to the doctor. They do a lot. Again, I'm not saying all of those symptoms are only testosterone. You know, as physicians, we're trained to have a differential diagnosis. So when a patient comes with those symptoms, right, they're tired, they, they have no interest in many things. They don't want to have sex anymore, they are gaining weight. You know, you're going to think, is this depression? Is this thyroid? What's going on in their life? Is this insulin resistance? What's going on? So we never used to have testosterone, low testosterone as part of a differential diagnosis, unless the man wasn't in his 60s. This is where I think this needs to change. And this needs to change even with our colleagues in conventional medicine. Because most of the patients I'll get to, they told me they would have gone to their primary care doctor like, doc, I'm tired, I have no, you know, I have no, no drive. Life is just blah for me. They do a basic level. They'll tell them you have low vitamin D, your cholesterol is a little down. If you insist, they will check. Just a total testosterone, they'll come back. Your testosterone is 385, 420. You know, normally 300 to 1200, they're like, that's good enough for you. So you stress, take a vacation, and on a lot of times, once everything is normal. Here's an ssri, right? I know as a psychiatrist you've seen that a lot.

Psychiatrists definitely are not testing for testosterone. So all they're testing is thyroid stimulating hormone. Hormones.

I'm going to tell you, a lot of psychiatrists in my area are referring to me now. I did a really nice presentation. There was a JAMA Psychiatry article in 2019 that showed the bidirectional influence of testosterone with depression symptoms. Patients with depression depressive symptoms tend to have a lower testosterone and patients with low testosterone tend to have more depressive symptoms. And they showed that replacing testosterone, optimizing testosterone increases the chance of resolution of symptoms by more than 50%. So psychiatrists are starting to be a little more open to it. And I'm getting a lot more referrals with this because we're going to the root cause. You know, we're all into root cause medicine, how to go there. So that typical patient, right, they'll go to their primary, they'll get the basic test, they'll have a testosterone that's lower limit of normal or sometimes it's, it's low. Now, the newest range for testosterone at LabCorp, the lower number is 264. Upper numbers 916 in the 1990s was 350 to 1950. Then it went 300 to 1200. Now 264 to 916. I had a guy the other day who came to me, 32 years old, all the symptoms of low T with a level of 285. And they told him that was normal because he didn't go below that.264. And they offered him an SSRI. I was like, stay away from this, stay away from this. And this guy, you know, I talk about him a lot because it was a success story. 32 year old guy who's a lawyer, you know, like has done great things in his life and all of a sudden he felt like, yeah, yeah. First he had difficulty having kids, which is something we're going to talk about. Also male infertility. Then finally they were able to have kids. But then he finds himself with all those symptoms. He had a level of about 380. When he came to, then we discussed, we went over everything. He was gaining weight, he wasn't interested in having sex that much anymore, just didn't get as much pleasure. He was still doing well in his work, was able to maintain things, you know, but it was low T. So after informed consent, his levels weren't completely low. But we thought, we explained and we put him on our treatment. Testosterone being a great tool, but it's the whole entourage of nutrition, exercise, sleep, supplements, connection, all of this plus testosterone. Within six months this guy was thriving. Within three weeks he called us, let us, oh my God, I want to do things again. The first thing you get when you replace testosterone in a hypogonadoman it's that drive, that wanting to do things, that enjoyment of things that you get first the physical energy, the physical changes come after. But it's amazing to see that. So this guy now, he changed his life. He was labeled non compliant by his doctors, you know, because doctors just told him exercise more, try to eat better and take a vacation. He had no energy, testosterone was low. Now that we gave him what he needed, he was no longer non compliant. He was, he became like the self motivated beast of a man. And we really, you know, and something. You had a guest in your show. I forgot her name. She was all about sex education and how she was giving. Yes, she's amazing. She's amazing. I learned so much from her. But the one thing I'm coming from is we always think when there's any kind of sexual dissatisfaction or sexual dysfunction, a couple, it's mostly the woman who doesn't want. It's the woman now. It's happening to men a lot. If a man's having erectile issues, I like to call not even erectile dysfunction, right? That maybe the erection is not as strong as before, the desire is not there, maybe a premature ejaculation. You see, you're not pleasing her, then you become disinterested. So both sides now are in a marriage that we can't please each other like your guest said. And then, you know, 15% of marriages are secular, sexless, just tragic. There's a sexual slump happening all over the world and even more in the US there are so many 20 year old men who are not sexually active more than women. So yeah, a lot of this is it. Social, cultural changes play a role in this. But biology, low testosterone, hormonal imbalance has a really big role to play. I told you about that hikikomori phenomenon. In Japan, the University of Kyoshu finally did a study where they looked at those young men and they saw in a lot of them low testosterone was at least. Patients with diagnosis of hikikomori had a higher incidence of low testosterone compared to their peers. And it makes sense. You have low testosterone, you don't want to do much, you know. And again, you know, what are the causes? Could it be, you know, too much porn? Porn induced erectile dysfunction. Porn induced. It's the dopamine overload and you oversaturate your receptors. Hormones don't work the same. There's a whole host of things that can cause it. But there's no questions that we see. Our society is in trouble. We're looking at our younger Generation, we're seeing a lack of drive, a lack of communication, communication between the sexes. A lot, a lot of. Because women have changed, women have become now more independent. A lot of women, especially in their 30s, who are well to do, who've achieved a lot, it's hard for them to find a mate that can really handle them right, the right way. So, so that patient, as we were talking, when you get that patient coming to, went to their primary care and then now have the symptoms, I come up with my differential diagnosis. If I see that testosterone is not optimal. This is when we'll have the discussion into going into testosterone optimization. The guy still wants to maintain fertility. We have options like HCG or Clomid because testosterone does affect fertility. If the guy has gone through the fertility period. Testosterone replacement makes guys feel amazing. There's no question, you know, I'm on testosterone treatment. I started at 48 and that I'm 53 now, that's the best thing I did. It changed my life, completely changed my life. Whether it's physical, mental, sexual, everything. It made everything so much better, even spiritual. And we're going to go into psychedelic medicine and all this also how I see psychedelic medicine as the last optimization of the spiritual optimization to really bring mind, body and spirit.

Yeah, I'd love to talk about that. But before we get there, one question is, you know, should people be on testosterone replacement for the rest of their lives? So what's the ramification of getting on replacement?

Yeah, so that's a great question because it all depends on how young you start. So for my younger patients, 20s and 30s, I always thought first of the testicular stimulation protocol, HCG or Clomid, of course, first thing before we even do this, you know, my six point approach is always let's fix your nutrition first. If you overweight, if you have insulin resistance, you know, you're eating junk food, let's fix this. Number two, let's get you to move to exercise. Let's get you to lift weights, let's get you to get more lean muscle mass. Number three, let's get you to sleep better. What can we do? I've diagnosed so many people with untreated sleep apnea. That's what the, that was the cause of their lotus. You know, if you don't fix the sleep apnea, the sleep, you can't get anywhere after you've done all of those things. Now you decide, okay, let's go to testosterone replacement.

So you have seen just by doing those three things, by diet, exercise and sleep, putting on Some muscle mass that some people's testosterone levels were corrected, definitely.

And especially the younger you are, the more chances of that you are. Once you pass 40, the chance of it is pretty low, especially in our toxic world. But a lot of my younger men, you know, again, I listen to your podcast, which I guess would talk about natural ways of increasing testosterone. Of course, there are those ways. You know, you. You try to limit the toxic exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals. You eat better, you lift heavy weight, you get enough sunlight. All of those things can help. And the younger you have, you are, the more testicular reserve you are. The more chances of that you have, the older you are, the less likely. That's the unfortunate truth. So for young men, once they start, and I have guys that started with testicular stimulation and it didn't work for them. So this is when we sat down, we sit down, and we talk. Okay, is it time for testosterone replacement? And once you start testosterone replacement, you could stop anytime that you want. Testosterone. Exogenous testosterone does have a negative feedback loop to the pituitary. So when you take outside testosterone, your own body's production stops. That's why one of the side effects of testosterone is testicular atrophy. And it's real. It's real. So if you're not gonna need kids anymore, you want testosterone, you are going to have testicular atrophy unless I put you on a medication called HCG that maintains testicular size. So there's always ways to do it. But let's say for whatever reason a man decides to come off testosterone, their levels will drop for two to three weeks because of the test, the negative feedback loop that there was. And usually within, you'll feel it more by the second to the fourth week you have, you know, your level would drop to maybe the 100. Low energy, a little blah mood, depression, maybe some sexual issues. Then you'll bounce back to your norm. If you started at 300, you'll bounce, bounce back to those 300, or maybe a little lower. Was that enough for you before you started crt? That's the big question. So a lot of guys, so if they come to me, their baseline was 300, 350. I'm like, yeah, when you start, you're going to go back to this. Was that enough for you? Were you physiologically optimized when you had this? So, for example, me at 48, I started after two years. I'm like, it's kind of annoying doing the injections. I'm going to stop within four months. I was like, I don't need to be on it. But I'm so much better when I'm on it. Why should I say no? And my goal doing this is to really remove the stigma of seeing testosterone as a performance enhancement medication only as something that only guys who have erectile problems take. Because if somebody has diabetes and they need insulin, they're not looked at a different way. If a man has low T. And again, the cause of the lute, we're not sure. But could it be exposure that you had? Could it be something that you're exposed to? Could it be something epigenetic that happened? Almost no power of your fault. You don't have power over this. If you need testosterone, you need to be on testosterone. Because the worst thing that can happen to any human being, you cannot self actualize. You cannot be the best version of yourself. And without the right hormone optimization, you just cannot be.

Okay, what about the peptide Kiss Peptin that people are using to increase testosterone level? What are your thoughts on that?

Yeah, so Kiss pepsin is also a testicular stimulation like hcg. I don't love Kiss pepsin as much because the half life is very low. The studies were done mostly with intravenous. That's to be more often. HCG has been the true, the proven way of really increasing testosterone production. It's an LH and FSH stimulant, Clomid. Also clomiphene or enclomiphene works better. We only started using Kisspeptin when HCG was difficult to find and became too expensive. So to me I use Kisspeptin. But in very few cases, HCG remains the workhorse of testicular stimulation. Plus or minus in clomiphene or clomiphene.

Okay, so you do think it's possible to naturally increase testosterone, but possibly up to certain point, certain age, about 40 or so then becomes a lot harder.

Yeah. And you know, just like in medicine, everybody's different. Could you have a 40 to 45 year old guy who really like his type A personality dialed in his diet to the best way possible? Exercises, no exposure. It's very possible. I see guys still, sometimes they come to you. Okay, my body is on your treatment. Let me check my testosterone level. The guy's 55, 50 and he doesn't need testosterone. Still have a good amount of guys like this. So we're not saying that everybody needs to start you, but if it's unfortunate that you've developed LOTI and you have the symptoms of loti, the chance of your Body recuperating. It's like asking a menopausal woman, could you eat your way into getting back normal levels of hormones? Right. What are the chances of that? Unless you do now, like the new studies about stem cell therapy in the ovaries. There are studies about stem cell therapy in the testes to really get back the normal production. But once you've passed a certain level, it's hard for your body to make it back again. Stem cell therapy, which I'm going to learn more with you, I can, I'm definitely going to take all your classes because to me that is the future of medicine. Can you regenerate a lot of that loss function? For now, your optimization with therapy, it is root cause, but it's still a bendage. But if you need that band aid, if you need this crutch to help you, to me I'm 100%. As long as it's done properly. The studies are really showing how testosterone affects positively the cardiovascular system, the brain, heart, health. There are so many benefits to testosterone besides just the sex, the muscles. Those are great. Those are great.

That's the best we have right now. Then we, you know, we're going to stick with it. But yeah, I haven't seen enough studies on stem cells and testosterone. But I've definitely seen stem cell therapy in animal studies helping female animals, you know, rats and increase ovarian size, increase number of follicles, decrease fsh, LH and increase estrogen production and increased number of pregnancy. So that's pretty, pretty powerful again.

Stem cells are going to open so many possibilities to us. I think. I'm so excited about this field of medicine. But there is no question that we're seeing an increase in chronic diseases, increase in neurodegenerative diseases, in reproduction, disease in sexual maturity, sexual development. There are so many of this. Again, why are we seeing so many of those diseases? Is it our genes that change over the past 50 to 60 years? It has to be our environment. So another big thing that I'm really trying to do, I'm actually coming up in an online class, is most physicians, I didn't even know about endocrine disruptors. I didn't even know where they hide in our homes, in our skin care product. We're being bombarded by those products. And of course, unfortunately, the marketing companies and those big companies know how to really hide this and pretend something is healthy. So as consumers, the only power we have is to educate ourselves, become aware of what's happening in our world right now and how can we protect ourselves? And an educated consumer is a powerful consumer. If we all start knowing this and we start demanding better and safer products from our companies, eventually we'll have a mass of people demanding this, that those companies will have to change. I don't know if you've seen now the big word, the big noise about those PFAS, chemicals and polyfluorinated substances. PFAS, they're everywhere. It's in. Recent studies show that it's 97% in the blood of Americans, 45% of our drinking water, and there's about 10,000 of those chemicals. You can even keep, keep up with them. And 3M, one of the companies that made them, did admit that those are, they can be carcinogens, reproductive and sexual development abnormalities, thyroid issue, pituitary issues. They don't even know because there's 10,000 plus chemicals. The studies are just coming out. So 3M was going to enter a $10.3 billion lawsuit settlement because they contaminated our water. So it's even 97% of human blood. Imagine what is it doing to us? Those chemicals, endocrine disrupting chemicals, have been found to even cause epigenetic changes that we can pass on to the next generation. They've done studies, especially with ddt, one of the pesticides, and they looked at grandmothers, three generations, the women who had a higher level of ddt, the granddaughters of those women had higher risk of reproductive infertility, reproductive problems, breast cancer, all the estrogenic type diseases. You know, they've never looked at the boys, but I'm sure that if they looked at the boys, I was talking to Dr. Shannon Swan about this. I'm sure they would see infertility, testicular cancer, undescended testes ed, all of those things. So we are being inundated by those chemicals. There's not much we can do as consumers, even as physicians. The average physician knows nothing about this.

Yeah, well, this is probably why I started my own skincare product, the Char Omni, because I just, I was so sick of all the synthetic ingredients that's in all these even expensive products. So, you know, I make sure that this skin cream is going to be 100 natural because, you know, the skin is our biggest organ absorption.

The way I started knowing about this, I went to Hawaii. I tell that story every time. And then, you know, in Hawaiian, there are seven beaches that you cannot use regular sunscreen because the oxybenzone, one of the chemical sunscreens, it's not only that does it, it's harmful to the corals, but it also causes infertility in zebrafish that are very important for the, for the health of the corals. So I was like, oh, so you guys don't want me to put this to protect? What about me and my kids who are putting this lathering on this? We know now that the causes sexual and reproductive abnormalities. So think about this, right? How many people? I'm not telling people not to use sunscreen, but recognizing just like what you did with your skin care, there should be more and more and more of those less toxic products that we're using. If not, what's going to happen to our species?

Yeah, to be honest, I haven't used sunscreen for probably four or five years. And because of that reason, and I think my skin is gray. The thing is, you can, you can, you can eat plenty of antioxidants. You know, you can do things that are biohacking your health. So you're protecting yourself from the sun rays instead of slathering this substance on. I, I think that's barking up the wrong tree. That's just my, my opinion.

And if you're gonna use sunscreen, you can use structural sunscreen, more, more with zinc, different things, but anything with benzone. Oh my God, those are the worst. The studies are out there. It's not even that, you know, there's a question mark. So every time I do a pod body, go and take your favorite sunscreen. Look in the back. If there's anything benzone in there, anything bends, B, E, N, Z, it's bad, get rid of it.

Yeah. And we only have a few minutes left. I want us to talk a little bit about your thoughts on spirituality and medicine. And you actually coined a phrase that's really awesome. So please share with the audience.

Definitely. So again, through the evolution of my practice, again, going from acute medicine to nutrition, weight loss medicine, eventually hormone, again, trying to be self actualization. Best version of my, of myself and for my patients. And one thing I've realized, if you don't think about spiritual optimization as part of the healing process, you're missing 50% of what you can do for your patients. You can replace testosterone, you can get somebody to have a six pack. You can really improve every metabolic parameter with all of our techniques. But if you don't do something for their spirit, for their connection, you've missed a big part of this. In western medicine, we're not very good at this. Eastern traditions are much better at this. Healing happens a lot from your mind down, not from your Body up. So for me, I'm looking at myself as again, I coined it for myself a white coat shaman. I still wear my white coat. I don't wear it with my patients because it's intimidating. But a white coat that, that is signifying conventional traditional western medicine. We have great therapeutics that we can use, but also having an eye on Eastern medicine that will all energy we have, we can help develop the inner healer and find a way to bring those two together. Now we finally can say we have tools for physical, mental and spiritual optimization. When you optimize those three, you can be a superhuman. And this is where I love your thoughts on ketamine, because ketamine. I have a ketamine clinic in Miami. Psychic. The psychedelic renaissance that's happening to me is that's what's keeping me optimistic about the future. Because I also came up with another term a theta male redefining masculinity. Right. We know about alpha males and alpha males has a lot of great qualities. They tend to be leaders, providers, protectors. They want to win, they want to, you know, they are the top dogs usually. But usually alpha male has a negative view to it. Those guys tend to be a little violent, machismos, impatient, not being the nicest guys. Now can you have all the qualities of an alpha, but still be a deeply connected person, deeply compassionate and empathetic? It can happen. You can do this. You can be a badass with a subtle completely. And I'm going to tell you what, I see a lot of my guys that get there. Once you are at your top shape physically, right, all your hormones are working, you exercising, but you still see something is holding you. Psychedelic medicine can get you to that connection, can get you to that. Most people who do a psychedelic experience become deeply grounded. They understand that we're all one, we're all connected. So we were talking about this with your spect scan that you did. They're amazing. I love your presentation on ketamine. But at the end of the day, we're not sure what psychedelics do. We've been using, our species has been using psychedelic for thousands of years. We have receptors for it. So it gets us into that other realm, to that connection. And most of my patients who come into academy session with us, the one commonality that we hear, it's the experienced oneness, they felt all connected. And that is deeply healing. Because now if you feel like you are part of this big cosmic mystery, you are part of all this. And your physical body is great in your light body now you see it, you see the power of the light body. This is when we can really help change society.

Yeah, I agree. And you know, I definitely see the limitations of only focusing on the physical body instead of looking at the long picture, which is possibly our spirit will live on forever. So what is the point of this for some people, this pursuit of incredible longevity or immortality, could that be misplaced drive and effort in order to focus on one physicality, this physical embodiment, this temporary embodiment? I think developing an understanding of who we really are is really going to help put things in perspective and, and direct our efforts to the right places. You know, we want to live well, but. But who are we really? Do we, you know, is this one body, that's what you want to optimize and keep forever, or is it your spirit that you are guarding?

And you know, the way I've seen that, and a lot of those insights came to me after I've done some psychedelic sessions and is we may not be able to understand the energy that created this world that's still expanding, that, you know, people call God, Brahmin, source, light, whatever you want to call it, that energy is there. There's no questions. There are ways to tap into it. Whether it's deep meditation, deep prayer, or using an entheogenic substance like a psychedelic, there are ways to tap into it. I've heard a quote that I love that said when, when you do a psychedelic substance or you do one of those deep meditation and you go into those gamma brain type waves, it's almost like you take a whiff of the divine, feel like, oh, there's something. But I feel like our mind, no matter how much we expand our science, will never be able to understand our spiritual part. We can only see that it's there. We can tap into it. But that veil that is lifted sometimes with psychedelics, therapy, you know, because that's how I like to see it. It's almost like a human form as a veil in front of us. When you connect, that veil is lifted for a little bit. You take a whiff of that mystery and then it closes again. And the only time we'll understand it, it's when we cross over to me. I don't need to be immortal. I don't want to be more. I understand that there's something outside of there that I may never be able to understand. That's when faith comes in. But I have a moment on this earth, a physical moment. So I understand I'm part of that energy. But I'm going to make the best out of that physical moment. But you can't pick one versus the one or the other. The combination of those two. And finding a way to doing this and finding a, a healer that can help you do this, that can employ both therapeutics, the Western medicine, the modern science, we need that, but that also takes care of this. And understanding for me is I don't think we'll ever solve that mystery. No matter how much a science will evolve, there's always going to be like, yeah, but how did we become something out of nothing? And this is when creator energy, I don't think we'll ever be able to pass that gap. You know, Einstein said it, he became truly spiritual when he understood quantum mechanics, the quantum field, how we're all connected, all this is, is there. And then that's when he realized we won't be able to understand that jump. We can understand from the, the Big Bang theory, from the singularity. But what started the singular? And this is when I became deeply spiritual after my psychedelic experience. And understanding that it's there, I can tap into it. I may not be able to explain it, but when you tap into it, there's power in healing it.

Yeah, I really think that is psychedelic experiences and opening up those portals definitely is one of the big hopes for humanity. And I hope the audience will embark on a journey to lift that veil a little bit instead of being trapped in this three dimensional, this thickness, this thick reality that we think is all there is. So I really encourage, you know, the audience not only to optimize their body and live a good life, but also peek into the mystery and, and have a little bit more understanding that's going to make your life even more meaningful and even better.

Yes. And because we're physicians and we have a license, we always say we don't encourage anybody to do something that's not FDA approved. The only one is ketamine. For now, psilocybin and MDMA are going to be approved within the next year or two for anxiety and ptsd. So, you know, everybody, you know, we're not giving advice, but that branch of medicine makes me really excited.

Yeah, we offer ketamine therapy at our clinic as well. Definitely. People are getting all kinds of breakthroughs and incredible clarity about their own lives. So very beneficial. Of course, it's FDA approved for treatment resistant depression and is very helpful for anxiety, PTSD, addiction or chronic pain. So OCD. So it's definitely worth exploring. Dr. Rudy, it's been such a pleasure. I'm sorry we're running out of time, but I can't wait to chat again.

Thank you so much, Dr. Kong. That was amazing.

Yeah. Thank you for sharing your passion and your wisdom.