John Gray 0:00
Longevity for men. It's all about healthy testosterone levels. And it's not about taking testosterone it's taking action that gives you a feeling that I'm making a positive difference and will increase testosterone.

Claudia von Boeselager 0:14
Are you ready to boost your longevity and unlock peak performance? Welcome to The Longevity and Lifestyle Podcast. I'm your host, Claudia von Boeselager, longevity, and peak performance coach. Each week, we'll explore groundbreaking science, unravel longevity secrets, share strategies to grow younger and stay up to date with world-class health and peak performance pioneers. Everything you need to live longer, live better, and reach your fullest potential is ready to defy aging, optimize health, and promote peak performance. Visit LLinsider.com for more.

Today's returning guest is none other than Dr. John Gray, one of the most popular podcast episodes that we have had. As many of you will probably know, John is the author of the most well-known book and trusted relationship book of all time. Men are from Mars, and Women are from Venus, listed by USA Today as one of the top 10 most influential books of the last quarter century. Dr. Gray has written over 20 books at this stage, many New York Times bestselling authors, and is a world-renowned speaker and expert on relationships and helping men and women better understand themselves and their relationships as well. John, it is such a pleasure to have you back on the Longevity and Lifestyle Podcast. Welcome back.

John Gray 1:35
Well, I'm really happy to be with you. And maybe today, we can also go into the genetics of longevity and how that relates to our relationships. You know, my whole focus is finding different ways that are relevant to our lives. To help people reinvent the importance of relationships, family, making love, the importance of, of creating commitment, and monogamy and how powerful people don't realize how powerful that can be, particularly for the longevity of our civilization that we still make babies, and we have marriage, but also, longevity, we want to be we want to live a long, healthy life, but most importantly, healthy and we have good life, why not long. And here I am, 72 years old, married and very, very happy and very, very healthy. And I know how I did it. And I love to share those ideas with people. I would

Claudia von Boeselager 2:30
I would love to hear more about that. And such an interesting topic. I think the longest-running study out of Harvard shows the importance of successful relationships to live longer to life. Right. So, the study that was founded in 1938 and is still ongoing, there are still a few participants in the 90s left. But I'd love to see and understand the research that you've been doing around genetics, longevity, love, and relationships, John, so could you share that with us? Well, yes,

John Gray 2:57
but first, let me address that study at Harvard, which was 38 years ago, I don't know much about it. But I do know that 38 years ago, those people would have had a relationship based upon more traditional values.

Claudia von Boeselager 3:10
just interrupt you, Janet was started in 1938. So, 85 years ago,

John Gray 3:15
85 years ago, there were people who understood that men and women were different. Now they're gonna last a long time. This is true. However, today, it's literally impossible to have a relationship based on those values because our values as a society have changed. And that it's not enough for women to feel I want to spend my whole life raising my children. She wants to do more than that. And that's fine. There's a time when you focus on raising your children. There's a time before that when you are educated and feel more independent, raising children, you can devote much of your time to creating a beautiful family. And then as they grow up, now you have more independence to be more financially secure, etc. All of this financial security for women dramatically affects how they relate to a man, to a husband, to a partner. So let me just give you a little example of one of my counseling clients. Okay, she has a 10 million dollars.com investor and her husband. They're both Harvard graduates, and her husband makes $700,000 a year. And in her experience, it's never enough he should be making more as their number one complaint. He's not using his full potential. He's not making more, and his other complaint is he works too much. You can just immediately see a disaster there. So the dynamic is if she and I point out to her, and it's helpful, but there's not just knowing you have to experience shifts and changes to fall in love again, and I teach them how to do that. I said it radically: if you weren't a Harvard grad or you're a Harvard grad, but you didn't make $10 million, and your husband was making $700,000, you'd be pretty happy with your husband. And so happy that you would say, Honey, you don't need to work so hard. We can spend more time together. That's it. A simple concept is that when women are financially independent, one of the major reasons they fall in love with men is gone. Women's primary generally speaking, a woman's primary need in a relationship is the need for security. We all know that you know, women want to feel secure. Now, there's a small subset of women who say, Oh, I don't care if a man makes any money or whatever. Well, I'd say she's pretty naive. Because biologically, we'll get into the biology. We'll also talk about genetics, too. One of the major biological differences between a man and a woman is a woman can have well-being whether she's working at a job making money or not, if she has money, okay? You need money to survive. Man primarily, if he's not working and making money in our culture, he will be depressed. Now why do I say that? Or he he will be unhappy, he will be needy, he will be demanding, he will lose interest in his partner, he's not capable of having a successful relationship because he doesn't have a job. That makes money because, for men, that's very important. Now, there are always exceptions. But when a man works hard and make to make money, that will make him happy if he's getting paid enough to satisfy his need, okay, so he never looked to women to make them happy. Men should look to women to make them happier. If he can't be happy with his own life, he's not a good prospect for a woman. And I'm saying this biologically because the number one hormone producer, male hormone producer, we could think about Mars hormones and Venus hormones. Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. It's just a metaphor. But it's like we live in different worlds. And what's interesting is under stress, the division, the differences show up even more. That's why some people go well, you know, I can relate to this I relate to because you're not under big stress. But when you're under big stress, that's where the differences show up the most. And now, I'm going to explain that hormonally because it is biological stress. When we say stress, we're not just talking about what's going on in your life. We're talking about how you're reacting to what's going on in your life. And today, when women are in the workforce. Now, these are averages. These are studies of hundreds of millions of women. Okay, when they're in the average woman in the workplace, which means she's working for money primarily, okay. And what's happening there is her stress level, as measured by cortisol, is twice as high as men's. Twice this high license high, that's the average. Now there's some women who say I love my job, I feel supported, then you're not so stressed. But we're looking at the average woman. And the feminists came up with this big study because they want to say we need to change the workplace to be more supportive of women. I absolutely have no doubt about that. That's great. But we should change the workplace to be more friendly towards women, we have to first recognize the workplace was designed by men for men. And these men knew nothing about women, and biologically, they're not women. So they have different motivators inside. So it's not about against women. It's, it's just for men. And now, as women go into that place to get ahead, they often feel I have to become like a man. That's a problem. Okay? The problem there is, when you're doing male, traditional male jobs, you're going to make male hormones, we'll call those Mars hormones, and the major one is testosterone. So when a man is stressed, and he's producing cortisol, oh, what's the other side of that example, I gave women that twice as high cortisol as men in the workplace. And when women come home, their stress levels double from the workplace, and men down. So we can say from this perspective women are way more stressed than men. Hormonally, we can measure it. So it's not so good. Yes, we can we can focus on on gradually, over time, creating a more friendly workplace for women. But we won't be able to do that until we really have an understanding biological understanding of how to bring out the best in women. So that's what I'm focusing on: how to bring out the best in women how women can bring out the best in men. So, I'm not teaching women how to make men happy. I'm teaching women how to bring out the best in men. We've all heard that old phrase, you know, women turn men on. I'm reminded of, you know, my background, I studied Chinese history and and religion. I studied G content for years in China, going back and forth. India on three trips, India started studying the Vedic tradition, Hinduism, Buddhism and all those things. I personally was a monk for nine years. So, I have all these eclectic ideas that are kind of woven together. One of them is that You go to the time remembering some temples in India, where White Men Can't go, I had connections, I fly in a helicopter, I would explore these things. And I'm sitting in a temple and there's these, we might call them pornographic pictures. These are naked women on, and statues all around you. And all these pictures of men in deep meditation. Okay, so you men are just sitting in meditation. And then you get these statutes of women or breasts are out, and they have little bells around their waist as they look at me and they're dancing. So, what's the concept of that? Well, there's this tradition there: the male energy is called Shiva, the female energy is his wife, property. And she, she has to dance and be alluring sexually to pull her husband out of meditation, okay? Otherwise, he'll stay in meditation forever. So, literally, women turn men on, we have to realize this is the oldest story in the book. And what turns men on is a naked woman turns on a man that every woman knows, and at the beginning of a relationship, as you started getting more naked, he was more turned on, too. The problem is that it doesn't last, okay? When people did not have a higher consciousness, more superficial cons consciousness, just physical attractiveness could sustain his attraction for her. Okay, that was because what is becoming undressed, but becoming undressed is revealing to him, which he doesn't reveal to anybody else. That's intimacy. That's called vulnerability. We put on clothes so people won't judge us, but if we feel safe with someone who loves us, then we can reveal more of who we are okay, and that turns a man on. Well, what we have to realize today is what turns men on to make them attractive to women, to make men motivated to pleaser, to bring a man out of himself into selflessness.

For her, that's his journey in life, is she asked to learn now how to become emotionally vulnerable? So you take off the clothes around your heart and reveal what's inside. I'm going to start out even though I don't have a lot of basis for this, but some of the people listening have heard my other talks. But the bottom line of what is revealed when you're a therapist and you help people go deeper into themselves is self-awareness. This is what used to be called enlightenment, which is self-awareness. Well, everybody's got self-awareness today, it's historically, they didn't have it. But now, you can ask somebody, what are you feeling? What's going on? What are you thinking? what's going on inside? instead of just believing what's in books, you would actually look inside of your inner feelings. your inner thoughts were deeper wishes and want, traditionally, and I suppose to look at what you want, you're supposed to think about the community, what they want. Traditionally, you're not supposed to look at what your feelings are manufactured. If you go back beyond 200 years, there's never any record of using the phrase I feel. And literature doesn't exist. There was a professor who studies literature pointed out a great book called The Breakdown of the Bike Carmel by Carmel's brain because we have these left and right hemispheres. As we've evolved as human beings, we have more connective tissue. And the past, if you had strong emotions, it was like somebody talking to you. You couldn't own this as your own emotions inside. And so what you'll see is gods would talk to people all the time, tell them what to do. It was like a voice coming out of the sky. This is the premise of this amazing book. But if you want to take away the practicality of it, it is just this is a new thing to be on both sides of the brain at the same time, which means embracing your feelings is not some external force, but this is what I'm feeling inside. And just because you're feeling it doesn't mean it's fact. See, I can't dispute that you feel something; therefore, it's a fact that you feel that, but what you feel might be a complete lie. So this is another step of what my call emotional intelligence is realising just because you feel unloved. It doesn't mean you're unloved. Just because you feel your partner's lost interest in you doesn't mean they've lost interest in you.

Claudia von Boeselager 14:11
You make it makes it mean about you, right? It's your perception of it.

John Gray 14:15
That's right, you just have your personal feelings are very strong. If you say, I think you don't love me. Now you're in an analytical part of the brain, which says, Well, maybe you do. Maybe you don't let's discuss it and understand it. But when you say, I feel you don't love me. Well, no one can dispute that because you do feel it. And I can't tell you you can't feel it. And of course is one of my practical techniques is men. When women are ever talking about feelings, don't dispute anything, but instead, simply say, help me understand that better, and tell me more and why you feel that way. And what do you think? You see, you take you from the feeling world, one side of the brain, over to the thinking world. It takes a while, and why is that because genetically, female hormones lower stress for women, male hormones, Mars hormones, lower stress for men. So whenever you're analyzing something, you're producing Mars hormones, you're producing testosterone, you're detaching, you're stepping out of the picture, you have no feelings at all you're analyzing. A lot of forms of therapy, which are very effective just about analyzing other forms of therapy, are about talking about your feelings. And I think either one is incomplete if you don't do both. They're important. That's what we need today as wholeness because women, the more independent whenever you're more independent, produce Mars hormones, primarily testosterone. Now, there's nothing wrong with that, except that Mars hormones, generally speaking, do not lower a woman's stress level. Men. In fact, whenever a woman is producing cortisol, she's making more Mars hormones than she normally would serve, and testosterone is going up. Now, think about that. What is testosterone is you have to protect yourself, it's up to me, I have to do it all myself. So if you're feeling threatened, then if you don't have health, then you're gonna go over to Mars hormones. When you have help, you say, Hey, honey, help me, protect me, take care of me, make some money for me, help me make dinner tonight, do whatever, whenever you're asking for help. You're depending on someone and you're trusting that they're going to be there for you. That's a huge female hormone, that's estrogen. And so when we get into genetics, what we see is the genome, which is unique for every person, but men have this Y chromosome, that it's only like 23 different chromosomes. They're called SEF. Sex differentiation, chromosomes, for example, is not totally science, we know that we have these different chromosomes. But here's what I've observed in terms of what's really different between men and women. One of them, I playfully say, is a gene, which is the efficiency gene. Now efficient, not that a woman can't be efficient, but it's not their go-to. So you can learn everything, but their go-to is to overgive anyone who comes to me for counseling, if she's stressed, at some point, I'll discover and she'll share. There's just too much to do. There's no time for me, I do this, and I have to do this, and I have to do this, and there's nothing I can do about it. I say, Well, I think you have a problem with efficiency, you take on too much to do. The idea of efficiency is never to do anything. You don't have to do that deflect. A delegate, delegate, this is the ultimate of men are always thinking, not thinking their biology as such. So I really have to do that. Why, why do it? And there's a lot of psychology that goes along with that, too, which is if, particularly if I do something that nobody else can do, I always get paid more. So men like to specialize. So I only do this and whereas women they tend to take the whole picture in. And why did they do that? Well, they're designed to make babies biologically; they are the baby makers and caretakers for these little babies, feeding them, protecting them, taking care of them, teaching them, educating them, all these things. So they have eight times more connective tissue, it's called white matter, the connective tissue in the brain. So they're thinking about this and thinking about this, and not only thinking about this, and this and this and this, they're thinking about consequences. What if this happened? What if this happened? What if this happened, so insecurity is a big issue for women? Okay, they're always there, they're always worried about what's gonna go wrong, what's gonna go wrong? Now, some women will say, that's not me. One hour in therapy with me, you'll find is the basis, which is, I feel that you know, it's like, go into, you can feel it right now, which is think about asking your partner to do something for you, that they've never done for you. And what's your resistance to it? They're gonna, they're gonna say, no, they're gonna say, Why do you need that? Okay? And why do you have a resistance asking? Is it because a part of you feels I don't deserve to ask for more? See how that is? Is it really clear? If you're working in an office and you want to make more, you want to get paid. Everybody goes, What do I deserve? You know, if I want to get paid as a counselor? Hi, what do I deserve? It's always an issue of, of course, I should get this as opposed to are they going to accept me and so forth. So this worthiness thing I remember it was coming out with all these commercials back in the 90s, where they're selling things to women, and they were saying, and you deserve as a man, that what a silly thing to say. If you say that to a man, it's like, of course I deserve it, but

Claudia von Boeselager 19:52
It doesn't even resonate at all. And so what do you advise women in that regard as well, like to step up a bit better? Also, I'm curious, John, and would love it if you could talk a bit more about those stress levels because, as we know, stress is one of the leading causes of disease and health issues as well. So totally impacting on

John Gray 20:10
chronic stress is going to inhibit your longevity and create all kinds of problems. So when a man is stressed, and we know that impairs his health, his testosterone levels go down, down, down. I mean, like, just like that, okay? If I suddenly feel something stresses me out, my testosterone is gonna shoot down, and my estrogen shoots up; that's what happens to men. Let's just let's look at that one basic thing. Men's testosterone goes down. estrogen goes up whenever they're in fight or flight. When a man's estrogen goes up, estrogen is the emotional part of us. You can't have emotions without a surge of estrogen, whether it be a positive emotion or a negative emotion. When men's testosterone is low, then they're when their estrogen goes up, all of their emotions will be negative fight or flight, anger, sadness, despair, and hate. All negativity and men is their estrogen levels are going up, but their testosterone is going down, if his testosterone is high, and that means I feel confident, I feel capable, I can solve this problem. I'm a can-do guy; I'm cool, calm, and collected. Nothing's bothering me. You see, then, when my emotions come up, they're all positive. So this is the opposite of what everybody knows about men and relationships and so forth. They think testosterone is causing them to be angry. It's fight or flight that causes anger in men and fear and also other emotions of despair, shame, and guilt. And all these things hold us back. That only occurs in men when their estrogen is too high and their testosterone is going down. So it'd be his woman to understand what they can do to raise his testosterone and, yes, to do to raise his testosterone, not dependent on her. Same thing I say for women when they experience fight or flight, which is their reactions are going to be a lowering of estrogen and a raising of testosterone. As when you're in fight or flight. As a woman, you're feeling like, oh, my, I don't have enough time. I don't have enough love. I don't have enough support. I can't depend on anybody. It's a place of this trust. It's a place of rejection. It's a place of lack of appreciation of others. Anytime you're in that place, you're in a stressed state. And you're also in a state of low estrogen and high testosterone. Now, women are a little more complicated because what I just applied is what's going on in a woman's biology from the day one of her period to ovulation. Now, after ovulation, if she's stressed, what's happening there is could be a variety of things, but the major reason women will experience cortisol hormonally is something called estrogen dominance. Okay, so we're just talking about how important it is for estrogen for women; for example, from the period to ovulation, estrogen levels are rising and rising and rising, and about five days before ovulation, they need to start doubling. And if they don't double, then she's gonna be very, very stressed. Okay? That's very, very important the universe designed women so that you're gonna go out and find a man because being dependent on a man looking to a man for something will produce higher estrogen. So it says, if you're gonna make babies, we need to make men really attractive to you so that he'll go after or be receptive to a man's pursuing you. That's more accurate. Alright, so once ovulation hits and estrogen hits a peak, estrogen will come down gradually but stay at a moderate level. And her progesterone levels have to rise higher than estrogen. So, a source of major stress for women is something called estrogen dominance, which only occurs after ovulation. Because she has estrogen dominance. before ovulation. She's feeling great. But after ovulation, she still needs estrogen, which means I'm not all by myself. I have support in my life. Okay? The estrogen goes up when you're not feeling independent but you're feeling dependent and not for everything. You know, depend on someone for everything. But a lot of your well-being comes from having a doctor, a coach, a husband, friends, a family, a culture of politics, all these different things are different forms of support. If a woman doesn't feel that she has that support, she's in fight or flight after ovulation and should go into fight or flight if her progesterone levels go low. Now, progesterone is a hormone, a little different from estrogen. Estrogen is going to be more like underpinning on others through relationships with others. For gesture on is more of an idea of doing what I like to do, doing what I enjoy doing. Now, she tends to have what's called an EQ extrovert personality to various degrees, introvert or extrovert. If she's more extroverted, social bonding is literally making dinner with a bunch of women, having a dinner party, and going dancing with friends; all this social activity becomes very, very important. After ovulation, romantic activity one-on-one is more important, typically for before ovulation. Now, after ovulation, you can't make a baby see all this biology. And so when it comes to our genes to stimulate the right genes of the feeling of love, and positivity, and so forth, they have to be triggered by the environment. That's the whole thing we learned about genomics is that you have these genes, but they get turned on and off based on the stimulation we get. So the stimulation a woman gets at for the first part of her period is going to turn on genes that say I want to have a relationship with a man, I want to depend on someone, I don't want to have to do it all myself, and I care about relationships a lot after ovulation. Now, that's still there, but it's not as strong. But what's stronger is I want to do what I like to do. And I like to interact with people who are more extrovert, or I like to take care of myself. So this is, you know, women would talk about I like to go for walks in nature, I like my gardening. My wife really loves the gardening. And some women like I like to pamper themselves and go shopping and do things they like to do and make themselves look more beautiful. It can also be taking a hot bath, it could also be eating a good diet if you have if you're focused on it loving yourself. So, a lot of you don't understand what Loving yourself is. Loving yourself is doing things that make you feel good that are healthy for you. It's not doing things that make you feel good, that aren't healthy for you, although it feels like I'm gonna love myself more. But it really isn't love is love, which is, is doing something good for yourself. Like when I wake up in the morning, I do my stretch exercises and I do my muscle exercises. That's part of my self-love. I know that I wouldn't be so healthy and vibrant if I didn't do that. So I feel like a child, I'm going to take care of that child, this body's like a child, I'm gonna take care of this. So that's what self-love is: doing things that support the expression of positive traits inside of you, make you feel healthy, balance your blood sugar, and support the different glands in your body. You know, these are all important things, but the most important, and again, it's a bias when I say this because I can't say, but it's making love. There's nothing more powerful that puts you in line with the force of evolution, which is guided by God, if you believe in God. And by the way, having a spiritual belief is one of the most powerful hormone stimulators that exists. It's been throughout all of history. And we've just taken it away for so many people. When a woman feels there's, if she's good, good things will happen. For her. That's like a universal spiritual belief that she just hasn't done good things, and she'll feel okay, the universe will support me, and God will support me. She prays to God, God blesses him. You know, this is the deal. You're not alone and will always produce estrogen. You're not alone, but you're in a supportive world. You know, one favorite quote I have is to realize that everything that happens to you is grace. This is the universe or God, rewarding you or giving you suffering so that you'll change your direction. All pain and suffering is pain, we feel pain when we when we're not aligned with our soul. Okay, so it's the way our soul talks to us. That's one way you can look at how your soul talks to when you're in the right direction; it makes you feel good. And when you're in the wrong direction when you're thinking the wrong things or feeling the wrong things. You'll feel pain. So, anytime we feel pain, we want to self-correct. So you adjust, you adjust. So that's very, very important. So sometimes, if we're going in the wrong direction, things just keep knocking us down, knocking us down until we wake up. I mean, in my own journey, I was a computer programmer after being a monkey. But I had to earn a living. So I became a programmer at Stanford and Stanford Research Institute. And it was high-paying, I was very good at it. But it caused massive neck pain. I mean, just the worst neck pain I saw. Okay, I saved up my money, I gotta do something other than this that I'm good at. And, of course, I've always been good at teaching. So I could shift gears as soon as I shifted gears, the physical pain went away. So again, we have to align ourselves doing what we love to do, which feels right for us. And that's, that's life. You know, that's our journey in life is figuring out what we're here to do and then to do it, and then do it. There's always going to be obstacles and we have to overcome those obstacles. But along the way, to bring us back to Mars hormones and Venus hormones and love and relationships, we need To have a mirror besides our own biology that tells us pain; we need to be able to see ourselves. And so, before this talk, I had to brush my hair, you know, I have to look in a mirror to see myself. And that's what relationships are relationships. Help us to see ourselves when our partners are loving us. We're able to see ourselves as loving. And when our partners do not love us, then we can recognize at those moments that am I depending on them to know who I am, or can I depend on myself to know who I am. So this seems so easy. When somebody says nice things about you just go, you're the source of my self-awareness. That's too far when you go too far into depending on another for your well-being. Then there'll be suffering and pain, you have to come back to what do I have to do to see myself again to feel good. And when I talk about men, your work is very important because it's work that produces the biggest testosterone producer. Now, since we're talking also about longevity, let's just look at the number one cause of heart attack for men. In that cholesterol, half the people who get heart attacks have high cholesterol, half have low cholesterol, half have a plaque in their veins, and half don't. Okay, so it's a different idea here. Certainly, these things can play in, but the major thing is your stress levels is oxidized cholesterol, it does contribute to heart disease to some extent, but then you'd only have oxidized cholesterol because you're in stress. And you're only in stress. If you're a man, if your testosterone levels are low, and there's no man that has a heart attack, then as healthy testosterone levels, they're all. They're all too low. And we don't even know what low is anymore because you look at 50 years ago, or maybe a little bit longer, when they learned how to start testing hormones. The average male at every age had twice as much testosterone as men, twice as much, 100% more, I mean, double.

Claudia von Boeselager 31:58
And decreasing rates. I think from the age of 30, it decreases by approximately 1% each year. But as you're saying, the overall research is showing that it Yeah, twice as much. I didn't even realize that number was that big.

John Gray 32:09
When we started testing, and before that, we didn't even know what men were like. We know

Unknown Speaker 32:14
four times as much.

John Gray 32:16
What we know is that there's kind of an evolution of males that maybe they don't need that much testosterone because they have more estrogen. estrogen regulates testosterone, okay, so when estrogen goes really high unless you're making love, your testosterone will tend to go down. I'll give you an example of the men with the most testosterone for every age group, and why testosterone is important. By the way, low testosterone is always associated with stress. It can be stress, which is anger, or it could be stress, which is passiveness; it could be lack of motivation, lack of energy, or lack of erections; all those things can be low testosterone linked, and when it becomes very emotional, either anger or defensiveness. Defensiveness is really fear, anger, depression or our lack of motivation. That's usually shame is what's going on in this biology. His estrogen levels are high, it pushes down his testosterone. He's too dependent on others. Now why do men become too dependent on others to show up. He either complains to his wife all the time. That's a man who's too dependent. It's a man who has to talk about his feelings all the time, his way on his estrogen side. It's the biggest turnoff to women, the destroyer of marriage, as men talk about their feelings. And all psychology is telling women to ask him about his feelings. Ask him about his feelings, and that should be talking about their feelings. If he's feeling good, talk about your feelings. If you're feeling negative, don't talk about your feelings because when you talk about your feelings, estrogen levels go higher and higher and higher. It's just a major estrogen stimulator, therapist, man. They get you talking about your feelings. So naturally, 90% of the people who go to therapists are women because they get a lot of value out of it. Then there's 10% of the men who go to counseling, and usually, they're looking for strategies because some counselors do give strategies more like a coach. More and more, you'll get both men and women going to coaches because we don't focus so much on your feelings but accountability and how you can achieve your goals and what's getting in the way of it and how you're getting in the way of it that's very strategic, which I'm really in favor of that, but at the same time, I'm very much in favor of, it's very important for people to explore their feelings as well. But never explore feelings and express feelings. And it's an important point, don't express negative feelings with the intent to change someone. That's called complaining as it is using negativity, amping up your emotions to justify making a demand in your relationship. You know, it's like you forgot to turn off the lights. Okay, that's one level of emotion. Then, five years later, you do it over and over, you never turn off the light at the follows you around. Okay, that's a lot of emotion all it did is just demotivate that man just knocked his testosterone down and it rewires your brain to be more and more upset about nothing in a compassionate way. In a gentle way. I'll say that 90% of anything people talk to me about a therapist is making a big deal out of nothing. And then it becomes a big deal. You see, if you are using emotions to justify your pain, your suffering your struggle to justify wanting more, then your brain is always looking for reasons to be unhappy to justify wanting more. When in a healthy dynamic. You can ask for more without having any negativity at all. It's called learning how to ask for help ask for help. And guess what the biggest estrogen stimulator is for women, asking for help learning how to ask for help. And women have such resistance to it, because they're insecure deep inside that thing we were talking about before, which is, I have to introduce this idea of insecurity. If you look at women wanting to know what's a man feeling? They use psychology to think you should be talking about your feelings. But why does the woman want to know what a man's feeling is? Because she's insecure. She's afraid he's mad at her. She's afraid he's not attracted to her anymore. She's afraid that she's on his bad list. She's afraid that he's thinking of somebody else. He's she's afraid I'm getting older. I don't look as pretty. Do you still think I'm pretty? Are you still turned on to me? Am I still the one for you? Do you want to be always? Are you happy? Did you marry me? I have my big regret in your life. All these insecurities are there. And people say I want my relationship to be like it was in the beginning. Well, in the beginning, you were in touch with your insecurities. Every woman at some point says let's talk about the relationship. Do you love me? Do you like me? Do you want to be with me? Do you want to marry a man, all these insecurities are there. If you want to bring back those beautiful hormones of falling in love, you have to go back to how you were at the beginning, which is in touch with your insecurity without any shame. Every man has his insecurity. It's just a different kind of insecurity. A man's, and when you're feeling insecure, what is the antidote to that? Is to realize it's called Love is called reassuring love. Now, when I'm married Bonnie for years, she would always say I need more reassurance. I thought that was a stupid thing. I married her I worked hard. I provide all these numbers. What am I supposed to do? You know what more can I do? And I found out reassurance was the beginning: four hugs a day, just walking into another one was a walking room just occasionally stroking your hair. Now, some women don't like that. But my wife did. Let me go. I'm not just a pet. But my wife was severe enough to know that I like being petted and that there was nothing wrong with being interested in their day. You know, in the beginning, men show interest in you, make you feel secure, that somebody cares about you. But now that I care about you, why do I have to ask you questions? Nothing is new. So, let's just forget about the talking part. Well, my gosh, when I become so insecure with no talking. And there's first of all, there's a biological misinterpretation of each other that increases insecurity. But I just want to say as human beings, women, when they feel adored, when they feel loved, when they feel prioritized, when they go on a date, all these things, why did they feel good to her? Because there's a need inside of her that says, I need to feel special and loved. And if I'm not getting it, I will, I will feel insecure. So now from that place of insecurity, what you do is you basically provide more security now that let's shift gears to men, which is, we're gonna want to say just women are insecure, men are insecure, too. But it shows up differently. You know, the guy who has the fancy car, you know, he's showing off his car, that he has insecurity. And he's seeking reassurance that he is capable and confident. When I've talked about men needing to be making money is because in this culture that we live in, money says you make a difference. If I make a little difference, I get a little money. If I make a big difference, I get more money. And you know what happened to me in my own life as a teacher, if I got a big audience, then I was more I was more happy. And now I'm over that I don't have that much insecurity about it. I feel secure. If I have a little audience, a big audience, one person, whatever. But that took a long time. I was constantly looking for how many people were coming to my seminars and so forth. And now people are looking for how many views they're getting online and all that. But that's our insecurity as a man we look for. Am I good enough? See, that's for the female is Am I worthy? If I if I feel unworthy, then I hesitate to ask for help. And because he might say no. And so you have this sense of insecurity there. And I know women don't have all the clear words for this, but just go with me here because there's a solution. All this for men is feeling of not good enough whenever I get a message and this is where Jenna's genomes are important, okay? This is where the external environment stimulates your genes. My genes make testosterone my genes give me the benefit of these different hormone mixtures. genes do that based on the input from the environment. Now the environment comes in, and people are clapping for me to talk my testosterone suddenly shoots up what just happened I psychologically think I might not be thinking about but what a good job I did I just I just felt that five other car standing ovation you know, I just I felt great benefactor to me hours and hours desert come down from the mountain, I couldn't even figure out how to get my Uber to get to the airport and my wife out of my body was so much nothing. Exactly, you know, it was just a lot of energy coming into me, it's over. But my testosterone was just off off the chart, you know, you just you achieved this great goal. Because you want to be of service to other people. They're clapping for you. I look at you know, my every day I look at my bank account, it just a little reassurance that nobody stole my money, but also look at a good guy, um, I made this money, you know, this is, so it's, it's, and women have a male side too. So they'll relate various degrees to what I'm saying on my male side, that and men have a female side, and they can relate to their own insecurities, or their deserving love and so forth. But it's not the major player, this estrogen that gives you that when when you're getting support, you're getting reassurance, and your estrogen goes up so reassurance of your worthiness, and that your worthiness of having more worthy enough of having what you have the worthiness of being better than you were in the past, you know, all these sorts of worthiness things is reassurance and men need reassurance again and again, that what they do makes a difference. And how do I get reassurance from my wife, I get reassurance from my audience, they gave me a standing ovation, I go, and this is so great. I feel guilty charging money for it.

But the testosterone that comes from it is the expression of my well-being biologically and what we talked about before as longevity for men, it's all about healthy testosterone levels. And it's not about taking testosterone; some people misinterpret me to think that I'm just saying that taking these hormones will give you all these benefits. No, it's It's having behavior, particularly taking action, making a difference in relationships to the world to others, and so forth. Taking action that gives you a feeling of making a positive difference will increase testosterone in some men are not so much in touch with their values, and the body isn't always thinking what your values are. But basically, if you're a man, just take a gun and shoot it and your testosterone will shoot up. Because you see, it's such a big impact. You made a big loud noise, video game theory or testosterone. But if it doesn't produce a result that's life-supporting, your testosterone goes right down. So for example, for men is very temporarily testosterone producing to do porn when they do porn, because the dopamine levels will be higher than any woman could ever stimulate them to produce, the more personal stimulation does not produce as much dopamine as impersonal or fantasy or not real, it will produce higher levels of dopamine, and that's okay, now I could explain all my theories why that's so but that's another discussion. We just know that digital stimulation produces more dopamine than relational, okay, it's like a way to understand this is if you eat sugar, it produces refined processed sugar, which shoots big dopamine levels, okay? When you eat a lot of sugar before a meal, the vegetables don't taste that good. Okay, you desensitize your ability to appreciate normal life. Healthy things are no longer wellbeing producing. What you need is high stimulation. And when men do porn, they will get a shot of really high testosterone, but it will right back down to their baseline, which will then continue to go down over their life. That's what we now know is one thing to understand: the relationship of men and intimacy. When men are single and in every category, their testosterone will be highest for their, for their category, like for 40-year-old, a 50-year-old, a six-year-old. If they're single, these are averages. Now remember, I'm talking from the point of view that this is all nonsense, but they're out there real study. Second, they show that it doesn't have to be that way. I'm 72 years old. My testosterone levels are at a baseline of 50% and 50% higher than when I was a young man giving this talk they've gone up at least 400%. Okay, they go up, they go, but my baseline is 50% higher than when I was a young man, I have more libido and more stamina. and more energy than I've ever had in my life. Because I've learned the secrets of how men can produce testosterone, which we'll get to. But first, we have to understand the basic things that nobody will agree with me on except if you look at simple logic. I was just giving a university talk with some professors who are just going nuts, telling them completely wrong. Okay? They say hormones can affect your mood. Say, have you read having a Give me a break. It was just nonsense that everything I'm the I'm thinking everything out of universities can be very, very smart, but also very ridiculous as well. Okay, so, like, there's such a thing as there's no such thing as a woman. Okay, so what you decide, these are nonsense ideas from my perspective, okay. I'm talking biology. So from that perspective, women are women, and men are men. And when men are producing male hormones, their well-being goes up. When they're producing male hormones and female hormones, their well-being goes to a much higher level. And that's called Making Love is sitting on one of the only places, the most powerful place that I know of, at least, where my testosterone just goes off the chart, and my estrogen levels go off the chart. That's your Janice, I love you. I can't live without you. I always want to be with you. This is the greatest experience of my life. I'm one with you. You're my wife. I'm your surrender. You know, having us here, the gods are enjoying our making love here on this planet Earth. Okay? That's my, that's my period. That's where my estrogen levels go. So, so high, my testosterone goes so, so high. And so we look at the norm today: the average single man has the highest testosterone. As soon as he's in a relationship, a committed relationship will knock down his testosterone. A marriage will knock it down again. Children will not get down again. And quitting your job will knock it down, and you'll die. Okay, so that's the average. Those are statistics. This is insurance companies saying that three years after a man retires, he'll have a heart attack and die. Maybe they can keep him alive with stents. That's that's them talking about this. What we know to be the case is vitality for men, longevity for men, a lot of things, you know, blood sugar is a big issue here, and you can look at all the different factors. But you can also realize that blood sugar issues will lower your testosterone. All of these issues, which, by the way, one of the biggest testosterone producers is Besides, regular making love is fasting. Okay, so I fast I fast from various things. Okay, I fast food, for sure. So I'm writing on a three-day fast. And that will amp my testosterone at least up to like, you know, I mean, I don't know, the research says it goes up 1,000%. But that's

Claudia von Boeselager 47:52
it's a one request, Joan. If I do I what type of fasting are you

John Gray 47:56
doing? Well, what I'm doing now is going to be just the water fast. I just okay, well. I have a water fast, but I have decaf coffee in the morning because I'm used to that every day. Is it tricky when you go off of a stimulant? It will affect you. And since decaf says Not much, but I love it. I like it. So I continue with that. But only water. Generally, I'm intermittent fasting all the time and listen to social events. I'm not too rigid. If I'm having lunch with friends, I'll have lunch with friends, a business meeting is always a lunch. Otherwise, I just have dinner. And that also keeps me very healthy, I believe. But the three-day fast is when testosterone goes through the roof. And it also, afterward eating a lot of meat and chewing it well will help my muscles so I'm not losing muscle mass. I said this variety of things I do I also do anyway, but I think it's very powerful when you fast. Another fast I'll do is the decaf coffee several times before lunch with a lot of, what's the name of it, CTO MCT oil, right? Oil and I put somebody that really helps me lose weight fast, okay, because when I'm, I just got back from a vacation and I'll eat ice cream on a vacation and suddenly have a belly. So that's why I'm a three-day fast now it will be gone. But I also did MCT oil, which really knocks the fat off of it very fast. And I do exercise every day is very important. I don't do strenuous exercise, just enough to test my willpower just enough to go I don't want to do this. But I'm going to do it where you got to push just for a little while. And so I do a set of Tibetan yogic exercises which I like very much. It's called the five Tibetans if people are interested.

Claudia von Boeselager 49:49
You can type of exercise. Can you expand a little bit on that? That sounds interesting. Well

John Gray 49:53
you twirl around, and then you do stretches on your back, and you do leg stretches up, and you do upside down stretches. And you use 21 a beach, so it puts you out of breath. I mean, it's not like a yogic stretch, I did yoga since I was three years old. But this is hard Yoga, you actually have to repeat it and do it, do it. And then save Salutations to the sun 21 times. So you know, that can put you out of breath, it pushes you so you know what my muscles to be there. I think one of the most important things for longevity is love and lower stress, and everything is muscle. You know, you got to keep your muscles. And so if you're a faster, you got to be Make, make sure that you're not losing your muscle mass is very, very important, which is why the MCT oil is very helpful and keeps you in ketones. So I've been giving the foundation so people may try this technique I'm about to suggest if you're in a relationship, I talked about deep inside, we have these insecurities. And we're looking for reassurance. And for women, they're primarily why they want men to talk often is because they want to. They want the reassurance he still loves her. And it says insecurity brings that up. Now, along with ignorance in psychology, saying that men need to always talk about their feelings. This is all nonsense. Usually, it's when women don't feel safe to talk about their own feelings. They want him to talk about feelings, and then she'll feel more safe. So here's the way to transcend all those problems and little exercise couples can do every day. Which means she can start it at any random moment. But you know what you're doing? She's gonna say, Do you love me? And the man's gonna say yes, I love you. How much do you love me? And he's gonna describe, I love you with all my heart. Are you still happy to be married to me? Are you still attracted to me? I'm so attracted to you. Am I the only one for you? Yes, you're the only one for me? Are you happy that you're with me? Did you have a fun time when we went on that date? We're glad that you took me to that fight, all these fine phrases that allow you to reveal what you normally would never reveal. But it's sort of a hint of a feeling deep inside. You want to give words to that vulnerability. And we're going right back to the beginning of my talk where I say when women get naked, it turns men on that, you know, you're not going to say to your partner, do you love me? You did in the beginning; that's when you had that much, but then that goes away. And for him, the power of him giving you what you need dramatically increases his testosterone. But he has to know he's giving you what you need. And you have to know that you need that reassurance, then it all works. And so it's not like he's going to share his insecurities. No, the fact that you're happy that he gave you that the fact that you didn't want that reassurance for him implies that you trust Him, you accept Him, and you appreciate him. He's important, too. That knocks his testosterone up if you do it in this little simple process. Now, if you don't do it as a sense of process, then you say to your husband, do you love me? His response is gonna be like mine was years ago. Of course, I love you. I work so hard for you. Why are you doubting me? you don't trust me, and you take it the wrong way as opposed to I want to share this part of me because it feels good? Just like when I give a talk, and people give me a standing ovation, which isn't always, I feel really, really great. Okay, so this is the number one estrogen stimulator for women who undress emotionally to the depths of getting completely naked but never saying things about them or asking for reassurance. That's it. So you don't say, You don't love me anymore? No, you just say, Do you love me anymore? See, you're opening that vulnerability up. And you have first to discuss it with your partner and say why you're gonna do it. It makes you, you know, it just makes me feel good. Like we said, In the beginning, you'd say I love you. And it's not like, I don't doubt you love me. There's just an insecure part of me that, when I say these things, makes me feel at ease and comfortable. And biologically, it makes estrogen, and just now, it will also raise his testosterone. So this is the dynamic of how bringing back the attraction in your relationship and opening your hearts More to Love.

Claudia von Boeselager 53:51
Beautiful, John. I would love to talk for hours. But I'm aware of the time now, and I'll need to let you go. But thank you so much for coming back on the level of the different biohackers you're doing. I think it's really, really important for men also listening to be aware of what's going on with testosterone levels in general, worldwide. We're exposed to so much estrogen in the water we drink plastics. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And plastics to a large number of us all. Exactly. Yeah. So John has great advice in his 70s where he's, it has exponential testosterone levels then, many, many years ago. There is so much to learn from that as well. John, it is such a pleasure to have you on today. Thank you so much for coming back. Thank you