1254: Justin Houman | Wiggling Out of the Male Fertility Crisis

1254: Justin Houman | Wiggling Out of the Male Fertility Crisis

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Jordan Harbinger: [00:00:00] Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On The Jordan Harbinger. Show, We decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. Our mission is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker through long form conversations with a variety of amazing folks, from spies to CEOs, athletes, authors, thinkers, performers, even the occasional arms dealer, drug trafficker, former Jihadi, or four star general.

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Just visit Jordan Harbinger dot com slash start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started. Today's episode is about something half the population has and the other half has to deal with male fertility. And before you check out, [00:01:00] trust me, this is not just about whether you can populate a small village.

Male fertility is basically a diagnostic report for the rest of your body, your hormones, your cardiovascular health, your metabolic health, even your longevity. Dr. Justin Homan is a urologist surgeon and men's health specialist at Cedar-Sinai, and he's at the forefront of what a lot of experts are calling the male fertility crisis.

Global sperm counts have dropped more than 50% in the last 40 years. And most men have absolutely no idea. It's not just a fertility problem, it is a massive red flag warning sign. Low semen quality is associated. Yeah, I had to get that word out there. Get, get ready for, for, there's a lot more where that came from.

Uh, low semen quality is associated with diabetes, heart disease, testicular cancer, even earlier death. And yes, we're gonna talk causation versus correlation because otherwise this whole episode becomes one giant WebMD panic attack. We'll get into vario cells, one of the most undiagnosed, fixable causes of male infertility.

The explosion of at-home sperm testing. Why AI is suddenly analyzing sperm better than actual [00:02:00] humans. The bizarre rise in penis size. Yes, really? And you knew that folks, I couldn't go in a whole week without referencing penises on the show. We'll also discuss what every man should be doing in his twenties, thirties, forties, and whether you should be banking sperm now.

Like you're prepping for the apocalypse. We'll, also, would you have kids during the apocalypse? Probably not, but you get what I'm saying. We'll also hit hormonal decline. Testosterone porn erections, dopamine peptides. PRP, shockwave therapy, Botox for your dick. That's a thing. The future is weird. And how erectile dysfunction is often the first sign of cardiovascular disease.

If your heart is struggling, your penis is the canary in the coal mine. A tragic, tiny canary. For most, most of us. This one's loaded, and Dr. Hooman is one of the best in the game. Let's get into it. I'm always skeptical of. It's like that's a fertility crisis. Okay. But maybe because people are having kids at age 40 instead of age 22 like they were in the sixties.

Is that part of it or what? Or is there really a actual downfall in fertility across all ages?

Justin Houman: Yeah, I [00:03:00] think it's both. We're doing a lot more semen analyses for people who are catching more of these abnormal sperm parameters earlier on. So we're getting those poor results earlier on. So that's part of the equation.

Men definitely in urban areas here in LA are getting married at a later age. Sperm counts are declining after your mid twenties.

Jordan Harbinger: It's depressing because mid twenties you still think. I got a long time to deal with this. That's the problem though, right?

Justin Houman: As a male, your counts are going down. You have to remember, each time you ejaculate, there's tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of sperm, and all you need is one.

Jordan Harbinger: One, okay. That's when you put it like that. Yeah.

Justin Houman: To your point, I do think men are getting married at a later age, therefore they're having kids later. But there's no question about it. We're unhealthier, right? We're less healthy now than we were 20 years ago, 40 years ago, 50 years ago. We're eating more processed foods and we wake up and we're sitting at a desk all day coming back watching Netflix all day and rinse and repeat.

That's the whole thing. It's unhealthy living really. It's poor food, poor exercise, we're consumed by screens, and all of that just ultimately leads to unhealthy life. So I think it's those three things.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:04:00] Okay. But it's global sperm counts. It's not just Americans. Globally, we're all still hooked on screens and stuff too.

There's more commuting, but it seems like some countries would be less affected by the same stuff as we are, like obesity and all that stuff.

Justin Houman: America definitely is more obese, but the world as a whole, it's more processed foods. In order to feed the 7 billion people on Earth, we have to mass produce food.

Jordan Harbinger: So processed food is lowering our sperm count too. For

Justin Houman: sure. Really? Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: What's the mechanism behind that?

Justin Houman: In simple terms, it's not good for you, right? Processed foods aren't good for you. The more unprocessed, natural foods that you have, the better off, not just for your reproductive health, your hormonal health.

Your overall health, your cardiac health across the board.

Jordan Harbinger: You're saying? My nanoplastics and my Cheetos is not good for my fertility.

Justin Houman: It's good for now. It's a dopamine hit. But after that,

Jordan Harbinger: yeah, I had kids. I got the whole snip and everything done. I remember one of the doctors, I had a health check recently, I had something on my testicle that was like a vein that he said was not good.

And I said, what can happen? And he goes, does it hurt? I said, no. He goes, could make you infertile. And you just [00:05:00] started cackling Because I told him I got it after a vasectomy. I think it's called a varicose seal. Okay, so we'll talk about that. He was from Taiwan, so he said ose cell. And that must have been what he meant, but we'll get back to that.

Global sperm counts have dropped over 50% in the last 40 years. But is that a big deal? Because if we only need one and we have eight bazillion sperm in each load. So there's half a bazillion If you need one and you got a million in there. It's fine, right?

Justin Houman: Yeah. It's not as bad. We're producing so many sperm.

Is the trend heading in the wrong direction? Yes,

Jordan Harbinger: sure. Sounds like the

Justin Houman: wrong direction. Yeah. Can it plateau? And this could be the new norm. Yeah, potentially. But I do think to a certain extent we're making it sound a lot worse than it is to make it sound like human race is gonna end.

Jordan Harbinger: That's good. We need that in the thumbnail for the YouTube big

Justin Houman: version of the show.

Otherwise, people with the intention span of a gnat won't click on this. We need more data. We need good longer data. I think right now we have some data points. We have to capture this longer term to see where this is actually, if it's real and where the trend is heading.

Jordan Harbinger: It sounds though like it's mediumly a fertility [00:06:00] problem, but it's more of a it canary in the coal mine of men's overall health, because I'm no doctor, but I'm gonna guess that healthy people have higher sperm counts generally across the board than somebody who's unhealthy.

So if we see low sperm count. It's not just probably that one system in the body that's affected. We're like looking at, I don't know, cardiovascular health is maybe not as good. Maybe there's something we can't measure, like your immune system or whatever that is. It's just sperm is easier to count 'cause you can put it in a glass and run it through a machine as opposed to, I don't know, the current state of your heart or your immune system or some other system that's harder to quantify.

Does that make sense?

Justin Houman: Yeah. Perfectly said so. Yeah, exactly. If you have lower sperm counts, you could say that lower sperm counts can mean that your overall, you're in poor health. But now we have data, I think it was about a year ago in Sweden, they published something where they said, guys who have lower sperm counts, lower sperm counts.

There's a number of things. How they sperm look, how they move. The morphology, how they look.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah,

Justin Houman: their counts, all these things. Okay. [00:07:00] Ultimately, men who have lower sperm counts can have mortality at a younger age. They die younger.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay. This is the correlation versus causation thing, right? It seems more like people who have a bunch of shit wrong with them and die early also have low sperm counts,

Justin Houman: so that's what it is.

You could say they're unhealthier, right? Whether it's cardiovascular rise or cholesterol, diabetes, high blood pressure, metabolically, maybe hormonally, you have low testosterone levels. This can impact them long term. So yeah, it's essentially their overall health. The reproductive health is a snapshot of their overall health.

So if you do have low sperm counts, it's kind of a wake up call. Hey, fix your overall health picture.

Jordan Harbinger: The thing that's crazy about the sperm count thing is the number of my friends who are healthy, upper middle class or higher have never been schlubby, overweight guys have never had real serious health problems.

This is sneaking up on them too. The thing is they also find out when they're like 40, 'cause they're like. I'm trying to have kids and it's been really tough and it's like, well, okay, but I don't get it. I'm a surfer and I work out three times a [00:08:00] week. I eat right and I'm 150 pounds and five foot 10, you know, not overweight.

What's the deal? And it's like they'll go and get a sperm test and you may have had a low sperm count for the last 20 years and you just never knew. 'cause nobody tests until there's a problem.

Justin Houman: Exactly. There's no symptom.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. You can't look at the uh, results of anything on your own, so to speak and go.

That doesn't look right. It happens in a laboratory. Only

Justin Houman: these days. You could do an at-home semen test. You can, oh yeah, there's a handful of companies out there. Huh? You just do it at home.

Jordan Harbinger: Let's talk about that because I feel like that's a good idea. How does that work? Don't we have to freeze it?

Justin Houman: So these companies, they've created a preservative and they're able to measure the decay, but ultimately, once you ejaculate in a cup at home, you mail it in based on the algorithm, they're able to measure what your sperm counts are quite accurately.

If any guy, whether he's 22 or 42, you want to have a kid. 52 doesn't even matter. Do an at-home test? I don't know. It costs 150, 200 bucks.

Jordan Harbinger: Can you recommend a company or two that's doing this?

Justin Houman: Yeah, there's one meat [00:09:00] fellow.com.

Jordan Harbinger: Meat fellow. M-E-E-T-E-E-T. Yeah. You never know. It's a sperm thing.

Justin Houman: Meat fellow.com is one.

Okay. I think there's daddy legacy.

Jordan Harbinger: Why are they named creepy things?

Justin Houman: And these companies do, uh, cryo preservation as well.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay. So you can freeze your sperm through them. What age should men look at freezing their, you know, women freeze their eggs in their thirties if they're doing the career thing or whatever.

What age should men do this? Is it like you're 25? Do it now 'cause it's all downhill from here. Or what?

Justin Houman: There's obviously no hard and fast rule on this. I'd say that if you're thinking about doing it, just do it. 10 years ago it was very expensive. There's only a handful of places in each city. These cryobank.

Now you could do these at home, cost a couple hundred bucks per year. It's not bad. It's an insurance policy the way, same way you insure your car or your home rental insurance, same thing. It's an insurance policy.

Jordan Harbinger: Buddy of mine recently became a father as well. He had testicular cancer. I wanna say that.

Then he went and froze a bunch of sperm, had that cancer thing taken care of, survived obviously. And [00:10:00] then like 10, 15 years later was, Hey, I'm gonna need that parachute that I left over there. And he, and it worked. And he had kids. Not everybody has a heads up like, Hey, you have to stick with cancer sometimes I guess you could get injured or something like that, and it could be too late.

Justin Houman: And luckily you have two testicles.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, I guess it depends on how severe the injury is, but yeah, you're right. So we mentioned that semen quality is essentially a barometer of systematic health. My cardiovascular health was, I don't know, my oral ring was like, you are two years younger than your age. And I was like, that doesn't sound good.

My wife was like 14 years younger than her age. She's Asian, so it's not fair, but whatever. And so I got a trainer and I started working out all the time. And now it says I'm six years younger than my age. Still not 14, unlike the wife, but better,

Justin Houman: so, or you're four years younger. Nice. Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: Not bad, huh? Yeah.

Justin Houman: I got to 11.

Jordan Harbinger: That's awesome. But you know what though? The way it tests this, I don't know if you've looked this up, there's something where it puts a sound wave through your system. The wave [00:11:00] reflection measures how flexible the arteries are. That's cool. I feel like you can do that with a real machine that's not this big on your finger.

If you had something like right here that did it, I would trust that. Or like electrodes all over me, that seems like it could do that. I am very skeptical that this can put a sound wave through my whole body and then have it read back in the ring. I just don't buy it.

Justin Houman: I will say though, the cool thing about this is I was exercising hardcore for a good three month period and I noticed the trend it got better and better.

Jordan Harbinger: So it's measuring something, but I'm like, is it really 5.5 or is it like, no, I don't know. It's too small. This ring was like, you're not getting deep sleep. You're getting like four minutes of deep sleep per night. Really bad. Sleep hygiene wasn't helping, night mask wasn't helping, blue blockers weren't helping that particular thing.

They helped me in all other areas of sleep, so I still use them. So I went and got an at home test where the sleep lab sends you this like finger device that said You have no sleep apnea. I said, I don't believe it. Look at my disturbances in my aura ring. Look at my sleep scores. [00:12:00] Look at all this. So I did the in lab test, right where you're hooked up to everything.

They're watching you on camera, you hooked up head to toe literally with electrodes, a breathing thing, everything. And they were like, you don't have sleep apnea. And I said, how is that possible that this ring says that I do? And everything else says that I don't. And they said, this ring, and this would surprise no one I guess, but it surprised me.

This has to extrapolate a shit load of data off of what it gets from one finger. The motion of your hand. Maybe you sleep and you wiggle your finger. It doesn't mean your whole body's moving, but your ring doesn't know that. Maybe your blood pressure is a little bit different because the ring is a little too tight.

Okay? Your ring doesn't really know that. It just think you have high blood pressure, right? So you need a blood pressure cuff to tell you what your real blood pressure actually. So it does a lot of extrapolation and it basically says, oh, this is what we're feeling on this one section of your finger, probably across your whole body.

It's like that. And that's just not necessarily the case. It's tries to connect dots. Yes. Look, I love the aura ring. It's amazing, the sponsor of the show before, but I've been a customer since Gen [00:13:00] one. It's an incredible device, but it's basically a canary in the coal mine. You test something and then you go, I want to dive into this more.

Not, oh, I'm diagnosing myself with sleep apnea because of what the ring says. It just tells you to get something else tested. That's all it really does, but that's extremely valuable, especially like you said, for guys that never go to the doctor because I don't know reasons. So can you do something like that for your fertility?

Like is there a workout that improves my fertility or is it just diet?

Justin Houman: No, it's more than diet, so I try to keep it simple. What's good for your heart is good for your. Testicles. It's good for your sperm. So lifestyle is one of them. Within that I talk about diet, exercise, sleep, and stress. Sure, that makes sense.

Right? Try to optimize your diet, healthy diet, minimize your processed foods, more unprocessed foods, vegetables, lean proteins, exercise-wise, combination of cardio, heavy weightlifting. That's good for your hormonal health. We know you need good testosterone levels within the testicle in order to have good sperm health, testosterone replacement therapy that shuts down your testosterone.

Jordan Harbinger: Ah. That

Justin Houman: shuts down your [00:14:00] sperm production as well.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh yeah, I've heard that. Sure. That's what dudes on steroids. The joke is always like the testicles are a little tiny rocks and don't work. Yeah, exactly.

Justin Houman: So sleep, get seven hours of sleep a night. That's good for hormone health and stress. It's good for your testosterone levels if you're minimizing your stress.

The other thing is, like we talked about the verica seals, right? Can you optimize your sperm health? Yeah. Just get, you have to do a physical exam. See a reproductive urologist, they'll do an exam, make sure everything's okay down there. If you have, we could correct those. The earlier you correct those, the better off you are.

There's genetic aspect to sperm health. There's not much you can do from a genetic standpoint. And then supplements is something a lot of guys talk about. So there's certain supplements within the fertility category that can help. Coenzyme Q 10. That's a great one. Oh

Jordan Harbinger: really? Just coq 10. COQ 10 is great one.

I started taking that 'cause I was really low and I did blood work and it was like, this is really low. So I take this air quotes. Good brand of coq 10. That's a good one. I had no idea. That's a good, okay,

Justin Houman: that's a good one. Vitamin E is a good one. Ashwaganda, that's good for your hormonal health as well.

That's how you optimize. But at the end of the day, it's not so objective as your cardiovascular health with [00:15:00] your AA ring at the end day. We've been reproducing for however long as humans. All you really gotta do is what's good for your heart health. Your overall health is good for your reproductive health.

Jordan Harbinger: Kind of makes sense, right? I mean, look, again, I'm no doctor, but from like an evolutionary standpoint or a sexual selection standpoint. The body is gonna just do everything better if it's in better shape. If you're able to run a decent mile, you can lift something that's heavy without throwing your back and your knee out, or just like ripping your tendons to shreds, you're gonna be able to maybe reproduce a little bit better.

I mean, I always feel like you level up everything. Like you start lifting weights and your hormones get built up when your sex drive gets built up. 'cause your hormones are built up and then your energy levels are better and then your sleep is better 'cause your hormones are better. Like it's all just this sort of self-reinforcing positive cycle.

It's unfortunate because it is America, right? So we're looking for shortcuts. But guys who are like 30, we'll jump into TRT. When now they have to take that for the rest of their life and they're like, oh, it's fine. My testosterone's optimized. I don't care about the money. But you're not producing [00:16:00] your own testosterone.

Theoretically. My testicles are producing that every minute of every day. I don't know how it works, but I assume something like that. Yeah.

Justin Houman: Steady dose.

Jordan Harbinger: But if you're injecting it, it's like you get three days and it's off the charts and then it dips down until it off the charts. So you're on this weird rollercoaster.

And also you said that if you're injecting testosterone, it's not helping you produce healthy sperm also, right?

Justin Houman: Yeah. It kills your testicle's ability to produce sperm.

Jordan Harbinger: It's also reducing the ability to produce testosterone. Exactly. Basically, S shuts your testicles down. Geez. Okay. So yet another reason why people should think twice about TRT.

Justin Houman: Yeah. If you're trying to have a kid, or you're gonna have a kid in the near future, see somebody who knows what they're talking about before you get started on TRT. 'cause we have options. We have good options to boost your testosterone, basically tell your testicles to produce more testosterone rather than shutting the system down.

Jordan Harbinger: This is, I did a show about this a few weeks ago because I was like, I'll just do TRT. Everyone's doing it. I might as well let me look into it. And my brother-in-law sent me a video. Dr. Mike is rattel. He is like, don't do TRT, you're gonna go bald and your [00:17:00] dick's gonna stop working. I was like, okay, that's a good point.

And then I have a telehealth clinic and the doctor was like, you don't need to do that because once you pop, you can't stop. And he is like, why don't we do blood work? And I was deficient in like coq 10, vitamin E, vitamin D, magnesium, like a million things. So I started taking those and my testosterone went from two 50 to 1150.

Justin Houman: Really?

Jordan Harbinger: Just from those supplements basically. Yeah. Also D-H-E-A-I needed some DHA that boost it, but it was like magic. Yeah. And then as I got in better shape, my testosterone leveled off. I had to reduce the dosage of everything. 'cause as I got in better shape from having my hormones in order. Everything started to be like too high and then now it's stable at 1150, but it was like magic

Justin Houman: I'm You were working out a lot during that time too.

Oh, a lot, right. Compared to before you weren't

Jordan Harbinger: Right. I was basically like a fat two 50 testosterone and then I worked out and I was a strong, but still kind of fat. Two 50 testosterone, didn't change my workouts at all and became basically ripped at [00:18:00] 1150. Then it went to 1415 and my doctor was like, whoa, that's a thing I wasn't expecting because I guess you respond better to supplements, medication and everything.

When you're in better shape, which most people don't know, like your body being healthy makes even your medication and supplements more effective. The systems are more responsive or something.

Justin Houman: I do think the workouts that you were doing probably helped you a lot too. Yeah. That contributed a lot to it.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Justin Houman: We have good data on strength training and what it does to T levels.

Jordan Harbinger: Even after a few years of working with a trainer though, my tea was like two 50 to three 50, and then once I started supplementing those vitamins, minerals, and the DHEA, it went from like three 50 to 1600 and then I had to tone it down.

Like I said,

Justin Houman: you felt a difference.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh my gosh. It was alarming because I was a little bit of a different person in many ways, in ways that were not all super comfortable. People go, oh yeah, your sex drives up and you feel like you wanna work out harder. I was kind of an animal, like I wanted to go to the gym twice a day for 90 minutes each time it's good, but then [00:19:00] your joints are like, bro, you're 45.

Maybe calm down. I didn't have rage or anything 'cause I'm not really that guy. I started to have, I wanted to like work on my business all the time aggressively. And it was like, no, maybe just play Legos with your kids, dude, calm 'em down. So I had to take a breath and then that's when I got my blood work again and they were like, uh, we need to tone it down.

I went, rucking like six days a week. For people who don't know, it's walking with a very heavy pack. And I was doing like 60 pounds. I was like 150 pounds, putting 60 pounds in my pack, walking like 10 miles. It's too much. At the same time, I was also dieting, right? So I was like getting shredded on a calorie deficit, like a nerdy tech guy.

Special forces training, right? It was ridiculous though. Amount of overload. I told my buddy who was actually in the seals, like what I was doing and he's like, your knees are gonna fall off if you don't calm down. So I did that, but fun

Justin Houman: little

Jordan Harbinger: experiment. It was a fun experiment, but yeah, you can overdo it.

And again, I think my original point before I started yammering was. You don't need [00:20:00] TRT to feel good, bring your testosterone up. In fact, basically it's like a last resort, right?

Justin Houman: Avoid it at all costs. If you're trying to have kids and you're a young guy, avoid it as much as you can.

Jordan Harbinger: I would love to drill that into people's heads more.

Yes. Because it sounds like, oh, simple, I'll just inject it, but you can't quit doing it, and it has all sorts of side effects that you don't get from just making sure your balls work.

Justin Houman: Yeah, and unfortunately these days, it's so easy to get TRT. People who are prescribing aren't telling guys about this.

Jordan Harbinger: The incentives are wrong for this, right?

Because if you do a telehealth clinic, the doctor or whoever runs a clinic makes a hell of a lot of money if you're ordering a thousand dollars worth of testosterone from them every month for the rest of your life. So they're less likely, theoretically, to tell you that you can do a bunch of other stuff instead to try first that you can stop taking at any time if you decide you don't like it, or you don't care about your hormone levels anymore for some reason, or if something goes wrong.

But if somebody sees you as a walking thousand dollars recurring payment for the next 30 years, the incentives are wrong.

Justin Houman: [00:21:00] Complete. That's well said. The incentives in this industry are completely wrong.

Jordan Harbinger: You mentioned earlier varicose seal. What is this again? 'cause apparently I have one, like I said earlier in the show.

Justin Houman: Yeah. So varicose seals are basically varicose veins of our legs. Think of a varicose seal as varicose vein of the testicles. So it creates basically backflow of blood around the testicle. Testicles need to basically stay within a very narrow temperature range. That's what the scrotum helps with. But anyways, when blood pools around the testicle, it raises the testicular temperature.

So it causes a couple things. It could cause pain. That's probably the main reason guys come in, causes infertility. One of the biggest factors of male factor infertility, it cause hormonal disruption. It could lower your T levels as well. It can shrink the testicles.

Jordan Harbinger: So this is like when your iPhone is old and starts overheating and runs slower, but it's when your test, yeah.

Yeah. That's nice. Geez. Okay. So I'll have to have this checked out again because the TMI part. So if you got little kids in the car, you're with your grandma. Fast forward a minute, but I had a vasectomy and it got infected and it was horrible 'cause I [00:22:00] had a grapefruit between my legs. Thankfully I was on vacation.

Who? For the lore. It was not good. And after that, the guy, one of the doctors was like, oh, you have a varicose seal. But I'm not a hundred percent sure that he was right because I had just gotten over this completely gnarly infection. And

Justin Houman: Which side was it on? Left? Yeah, usually it's on the left. Really?

Yeah. Why? Just the way it drains back to the body. The way the veins drain back. But yeah, it was probably had one

Jordan Harbinger: it. Yeah. But it can go away, correct? No, no, no. So it's there forever now.

Justin Houman: It either stays the same or it gets worse.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, good to know.

Justin Houman: If you've already had a kid, you don't have to stick your pain.

Nothing to worry about it. No,

Jordan Harbinger: nothing he didn't check other than by doing the old grab and whatever. So he can just tell by

Justin Houman: that. You have to do like some breathing, like, you know, breathe hard. Yeah. Yeah. You could feel it then,

Jordan Harbinger: huh? Okay. So why do so many of these things go undiagnosed? Aren't guys getting physicals or is this not something they look for?

Justin Houman: Guys aren't really regularly checking in with their doctors until something happens, right? Not good guys. Yeah. Come on. And that's a whole different conversation. But men really aren't engaging in the healthcare system. And then [00:23:00] Veri. Castil is really to do that exam. You're only gonna do it for those reasons I discussed like infertility, pain.

Even if you're having low T, no one's gonna really check you for a varicose seal unless you go to certain doctors.

Jordan Harbinger: You just said it's really easy to check for. It's a field test, so it seems like it should just be done every year.

Justin Houman: But the thing is, it's hard. For example, primary care doctors are the ones who see you for your physicals.

It does take someone to know how to really gotta feel a lot of balls before you A lot. Yeah, a lot.

Jordan Harbinger: Gotcha. Yeah. You

Justin Houman: gotta know what you're doing. You gotta

Jordan Harbinger: know what you're doing. Yeah. You think a GP would get a lot of practice anyway? 'cause they're still doing the hernia test?

Justin Houman: Yeah, but that one's pretty black and white.

You know when someone has a hernia

Jordan Harbinger: because you drop to the floor in a fetal position when you cough and you have a hernia.

Justin Houman: But this one, there's varying degrees of it. Like sometimes you feel something, sometimes you don't.

Jordan Harbinger: How do you treat that? Surgery only? Yeah, it's

Justin Houman: surgery. Oof. Very straightforward surgery.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, that's what they said about my vasectomy. And look what happened. I don't know. I don't know if I trust that anymore. No, this

Justin Houman: one is,

Jordan Harbinger: I just got really lucky that my urologist who did the vasectomy, that guy was like 65. He was like, I've done a thousand of these minimum. And he's like, I've had [00:24:00] two infections my entire career.

And you were one of 'em Every decade. I get what? I guess I'll take off my calendar is what he said. Something like that. It is

Justin Houman: very rare. Yeah. Lucky me. Hey, but oswell, that ends well, right? I

Jordan Harbinger: mean it was kind of a joke 'cause I said what could happen? And he said you could be infertile and it's just.

Urologists love. Joking about infertility. I guess so how does the surgery work though? What do you do to get rid of it? Because a vasectomy, they get in there and they burn something. I don't know.

Justin Houman: Yeah, well they cut the cord. Yeah, they cut the VA deference. So this one is, we use a microscope, surgical microscope, like we're looking at it like 15 to 20 times magnification.

We make a small incision, we're in that groin area. Pull up the cord, we find the veins, tie 'em off. And in simple terms, that's really what we're doing. We just tie them off and we leave the rest of the structures there in place.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay. So it's relatively simple, not a big deal. Oh yeah.

Justin Houman: We do a couple of these a week.

They're very, very calm. Local

Jordan Harbinger: anesthetic only kind of thing.

Justin Houman: Yeah, no, you need general, you have to be asleep. But it's, yeah, it takes about 45 minutes, maybe an hour.

Jordan Harbinger: Why is it so much more anesthesia than a vasectomy?

Justin Houman: We're making a larger incision. I see. The area's a sensitive area.

Jordan Harbinger: Yes, sir. [00:25:00] Yes it is. I don't think you need to explain that.

See?

Justin Houman: Yeah. Vasectomies are quick.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, that's true. This was like 20 minutes. It was like, you are not done. I can't even believe it took me longer to get parking at Kaiser Permanente than it did for me to get snip. Come on

Justin Houman: Kaiser.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Nice.

Justin Houman: Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay. This is something that I've wanted to ask about for a while.

I mean, this whole show is about dick's, but Dick's size is something that men are obsessed with, and I probably should include myself there. Correct me if I'm wrong. There's been a rise in penis size the last 40 years. Average penis size. That's what I read. But how and why would that be true other than endocrine disruptors or making our dicks bigger?

Justin Houman: Is that it? So there was like a meta analysis. There was a study that came out, I think it said we've gone in the last 80 years, we've gone from like 4.7 to six inches, which is a huge difference. Evolution doesn't take place that fast. Does

Jordan Harbinger: sexual selection also not

Justin Houman: right? It's not enough to generate, but it's going so fast.

Like that number doesn't necessarily make sense. I think that's like a 25% increase in 80 years. Imagine what's gonna be in 80 years from now, what are gonna be eight [00:26:00] inches.

Jordan Harbinger: You better hope women's vaginas are keeping up, right? Otherwise we don't have a big problem.

Justin Houman: No one really knows the answer to this, but I think endocrine disruptors are one.

I think what's happening is the time when people are hitting puberty and what these endocrine disruptors are doing during the time of puberty when penis is growing in length, it could be throwing things off. But I also think some of this is just like a selection bias type thing, who we're sampling what we're looking at.

It doesn't necessarily make sense to me in all honesty,

Jordan Harbinger: because you said meta analysis and look, those are valid for all kinds of things, but I'm always a little skeptical because. You have to see all the studies that were included. And I've noticed, especially with penis sized studies, there's huge data sets from other countries.

And then when you look at the methodology, it's like this is self-reported data among dudes in the military in Portugal. And you're like, oh, a bunch of 20 something year old dudes in the army in another country where like, yeah, I have a giant penis. Go figure. They told the female nurse who was writing down in the spreadsheet that they all had giant dicks.

What a surprise. And then you see the measured ones where like a person injects a [00:27:00] drug into the trimix or whatever it's called into the penis and then uses like a specific bone press measurement. It's, oh, they match the average everywhere else in the world using that methodology. So I don't know, I'm always a little bit like asterisk whenever I see that penis size is increased.

Justin Houman: I'm sure it is, but you gotta take it with a grain of salt. That number is massive. It doesn't make sense.

Jordan Harbinger: Before we talk about why your sperm count is dropping faster than your motivation to go to the gym, here's a quick word from the amazing sponsors that make this show possible. We'll be right back.

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Jordan Harbinger: This episode is also sponsored by BetterHelp. One of our favorite holiday traditions every year is taking the kids to see Christmas lights.

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Jordan Harbinger: If you're wondering how I manage to book all these great authors, thinkers, and penis experts every single week, well, it's because of my network, the circle of people I know, [00:30:00] like, and trust, and I'm now teaching you how to build your own network for free over at Six Minute Networking dot com.

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Many of the guests on this show subscribe and contribute to the course, so come on and join us. You'll be in smart company where you belong. You can find the course again, all for free at Six Minute Networking dot com. Now back to Dr. Justin Hooman. There's pollution all over the place, but some countries certainly have it worse than others.

Wouldn't the West have different potentially endocrine disrupting effects than say. Asia, south America, Africa. I guess the question is are have we polluted the earth uniformly enough to make that a thing or not?

Justin Houman: That's the question. Yeah,

Jordan Harbinger: because sexual selection would've theoretically been similar across [00:31:00] populations.

Probably somebody who studies this would, it would be very interesting to see. Measurement bias is the go-to when something like this shows up for me a hundred

Justin Houman: percent.

Jordan Harbinger: Tell me more about the puberty hormone exposure stuff do, because I know we have endocrine disruptors, like in our shampoo, soap, water supply.

What else could cause something like this if it's not just spurious data?

Justin Houman: Yeah, I mean the endocrine disruptors, there's tons of these things around us. Some people are saying now that even like receipts are causing,

Jordan Harbinger: that's definitely true.

Justin Houman: Like 80% of receipts have some degree of these endocrine disruptors, which throw off our hormones.

Jordan Harbinger: That said, just for people who are worried. You'd have to touch thousands of receipts in order to have that problem. So if you're a cashier, big time issue, working at a restaurant big time issue. If you touch a receipt at Chipotle every day, you'd need to like eat the receipts in order to get enough. I think it's BPA or something, right?

That's in there. So casual receipt handling not an issue, but if you work with receipts, but here's the thing, when do men's penises grow During puberty? Because what [00:32:00] kid is touching a shitload of receipts?

Justin Houman: Yeah. So the adult version of the penis, I see it's during puberty. Okay. But during that time, I think what's happening is because of these endocrine disruptors, puberty's becoming elongated, right?

This is the theory. It's a longer puberty period. As a result of that, your penis is getting exposed to some of these hormones for a longer period of time. Therefore, you're getting a longer length,

Jordan Harbinger: you're selling it pretty good. Most guys are like, how many receipts do I have to eat after this podcast?

Justin Houman: I'm quite skeptical of it.

In all honesty. I do think things are growing, but to this extent, there's no way.

Jordan Harbinger: It's tough to predict, and I can. Only imagine the amount of fake crap out there for penis enlargement. Maybe we'll get to that in a bit. There's ads and stuff like that, but I'm gonna go ahead and guess that nobody has quite nailed the ability to take a pill that you've ordered from an ad off PornHub to make your penis grow.

Get on it, man. Then we'll have the round two on your I wouldn't have to work if I figured that on your, yeah, on your yacht. Yeah. So when we're in our twenties, thirties, forties, can we go decade by decade and talk about how we [00:33:00] might preserve or work on our hormone sexual function, infertility. Like is there anything guys should be doing in their twenties other than just not getting fat?

Justin Houman: I mean, your twenties and your thirties, you're really laying the groundwork for your forties, fifties, and sixties. So simple terms, you just get a good exercise routine, mix of cardio as well as heavy strength training a couple times a week. As much as you can, I know we've talked about this, but eating right is quite important.

Minimize your stress as much as possible, and then sleep. Those are the big things there. Early on. It's simple stuff. You don't need to supplement the supplementation, all that stuff. That's the gravy, but you gotta get the mashed potatoes. You gotta do the, those four things in order to set the ground table for everything else going forward.

Jordan Harbinger: And that's in twenties, thirties and forties, I assume.

Justin Houman: Yeah. Twenties, thirties. And then, you know, once you hit your forties, this is when we start talking about some other things, like what can guys do at this point to optimize Our testosterone levels start to decline starting at the age of 30. We say one to 2% every year.

What can you do at that point? Let's say you're getting poor sleep, you're stressed out, you check your T levels, they're low. Repeat that test in a couple [00:34:00] weeks. See what the levels are at. If they are low, then you have to start thinking about other ways in which you could boost your levels. There's other ways like the supplementation, some of those things that you talked about.

We talked about Clomid, which is a medication that could basically tell your testicles to produce more testosterone. This HCG, these are all natural,

Jordan Harbinger: well, they're still pharmaceuticals, right? But HCG I'm familiar with actually I think isn't H CG and ch Clomid. Isn't that what steroid guys use after they come off their cycle?

It's part of restart the cycle. Okay, I see

Justin Houman: that restarts the natural testosterone production in the body. And then once you get into your forties, this is one thing that I actually recommend. So starting at the age of 40, I tell guys they should start taking Cialis regularly.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay. Talk about this. 'cause I take this for gym pumps.

It's from my doctor, but he's like, you don't need this. It's good for the gym and it's somehow cardioprotective because it dilates my veins. Is that right? Be arteries. Arteries, okay.

Justin Houman: Yeah. So it's specific for the pelvic area of the penis in terms of dilation. It dilates to the arteries of the penis, therefore you get strong [00:35:00] erections.

Jordan Harbinger: What's the difference between a vein and an artery? Again, I know I should learn this in seventh grade,

Justin Houman: artery takes blood flow to the organ. Yes. And then veins bring blood flu. Okay,

Jordan Harbinger: got it. Thank you.

Justin Houman: So it dilates these areas. We do have some idea now that it could help, even systemically there's some blood vessel dilation that could even take place in the rest of your body.

Jordan Harbinger: And that's not bad for me.

Justin Houman: No. Unless you've had a history of heart attacks where your on medication because your blood pressure has dropped significantly. If you're on nits for your heart, basically those are the patients who are at risk of this. Cialis like a low dose of Cialis in incredibly rare where it actually drops your blood pressure significantly.

It is safe to take

Jordan Harbinger: what's a low dose? Because I know people right now are looking, you can get it online from a air quotes doctor that looks at your email when you submit the form and then mails you like a packet of it. People are gonna overdo it if we don't tell them what a low dose is.

Justin Houman: So five milligrams is generally the lowest dose and some people actually take two and a half milligrams.

But I'm not saying take it every day, but once or twice a week. Okay. Starting at the age of 40. Especially even if you [00:36:00] don't have ed. 'cause we're all gonna get Ed at some point, but it delays the onset of it. That's the idea. Biochemically. We never develop a tolerance to this. Okay. If you start, let's say 10 years from now is working less and less.

It's not because of the medication, it's just progression of disease. You wanna call it ed a disease. Your erections are just getting worse 'cause of other things.

Jordan Harbinger: Honestly, I'm not sure that I can tell the difference 'cause I'll stop taking it if I forget it on a vacation and I honestly don't know the difference.

So I take that to be a good thing because that maybe means I don't need it for the, you know, activities that happen when you usually take that. But I don't know. I have heard that it's good for your heart 'cause it lowers your blood pressure, but you're saying that not appreciably so unless it's a higher dose.

Well, it's

Justin Houman: not a blood pressure thing. It basically, it helps dally your arteries to the whole body, which is only good. That could only help you.

Jordan Harbinger: I do notice if I take it 20 minutes before a workout, you get crazy pumps and probably better recovery, which is why they prescribed it in the first place for me.

Justin Houman: If you want it, you could do l citraline.

Jordan Harbinger: I take [00:37:00] that too. I take both.

Justin Houman: That's fine. But if, if people don't wanna jump on the Cialis train doing El Citraline, 3000 milligrams, three grams daily, that works well too.

Jordan Harbinger: And that stuff is cheap, man. I think I got a huge bottle of 300 tabs for 40 bucks. 20 bucks is also seemingly noticeable.

Look, could be placebo, but as a pre-work. Yeah, for sure. We already talked about banking sperm, but what about testosterone tests? When should guys start testing their testosterone?

Justin Houman: If you're having symptoms, I wouldn't necessarily jump into testing unless you're really having symptoms. 'cause this is the thing about testosterone, the range is 300 to a thousand, which is pretty unfair for a number of reasons.

But one guy, like for example, for me, when I'm 500, I feel great. For somebody else. If they're not at seven 50 and anything below seven 50, they don't feel very good. So if you go to a doctor, they're gonna be like, you're in the normal range. I'm not gonna really treat you for it. But yeah, also, so what if you're 3 0 1, you're okay.

But if you're 2 99, yeah, you're low T.

Jordan Harbinger: That's how healthcare works though, man. You're a doctor. You know this,

Justin Houman: right? Unless you go to somebody who knows what they're talking about, [00:38:00] right? But anyways, it comes down to if you're having symptoms, get it checked out. Some guys have all the symptoms, some guys have one of these symptoms, but it's low energy not exercising the way you used to.

Sexual function's a big one. Whether you have poor erections, your libido, your sex drive is not there. Even when you go to the gym, you're not exercising the way you used to. Sleep is a big one too. People feel like they're sleep. They have a lot of sleep disruptions, even mood like anxiety, and more so depression than anxiety.

But mood's a big one.

Jordan Harbinger: A buddy of mine who works for this show, actually, Nick Pell, one of the writers for the show, he was depressed. I've known him for a long time. He was depressed and then he started using testosterone. Essentially steroids. He admits this, it's fine. Everyone's like, oh, it's bad for you.

And he's like, you know what's bad for me? Wanting to kill myself in the morning, literally. And it's hard to argue with that. Yeah. Now, should he have used other alternative methods to try and raise it naturally? Whatever may be possibly debatable, but there's a lot of guys out there. Whenever people tell me, I'm having a midlife crisis, I'm depressed, this, that, and the other thing, I always [00:39:00] recommend getting their blood work.

Because you might think your entire life is falling apart, but you might also just have some shitty blood work that needs to get handled.

Justin Houman: Yeah. Could help. I have a psychiatry buddy who screens when the guys are depressed, he'll screen them for low T.

Jordan Harbinger: Good. I feel like that should be step one. Agreed.

Pretty much.

Justin Houman: Agreed.

Jordan Harbinger: I know so many guys who say that they're depressed and then the mind is weird. We don't wanna go. I'm depressed because of no reason. They go, oh, I'm depressed because my career's not where it was supposed to be, and my marriage isn't what it was supposed to be, and I'm stressed out about my kids and I'm not sleeping well.

And it's, or did your brain look at all those things and decide that's why you were feeling this way? Because it needs a reason. And this is what happened to a lot of friends of mine and myself as well. When I get sick, I start to go, I'm not happy with this and this and this and this. And then when I'm better, I'm like, was I tripping about it?

It's all fine. And it's because your mind looks for a reason to feel down. Instead of just going, I have a hormone problem, or my blood work, your mind doesn't know that. Your mind doesn't know that your body's tripping. [00:40:00] So if you feel like crap right now and you're struggling to get outta bed, go get blood work done.

Even if you have to pay for it out of pocket because your doctor's giving you trouble. And if you have low testosterone, or even if your doctor says your tea is normal, but it's under, I don't know,

Justin Houman: like low normal, if it's in the low end of the normal range,

Jordan Harbinger: get a second opinion because my testosterone was normal.

But then when it was fixed, I felt like a totally different person. The closest analogy I have is when I started taking Adderall in college. 'cause I got diagnosed with a DD. Surprise. Surprise. And I took Adderall and I was like, wait, is this how normal people feel every day? They can just. Listen to a teacher talk for 45 minutes and they don't look at the sky in the room and count the holes in the ceiling tiles.

This is unbelievable. That's what getting my teeth fixed felt like. It was like, oh, I wanna get up in the morning and I wanna work hard and I wanna work out, and then I wanna do all the other things that are intended to having normal testosterone. It was like starting to see in color from black and white.

So [00:41:00] if you're feeling down or you're feeling a little rough around the edges, go get your blood work done. What about proactive testing strategies for guys who wanna stay ahead? What if you don't have symptoms? Does it make sense to go get a baseline of testosterone when you're 30 just to see? 'cause if you need it again in five years and it's way down or way up, you know that you can look back in time like how

Justin Houman: to

Jordan Harbinger: optimize Well, because when I was 33, I got a CEO Health check gifted to me by a show fan and it was like VO two max testosterone, all your blood levels.

I look back at those documents now and I go, holy crap, I had 39% body fat. My testosterone was two 50 when I was 33. I'm 45. I'm objectively healthier in pretty much every single category. Like my triglycerides are lower, my testosterone's higher, my cholesterol is lower, everything. Obviously my body fat is not 40%.

So I can look at that and I go, I don't have this delusion that I was healthier when I was younger. I can actually look at the data and it's been helpful for doctors now 'cause they'll go, oh, you've probably [00:42:00] always had this level of testosterone. You don't know that it's the medication. And I go, actually, here's blood work from five years ago, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, all laid out nicely.

And they can see the trend instead of just guessing. Is that valuable at all?

Justin Houman: The trends? For sure. Yeah, definitely. But the first part of your question in terms of what can guys do, younger guys are like, I know I have good healthy testosterone, but I'm trying to optimize, right? I'm trying to take it to the next level.

And now we do have some strategies because there's a lot of advancements in the testosterone replacement therapy world. Take them to the next level, very safely pushing the needle a little bit further, and that's a whole different way of treating these guys. These guys in their forties and fifties before sixties, seventies, eighties.

These guys are usually in testosterone placement therapy, but forties, fifties, sixties, we have different combinations of meds we could give them.

Jordan Harbinger: What about guys in their twenties and thirties? Is there anything they can do now to, aside from diet and exercise, like we said, to either stay ahead or test for something that might bite them in the ass later?

Uh,

Justin Houman: in your twenties and thirties, again,

Jordan Harbinger: you're [00:43:00] on Easy Street, but you don't know that when you're 20 and 30. Exactly. You have no idea.

Justin Houman: You know, I'm broadly speaking here. Every part of your body's working well, eat right, sleep, right. Exercise, minimize your stress. I can't stress enough those four things, but the exercise early on in your twenties and thirties is

Jordan Harbinger: massive.

Is it healthier to have kids younger? Is there a declining health? To my offspring, if I have kids in my forties and fifties as opposed to in my twenties and thirties,

Justin Houman: you have increased risk. For example, as we age, our sperm become, they have different types of DNA issues. One of 'em can slightly increase the risk of autism, for example.

Oh really?

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, they know that now.

Justin Houman: It slightly increases it. Okay. Slightly increase. But other genetic issues as well. Just as similar to the female with her eggs. The older she gets like increased risk of down syndrome.

Jordan Harbinger: My wife had to do extra screening 'cause we had a second kid. She was 35. I wanna say they call that a geriatric pregnancy, which sounds harsh.

She did not like hearing that. Lemme tell you. Increased risk

Justin Houman: as we age. There's slightly increased. We say autism is one, but [00:44:00] there's other ones that can increase as well, for sure.

Jordan Harbinger: Do you notice any psychological impacts from male infertility? It's hard to put myself in the shoes of many of my friends who are having trouble, but there's something about it that kind of like reaches into the core of their identity as a man in a way.

Even if it's a problem on the other side of the wife's physical problem. There's just something about it that I think for a couple is like uniquely difficult and traumatizing. Devastating. Yeah. It really gets to the court like if you can't even do this one thing that you're put on this earth to do. I don't know.

It screws with you. Have you seen that?

Justin Houman: Yeah, I'd say it leads to relationship issues. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, so I think men, for the most part, and obviously there's extremes on both ends of this, but men for the most part, once they get the news, it's a punch in the gut. No doubt. Especially if it's them. But fertility issues as a whole can lead to a lot of relationship issues.

'cause it becomes a finger pointing thing. It's like, who's at fault? You're smoking a cigarette now, you shouldn't be smoking a cigarette.

Jordan Harbinger: Why are you in the hot tub?

Justin Houman: I'm doing all these [00:45:00] things to help myself out to increase our chances. You're not doing those things, you're out there drinking, whatever it is, but it can lead to a lot of relationship issues because they're trying to get to that end goal.

And that's so ironically, but that makes things a lot worse too. Of course. The

Jordan Harbinger: stress, right?

Justin Houman: Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: So does mental health stress lower testosterone or does lower testosterone cause depression and worse mental health or both?

Justin Houman: Yeah, it goes both. Okay. Yeah, as you can imagine, if you have mental health issues, anxiety, depression.

Poor sleep. You're not exercising, you're not eating right, you're not out socializing. It's worsening things for you. You're not getting the vitamin D from the sun. I actually say they go hand in hand. Mental health and hormonal health really do go hand in. If you're out there socializing, getting exercise, seeing the sun, those types of things, it's good for everything.

Jordan Harbinger: That was another thing. I was massively deficient. It was vitamin D, it was like rock bottom, terrible. And then I started supplementing it. Ironically, coincidentally whatever. Wanted to go outside all the time. And then my vitamin D was too high 'cause I was outside seven days a week rucking. So I just cut back on the supplementation.

It's, and it's [00:46:00] like it was way over the limit. 'cause I was getting it from the sun and from supplementation.

Justin Houman: How long were you in this period? Or high tea?

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, high tea. Probably like four months. Felt great. Oh my God. It was like being a superhero. Except for the fact that it's not good for you. I didn't have any real side effects 'cause I wasn't angry or anything.

But the testosterone test only went to, I wanna say 1500. It just said greater than 1500, so it means you could be 2,500. Unlikely. Because I wasn't taking testosterone itself, but I was like, where was this energy in my twenties? Because this would've come in handy. I think back then

Justin Houman: if people hear this, they're like, I wanna get on TRT.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, don't take TRT though. I took magnesium vitamin D, some DHEA and a couple of other magnesium and stuff for sleep and my hormones went through the damn roof 'cause I was deficient and I was sleeping like shit. Surprise. And then of course I was working out and eating vegetables and chicken instead of fricking processed foods.

I was [00:47:00] also eating some processed foods, but not exclusively like I was when I grew up in Michigan. And I love Cheetos.

Justin Houman: Some nice flaming hot. It's so

Jordan Harbinger: good. Oh yeah. Any version of Crunchy Cheetos. I will eat it. I don't care. Lime flaming hot, regular. I'm there. What is your opinion on there's these new pills that men can take for birth control?

I'm not a doctor, but I always recommend women also avoid hormonal birth control. Just from what I've read about it, it screws with your whole body. People think you take a pill, it affects one part of you. That's not how anything works Medication wise.

Justin Houman: Yeah. It's hard for it to be for sure. Like a vasectomy.

We've been doing vasectomies for decades

Jordan Harbinger: and it's a physical thing. Plumbing is no longer routed in the same way. The

Justin Houman: end. Yeah. So it's old school, but it works. And I know there's new technologies. They're trying to basically replace the vasectomy. There's different polymers they're trying to inject in there.

They inject it in the lumen, right? In that the inner part of the VAs deference. Oh, and then you can dissolve it if you wanna reverse it. Exactly. But that procedure itself is basically half a vasectomy. In order for them to get access to that inside, they're still opening you up. [00:48:00]

Jordan Harbinger: I see. So it's just as invasive,

Justin Houman: you know, it's basically half as invasive, if you will.

Right now. I don't think we're there for any of these procedures or these medications, like the pills. I think we'll eventually get there. We're just not there yet. Yeah, vasectomy is still the gold standard. It's great. I tell guys it takes seven or eight minutes. I know you had a bad experience, but you're in, you're out.

I,

Jordan Harbinger: I looked at the stats before and after and I was just unlucky. I had a one in 2000 or something, chance of getting an infection and I got lucky there and it's like one of those things where you go, oh my gosh, would you have done it? Yes, I did the right thing. Even though I had an unlucky role, I still did the right thing, I still got the right result.

If I had to have both my testicles removed or something as a result of that infection, then I would probably have gone like, well, shit. That's not what I wanted at all. But since I'm totally fine now, I think it doesn't really matter. But I'm worried about these male contraceptives because I feel like this is one of those things where they go, Hey, there's no side effects.

And if you just stop taking it, you'll make sperm again. And then they find out years later that it causes pancreatic [00:49:00] tumors or something. Or it stops the production of semen because it stops something else that you need.

Justin Houman: Yeah. Or want. Exactly. So that's what I'm saying. We're not there yet with these things to shut off sperm production and then to take a pill, I'm sure you, you have to time it appropriately.

Ultimately that the mechanical obstruction of stopping the router of sperm, it's the best way of doing it.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Tell me about porn and sex here. Because there's a whole bunch of guys they'll write in or I'll see it online and they'll say things like death grip. It's where they, like, they masturbate so much that their grip tightens over time to increase stimulation or something.

'cause their nerves are desensitized. So then when they have sex with a real woman. It's just too loose, even if it's a normal vagina, which to me is very odd to imagine because I don't know how much masturbating you have to do to get there, but I can definitely say I've never been close and I sure as hell tried.

Like what amount do you have to be working on yourself [00:50:00] here, cranking it to get desensitized to real sex?

Justin Houman: It's both grip and frequency. I mean years and years, decades of masturbation. But yeah, it's a real thing. And guys, as much as premature ejaculation is a very real thing. The late ejaculation is a very real thing.

Jordan Harbinger: There's a friend of, a friend I should say, and he's in the adult entertainment industry, and I was like, wow, you must have crazy stories. And he's like, oh, come out with me and some of the girls. So one of the things the girls told me was that a lot of male stars, they have to use porn while they are on a porn set in order to finish.

And I was like, wait, repeat that. You're filming a sexual scene with three women. You're on your phone in the corner looking at a video of a guy who's not you having sex with three women so that you can finish because this is work. It is crazy to me. I feel bad for that guy. Like this man has ruined his penis, essentially.

How do you recover from that?

Justin Houman: A lot of these guys are doing injections too. They're past the point of Viagra in ci. They're doing injections in the penis in order to get erections.

Jordan Harbinger: Good [00:51:00] guy. And these guys are like in their twenties and thirties, right? Yeah. It's a job. What are they injecting, asking for a friend.

Justin Houman: Think of it like liquid Viagra. There's different chemicals. Prostaglandins, the most common one brings more blood flow to the penis. But a lot of these young porn stars, I mean we see 'em at, given where we are, where our office is.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. That's a good, where's your office?

Justin Houman: Right down the street here? Yeah, here in

Jordan Harbinger: Beverly Hills.

I thought they'd be more in the valley, but you know, times have

Justin Houman: changed. They come here and, and we see a lot of these patients, and not only are they young guys who are doing the injections, there's even younger guys who are getting the penile implants. Like guys in their thirties and forties are getting penile implants.

They've exhausted the medications. The Viagra dialysis, the injections don't work anymore. All they could do now is the penile implants.

Jordan Harbinger: So is the implant for size or is the implant because they can't get an erection

Justin Houman: purely for function.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh my god.

Justin Houman: Yeah. It's a pump. We literally put a pump in their penis.

It's all underneath the skin.

Jordan Harbinger: How do you pump it up?

Justin Houman: There's a pump that sits in between the testicles in the scrotum.

Jordan Harbinger: So you have a third nut nut. You have a third nut that's like a Reebok

Justin Houman: pump from the nineties, and you have a little reservoir in your belly.

Jordan Harbinger: Get outta here. So every

Justin Houman: time you wanna have an erection, the [00:52:00] fluid from the reservoir goes into the cylinders, gives you a rock art erection.

Jordan Harbinger: Think Reebok pump was 1989. Some will correct me on this. That's actually incredible technology.

Justin Houman: Yeah, it's space around for decades too. We've been doing this for a long time.

Jordan Harbinger: I just, I have to appreciate that there is a third testicle that you pump and then something in your abdomen puts, I guess a fluid into an implant in your penis and you can get it.

That's actually just amazing.

Justin Houman: And then when you're done, there's a release button.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, I suppose you would want that too. I wouldn't wanna have to have that, but it would be nice to not have to have an erection at an inopportune time. You're on the airplane wearing your joggers, hypothetically, folks, and yeah, you're like, crap, where's my sweater?

I gotta tie this thing around my waist. It's a good problem to have. Yeah. At age 45 again, uh, for those who might have it, it's that daily Cialis. Exactly. So what is the cure then, if you've got the porn brain? You can't get an erection. Are you screwed now or do you just quit porn and it comes back eventually?

Justin Houman: Yeah, so look, I see a lot of young guys who have porn induced ed, right? They [00:53:00] just, they're watching too much porn. When real life comes about, this is nothing compared to what I've seen on the screen. The scroll doesn't match up. Whatever it is. The good thing is I could tell you like anecdotally, if a guys stop for honestly like a couple weeks, you'll start to notice the difference.

Obviously, look, you have to make a long-term change, but within a couple weeks, I'd say guys are able to notice a change. I have these guys come back four weeks later. Some of 'em, I'd say most of 'em, the majority of 'em, like, look, I'm noticing something right? And the longer they do it, the better off they'll be.

There's a lot of plasticity here. So the nerves of the penis get more sensitive. The less you death grip it, you're talking about, the less you do it. So no one is screwed with this. You're not screwed. Just change these habits, break these habits and things will, generally speaking, they'll resolve.

Jordan Harbinger: We're talking porn, dopamine, and why your brain doesn't know the difference between a real life partner and a tab you forgot to close while you go clear your browser history.

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Jordan Harbinger: This episode is sponsored in part by Airbnb. As much as I love what I do and putting out content for you all, I've definitely been feeling a little bit of burnout creeping in. The only thing that truly resets me is not another productivity hack.

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Owning a home is amazing until the repairs hit. When something breaks, it's always expensive and it always kind of at the worst possible time, we've dealt with a pipe leaking through the ceiling. Electrical issues, HVAC problems, you name it, every time. I think if I'd had HomeServe, I'd at least have some peace of mind because those repairs, they add up fast.

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Jordan Harbinger: If you like this episode of the show, I invite you to do what other smart and considerate and likely very fertile listeners do, which is take a moment and support our amazing sponsors, those who make the show possible. All of the deals, discount codes, and ways to support the show are searchable and clickable over at Jordan Harbinger dot com slash deals.

If you can't remember the name of a sponsor or you can't find the code, email me Jordan at Jordan Harbinger dot com. We're happy to surface codes for you. Yes, it's that important that you support those who support the show. Now for the rest of my conversation with Dr. Justin Hooman, it's really easy to judge guys who get hooked [00:58:00] on porn or watch too much porn, but I don't know.

Look, as a guy who grew up in the eighties and nineties, I have real sympathy for people who grew up with unlimited pornographic shit on the internet accessible at all times. Essentially. How do you stay

Justin Houman: away from it?

Jordan Harbinger: There's no chance I would've stayed away from it as a teenager. There's no way. It's not, I'm old enough to know you shouldn't do that.

There's no scenario in which I wouldn't have watched porn constantly as a teenager. Zero chance. I just didn't have access to it. If I wanted to download a pornographic image, it would take 20 minutes, 50 on dialogue. 56. Yeah. That's even if you, yeah, or 28 or 14 four, man. And even that was good tech in the early nineties.

Justin Houman: It slow it go down it.

Jordan Harbinger: My mom caught me downloading a porn gif once it, I remember it was a woman with a life vest on a jet ski, like touching herself. I was like almost done. And my mom came in and was like, what are you doing? Turn this off.

Justin Houman: It was all pixelated. Yeah,

Jordan Harbinger: it was like, probably like a tiny, you know, bitmap or whatever.

It's just absolute trash. And it, it's funny, I remember what that was 'cause it was such an impression on me as a kid. [00:59:00] That was all I had access to man. I, I didn't have porn hubs streaming to my iPad under my blankets at night, at age 13 or whatever kids have now. So I have real sympathy for guys that get stuck with this problem because when you're 13, 14, 15, you don't think, gee, if I do this for a decade, I'm gonna cause myself a real problem.

That's not something that kids think about

Justin Houman: at all.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Justin Houman: I would tell you this, like these young guys who come in, this porn induced ed, it actually leads to these guys get anxiety as a result of it. Of

Jordan Harbinger: course.

Justin Houman: So it literally leads to mental health issues.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Justin Houman: They have anxiety, they have ed, and as a result of it, they get anxiety and then they come to us.

I'm a urologist and they, I'm thinking myself, you gotta go to a therapist. Right? This is past the point of what we do. It's really a bad cascade.

Jordan Harbinger: I agree, man. It's awful. I got an email that was like, I'm afraid to date women. And I was like, they're not so bad. What are you scared of? And he's like, no, it's not.

I'm even bad with women. If I'm good with women and she wants to have sex with me and I can't get it up because porn induced ed and I'm 22, she's gonna tell her friends. And I'm like, God, you're not [01:00:00] wrong. That could happen. And then what? So he's like, I'm just avoiding it. So he doesn't even go on dates.

And I'm like, you're actually handicapping yourself socially. You have porn induced erectile dysfunction at age 22. It's really, it's quite tragic

Justin Houman: porn at that age. Fs you up.

Jordan Harbinger: Yes. Yeah. 'cause your brain's still developing. So guys, stop washing the porn. I know. It's fun and entertaining. Minimize it at the very

Justin Houman: least.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Instead of daily. I don't know. Wait until you're about to explode and then do take care of it. I don't know. What's a healthy porn use? I don't even know. So

Justin Houman: I'll tell you, I had a therapist, a sex therapist, who told me this, like I refer her patients and she said something good. She's like, for every two times you watch porn for masturbation.

One time don't. But really just, you can masturbate. It's fine to masturbate, but obviously within a normal amount. But do it without porn.

Jordan Harbinger: Theater of the mind only. Yeah.

Justin Houman: Use that creative mind.

Jordan Harbinger: That's crazy. Some guys right now are just like, how do I do that? Yeah.

Justin Houman: What's that?

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. What's that exactly?

Imagination. What's that? It's like when your phone battery's low and the video won't play yet. It's slow. Internet guys. [01:01:00] I did a show recently on insulin. Men and women for that matter though, have insulin issues, cortisol issues, thyroid issues seem to be quite common. Now, again, I don't know if there's more thyroid issues or if they're just getting caught more because of testing.

How do you manage things like that? Or do you not view those as important as, say, testosterone management?

Justin Houman: We do know that insulin's part of the bigger picture of diabetes and making sure if your blood glucose levels are high, you always wanna change your diet, clean that up to minimize that. That's the insulin part.

But thyroid hormone is very closely related to testosterone. So if you have low T, you always wanna check your TSH, which is part of the thyroid cascade. TSH. Yeah. Thyroid stimulating hormone. You wanna check that? So that's part of the panel that most doctors would check, is that what T three is? T three is one of the thyroid hormones themselves.

I see. But that's part of the comprehensive hormonal panel. Cortisol, people are checking cortisol more and more. This is the one that, well, you're gonna check your cortisol and your cortisol levels are high. You can probably change your lifestyle. It's more of these things. What are you gonna do with this data?

Well, you gotta try to [01:02:00] minimize your stress levels, which is, if anyone knows how to do that, yeah, let me know. Exactly. Geez. These tests, we're learning more and more about the whole complete picture. I do think some of these tests, you don't necessarily need them as much, but we're slowly getting there.

We're getting better tests to fill in the whole comprehensive picture.

Jordan Harbinger: I know there's Cialis, for example, but there's also PRP. Can we talk about PRP shockwave Botox? Let's talk about these things. I wonder what's sort of hype and what's proven. Maybe we start with PRP that sets off alarm bells. 'cause PRP is like, oh, put it in your knee and your knee's better put it in your elbow.

Your elbow's better. People are just injecting this everywhere they can and somehow it fixes everything. That always makes me give some side eye.

Justin Houman: Yeah, it's made its way to the penis now. Of

Jordan Harbinger: course. Yeah.

Justin Houman: Yeah. So PRP is you spin down the blood, we draw a large amount of blood from you, we spin it down, and then there's a portion of the blood, which is rich in growth factors.

And what we do is we inject that into your penis. About 10 ccs of it.

Jordan Harbinger: Whoa, that's a

Justin Houman: lot. Yeah, it's a decent amount.

Jordan Harbinger: You said it's platelet rich plasma? Is it my [01:03:00] plasma? Oh yeah. Okay, so it's your blood. So you take it from my blood? Yeah. Oh, that's cool. The

Justin Houman: process is you come in, we draw blood, we spin it down for about 30 minutes in order for us to collect that specific platelet rich components.

How much blood

Jordan Harbinger: do you need to get 10 ccs of the platelet rich?

Justin Houman: Yeah, we usually take about 60 ccs of blood. Oh wow. 60 milliliters.

Jordan Harbinger: So this is like. Distilling my blood down to one specific part of it.

Justin Houman: Yeah. It's like petroleum when we're refining petroleum. Same idea.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Huh?

Justin Houman: You are swollen after you get 10 ccs of liquid.

It's a flad penis and then you're injecting it so it could hold it. I try to keep it in there for like an hour and a half, two hours. I tell patients to keep it. We tourniquet the penis in order to keep it in place.

Jordan Harbinger: You wear a tourniquet on your penis for an hour? We wrap

Justin Houman: it. We do a special wrap on it. Oh.

'cause

Jordan Harbinger: I was like, again, I'm no doctor. But isn't it gonna turn blue and fall off? No,

Justin Houman: no, no. We don't cut it off completely. Okay. But its growth factors in the penis. If you asked me anecdotally a few years ago, guys liked it. Now we have data to support its use. It does help with erections definitely in terms of, it helps with basically some of the smooth muscle regeneration within the penis [01:04:00] to create more elasticity.

So more blood flow comes in for stronger erections. I would say if you're gonna do PRP and whatnot, all of these things that we're gonna talk about, these are after doing Viagra and Cialis. Okay. Or at least you wanna be doing Viagra and Cialis while you're doing these things. 'cause they only help.

Jordan Harbinger: How do you know if you need something beyond Viagra or Cialis?

Is it because the Cialis just stops working and you can't get or keep an erection? Like what's the red flag that you're looking for? Because I have no idea if my erection quality is as good as it was 10 years ago. Like there's no meter I put on there. I haven't hooked it up to any machinery.

Justin Houman: Yeah, it's like there's no objective number.

Yeah, so there's two components. So there's two classes, two groups of guys. So one of 'em is the Viagra sales just aren't working anymore. And they're like, all right, well I have to try something else. We'll try these things. And sometimes they jump into the injection, sometimes they jump to the implant. And then there's the other group where they're like, look, I'm young, I'm healthy, I feel good.

I microdose Cialis every once in a while, but I wanna optimize my erections. And that's when we talk about like PRP. Shockwave is a great one. Tell [01:05:00] me

Jordan Harbinger: about

Justin Houman: that. Shockwave.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah,

Justin Houman: shockwaves fantastic. I actually say shockwave is probably amongst all these things. Shockwave is probably the best one. The way it came about is as urologists, we treat kidney stones, right?

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, I never thought about that. I thought you only did erection shit here. No, that's right. You're a real doctor that does other things.

Justin Houman: Kidney stones. Anyways, so we treat kidney stones. One of the ways we do it is with high energy sound waves from the outside. He could just break the stone up into pieces.

Exactly.

Jordan Harbinger: No kidding up from

Justin Houman: the back. Right. Okay. And long story short, one time they looked into the kidney, they're like, wow, this kidney, one of these patients who had numerous shockwave treatments, like, wow, this kidney looks very well vascularized. I wonder what this high energy sound wave is doing. So we've done a lot of studies on this and we see now that high energy sound waves.

Lead to neovascularization or new blood vessel growth. Why It's creating microtraumas.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, that's what I was gonna say. It's rupturing your tissue, so it regrows is that,

Justin Houman: that microtrauma essentially, it doesn't kill it, but a little bit of microtrauma eventually leads to new blood vessel growth. Wow. It works.

So we do it for the erections. There's orthopedics [01:06:00] surgeons who do it for tendons. If you're having like any type of tendinopathy, it works there as well. There's some cardiac surgeons who are doing it for the heart 'cause it penetrates deep and it's great. I would say that if you're trying to optimize your sexual health, like your erections, that's the best way of doing it.

Jordan Harbinger: How many times do you have to get things like PRP or shock? Like is it round and then it's done, or is PRP ongoing? Is shockwave ongoing? What is it like?

Justin Houman: So we know what the induction course is, if you will. The loading dose, the beginning part, but then the maintenance part. This is the part where we're figuring that part out.

Shockwave therapy, it's six treatments over either three or six weeks, and each one takes maybe 15, 20 minutes. And it doesn't really hurt

Jordan Harbinger: this little at home device, which I know is not the same thing as getting it done in a clinic. And I guess I will be, I don't know. Shocking my dong with that later on.

That's nothing. Sounds like a jackhammer, I bet. Oh yeah. Yeah. The neighbors of the hotel are

Justin Houman: gonna be thrilled. They'll be hearing it. And then PRP is just two treatments, but ultimately I'd say if these work for you, I have patients who come in quarterly or twice a year just for repeat [01:07:00] treatments.

Jordan Harbinger: Wow. Two treatments of PRP in your ED is in some people solved.

That's awesome. Not solved. Okay.

Justin Houman: None of this is solved. Okay. But a erection is like a six outta 10. Can we get it to eight? Maybe a nine outta 10? Like that kind of movement. It moves the needle in the right direction.

Jordan Harbinger: That's phenomenal. The shockwave thing is quite interesting. I mean, six treatments over six weeks.

I'm thinking if, do you have to do it over that specific period of time? Or you can only do it once a month? Is that helpful or not as much?

Justin Houman: Not as much the cumulative effect of these treatments. I see. Okay. That's the thing that works best. Gotcha.

Jordan Harbinger: What about Botox? I've actually heard about this and I did an episode.

Penile enhancement and I was like curious about this. So I went to a doctor and asked about it and he offered to give it to me and he put that in. It was like, I'll do this. It's like minimally invasive, right? It's a tiny little, I think insulin like needle or something. Yeah. And I will say I don't have eds, so I can't say that it helped or anything.

I probably wouldn't do it again because I'm not a big fan of injecting things into myself for no good reason. I did it for the show. But tell me how this works, supposedly.

Justin Houman: Did you notice anything? [01:08:00]

Jordan Harbinger: I actually noticed that it maybe did the opposite and I can't tell again 'cause it's like placebo, no SIBO kind of stuff.

But I'm like, huh, I can't tell if it made things better or if it like actually relaxed too much and now it's not as good because I noticed that it wore off and I feel like it's better now. So I'm on the fence, like maybe I took too much. Or if you don't need it, it does bad things. And if you do need it, it does good things.

I really don't know.

Justin Houman: Or maybe he gave you too little. Too little. I see. Maybe,

Jordan Harbinger: huh? Okay.

Justin Houman: It's too small of a dose. But anyways, what does Botox do? It relaxes muscles. So the idea here was it relaxes the smooth muscles, so his arteries dilates them. So more blood flow comes in.

Jordan Harbinger: It's like Cialis. What Cialis does though.

Justin Houman: Exactly. Okay. Same idea, but this is like a stronger dose. Botox is very concentrated around the penis. We've done penile ultrasounds on patients before and after Botox. And objectively like the pulse weight, the amount of blood flow that the velocity in which blood is coming into the penis is definitely [01:09:00] higher after Botox.

So the objective data supports it. Wow. But like clinically, does it make an impact? I have some patients who love it. They come in every three months for it. Some guys love this thing and other guys. No response. Huh, interesting. That's why I wouldn't put it at the top of that list.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay, but what do you think's at the top shockwave, you said?

Yeah, shockwave and

Justin Houman: BRP for sure.

Jordan Harbinger: What about exosomes? Do you use those? Those are like always hit the news cycle.

Justin Houman: It's like micro RNA type proteins that can only help with the idea. I know people are using it for pain throughout their body. People are injecting it. The veins to see goes anywhere in the body and people love it.

We've done it for the penis. We do it with PRP. So to what extent is it the exosomes? Is it the P-R-P-T-B-D on that one?

Jordan Harbinger: PRP looks like it hurts. I looked up a video of this happening and I'm like, that's a big needle going into your penis. No, do use small needles

Justin Houman: for

Jordan Harbinger: that. Oh really? Oh yeah.

Justin Houman: Okay. You could use a small needle for, not an insulin needle, but a small one.

Okay.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. It just, there's something viscerally unappealing about a needle going into your penis.

Justin Houman: I try to numb guys up for that. I bet. Yeah. Do [01:10:00] 'em a favor.

Jordan Harbinger: I'll visit if I ever feel the need to get the PRP I've. So I always wanna try this stuff, but I'm also like, I have this, maybe it's a cognitive bias where I'm like, okay, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

And whenever it comes to medicine, you don't just get the one thing that you want. There's always something else that maybe happens if we don't necessarily fully understand. Oh yeah,

Justin Houman: everything's a trade off. Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: So it's like, uh, I don't know how much I need X, Y, Z. So even with the Cialis thing, I'm like, I always am looking at, is there new research that says that this maybe isn't so good for you?

Is there anything I need to avoid as a result of it? Just, I'm always sort of a, a little bit risk averse maybe when it comes to medication. What do you make of the whole like penis pump, penis extension device thing? Some of it maybe works if you stretch tissue for two hours a day for a year. Is that gonna make it longer?

I don't know.

Justin Houman: Yeah, it's the vacuum erection device

Jordan Harbinger: or just the ones that clamp onto the glands, the head and they literally pull, restore X. Yes, I researched that for an

Justin Houman: episode. They could only help. To what extent are you gonna get [01:11:00] maybe a centimeter? Maybe two centimeters. Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: Not even a full inch, basically.

Half inch.

Justin Houman: Yeah. It's hard to get that. I would tell you this. If you're putting the penis on stretch for long periods of time throughout the course of months, yeah, you could get better length on that. The Restore X is one of those things that's, you can't be a functional, you can't move around your daily life with that thing on.

Jordan Harbinger: No, I saw one, 'cause again, I researched it for our skeptical Sunday on penis enhancement and it's. It also helps get rid of curves if you've curve left right up, down, but it straps in between your legs. It's this big piece of plastic and then it's got like metal rods. So you're not going to the grocery store with this thing on.

You probably can't even walk with a thing on.

Justin Houman: It's like a scaffold to your penis. Yes. It's a

Jordan Harbinger: scaffolding around your penis,

Justin Houman: but continuous weight or stretch can, like any other part of our body, it'll add length to it. Small amounts, like you're not going from four to eight inches, but yeah, you could get a few centimeters.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay, but man, what a commitment to get, not even an inch of length, although I guess if you're below average you have, what is it? Micro penis, like you take whatever you can get.

Justin Houman: [01:12:00] Yeah. There's surgeries now that offer girth and lanes.

Jordan Harbinger: What kind of surgeries are those?

Justin Houman: You look into pma.

Jordan Harbinger: What is that?

Justin Houman: They call it the hem plant now.

Oh, yes,

Jordan Harbinger: I've heard of that.

Justin Houman: It's like a, they put a silicone sheath underneath the skin, but outside the erectile bodies of the penis, and that adds girth. But what we're seeing is over time, because it's continuously stretching, it adds length as well.

Jordan Harbinger: I see.

Justin Houman: Yeah. So that's the continuous stretch I talk about.

Jordan Harbinger: The problem I've seen with that online is that when I research this, since it's a silicone sheath, your body responds by basically building a a wall around it. A capsule. Yes. And that capsule can become rigid and scar ish, and it can actually shrink, so it pulls inwards. The other problem I think, was that having rubber or silicone inside your penis can rub against the skin.

If that happens a lot, it can just rub through the outside of the skin.

Justin Houman: Yeah. And then if you ever erod in that area, you gotta take it out [01:13:00] because of infection. It's a big mess.

Jordan Harbinger: I don't know how you take something like that out without. Also destroying other tissue around it. It just makes me clam up thinking of that.

Justin Houman: Yeah, it comes with risk, no question about it.

Jordan Harbinger: That's scary. What about the pumps and things like that? I've seen those. They seemed a little bit harmless at first, but I've also seen, unfortunately I've seen many photos of guys who claim that they've used it for years and I'm, I'm always like, what is wrong with your penis?

Like discolored weird looking in the pump. Yeah, because I guess what it does is it causes the blood vessels to burst. If you overdo it, you overdo it. Yeah. And then if you do that for long enough, you end up with, I forget what these are called, but basically like discolored rough skin,

Justin Houman: like little

Jordan Harbinger: hematomas.

Is that what it is? It's essentially like bruises that don't go away. Is that what a hematoma is?

Justin Houman: Scars basically?

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Like the skin is just discolored and brown. I talked with another doctor who does hyaluronic acid fillers and I was like, oh, what about the pumps? And he's like, you can tell he does a lot of the adult stars too.

You can tell when [01:14:00] these guys come in because their dick looks like it's just been abused from the pump.

Justin Houman: There is some rule for the pumps though. I will say, like for example, like with this penile implant idea that I talked about, sometimes you have to take it out due to infection anyways when they scar down as a result of it.

So the pump itself really could restore some of that length. It gives them that elasticity. They're doing this for a couple months before we go back in there. But if you're overdoing the pump, it could cause damage for sure.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. It just seems like a tough thing to not overdo. If you're trying to make your penis bigger, you're gonna overdo it.

That's kinda the idea, right?

Justin Houman: Yeah. So we've optimized like sexual function, like ed, we've figured out ways of optimizing that hormonal health, but when it comes to optimizing length, we don't have it. Everything comes with risk, so you gotta be careful.

Jordan Harbinger: What do you think of the other enhancement procedures that are out there on the market?

There's hyaluronic acid fillers, which I just mentioned. Tell me what you think about that. That seems to be like maybe the only safe ish thing. 'cause there's PMMA, which is like a plastic, but you get [01:15:00] granulomas over years, which are essentially, what are those again? So

Justin Houman: those granuloma just come about because either the way they've injected is not uniform or your body is absorbing certain parts of that injectable material, but not other parts of it.

So it becomes like your body's absorbing some of it. What's left is this weird,

Jordan Harbinger: bumpy. Uneven. It

Justin Houman: really, it doesn't look good.

Jordan Harbinger: Imagine trying to take out a little silicone bead, but there's a thousand of them, right? Or a hundred thousand.

Justin Houman: That surgery is messy. And the thing is the nerves for the penis, for sensation are right there.

So that surgery gets very messy.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. So hyaluronic acid, what appealed about that when I looked at the safety profile was that it just goes away over time. And also you can dissolve it using enzyme. Exactly. So like anything where there's an undo switch that takes hours to a day. That seems way safer than injecting silicone or putting an implant in there.

Justin Houman: Yeah, you just wanna go to somebody with anything, whether you're doing any type of surgery, you wanna go to someone who knows what they're doing, even with the filler and you want to just have them guide you through the process. But someone who knows [01:16:00] what they're doing, who does this regularly?

Jordan Harbinger: One of my friends who was also a source on this show is Dr. Joel Pash. I don't know if you know him, but he owns Upsize Clinics. They have 24 25 clinics. They only do the Hy Hyaluronic acid filler. And I asked why? Because, man, you could make so much money doing all this other, and he basically told me all the downsides of how unsafe some of the other things are.

The horror stories are really hor I They're, they're bad, man. I I, very bad. I know the ones that you've probably heard too, and I don't wanna get sued, so I won't mention specific companies, but some of the stuff that we've talked about has complications where they say their complication rate is like 1%.

But if I look at pending lawsuits on Lexis Nexus, there's a lot of them. Allegations are pretty severe and the injuries to that air caused are. Not worth it at all. Yeah, like permanent scarring and disfigurement of your penis or having to take out necrotic tissue, parts of your penis tissue is dead. It's just not something you wanna research before lunch.

Justin Houman: And these guys are young [01:17:00] guys. These guys are getting the surgery are young guys, so be careful.

Jordan Harbinger: The obsession with size is something that I think a lot of guys probably should try to work on and get over, but I'm down for maximizing the health of the erection. Especially because it seems like from this conversation maximizing the erection health is maximizing your health in general.

Justin Houman: Yeah. There's very few times where I think to go to that extent for length and for girth and whatnot, it's a big leap to your point, focus on your erectile function and your sexual health. Those things are more important. Get there.

Jordan Harbinger: Thank you very much, man. Super interesting conversation. I know a lot of the women are like either tuned out or have learned a lot about dicks, but I think for guys, I know I needed to hear this stuff.

Probably several years ago. I think it'll. Maybe some people who don't really care 'cause they're married, maybe if they find out that they're letting their dicks stop working slowly by eating those Cheetos, this'll be the motivation they need to clean it up. So thank you very much.

Justin Houman: My pleasure. Thank you very much.

Jordan Harbinger: Really great [01:18:00] conversation with Dr. Hooman. And if there's one takeaway here, it's that male fertility isn't just about making babies. It's a long-term health signal. Semen quality reflects cardiovascular function, metabolic health, hormone balance, even cancer risk. The earlier you pay attention, the better your chances of preserving fertility, sexual function, and overall longevity.

We'll link Dr. Herman's practice and resources in the show notes at Jordan Harbinger dot com. If you haven't had a basic workup, testosterone, sperm analysis, vascular health, consider doing it. Young guys especially. Don't wait until you're 40 and panicking. Be proactive, future. You will. Thank you. And currently we'll also thank you for listening to the show, advertisers Deals.

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