My Best Friend Took His Own Life
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Welcome to The Referral. I'm Dr. Curran, a surgeon in the NHS. Now, if you like science, medicine, or you're just interested in improving your own health, then this is the perfect podcast for you. Today's topic is an important one and one which affects everyone. It's mental health, and specifically, male mental health. I'm joined by Capital Radio presenter, singer, and Dancing on Ice winner, Sonny J. We found out that we had lost him on air. You would never know

that in his head he was battling something. People die twice.

And the first time is when they're actually gone. But the second time is when you stop talking about them. Later on, I'll be answering your questions in CrowdScience. And if you've got your own question you want answered on this show, get in touch by thereferralpod.com. And if you want even more deep dives into some of the questions you guys ask me, you can subscribe to The Referral Plus. And if you do that, you can download this episode and all the others completely ad-free. Just visit The Referral Show page on Apple Podcasts and hit try free to begin your free trial today.

Sonny J, you're a Capital Radio presenter, you're a Dancing on Ice winner, you're a singer. You experienced significant personal loss in the middle of the COVID pandemic when the world was already pretty rubbish and everyone was stressed. Do you mind talking about that? Of course I don't. No, I think it's actually good to talk about. I feel like the more you talk about it, the less...

Not the less emotions are taken out of it, but the more you start to deal with it, cope with it and acknowledge it and use it for good, you know?

So, of course, yeah, absolutely, fire away if you've got any. Well, I mean, your producer for the show and one of your best friends as well, Joe Lyons, he passed away. He took his own life in 2020. How, when you first heard the news, what were the things you felt and, you know, what were you thinking at the time? You know, it was a weird old day. And it's purely because we obviously, you know, we get up at four o'clock every morning to do a breakfast show. Right.

You go in, he was the first person that was always there in the morning walking into the office. I always see the back of his head. He would be segging the show up to make sure, you know, all the capital bits are in all that sort of stuff. And it was this one morning that he wasn't there and we all thought he slept in. In all honesty, we were going, oh, what an idiot, you know?

It happens. We've all done it. We've all slept in, you know, at 4 a.m. in the morning. And we thought, right, he slept in, that's it. And it got to a certain sort of time where we're going, all right, OK, this is starting to get a bit weird now. You know, you're sleeping and then you're taking the mic. So I remember texting his sister because he lived with his sister. And I was like, oh, look, you're with Joe because he's not basically he's overslept. He's not turned up for work. She was like, no, I'm staying with my mom and dad. And I was thinking, OK, fine.

Well, he's really slept in now. And it got to a point where we just sort of knew there was this weird sort of... You sleep in, but when you do a breakfast show, you only sleep in until about seven o'clock and then you know that you've messed it up. And we ended up basically just finding out on air, which is, I think, the craziest thing now looking back at it. Obviously, it was during COVID. It was like...

height of emotions, I'd say for a lot of people, because there's so much going on and it was, there was stuff in the news that I find crazy. Now we'd like looking back, we go, there was death counts on, on news. I don't know. It sounds bad, but it was like, Oh, another, however many have gone today. And it was like, I feel like in a way I, the reason why I love talking about this so much is because I feel like a lot of people that have blocked out parts of COVID and parts of like, because we just don't want to remember it. And it,

It's one of those things now where I look back and I go, I need to carry on talking about this and carry on talking about my mate because it's a good way of sort of going, oh yeah, that was at this time. And, you know, and actually learning it. I mean, yeah, we found out that we had lost him on air. You know, we were doing a radio show that, you know, supposed to entertain millions in the morning. And we found out on air that our mate had gone and it felt just...

You know, you have this thing of the world just opening, just going underneath you, you know, it was just that feeling of just like, okay, we're all in this together. And, you know, we've lost our best mate here. You know, we've lost our producer. We've lost so much. And yeah, it's so weird looking back at it because you just sort of replay it in your head, you know, and you go, I want to be honest. The last thing I said to him, I remember it was on a Tuesday.

And the last thing I said to him on the Monday, and I'm so pleased that I did this, he was walking out the office before me. And as a producer, you know, as a presenter, you're known to sort of leave early. Do you know what I mean? And the producers stay a bit behind. And he walked out the door before me. And I was like, is that it then, is it? He went, yep. I went, go on then. F off. And that was the last thing I said to him. And he actually did it. It was like, whoa. Yeah, but that was the sort of relationship I had with him, you know, to be able to do that sort of stuff. But I think it's good to talk about it because...

He was the classic stat of a guy that was so happy-go-lucky, you know, just cheer everyone up in the morning, this, that, whatever. You would never know that in his head he was battling something. And I think, you know, to learn from that as a male, not even just as a male, as a human, to learn from that and...

realize that you have to go through things together with people. Even if you're not going through it together with someone, you're just talking about it and you're learning from it, you know, and you're understanding your,

um, mental health, which to me wasn't a thing growing up. I've never, I never thought about mental health and I'm actually, I'm only slowly learning about it still now. I don't fully understand, you know, how people can get so low and how people can get to a point where they feel that they want to take their own life. Like that to me just doesn't,

Do you know what I mean? I feel like, you know, my kind of culture and heritage, you know, I'm Indian by background. So in the South Asian community, mental health is not something which is at the top of everyone's priority, right? And even if someone is suffering mental health conditions, and clearly there are, it's not talked about and it's suppressed. And if it is talked about, it's like, no, forget it. It's a weakness sort of thing. And that's a sort of a traditional thing which is kind of held back. And even though at points in my life,

you know, maybe my first breakup, all these things which have affected my mood in some way from teenage years to now, I've never spoken about it freely in that way to my parents or, you know, any of my family members.

But I also feel in a weird way that we only learn about mental health once we go through stuff, once we go through the bad stuff. So in a weird way, the more bad stuff we go through, the better equipped we become to deal with mental health, which is a weird way to, you know, you learn from experience and you learn from basically horrible things happening. Yeah. I remember when my mum said to me after my best, you know, after Joe passed away, her best friend passed away years ago.

And she always said that, well, she said to me straight away, she was like, this is feels like the worst thing ever right now. And I totally understand. And this is coming from her who's lost her best mate, you know, growing up as well. And she was like, just every day it does get easier. And, you know, you don't stop thinking about them. There's always times where you, and you want to carry on, you know, I think it was, um, I was interviewing Jimmy Carr last year.

And he went through something very similar with Sean Locke. Oh, yeah. And he said something that stuck with me and it will forever stick with me. He said, people die twice. And the first time is when they're actually gone. But the second time is when you stop talking about them. And I think it's so nice to be able to carry on

That, you know, I will continue to talk about Joe because he was my mate and I have so many, like so many good memories with him. And yeah, and I think that's what his family are doing as well. You know, they've set up a charity to be able to carry on talking and learn from it and, you know, put it into practice.

you know, the future of kids and, you know, why, how kids need to learn about mental health when they're young? Because I didn't. Like you said, how do we equip children at a young age to be more emotionally aware and kind of instead of just trying to teach them academics, how do we raise their emotional quotient? You know, in school, you know, even now, I doubt in most schools, there is some sort of

you know, session or sessions or, you know,

or lessons where they're actually told how to, you know, use their emotions in a certain way, how to react to certain things. That doesn't exist. It doesn't exist. And I think that's actually why mentioning Joe's charity now is that they're trying to do that. And, you know, they're trying to put into schools, you know, learning about it. They call it Joe's buddy line. They have a box in a school where you can put, you know, like a confidential letter in. Teachers read it and they can work it out. But it's also teaching kids to have,

to have that buddy to have that mate that checks in on them even when they're young like are you alright and we always say about asking twice because the first time you go are you alright and we will just brush it off and go yeah fine how are you and we go no actually are you okay that second one where you're like oh you're really asking me more like you're getting into what you know I think T

teaching kids, you know, I think it's, you know, teachers maybe not, they haven't got enough to do, but teaching kids in schools to talk to each other. And, you know, I remember I was so fond of my teacher at school that I, I probably could have, if I did feel a certain way, go up and speak to him. Do you know what I mean? But that's how he made me feel and made a lot of people feel, but I don't actually think that a lot of kids have that, you know?

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And I think also, like, aside from, you know, teaching kids how to, you know, use their emotions correctly or kind of, you know, more of an in-depth into psychology, I think it's also important to say that, you know,

One of my best friends from school, from medical school actually, he's a high-functioning guy, doing well. He's a doctor himself, and he's thinking about quitting medicine onto a different career as well. And I'm close to the point where he can talk to me about anything and I can talk to him about anything. And he recently told me that he'd started seeing a therapist. Yeah.

And I just asked why, but he's actually telling me, you know, I'm not, I don't feel low in mood. I just decided to get a therapist because I felt I just wanted to talk to someone like you just sort of professionally talk to someone that's not a friend that doesn't have any prior knowledge of your background and just kind of listens to you talk like a ranting session, almost like a monologue. And he said that that just improves his mental health.

And he was telling me about it. And I thought, wow, that's like almost like a pub session with your mate, but slightly different because it's formalized and you're doing it regularly. And it's a form of just venting, which I find quite helps. Would you say that it's made you want to go? It has. Yeah. Like, you know, listen, you know, I've never suffered with depression. I've been, you know, in low mood. I've been stressed with work recently. But here...

hearing that from him, that almost catharsis of just talking to someone, I'm like, I would want to try it out. And he says, 100%, do it. Yeah. Do you know what? It's quite interesting because while you were saying that, I was like, I picture in my head, me and my best mate, Christian, we,

We, we have, I always say that you have to have a person and a place that you speak to, you know, people about. Christian, for me, I can always have, and I have always done, especially since, you know, my mate passed away, that we would always chat and it's normally over a drink. It's normally in a pub, but if that's our place where we actually open up to each other,

Great. I feel like now you've just said about having a therapist and all that sort of stuff. It makes me question whether you pick and choose what you do open up to about your mate, where when you've actually got someone who is completely not in your life and whatever, you can literally do anything. You've literally, yeah, maybe I need a therapist. I've been offered therapy before after Joe, you know, my company did say, you know, if you want therapy and people did do it, that we worked with and I just chose therapy.

personally not to. I feel like at some point I probably should. What I'll say is that I think there's also a cultural discrepancy in our perception in the UK of what a therapist is and other places. So another one of my mates, maybe about seven years ago now, he moved to LA. And he's deep into business in LA, living life out there, beautiful weather, food, everything. So clearly that's great for his mental health. But also,

And he's like, you know, he's married. He's about to have a kid. Everything is going fine in his life. And he was just mentioning because he wanted to come up with a new app. He's always thinking about new ideas. What about an app for like therapists where you can find a like a yellow phone book for therapists? And he's like, I've got a therapist. And I was like, hang on, hang on. You've got a therapist. I was like, why? And he says, I don't know, like everyone has one out here. And there in America, you know, especially in L.A. and New York,

People just have a therapist. Just like you go to the dentist to do a checkup on your teeth, you'll have a therapist. And there seems to be less stigma attached to that because it's just a thing you should have to be well adjusted. But here, it seems like there's a deficiency in your mental health or there's some abnormality in your state which requires you to seek help from a professional. So I think that limits a lot of people from actually getting help because...

The actual perception of therapy is different to India, to the UK, to Arabic speaking countries, to America, you know, where one it's completely normalized and almost expected. Like what you don't have a therapist. You're weird. Here it's like, oh, you've got a therapist. Yeah. You're so right. Yeah. There is a stigma to it. I don't know why.

But then saying that, I'm saying I don't know why I've not gone to one. So, yeah. So, I mean, therapy is one thing, which is an external factor that you can use to manipulate things. And another thing which, you know, you've spoken about and you've been quite vocal about is...

Going to the gym and having that as a place where you can get away from things and transform yourself and transform your mind. Yeah. At the beginning of this year, January, I sort of started a new job. I used to do obviously the breakfast show.

And I got this opportunity to have my own show and go on to the late show, which means that I wasn't getting up at four o'clock every morning. And I had this thing of, well, I'm going to do something with that time. I'm not going to get up at four o'clock, but I have the morning to myself. What am I going to do? And I thought I'd make the decision of going to the gym. And I would consider me last year actually happy, happy.

I'd say healthy. I wouldn't say the epitome of health, you know, I'd always sort of think about, you know, what I was eating or whatever, but I just enjoyed life. And I, you know, I didn't really care too much about what I was putting in my body. Um,

But this year I just gave myself the goal, you know, I'm 30 in June. I want to get fit and see what I can do and see how better I can feel. And I only now look back and go, I was happy last year. And I didn't actually think there was anything, you know, wrong with me or anything like that, but yeah,

I feel so good now. I'm like, how could I have been happy? So I know that it just makes me feel so good doing it and going to the gym and gives me confidence and it, it gives me drive. It gives me more energy to be able to give to my loved ones and,

it's weird, but that's all stuff that I thought I had last year, but I clearly didn't. There's consistent science to suggest that that is a positive thing. When you go to the gym, your muscles release these myokines, which actually these chemicals which go to your brain and produce positive impacts on the brain. Natural endorphins which are released, which are opioids, natural endogenous opioids which lift your mood, mood elevators.

And actually, I think, you know, the process of just moving as well, whether it's just simply walking or whether you're deadlifting something, that improved blood flow, blood flow to the brain. You know, it staves off future mental health issues and things like dementia. But also in the moment, it's a form of release and catharsis. And just last week, actually, I was speaking to someone on this podcast who said,

From a young age, she was boxing. And she just felt as well when she was in the boxing gym, apart from just training, and she sees a lot of people in there who box for years, and they don't get any better at boxing, right? But it's the community they go for, just hanging around with other people. Yeah, I think it's massive, really. And...

There's some mornings that I still wake up now and I go, I feel really... Not low as in just low energy. I feel low energy, which is the worst because you don't want to do anything. But the moment you're on... I have a bike at home so I can get on the bike. But the moment I'm on it and I get past a certain point, I'm like, oh, I have energy. It's not that I didn't have energy. I just have it now. And then I get off it and I'm like, I feel so good. But it's turning up. It's just the turning up that's the hardest part, isn't it? But when it is raining and cold, it's hard. However, I...

I can honestly say that I, every morning pictured myself of how I sort of wanted to look. Not, I don't think it's how you should. This is where I got confused when I first started, because I always had this image in my head of how I wanted to look. And because growing up, you look at, you know, you, I can pick up the men's health cover and I can, Oh, he looks good. I want to look like that. Um,

But actually, it's become less about how I look and more about how I feel. But at the beginning, in my head, that actually motivated me was how I wanted to look. So getting up on the cold, dark mornings where I might not have had petrol and I didn't lay my clothes out. By the way, putting gym clothes on, right? People say that that's a step to get into the gym. Absolutely not. Gym clothes are so comfortable. I could sit on the sofa and fall asleep in them. So that's not a part of it. But yeah, just that sort of thing of just getting up and going, I need to...

I need to do this because I'm doing, I have a goal and I want to look a certain way. And then it got to a point where it was actually that changed. And I was like, I don't care about how I look anymore. I feel good. So I want to carry on doing this. And it became a bit addictive in a way. Like I had an Apple watch that I just kept on,

Just kept on, I need to close my ring stay. I need to do this. I need to do that. Calorie counting. Oh, how many steps am I getting? And became addictive. And I took it off eventually because I thought, I can't rely on that. I need to rely on how it makes me feel. And actually tracking all that stuff didn't make me feel good. Do you know what I mean? I think, you know, there's a lot to be said for exercise, but I feel that most people don't have to worry about too much exercise and being addicted. You

you know, that is obviously like one extreme. And paradoxically, I've found that often the fittest looking people who've got six packs and the men's health, you know, magazine cover models, they often have pretty poor mental health because to get to that point of, you know, having, you know, every little vein visible on their abdomen, they've had to sacrifice and restrict so much that their libido, their mental health,

Their appetite is just at an all-time low. And they feel terrible, but look great. Yeah, their energy levels would just be so low because it just involves just starving. It does. It's that thing of just like, if you want to look that way, then you shouldn't eat as much and your energy level is just going to be like that. So yeah, it's always been about balance for me. And I can honestly say since January, I do drink. And my thing is, if I can be really strict and clean during the week...

On the weekends, I won't go mad, but I can have a drink and I can, you know, go out for dinner with my girlfriend or I can go see my mates and not feel guilty about it because I know that during that week I've been good. And that for me worked mentally as well, you know. So that's your balance. That's the way you find balance in your life by having some restriction in the week, but then having that ability to, you know, open the floodgates if it were during the weekend. You need something to look forward to. And I always used to think, what's the point of me doing this?

if I am, you know, starving myself or if I am, you know, restricting what I'm doing on the weekends and not seeing my mates because I can't go out because I feel like they all drink. No, I have to have a balance and it's like,

I feel like I've done that so well. And I can honestly say that. Could I have achieved goals quicker? Absolutely. But I would have been that person that you said is low energy and low libido and low this, low that. I don't want to do that. I just want to go through life enjoying it. That's what it's about, isn't it? But I also feel that...

our society has now been engineered and mutated into us expecting happiness all the time. There's an expectation that you have to be happy and cheerful all the time. And that actually, if you are low, then you've got some issues, you've got some mental health issues. But, you know, mental health

is a constantly fluctuating spectrum. Within an hour, you can go from elated to seriously, seriously low mood. And that can change depending on factors that change on a minute-by-minute basis sometimes. I mean, I can feel happier at the end of this podcast than I did at the very start. And I think it's kind of

reorganizing our perspective of how people need to feel and say, actually, do you know what? It's okay not to be happy and feel happy all the time. And it also doesn't mean there's anything wrong. You can go the whole day feeling absolutely miserable and that's fine. Yeah, of course it is. Again, my thing has always been balance.

You know, and if you do feel miserable one day, the next day you might feel a different way. And it's, I always look at it and go, well, at least, you know, I've learned enough. I can feel the difference that in my head, I'm always trying to find the positives, which, you know, I don't know why, but it just makes me deal with stuff.

And yeah, there is days where I'm like, you know, I just don't want to go out or whatever. But I just know that the days that are good and I do feel good, just make it worth it. So actually the in-between, if I can look in between that, I feel all right, you know? I mean, this sounds stupid, but yesterday it was, I got a glimpse of sunshine yesterday and I thought I'd put some shorts on heading into town. Little did I know that when I got outside the train station, it was just, I've never seen rain like it. It was like monsoon yesterday.

And I looked out, I had no umbrella. I had shorts on, you know, trainers, whatever. And I looked at it and I was like, I'm just going to have to walk in it. And I was walking in it, I was thinking, oh, this is rubbish, this. And I was like, well, at least... And that's where my brain then goes. Well, at least, you know, I'm not outside all the time and having to, you know, there's homeless people out there. And then that's where my brain goes. And I don't know why and I don't know how it goes like that. But I just don't go, oh, God, this is really getting me down. And I don't know why I do that. And it might be a...

I dunno, a deflection of something. I don't know. And do you think, do you think there's any difference between men's mental health and women's mental health? Um, I think that obviously there is a stat to say that men don't talk, you know, to each other and open up about their mental health. Um, but there's a stat that women don't. So I, I do, I think things are different possibly.

But mental health is mental health. And, you know, we should be encouraging everyone, you know, to open up to anyone and to chat about how they feel and why they feel like it, you know. And it's hard because I sometimes still don't know to this day. If someone comes to me and says, you know, I'm feeling this way, I don't know the right questions to be able to answer.

Do you know what I mean? Like to make them feel like they've opened up to me. I will ask as many questions as I can to actually understand how they feel and whatever. But I don't know if I'm actually...

But you are because you're there and they're chatting to you and whatever, but you just don't know how to deal with it. Do you know what I mean? No. And I see similar, you know, that this example mirrored in my own clinical practice. Someone comes to me with maybe bowel issues or they've got abdominal pain. And sometimes you can get so caught up in the physical ailments that

that you forget or neglect to ask about the mental health things. Like, how's your sleep, by the way? Because we know that, you know, if you have poor mental health and if you have mental health issues, poor sleep and all of these extraneous factors, that can have physical manifestations. So I'm, you know, running around thinking about a diagnosis for abdominal pain. Could it all be related to something else more insidious in the background? Doctors usually don't.

Number one, they don't have time for this. And often that's not the first thing they think of. We're trying to get to the physical problem first.

And I guess it's a similar thing as like, should actually we be taking a far more holistic view of people in general? When you greet someone, you know, just talking about like, you okay? How are you doing? Kind of rather than just, oh, what'd you do last week? And talking about material things. Yeah. And yeah, I think it's routine as well. Like you said, doctors don't have enough time to be able to ask, what do you do in the morning? Do you have a coffee? How could you possibly do that to every patient that comes in? You can't. So you're right. It is all physical and it is, but actually...

I guess this is where it comes back to therapy side of things and sort of losing the stigma towards it. It's just, there is that, that is your mental health doctor in a way of, you know, just opening up and they can potentially go, you need to be doing this or, you know, so absolutely. And Sonny, before I let you go, go on, got a question for me. I do. Do you know what? I, um, since starting my whole, and I hate using these sort of,

weight loss or transformation sort of thing. There's, there's certain things that I've been, I mean, I spoke to you about my Apple watch and all that sort of stuff and tracking loads. I've, I've now gone the other way where I've got a band on that track sleep that you were just talking about and recovery and all that sort of stuff. So I'm trying to focus more onto that. My thing has always been since I started of knowing what supplements and stuff like that to take, because I know everybody's different, you know, people lacking iron more than people lacking this, but,

I have got, I literally, you could shake me and you would hear pills in me. And I say pills, it's literally just like vitamin D, zinc, magnesium. You know, I've been taking all these different things, ashwagandha and all that sort of stuff. And I'm like, do I need this stuff? I've been told to take it because it should all make things work better.

the way, you know, is there like a normal multivitamin? Like, do you know what I mean? What should we be taking? I'm taking collagen now and I'm like, people say to take it because I'm over 30. So there's so much misinformation in pseudoscience when it comes to supplements and a lot of that is driven by

you know, influencers wanting to sell stuff, promo codes and stuff, you know, at a very basic level, vitamin D is a pretty decent supplement for most people to take, especially if you've got darker skin, especially if you live in a Northern hemispheric country like the UK, where you don't get as much exposure to sunlight. It's good again for mood as well. Vitamin D is important for mood, not just for muscle and bone health. Collagen, no, because

Because the kind of collagen that we consume will be hydrolyzed collagen in the sort of powders or pills or whatever. There is no clinical scientific evidence to suggest that this improves the, you know, clinical appearance of the skin.

So that's usually a waste of money. When it comes to magnesium, now there's some thought that that is one of the most common nutrient deficiencies and people struggle to get magnesium in their diet. You can get magnesium in your diet, you know, plenty of sort of green leaves and nuts. But actually, a lot of people probably don't get enough magnesium. There is some equivocal evidence to suggest it may help with sleep and general relaxation and mood.

But again, you don't necessarily need magnesium. Zinc, again, minimal evidence for that.

The things which do have evidence, in addition to the vitamin D I mentioned, if you're training, for example, like you are, one of the most researched supplements, creatine. Again, and there's recent evidence which suggests that creatine can actually help with mood as well as recovery and all these things. And we know that recovery is also linked with a better mental state. Probably fish oils, especially if you're vegan or vegetarian, because there's certain types of fatty acids you can only get in fish.

And if you're vegan or vegetarian, you're not going to have fish. And your body can only convert a small percentage of the fatty acids, which you can get from plants, into the non-plant type of fatty acid. So if you're a vegan, vegetarian, supplementing with like a fish oil may be beneficial. But apart from that, protein supplements are a good, cheap source of convenient protein. Yeah. Unless you have a nutrient deficiency, everything else is usually BS. So would you say that normally you can get all...

every vitamin in good food that you eat.

Do you know what I mean? Do you have to take vitamins? That's what I'm asking in a way. Can you just do it by food? Yeah, you can do most of it by food. The thing is, right, the people who can't afford to have a nutritious diet probably won't be able to afford these vitamins. Fine. That's the thing, because some of these vitamin companies have a subscription, right? Yeah. And it costs like £50, £100 more a month. That's a lot of money. Oh, absolutely, yeah. You can get...

you know, go to any supermarket, like even low end supermarket, and you can get all you need for less than £50, £100. So it's this kind of false dichotomy that, oh, I don't have a good diet, but I can supplement it all with these things. You can't because it's more expensive, number one. And actually the nutrients that you get from food, from whole foods are way better than just pills and powders. Because with the food, you get a combination of things, you get fiber, you get all these things.

Which you can't replicate with just like, you know, a pill or a potion. Wow. So you've got good skin like that just from... Wash. Wash. Wash your face. If we take anything out of this, just wash. Wash. Yeah. Wash your face, moisturiser, sunscreen. And, you know, if you've got pigmentation or some like, you know, patches of skin, like clumps of skin cells, you can try some retinoid. Right. Right.

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So this podcast is all about providing evidence-based information. So If It Ducks Like a Quack is the part where we debunk medical myths and nonsense. Our first myth, you either have mental health issues or you don't. So it's important to know that mental health is a spectrum. Everyone has mental health and they'll be sitting somewhere isolated.

on a fluctuating spectrum. If you are consistently in one end of the spectrum at the low mood end of the spectrum, you could be then diagnosed with depression or a number of other mental health conditions. But there's nothing that prevents you going from very happy and with a normal mood to going to the other end or closer towards the low mood end of the spectrum.

So no matter what you hear on social media that maybe mental health or depression or any of these mental health conditions are a weakness, that's complete rubbish because no one is immune from having their mental health affected in a negative way. And there are a number of stresses for that. It can be biological because of certain medical conditions. We know that chronic medical conditions, you know, arthritis, endometriosis, cancer, inflammatory bowel diseases, all of these can have a significant benefit.

burden on a person and it can cause low mood and other mental health conditions. There's also psychological factors. There can be things which happen in your brain, any changes which happen in your brain, which predisposes you or increases your risk of various mental health conditions. And finally, social factors as well. Things going on in your life, in your environment. It can be financial, a breakdown of a relationship, you know, arguments with other people,

a loss of a job, a loss of a loved one. There are various external stressors which can also have an impact on your mood. So everyone can be affected in some way or some capacity by mental health. Our second myth, men do not suffer from certain mental health conditions. Now, I'm not a psychologist or a psychiatrist, but I'm pretty sure there is no specific mental health condition which affects

only targets women and not men. Any mental health condition out there which exists right now and is categorized and is diagnosable can affect you regardless of your gender. Now, there can be an increase of mental health issues in women because they have different organs to men. For example, they have ovaries and a uterus. There can be significant issues related to postpartum

depression and postpartum mental health issues, which is actually not that uncommon after pregnancy. Naturally, men cannot get postpartum depression. Indeed, some women, and it's thought to be around one in 10 women, suffer with something known as endometriosis, which is a chronic gynecological condition. And this can have a significant impact on a woman's life such that it can actually affect the quality of life and their mood and increase the risk of mental health conditions like depression and anxiety.

Just before we go, we've got a listener question. This one is from Mike in New Orleans, who says, Some senior individuals in old age require walkers to get around due to what I presume to be gradual weakening of the legs. What confounds me is that the walkers also require considerable arm strength to operate.

So my question is, does arm strength tend to degrade a lot less than leg strength as we grow older in age? Great question, Mike. And, you know, I don't think anyone has significantly looked at it on a population level about comparing the rates of arm muscle degradation versus leg degradation. But what I will say, it's more noticeable when you lose significant muscle mass in your legs.

because it puts you off balance, it puts you at increased risk of falling, it makes you more unstable. And if your mobility is limited, and we walk with our legs, then that is more noticeable than having a poorer grip strength or a poorer arm strength. Because

You know, these elderly people with walkers, they still have some leg mobility, but they have to overcompensate by using their arms more. And so this is one of the things it's important to actually throughout your lifetime, if it's possible to do resistance training, and try to maintain or at least reduce the amount of muscle that you lose with age, you know, after a certain period of time, so after

your 30s and 40s, you begin to continually lose muscle as you grow older, and you lose bone density as well, both, you know, throughout your body, throughout your skeleton. So it's important to do weight-bearing exercises so you can reduce the rate of bone density loss and reduce the rate of muscle loss or sarcopenia, so you can reduce your risk of

you know, infirmity, falling and fractures in older age. Great question, Mike. I hope that answers it. And in this week's extra episode, I'll also be answering a question from Charlie in West London. Charlie's asking about UV lamps and getting her nails done

and whether avoiding contact with the UV light by wearing covering over our hands is helpful, or is that slightly paranoid? To hear my answer to that question and loads more, you just need to subscribe to The Referral Plus, where you can listen to those extra episodes aptly named Crowd Science Extra. And don't forget, if you've got a burning question for me, get in touch via thereferralpod.com. If you enjoyed this podcast, you're going to love even more. So for even more actionable tips,

hit the follow button and obviously give that five star review button a click. I'll see you next time.