Supporting Men in Schools | A Conversation with Ryan Parke

This episode contains discussion of suicide. So if you're not in the right place for this content, please consider pausing now or listening at another time. When we talk about men's mental health, we're often told men just need to talk more. You must have heard that.

But what if there was something deeper going on? Today, we're going to look at how testosterone impacts men's physical and mental well-being, and some of the surprising ways that it might save lives. Hey, everyone. I'm Shane Leaning.

Welcome to Education Leaders, the chat-topping leadership podcast for school leaders just like you. I'm an organizational coach, and in this show, I get to know the teachers, leaders, and innovators, making a difference in education across the world. Before we jump in today, I'm really excited. This episode is supported by the International Curriculum Association and the University of Warwick's Center for Teacher Development.

Stay tuned to learn more. My guest today is Ryan Park. He's also known as the men's coach. After losing a friend to suicide, Ryan embarked on a bit of a mission to understand why men are dying by suicide at much higher rates than women, even when they're doing everything we tell them to.

And what he's discovered about men's well-being might surprise you. It certainly did me. This conversation challenged my assumptions in the best possible ways, and I know you're going to find it valuable. Let's jump in.

In June 2019, I bumped into a lady who I hadn't seen in years, and I was so excited to hear the latest about her son, because Jenny's son Brad was taller than me, more muscular. Some would say slightly better looking. I know that's hard for you to believe, Shane, but honestly. But the important thing to know is that Brad had a fast car, a big house, a great job, plus he was a dad with a loving wife.

And I like to believe at the time that I was on the same trajectory as Brad, but I was just a couple of years behind because of the age difference. Then I saw the look on his mom's face, and I thought, oh no, what have I said to upset her? And she said, oh my gosh, Ryan, you're asking me how Brad is. You don't know.

Brad's taken his own life. So I was really taken aback by this for a couple of reasons. One, of course, was the initial loss of Brad. But the other thing that really struck me at the time was up until that point in my life, I'd always heard and believed that the reason why men might die from suicide at higher rates than women is simply because they don't talk.

And yet Brad was the most open and articulate man that I knew. In fact, I found out after his death that two years before Brad died, he decided it was time to reach out and get some help with his mental health. One of the ways that Brad decided to do this is he went to see his doctor. Now Brad's doctor did what doctors are trained to do.

And so Brad was referred to talking therapy and prescribed antidepressants. Now Brad attended talking therapy, took antidepressants, and two months before his death, his mum, Jenny, who works in mental health herself, said, Brad, call me every night, tell me how you feel, because you've got to get these feelings off your chest. Now, please don't get me wrong, I'm not for one second suggesting these things didn't help. But what struck me at the time, Shane, was here was a man who'd done all the things that we tell men in crisis to do, and yet he still wasn't here anymore.

And I wondered what else could Brad have done? This did just really strike him for me, Ryan, because I know a little bit about mental health in the community. My wife is a columnist for a newspaper and writes about mental health, and yet I would have gone down the exact same path thinking it's about talking, right? It's about talking with people about it.

That's the biggest help. That's what I'd always believed too. And Brad's mum, Jenny, actually said to me at the time, Ryan, you should learn about this, because every day, where I am in the UK, Jenny said, every five hours, four people take their own lives in the UK and Ireland, and three of them are going to be men. And that pattern actually replicates across almost the entire world that around 75% of people who take their own lives are thought to be male.

Now, I took what Jenny said really seriously, and there and then I set aside one day every week from June 2019 to the end of the year, because I wanted to learn everything I could about male mental health. And on my very first day of research, I was reading a couple of studies actually that stopped me in my tracks, because they were just happening to mention that there appears to be a day every year where heart attacks in men jump up by potentially around 30%. And yet on the same day of the year, heart attacks in women appear to go down significantly. So we spoke about this a little while ago, so you're disqualified from giving this away, Shane.

Well, I will say, listeners, you need to have a little think about that for a second, because when Ryan and I last talked, I was stumped. Yeah, and when I talk about this now, I often invite people to guess what that day is, where heart attacks jump up in men and go down significantly in women. Actually, funnily enough, the first guess that often comes out is Valentine's Day. I think maybe if a man forgets Valentine's Day, that could cause a heart attack, definitely.

But there's often all kinds of brilliant guesses like Christmas Day, New Year's Day. These are all good guesses, but on all these days we've spoken about, on Christmas Day or New Year's Day, heart attacks do jump up in men, but they also go up in women. So to hear about a day where heart attacks went up in men and down in women, I found that really interesting. So go on, go on, you've got to tell us now.

So the day every year where it appears that heart attacks jump up in men and go down in women is the Monday after the clocks jump forward in countries where that happens. And when I learned that, I had to know why. How could the same thing happening impact men and women so differently? So when the clocks jump forwards, which in the UK in 2024 was that first Monday, in April, that's the Monday after the clocks change, when the clocks jump forwards, in theory we should go to bed an hour early.

But Shane, when you lived in the UK, did you ever actually do that? Exactly, it doesn't happen. No, so when the clocks jump forwards, it's like a mass experiment where most people all lose an hour's sleep at the same time. That's right.

What happens in your body when you lose even one hour of sleep depends upon whether you're biologically male or biologically female. In a male body, losing even one hour of sleep lowers testosterone for days. And in a male body, as testosterone goes down, the chances of having a heart attack goes up. And when I first learned that, I remember thinking, that's really weird because I don't know about you, Shane, but at that point in my life, I'd never heard anything positive about testosterone.

Oh yeah, oh yeah, that's a very good point. And I actually remember when I was a kid and there was a fight in school, I remember the teachers saying, it's no wonder they ended up fighting, there was too much testosterone in that room. Oh gosh, that is a classic teacher thing to say, isn't it? I've just realized.

I used to hear it all the time and I just accepted it. So when I learned that testosterone appears to protect men from having a heart attack, I remember thinking, how can a hormone that causes fights in schools protect men from having a heart attack? I decided next week, I've got to learn about this hormone testosterone. So the following week comes around, my first research question of the day is, why does testosterone make men and boys aggressive?

And it turns out, testosterone does not make men or boys aggressive. That's just an urban myth that took hold. It's been disproven many times, it's not been proven. And in fact, there are lots of biological reasons to believe that testosterone actually calms men and boys.

Really? Yeah, it just seems to stick that males are more aggressive, they have higher levels of testosterone, therefore it must be the testosterone without any real interest in the wider factors that are available. So tell me about testosterone more then, this is interesting. So what impact is testosterone having?

I'm assuming some of the work you're doing is around its effect on our mental health, I'm assuming is what you've found. So where your questions are going now, Shane, that's exactly where my mind was going when I learned this. So on that second day of research, I just learned that testosterone wasn't bad, it doesn't make men aggressive, it's just a myth. Now, knowing that testosterone wasn't bad, my next question was, why does it protect a man's heart?

Five years later, I can tell you, there's loads of specific reasons why testosterone protects a man's heart. But what I found more interesting that day is that not only does it seem to protect a man's heart, it also seems to protect his mental health. Multiple studies have found that on average, men who are depressed have much lower levels of testosterone than men who aren't. This also holds true for younger men as well.

And where it gets really interesting is the only study of its kind that looked at the levels of testosterone in men who had sadly taken their own lives found that they had even lower levels of testosterone. And studies on suicide survivors, male suicide survivors, show especially in men with mental health conditions, lower levels of testosterone are associated with thoughts about suicide, with more suicide attempts, and with more aggressive methods. That flips the thinking. Yeah, and when I learned that, I was really interested, so I'll tell you why.

So you know I'm from the UK, I'm from St Albans in Hertfordshire. So I just learned about this connection between low testosterone, depression, and suicide. So in the UK, the single biggest killer of men from the age of 18 to the age of 50 is suicide. And suicide and depression are linked to low levels of testosterone.

But it's also the same across the world. In the world wide, it's believed that the second biggest killer of young men after accidental deaths is suicide. So this is a massive killer worldwide, not just in the UK. And it's associated with having a low level of testosterone.

Now in the UK, the biggest killer of men over the age of 50 is heart disease. Again, that is the story across the world. In fact, heart disease is the single biggest killer of men across the world. It's rising at the moment, and experts think it's gonna remain the biggest killer of men until at least 2050, the way that things are going.

Now heart disease, heart attack, heart failure, and high blood pressure in men are all linked to having a low level of testosterone. The next biggest killer of men after heart disease is cancer. In the UK, the most likely cancer that men will be diagnosed with by a long way is prostate cancer. And many sources suggest that the single most accurate way to diagnose prostate cancer or to detect prostate cancer, one of the biggest predictors is having a low level of testosterone.

In fact, while PSA levels are generally measured, in the West at least, to detect prostate cancer during screening, I know multiple studies that suggest that if we were to start using testosterone levels rather than PSA tests, we would find more prostate cancer and we'd find it sooner and earlier while it's easier to treat. And outside the UK, the most common cancer that men get is lung cancer. And guess what? Lung cancer is associated with having a low level of testosterone.

So this was my first two days of research that we're talking about at the moment, Shane, like about 15 hours of reading publicly available information. And it completely flipped what I thought it was all about because I started out with these assumptions that I'd never even questioned, like testosterone's bad and we just need to get men to talk. And pretty quickly I could see, hold on a minute, testosterone isn't bad. It's actually vital.

Unfortunately, this is something that no one tells men or boys and worse, there's actually stigma associated with testosterone that prevents us from finding out this kind of information. But the other thing I could see really early on is that it seemed way too simplistic, the assumption that I used to have that the reason why men are dying is simply because they're not talking. It appeared even early on that there's a lot more to it than talking alone. This is really interesting, Ryan, and thank you for kind of going on this journey as well, like to explore these things because it's very enlightening.

And I know many of the organizations you work for find this very useful. It's making me go back to the brilliant work that's done by Renee Brown, for example, on connection, you know, and I guess for so much good that has really helped people reflect on their connection in their lives and where they're bringing, but it's also potentially this conversation also disguises other areas that we should be paying attention to, especially in men. The thing that is interesting to me, though, is that if we were to say that connection was the issue, let's say we were saying, okay, connection is the issue, then the cure makes sense. We need to get men talking more.

But if you're saying there is actually a huge link with testosterone, now I'm lost. So where are we supposed to start knowing that information? I can imagine school leaders listening going, oh gosh, so what am I supposed to do with this? Okay, really good question.

So let's talk on a practical level. Given that testosterone seems to be so important in males, and it is, so there's lots of causal reasons why low testosterone today predicts worse mental health, physical health, and life expectancy in the future. So given that it's that important, I think it's really important that we know what actually are the key ingredients for a healthy level of testosterone. Now, at first, I wasn't actually optimistic, Shane, because I don't know about you, but I'd always heard that testosterone levels naturally decline in men, and that once males get to about 30, testosterone levels start to fall off a cliff.

And so I thought, well, there's not much I can do about that, because I can change a lot of things, but I can't change my age. But based on what I know now, I can tell you that age is not the biggest factor when it comes to testosterone levels in men. It is all about lifestyle. And I have seen amazing transformations in my own body.

And now this is what I do for a living. I've seen amazing transformations in the men I've worked with. And as their testosterone levels have improved, their mental health has improved exponentially. So given that, I think there's five factors that are really, really important for healthy testosterone levels, and I'm going to try and put them into a logical order for you.

The first is something we've actually already spoken about in a weird way, because remember, when men lose one hour of... Yep, sleep. Yep, testosterone is made when men sleep. So what that means is lack of sleep easily translates to a lack of testosterone.

The longer you're awake for, the lower your levels of testosterone, the less time you sleep for. In fact, there's a 2018 study that seems to suggest that each single hour of missed sleep lowers a man's testosterone by roughly the equivalent of 12 years of aging. Wow. So just to put that in perspective for us.

Gosh, that's shocking. I'm writing myself a to-do list as we speak. Yeah. So to put that in context, I'm 34.

I know that's hard for you to believe, but I had a very easy childhood. But if I had missed an hour of sleep in the last 24 hours, that means that all other things being equal, I'd have roughly the same level of testosterone as a 46-year-old man who got an extra hour of sleep over me. And if I missed two hours, it's roughly equivalent to a 58-year-old man. Sleep's the biggest factor because that's when testosterone's made.

Right. So that's number one. Number two is diet is what we eat. And specifically, testosterone, like loads of important hormones, is made out of natural fats.

And actually, there's reasons to believe it's a bit controversial, but it appears to be made out of saturated fats. Yeah. That's what we're told to avoid. And in the decades since the modern dietary guidelines came in, testosterone levels have plummeted in countries where they introduced the guidelines to eat low levels of fat and instead get our energy from sugar and starch.

So we need to know what to eat. And I've seen incredible changes. So one of the workshops I deliver is one of my sort of more advanced workshops. I have like introduction workshops to this topic, but then one of them is I have a deep dive, a two-hour deep dive on testosterone.

It's called Hack Your Health. And one of the men who was in my last cohort came to that workshop because he wanted to improve his testosterone levels, followed what we spoke about in the workshop, decided to use those strategies. The next day was the last time he took his medication for high blood pressure. The next day, he'd been taking it for 12 years.

He spoke to his doctor. His doctor said, yes, discontinue. It'd be safe if blood pressures come down so much. And four weeks later, he no longer had type 2 diabetes.

Really? Yeah. And the reason is, so because testosterone is such a brilliant indicator of, it's called metabolic health. It's the health behind the scenes that's connected to your physical health and your mental health and your life expectancy.

Testosterone is a brilliant indicator for that. That's why men need to know about it. Because it's like checking the oil in your car. You know what's going on deep within your body.

So in order to improve his testosterone levels, which he was motivated to do, a side effect of that is his high blood pressure as type 2 diabetes was reversed. I want to take a moment to tell you about this event from the ICA. It's called the learning effect. Play Paradox Passion.

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I wouldn't have a clue where to start with my testosterone. I just never thought to go check that. Yeah, of course not, because the narrative at the moment doesn't place any value on it. And actually, I don't really know of any conversations that I can only speak for the United Kingdom, but I don't really know of any conversations the men can have with their doctor that would trigger a testosterone test besides low sexual desire or erectile dysfunction.

There's so much evidence that low testosterone is associated with depression, with type 2 diabetes, with high blood pressure, with enlarged prostate, with being overweight. And yet, none of those things cause an inexpensive testosterone test in the UK. Gosh. Or so far as I'm aware, in most places.

So we have sleep, we have diet. Good, number three. Should we keep going, number three? I've got so many questions I wanna ask you, but I'd like to hear the list.

Okay, cool, right. Sleep, diet, exercise. Of course. And specifically, yeah, you guessed it right, but there's a threshold with exercise that I think everyone should be aware of, whether you're male, female, any gender identity, whatever your age, the threshold we should be aware of is 150 minutes of exercise a week, which is 20 minutes a day.

Now, there was a massive meta-analysis, a study of studies that came out last year. Over 100,000 participants were included. And it suggests that once you get to 150 minutes of exercise a week, exercise is actually more impactful, more effective, one and a half times more effective, in fact, than antidepressants, and one and a half times more effective than talking therapies when it comes to the treatment of depression, stress, and anxiety. And how often are we told that?

It's funny, it's seen as almost like an add-on, isn't it? Like, okay, you're struggling with your mental health, so get the tablets, do your talking therapy, and then, you know, a little Brucey bonus is to go and do a bit of exercise. But actually, 1.5 times is huge effect size.

And we're talking about 20 minutes a day. We're not talking about you've got to run a marathon a week. We're talking about 20 minutes a day. That's the threshold.

20 minutes of a type of exercise, is it? Like, is strength better? Like, that's what I would assume. So if you're not getting 150 minutes at the moment, then what you'd want to be aiming for really is what's referred to as aerobic exercise, specifically moderate aerobic exercise.

And that's anything you're doing, Shane, where you're physically active to the point where you wouldn't be able to sing, but you could still talk. Yeah. And you might listen to me and think, well, Ryan, I can tell you can't sing from your speaking voice, and you'd be right. But the important thing is, you need to be sufficiently out of breath that you wouldn't be able to sing.

So depending on your current level of fitness, that will dictate what would count as exercise for you. So for some people, going for a walk after work would prevent them from being able to sing, but other people might think, well, actually, Ryan, I could walk for a couple of hours. I would need to go for a jog or a swim. I love that.

That's such a simple way to frame it as well. That's really nice. Okay, so exercise 20 minutes a day or 150 minutes a week to the point where you can talk, but you can't sing. This is so clear.

Great. When you're at 150, all adults should have, according to the UK's NHS service, all adults should have at least two resistance training sessions a week. And if this seems daunting, any exercise is better than none. Five minutes a day is better than zero.

Yeah. So we've got sleep, diet, exercise. Then the next big thing. Yeah, well, now you've lost me because those are three words that I was maybe expecting.

So what's next? Right, this is where it gets really interesting. The next big one is vitamin D. Specifically vitamin D3, which is, it's called a vitamin.

It's actually a pre hormone, but let's not get confused about that. Your body makes it. So it's a vitamin that animals make from being in the sun. Yeah, great.

Well, I get very little of living in Shanghai. And loads of people get very little, unfortunately. So it's been found that men who have a low level of vitamin D have very low levels of testosterone. And it appears that it's because vitamin D is required for the process of making testosterone.

It's not that they co-occur, it's that one seems to cause the other. And I know that because I worked with men who started supplementing vitamin D and it's massively increased their testosterone levels. So many places around the world, during the summer, all you need is about 10 minutes of midday sun for a healthy level of vitamin D. But during the winter months, because we wrap up warmer, and depending on where you are in the world, there might be a lot less sun.

In some places in the world, like Northern Europe, you would need around two hours of midday sun during the winter for a healthy level of vitamin D, which most people just can't get. Yeah, that's right. So we would potentially need to supplement vitamin D. Okay, this is really, really helpful.

I'm glad I've got my little tub of vitamin D on my office work shelf now. So there is a little complication to that, which is vitamin D, like a couple of other vitamins like K, is fat soluble, which means it's absorbed in fat. And actually, there's a really interesting study which took 32, they were actually healthcare practitioners, I believe, divided into two groups. They all took a massive vitamin D supplement, really big.

And one group had it with a low fat meal and the other had it with a meal that contained like a healthy amount of fat. The group who had the fatty meal, their vitamin D after two weeks was up by about 26%. The group who had vitamin D as part of a low fat meal, two weeks later, their vitamin D levels were down after taking the supplement. Oh, no, Ryan, this is very problematic for me because I was just feeling very good about my vitamin D being on the shelf.

And yeah, I have it with my lunch at work, which is usually a salad. That's terrible, terrible idea. I should have it with my nice fatty dinner. Yeah, in fact, fat is such a key component for metabolic health, hormone health in men, in everyone.

Really, the low fat guidelines are posing so many risks to testosterone. We could do a whole podcast on that, but there's a lot more to it than that. Our job today is to make people aware that there's more to it than just having the supplements on the shelf. And then we've got a fifth factor as well.

So the fifth factor is sobriety. And I'm not talking about be sober forever. I just don't know a better word for not drinking alcohol. So I end up saying sobriety.

It's been found that each single alcoholic drink may temporarily lower a man's testosterone by roughly the equivalent of six years of aging. And it stacks. And I think this is something that men and young men need to know about because alcohol lowers testosterone in men. Men with low testosterone are much more likely to be depressed and to have physical health issues in the future.

And what do depressed men often like to do? It's a vicious cycle. Drink alcohol, yeah, exactly. And so what happened years ago, Shane, is I remember taking a look at these key ingredients for a healthy level of testosterone and thinking, oh crap, because you know what, I knew Brad.

And I know that, yeah, he did all the things that we tell men in crisis to do. He reached out for help. He went to see his doctor. He attended talking therapy.

He took antidepressants. He called his mum every night and told her how he was feeling. But nobody that Brad spoke to realized, and I knew him well enough to know, that sleep, diet, exercise, sunshine, and sobriety, they just weren't on Brad's list of priorities. And I realized at the time, they weren't on mine either.

And I actually came to believe that trying to be a man is something that kills a lot of men. What a powerful statement to make. Do you know, this is fascinating for me. So, okay, we've got a five, sleep, diet, exercise, vitamin D, and sobriety.

So how I'm thinking is, I know a lot of men who are listening are gonna be right in that demographic where it gets real. So they're gonna be like, okay, this is great for me. Education Leaders has become a self-help podcast. So this is great.

This is really, really useful. But I guess the next thought is, who are the men who are working in my school, who are in that category as well? So how are the teachers and the staff doing? And am I, I guess, looking at and supporting them to make sure I'm checking in, are they getting enough sleep?

Are there ways that we can talk about these different things to support the men in schools? Is this information also useful? I mean, students, they're all kind of 18 and below in international schools. So in the work you do, do you predominantly work with those who've kind of hit 30, or is this actually useful information for younger?

So I believe it is very useful for younger men and even for boys, but for a different reason. So when you're under the age of probably 21, you're gonna have higher levels of testosterone than men over the age of 21 because of the fact you're going through massive hormonal changes. Yeah. However, and unfortunately there's almost no research that I can see on hormonal health in teenage boys.

So we have to start by saying anyone that comes on here that tells you they know, they've seen something I haven't seen. I've not seen any interest in the hormones of teenage boys in the years that I've been doing this. I haven't found any studies. It's really bizarre.

Just an assumption that they have high testosterone. We know that, but we don't know whether it's linked to lifestyle or whether lifestyle could impede that. Here's where I think Shane is really, really useful to young men is I believe that understanding testosterone is the missing link of male wellbeing. And I wanna explain what I mean by that, which is young men and boys, they are actually motivated to have a healthy level of testosterone.

It sounds like something that agrees with their general identity of what it is to be male. And it's extremely motivating for them. Not only is it motivating, it's easy to measure, which men like to have something they can measure to see the progress and it's easy to increase. As I said, I've seen men double their testosterone levels in a couple of weeks after actually taking some of these strategies into account and changing their lifestyle.

I believe that sharing this knowledge around testosterone is the missing link to motivate young men to do the things we want them to do, to sleep, to get a healthy diet, to exercise, and to be interested in sunshine and sobriety. Because if testosterone is bad, then wellbeing doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense. Why would you sleep?

Why would you have a healthy diet? Why would you exercise if you're being filled up with a bad hormone that makes you aggressive? Wellbeing doesn't make sense under the current paradigm. And when you start to read studies and you go, wow, this is such an important hormone, not only does wellbeing make sense, you need to look after yourself, but young men are motivated to do it because they want a healthy level of testosterone.

It's the missing link. This has just really flipped my thinking and I think that's a really healthy message. And what really strikes me as well is those five areas that you talk about about increasing testosterone just seem so counter to assumptions that you hold around the word testosterone because it's so closely linked to aggression or, I don't know, lads, lads, lads, this kind of mentality that you would think that testosterone was induced by these alcohol nights out, the idea of aggression and fighting and these kind of things. And actually what you're saying is sleep, diet, vitamin, exercise, sunshine, being outside in the day.

These are real man-boosting superchargers, right? Yeah. So there is an element which we haven't dived into. I go into it in my talks and workshops.

Testosterone is really stimulated by competition. But you have to remember, testosterone has a calming impact. So where we see incidences of aggression when there's like losses in competition and stuff like that, based on what I know about hormones, it seems to me that the testosterone has a calming impact. But when testosterone crashes, for example, through drinking alcohol, men are left with the stress hormones that make them aggressive like noradrenaline.

Now, drinking alcohol reduces testosterone and raises a stress hormone called noradrenaline. Noradrenaline is proven to be associated with aggression. Testosterone isn't. And we know from life experience that drunk men are more aggressive, but it's blamed on testosterone, which doesn't make any sense.

That's absolutely fascinating. Ryan, you're a wealth of knowledge on this. Where can people go and read more about this or learn more about this? Because I'm desperate to read more now and I need to know where to go.

Okay, this might turn into a sales pitch. I'm often asked, where's the book? And I can't point anyone to a book that says this stuff. This is where I came to after digesting over 1200 different studies that I link to on my website, if anyone wants to read them, and my experience coaching hundreds of men.

And I have the privilege of seeing their hormone levels and my hormone levels as I change things in my life and as they change things in their life. This is where I've arrived at. However, I am working on a book, which will be out soon, and it's called How to Help Him. It's actually a book for women worried about a man, and it's gonna help them apply all this stuff.

Also, if anyone wants to have a look on my website, from time to time, there are open webinars I do that come up, which are often funded by amazing suicide prevention charities like The Ollie Foundation. I know that it was Debbie who put us in touch. She's amazing. And so what that means is you can actually come along, learn more about this kind of information.

And that's the men's coach for Code EK. Didn't I tell you this conversation was gonna challenge you? It really got me thinking about our approach to men's mental health, especially in schools. Those five key factors, sleep, diet, exercise, vitamin D, sobriety.

They're not just good health advice, they're really linked to testosterone levels, which, as Ryan suggests, has a big impact on our physical and mental well-being. There's a few takeaways, I think, from this episode. First, we can reconsider how we're talking about testosterone with boys and men in the schools. Can we look at those lifestyle factors?

Are there any interventions we could make? And we know the research really talks about the importance of individualized approach to well-being. What works for one group may not work for others. What works for women may not work the same for men and vice versa.

What does that mean for the support that you're giving young men in your schools? You can find Ryan his amazing work on themenscoach.co.uk.

He shares research, offers workshops all based on these findings, and all of those links are in the show notes. Education Leaders is hosted by me, Shane Leaning. Thanks so much to the show editor, Pete McGill, and for the original music by EMA Silver. I'm really grateful that you tuned in today, and as ever, if we don't speak before, I'll see you here next week.

If you're interested in the work of my show's partners, the University of Warwick and the International Curriculum Association, head to the show notes to get links to learn more.