Gary Thompson is not A beer guy. He's THE beer guy. For 40 years he worked in the beer industry. He's now retired from Michigan's Powers Distributing.
We open the show with the big question. Is "breaking the seal" an urban legend, or is it true? Your friends often warn you against making that first trip to the men's room in the bar. What's the science behind beer and urination?
What about kidney stones? Dr. Lutz tells us about the connection between beer drinking and passing those awful kidney stones, and he jokes about a near sure-fire way to pass a stone that, frankly, sounds like a lot of fun.
While Dr. Lutz's expertise is in urology, Gary's is in beer. And we spend a fair amount of time in today's episode talking about all things beer. We cover the importance of water in brewing beer, home brewing, and even so-called "rehydrating beers."
Gary tells us what his absolute favorite beer is, what it pairs well with, and why. We also get into other ways to pair beer with food that you might not know about. For example, there are beers that pair well with dessert!
Beyond, urology and beer, Gary and Dr. Lutz discuss overall men's health. Both are self-described exercise "freaks," and we cover the importance of taking care of your body, especially as you get older. And yes, that CAN include drinking beer. We also talk about community events through the MIU Men's Health Foundation, including both men's shared passion for taking care of our military veterans and first responders.
Resources:
Admiral McRaven's 2014 University of Texas Commencement Speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxBQLFLei70p
MIU Men's Health Foundation Website:https://www.miumenshealthfoundation.org/
Dr. Lutz: Welcome to the On Call For Men's Health podcast. And I'm Dr. Michael Lutz. This is where we talk about the things that you don't want to talk about, but these are conversations that could save your life or the lives of the men you love. So thank you for joining us. And today we're going to talk with Gary Thompson.
Gary Thompson is just that beer guy. He's more than just a beer guy. He is THE beer guy. 40 years he's done this. How are you, Gary?
Gary: I'm great. Dr. Lutz, how are you?
Dr. Lutz: Oh, great. I'm so glad that we have this chance just to sit and talk a little bit about beer. I think everybody wants to talk about beer. So let's cut to the chase.
What about breaking the seal? Do you know much about breaking the seal what that is all about?
Gary: No, I don't.
Dr. Lutz: Every guy goes to the bar and they start drinking a couple of beers and they're warned by their friends. They say, hey, just whatever it is, don't go. Don't go to the bathroom yet. Because if you go now you're going to break the seal.
And so,that is one of those urban mythologies. What it really is the reason you so-called "break the seal," it's just a true urban legend because when you hydrate that much with beer, and drink that much beer, you're filling the tank. And so it's not that you go to the bathroom. The beer actually has a blockage of antidiuretic hormone.
So it actually makes you make more fluid. And the other thing is it irritates the bladder and the prostate. So if you drink a lot of beer, you're going to be going a lot. You're not breaking the seal. You're just flushing the system.
Gary: OK. There's a good reason for that.
Dr. Lutz: There is, and I know you're a retired beer guy, but you've done this for 40 years. So for 40 years, what was the thing that you really enjoyed most about being the beer guy?
Gary: Oh, wow. What was the thing I enjoyed most? It's a fun business. It's the entertainment business, really, without having to have a bunch of people, have your name and phone number and stalk you and that sort of stuff.
Everybody wants, as you pointed out earlier, everybody wants to know about beer. Beer is three, four thousand years old. It's one of those things that we all know about. Monks even make. And by golly, they do a great job of making beer. It's been around since the dawn of time and people just... it helps us be social.
The History Channel once did a program on how beer saved civilization. So it's always something people like to talk about.
Dr. Lutz: So just out of curiosity, if you like beer a lot, could somebody make it at home?
Gary: Sure. Oh, you can make it a home and actually pretty simply. There are home brewing kits that you can buy.
There are a bunch of different places where you can go and get a home brewing kit. You can also, if you really want to have some fun, get with the folks at Boston Beer. Once a year. I don't know if they still do it, but once a year, they used to allow people to enter into a beer making contest and they would send you a beer making kit and you would make your beer and send it back to them.
And if they really liked it, if you won the contest, they'd produce the beer and use it as a, like a special one off.
Dr. Lutz: So are they the same ones that make that rehydrating beer after the marathon?
Gary: They are not, they have their own version of it. But the original rehydrating beer with sea salt was made by a different organization that actually started up on the west coast. I believe it was in San Francisco. And then that particular brew and brand caught some fire. And I believe it was acquired by by a much larger brewer.
Dr. Lutz: Now, what would make a beer rehydrating?
Gary: Well I'm not sure, you're, the doctor, but the way that it's explained to me is, number one, the alcohol content's a little lower.
That's not that big a thing or a small thing, but what it does for you is give you a situation where you can consume a little more of it without worrying about getting in your cups or having any of those kinds of problems. It also had salt in it, I believe, and I never had that particular version, but some of them have lime in them.
So you end up in a situation where. You've got kind of a combination of fruit, salt, and water, because beer is 90 percent-ish water, dependent upon your brew. And so you end up in a situation where you put some water back and you put some of your salt back in your body after a good run. And you end up with a little bit of vitamin C.
Dr. Lutz: So you mentioned that beer is 90% water. Are there parts of the world that make really special beers based upon the water supply that they have?
Gary: Oh, Bass Ale used to tout the fact that they had the most perfectly balanced pH water in the world. And that's what made Bass Aleso special. I don't know that that's still the case because I don't know that Bass is made only in that place anymore.
One of the things that they said. And one of the things you'll find about brewers is they work really hard to pH balance their water before they start their brew. And they need to, because if there are different minerals and salts in the water that they used, your recipe comes out a little different than you expected it to.
Dr. Lutz: Well, A lot of beers are known to be very healthy for you. Now I know the US Department of Agriculture and dietary guidelines will say, women should drink one drink a day and men two drinks per day, which is two 12 ounce beers. I'm not sure a lot of people really follow those guidelines, but I guess they have to start from somewhere.
So we'll let them begin with that. Where it ends, we don't know. But some of the things about beer that are so helpful as is that it's actually a great source for soluble fiber, which will help lower your LDLs and improve your bad cholesterol. It's full of protein and vitamin B, which is even higher than you might find in wine.
It's good for your bones because it's high in silicon. It's an excellent source of potassium and magnesium, calcium phosphorus, niacin, folates. Just about everything that you'd find on the side of a vitamin bottle and the darker, the beer, the more the antioxidants. And we know that those are helpful in preventing malignancies in the human body and staying healthful.
So there's a lot of things about beer that are just amazing. And I think a lot of people don't even know it. One of the things from my perspective as a urologist is that it can reduce kidney stones by 40%.
Gary: Wow.
Dr. Lutz: In fact, if you're passing a kidney stone, it'll actually help you pass the stone. And I think that gets me to one of my most important studies was back in Ankara, Turkey.
They did a study in 75 men and they found that if men had intercourse while they were passing a kidney stone up to five millimeters in size, it increased the spontaneous passage of the stone two-fold. And then lo and behold, Michigan State University, which never likes to be outdone about anything, did a study on rollercoaster rides and found that if you sat in a rollercoaster while passing a five millimeter stone, you can increase spontaneous passage two-fold.
So that gets me to think that if you go on a rollercoaster and have sex and drink a beer, while you're on that ride, you are probably going to be passing that stone.
Gary: And having had a kidney stone once upon a time, I can tell you anything you can do to increase the passage would be a good thing.
Dr. Lutz: I got it. I got it. So you're an exercise freak, kind of like I am, and I think that's great. And that's part of what we love about each other and the way that you've been such a great supporter of our foundation when you were working over at Powers Distributing and all of the things that you've done for our foundation.
And I know you love to ride your Peloton now and you also do some yoga and you do just about a little bit of everything. So I think it's great, but I was kind of interested. You said you liked to do, one of your dreams is Tai-Chi. What made you choose Tai-Chi as your martial art of choice?
Gary: Well it's an interesting thing. I was on the top of a building in Chicago of a hotel, because I was staying there for a conference. And I was running at about six o'clock in the morning and it was spring or summer early fall, somewhere where the weather was fairly decent Chicago and the wind wasn't up.
And there was a guy on the roof of that building doing Tai Chi at the same time I was running. And it was difficult for me not to stare at him because it was just the mesmerizing the way he put his fluidity together in his movements. I'm a guy that moves kind of fast and a little herky, jerky and so watching that guy do Tai Chi movements in a way that was very fluid and very controlled and very smooth piqued my curiosity. So since then I've gotten two classes on CDs and failed them both miserably. So, I got to go to somebody who's going to help me try and figure out how to do this.
You
Dr. Lutz: know, my wife has a black belt in Aikido Yoshokai. And I love to watch when they do their practice and prepare for their competitions. It's just beautiful to watch it. I mean, martial arts are just beautiful to watch, but they're not retirement sports. So as you get older, they're really, really challenging because they're pretty hard on your body.
Gary: Tai Chi I think is probably the least hard because of the way it moves and. I would agree with you. I tried karate a number of years ago when my daughter wanted to try it and I thought it was great for her to get involved in it for a lot of reasons. It helps people with discipline and a number of other things. So it was fun to go with her, but I was wasn't good at that one either. And I can understand how it would be hard on your body though. Especially the older you get.
Dr. Lutz: Well, I know you find health and important part of living life. And you made a statement saying that, making my one walk through this park called life, the best I can make it. What do you mean by that? And how do you follow that dictum?
Gary: Well you only get one walk through this. We can say our soul may ride different carbon bodies over the course of time, but we don't know that. So you really only get one chance to experience all that's going on. And so there's a ton of different things that I think open your eyes to the way different people are, the way the earth works, the way your body works.
And it's fun for me to experience most of that stuff. And a lot of it started with beer, believe it or not because people brew beer differently all over the world. The Mesopotamians started brewing beer 3000 years ago. Because nothing bad for you could live in, no known pathogens could live in beer at the time, so they couldn't drink the water out of the Nile so they could make beer and then, and still survive.
So, anyways, out of that process of finding different beers in different places and seeing the world in different places, experiencing different things that different people do and watching how they do it and the joy or the passion that they can do with, it just makes for trying some things new yourself, and finding different stuff out about yourself and about others.
And so that's what that line is supposed to do. It's supposed to help me make sure I make the most out of most day.S every day if I could, but nobody's that good? So most days would be important.
Dr. Lutz: Yeah. I I totally agree with you. I know that life is definitely not a dress rehearsal, and I can tell you that after 36 years of being a practicing urologist and caring for men and watching them truly grow olderr many of them will say, if I knew I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself.
And I really think that's a truism without a doubt, and I've watched it happen. So whenever I counsel men is part of my practice as far as taking the best care of themselves that they can. I always tell them to imagine every time they enter a decade of life, they want to enter that decade as healthily as they can and make sure that they basically go through their own checklist of what it is they need to have done and taken care of. And if there's screening tests, if there's studies to be done, they should get them done and start that decade off as healthy as possible. So they have the best chance of exiting that decade as healthy as possible. And obviously it gets more and more challenging as you get on in the decades of life, because you don't know what God has in his hands for you, but nonetheless, you have to do your part. It doesn't happen automatically.
Gary: It really doesn't,.and then I'm one of those guys. I never thought I was, I knew I was going to get old, but I didn't think it was going to happen as quickly. So I mean, somehow it was always out there in the future. And I think that's the way we all look at it is it's out there in the future.
And you'll worry about that when you start to get old. Well, one day you wake up and you figure out, oh, hey, you know what, I'm sore getting out of bed. Or I got this issue or that issue starting to bother me. And all of a sudden, now it starts to become really important to you and I've been lucky enough, thank goodness, that so far, it hasn't been anything disastrous, but there are many, many people that their health doesn't come naturally. It doesn't come easily. And that group can teach us a lot about going through every day and looking at it in a positive way and figuring out that your health and what you can do about your health is an important.
Dr. Lutz: Yeah. Well, I tell most guys that men make plans while God laughs because it's not up to you, but you can sure try and improve your odds.
Gary: Exactly.
Dr. Lutz: It's a good thing. I love talking about non-profits and charities cause that's kind of who we are and what we do. And I noticed you mentioned that you are a real avid supporter of our military and first responders.
And I don't know if you know this, but our foundation has really focused intensely on those men of the red, white, and blue, our fire, police and EMS, because we really believe that whenever there's an emergency or a crisis, they're the ones who run towards it while we all run away from it and they take many risks on our behalves to help protect us and care for us.
And we need to show them some loving. We need to show them some thank you back for the things that they do. And they take a lot of health risks. Firemen for instance, they actually suffer a lot of malignancies as a result of being exposed to all of the volatile organic compounds that are floating in the air at fire scenes and the contaminants that they experienced on their uniform.
Since they only get a clean uniform, typically once a day, if they have a second or a third fire, they're wearing the same uniform, that'll be filled with those compounds that are toxic to their skin, causing them increased risk of testicular cancer, prostate cancer, and lung cancer. These are risks that they take that I don't think they really bargained for when they choose this profession.
And policemen, for instance, who do shift duties. About 16 to 18% of the population does shift duty. And as a result, they have a higher risk of metabolic diseases like diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. And I don't think they know that either when they choose these professions. And so we need to say, thank you.
And so we're really fortunate. And you were partnering with us when you were working over Powers and we did our Cogs and Kegs event. Our first responders are an intimate part of that event. They make that event fantastic. And by having them there, doing this police escorted ride, there's a lot of loving in the space where the riders love the first responders and back at us so it's it's a really great experience and great event. And I think that we can't do enough to share the the importance of first responders and what they do for our communities.
Gary: I think you're right on Dr. Lutz. Yeah, I think there are two things that have stood out in the last 20 years that really should bring home what folks do. And obviously the first one is 9/11.
If you listen to anybody that did survive it, they talk about coming down the stairs while the firemen were running up the stairs of the world trade center. So, I mean, that's just a perfect example of what you're talking about in terms of running towards the problem versus away from it. The other one is we were involved in trying to support fire department units when the pandemic started well before we had a inoculation or really knew how to deal with the disease. There were a lot of firemen and policemen that were being exposed because of what they were doing with trying to help other people.
And so it's one of those kinds of deals where I don't think they bargain, I don't think anybody thought of a pandemic. When they got into any business, but you end up in a situation where that's what they're dealing with. They're doing things that none of the rest of us can.
Dr. Lutz: I also notice we talked about veterans and you mentioned that one of your heroes is Admiral McRaven, and actually mine as well.
And if you haven't listened to his speech that he gave at the commencement at the University of Texas at Austin, if you haven't listened to it, you need to listen to that speech. It is fabulous. I'm a total speech geek. So whether it's the mountaintop speech or whether it's that or listening to the Kennedy speech, I go. back and I listen to speeches and I can tell you that Admiral McRaven speech is priceless.
Gary: It is. It is fabulous. He's got a book now, too. I don't know if you saw it, Make Your Bed.
Dr. Lutz: Yeah. Based on that speech. And he gets it.
Gary: He does.
Dr. Lutz: I think that it's people like that who express basically what you were saying about your wife, about courage, being courageous. I mean, there's certain things that people you want to have a quality. And courage is probably the person you want to be standing next to all the time.
Gary: You've probably often heard the thing about while I wouldn't want to be in a foxhole with so-and-so or I would want to be in a foxhole with somebody else.
And I can tell you that I would much rather be in the group that wants to be in a foxhole with me then than the group that doesn't, and that is representative of someone's courage. Denzel Washington has got a graduation speech he made that if you haven't listened to. That's another speech to me, listen to, it's really good as it goes.
Dr. Lutz: Yeah. I have to tell you, I have heard that's an amazing speech as well. It's those things that just move you to want to do more, do better and live life with a passion. I know you mentioned about living life with passion, integrity and perseverance. I always say when people ask me like how your kids? Are they really smart?
I said, "Well I don't know. I think they're pretty smart." But yeah. The most important thing I want my kids to be is passionate. If you have passionate children, they're going to be happy with life. There'll be successful and they'll be happy. That's all I ever think about is how to encourage and instill passion in people around me and people that I care about because that's really what it's all about.
Gary: Back to your conversation about "this isn't a dress rehearsal," right? So bring your whole self to whatever you're doing. Because it's not a dress rehearsal and one of the other things we talked briefly about, as I filled out some information before, Andy Andrews has this thing about seven decisions that'll change your life. And,one of the things he says in that 20 or 30 minutes is, everything you do or don't do every day matters and matters now and forever.
So that's a lot of pressure to put on your life. But if you start putting that in perspective and saying, look, those are 15 minutes I don't get back. You just don't get them back. So how you spend them becomes pretty important as you're doing it. So I agree with you. It's a real having passion for every day and trying to figure out how the day's going to come out. Making it come out the best you can. Make it come out is something that's I think really important.
Dr. Lutz: Well, part of it's drinking beer and eating food. I think that's an important part of life. If you were to pick your favorite place to eat, where would that be?
Gary: Well, there are two of them. My favorite place to eat, believe it or not, is Churchill's in downtown Birmingham.
And there's a reason for that. A lot of people are worried about the smoke and you can smell it a little bit, but they've got a pretty sophisticated system, a change in air that allows you to do it. And plus you can sit on the front porch where I'm right out there on the sidewalk and eat. But they have Chimay Grande Reserve beer and they make an absolutely fabulous steak .
And those two things are two of my favorite things in the world. I love Hyde Park. It's got great steaks. And if they served Chimay Grand Reserve, it would be perfect too, but they don't serve Chimay Grande Reserve. So my favorite place is Churchill's.
Dr. Lutz: So tell me about Chimay Grande Reserve. I've never heard of that one before.
Gary: It's a wonderful beer made by monks. It's a Trappist beer made in Belgium. It was originally their Christmas beer that they made. I want to say in 1944. I may be a year or so off on that. So it was their Christmas brew. They always made a special Christmas brew and people loved it so much that they make it all the time.
Now, a lot of people will call it Chimay Blue. It comes in a very heavy bottle because it's bottle conditioned, which means that they put a little bit of Belgian candy sugar in the box at the same time they put the beer in to keep it fresh. And so Chimay can actually age really, really well. I've had some, 2012 Chimay Blue. I've had some 2008 Chimay Blue and it just gets more fabulous over time. It's very malty. You'll get lots of hints of dark fruit and some spices in there. And the longer you let it age, the less hop character you'll notice in it. And it continues to make a little bit of alcohol as it goes because the Belgian candy sugar is eaten by the remaining yeast that's in the bottle, creating some more alcohol, and there's more Vitamin B in it. So when next time you get a chance and you're going to have red meat whether it's a burger or a steak or whatever, or a red sauce on an Italian dish, try and grab yourself a Chimay Blue. Pour it right down the center of the glass and let it bubble up good. You don't want to get all that all those bubbles in your stomach. They're better off coming out of the, having an inch or so head on the beer and you sipping it from there.
Dr. Lutz: Are there other beers at actually age as well? Because I was always under the impression that once a beer gets a little bit older, they don't last. They're dead.
Gary: No, no, no. There are many beers that age really well. In fact, most Belgian beers will. Any beer that's bottle conditioned will age pretty well. So one of the neat things about them one of the breweries out west in Oregon, was that they bottled conditioned a bunch of their beer. And so that's how they keep it in a pretty good place.
That's Dechutes. But Belgian triples typically do very well. Some of the ones that are made in the United States that don't make with traditional Belgian candy sugar, and they don't get enough oxidation in them. So they don't do as well. Affligem is one of them that Affligem Trippel won a World Beer Cup for years, it was like a perennial winner. as a Belgian trippel,, and it's just marvelous. And it will age very, very well, continues to make alcohol in the bottle a little bit. And you can tell most bottle conditioned beers because if you pick them up the bottle's really heavy. Most of them are overseas. Although the guys at Brooklyn Brewery, their Brooklyn, local one and local two are very similar to Belgian brews, and were made that way by Garrett Oliver who studied brewing all across. the world. So there are several that are like that, that will age really, really well.
Dr. Lutz: So you mentioned the Chimay Grande Reserve and beef. Are there other pairings that you think are just so ideal that if you don't do it, you're really missing out?
Gary: Well, there are a lot of different ones that I partake, that I have some fun with, I'm not a big hop guy, but believe it or not, there are, especially if you like a lot of heat in your mouth, if you get something spicy and put a real hoppy ale with it, it'll wind up the spices just enormously. The other ones that are really good, if you can get a dark chocolate stout or even a dark stout, believe it or not, it goes wonderfully with desserts. There's another beer that's made in Scotland.
The Scots are fun because they don't put hops or they put as little hops in their beers as they can. The Scots didn't like buying their hops from the Brits. And so they tried to make a beer with everything, including sea grass, to avoid having to use some hops on it. But there's a brand called Innis & Gunn Original.
And if you pair that up with Dolce de Leche ice cream from Haagen Daaz, it's fabulous, which is something most people don't consider. On a white food basis, Belgian tripels go really, really well with different pork and chicken dishes or creamy sauces like a fettuccine Alfredo, even. The nice thing about those is they're very carbonated.
Those Affligem Trippels are. And so they'll kind of help cleanse your mouth out before you take the next bite. And lasts, you just enjoy it over and over and over again. So it depends on what meal I'm eating, but all those are fun to do. If you've got a salad with Mandarin oranges on it, try it with a Blue Moon. It's just, it's just wonderful.
Dr. Lutz: They all sound great. I'll tell you one day, I'm going to have to do that. And I hope that we can do that together when you come out of hiding from Traverse City and we spend some time here in the Detroit area, that'd be great. I would love it. Well, I would just like to say, thanks so much to Gary Thompson for this great conversation and thank you for joining us.
I'm Dr. Michael Lutz, urologist and founder of that MIU Men's Health Foundation and through our events, resources, and this podcast, we are dedicated to men's health, advocacy and awareness. We're focused on education, research and treatment of prostate cancer and men's health related issues. And for more information about the work we do and how you can get involved, visit us online at www.miumenshealthfoundation.org.