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Is Your Doctor Making You Sick? Ozempic, + Rising Cancer Rates | Dr. Marty Makary
01:12:28
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- [00:00]
Courtney Swan
On today's episode of the Real Foodology.
- [00:02]
Dr. Marty Makary
Podcast, take a step back and look around and realize what's going on. We have the sickest population in the history of the world. It's not the fault of the kids. This is something adults have done to children.
- [00:16]
Courtney Swan
Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of the Real Foodology Podcast. As always, I'm your host, Courtney Swan, and today I sit down with Dr. Marty Makary.
- [00:25]
Hector
He is amazing.
- [00:26]
Courtney Swan
I had the pleasure of sitting down with him at the Senate hearing a couple weeks ago, and if you guys have not listened to his talk, I highly recommend going back and listening to that because it was incredible. In fact, after we left that Senate hearing, my fiance Hector said that this was his favorite talk, besides mine, of course. At the Senate hearing, he really. He said that he was blown away by what he was saying. The information and the stats that he was dropping and the fact that this man is a surgical oncology and gastrointestinal surgeon at John Hopkins Hospital. He also studied. Studied at Harvard, so he is as decorated as they come in the medical community. And his message is so powerful right now. He actually just wrote a book on all of this called Blind Spots, where what he has found working in this world is that the medical system has been captured by big pharma. And there are all these blind spots that are happening in the medical community. There's this group think where if you think outside of the box, you are disbanded or you are kicked out of your medical group or you're fired from your hospital. Big pharmaceutical companies are paying for desired outcomes in certain studies. And as a result, we are stunting the ability to progress real scientific research about what is actually going on right now. Not to mention, one of the biggest points that he pointed out at our Senate hearing was that his group does more pancreatic cancer surgeries than any other hospital in the United States. But nobody has stopped in that world to ask why pancreatic cancer has doubled in the last 20 years. I shouldn't say nobody. Many people are not stopping to actually ask, okay, but what is the root cause of all this? How did we get here? Because everybody's heads are down, you know, putting out fires, and obviously we need this. But many of these medical doctors have been trained to only care acutely when there's already an issue. And the problem is, is that we are dealing with so many chronic diseases that if we could get to the root cause and we could practice preventative care, we could stop it in its tracks, reverse it, or even stop it from happening in the first place. So he is just an amazing thought leader in this world. I was so grateful I got to sit down and speak with him. And I think you guys are really going to love this episode. There's been so many amazing episodes that I've been coming out with lately that are talking about all the corruption of all of this and it gives me a lot of hope. Gives me a lot of hope. I remind you all of this, all of the time. You have two choices. You can either choose to allow this to scare you and make you apathetic and you put your head in the sand and say, la la la la la. This is not happening. I'm gonna ignore this. Or you can choose to allow this to empower you because now you know what's going on. There's no wool over your eyes anymore. You know what the solutions are because we have so many solutions. These podcast episodes are full of so much hope and solutions for all of this because, you know, in this day and age, it's on us to protect our health. You know, we have to become the CEOs of our own health and we have to make sure that we are healthy enough that we can avoid this sick system. All that being said, I hope that y'all love the episode. If you could take a moment to rate and review it. It means so much. It does so much for the show. More than you could ever even imagine. And it takes two seconds. And if you're really loving this particular episode, if you want to share it on Instagram, tag me reelfoodology ealthoodology Podcast. I really appreciate it. I see all of your messages and I'm just so grateful for the support. So thanks for listening guys. 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- [05:57]
Hector
Better.
- [05:58]
Courtney Swan
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- [06:36]
Hector
Started recording that I'm so grateful for your voice in this movement right now because I think a lot of people are seeing what you're talking about. But people get labeled as crazy or anti science because they don't have the background that you do with Harvard and John Hopkins. So when somebody like you Stands up and you're like, hey, I have all these academic academia medals, and I've done all the studying, and I've gone through the medical school, and I'm seeing this. It's really powerful when you say it.
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Dr. Marty Makary
Well, thanks.
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Courtney Swan
Yeah.
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Dr. Marty Makary
You know, collecting these badges that we're told to do in life is almost ceremonial, and sometimes we know that it has very little meaning, but it's really a. You're describing really what's become very tribal. You know, it's so territorial now. It's like, hey, let's find a gotcha. Oh, you didn't do this. You don't have this degree. Or that degree didn't count. It's like, degrees are meaningless. Learning is what counts. And people are learning now from podcasts and books and people like yourself. So thank you for what you do, Courtney.
- [07:39]
Hector
Thank you. I really, really appreciate that. But you're right, it's become so tribal. And it is. It's interesting because when I say stuff like this, people start to question, like, oh, well, where did you get your degree? Or do you actually really know what you're talking about? Did you actually graduate with a master's of science? And it is interesting because we've gotten to this point now where you can't even say something that's common sense without somebody questioning where you got your degree from. And the tribalism is crazy.
- [08:04]
Dr. Marty Makary
Tribalism, yeah. It's barbaric.
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Hector
It really is. So I'm curious how you started kind of figuring this out. I mean, to me, it makes perfect sense, and it's common sense. But how are there so many people, how are there so many doctors, very smart medical students in this medical system that are not seeing it and speaking out.
- [08:24]
Dr. Marty Makary
I think there's a culture of medicine where when you show up on day one, it's memorized, regurgitate. Every now and then we stop and we're like, whoa, wait a minute, what's going on here? Why is infertility going way up? Why is the age of puberty going down every year? Why is all these chronic diseases surging? And you're kind of told, put your head down and keep memorizing and regurgitating. And then when you come out into practice, put your head down and keep billing and coding, and we're going to measure you by your throughput. And if you want to be great, here's the greatness. The guy who has a subspecialty focus, who spent his whole career on one tiny part of the body and bills a ton because everybody wants to See them. And so there's this really scary culture. And we take these bright altruistic people who are very creative, who want to ask the big questions, and it's almost we beat it out of them. And that's what it results in this culture where we develop these giant blind spots, things in medicine where there's a good body of science and research to support the harms of ultra processed foods and seed oils and food dyes and chemicals and pesticides and heavy metals and all of these things that are driving chronic diseases. But it's in our blind spot. We don't talk about it. We focus on this very rudimentary model that is very limited, that there has to be a randomized control trial isolating one factor or it's not legitimate science. And when that culture permeates the medical journals, when it permeates the medical schools, when you have heavy funding of pharma, of medical schools and hospitals, it becomes a culture where you have good people working in a bad system.
- [10:22]
Courtney Swan
Yeah.
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Hector
And it becomes very biased because then you have these big pharma companies controlling the studies to make their medicine look better than it is because they have an outcome that they want with this study. So I'm curious, so you wrote this book Blind Spots. What are some of the biggest blind spots that you've found?
- [10:41]
Dr. Marty Makary
Well, I think the biggest blind spot, and there's a lot of them, I mean, there's an epidemic of medical dogma. But I'd say the biggest blind spot is that all of these chronic diseases we medicate and we operate on are on the rise in our living generation. They were rare in many instances a generation or two ago. They're still rare in parts of the world that are eating good whole foods from good soil. And we don't talk about them. And so the rise of all these things are obviously the result of the cumulative effect of all of these pro inflammatory agents, all of these things that alter gut microbiome health, all of these things that change our physiology and change our insulin metabolism. It's so obvious that's what's going on. I mean, you can go to communities that are still eating great foods in the United States. I mean, they're rare, you know, a subset of the Amish maybe. And you just, you don't see the rates of colon cancer surging in young people like you do in traditional western food cultures. So I think that's the biggest blind spot.
- [11:53]
Courtney Swan
Yeah, I mean, you look at like.
- [11:55]
Hector
I know Kelly uses this example all the time.
- [11:57]
Courtney Swan
You look at America, right Now we.
- [11:58]
Hector
Have 50% obesity rate in young children, and then In Japan, it's 3%. So that's telling us something's going wrong here.
- [12:06]
Dr. Marty Makary
Yeah, it's not that American kids are more lazy or more disobedient.
- [12:09]
Hector
Exactly.
- [12:10]
Dr. Marty Makary
It's what we've done to children. This is something adults have done to children. We give them these screens that are designed to give them these dopamine hits. We destroy their circadian rhythms. We wake them up early, give them sugary processed foods and ultra processed foods. They have a food coma when they go to school. They have.
- [12:33]
Hector
And they can't pay attention.
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Dr. Marty Makary
They can't pay attention. Then we hit them again with school lunches, and they're in another food coma. They have trouble paying attention. And then this vicious cycle of a lack of sort of self confidence, self confidence goes down. And so what you have then are these students who cannot sit sedentary for seven hours a day when their circadian rhythms are messed up, when they're poisoned with ultra processed food and hit with these sugar highs. And then what do we do? We diagnose them and medicate them. It's insane. And look, there are true psychiatric illnesses in children. But I was just talking to a psychiatrist who says this field has lost its way, and now it's bordering and engaging in the medicalization of ordinary life. And so how do we not talk about these underlying root issues? Well, when you have a system that's focused on billing and coding, when you have a medical profession where everybody is so busy billing and coding and collecting revenue and measuring revenue and measuring the throughput, everyone is so busy on these peripheral issues, and no one is talking about the root cause of our health crisis in America.
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Hector
So I want to know. I mean, I know it's the tribalism.
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Courtney Swan
But, like, how do we have all.
- [13:49]
Hector
These really bright, amazing minds that are seeing this? I mean, you started. So you and I both spoke at the Senate hearing together, and you started out your talk saying that your group does the most pancreatic cancer surgeries out of any other hospital Right. In the United States. And yet nobody's asking why these rates are rising.
- [14:08]
Dr. Marty Makary
Yeah.
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Hector
How is that possible?
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Dr. Marty Makary
It's so frustrating. And when you look at the system, you show up and you might have a big idea like, hey, what's the role of food here? Or all these environmental exposures. And you're quickly told, you know, that's nice, but focus on getting your NIH grant. Because if I get a $3 million NIH grant, 3 million goes to my research team. And a bonus 2 million goes to my dean to use for whatever the dean's office wants to use it for. Could be hiring five diversity equity inclusion staff deans, which we had at Johns Hopkins. We had five deans of diversity in the medical school. I'm not saying that's not an important issue.
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Hector
I'm saying when we're talking about pancreatic cancer, that doesn't mean shit. Sorry.
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Dr. Marty Makary
Like 1 in 6 NIH grants, now it goes to diversity or health equity research. One in six insane. So it's not to say that's not interesting. I personally don't think it's interesting to describe health disparities. What's interesting is how you fix them.
- [15:19]
Hector
Absolutely no one's doing that. And I'm sorry, but if I'm going in for a surgery, I'm not going to ask like, oh, is this a man or a woman?
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Courtney Swan
Or are they black?
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Hector
I'm going to ask are they qualified? That's all I really care about.
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Dr. Marty Makary
You're becoming an outlier in the modern medical establishment for having that view, because it is. The dominant thing right now is that you have to tie your research in to describing some health inequity. We know health inequities are one of the most studied things in all of medical science. They exist with every disease process. The number one predictor of health status has always been and will likely continue to be the socioeconomic status of that population. This is not the riddle of the Sphinx. We know what's going on here. Are we going to pay attention?
- [16:13]
Hector
Part of the issue that I'm understanding, and I know you can speak better to this, is that also if somebody is going to go get a grant for research done, Big Pharma has all the money and they're the ones that are funding a lot of these studies. And if they don't want you to study this, they're not going to give you that grant or that money to actually study the research. Right?
- [16:30]
Dr. Marty Makary
That's right. There's a lot of stuff that lives in the Bermuda Triangle of medical research. Pharma's not interested in it. The NIH is not interested in it. But it's very clinically important. So who's going to study the role of healthy foods as medicine? Who's going to study the role of toxins and environmental exposures and food ingredients and food dyes? It's been in this blind spot of research. So when you show up, you have big ideas as a young researcher at a university hospital, and you're basically Told, no, no, give up on your big ideas. Focus on a small incremental benefit or some study that shows a small incremental discovery of some kind. It's basically, you go to these medical conferences, all you see are these incremental little papers. They're boring. There's nothing new there. Very little that's new. That's how we end up spending a ton of money on research and say, cancer research. The top paper at the big cancer meeting was showing that an existing chemotherapy applied to another cancer improved survival by a couple months with no added cure rate. I mean, that's the top paper. It's crazy. I submitted an IRB application, research application internally to do a self funded study of healthy foods and the risk of pancreatic cancer. The institution blocked it. That's because they have their own subcommittee that decides not what's ethical research, but what research they like or don't like. They basically said, you're not approved to do this research internally unless you do all these things, which were very complicated and elaborate and would have basically killed the study. That is the problem right now that has generated this huge blind spot. Then you have people that come in from outside the priesthood of medicine, people like yourself, and you say, hey, there's a little common sense here we need to use.
- [18:45]
Courtney Swan
Yeah.
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Hector
I'm like, there's a lot of stuff going on. Why are we not studying this?
- [18:48]
Dr. Marty Makary
Yeah, you'll have people with chronic pain go to Italy for a summer and suddenly they're cured. It's like, what is the difference?
- [18:55]
Hector
And then meanwhile, we're studying things. Like, I listened to you on a podcast earlier and you said something about we're studying the effects of cocaine on monkeys or something.
- [19:03]
Dr. Marty Makary
Is that what it was on Japanese quail?
- [19:05]
Hector
Oh, on quail. Okay.
- [19:06]
Dr. Marty Makary
This was a real government funded study. They gave cocaine to Japanese quail to watch their sexual activ on cocaine.
- [19:14]
Hector
Why are we funding studies like that? I mean, this drives me crazy.
- [19:17]
Dr. Marty Makary
Yeah, or research on bat coronaviruses in China.
- [19:21]
Hector
Exactly. Which is something you were super outspoken about, which I'm so grateful for. And I know people are sick of talking about COVID and we don't have to really talk about it, but it's just another one of those instances where there were so many people that were speaking out about it at the time and everybody was chastised and it was called anti science and all this stuff.
- [19:36]
Courtney Swan
And guess what?
- [19:37]
Hector
Now we have all these studies coming.
- [19:38]
Courtney Swan
Out showing that we were all correct.
- [19:40]
Hector
About all of it, but we were stuck in this medical dogma that I believe killed so many people.
- [19:47]
Dr. Marty Makary
Yeah, I mean, where was the research? I know they were interested in funding bat coronavirus research in China. How about studying school lunch programs?
- [19:57]
Hector
Thank you.
- [19:58]
Dr. Marty Makary
I mean, if they could take 5% of their enthusiasm for the 72 dose vaccine schedule.
- [20:06]
Hector
Yes.
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Dr. Marty Makary
And talk with just 5% of that energy about the dangers of ultra processed foods and refined carbohydrates and food chemicals, we could actually see some movement. But it's myopia, it is groupthink, it's herd mentality that when you disagree with it can turn into a mob mentality. And so that's why I wrote the book Blind Spots. I wanted to show how this groupthink in medicine has done tremendous harm and left people in the dark on important health topics that they still need to know about today, where there's still not clarity from the medical establishment.
- [20:45]
Courtney Swan
Yeah.
- [20:46]
Hector
So what are. I wanna give some people some real examples of how that's showing. I mean, I'm sure people have already seen it in their everyday life, just in their interactions with their doctor, for example. But what are some really big examples of things that you have found? Actually? Okay, so I'm thinking of one in particular that I was shocked to hear about. So we've been told that HRT causes breast cancer. And I was listening to you talk about how we actually found out that those studies were completely false. So can you talk about that?
- [21:15]
Dr. Marty Makary
Yeah. So hrt, hormone replacement therapy for perimenopausal women is replacing your body's estrogen with estrogen or plus or minus progesterone. So that therapy, if you will, that maintenance administration of estrogen, plus minus progesterone, that we call hormone replacement therapy was announced 22 years ago by an NIH scientist to increase a woman's risk of breast cancer. Now, the study that he used to support it, he did not release until weeks later. The media ran with the headline, now every woman out there needs to know this. Every woman. If you know a woman, if you love a woman, if you are related to a woman, I mean, that's. Everyone in America needs to know this because 80% of doctors don't even know this. If a woman starts hormone replacement therapy, it does not increase the risk of breast cancer mortality as the scientists had announced and as the media ran with. What it does is you live three and a half years longer on average. In one study, you have a 50 to 60% less risk of cognitive decline, 35% lower risk of Alzheimer's, and it cuts the rate of fatal heart Attacks in half. If a woman falls, she is far less likely to have a hip fracture or bone fracture later in life. Their bones are stronger.
- [22:46]
Courtney Swan
Wow.
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Dr. Marty Makary
So there are tremendous long term health benefits that have been overlooked because people thought, oh well, all it's for is alleviating symptoms of perimenopause like the hot flashes of night sweats and mood swings and weight gain and there's 50 plus symptoms of perimenopause. And people thought, oh well, you know, women just need to suck it up and they're usually minor and it just lasts a couple years.
- [23:08]
Hector
Yeah, it's just minor.
- [23:09]
Dr. Marty Makary
Yeah, no, it lasts eight years on average and they can be severe. And it's 80% of women. It's not some. And it's minor and it's no. So a male dominated medical establishment, along with this dogma that it causes breast cancer, basically created a culture in medicine where there's nothing you can do for perimenopause cause the only therapy causes cancer. And so you know what, we don't even need to teach menopause in Medical School. 50 million women have been denied the health benefits of hormone replacement therapy because of this announcement 22 years ago that I detail in the book where I go through what happened in the days prior where his co researchers got into a shouting match and said, you can't put this out there. It's not supported by the science. And if you dangle fear to women with something as sensitive as breast cancer, you will never be able to undo that fear. You will never quote unquote be able to put the genie back in the bottle.
- [24:07]
Hector
It's true.
- [24:08]
Dr. Marty Makary
And that's what happened.
- [24:09]
Hector
Well, it's interesting because I have a friend who I was talking about this with literally this morning because we had a conversation two nights ago because she had breast cancer like 20 years ago. Just had a hysterectomy because they found a little bit of cancerous cells on like an ovary or something, had a full hysterectomy and now her doctors are telling her that she can't take hormones because of her breast cancer that she had in the past. And then I listened to you talk about this study and I told her and she was like, I need to find a new doctor. She said, I don't understand. These doctors are so stuck in their ways, none of them will look at what the actual real research says. And she said, why can't they stay up with the up to date science? She's like, they're not open to hearing that. There's updates to this kind of stuff.
- [24:55]
Dr. Marty Makary
Well, I hope she can find a doctor who is open because I have had a tremendous, tremendous amount of doctors. The book came out about a month ago, sold out on opening day. It's still in the New York Times bestseller list. I've had so many doctors read it and they're like, gosh, Marty, I never knew this. I never knew the details. I just heard it causes breast cancer. It's just become a dogma. It's taken on a life of its own. So Dr. Avram blooming is a oncologist who is a fierce advocate for offering hormone replacement therapy to candidate women after they recover from breast cancer and are cleared. Now, he's not an outlier, he's an expert. And so there's a lot of new literature now that is challenging a lot of these deeply held assumptions.
- [25:44]
Courtney Swan
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- [28:45]
Hector
You talk about. I've heard you talk about the hubris of the medical system being the cause of these massive chronic issues that we're seeing right now. Can we talk a little bit more about how that's hindering our progress as far as like figuring out what's actually going on with these chronic issues?
- [28:59]
Dr. Marty Makary
Yeah, look, we're not gonna find the cure for cancer if we're ignoring these giant blind spots. If we have already decided that we understand it's this one chemical pathway and we just have to find a way to block it. If we have that level of closed mindedness and myopia, we're not going to make any progress. And if you go to the medical conferences I go to, what you will see is a massive disappointment in research and scientific progress in the United States. And people kind of see it. The politicians will rise up and say, hey, we're going to cure cancer in 30 years. It's crazy. Yeah. So thankfully there's a young group of doctors and students who see through this sort of group think and they understand that there are these giant issues that we're not talking about that are at the center of our health, the gut microbiome being one of them. And so now you're seeing a lot of interest of young people saying, I don't want to be on the hamster wheel of medicine. I want to come out of Johns Hopkins Medical School and I want to be a good doctor. I want to learn everything you're supposed to learn. But I'm going to read books that are off the beaten path. I'm going to read books by Peter Attia and Casey Means and other books. They're going to listen to podcasts where you can learn a tremendous amount of information about environmental exposures in the food supply from people who may or may not have medical degrees, but they have done the investigative journalism or they are well read. I mean, it's amazing really how you can become an expert in understanding some of these topics now from self directed education.
- [30:46]
Hector
I mean, it's pretty incredible. We really live an amazing time. And more specifically, I'm of the mind that I'm so grateful that Twitter is around because a lot of this stuff has been censored. And as you were talking about all these bright, amazing minds that are going outside of the box and doing it a new way. There's gotta be a fear for these doctors, especially these doctors, like medical students that are stepping out of line. Because I actually watched this documentary a couple nights ago from Dr. Aseem. I'm forgetting his last name right now, but he did a documentary called do no Farm and he was talking about how, I mean, he lost his job several times. Like hospitals of medical groups, they disbanded him because he's talking out about all of this. Was there any fear with you? Are you seeing that there's any fear with these doctors? Or do you feel like we really have this big movement that we're going to maybe be able to take on this medical complex?
- [31:42]
Dr. Marty Makary
I personally have had no fear. I just, I've spent enough time with people at the end of their life as a cancer surgeon. And I just feel like you have got to have a sense of purpose in your life. And if you're worried what the implications are of speaking your mind and speaking your honest beliefs, then we don't live in America anymore. So I didn't want to feel constrained. Now I had good support from Johns Hopkins. Amazing Some people, I would say, half the doctors I would talk to would say privately, gosh, I love everything you're saying. Keep going. It's so interesting. I agree, but I can't say anything because my boss or my grant or whatever. And then there'd be another group of people that were just kind of oddly quiet, and you're just kind of like, how do you not talk about these issues that we're saying are at the center of health? Like, how do you ignore? How are you a colorectal cancer specialist or an inflammatory disease specialist and not have any interest in gut health? I think there's a group of doctors now that are saying, hey, we're missing something big. I mean, the study just came out on the microbiome showing the downsides of unnecessary antibiotics, how it's igniting a lot of these chronic diseases. Study just came out on C sections that we know alter the microbiome and how that was associated with the rise in colon cancer in young people. Enough doctors are saying, hey, if we can look in our blind spots, there's a tremendous amount of knowledge that we can gain that we're not currently getting from our textbooks.
- [33:27]
Hector
Let's talk about the C section thing.
- [33:28]
Courtney Swan
A little bit, because I've talked about.
- [33:29]
Hector
This on a couple podcasts. So in my training, I was being trained. I'm trained to be a clinician. And one of the first things that we were told to ask every single patient that we have, literally first day, first thing I ask you is, were you breastfed and were you born vaginally?
- [33:46]
Courtney Swan
So can we talk about why?
- [33:47]
Hector
There's a huge difference of that. And also, you speak to this so. Well, we're not vilifying, getting C sections. Thank God we have them in emergency situations, but why should we be concerned about it? And if it's an elective thing, maybe elect to not do it.
- [34:00]
Dr. Marty Makary
Yeah. So C sections save lives, and sometimes they're necessary. You and I both know that. But they're also overused, as are antibiotics. And so what happens when a baby is born by a C section is they don't have the same microbiome, because when you're in utero, when a baby is in utero, their gut is sterile. There's no bacteria lining. So how does a baby eventually have millions of different bacteria as a person in the actual world have millions of different bacteria that live in a balance? They're different. They're not millions. Cumulative, total millions of different types. The balance is important for digestion and immunity and reducing inflammation. Some of Those bacteria produce serotonin. Most of the body's serotonin is made in the gut. So there's a connection with mood and mental health. Some of Those bacteria make GLP1 in low doses. The active ingredient in ozempic, some deconjugate estrogen. So it's this incredible central organ of health we call the microbiome. Where does it come from? Well, when a baby passes through the birth canal, those bacteria in the vaginal canal seed the microbiome, and then the microbiome is augmented with bacteria from skin and from breast milk. And so all of that goes into the formation of the microbiome. When you're born by C section, though, a sterile baby is extracted from a sterile, operative field. And instead of the vaginal bacteria and other sources seeding their gut, microbiome, what may seed the microbiome are the bacteria that normally live in the hospital, which are not good bacteria.
- [35:49]
Courtney Swan
Yeah.
- [35:49]
Dr. Marty Makary
And so we've known that for a while that if you're born by C section, you have a higher risk of asthma, you have a higher risk of other chronic diseases, inflammatory diseases, including inflammatory bowel disease, ulcerative colitis, Crohn's disease, irritable bowel, that family of diseases. And so what's going on here? Obviously, the microbiome has been altered. Obviously, we're seeing a real clinical difference. And a study just came out in our journal, JAMA Surgery, that there was a higher risk of colon cancer among individuals born by C section.
- [36:25]
Hector
That's fascinating, because I feel like those rates are rising like crazy right now, especially in the younger generation. Right?
- [36:31]
Dr. Marty Makary
That's right. It's going up in people under age 50. We're scratching our heads in medicine as to why, but if we actually look at the signals in the data, the studies are trying to tell us why we are messing with the microbiome. At Mount Sinai Hospital now, they have a trial where they take vaginal fluid and swab it on the baby's skin. I describe in McKinney, Texas, how a neonatologist there is insisting we don't wash a baby the second the baby is born. Those bacteria on that thin protein coat that line the baby that's involved in microbiome. So why are we washing babies? Just to give mom a shiny baby when they're born. So we're recognizing now that we have engaged in the medicalization of ordinary life, and we need to restore some of these best practices and at the same time have the might of the modern scientific, modern medical interventions to be available for Emergencies.
- [37:29]
Courtney Swan
Yeah.
- [37:30]
Hector
It's amazing. I love. You're just dispelling, like all these myths, which is so great. There's another one that just came to mind for me. So the low fat movement. You speak to Ancel Keys and how he came on with, I believe it was Eisenhower had a heart attack, right?
- [37:43]
Dr. Marty Makary
Yeah.
- [37:43]
Hector
And then it cued this whole low fat movement, which I wanted to know where that was on the map. As far as what I thought really started the low fat movement was there was this Harvard study that came out in the 1970s where this Harvard scientist found that it was actually sugar that caused high cholesterol and heart attacks. And then the sugar industry got wind of this, and they came in and they said, no, no, no, no, no, it's fat. And so then we cue this whole low fat movement. And so that was kind of in conjunction with Ancel Keys. How did that kind of.
- [38:13]
Dr. Marty Makary
So John Yudkin was a scientist who basically said, it's sugar and it's refined carbohydrates. And man, did they shut him down. I mean, he was a prominent researcher, and they took his lab away, they railroaded his career. And really, because of the groupthink, this one very influential political doctor was able to get the entire medical establishment, including the American Heart association, to sign on to his demonization of natural saturated fats. And what happened was, as we were focused on that, we ignored all of the chemicals and processed foods, namely refined carbohydrates that drove inflammation. And guess what's at the root of so many of our chronic diseases? It's inflammation and cancer.
- [38:59]
Hector
And what I'm struggling with is, okay, so now we're in 2024, we know all of this, and we've known this for a while, but we're having such a hard time of turning the ship. And it's because of this, like, medical dogma. And is it. Do you feel like with many doctors that they just feel like they've learned this and now that's it and it's set in stone and now we can't change it? Or are doctors maybe starting to realize.
- [39:25]
Courtney Swan
That they need to be a little.
- [39:26]
Hector
Bit more open to it, or maybe there's a mix of both.
- [39:29]
Dr. Marty Makary
So I think it rattles you when you work so hard and you've been through health professional training, you know, you work so hard for a degree for you learn what's in the textbooks, you do what you're told, and then you start hearing things that challenge that, and you think, oh, my gosh, maybe everything I learned has been in part corrupted by misinformation, dogma, groupthink, industry involvement in science. And it's scary. You start thinking, oh, my gosh, maybe what I've been telling people, I gave them the wrong information. Maybe it's not true. And so I think we all have that moment. Now. You can do a couple things with that. You can either say, well, screw it, I'm going to rely on the American Heart Association, I'm going to plow through, I'm going to stick to my guns, and that's a coping mechanism. Or you can allow these new ideas with good science to challenge deeply held assumptions. And that's what the purpose of science is, to challenge deeply held assumptions. So I think you see people now who are questioning what's going on. And what I found in writing the book Blind Spots is there's a psychology to resisting new ideas. And this guy, Leon Festinger described it in the 1960s. He basically said that when we hold the belief, when we understand something for the first time and we're told what is true, we hold onto that. We tightly hold onto it because it's comfortable to have one belief once you've figured it out. Okay, explain to me this war, okay, this side's the good side, this side's the bad side. Okay, thank you. Now I understand it. Now I'm enlightened. And then somebody says to you, no, actually, there are war crimes committed on both sides. It's actually not that simple. It's more nuanced. Well, we automatically will tend to resist those ideas because Leon Festinger, the psychologist, described the comfort of just having one belief system that is comfortable. And when new ideas challenge that, you will automatically, without even realizing it as a part of the human condition, reject new ideas or reframe the new information to fit what you already believe. And this is part. This is something we all do. We all have a tendency to do it unless you're actively aware of it and suspend those biases. Which is the father of modern medicine, Claude Bernard, said, we all have biases. We need to recognize them and then just suspend them as we hear new information in order to be objective. But we all have these biases. And so imagine you smoke cigarettes and a study shows smoking is bad for you. Subconsciously, what's going on in that person's mind is, well, I'm different from the people in the study, or I work out, or I also do these good things. And they probably didn't do that. They smoked more than I smoked. They're probably. They have Other risk factors. I use filtered cigarettes. It's amazing. The mind will go through acrobatics to reframe new information just to hold on to what you heard first. And that is a powerful force in psychology, and it's what drives so much medical dogma as I go through in the book.
- [42:49]
Courtney Swan
Yeah.
- [42:49]
Hector
And, you know, you said something that.
- [42:51]
Courtney Swan
I totally agree that it's so powerful.
- [42:53]
Hector
Once you know that you have those things going on online, because then you're able to start going, okay, wait, am I. Am I doing that thing again where I'm just, like, allowing myself to be stuck in this, or can I actually allow myself to maybe be open to this new information? And I find that is helpful for me because, I mean, we're constantly being inundated with all this new stuff. And, you know, a lot of it counteracts with what I learned in my traditional training in school. And I found that that's helped me to be, like, a little bit more open to this new stuff that comes out. And, you know, what was just coming to mind for me was something that is. Is pushing that dogma right now is there has been finally a recognition by the NIH that fluoride is a neurotoxin. And this is something that, like, I don't know if you feel this way, but I feel like I've been trying to warn people about this for 15 years. Everybody calls me quack and anti science, and now we're finally starting to really recognize that. But I have a dentist friend who is very into this, and she's been very anti fluoride for a long time. And she said that she's seeing a ton of pushback in the medical community to this, where they're still trying to say, like, oh, this isn't true. Even though I think there was a COP report that was just done on it. And so it's interesting to see, right, how that's like.
- [44:02]
Dr. Marty Makary
This is what Leon Kestinger described when he described the psychology of being comfortable with the first idea you have and then defending it to the bitter death. Even if new information is more logical, it's the psychology of resisting new ideas because we're trying to avoid cognitive discomfort or what he called dissonance. Cognitive dissonance. You see it in the rejection of new information about fluoride. The rejection of the new JAMA pediatric study that shows there are lower IQs in the children in fluoride areas. They did a study as elegant as they can do. It was up to the standards of jama. There's this feeling that fluoride builds up in one of the learning center areas of the brain. If fluoride kills bacteria in the mouth, as I write about in the book, what do we think it's doing to the bacteria in the microbiome every day, all day long? And so Europe does not use fluoride. It's 3% of the water there. Canada, it's about a third of the water. And the United States, it's the majority of water. Well, the CDC has already declared on its website. You can go to the website now and chuck that fluoride in drinking water is one of the top 10 greatest public health achievements in modern history. It's on the CDC's website. And I know, Dennis, as you mentioned, you know, some folks are talking about this who defluoridate water in their own homes.
- [45:33]
Hector
Oh, yeah, my friend does that too. And she uses hydroxyapatite in her clinic or what do you call it in her office. Yeah, I mean, it's crazy.
- [45:44]
Dr. Marty Makary
Dogma. Medical dogma. Foreign.
- [45:48]
Courtney Swan
Let's talk about something essential for your kitchen. Olive oil. You all know how I feel about seed oils. That's why I love using olive oil. It's at its best when it's fresh pressed. And unfortunately, most supermarket olive oils sit on shelves for months, even years, growing stale and flavorless and eventually turning rancid. But what if you could have the freshest, most flavorful olive oil delivered straight to your door? That's where the Fresh Pressed Olive Oil Club comes in. Founded by T.J. robinson, also known as the Olive Oil Hunter, this club brings artisanal oils from gold medal winning small farms right to your home at harvest time, ensuring peak flavor and nutrition. And here's the best part. TJ is offering our listeners a chance to try a 39 bottle of one of the world's finest olive oils for just $1 to help with shipping. There's no commitment to buy anything else and you can cancel anytime. Why should you care about fresh olive oil? First, it's packed with health benefits. It can lower the risk of heart disease, reduce bad cholesterol and even help prevent type 2 diabetes. Plus, it's high in antioxidants and can boost your immune system. Try the Fre Best Olive Oil Club today for just $1 and taste the difference for yourself. Head to their website and elevate your cooking with the best olive oil out there. Go to getfresh324.com that's G E T F R E S h324.com for a free bottle and pay just $1 shipping. If you're like me and you're all about keeping things clean and high quality, especially with supplements, let me share a little nugget of wisdom. When it comes to Omega 3 oils, choosing a pure and potent source is absolutely key. And that's where Peoria O3 Ultra Pure Fish Oil comes in. Peori goes the extra mile by using only small fish, which helps avoid contaminants. And if you're concerned about those unpleasant fish burps, rest assured that Peoria's oil is so fresh and clean you won't have to worry about that at all. What makes PRI stand out, they focus on pure origin, potency and peace of mind. Every batch is clean, certified and third party tested by the Clean Label Project for over 200 contaminants. Plus it it's IFOS certified with a perfect 5 star score for freshness. You can even scan the QR code on the bottle to see the test results for yourself. How cool is that? If you're interested in high quality Omega 3s, Peori's O3 Ultra Pure Fish Oil offers a powerful dose of 2000mg of EPA and DHA supporting your heart, brain and eyes. And now you can try it out with a special offer. While you're on their website, check out their creatine, their protein powder. So make sure you go to Peori and use use promo code realfoodology to get 20% off your purchase. That is P-U-O-R-I.com realfoodology. Don't miss this chance and use promo code realfoodologyori.com.
- [48:28]
Hector
So do you have hope that we're that more people are going to wake up to this and we're going to kind of get out of this medical dogma? My biggest concern, and I'll let you.
- [48:35]
Courtney Swan
Answer that, but I also want to.
- [48:36]
Hector
Tack on that my biggest concern is the corruption and the capture of all of these systems. The medical system, the insurance, the food, all of it is captured by these big corporations and entities that have so much money and power.
- [48:52]
Courtney Swan
So how do we do you have.
- [48:54]
Hector
Hope that we're going to tackle this? Can we talk a little bit about that?
- [48:57]
Dr. Marty Makary
Yeah. This is an exciting time right now and I don't know what's going to happen in terms of the role of government in this, but we have seen a movement in the United States to finally address corruption in healthcare. We're talking about the corporate capture of the organizations of government who are there to regulate corporations. We're talking about the incredible influence of pharma on the American Medical association, on most medical associations. You look at the American Diabetes association getting all this money from Coca Cola. You look at the American Medical association listing their donors, tons of industry. I mean, it's just, it's pretty remarkable. The CDC created their own foundation on the side so they can take pharma money.
- [49:50]
Hector
Of course they did.
- [49:52]
Dr. Marty Makary
Fda, nih. And so we have seen now a movement in the United States to say, hey, if you're going to be an honest fiduciary about talking about health, you need to be free of these corporate interests. So I think there's good stuff that's happening. I think we're seeing an awakening. I think people got a little sense as to how captured our government agencies are during COVID And I think people are pushing back and now with this new leadership to talk about our poison food supply and chronic diseases. In the words of RFK Jr which I thought were amazing, can we love our nation's children more than we hate each other?
- [50:34]
Courtney Swan
God, I love him.
- [50:35]
Hector
He has given me a new sense of hope that I've never felt before.
- [50:38]
Courtney Swan
I've always. My personality is.
- [50:40]
Hector
I'm just very optimistic in general. Like for some reason, I don't know why I can take all this really heavy doom and gloom info and the craziness about the corporate capture and all the corruption. I can still be hopeful somehow because I think I believe in the betterment. I just believe in good people. And I believe that I'm seeing people like yourself who are actually speaking out against it. And I really believe that we can change it. But when RFK started really getting traction and being able to talk about this on such a large political stage, I've never been so hopeful because he is the first politician that I've ever seen actually name this stuff. Like, we hear little trickles of it here and there, but he is coming out being like, no, the FDA is corrupt. Like everyone you know, Big Pharma is taking or spending money on studies. And it's just such a beautiful thing to see.
- [51:30]
Dr. Marty Makary
We've been hoodwinked by a lot of politicians. We've been told that the issues of health care are Obamacare, anti Obamacare, for or against Medicare, expanding or not expanding Medicaid. Those are issues at the periphery. It's not to say they don't have merits, but no one is talking about the core issue in health care and that is health. And in terms of the health of the population, American healthcare has been a 50 year failure. We can do sophisticated operations and we're the best place in the world to take care of an emergency. But when it comes to rising rates of autism, childhood obesity, diabetes, pre diabetes, rising rates of infertility, pcos, cancer rates in young people in the GI tract, we're going backwards. And we have the sickest population in the history of the world and the most medicated. So when you hear that, oh, on health care, this is the position of this candidate to support Medicare's right to negotiate drug prices for 10 generic drugs. Don't be fooled. Those are shiny objects. It's not to say they don't have merits, but they are in the periphery. The best way to lower drug prices is to stop taking drugs we don't need. No one has been talking about that. American Academy of Pediatrics just pushing to move the age of Ozempic down, lower, down to age 6. That is not a comprehensive approach to health. That is an approach that is intensely myopic and has now generated groupthink. And so that's why I wrote the book, to allow people to understand the groupthink and the medical profession. What is actually true and what's misinformation and what they can do to promote a civil discourse.
- [53:26]
Hector
Well, and also it's interesting, them pushing those drugs on younger generations. All that's doing is propelling more money into big Pharma. But that isn't actually a solution. And that's what drives me so nuts about all these conversations that are happening. Large stage, like you said. It's like, we're not. Nobody's saying, okay, we have an obesity crisis. Why is this happening? And how can we get the processed foods out of the school lunch programs? How can we lower infertility rates? How can we get the pesticides and the herbicides out of our food? It's like they're going, yeah, yeah, yeah, we see this. And now we're just going to start giving them drugs at a younger age and not actually address all of the huge elephants that are in the room.
- [54:04]
Dr. Marty Makary
Yeah. And I'm looking at all these doctors who are just pushing for Ozempic in younger and younger kids. And I just want to have a conversation with them and tell them, what is your understanding of the harms of stripping fiber away from flour so that it's chopped up and it functions like sugar? What is your understanding of the role of tartrazine and yellow number six and red number 40 and blue number one and Bhd in all of these cereals that we pour into our nation's children. Do you think there's an association with attention deficit disorder? Do you think there's an association with foods being addictive? What is your understanding of the research on that? I know they get zero education on it. You know it. I know it. If we're going to be honest, if we can be honest for a second, there's zero education on any of that stuff. And so what you have then is a group of health professionals who know nothing about food and chemicals in food. But worse than knowing nothing, they perceive that they are the experts and know nothing. And that is a very dangerous force when you talk about public policy.
- [55:18]
Hector
Okay, and let me add on an even more dangerous force that's now happening. So I was on a track to be a registered dietitian, and I was.
- [55:26]
Courtney Swan
Actually going to Texas State.
- [55:27]
Hector
I was living here in Austin, and I was going to Texas State, and.
- [55:30]
Courtney Swan
I was on this track, and I.
- [55:31]
Hector
Was starting to do all these nutrition classes, and I started to see the corporate capture that was also happening in my field of nutrition. Like, I already knew that doctors weren't getting nutrition training. And I've been telling people for 20 years, I'm like, go to your doctor if you need a surgery or you have an acute issue, but do not go to them and ask them for diet advice because they get no training. Go to people that are like registered dietitians.
- [55:53]
Courtney Swan
Well, then I get into that program.
- [55:55]
Hector
And I'm finding out that this program is largely funded by Coca Cola, the dairy industry, like, all of this. And I was looking around going, hello, does anybody see this? Like, what's happening? And then now, guess what? Fast forward. This was back in 2011, and now we are seeing it like crazy online, these registered dietitians.
- [56:18]
Courtney Swan
And by the way, let me be very clear.
- [56:20]
Hector
I have so many amazing registered dietitian friends that are seeing this and they're calling it out, and it's amazing.
- [56:25]
Dr. Marty Makary
It's exciting.
- [56:26]
Hector
It's very exciting. But there is this subset of registered dietitians that are going online and they're doing videos to counteract my video saying, the FDA says that yellow number five is totally safe and it's fine to eat.
- [56:38]
Dr. Marty Makary
Oh, okay, thank you.
- [56:39]
Courtney Swan
Literally. And they're saying, oh, we don't have.
- [56:41]
Hector
To worry about glyphosate. And everything you're saying is quackery. And this is not true.
- [56:47]
Courtney Swan
And in fact, if you tell people.
- [56:48]
Hector
All of this, they're going to develop an eating disorder. And it is. To me, it's kind of insidious what's happening Right now in that world, thank God, there's people that are seeing it. But it goes even further now than just the doctors trying to say that they have the nutrition expertise and telling people to come to them for it. Now we have the registered dietitians, which are the people that you're supposed to be able to go to to trust about diet and nutrition. And they're also peddling this narrative.
- [57:13]
Dr. Marty Makary
The worst thing you can do in the health profession is to put something out there with such absolutism, suggesting it's based on science, when it's not. It's just a gut feeling or your opinion. And that's what we have seen from much of that historic, corrupted nutrition science community. Now, I was invited to speak at the annual nutrition conference as the keynote speaker. The meeting, you know, the meeting I'm referring to, where all the dietitians meet. It's the largest dietitian meeting.
- [57:44]
Hector
I feel like it's their conference that they have, like, once a year, it's their conference.
- [57:47]
Dr. Marty Makary
Yeah. I'm trying hard not to mention them by name, but, you know, the meeting. I'm talking thousands and thousands of people in the audience. So I give the keynote speech, and I, of course, like to push the field. I like to tell people we need to challenge some of the deeply held assumptions that we've been taught. Does every adult need three glasses of cow's milk a day, as is still currently being recommended?
- [58:12]
Hector
That's insane.
- [58:13]
Dr. Marty Makary
And so I put out a provocative talk, and a woman comes up to me afterwards and says, you know, I appreciated your talk, you were funny and all this stuff, but I have an issue with this. Are you aware of blah, blah, blah. And she cites this body of corrupted research, and her badge says Dairy association or Milk Food Milk, of course, whatever that lobby is.
- [58:41]
Hector
Right, yeah, the lobby that funds them.
- [58:43]
Dr. Marty Makary
Yeah. And then it says sponsor. You know, the ribbons under the tag sponsor or golden sponsor, Premier sponsor. And so I find out they're one of the two biggest sponsors of the conference and the other big sponsor, Coca Cola. So people need to know this. People need to know this when they're out there hearing advice. They need to understand these are good people. Many dietitians who may not know the full body of research, these are good people. They read the textbooks, they took the exams, they perform well, but they are learning in a field which is one of the most corrupted science in all of science. I remember the head of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, Walter Willett, he wrote the textbooks. He was the God of Nutrition, the Harvard brand. Talk about collecting badges. This guy was getting paid off by the food industry. Ignored the role of refined carbohydrates, ignored the role of ultra processed foods. Put out this whole calories in, calories out, as if it doesn't matter how you get the calories. And they continued the demonization of natural fat. He's got a picture in his office of him shaking hands with Ancel Keys.
- [59:58]
Courtney Swan
Oh, wow.
- [59:59]
Dr. Marty Makary
Yeah, yeah. The guy who created the whole dogma.
- [60:02]
Courtney Swan
Yeah.
- [60:03]
Dr. Marty Makary
And so, yeah, I get it. You got the degrees. I get it. You read the books. I get it. You took the exams. You answered the questions at as the exam writers wanted you to. But take a step back and look around and realize what's going on. We have the sickest population in the history of the world. It's not the fault of the kids. This is something adults have done to children.
- [60:25]
Hector
Yeah. So let's say that there's somebody listening. Hopefully there's a lot of people listening that are starting to wake up to all of this and they're going, oh, my God. Okay, everything I. Not everything. A lot of what I learned in school. School was maybe funded by industry and corporate capture. What would be your advice as to how to navigate this?
- [60:45]
Courtney Swan
Because I know when I was first.
- [60:46]
Hector
Challenging myself with all of this, I was kind of having moments where I was like, wait, can I believe anything? What can I believe? What can I not believe? What would be your advice to kind of navigate that?
- [60:56]
Dr. Marty Makary
So just like people need financial literacy and they don't get it in high school or college, just like they need relationship literacy and nobody learns and anyone makes the same mistakes. There are many forms of literacy that are part of the core competencies of just being a great human being. And I think at the top of that is health literacy. You're not going to get it through the traditional channels. You need to educate yourself. So one thing I could do for people who are truly interested in learning about health and the health of how to raise children well is to follow certain individuals. And it's not a comprehensive list, but I love your podcast. Max Lugavere, Vani Hari, Peter Attia, Vinay Prasad, Casey Means.
- [61:50]
Hector
I mean, I would even say Joe Rogan when he brings on amazing health experts. He's really great about that.
- [61:56]
Dr. Marty Makary
Yeah. And there's more out there, but, I mean, there are some truth speakers, Mark Hyman. I mean, if you can take the hours it takes, even if it's five hours, or take 40 hours and read a book and listen to a couple podcasts you will propel yourself to a level of knowledge that is not included in traditional education, that is central to health, around the microbiome, the food supply, and exposures that we don't need to be exposed to. And then you can become an advocate. And when more people ask for organic foods, the restaurants will change their suppliers. When people ask for foods without added sugar, enough people ask that the industry responded, because that's the way a free market works. And now they advertise no added sugar. But it's not just sugar. People need to know about all these other ingredients, about the seed oils, the food dyes, the chemicals, pesticides. And you need to sort of come up with your own rank priority list of what you can do in your life to go healthier. We have this reverse osmosis machine for water. It turns out that it'll actually tell you how many parts per million there are in the water that comes out of the tap. So Austin water, we've noticed, has about 450 parts per million.
- [63:24]
Hector
Oh, that's a lot.
- [63:25]
Dr. Marty Makary
That's a lot. I mean, 500 kind of warrants an EPA investigation.
- [63:30]
Hector
Yeah, like an intervention.
- [63:31]
Dr. Marty Makary
Yeah. Right. And who's to say it's consistent? Right. It may bump into that range. And so how did I learn about that? From Dr. Mark Hyman and his podcast. Right. And so you're doing a good work. So many people are doing good work. We need to get the word out. We need to share, we need to support. We need to recognize this is not political. Even if some political candidates support this stuff. Absolutely, it is not political. I mean, this is a Bernie Sanders, Cory Booker, two staunch liberals in the Senate, and RFK Junior. Lifelong Democrat.
- [64:06]
Hector
Lifelong Democrat, I will say so. I've been pretty outspoken about all of this. And I'll just say this on the podcast.
- [64:12]
Courtney Swan
So I've been a lifelong Democrat.
- [64:14]
Hector
I've actually voted, voted blue my whole life. I voted for Obama. I voted for Biden. I'm honestly going to regret that now. But that's another conversation. And we don't have to make this political. But I do want to say that I think that there is a lot riding on this election. And I'm of the mind that I wish that everybody across all aisles was talking about it, because this is a bipartisan issue. Your health, cancer does not know if you're left or right, you know, like we're gonna be affected by this, whether you're Republican or Democrat, you know. But there is one side that's actively talking about it right now. And to me that speaks volumes as to the overall prerogative of certain parties. And so I have been very outspoken about the fact that like I'm siding with RFK on this one because I think this is our number one most pressing issue that we have right now in this country.
- [65:05]
Dr. Marty Makary
We've been told we need to do these small incremental changes to fix the chronic disease epidemic and address childhood obesity. Incrementalism is not working, it's failed. We've been fooled. We're getting played by the politicians. We need massive reform from the top which involves aligning so many different stakeholders, so many different agencies in government. And it's not something any one individual can do, but it's something that strong leadership from the very top can usher in. And we've seen an enthusiasm to do that now that we have never seen before. Medical establishment has given lip service to food as long as I've been a doctor. We have blamed every problem in society on three things that we see in medicine. Tobacco, obesity and genetics. Yeah, and we've missed the mark. We've missed the mark. I mean, maybe we've got tobacco. Right. You know, good. That was a good health campaign. Can we switch now to talking about our poison food supply? Can we switch to talking about highly engineered chemicals that are added to food? And genetics is like a wastebasket term. Even obesity. Obesity is a marker of another problem.
- [66:25]
Courtney Swan
Yes.
- [66:26]
Dr. Marty Makary
And it's what we are putting down our GI tracts and what's altering our microbiome.
- [66:31]
Courtney Swan
Yeah, yeah.
- [66:33]
Hector
It's interesting, it's been interesting to see also how these, like how big food for example, has been in charge of the narrative for so long. Like I've used this example before where you remember when Michelle Obama, when she first started coming out and she was like saying like, we gotta get the poisons out of the food, we gotta lower the sugar content, we gotta get the dyes out. And then she was kinda quiet for a couple weeks and then she comes back out and it's like sponsored by General Mills.
- [66:57]
Courtney Swan
And it's like we all gotta move. And we turned it in.
- [67:00]
Hector
Exactly.
- [67:00]
Dr. Marty Makary
And then.
- [67:00]
Hector
And we turned it into moving. And it's like we've been co opted by this large industry that has so much money because they don't want to have to change their food ingredients. They just want to say like, oh no, no, no, it's all genetics and you don't actually really have a control over it. And the only control you do have is you just got to exercise more, you got to move your body More.
- [67:20]
Dr. Marty Makary
Right. I'm curious and I try to stay out of politics, but. But I am really curious why Michelle Obama suddenly changed her tune in the second term of the Obama administration. Never once, to my knowledge has she ever talked about the poison food supply in the second term. Was there a deal with the food industry? Is that how powerful these stakeholders have gotten? Because when it comes to Washington, D.C. corruption is legal and politicians get paid off by corporations and some people that defines what they talk about and don't talk about. I don't want to make any judgments. I don't know what happened, but something appeared to have gone down between the first and second term.
- [68:12]
Hector
Well, because if we look back, I don't remember the exact companies that were sponsoring it, but there were some actual food companies that were sponsoring the let's Move movement. So I'm thinking similar to you. I don't actually know exactly what happened, but my thinking is that some of these executives got in there, some lobbyists got in there, and they're like, hey, no, no, no, no, no. We got to tone it down on the ingredients thing. And let's talk about the movement. Well, and you know what this reminds me of? There was that study that Coca Cola paid for that showed Coca Cola found this. That obesity is not actually linked to sodas. It's. We need to be moving our bodies more.
- [68:49]
Dr. Marty Makary
Ah, yeah. It's your fault. It's your fault. Now we blame people for their diseases all the time in the medical culture, and we've got to stop it because you know what it is? It's the arrogance of the ruling class. That's really what it is. So it's interesting. I hope things change. Blaming people for their diseases is one of the oldest and sort of worst sides of medicine. And hopefully we can start talking about what we are doing to people.
- [69:21]
Courtney Swan
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, well, I'm so.
- [69:23]
Hector
I said this in the beginning. I'm so grateful for your voice. I love that you wrote this book.
- [69:27]
Dr. Marty Makary
Thank you.
- [69:27]
Courtney Swan
Yeah.
- [69:28]
Hector
Everybody, please go get it. Blind Spots. It's a great book. You outline just all of this so beautifully. And it's such a. It just gives me hope.
- [69:37]
Courtney Swan
It gives me so much hope because.
- [69:38]
Hector
People like you are actually really speaking out about this and turning a lot of people's minds.
- [69:43]
Courtney Swan
And I think you're really helping a.
- [69:44]
Hector
Lot of doctors see this, which is huge. And we need more people speaking out about this and actually seeing it because that's how we're going to see real change in the actual medical system, because we have doctors Start standing up to these big pharma companies and these big food companies and going, no, no, we're actually going to start looking at this other stuff that's actually really the issue, not the bait. So I want to ask you a.
- [70:08]
Courtney Swan
Final question that I just asked all.
- [70:09]
Hector
My guests, and it's a personal one. So what are your health non negotiations? These are things that you do, no matter how crazy busy your day is or your week is, to prioritize your own health.
- [70:19]
Dr. Marty Makary
Gosh, non negotiables. That's a strong word. I don't know if I have any. Total. None. I've been forced in airports late at night to compromise my standards. But I would say one thing that I'm really focused on right now is trying to avoid seed oils, trying to eat organic anytime I'm eating the surface of a fruit or vegetable. And if food is unappealing, go ahead and skip a meal. I've got these protein bars called David that I have no financial interest in, but they can get me through tough spots. And so I'm trying to just focus on cooking and not buying meals. That's my biggest interest right now.
- [71:04]
Hector
That's great.
- [71:05]
Courtney Swan
I mean, I talk about this on.
- [71:06]
Hector
The podcast all the time. If you're not cooking the majority of your meals, you're. You're setting yourself up for chronic disease, unfortunately, right now, just because the seed oils and the restaurants and we need to be more cognizant of the food that we're consuming. And the only way we can control that is by bringing it into our home.
- [71:22]
Dr. Marty Makary
Yes.
- [71:23]
Courtney Swan
Yeah.
- [71:24]
Hector
Well, please let everybody know where they can find you and also where they can find the book.
- [71:27]
Dr. Marty Makary
Great. I'm on social media MartyMcary, and the book Blind Spots is available wherever books are sold. So thanks for taking an interest in it and I hope your viewers can enjoy it and enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it because I loved writing it. It was so eye opening.
- [71:42]
Hector
Oh, I love that.
- [71:43]
Courtney Swan
Thank you so much.
- [71:44]
Hector
This is great.
- [71:45]
Dr. Marty Makary
Great. Thanks, Courtney. Great to see you.
- [71:46]
Hector
Yeah, you too.
- [71:47]
Courtney Swan
Thank you so much for listening to the Real Foodology podcast. This is a Wellness Loud production produced by Drake Peterson and mixed by Mike Fry. Theme song is by Georgie. You can watch the full video version of this podcast inside the Spotify app or on YouTube. As always, you can leave us a voicemail by clicking the link in our bio. And if you like this episode, please rate and review on your podcast app. For more shows by my team, go to wellnessloud.com see you next time. The content of this show is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not a substitute for individual medical and mental health advice and doesn't constitute a provider patient relationship. I am a nutritionist, but I am not your nutritionist. As always, talk to your doctor or your health team first.