← That Can't Be True with Chelsea Clinton
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A
I am Michelle.
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And I am Craig.
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Craig here is my big brother. We are so excited for you to listen to our brand new podcast. It's called IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson. Together, Craig and I are gonna take your questions about the challenges you're grappling with in life.
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So get in touch, send us your questions and join us on IMO with
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Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
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C
Welcome to that Can't Be True, a show that sorts fact from fiction, especially on issues impacting our health. I'm Chelsea Clinton, and if you've ever wondered what organic means and how to think about that, meaning if you've been paying attention to the recent debates around Casey Means nomination for Surgeon General, and if you just broadly wonder what's evidence based in conversations in the health and wellness spaces, what's pseudoscience? What's just clearly not true? Well, this episode is for you. Today's guest is Dr. Andrea Love. She's an immunologist and a microbiologist with years of experience in scientific research. We'll talk about that. And also since COVID a dedicated public health communicator, she's a leading voice in the fight against health misinformation and ultimately for the fight to ensure that each of us not only know what's real, but know how to activate that knowledge in the choices that we make in our daily lives. Hi, Dr. Love.
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D
Hi, Chelsea. How are you?
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C
I'm all right. Thank you so much. I hope everything's okay with the tree that fell.
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D
You know what? It's. I moved into a new house. Well, I closed on December 31, and so the neighborhood is all very unfamiliar. And my house, I guess before I bought it, they did a bunch of renovations and they took up a bunch of old, mature trees that were at risk. And I guess one of the neighbors didn't do the same. And the weather's been bananas, so.
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C
Yes, everywhere.
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D
Yeah.
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C
Well, yeah, I hope everything's okay. And thank you for being flexible. So we could chat today.
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D
Yeah, no, I'm glad to be joining. I think there's a lot of timely, relevant topics.
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C
I agree. And I wonder if we could start with your background. You're an immunologist and a microbiologist by training. I'm curious, when you were a little girl, were you always interested in little organisms and how they might affect us? Is this what you always imagined yourself to be when you grew up?
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D
Yeah. No, it's really funny because I know a lot of people kind of like fall into their fields because of an experience in their upbringing or something that happened later in life. But I was always really kind of fascinated with the natural world. I grew up in eastern Connecticut, and my childhood home kind of abutted a small local park. And so we had, you know, a reasonably sized yard, but had a ton of undeveloped forest behind it. And my brother and I would just play in the woods and collect bugs, and I used to catalog them and try to identify different types of insects. And I was always weirdly fixated on the ones that you could gross other people out about. And did you have a favorite as a kid? So I would say, when I was in elementary school, I did this, like, creative project in my classroom about the life cycle of a tapeworm because we had personally experienced it because our cats. Cats had to get wormed and. Yeah, no, it was one of those things where if I could, like, gross someone out. Right. Like leeches and head lice and tapeworms,
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C
you're like, I loved grossing people out. Like, that is what power is as a child.
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D
Yes. And then my mom went back to school to get her master's in education when I was, you know, somewhere around 8, 8 to 10 years old. And I went to the Eastern Connecticut State University library, and I took out the Physician's Guide to Arthropods of Medical Importance, which is a medical textbook. And I would walk around reading it to people about things that could. Arthropods, insects that could transmit, you know, diseases. And that's terrible things. Yeah, that's really where. Where it stuck. And I think I knew in high school that I was going to get a PhD and study infectious disease immunology.
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C
So what a great origin story. And it sounds like then becoming involved in public communication also is an organic development, given that you were walking around decades ago.
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D
Yeah. Doing the same. No, I was doing. When I was five years old, I was. Let me tell you about this thing. And you might want to avoid it. So, you know, it was always one of those, like, passion projects. Right. Like, I wanted other people to be as intrigued and fascinated with these things that I guess objectively could be kind of off putting, but really important.
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C
I have so many questions. I next want to turn our conversation to what we call that can't be true, where we play a tape of something that recently, often someone with authority has said. But this will be a little bit different because at least on our team, we all got quite a healthy laugh and hope that this segment helped, maybe through humor, people really rethink some of their Assumptions around kind of what they might be hearing from the Make America Healthy Again movement. And so I just wanna share a little bit from the Saturday Night Live sketch sketch called My hospital.
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What do we got? Lady flaps her 80th birthday party. Delayed breathing, blood pressure's through the roof. For people who love the pit.
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C
No effusion, good lung, fun.
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B
Likely stroke, but can't stand its phony liberal science.
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C
Stock's going crazy.
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Or see we were thrown back to me. Not until we have a definitive diagnosis from producer Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. And the team who want to make America healthy again. What she needs is a steak. She needs protein, people. Get me beef tallow and six raw egg stack. It's ma hospital.
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D
Okay.
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B
Treatment.
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D
Jaws okay. Maybe methylene blue and a full moon ceremony might work.
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B
Manny. Whey powder, anal probiotic and a sound bath. Not quite Tanner. Triple dose of alpha brain and a cold plunge in blue jeans. Bingo. Get on it. If your favorite character from the pit was the guy who punched the nurse in the face, you'll love ma hostable Boston. Bring one in them. Coming through with a special appearance on rfk. Junior Coming through. Come on, help me out here. Is that a bear? I hit him with my car on the way over here. Prep him for surgery. For jerky, spend that for a day. But the meat's still good. Prep him. Alright, let's move. Ma Hossam. Coming soon to the daily walk.
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C
I've watched that so many times and I still just giggle so much. I mean, I'm crying.
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D
It's on the nose.
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C
It's so on the nose.
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D
So on the Nose, you know, Dr.
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C
Love, I want to say, like, that can't be true, you know, and I do think, thankfully, that is not true in a emergency department setting. But how much are things like that happening in real life right now?
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D
It's happening a lot, you know, and I think it really kind of speaks to the underlying themes of, you know, the Maha movement and a lot of the rhetoric that has kind of taken root because the claims and the interventions and the treatments and the messaging is all very dangerous and is actually going to harm, you know, health measurably on an individual and population level. But yeah, people are overdosing on unregulated dietary supplements. They're refusing, you know, proven medical interventions for deadly diseases like cancer and opting for unproven and unsafe and ineffective, you know, interventions. And we have actual data that that causes excess death and excess suffering and. And things that could be prevented. And this is true, really, in all kind of ideological circles. It's really, everyone is susceptible to this type of misinformation because at the core of it, it is getting your emotional or identity related buy in by undermining kind of the, the real data that would support, you know, the science based
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C
alternative like in my in the hospital sketch. What was it? Like methylene blue or something?
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D
Yeah, yeah, methylene blue. So you know, and RFK Jr. Loves that. And we actually use that in the, in the lab as a science stain. Like that's a industry coloring, right? It's an industry dye. It's dark, dark blue.
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C
Out of curiosity, you use it as a stain for what?
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D
For cells. So methylene blue, when cells are dead or dying, it, it's taken up by cells when they have little, you know, holes in the membrane. And so cells that become dark blue, we can say, oh, those are dead and cells that are not dark blue are, are still intact. And so we use it as, as a stain in cell culture. And it's. Yeah, it's just, it always makes me
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C
chuckle, you know, and Dr. Love, one of the, I think insidious dynamics often at play is that of course everyone can probably eat a healthier diet and of course school lunches should be healthier. And of course there are people in our country who are not eating enough fruits or vegetables and people who are not eating enough protein. And there was a kind of a review in Nature this week about some of the real benefits that redlife therapy has been proven to have in, you know, a wide application of different possible indications. And also a lot of people need to be on statins and yes, like red light therapy may be really beneficial in some areas. And you still need to wear sunscreen. So how do you think about both as a scientist and a public health communicator, navigating the partial truths along with the total fabrications?
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D
Yeah, and that's, I mean, that's really why pseudoscience is so effective, because it's building out of a nugget of truth. Right. When we talk about, for example, some of the like, pseudoscience medical conditions like leaky gut. Right. Or toxic mold or something like that. Right. So leaky gut is kind of the false belief that people can develop these low level holes, leakiness, permeability in your intestine where undigested food and bacteria and toxins are leaking into your bloodstream and that's causing these nebulous symptoms like brain fog and weird food cravings and so on. And you know, the solution is these tests that don't have any basis in science and haven't been validated to even tell you anything useful. But then those tests are. Will then tell a person, oh, you need to take supplements X, Y and Z, and you need to follow this regimented diet. And of course, the person who's diagnosing them is the one that's selling those things. Now, the nugget of truth is that there are real gastrointestinal medical conditions that lead to a disruption in how your intestine normally functions, like ulcerative colitis, which is an autoimmune disorder. So it's taking this thing that's real in a very specific medical condition, in a very specific pathology that's a symptom of the pathology, not causing the pathology, but then extrapolating it to say that there's like this milder version of it. And we're gonna basically slap a name on it, and we're gonna use it to give people health anxiety and create a problem that there isn't actually a problem. And so that's why it becomes so stiff, sticky. Because, yeah, a lot of these claims are born out of a nugget of fact that's usually exaggerated or extrapolated or misrepresented, either intentionally or not. And so it's really difficult as a non scientist, as a member of the public, to know how to navigate that. Right. Because you're being bombarded with all these things and it's all preying on that health anxiety. Right? It's all preying on. Well, if you do this, you're making yourself sicker. You're, you know, you're. A lot of it is targeting, like, people with children, right? You're gonna poison your kids, you're gonna harm their development. You're gonna do this to them. And so people are making these decisions out of fear that the alternative decision, like getting your kids vaccinated and giving them pasteurized milk and not freaking out over safe and studied and well tested food ingredients, you know, is somehow going to harm them because they've been told, they've been con. That if they do that, they're poisoning, they're harming their kids.
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C
I do want to talk about President Trump's nominee for Surgeon general, Casey Means. We're talking here in late March. Her nomination has been stalled for over a month since she had her committee hearing. She certainly is one of the most prominent figures in the kind of Maha movement and kind of in the current wellness zeitgeist. You've, I think, called her nomination incredibly alarming. I certainly agree I'm curious though, what are the most concerning parts about her potentially being in this role? And for any senators who've not yet made up their mind, what do you want them to know?
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D
Yeah, so many things. I mean, please. I mean, I've written about her a few times. I wrote about her first when Ron Johnson had that health and nutrition expert panel which was just the MAHA people in front of Congress. RFK and Jillian Michaels and Jordan Peterson and the Meanss. Right. Casey Means and Callie Means. Right. So Callie Means is her brother. He is a wellness entrepreneur. He owns a company called True Med. He's the CEO. It sells supplements and wellness products. And he claims that they're eligible for HSA and FSA reimbursement even though they're not actually. But he's got lot of partnerships with those companies and he's RFK's advisor, even though he has no expertise. But his sister Casey, she's not a practicing physician. So, you know, she doesn't have an active license. She graduated medical school, which means she has a medical degree. She did not complete a residency, so she's not board certified in any medical profession. Which also means that she's never practiced medicine independently. And I think that alone should be disqualifying to be Surgeon General.
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C
She couldn't actually serve in the public health corps, which she would be right. In charge of were she to be in this role.
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D
Yeah. And I think beyond that, you know, even, even if, you know, hypothetically. Right. She had an MD and she opted to move into clinical research, which there are MDs that do that. And that's great because we need, we need clinicians doing research alongside scientists because that is really integral to, to our work. But she hasn't done that either. She hasn't done any sort of scientific research or health research or scientific study in any capacity. And she doesn't understand anything about public health. But she wrote a book where she essentially attributes every single health condition to a metabolic dysfunction and claims that actual scientists and physicians ignore root causes. And of course she has a company where she sells glucose monitors to people who don't medically need glucose monitors. And it has a nice monthly subscription. So it's a very lucrative industry, but has nothing to do with public health, which is the role of the Surgeon General. Her, her rhetoric is, is, you know, aside from the fact that she doesn't understand basic science. Right. Cause she wants to talk, she wants to talk about root cause, but she promotes raw milk. But the root cause of milk borne illnesses are pathogens in Milk. And the solution to that is pasteurizing milk.
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C
Yeah, I'm a huge fan of pasteurization. Yeah.
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D
I love. I love pasteurized things. Thank you, Dr. Louis Pasteur.
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C
Yeah. Very grateful for you.
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D
And most people don't know that our juices are also pasteurized, right?
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C
Yes.
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D
And that's a good thing. Yes.
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C
Like bovine tuberculosis. Terrible way to go.
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Yeah.
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C
Yes. Terrible way to go.
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D
Yeah. It's wild. So, you know, she doesn't actually know science, and she, of course, is ignoring real root causes, but it's very profitable for her. And so, you know, this is antithetical to the role of Surgeon General. So, you know, even if you want to kind of hold the ideological line and, you know, you don't want to switch sides, you know, from what your party is supporting, like, she checks none of the boxes of what the Surgeon General would do, and, you know, she would cause a lot of harm, not just to people, but to your political party. Because now you're going to be affiliated with this. I'm talking to the senators now, but now you're going to be affiliated with this woman who everyone can see is wholly unqualified. I mean, even media outlets that I normally disagree with vehemently have rightfully called out her gross disqualifications.
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C
Well, and I give a lot of credit to Dr. Jerome Adams, who was Surgeon General.
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D
Oh, my gosh. Yes.
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C
In President Trump's first term, I think, who was clearly qualified for the job and, you know, has just been very, very vocal, respectful, but very vocal and very pointed about all the ways in which, speaking from his own experience as having served as Surgeon General, that she is unqualified.
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D
Yeah. And I think, you know, one of the frustrations, I think, with not just her, but with, like, a lot of these appointees and with a lot of the direction that these health policies are leading, is that there's a lot of institutions that should be doing more. Right. Academic medical centers should be saying more, should not be kind of doing this. Like, we don't want to stir conflict. We don't want to ostracize donors or, you know, beneficiaries or whatever. Like, this is bad for all of us, you know, even if you want to ignore the scientific part of it, but if you want to look at, like, the research funding part of it, that's bad for the economy across the board. Because what most people don't understand is that these academic medical research centers, they drive the local economy, hospitality industries and restaurants and all these sorts of things, they often build off of the funding and the jobs that are created by these types of research institutions. Rochester, Minnesota would not exist if it weren't for the Mayo Clinic. And before the Mayo Clinic was there, it didn't exist. And now it is this huge, hustling, bustling, like little ecosystem that everything is like mutually beneficial, but it's based off of the cutting edge research and medical care that's administered there.
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C
Absolutely. You know, one of the pieces you wrote recently focused on the organic food industry. And you mentioned this is an area where there's also a lot of confusion and a lot of people don't understand that it actually kind of is about a method of farming and not, you know, a validation of a higher nutritional, you know, content or density. I wonder if you can talk about like, why you felt like it was important to write that piece now and what you want people to know about what organic means and I guess basically what's, what's real and what's not.
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D
Yeah. So, you know, I would say that the organic farming industry and the organic label and the certification is probably one of the most successful kind of chunks of the wellness industry. And so, you know, I've talked about this for a really long time because I again, if you survey people, and again, there's studies that have looked at this and they ask buyers, you know, reasonings for why they're purchasing organic food, which is generally, you know, at least 50% more expensive than the conventionally grown counterpart. It's because they have a perceived belief that it is healthier or safer or, you know, better for the environment. Those are usually the three big motivators. And I think those are very admirable motivators. But the problem is, is that organic doesn't actually check those boxes. And people who believe it, it's not your fault. Right. It's, it's 36 years of marketing at this point. Because the National Organic Program was, was created in 1990 and basically it did what the 1994 Dietary Supplement Health and Education act did for supplements for this type of farming practice. And it's solely built on the appeal to nature fallacy. And so basically what the organic certification is is it has rules for ways in which food is grown that can qualify for this label. It has nothing to do with whether the ways that the food is being grown is safer, using less toxic pesticides, using more environmentally friendly practices, and it has zero to do with nutrition. Right. There's nothing in the organ certification guidelines that has anything to do with food quality. Basically what it does is it allows pesticides. So Pesticides are anything that's going to kill or target a pest that would damage a food crop. So those can be herbicides which target plants and fungicides which target fungi and rodenticides or insecticides and so on. They're kind of lump them into a giant category of pesticides. So the pesticides that are approved in organic farming are naturally derived chemicals. So chemicals that are isolated or exist from something that exists in nature, and they're not allowed to be chemically altered to change the structure of the molecule to, you know, change it, its stability or efficacy or specificity in any way. And so there are a lot of chemicals in nature that are really effective pesticides that can be incredibly dangerous at reasonably low doses. I mean, most of the insecticides or fungicides that are used in organic farming are derived from plants because plants naturally produce a lot of chemicals to prevent things from eating them. Right? They can't run away when a predator is going after them. They have to rely on the fact that they're going to produce things that are going to make them taste real bad. And usually those things that taste real bad, bitter compounds, those are generally toxic compounds, they typically fit into certain buckets of chemicals. And so merely by extracting those from plants or producing them in large quantities in the laboratory doesn't mean that that's safer or better than a derivative of that that's been tweaked in the lab to make it a little bit more stable or safer. It doesn't impact as broad a class of organisms. And those are the ones that would be used in conventional farming. And so it's really just kind of building on this appeal to nature fallacy. But because of that, the organic farming organizations have kind of lobbied for this provision, which was a political piece of legislation, not a scientific piece. Organic farms generally make 25 to 33% more money per kind of product. It's that much more lucrative than conventional farming because you've got this health washing to it, right? People are willing to spend more money because they think it's better. And beyond that, because a lot of these pesticides are naturally derived, they're not necessarily as effective. And so you might need to apply them more often or you're not killing as many of the pests, so you lose some of your crop. And so you generally have lower yields. Say you're talking about blueberries. An organic blueberry farm typically is going to have about 30% lower yields than a conventional blueberry farm. And so that means more land use, more deforestation, they often have to till more, so you have more soil erosion. And so the motivations behind why people want to buy organic are really noble, but the science behind it is, is not there. And in many ways it's kind of using the same rhetoric that the anti vaccine movement is using to convince people to not vaccinate. And so that's the analogy I use, is that you may think it's kind of benign and you're like, well, if I have the money, why can't I just spend it on organic? But in reality, you're kind of feeding and giving money to this industry that's actually undermining agricultural science and agricultural development and legitimizing essentially the same rhetoric that the natural immunity people use to convince people to not vaccinate.
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C
Well, and I think, you know, Dr. Love what organic means and leaving aside the kind of credentialing around it is wildly differently interpreted. Right. Which I think then it makes it hard to have a coherent conversation because I think, you know, there are some farms, I would say also not only fruits and vegetables. And blueberries are my favorite fruit. I eat them every, every day if I can. So I was very happy that you mentioned them.
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D
I could eat blueberries for the rest of my life.
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C
They are my favorite. My kids are all obsessed with raspberries, which I find interesting. Every morning I'm like, where's the blueberry constituents? And they're like, it's you, mom. But I think it makes it challenging. Right, because there are also some states that have tried to have, you know, additional certifications in the areas that you really spoke about, particularly as it relates to kind of climate, sensible climate, smart climate preservation. They're different words that are used, but all kind of in the same motivations to ensure there's appropriate water use, appropriate land use, appropriate tilling, et cetera. So I think it makes it hard to have a coherent conversation because oftentimes people understand the word to mean very different things just also based on where they live.
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D
Yeah, absolutely. And so I think, you know, my kind of big takeaway, you know, to
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C
most people is what is your advice to people?
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D
Yeah, because, because people are, you know, buying those foods because again, they're trying to make the best decisions for the health of themselves and their family. Right.
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C
And the health of our planet. Yeah, right.
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D
A lot of people, absolutely. And a lot of people, you know, they don't, they don't know these things because again, it's, it's a very successful marketing campaign. But then you have the other, the other side of the coin where other people are terrified to buy conventionally grown foods because they've been convinced that they're dangerous. And so when we talk about, you know, Nutrition. Right. And 90% of Americans are not eating enough fiber from fruits and vegetables. Yes.
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C
Eat some apples and some broccoli. Yeah, yeah.
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D
But a lot of them have been scared because they can't afford organic and they've been told that the conventional option is dangerous. And so for me, it's neither is dangerous. I personally buy conventionally grown because that's what the science and the data supports. And in particular, I would love to have a longer discussion about genetic tools for farming.
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C
Yeah. The conversations around GMOs in our country, I think, are even less evidence based, arguably, than this one.
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D
Yes. Oh, 100%. 100%. And they're so often conflated, they're kind of related. But in reality, if we really wanted to address climate issues, genetic engineering is the tool.
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C
I mean, the green revolution. Right. And like the ability to grow rice all over the world to staple people's diet or carrots used to not be orange. Yeah, right.
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D
Oh, yeah. Nothing you eat now is natural. It's all genetically modified and over centuries
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C
as well as decades. And not just like in a lab at Monsanto.
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D
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
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C
And I don't think people understand that at all because we haven't taught people that to be fair.
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D
No, absolute. And again, you get the fear in them. And logic, you know, logic. A logical conversation is going to happen. So, you know, what I try to do is I buy conventional because it's cheaper and it's equivalent quality and sometimes better quality. And also frozen fruits and vegetables are great and they're stable and they're often cheaper. And sometimes, depending on the fruit and vegetable, it's healthier because they're frozen as soon as they're picked.
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C
They're flash frozen as soon as they're picked. Yes. Yeah. You mentioned vaccines earlier. And I first got interested kind of in this whole set of related conversations really many, many years ago because of how concerned I was as a pregnant and expectant mom with the not only kind of percolating but real proliferation of mis and disinformation around vaccines. And I think we had a significant ruling where a federal judge blocked the Trump administration's not only recent changes to vaccine policies, but effectively, like, invalidated all the changes since the forced and the new ASIN illegally fired and then illegally appointed members of the Advisory Commission on Immunization Practices, acip or acip for people who may not know kind of as much as we do. Why do you think that ruling was so important? What does it actually mean, you know, for families in our country?
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D
Yeah. So essentially the Advisory Committee of Immunization Practices is making recommendations about which vaccines should be recommended for certain populations. And I would say majority of them are in the context of children, but they also do make recommendations for adult vaccination vaccines. Right. For things like pneumococcal pneumonia and shingles and Covid and influenza and so on and so forth. Now this all seems kind of performative, but what it actually does is it doesn't just help create the recommended vaccine schedule for all of our populations, but also there's a legal provision that any ACIP recommended vaccines are required to be covered by medical insurance. So if a vaccine is no longer recommended by acip, that means insurance providers can be like, we're not gonna cover it. And so you can imagine what that's gonna do. Even if the vaccine exists, if people are now gonna have to not only overcome barriers to get to the place to get the vaccine, but now they have to pay out of pocket for a preventive medicine that's good for all
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C
of us, good for everybody.
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D
Right. Providing population level, you know, protection, the likelihood that people are going to get that drops dramatically. And the likelihood that the highest risk groups, which tend to be lower education, lower income, less transport, you know, ability, that drops even further. But anyway, the fact that a judge said this was not based in any scientific foundation and is being thrown out, is a little bit of a sigh of relief because all of us were thinking about the generational decades of harm that this is going to cause and, and undo so much progress in not just infectious diseases, but all these chronic illnesses like cancers that come from infectious diseases. But it also, it gives some precedent to challenging a lot of the other dangerous things that are coming out of HHS and FDA and CDC right now. And so one, it means that those vaccines will still be covered by insurance. Two, it nullifies the anti science decisions of people on that committee that have no business talking. And three, I think, think it, it gives us a little bit more energy to kind of keep in the fight because you know, to be frank, we're all feeling pretty beaten down. You know, in the last five years, I mean, I've, I've definitely pared back like my social media presence because it's just, it's just hard to like keep fighting what feels like a Sisyphean battle where, you know, you can keep trying to help improve, but Then every single day some new thing comes out and you're like, okay, well, now we're undoing even the bare bones nutrition guidance. Now we're undoing nutrition education and food access, and now we're undoing a cancer preventive. So I think that this is obviously a win for public health and for pediatric health, but I hope that it is maybe a beacon of some of what we will continue to see. I really hope that people continue to push back because we need the collective voice at this point. Absolutely.
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C
Well, thank you for kind of pushing the rock up the proverbial hill. I do actually have one more question before we go to fact or fiction, which is, does maha get anything right in your mind?
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D
I mean, I feel like if I wanted to find a piece of common ground. Right. Like, we as the United States of America should have better health demographics. Right. We shouldn't have a maternal mortality rate that it is. We shouldn't have malnutrition rates that they are. We shouldn't have, you know, life expectancy that's lower than the average of other developed nations. But the reasons that we have those things are not the things that the Maha movement is blaming. It's systemic structural inequity that we have to address from a federal government perspective. And they require big, complex, multifactorial solutions. And it's hard to kind of come to terms with that. Right. Simple black and white. You know, we're gonna blame this one thing, this one food ingredient. That's so much easier than saying we need to do a big overhaul if we actually care about the things that we're saying.
- [34:41]
C
I totally agree. We end each episode with a fact or fiction segment, which I mentioned earlier, where I will throw out some things that we've heard recently, maybe statements, maybe beliefs, and you'll tell me if they're fact or fiction. And I'm also gonna ask you a few questions about Lyme disease, which I know is where you spend a lot of time, and we haven't had the chance to really delve into otherwise, but I want to start with one that I hear about a lot, which are parabens, preservatives that have been used for decades in cosmetics, skincare, shampoo, conditioner, largely to prevent the growth of bacteria and mold. Recently, they've come under a lot of attacks I certainly see when I'm in the grocery store or the drugstore. Paraben free has, like, colonized whole parts of isles. Should we be avoiding them?
- [35:44]
D
No.
- [35:45]
C
Okay.
- [35:45]
D
Parabens are. They've been used for 100 years. The ones that are used as preservatives are incredibly safe, incredibly effective, and incredibly cost beneficial. And the alternatives are inferior in most of the ways.
- [36:00]
C
Everyone should. Cold plunge.
- [36:03]
D
No cold plunging. If you enjoy it, if it helps wake you up, if you get a rush of energy, cool. I was just in Norway and I did a cold plunge and it was really in the fjords. Yeah, I was in the, I didn't plunge in the fjords. It was more than an ice pool.
- [36:19]
C
Okay. I had, I had a vision of you, like jumping into the fjord.
- [36:22]
D
I would do that. But not for a health benefit. There's really no evidence that it's, it's offering these really substantial health benefits. So if it feels good to you and you don't have an underlying heart condition and you know you're medically clear, do you. But it's not a panacea.
- [36:40]
C
Everyone should sauna.
- [36:42]
D
No, also fiction, again, if it feels good, I like to go in a sauna and get a little sweat going on. Makes me feel like I'm relaxing a little bit. It kind of temporarily like relaxes my muscles. But again, it's, it's not offering long term, kind of sustainable health benefits. There are some risks. Risks especially if you stay in too long and you have underlying health conditions. So again, you know, caveat. Talk to your doctor. But not, Not a magical panacea.
- [37:11]
C
Microwaves are linked to cancer?
- [37:13]
D
No, absolutely not. Microwaves are using radio frequency radiation to warm up water molecules and that's what heats your food. And that type of radiation, radio frequency, it's what we call non ionizing. It cannot damage the cells or the DNA in your body. So there's no chance that it's causing cancer.
- [37:35]
C
Cell phones are linked to cancer also.
- [37:38]
D
No. Cell phones also use radio frequency radiation. Same with the WI fi towers and the routers and same sort of deal. They're not using ionizing radiation. Ionizing radiation is like ultraviolet radiation. So that can damage your cells and DNA from the sun. From the sun. Yeah. Exactly why we want sun protection. But yeah, not your cell phones, not your WI fi, not your routers.
- [38:06]
C
I will say I have found that anti sunscreen crowd, maybe what has surprised me most recently in kind of the Maha adjacent space. Yes, yes, smoking cannabis is linked to cancer.
- [38:19]
D
So I would say there probably isn't enough evidence. But we do know that smoking anything that's causing damage to your lungs or inhaling volatile organic compounds. So volatile just means they evaporate. So things that you're burning and inhaling. Yeah, at a certain point that can increase your risk of lung cancer. I think generally speaking, people are not smoking cannabis at the same amount on a daily basis as nicotine, tobacco. But yeah, theoretically anything you're smoking could increase your risk of lung cancer.
- [38:52]
C
We are pumped with aluminum through vaccines.
- [38:56]
D
You're definitely not pumped with aluminum through vaccines. There's micrograms of aluminum. You're eating dozens to 100 times more.
- [39:05]
C
We're breathing in more aluminum.
- [39:08]
D
Yeah, Aluminum is the most abundant metal around us. It's in your soil, it's in your food, it's in your water. The good thing is, is your body is really good at getting rid of it because you don't really use it for much. But you're eating more aluminum on a daily basis by orders of magnitude than you would ever be exposed to with a muscular injection of a vaccine.
- [39:36]
C
If a tick bites you, you can get Lyme disease.
- [39:40]
D
So if a tick bites you and it is the right species of tick and you live in the right part of the country and it's, it's on you drinking your blood for a certain period of time, you can theoretically get Lyme disease. Yes, it's a bacterial infection, but it's only transmitted by two species of ticks here in the US and they have to be feeding on you for at least 24 hours. So if it just crawls on you and you pull it off right away, there's no, no, no cause for concern. And if you live in Texas or New Mexico or the majority of states in the US there's no cause for concern.
- [40:16]
C
Probably concerned about other things, but not about this.
- [40:19]
D
Absolutely. There are tick borne illnesses that I am much more concerned about than Lyme disease for sure.
- [40:25]
C
Like what?
- [40:26]
D
Rocky Mountain spotted fever is definitely one that I am much more concerned about. It's transmitted by a very different species of tick, but it has a pretty high mortality rate and can cause really serious illness. And then there's a couple of viral infections that are transmitted by ticks that are pretty rare but also really serious and they don't have any treatments at the moment.
- [40:49]
C
Chronic Lyme disease is a recognized medical diagnosis.
- [40:53]
D
It is not a recognized medical diagnosis. There's a condition called post treatment Lyme disease syndrome, which is some symptoms that last after antibiotic treatment of Lyme disease. This, this officially is called post acute sequelae. So it's similar to things like long Covid or even pretty much anytime you get an infection, there's a proportion of people who have symptoms after the infection is gone. But it does not mean that you still have an infection. It doesn't mean that the bacteria are hiding out in the body. And chronic Lyme disease is kind of promoted as this kind of persistent infection, and it's used to kind of lump a bunch of unrelated symptoms under a giant umbrella by people who ultimately are trying to sell you unregulated therapies and potentially dangerous products.
- [41:44]
C
Dr. Love, what fiction did we not touch on that we should have?
- [41:51]
D
Oh, my gosh, there's so. There's so many.
- [41:54]
C
Pick one for us to finish.
- [41:56]
D
We're not hiding the cures for cancer. Oh, that one.
- [42:01]
C
Yeah.
- [42:01]
D
So a lot of people believe that we're hiding all these natural cures for cancer. This is not true. In fact, many of our chemotherapies that we use today are actually derived from natural compounds, but they're improved because natural chemicals need to be tweaked to be more specific and more effective and less toxic and so on. And so if you hear anybody using that messaging, that's going to ultimately mislead you and people who fall for that and forego real cancer interventions, they often have an increased risk of dying. They die earlier, they die faster, and they die more often. So that's one working in the immunotherapy field, I feel really strongly about, understandably.
- [42:42]
C
Well, Dr. Love, Andrea, thank you so much for your time. I've learned a lot. Thank you for having me. I've enjoyed this tremendously. I hope we can have some of those longer conversations down the road. And just thank you again.
- [42:52]
D
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me. Chelsea,
- [42:58]
C
you can follow Dr. Andrea Love at Dr. Andrea Love on Instagram, and you can find her newsletter@immunologic.org thanks for listening. Talk to you next week. That Can't Be True is a production of Limonada Media and the Clinton Foundation. The show is produced by Katherine Barnes, mix and sound design by Johnny Vince Evans. Kristen Lepore is senior director of new content, and Jackie Danziger is VP of narrative and production. Maggie Krauschore is our managing director of partnerships. Executive producers are Jessica Cordova Kramer, Stephanie Whittles Wax, and me, Chelsea Clinton. Special thanks to Erika Goodmanson, Sarah Horowitz, Francesca Ernst Kahn, Caroline Lewis, Sage Falter, Barry Lurie Westerberg, Emily Young, and the entire team at the Clinton Fund. You can help others find our show by leaving us a rating and writing a review. And if you can think of someone who might benefit from today's episode, please go ahead and share it with them. There's more of that can't be true with Lemonada. Premium subscribers get exclusive access to bonus content when you subscribe on Apple Podcasts. You can also listen ad free on Amazon Music with your prime membership.