The Daria Hamrah Podcast
Do you want to change or simply improve your life? Take your business or your personal relationships to the next level? Have you ever thought why change is so difficult? Ever wondered how people become successful and we just call them "lucky". The Daria Hamrah Podcast gives you Dr. Hamrah's personal insights and pathways to his successes and what he calls "true happiness". Featuring interviews with some of the most successful entrepreneurs, authors and experts in their field, he shares their insights into what he calls the "Secret of Life".
The Daria Hamrah Podcast
"From Surviving to Thriving": Dr. Corey Howards's Blueprint for Lasting Health
Discover how you can revolutionize your approach to health and wellness with insights from Dr. Corey Howard, a distinguished physician specializing in internal medicine, gastroenterology, and functional medicine. Tune in as Dr. Howard pulls back the curtain on his journey from contemporary medicine to a proactive focus on disease prevention and lifestyle optimization. This episode promises to reshape your understanding of healthcare, highlighting the critical need to shift from a treatment-centric model to one that prioritizes prevention and holistic well-being.
Learn from compelling personal stories and practical advice on topics ranging from the transformative power of functional medicine to the fundamental role of deep sleep in maintaining health. Dr. Howard shares a riveting narrative about overcoming inexplicable health issues through the lens of holistic care. His expertise shines through as he explains the intricate connections between lifestyle choices, the epigenome, chronic illness, and aging. You’ll walk away with a newfound appreciation for the importance of addressing root causes rather than merely treating symptoms.
We round out the conversation with a deep dive into optimizing gut health and the critical impact of the microbiome on overall well-being. Dr. Howard offers actionable tips on diet, sleep, stress management, and the intelligent use of vitamins and supplements. Whether you’re looking to understand the science behind functional medicine or seeking practical steps to improve your health, this episode is packed with insights and strategies to help you achieve optimal wellness. Don't miss out on this enlightening discussion with Dr. Corey Howard.
Website: https://www.howardhealthandwellness.com
Instagram: @dr.coreyhoward
Podcast: "Howard Health & Wellness"
YouTube: @dr.coreyhoward
Tweet me @realdrhamrah
IG @drhamrah
All right, everyone, welcome to another episode of the Daria Hammer podcast. Today's guest is a highly accomplished physician, dr Corey Howard. He is a board certified in too many areas to mention, but I just have to mention for the context of our conversation that you will be part of shortly. So Dr Corey Howard has a very interesting background. He started with what I call traditional medicine, but traditional medicine not in a traditional sense, in a sense that medicine, the way we practice or's practicing it today. So he's board certified in internal medicine, gastroenterology, functional medicine with a deep focus on disease prevention and lifestyle medicine. Now we're going to talk a little bit about what actually functional medicine is and what lifestyle medicine means and how it pertains to you. So after 10 years in practice of internal medicine, gastroenterology, he decided to take a different route and expanded his expertise with advanced training in anti-aging, functional and regenerative medicine we're going to talk about what all of those encompass and also he educated himself and got board certified in metabolic nutritional medicine. So again, I feel like I don't think there's anyone more complete than Dr Howard here to have this conversation, which is mainly going to be around health, wellness, as well as longevity and health span and some practical changes and lifestyle choices you can make today after listening to this podcast that really will steer your life into the direction that you want it to go Now.
Speaker 2:Dr Howard is also actively participating in lawmaking. He served as the past president of the Florida Medical Association and currently chairs the Florida delegation to the American Medical Association, and his holistic approach integrates all of the aspects of nutrition, fitness, sleep, stress management and cutting-edge science to help his patients achieve their optimal health. He's also a life coach, which is very interesting. I used to be actually a life coach, so hopefully we get a little bit into that. Also, he's an Ironman triathlete I couldn't say this for myself A musician and published author, making him a really well-rounded expert in both medicine and wellness.
Speaker 2:So, without further ado, I didn't even know where to start with your intro, corey, but I decided to just say everything because I feel every experience and expertise you have is really significant what we are about to talk about, because when you talk about functional or holistic medicine, I know some people might cringe when they hear holistic medicine because they don't understand it, but we're going to talk about what that means. I think when you talk about that, it is important to talk to someone that really has real-life experience and expertise in all those aspects and didn't just read a book about it. So, first of all, welcome to my show. It's an honor to have you. I can't wait for me and my audience to learn from your expertise. But I want to start this conversation by asking you what is wrong with healthcare today? Why is it that our current healthcare system is so focused on fixing what's broken instead of preventing the break?
Speaker 3:Well, thank you for that. Thank you for not actually reading my entire CV. Lots of stuff. It's actually a very interesting story and hopefully we'll get into that.
Speaker 3:But you dove in the deep end to ask the big question of what the hell is wrong with medicine and pretty much everything. It starts with training training in a disease-based model focused on medications, focused on the aspects of just moving patients through the pipeline. But the reality is, when I talk about this and one thing I just need to correct you is I just recently retired from my positions after 32 years working at the Florida Medical Association and the American Medical Association so that I could take my message and do it Association, so that I could take my message and do it the way that I wanted to do it. I got tired of somebody telling me or asking me that I should say things a certain way or act a certain way in a political environment, and I just think that that's ridiculous now, because we all know the political scene in the United States is absolutely nuts. Yeah, I call that silly, to be honest.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and that holds true in the medical field. But I'm going to give you a little bit of a parallel here and hopefully this will help answer part of that question. You see, in a political race you have three sides. You have people on your side, people against you and then people on the fence, and so you always focus on creating a bigger base by solidifying the people that like you and you pick people off the fence and you never spend any money on people who are against you.
Speaker 3:In healthcare, you have people that are already healthy, that are interested in doing it.
Speaker 3:You have people that are interested but maybe need some assistance, and then you have people that just won't do it for a variety of reasons they don't have resources. They're a lot of problems, but right now we are spending all of our time, money and effort plugging holes in that population that's sick, instead of making the healthy population healthier. Now I have pitched this to Congress exactly the same way and they were like yes, this is exactly what we should do, and I can name the congressman, but the problem is you can't get it done in an election cycle, so they won't do it and they won't put money into it. But the reality is that if you spend enough money in prevention and really work on the patients that are already interested and make them healthier, pick people off the fence who are thinking about it, teach them, educate them, show them how to do it, introduce them to what is functional medicine, which is root cause analysis, you will save enough money in healthcare to pay for everybody else. So I have a question for you.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Go ahead. I was just going to say I could give you a quick example of that is simply weight management and diabetes. You can take 100 million people off of the table just by applying some very basic principles, but there's a lot more to talk about. So what were you going to ask?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I feel like we treat. I mean, you're preaching to the choir and I'm pretty sure the audience feels the same way, as I do.
Speaker 2:Now there's no secret that we treat healthcare like a fire extinguisher. You know I mean something we only reach for when we're already in crisis. But what if we treat it? I mean it's common sense. What if we treated it like a garden, you know Like we nurtured it, watered it and, you know, and tended to it before the weeds or disease ever had a chance to grow? I mean this is like common sense. We do that in all other parts of our lives. We do that with our garden, we do that with our car, we do that with our pets. I mean we are wired to think that way, think that way.
Speaker 2:My question to you is you are one of the few physicians that have really battled at the front, meaning you have really not just talked to congressmen and women, but you have discussed this matter with your fellow physicians. And what is mind-boggling is that why isn't that concept even taught in medical schools, teaching institutions that have some of the smartest scientists and physicians in the world at the helm of or responsible for teaching the new generations of physicians? And what's astounding to me, you know I have a fellowship program, so I mentor and I train physicians and surgeons that literally just graduated within the past five to 10 years, and when I asked them how much of your education was focused on preventative care was focused on, for example, nutrition, lifestyle, et cetera. They look at me like they don't even know why I'm asking that question or what I'm talking about, and so I just don't understand that.
Speaker 2:Emil, you're someone that has discussed these matters with your fellow physicians and colleagues, and so can you explain what the sentiment is. I just want to get an idea of the sentiment and of the attitude towards it. Is it something that's being shrugged off as that's just like voodoo, or that's BS, or that's holistic BS whatever they call it, or selling snake oil? Or is it something that they say yeah, we totally agree with you, we understand, but look, the system is not in our favor. So what do you want me to do?
Speaker 3:Well, first of all, you have to realize a lot of funding that goes to medical schools comes from Medicare, and so Medicare directly funds residencies, and so they have to what do you mean?
Speaker 2:they fund residents. Can you explain that? How does Medicare fund residencies?
Speaker 3:The government, through Medicare, actually proportions a certain amount of money that goes to medical schools to pay for a portion of training in medical school, and so if you pay $40,000, for example, a year for medical school which obviously would be cheap in the United States the actual cost is much greater than that per year per student, and that's co-funded by Medicare. But that's not the reason. The reason why is there are a lot of acronym names like ACGME and such, which control what they think you should learn, and so I think that there is a basic, foundational knowledge that we need to get to, and that's we should all do it. I mean, how many times have you been taught the Krebs cycle and forgot it until you finally realized how important it is in clinical practice? Right, and then now you know the thing and why it's so important, and we could talk about that, but at the end of the day, the reality is they have to do things a certain way. Now I will say that a lot of schools in the United States have integrated some evidence-based cooking. They've actually integrated some lifestyle medicine, some areas of mindfulness and meditation, but that is a minority compared to everything else that you have to learn.
Speaker 3:So what I do and what people need to do is they need to take that foundation because you have to learn. So what I do and what people need to do is they need to take that foundation because you got to start somewhere. You've got to know some of that basic stuff, even though that medical knowledge doubles literally every 60 days now. So what you learned 10 years ago is very, very different than what you do today. But you know, what hasn't changed is how you communicate, what you know and how you work with people, and I don't know if they teach that enough that interpersonal skill to really be a person talking to another person and not like I am the doctor, you are the patient and this what you do too. That would never fly, but it works for the masses and doing stuff. So I think that what you have to do is get that foundational knowledge and then you have to decide what kind of person do you really want to be? You know, I always say you look at my wall at the office and I've got. You know, just like all of us, we've got degrees and diplomas all over the place and I tell people that doesn't tell the story of who I am or why it is that I can treat you, or what my background is, or how I've leveraged the most difficult, dark things that have ever happened to me in my life and funneled it in a way to actually help you become a better person. And that's what I did, and I did that consciously, I did it as a reason, and that's what I did, and I did that consciously, I did it as a reason. But I will say that we're not going to be able to solve why things are the way they are, but, just like in marketing, you've got to meet people where they are and move them forward to the next level. And so we can all do it better. We can be better physicians.
Speaker 3:I do find and I don't know if you find this too, and I'm sorry to some doctors that might be listening, but people got pretty lazy and incomplete. Workups are incomplete, diagnoses are incomplete, patients aren't talked to, they don't have enough information, and I think that you have to decide as a person if you're going to do it better. And that's what I decided. I decided that I needed to know more. I needed to know why this happens and how I can help you.
Speaker 3:And you know, the funny thing is like if I see somebody, I honestly don't, I have no idea what I'm going to talk about. I mean, yes, if we have labs and stuff, we start on a process, but later on we wind up going. I may talk about their childhood, or I may use some colorful language to have a pattern interrupt, to change their thought process, to get them back on track, or I may actually do therapy with them in the middle of an appointment. But I think you have to be proactive. And so the schools, the systems. They are slow to change. There are lots of rules and regulations, but there is a basic foundational knowledge. As a physician, you have to decide which part is art and which part is science, and that's going to be up to you. You can work in the system you see a bunch of patients clock in, clock out as an employee and be done, or you can really do something for healthcare and change the trajectory of health in America, and that's what I intend to do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I commend you for that. And as far as my practice is concerned, you know, I want to also know how you got into functional medicine, because that's not where you started. So, so, so, so, just so that you know. The reason why I actually got to know you is because of the interest, my interest, that had changed. You know, I come from a surgical practice aesthetic medicine, anti-aging, rejuvenation meaning from a specialty that is in desperate attempt to turn back the aging clock. Okay, that's really pretty much what I'm trying to do. And then, like in medicine, we have two ways. One is a non-surgical way, one is a surgical way. One involves cutting and the other one involves medication, creams, externally applied stuff, let's call it so the way I stumbled on functional medicine and that's how I got to know you, one of these days you just popped up on my feed and your way of communication really engaged me and it was so educational. By the way, you have a very clear and soothing voice that one wants to actually listen to you. So I just listened to the whole thing and I'm like, oh my God, this guy is exactly who everybody should be listening to. And for those of you who don't know what I'm talking about. By the way, dr Howard also has his own podcast, and it's a fantastic educational library. If you have no clue about what we're talking about and just wonder where to start, I would say, just go down his podcast episode from number one to wherever you are now, and it's beautifully explained. It's even I learned so much from listening to it that what I was actually impressed by is that the way you communicate, a layman can easily understand, but that's a communication style. It's an ability, a talent that unfortunately not all of our colleagues possess, and it's not something you can teach or train. I mean, up to a certain degree you could, I suppose. But really it's an art in itself and I think that's what makes a good physician.
Speaker 2:But back to how I stumbled upon functional medicine. Is that, corey? I started getting old and I didn't like it, and I used to wake up in the morning and thinking why does my shoulder hurt? Why does my ankle lock up? Yes, I did a lot of sports in my young days and even up until like three, four years ago, I used to play pickup soccer every Sunday for like 90 minutes like full force, not just like I mean we're talking about the whole field, the whole pitch and all my life. I was involved in athletics Even today I am and I couldn't do. I got to a point I couldn't do the regular stuff Like walking up a flight of stairs. I was kind of worried because I was worried my right knee is going to hurt. And even when I got after I got an MRI and MRI was negative. It pretty much showed chondromalacia and just natural stuff of aging, nothing pathological which was inappropriate. I was like, well, it still hurts.
Speaker 2:And then my left shoulder started hurting and then my toes started hurting. My ankles started like everything creeped up as soon as I hit 50. Like everything creeped up as soon as I hit 50. So I said, well, I should go to my primary care doctor, get some basic labs and just see what the hell is going on. Everything came back normal. She's like see you in two years. I'm like, wait so. But I don't feel normal, I'm tired. I have like brain fog like around 2, 3 pm I just want to go home and just take a nap. I'm not the same person. I know it because I know my body very well. And she said well, you know, welcome to the club, you're getting older. You're just working too hard, maybe you should rest more. So pretty much no straight answer, no suggestion, nothing about lifestyle. Not even a single question about my lifestyle or habits, not even a question how many hours I sleep, not a question about what I eat, not a question about what's going on in my life, my connections, human connections and my mental status. None of that and my mental status, none of that.
Speaker 2:And so I stumbled on the topic of functional medicine. You'd be surprised, through a friend of a friend that I met at a party, who happens to be an orthopedic surgeon that is very interested in longevity, functional medicine and stuff like that. So I said I went up to him. I'm like Matt, I'm really sorry. I hate when people in a party come up to me and ask me medical questions because it's a one time. I just don't want to talk about that stuff. But I just need to pick your brain. What's going on with my shoulder?
Speaker 2:So, long story short, I was diagnosed with a rotator cuff injury and a right labrum tear. So pretty much I was crippled. I couldn't lift anything, I couldn't even wash my back in the shower, and another orthopedic surgeon just gave me a steroid shot, said yeah, I'll see you back in three months. And so I stumbled. So he gave me a bunch of advice. He's like, hey, do you do this, do you take that? And I'm like, no, I don't even know what you're talking about.
Speaker 2:So that night I went home, I went on Google, I researched the whole damn thing. Everything he told me and that's how I stumbled on this topic. And you know what occurred to me? That I'm treating aesthetic medicine the same way a primary care or any other doctor approaches healthcare today, which is waiting for something to break and then trying to fix what's broken instead of asking what is the root cause and treating the root cause of it. And when I did that, I did my own research, I literally treated myself. I changed my lifestyle I'm not kidding you Within four weeks and, by the way, I just went to one of these direct-to-consumer sites online, got all my biomarkers, my DNA, everything.
Speaker 2:I think it was InsideTracker. I don't have any affiliation with them, but it just gave me everything and more than what my archaic basic labs of my primary care physician would even order. And I saw that about 12 of my biomarkers were out of whack and they weren't optimized and the ones that were within the normal. They were at the borderline, either borderline high or borderline low. I changed my lifestyle. I changed my diet. I took some supplements that I was deficient in.
Speaker 2:Within four weeks probably even less than four weeks, I would say, maybe two and a half weeks or so all my pains and aches went away. I would jump out of bed. I would not get tired. I had so much energy. My staff was like bed. I would not get tired, I had so much energy. My staff was like what's wrong with you? You're very hyper and energized. You're like an energized bunny. I'm like I don't know. I don't know. I feel that, but I don't know why, because everything happened so quickly. So it changed my life to the point that I felt so compelled, I was so juiced up and amped up to integrate that in my own patient care, because it occurred to me that aging this is what it is.
Speaker 2:So it's cellular aging is what the root cause of all of this is, and cellular optimization is what needs to be performed and done. Now the question is how? And so I went and dug back into my basic science knowledge that I had from doing two years of full-time cancer research. I literally looked up the Krebs cycle again. I looked at all the cell cycle, I looked at all the cytokines, I looked at everything and it all rang a bell. It was kind of 25 years ago. So I literally studied for six months and now I'm integrating in my patient care because I feel we're not treating our patients the way we should, which is in a preventative fashion and optimizing. And the science is there. So that's now what's shocking. I want you to explain us. The science is there, has been there for decades. This is nothing new. So why is it that colleagues of ours don't look at that? If they're interested, if it's their profession, isn't it their duty and obligation, or is it that they're not aware of it? Which one is it?
Speaker 3:They're not aware. That's the thing. So my story was a little different and I'll get into it a bit. But they're not aware and they were told that alternative medicine, integrative medicine, is kooky medicine, like you don't need supplements.
Speaker 2:You don't need to look at why was that? Where did that, does that stem from?
Speaker 3:I mean, it's coming from their training, unfortunately and then you get stuck in the mode of being a human doing instead of a human being. Right, you just start doing stuff because that's what you were taught to do. You literally have to take a step back and take a pause and say what is important here, what is the cause, what could be going on, instead of just saying, okay, this is the differential diagnosis and these are the things that we should do and this is how we're going to do it. And so in your case you know that's amazing. I mean, you must have had a kind of not, your diet probably wasn't good and things like that. But you know, doctors aren't going to talk to you about your deep sleep cycle. You know how I explained it. Let me, let me just talk about that. You know how you I explained the deep sleep cycle. This is how I explain it. I'm like the deep sleep cycle is so incredibly important to your health.
Speaker 1:So think of it like this Every single cell in your body is like a mini city, so in the morning people are coming in, people are chefing up food and consuming food.
Speaker 2:I love your analogies.
Speaker 1:You know, cars are going all over the place, Pollution is happening and, at the end of the day, people leave, they're restocking the restaurants, they're cleaning up the streets, and all that garbage has to come out.
Speaker 3:Well, that is exactly what happens to your cells at night, and so if you're not having enough deep sleep, you're not detoxifying, you're not getting rid of the products you're not able to replenish and you eventually will fall apart. But it even is a little bit different than that. It goes back to the key elements of lifestyle medicine, because 80% of all chronic illnesses are due to lifestyle. So I'm talking about nutrition hundreds of billions of chemical reactions occurring per second, talking about your fitness your brain fitness, heart fitness, bone fitness, cardiovascular fitness, metabolism. Talking about stress and how you manage it, talking about sleep like I talked a little bit about it the environment xenoestrogens, pesticides and BPA, microplastics. And then relationships how are you interacting with the people that you're with and the groups around them? And then what is your mindset? Are you even thinking about those things? So that's just step one, and the reason why it causes chronic illness is because, in the 1940s we found DNA. Woo big deal right.
Speaker 3:Now what do we know? Oh, we know the map. Okay, big deal. No, now we know there's a set of DNA that sits on top of the DNA, the epigenome, that actually has switches that turn on and off that are directly regulated by lifestyle behaviors. And so when those switches turn on and off, they read regulated by lifestyle behaviors. And so when those switches turn on and off, they read the DNA. They mismatch the DNA leads to telomeres unraveling the aging process, which are the end caps of chromosomes, and so it's all part of the same thing.
Speaker 3:The problem is that people are doing one thing hormone care Like I'm an expert in hormone. Well, I'm an expert in hormone care too, but I just happen to do everything. And so I look at all of those aspects and for me it was just like you, except you know you get old enough, everything does hurt. That's just you just kind of. You know you get there, but it doesn't prevent you from doing things. But I had the idea that there had to be something else. There seemed to be something.
Speaker 3:I was a gastroenterologist. I could scope all day, I was great at video games. It wasn't like it was super complicated, occasional, complicated case, but it was just like churning and burning through patients, but I found that what I really liked most is sitting and talking to them. And then, when I thought back, I was like you know, when I was a medical student and resident, I realized that every day after everybody went home I would go to the patient's bedside and sit with them and listen to their stories and communicate with them, and I learned a skill that wasn't taught and I carried that skill and it just made me more interested to be like we could do better and, believe it or not, I actually started off in psychiatry in New York City and I realized after a year I definitely wasn't a psychiatrist, but I did understand how important it was, but I wanted to know more, just like you, and how it can help, and that brought me to today.
Speaker 2:Was there a specific moment? Do you remember that moment? Because I remember my moment. I had a holy shit moment. Yeah, you know, I was like all of a sudden things connected and did you ever have that moment or was it more? You evolve into it?
Speaker 3:you know I had many moments because I can't tell you that one thing did it. I mean I wanted to have more control. I didn't want to be told where to go and what to do all the time. I wanted to make sure that when I talked to somebody I was empowered with information that could empower them. You know, because at the end of the day, for me it's not like I teach my patients and train my patients to do it themselves. You know, we talk about health care and should health care be a right and we can argue about that, but you've got to go out and put your shoes on and go outside. You've got to do that yourself. So in my world the teacher rise when the student is ready. And at this point in time in my career I see people who are already interested in taking those steps, whether they have money or don't, because I have patients on both sides.
Speaker 3:But I did have an aha moment doing gastroenterology and I was just like nausea, vomiting gas, bloating, diarrhea, pancreatic disease, colon cancer, esophageal disease. I'm like not what else is there. And GI didn't change that much. I mean they still really hasn't changed. I like the molecular nature of things. I like to know how cyclic AMP works. I like to know how nuclear factor kappa beta works. I like to know how these part integrate and teach it to my patients in a way that makes sense to them, just like I teach them why that little nuclear power plant in your cells?
Speaker 3:the mitochondria are so important because without it you don't make energy or ATP. And then I explain the whole thing and they go like that's interesting. So I had a deep desire to know more, and the problem with medicine and what we do besides the fact that it doubles so quickly is that the more you learn, the more there is to learn.
Speaker 2:Well, not only that, but simply the fact that, knowing that how much medicine supposedly has evolved, let's say, since the 70s, right, All the discoveries, all the papers in these journals and science, nature, everything that was discovered, right, we're talking about 50 years now since the 70s I was born in developed, researched has not really made us healthier. Actually, what was astounding to me when I looked at some statistics? Our life expectancy has dropped by a couple of years since the 70s. You know why that is well, yeah, you know, I think I know, but please tell us why.
Speaker 2:Like how does that even make sense? Well, there's a bunch of reasons why, but I will say one thing Aren't we supposed to get healthier?
Speaker 3:Well, actually, because we don't teach health, we teach disease management.
Speaker 2:Okay. So if we teach disease management, why are we dying earlier if we're managing?
Speaker 3:disease Because we're not managing it well, because people also have to be proactive. We're not empowering people to get healthier. See, everybody thinks it's the doctor's responsibility to you to be healthy. Thank you.
Speaker 2:It's not.
Speaker 3:Thank you for saying that, yeah, you have to go out and do it. And I'll tell you what I wrote a national healthcare policy at the American Medical Association, like 15 years ago, called American's Health, and it talks about personal responsibility and that still is an active policy there nationally because people have to be proactive and take responsibility for themselves. But you have to have the teachers teaching it. You know, doctor in Latin means to teach, so you know we should be teaching. But you did open the door to one thing which I think is very important. It's research versus clinical medicine and right now there's some very popular people out there that are actually researchers giving clinical advice to people, which absolutely blows my mind because people are taking it in like it's gospel.
Speaker 2:Because they're desperate, because they don't get that information from their doctors.
Speaker 3:But the thing is, is we as clinicians? Yes, we take their information from research, we interpret it the way that it needs to in the clinical environment and decides whether or not it's good. So everything that comes out it's like you should have this much protein or these amino acids, or this is the science behind this or that, and you're like is this practical? Is that something that you can actually teach? I mean, what do we do? So I think that there's a bit of a disconnect with that. But back to the problem. Like what happened in the 1970s Well, the coolest thing ever.
Speaker 3:First of all, in the 1950s, glucose isomerase was developed. Now I will tell y'all glucose isomerase. I'm in Florida, even though I'm from New York. Somehow that seeped in so far. Sorry for the y'all part, but the thing is it occurred in Japan, actually from a physician, a doctor in Hiroshima and in the United States, independently in the fifties. In Japan they needed to get sugar, but nobody really wanted to sell them sugar after World War II. So they created a, a way to create a substitute, high fructose corn syrup. But they also taught in the schools how to, how to not become obese, and that's why obesity didn't affect them at the time until we got there, and then the United States, we had it and just sat around until the 1970s. And in the 1970s the food industry was bitching because sugar prices were going up and they wanted to find cheaper products. And it just so happens that the original studies in Princeton looked at high fructose corn syrup and sugar in rats and they ate it. But they realized that the rats didn't have the release of leptin. They didn't know what it was back then, but they didn't get as hungry so they ate through it. So they had a higher amount of calories as soon as they got into high fructose corn syrup. But it also so happens in the 1970s this is all fact, because I'm actually researching this for another book. I'm writing a fiction novel but in the 1970s they found corn was a surplus in the United States. They sold corn to the food industry. That applied glucose isomerase and boom, high fructose corn syrup was introduced. So that in the 1990s the average American is consuming 40 to 50 pounds per person per year and the obesity epidemic started to explode. Because, just think about it, we've always had Richard Simmons, jack LaLanne, original people doing exercise, so that's not a new thing People talking about food and diet, and you can go back to many, many individuals talking about plant-based eating.
Speaker 3:It turns out they duped us. They created food that became addictive. This is not being conspiracy theorists, this is just fact. And then all of a sudden they were like we can make a lot of money like this. They introduced us into every single product. So most of you people who have ketchup in your refrigerator, it has high fructose corn syrup, unless you read the label and you have to eliminate those things. That is number one.
Speaker 3:Now, of course, we're also doomed because advertising is everywhere and where it used to take five or six impressions to do something in the 1950s, today you're getting like 10,000 impressions a day of stuff. So we have to take a proactive stance and physicians have to empower patients to change that. But that's just one small aspect. We're getting sicker, and the reason and it's not because we don't have enough doctors or nurse practitioners or PAs, it's because we're not educating the patients to think of a healthy lifestyle and again, go back to it. Not everybody's going to do it, but there are enough people that want to and enough people that are already doing it to literally change how we look at healthcare, and that's how I focus, and it really starts with having this personal interaction with somebody. It's my Live Beyond Well program, but having an interaction, ordering the proper test, not because you're a steward of the medical dollar, which is what they teach you, but because you want to actually help them. And so, yeah, instead of ordering a basic cholesterol profile, you're ordering an advanced lipid profile with inflammatory markers, which actually looks at your lipoproteins, which are the genetic sticky factors that are involved in the size of your particles which can kind of get between the cells, and stuff like that. And looking at other markers, like you had done, that are not in the traditional realm because they're a little bit more expensive, although they're coming out less expensive now, all the way through complicated tests which could be micronutrient testing and T-limit testing and ApoE testing and that stuff, but just the basic stuff. You can catch so much.
Speaker 3:And hormones, because hormones, we can have an entire podcast on hormones, how poorly they're done in the United States, how it's such a money grab, but they're absolutely needed in men and women. And so a couple of people right now, thank goodness, are really champions of their fields, although you know they've had a varied background and they're realizing how important hormones are for both men and women throughout the life cycle, and so, and lots of data that we could get into. But in terms of for you particularly, and and and the topic here which I think is really, really important to talk about because my wife is a cosmetic dermatologist too, so we have these conversations is how do you apply what we do from as a functional standpoint, to improve the outcomes of what you do? And I think that's the interplay of where it sounds to me and from what I've seen from your site, where that's going gosh. Wouldn't it be amazing if more people did it? Not just for money by selling you stuff, but because you know that.
Speaker 3:You know vitamin C supports collagen and vitamin E is an antioxidant and niacinamide reduces inflammation and zinc plays a role in skin repair and collagen.
Speaker 3:Peptides and estrogen, progesterone, hyaluronic acid and CoQ10 and probiotics and resveratrol, which, by the way, is in highest concentration of Pinot Noir. But that isn't strong enough that, if you don't drink, to start drinking. So there's a lot of stuff like that that we could dive into every single one on how to help people and create customized programs to help people manage it. They don't have to do it all. But if they do something and it's kind of like this and this may be counter to something you do and I would apologize if I'm gonna put my foot in my mouth, but my wife has skincare products In fact she has her own line and stuff and I'm a firm believer that if you just use one skincare line actually doing cleanser, toner, you know, and you know looking at vitamin Cs and things like that and retinols if you do a line, whatever it is, you will see results, as long as it's matched to your skin type, because it's about consistency.
Speaker 2:You know everything, we do Everything about that. Everything is you hit the nail on the head and that's something I tell my patients. I say I don't care what you use, as long as you use it on a regular basis. It's like saying which gym is the best? Should I go to LA Fitness? Should I go to Lifetime? I don't care, as long as you show up, you do something, you will see improvement. And that's, I think, when people kind of lose perspective of what's important and what's not.
Speaker 3:But you mentioned Don't you also think, though, on the consistency thing? Sorry to interrupt, but the thing is, that's the problem in the medical environment. Because you don't have consistency, you go to your doctor and you just said see me in two years. Okay, go work out once every two years. I mean, how does that?
Speaker 2:work and you know why. She said you have no risk factors.
Speaker 3:I'm like You're a person that's getting older, you have risk factors.
Speaker 2:Like two years is a long time, man. So.
Speaker 3:I mean.
Speaker 2:I just checked my lap every four months now and I can't believe how much has changed based on the modifications that I make. So I want to see real-time what's happening because I don't want to do too much of something Like if I'm getting, for example, if I'm in the summertime, I'm getting enough vitamin D3. I'm outdoors a lot and my vitamin D3 levels are optimal. Do I really need to take vitamin D supplement? Probably not.
Speaker 3:Whoa whoa, whoa, whoa whoa. Let me help you there.
Speaker 3:Help me there. First of all, the efficiency of the sun. Conversion to bioactive vitamin D is about as efficient as solar energy into electricity. Amazing, like it's just not that good, amazing. So I live in Florida and I would say 90% of my patients even the sun, gods and goddesses have low vitamin D. Now, of course you know the endocrine society just came out with their statement on vitamin D that we shouldn't even be checking it. Yeah, okay, what I'm going to call. I'm going to call BS there, just like the United States preventive medicine said don't check PSAs in the past and women shouldn't have mammographies. They're just stupid.
Speaker 2:But why do they say that it makes no sense? It's expensive. It doesn't change anything.
Speaker 3:The data that they see. Endocrinologists are very book-wise. We have to think much bigger. So we found, actually even during during COVID, how much vitamin D is involved in your immune system, because so many people died. Now I'm not trying to get into a political conversation.
Speaker 2:We're having a medical conversation. Anybody that wants to make this political, that's on there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know, but we found that a lot of people succumb to the disease early when they had low vitamin D levels and obesity and inflammatory conditions. And so that was like hmm, it turns out it's a powerful antioxidant. It's not only involved in the bone, it's involved in your immune system, and you know how complicated the immune system is. I can't even touch that one because that's way over my head about understanding it. But I optimize vitamin D 100% and I would say more than 90% of patients are on some vitamin D. Now, how much is the question?
Speaker 3:Personally, I think 40 to 60 is a pretty good number. I don't think it has to be that much more. And remember, for every 10 international uh, for every thousand international units of vitamin d, your vitamin d level will go up about six to ten. So it's, you know, not a, not a lot. So 2000 would make it go up like 20 or so. But you know, I do monitor and measure, just the same way, like I look at vitamin d b, vitamin b12, I look at homocysteine, look at meth a cheap way to look at methylation pathways yeah, although I can look at other things.
Speaker 3:So so, I mean, there are definite, definite things that we can and should do. But anyway, you were talking about your vitamin D and sun.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so. So my, my point is that for physicians today to rethink the way they treat patients or we shouldn't say treat, actually, um, I would call it manage their health. It should be about managing health and not treating someone, you're not treating someone, you're managing their health or giving them advice.
Speaker 2:You would have to send them back to school, basically, because it's a complete 180 as far as how you approach. Even the approach is different. It's not like you can go into a seminar or a lecture and then say, oh okay, that sounds great, I'm going to do that from starting tomorrow. On Monday it's not going to happen, so there needs to be a requirement if it's not voluntary, it should be a requirement that all current practicing physicians have to get trained and whether you want to do a certification or whatever it is to standardize it, to be able to have this paradigm shift in their minds and understand the earth isn't flat, it's actually round.
Speaker 2:You can't just mention it in the elevator or as a suggestive way of treating patients. I mean, that's on one hand and the other thing is looking into the future. You have to integrate it into every medical school education or else it's going to be the same going forward and policymakers are eventually going to be deterred or motivated. You know, I mean money runs this country, I mean money runs the world. I'm pretty sure I could tell you now, and without even knowing for certain, if we get healthier, if people get, get healthier if we have less disease, if we eat less junk food. There's a lot of powerful and rich people are going to be pissed off, so the question is the question is, who's going to win that one?
Speaker 2:I think the big answer to whether it will ever going to change. The big answer to whether it will ever change is who is bigger and stronger and more powerful?
Speaker 3:let me just say this, because I don't disagree with you there. But you know, my days of trying to change the world, to see it a certain way, are diminishing and I am more interested right now in people who are already interested in what I'm doing and how I'm doing it. And if you have an interest and you want to know more about it, that's where I'm creating my program, that's where Live Beyond Well becomes a big thing. That book should be out within a year.
Speaker 3:Understanding it, it's not just the functional, integrative lectures that have been put into context, it's just real world clinical medicine on how to interact with people, like people, not cookie cutter, and every situation becomes different. I can't tell you how many times I'm talking to a man, and they could be 40, they could be 70 and they're having some issues with their marriage. And I'm like, well, when's the last time you guys went on a date? Or when's the last time you actually sat and listened to your wife? Like just literally just had a conversation. I said do you know how to listen? So I'm talking to this guy.
Speaker 2:You're opening up a can of worms here.
Speaker 3:Yeah, he's like 40 and super success 45. He's like super successful, great guy. And I'm like so do you know how to talk to your wife? And he's like, oh, yeah, you know whatever. I'm like, let me explain something to you. This is what you do and I want you to do this when you get home, because I'm a firm believer is you never leave the side of a good idea without taking an action towards its completion, right? So if I tell somebody something, I want them to act upon it, because that'll solidify it and they can. They can work on it.
Speaker 3:So when you go home and you have a conversation with your wife, work on it. So, when you go home and you have a conversation with your wife, talk to her and listen to her and ask her clarifying questions. It's like, hmm, I'm like, yeah, make it so that you know that she's listening to you by repeating back what she said. You said oh so, honey, you were just saying that you went and you went to the store and this and this happened, or you learned something at work and this happened, or whatever. And you're having that and she's like, hmm, wow, somebody's actually listening to me in my house. That changes the entire way people interact at home, and it goes both ways, but I tend to think that men are worse than women at that for sure. Yeah, so I'm guilty, it can happen at any age. But anyway, I mean, that's just a little digression that gives you an insight into the depth and stuff that I can get into and, like I said, I just never know what's going to come out of my mouth.
Speaker 2:And you know that is fair. I mean, I think that's like the life coach hat you just put on and that's so important because mental health is often not forget about, often not actually never even discussed um, no um with a patient. I mean it's almost like taboo, it's almost like we don't talk about that and that is on you. I'm just here to manage your body is like the mind doesn't have any effect over your body and that's kind of like the stance currently we have. But I want you to give us, you know, a lot of my audience. They've been following my content and I know that because they're asking me questions online. They're asking me questions on social media and I feel like this hunger for figuring out. Okay, they now sold on. I need to make a change. I need to take my health in my own hands. It's just that there's so much information out there, like you said, every scientist is a clinical expert suddenly and some of the stuff they say is good, but then, like you said, it's almost not applicable. People don't know what to do with that information. Me and you can understand it and kind of figure things out and make it applicable, but the layman is confused because when you're listening to all these experts, there's also a lot of contradiction. One says this diet is great plant-based, the other one said no, carnivore. The other one said don't worry aboutbased, the other one said no, carnivore. The other one said don't worry about fats, the other one said, oh, fat is great. One said cholesterol is great, your body needs cholesterol, and the other one said cholesterol kills you.
Speaker 2:So there is like in every avenue, in every aspect of health, lifestyle, diet, nutrition, medicine, there is this polarization. And patients what I've realized or people, they're desperate, they want to change but they're scared. So it's like we make them drink out of a fire hose and what happens is they capitulate. They're like you know what? I'm just going to continue to do it Until I can figure out how I'm going to do it. I'm just not going to change and then nothing changes. I don't know if you see that, uh, in your practice I mean you see that everywhere, right?
Speaker 3:you know you also see it if you read golf magazine, right? So in the back of the magazine you go in there and you're like it could be on an online form, except golf can't kill you. But no, no, no, but it's a metaphor, I know so says okay, so you want to hit a sand shot. You sit here, you do this, you move your feet here, you swing the club this way and all this and you should go out and do it, and it's like too much information. So how do you?
Speaker 2:coach. My question to you is now in your practice, because you're doing it every single day. Doing it every single day, how do you redirect the patient's focus and attention and coach them as to how they can make practical changes, literally starting tomorrow, when it comes toward the practical changes they can make towards their health and well-being from lifestyle changes to diet, exercise, nutrition, stress management and also, how can they turn this into long-term habits rather than short-lived efforts or almost like building for themselves these insurmountable goals where they give up after two weeks they're like, yeah, I can't do that, that's not for me. How do you lead the horse to the water?
Speaker 3:Yeah, First of all, I love that whole idea, but I would say everybody should read Atomic Habits. That book is an eye-opener if you don't know anything about habits. But here's how I really approach it in real time, in a clinical setting, and this is very different than probably people do it. I ask a question and I ask them what do you want? What do you want out of your what, what? What is it that you want? And they're like I don't know, Cause most people don't know. So I have them do an exercise. I teach all my patients the same exact exercise. I've done it with my kids, my family, their friends, everybody.
Speaker 3:And basically, in order to determine what you want, you have to do something. You have to take a piece of paper for like 10 minutes and you have to turn off the editing function of your brain I'll get to the reasons why in a second and you turn off the editing functions of your brain and you literally write down anything and everything. You want a jumbo jet, a tank, whatever it is, you know, and without editing why you can't have it. Because that's what we always do. We're constantly editing what we can't have. And then I have them go back and put it into categories Financial, physical, bucket list, relationship, spiritual, whatever it is, doesn't make a difference and then I have them put it in order one, two, three. One, two, three, whatever it is. And then you take each top three in the categories and you come up with three compelling reasons why you want that.
Speaker 3:So if one of the things was you want to be healthy, you have to understand what healthy is first, and then you say, well, why would you even want that? Because if you don't have compelling reasons to do something, no matter what I tell you, you ain't going to do it, no matter how good I am or how good you are. So they have to have compelling reasons. Once I've identified those reasons, I can reverse, engineer a way to get them to get there, and so it's a process. It's not like a one visit thing. I have patients that I see for years that we it took a while to get there. You know, the first of all, they have to trust me because, as you can tell, I am a straight shooter in my practice. I am no BS. I say it like it is. I call balls and strikes.
Speaker 2:Have you ever fired a patient?
Speaker 3:say it like it is. I call balls and strikes. Have you ever fired a patient? I have fired patients and I have gladly had patients fire me because they weren't working out. But I do weed out people. I do ask people that aren't in alignment with what I'm thinking to seek out somebody else for sure, Because no amount of money is going to make me see somebody that won't work with me.
Speaker 2:So how do you handle this lack of accountability, sometimes from the patient standpoint? Let's say, patients come to you. Obviously you're a concierge physician. I assume they pay you monthly or annually or per visit. I don't know how your structure?
Speaker 3:is Annually generally.
Speaker 2:So they pay you annually. With that annual payment, automatically, they will have a certain set of expectations Correct and usually the expectations, at least in my specialty is that if I don't deliver what they expected and you can never know what they expect is they point a finger at you and say it's your fault and I want my money back. You didn't give me what I thought I would, so a lot of it has to do with expectation management. In your case, obviously they're going to look for results. And then at what point do you draw the line in a finger pointing? At what point? And how do you Because it's very tricky to manage those, to navigate those waters and kind of politely tell them look, I've been telling you all along, you're supposed to do this, you're not supposed to eat that, and I really don't see that happening.
Speaker 2:So what's going on? And then the patient goes like well, you told me this and I'm going to lose that much weight, I'm going to feel better, I'm still this, I'm still that. So what's the deal? How do you manage that and what's your? Do you have a strategy or approach?
Speaker 3:Oh for sure For sure. So I actually it's several things. I manage expectations from the very first visit. So I do a meet and greet and I lay it out but what they expect, what I can do, what I can't do, and I let them know that if they're not going to participate it's not going to work, just from the very first. And it took a lot of years to get the balls to do that because it takes a lot to take a patient that's going to pay you a significant amount of money and tell them it's just not going to work. So I've developed that and it's hard to do and if you're a young physician it's exceptionally hard to do because you pretty much got to take everybody.
Speaker 3:But in real time I have had these patients, even recently. You know an older woman in their 70s who is overweight. We've tried diets, we've tried stuff. She won't do it. She keeps eating, although now I've dialed it in a little bit more after, you know, being with me for almost four years, five years, and she just was resistant to it. She wouldn't do it. I know she was eating outside of everything and not telling me the truth.
Speaker 3:And finally one day I was just like listen. I'm really sorry, but this is not working for me. I mean, I have a medical license and I take my job seriously and I'm gonna consider what you're doing a form of non-compliance, and if you can't do these things, then I don't think this is going to work. And most of the time, if not almost all the time, they are like that is enough of a motivator because they want to keep me at least in one way or another because I'm giving them advice, to keep me at least in one way or another because I'm giving them advice. And it turns out that this particular person amazing just was like bing, had a aha moment and just was like, let me see how much I can begin to. And she finally realized that it's all about her, nothing about me, it's about her. She opened up, she started talking about that, they started talking, she started talking Remember, this is a lady in her seventies started talking about her childhood, what had happened, why you know dad, and things like that, and I coached her through that and now we're on a path to success and decreasing inflammation and hopefully, you know, a little bit healthier life because you know there, you know.
Speaker 3:I do want to just take a quick segue into three aspects of life right, so there's lifespan. Right, you live and die. There's a health span living healthier, longer and then there's longevity, which is actually living longer and healthier, and so they don't all intersect. And so you know, the reality is that you know you're in your seventies. If you don't do something different, something's going to happen. So I take a proactive stance. I don't threaten them, but I give them an idea that you know maybe it's not going to work. And if they really, really aren't interested in what I'm doing, the relationship doesn't work.
Speaker 2:And I try to do something about that from the very beginning and that's, you know, very well said, and I think that's totally fair and I think anybody initially, if you set the stage correctly, would understand and you can come back to said hey, we discussed it and do you have any quantitative measures or ways to quantify health Meaning? You know there are people talking about biologic age versus chronologic age and there is hundreds of different ways of people claiming they can measure the biologic age to the point that, like when I looked into it, it got really confusing.
Speaker 3:Or that clock and a tick clock yeah all of them exactly yeah is it?
Speaker 2:is there um any clock or any way that you try to measure that and if so, which one and why?
Speaker 3:yeah, I actually don't. I mean, you're getting into the area of, uh, what is really considered biohacking, right, and you know biohacking is like it's like a do-it-yourself biology kit, you know. You kind of like figure things out along the way. But I think at the very, very basic part of it. The first thing is we have to look at lifestyle behaviors, nutrition, fitness, sleep, stress, got to dial those in. That is not an easy thing, you know. You've got to make sure that you're dialed in there.
Speaker 3:I do telomere testing. I look at telomere length. I use a specific lab for that. I don't have any financial ties to them, but I use a very specific lab to do telomere testing to get an idea of where they might be. But it turns out that a lot of the factors that affects your telomeres are related to inflammation, are related to, you know, micronutrient insufficiencies or trace element insufficiencies and stuff. So that's kind of that part of it, so to speak. But you know there's also other kind of biohacking between nutritional biohacking and cognitive biohacking and skin therapy and cryotherapy and a lot of different things. But I don't do a lot more of specific testing because there's so much depth and wealth inside of doing the things that I do, that I find that if you're already doing those, man, you are hitting the high notes. So I would say one of the metrics that I do that I find that if you're already doing those, man, you are hitting the high notes. So I would say one of the metrics that I have.
Speaker 3:I think you have to look at some of the common diseases. So A, how many heart attacks? Zero heart attacks of my patients in 15 years Zero, not one. And that's not like they didn't have disease. Because I do advanced cardiac testing, ct calcium score. I'm very aggressive at, you know, talking to them, getting them to the right cardiologist to do. You know either pet you know cardiac pet, or you know stress echoes and things like that or these are tests that you do to detect disease as you can, basically for those who aren't a physician. So I'm very aggressive at that. But I find that you know, most of the problems that we have after age 40 are due to an inflammatory process and you've got to address the inflammatory process. So that's kind of what I do.
Speaker 2:And that's and I 100% agree with you. I think inflammation is really what leads chronic disease and aging, and it's part of the senescent cells and adipose tissue. All of those contribute to increased inflammation and that was, for me, something that really reduced inflammation. My HSCRP was to the roof as soon as I changed my diet. Stress and cortisol was a big factor for me too. Once I regulated all of that to just make logical lifestyle modifications cutting processed foods, cutting saturated fats, cutting carbohydrates I was a sweet tooth and I would eat like chocolate and candy all day long. Cutting all of that it just changed everything and it's something that anybody can do, starting today.
Speaker 2:It's just that I think people aren't sold on it or people are creatures of habit. And then the book that you mentioned I think it's probably a powerful one for anyone that is interested to read about, understand about habits. But I want you to mention, because you're an expert in gastroenterology, internal medicine and functional medicine, how important is gut health, because I know enough to know that what we put into our bodies, what we eat, is not necessarily what we absorb, and I know people are learning more about the importance of probiotics, about gut health and how that affects their immune system, their absorption of the nutrients and, ultimately, their health. Can you speak a little bit about the importance of it? Is it overhyped or is it real?
Speaker 3:Well, I have given many national lectures on the gut microbiome. I have a great one that I'm going to retool and pop it on one of my sites eventually, but it's so in-depth that it would take probably a three-part series just to get through it.
Speaker 3:Well, give us the elevator pitch 80% of your immune system's in your gut. Your gut, basically, is everything 80%. And the coolest thing about your gut is that you're basically born human with 60 trillion cells and you die bacteria with over a hundred trillion cells, and so inside of the gut, the coolest thing that happens is that they live in factions, right, so they could have 50 billion here, 100 billion there, and they're connected through something called quorum sensing, which is like a connector, and they're communicating. But if one comes over to the wrong place, they either kill it or they're like the Borg in Star Trek, they turn it into themselves by injecting their DNA into it and stuff. But the gut is incredibly important for everything and that's why some of the peptides that are out today anti-inflammatory peptides like BPC-157 is one of them you could take by mouth. It's one of the few that you could take orally and because the gut is so vital.
Speaker 3:So, yes, first is food, so you've got to feed the gut bacteria, and so the first thing you have to know about your microbiome, in a nutshell, is that it is dependent on where you are from genetically in the world first, like where your actual 23andMe or however you want to look at where you're from. That's number one. Number two is where you currently live. Number three is what you eat. Number four is your stress. Number five is your sleep and number six is any additional supplements, diseases and things like that, and that is the makeup of your microbiome. I mean just drinking diet sodas can change the microbiome to a form that doesn't allow you to absorb certain nutrients, and so it's extremely important to get your diet right, get enough fiber in your diet, because they thrive on fiber, they love fiber. That's their jet fuel, in addition to butyric acid, which is found in butter. So I'm not advocating that you eat a pat of butter every day, but it does have butyric acid in it, which is a fuel for the bacteria. So you've got to improve that. The gut actually can have a lot of factors in your mental health because it directly connects through the vagus nerve, that's the vagabond nerve, so it connects to the gastrointestinal tract. That's how you have a gut feeling. You actually can cultivate that, but you have to have that healthy.
Speaker 3:So now we've gotten into probiotics, prebiotics and the combinations, and what do you do and how do you take them and which one should you do? Well, the one thing that people have to know is that your gut microbiome turns over every five days and so you get rid of it all. Boom, it comes back right. So you can actually do some good. But remember, if you have like a hundred trillion bacteria, taking 50 billion is like a grain of sand. It's not going to do a lot but it could help. So, for example, like in women, you give a formulation that's heavy in lactobacillus, because that improves vaginal health versus men, which are more bacteroides. So you want to kind of look at the formulations. There are a couple of out there. There are a couple of really good brands to try. Sometimes they cause some GI distress and this is assuming that you're already eating.
Speaker 3:Then you look at what is a prebiotic. It's like what is a prebiotic? Well, prebiotics are like inulin. So inulin is a substance that's found in artichokes. It's also found in okra. So if you ever pickle okra, you go in the jar and it's like this slimy stuff. You're like, oh, this stuff's got to be bad and you throw it away. No, that's inulin. You want that. That's the stuff that's good for you and good for your bacteria.
Speaker 3:So that actually will help your bacteria, not only aid in digestion, improve your immune system. It's also where a lot of inflammation begins, and so it really is the gastrointestinal tract, and thank goodness that I was a gastroenterologist first, because it is literally the epicenter of everything that can happen, including wound healing, including making sure that if your gut's not healthy, for example, you can get a leaky gut. So, just to kind of give people an idea, there's leaky brain, leaky heart, leaky gut they're all exactly the same thing. It's just the cells lose their little tight junctions that basically hold the cells together and stuff can get past it, and so that can lead to inflammatory conditions in the gastrointestinal tract. And so, yes, it is an extremely important part of health is looking at your gut health, and even fewer people know how to do that.
Speaker 2:And so for some people, if you want to give practical advice to the audience, if someone wants to say, okay, dr Howard, I want to improve my gut health, tell me five things that I shouldn't eat and five things that I should eat. You mentioned several, like soda. We shouldn't have soda, but can you name the five big, most common dietary foods or you want to call them foods, what people eat that are bad for them, for their gut health, and five foods that are good for their gut health that people practically have access to and they could easily integrate it in part of their diet on a daily basis?
Speaker 3:Yeah, we'll take a crack at it. I won't count the numbers, but basically things that are good for you Fruits, fiber, right, so fiber and fruits, vegetables, particularly a combination, by the way way, of both cooked and raw vegetables, so not just raw vegetables. So the raw people are kind of off, because you can't actually absorb everything in some of the cruciferous vegetables if they're not slightly parboiled or cooked. People will argue about that. Making sure that you have adequate sleep, making sure that you have adequate sleep, making sure that you are addressing stress and making sure that you have regular bowel movements by either the foods that you're eating or making sure that you have enough hydration. So those are all very simple, basic things that we can do just to start the process, things that really affect your gut.
Speaker 3:Alcohol, number one. Probably. It's a toxin that in, of course, women have less lactate dehydrogenase, which is the thing that breaks it down, and men tend to have a little bit more, but it is a toxin that can affect your bacteria in your intestinal tract. So remember, ethanol, which is a two-carbon sugar, versus glucose, which is a six-carbon sugar, is like jet fuel. It also causes all kinds of cardiovascular problems and vascular problems and things like that. So number two I mean we mentioned already sodas.
Speaker 3:Number three are artificial sweeteners. Artificial sweeteners definitely can all of them alter? No, not not all of them, but you know. Aspartame, certainly saccharin, which you know I wouldn't even give to rats these days in experiments. But, um, you could use something like stevia, which is uh healthy, and there's several major companies that make very high quality stevia products these days, like Pure is one of them. And so another thing is the content of saturated fats in your diet. You know that actually causes some significant problems in absorption and leads to other problems with inflammation in the gut, believe it or not. Overuse of proton pump inhibitors. So so many people are on things like Prevacid, prilosec, imaprazole same thing.
Speaker 2:How about antacids like Zantac?
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, zantac. I haven't prescribed Zantac since I was a gastroenterology resident or a fellow, because Zantac is one of the few that actually crosses the blood-brain barrier and causes some problems with depression. So that actually should be taken off the market. But Pepsid is a little bit better. But anything that you do because it alters the pH that is in the stomach, which it should be an acidic environment, you make it less acidic, which opens the door to bad bacteria entering into the intestinal tract and taking over certain sections of your upper portion of your small intestine, which were, by the way, so much absorption occurs, right. So you've got all kinds of things coming in through the duodenum and jejunum, which are the upper portions of your small intestine, and they're like they have bacteria and they need them, and so you can alter them.
Speaker 3:So that's some stuff High fat diet, especially like cheese that can actually affect it, believe it or not, although cheese has other properties that make you wanna eat cheese. So that's just a couple of things. We've got lots and lots of other supplements that we could talk about that are not good for you, and supplements that are good for you, but I would recommend you know, in terms of what else you can do is consider a probiotic, and when you're looking at a probiotic, you don't want to get the ones that are just one or two bacteria, of course, and there's a couple out there. I don't want to trash any company's names, but you want to look for some that have 10 or 15 strains, at the at least, and there's plenty of those, and actually a lot of them have become shelf stable, meaning that they don't require refrigeration anymore, so it makes it easier to to have them portable. Yeah, so that's a couple things 100.
Speaker 2:I mean that segues us into supplements, because I do want to pick your brain on anti-aging myths and supplements that are really floating the internet that everybody has the one and greatest and best anti-aging supplement, greatest and best anti-aging supplement. So anti-aging treatments and supplements are everywhere, but there's still a lot of debate around what really works and what's just marketing hype. Are there any anti-aging trends or products you see overrated or not supported by solid science? One of the very common ones currently is NMN, nr, nad, and there's a lot of debate. It's crazy how much layman actually knows and reads about this and you know I really want to pick your brain on it, since you also are specialized in regenerative medicine and anti-aging.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and so I would have to say first is I do not use a shotgun approach for supplements, even just as advice of like, yeah, you should probably take these things. I do functional micronutrient testing to actually see what your cells require, so not just in the bloodstream but what the actual cells require, by taking your white blood cells, culturing them and adding nutrients to them.
Speaker 2:But what about stuff we can't measure but could be good, based on extrapolation of science and animal studies, for example?
Speaker 3:Well, I'm going to start with my most favorite, which is in the aging population, which is hormones, I think, hormone supplementation and creating an environment that you can do. Remember there are estrogen receptors, like, for example we're talking about women especially here, but in men, believe it or not, estrogen is what drives bone health in men. So so you actually need some estrogen too. But estrogen has receptors everywhere, especially in the skin, and as a woman goes through menopause and becomes post-menopausal, you wind up having an acceleration of skin issues and wound healing and wrinkles and thinness of the skin, and so you need a combination of some things. So that has to be tested by somebody who knows what they're doing, because it's done so incredibly wrong.
Speaker 3:That's probably number one for me that I start with. I also make sure that people understand the importance of collagen peptides, I think. Another thing for good skin health, and this is something my wife and I actually do together. She'll be on my podcast soon and you might enjoy her on yours. She's a brilliant woman I would love to. She's actually vice president of the American Academy of Dermatologists, so she's got lots to say, definitely put in a good word in for me I will.
Speaker 3:But in either event, you know, looking at collagen peptides improve elasticity hydration and you know the cross-linking that occurs. You know that's obviously something. But even at a more basic level we've got you know we talked about vitamin C so lots of natural sources for vitamin C. You know whether it be a citrus, but I do think that that's another one. Vitamin E as long as you don't take too much, that can cause some problems. That actually helps protect the skin cells. You've got biotin right. So a lot of hype on biotin. One little pearl about biotin is that for women especially taking biotin, that get hormone testing. The labs most of the labs that are done are done with an assay that is interfered with biotin. So you will get false high and lows. It is a complete. You have to have people off of biotin and their B vitamins. Niacinamide as you know niacinamide there's good studies. The dose is like 500 BID for that twice a day for skin cancer. But it also is an anti-inflammatory and helps to help the skin barrier so that you can do that.
Speaker 3:Omega-3 fatty acids another big, big one right. So you know everybody's on this kick of a low fat diet. Well, just what you actually need? Some fat, some healthy fats. Sometimes it's better to get it in oral form and that's, you know, naturally would be, you know, eating fish like salmon or fish oil capsules or flaxseed. But it comes in a vegan source too. Actually, one is gamma linoleic acid. So gamma linoleic acid, which is evening primrose, actually can help with elasticity. So I think it's good in the postoperative period as well. Then, in addition to that, some of the other basics hyaluronic acid, very, very common, that's pretty well known.
Speaker 3:But CoQ10. And so Co, coq10 the coolest thing about coq10, I mean you only hear about it when people are put on drugs to lower cholesterol, like statins, because you have to be on it, because it affects the absorption. But it turns out that coq10 is part of the electron transport system to make atp in your mitochondria and is absolutely necessary and it improves the skin elasticity. So kind of get a twofer there, believe it or not. Probiotics we talked about that because you are the same inside and out, and I did mention resveratrol before. Resveratrol is found in certain wines. Like I said, pinot Noir is the highest. It is anti-inflammatory. I have not been convinced that pill form resveratrol is adequate. But also, I don't have the data of how much alcohol you should drink to do it, and I wouldn't be advocating.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, as far as resveratrol there is so much controversy. I know David Sinclair. He kind of really cashed out on it big and then later on no one could reproduce his studies and you you know it was this whole controversy. And then also again, it's a dose depends you, we don't know how much resveratrol. And and then if you have taken resveratrol in combination with drinking pinot noir all day long, well, now you have you're trying to get one tiny benefit, um for like a lot of damage.
Speaker 2:You know alcohol. You talked about gut health. You know I think.
Speaker 2:I look at health as like as your bank account. You know you, it's kind of like you make a bunch of, yeah, the good stuff that you eat and do yourself. You count them as tiny deposits, and then the bad stuff they're like withdrawals. So if your withdrawals are more than your deposits, you're making you end up going broke and bankrupt. So I think that's where a lot of people get confused and will require your guidance on how to kind of manage those deposits and withdrawals when it comes to choices they make to get benefit of one ingredients versus the downside of what else is in there.
Speaker 2:For example, in case of fruits, you know fruits are great but you know, if you're diabetic you might not want to consume high glycemic foods, like I don't know grapes, or you know or even drink juices, which I think juices are terrible because you're not even getting the fiber from the food and you know, or even drink juices, which I think juices are terrible because you're not even getting the fiber from the food and and and you know that.
Speaker 2:you know I I wore for just a month like um direct glucose monitor just to see what foods do to my blood sugar, just for a heck of it, and I was shocked like I remember one night I used to love eating like a bowl of cereal at night and my, um, my secret, um, um crave was um, um you you'll you'll laugh right now was lucky charms I couldn't get worse than that I know couldn't get worse than that.
Speaker 2:I just loved it and so I did it. My my sugar did not come down all night below like 110, 120. It just didn't come down for like four or five hours. Wow, just because I had that. And that was before I went on my lifestyle change trip. And that was like in the very beginning because I wanted to know what foods are good and bad for me, what should I cut out of my habits? And so now it's like I don't eat after 7pm. I actually brush my teeth after 7pm after I had my last meal, so I don't eat anything, and so that's the one way I tricked myself. And so now my sugar is very stable. At night when I sleep, it doesn't even go above 91, 92. That's like the highest it goes. And so with a simple lifestyle modification, that has improved my sleep and then that has improved in turn my cortisol level.
Speaker 2:So I think if people get just simple guidance on what are the for someone like you, if they get into your hands in your office so you can identify what are the main factors, the main poisons to their lifestyle and just starting with the number one, and then slowly do one miracle at a time they don't get overwhelmed. And I think you're doing a great service to medicine and mankind. And you know, I'm definitely a big fan of just your philosophy, the way you approach medicine, the way you approach a fellow human being, which is based on passion and real care, as opposed to a job or a means to an end which is to make money. I think motivation, our motivations, they tell a lot about who we are as a person.
Speaker 2:And also, they can be extremely inspiring, and I think we don't need million of inspiring voices. I think 10, three inspiring people they can create. It's like a spark that causes a wildfire, and I really am so happy that you're now on social media. You're spreading the word. You have an amazing talent in communication and I think that is the number one part that makes a patient listen versus tune out, makes a patient curious versus bored, and I think that's the one thing. In the beginning, you said it's not being taught in medical schools. I think it's more than that. It's more of a talent thing. You were born to do one thing. In the beginning, you said it's not being taught in medical schools. I think it has. It's more than that. It's more of a talent thing. You were born to do one thing and, uh, we all here are here for a purpose. I know I'm getting very spiritual here, but I truly believe that and um, it's about inspiring the new generation, because the new generation is extremely smart.
Speaker 2:I can't tell you how many Gen Z-lers come to my office and asking me what can I or should I do if I want to be healthy and if I don't want to age? What can I do? They're just curious, they want to know. They don't want a quick fix. They're not here to get. They don't come to my office to get Botox. They literally ask me what I recommend that they should be doing or shouldn't be doing for anti-aging purposes.
Speaker 2:These are people in their 20s and when I ask them about what they eat and their habits, they check all the boxes. They get A plus in anything except in the sleep aspect and in the screen time aspect. There they get like's and d's and some, some of them, f's. But which is sleep? I see it as you know, like we know what we say, stress is the silent killer. To me, sleep is the silent healer, because that's where all your repair cellular repair happens, like you alluded in the beginning of this podcast. So for audience, I want them to really get to know you. Your podcast is amazing. It's very educational. It's called Howard Health and Wellness, is that correct?
Speaker 3:Actually just Dr Corey Howard.
Speaker 2:Oh, dr Corey Howard, and I think if someone asked me and I've said I started saying it already last week to my patients and knowing in anticipation of this podcast, they're like where do I start? I'm like just I sent them the link of your podcast. I'm like, just listen to this and after you listen to this, see what more questions you have. Pick someone like him in your area. If you're willing to fly or drive to Tampa, you're more than welcome. We're on the East Coast, but one of the struggles, I think, is to find your doppelganger here for my patients in the DMV area.
Speaker 2:So if you know of anyone that you trust, please let me know. I would love to have some information and advice to send my patients to, because I truly care about my patients' well-being, because when I do, for example, a facelift on them, I want to make sure their health and their body's optimized before I even operate on them, so that they have the best chance to heal. And also, going forward, I want to make sure they heal the best possible way and also, further into the future, I want to make sure they are able to maintain that wealth and health they obtained, not just from the appearance standpoint, but also from a cellular standpoint, internally, because to me, beauty is more than skin deep. Oh, for sure.
Speaker 2:And that is something that I want to promote. You will be my go-to guy for advice from now on, and you know I wish you were in my area. I would really become your patient. I know I'm raving here. I sound like a big fan, but I am a big fan.
Speaker 3:It's good to have a conversation, just like with somebody, that's not just for money. I mean, I will have a back end. We haven't built it yet, but we'll have a backend where we can open up a conversation for people to actually connect and talk about this and really hopefully spread the word of what health really should be in the country, how medical care really should be outside of the traditional training. And it requires a little bit of risk because you know people word about the legal system, especially doctors. But you know we have to understand that taking care of people is not a static thing. It's a dynamic environment that's constantly changing and learning, and we are learning as we go along. And so people like you that are helping to spread that word just are great. And you're doing it in your practice. Good for you too. That's fantastic.
Speaker 2:I'm just trying to apply what I learned, but I still try to guide them. It's hard to guide them to their doctor because their doctors usually don't listen and. I literally don't listen and I don't even. I literally don't know anyone in my area that I could refer them to, and so that's something I'm gonna have to find out. But uh, cory, thank you so much for coming on, I mean there's so much stuff that I still would like to talk about.
Speaker 2:Maybe we'll do uh and another session where we kind of delve deeper into topics, and I know you're doing it on your podcast. But what is the best way for someone where someone can reach you for advice, for content or anything? What is the best way to get in touch with?
Speaker 3:you. Honestly, I think there's a couple ways Probably. Number one is go to my website, which is howardhealthandwellnesscom, and there's a question area that people can ask questions. I also have askdrcorey at gmailcom, so you know. There's another thing. There's a reel I have on Instagram for that. But asking questions, I answer almost every single time somebody responds, especially when they're saying something in the opposite. On Instagram and Facebook, but mostly Instagram. I mean, it's a pretty good platform for that, but I'm going to develop it even a better way. But if people really want to reach out, you can shoot me an email through my website. It's very easy Howard, health and wellnesscom and, uh, you know we can open up conversation. I'm I'm actually licensed in uh, florida, north Carolina and Utah, which are places that I I like and uh so, but mostly I do everything in in Florida pretty much.
Speaker 2:Wonderful. Thank you so much.
Speaker 3:Thank you.
Speaker 2:Dr Corey Howard, everyone, I hope you enjoyed this episode as much as I have and learned as much as I did. And, uh, please don't forget to leave me a review on Apple iTunes podcast and you can leave comments on Spotify. If you have any questions, uh, I will definitely communicate it with Dr Howard and we'll be glad to answer them. Thank you very much and have a good night. Bye-bye.