Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hi, welcome to It's a Kinetic thing with Karen Kay. I'm Karen Kay and today we're just going to kind of talk about healthcare in general.
[00:00:06] Speaker B: So where do you see medicine headed and what excites you most about the future of wellness?
[00:00:13] Speaker A: I think, you know, it's going to be a slow transition from what I call modern western medicine to more wellness focused and disease prevention. But that's really what I would like to see and more natural solutions. You know, we're so, we're seeing that in cancer care now that immunomodulators that are coming out instead of the very toxic chemo and you know, we're finding more and more the role that hormones and peptides play in just making people feel better, live better, live longer.
I think it's going to be great when we start really starting to focus towards that more of a wellness versus.
[00:00:53] Speaker B: Just trying to deal with the situation.
[00:00:55] Speaker A: Just appeal for every ill kind of thing and then appeal to counteract the effects of that pill. And you know, I'm just so happy when we away from them.
[00:01:04] Speaker B: Do you think we're moving away from sick care and finally focusing on prevention and optimization?
[00:01:09] Speaker A: Slowly, very slowly. You know, I don't think we're going to have a massive change until we completely overhaul our medical schools and the curriculum that's out there because they're still unfortunately teaching old school curriculum. But there's a lot of new age providers, both physicians, nurse practitioners, physicians assistants that are focusing on functional meds and really diving into the research and that. So I think the more that gets widespread, eventually it'll get out into the medical school curriculum. I mean I, I hope that they're getting more focused on that and then, but you know, we've also gotta, we've got to overall our healthcare system because our insurance doesn't want to pay for anything except old school western medicine, which why would you not rather pay for somebody, you know, to control their diabetes or cure their diabetes, get the weight off, then continue to just pay for all these drugs to treat diabetes and the meds and the organ failure that goes along with it. When, when is our insurance industry going to get wise? But honestly if they focus more on prevention and health, I think they'd make more money in the long run.
[00:02:23] Speaker B: Well then how do you see technology from peptides to AI driven labs changing how we treat patients in the next five years?
[00:02:32] Speaker A: You know, I think obviously like peptide therapy, we're identifying more peptides every day and what they do and how to replicate them. And I Think that will continue?
We're getting more and more lab tests that are what we call point of care tests where you can stick your finger at home or swab your cheek and send it in. So the days of having to go to the, you know, to the lab and have 15 vials of blood drawn, I think is going to become extinct over the next 10 years or so.
[00:03:03] Speaker B: Interesting.
[00:03:03] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:03:04] Speaker B: Let's talk about the GLPs. Since they're continuing to become so popular and everybody's on them, they've changed the landscape of weight loss. What do you think we've learned from their success going forward?
[00:03:16] Speaker A: Well, again, I think it's a peptide that we've learned to replicate and then we're finding more and more arms of them. So, you know, we came out with the first wave of glp, really, that were once a week injections like Ozempic and WeGovy. And it hit one insulin receptor site and we've seen really good results with it. Then they came out with the second version that hits two insulin receptor sites with a little less side effect, a little more weight loss. So that's our zepbound and Armanjaro. They're coming out now with the third one that's going to hit three insulin receptor sites with even more weight loss and even less side effects. And in development right now is the fourth one that's going to hit more receptor sites. Plus it has something in it that helps maintain, preserve muscle mass while you're losing fat. And so that's going to be really exciting.
And it's interesting to me that all these studies are coming out about unexpected benefits of the GLP1s, like obstructive sleep apnea, where they're now finding people on zepbiomjaro have lower incidence of obstructive sleep apnea or coming off their CPAP machines. I just got one the other day about women with PCOS and how much it has helped them. But it all makes sense when you go back to the root cause. And the root cause is your insulin resistant. If you're insulin resistant, your body's storing fat. It's not burning fat. Your whole body's inflamed and irritated. And if you take that down and you let that insulin get in those cells, you're. Yes, a lot of those diseases are all caused by an inflammatory response and insulin resistance. So, yeah, if we can do something to lower that, of course, other diseases are getting better. We know kidney disease is better when people are on those heart diseases better. So we'll find more and more.
And for I think, a layperson, that's like a super exciting. But if you really understand the physiology and it all goes back to insulin resistance and inflammation, it makes great, perfect sense.
[00:05:24] Speaker B: I just, to me, interesting that all these years we've come to realize insulin resistance is the number one cause for not losing weight. Where all these years of people dieting, all these fad diets.
[00:05:36] Speaker A: Yes. All these fat diets that did nothing and all this shaming we've done for people.
You know, and you know, I'm not big into politics and I can't say that I'm in love with the current administration, but they are doing some things right, like getting some of this crap out of our diets. You know, French fries in Italy made by McDonald's are nothing like the French fries in the United States. Ketchup overseas is not ketchup. They don't allow all the chemicals and preservatives and artificial dyes and colors overseas. And that's why people over there are healthier and there's less obesity for the most part.
And until we can get some of that under control and quit feeding our children crap, we're, you know, we're not going to make our general population healthier.
[00:06:33] Speaker B: It is really something when you travel over there and the way you eat when you're over there, because the food's amazing. You're eating pastas and breads and cheeses, but you don't gain weight like you do when you're here.
[00:06:43] Speaker A: And you don't have all the gluten intolerance because they haven't modified.
They're still, you know, growing and picking and, and harvesting their own fruits and vegetables and flour and, and they're not putting all the junk in it that we do over here. And so you just, your body doesn't have the same response.
[00:07:03] Speaker B: Yeah, I even buy my dog food from Canada because they're. Their dog food is healthier for dogs than our food here in the United States for animals. And it's, it's sad that. That all the other countries are better than we are at that.
[00:07:16] Speaker A: Yeah, it really is a shame at what we've done to our food industry in this country and then what it's.
[00:07:23] Speaker B: Done to our bodies because of that just unhealthiness of it. So. But where do you think these medications fit into long term wellness? Are they tools, bridges or lifelong therapies?
[00:07:34] Speaker A: I would say it could be any of the above. You know, if you just have some excess pounds that you've Had a hard time getting over, getting, getting them off with traditional methods, then it's, it's a great bridge or it's a great tool. Why you change your lifestyle and you change your eating habits and you change your exercise habits. But if you're, you know, a full blown diabetic, you're not producing insulin or you're producing very little, it may be a lifelong medication and that's okay if that's keeping you healthy and vital and things.
[00:08:10] Speaker B: What's your answer to someone that says that being on the weight loss injections is che?
[00:08:16] Speaker A: I don't think so. Do they? Do you say that to people who have high blood pressure? Being on high blood pressure medicine is cheating, right? Why can't you just mind over matter, bring your blood pressure down? We don't do, we don't shame them that way. If you're insulin resistance and you have a genetic makeup for obesity, yes, there is some diet and exercise components, but some people, I mean, explain to me how a bed bound elderly person on nothing but tube feedings at the calculated amount of caloric intake they need per day just to survive, can lay in a bed and still be 100 pounds overweight after a year being on tube feedings. That's not, there's some genetics in there.
[00:09:01] Speaker B: That'S out of their control. Yes. Well then how can patients use GLP1 responsibly without losing muscle or damaging metabolism?
[00:09:08] Speaker A: You know, really important thing is lowest dose possible, increase slowly as needed. Use it as a tool to help it make it easier for you to adhere to dietary changes and do some lifestyle changes and then really know, you know, it's very important that you get the protein needs that you need a day and you get that intake. And most people tell me all the time, they'll tell me I'm getting plenty of protein and I'll make them journal it and log their food and they find out they're not getting plenty of protein. So you need, for every kilogram of body weight, you need one and a half pounds or grams of protein a day. So if you're 100 kg, you're going to need 150 grams of protein a day. And so it's a lot. And but my people that do what I ask them to do, do very well. And honestly, we need to focus our food on if you can shoot it, kill it, hunt it or take it out of the ground, you can eat it. But if it's processed, refined, preserved, you really don't want to be eating that.
[00:10:19] Speaker B: Yeah. So I've been today, actually, I heard two different arguments on the GLP1 injections. One saying when you reach a certain, you don't need to go up every, every month, you need to plateau at some point and stay there because it's obviously affecting your hunger and you want to make sure you can eat. Then, you know, two seconds later you hear somebody else say, you actually need to just do it every month because as your body weight's going down, everything else is changing. And so you need to increase the amount of GLP1 based on your weight loss.
[00:10:51] Speaker A: I really think it, I think that's where you get a good provider coming in and coaching you. Because I'll have people that never got above the lowest dose and dropped 40 pounds and did great and they come off of it very easily.
But I have other people that will try them three months at the low dose and they lose nothing. And so that just tells me they're very insulin resistant. It's time to go up. I've made sure they're getting their caloric intake that they need a day and make sure they get their protein intake that they need a day. And if they're hitting all those and they're still not losing, yeah, I'm probably going to increase it. I'm not going to increase their dose every week. I'm not going to increase it more than once a month.
And sometimes it might be every two or three months, but I'm really looking at everything. Are they, are they following their diet instructions? Are they getting their protein that they need? Are they eating enough? Are they eating way too much? And then we make a decision together about what we need to do.
[00:11:48] Speaker B: So there's no right or wrong with that. It's going to be based on each person and what it works for them.
[00:11:52] Speaker A: I don't know there's any hard and fast rule and I just think you want a good healthcare professional guiding you. That's why it scares me a little bit about some of these mail order where you can buy a research file offline. You don't have a clue. And I can't tell you how many people I've talked to and they're like, well, I just take 20 units because my friend takes 20 units. Yeah, I'm like, but how many milligrams is that? Is it 1 milligram in a meal or is it 5 milligrams in a meal? Because 20 units is completely different of five times different dose from one vial to the other.
So you can't just go by what your buddy's doing.
[00:12:31] Speaker B: And that floors me that people just ordered off the Internet and then injected into their stomachs. Like it's going in your body. You don't know anything about it.
They don't even send instructions. When they send those via, you just get them and you're on your own to figure it out.
[00:12:45] Speaker A: It's really stick. I've said this on here before, but this is even a person who went to a chiropractor she thought was a health care provider and they started them on the max dose and they ended up in ICU in kidney failure because they vomited for 48 hours and were so dehydrated it shut their kidneys down. So they're not. Not something to play with. It's not like just taking, you know, B12 drops or something. It can definitely affect a lot of things. It potentially could cause your blood sugar to plummet, you pass out while you're driving. I mean, there's a lot of things that could happen. So you don't want to just take your neighbor Joe Blow, that works at the mechanic shop's advice on medication.
[00:13:31] Speaker B: Well, let's talk about peptides.
[00:13:33] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:13:33] Speaker B: You said, you talked about in the beginning how much they've exploded in popularity, how many people don't really understand what they do, which I think a lot, A lot. And then how do you explain it to a first time patient?
[00:13:46] Speaker A: It's hard to explain, but I mean, the best thing I can say is they are naturally occurring small chains of amino acids. And so chains of amino acids make up different things in our body and do different functions. And so there's a world of peptides out there. Insulin is a peptide. It's the first recognized, replicated peptide. People think of it as a drug, but it's actually a peptide that your body produces to help you break down your food and burn it as fuel. So now you know. We then found the glucagon, like peptides, which are the weight loss injections. But there's other ones out there. There's the one they call the Barbie peptide, which is melanitan. And when you inject it, it helps your body produce more melanin so you tan easier and quicker.
It also has a little bit of a side effect of lowering your appetite and increasing your libido. So they call that the Barbie peptide for that reason. There's one out there that can help women ovulate more regularly, that can actually help with fertility.
There's some out there.
Probably a really popular one right now is BPC157 BPC stands for body protective compound. So it's just a chain of amino acids that help protect your body. And it's really great for soft tissue injuries, fractures, strains and sprains and things like that. People that have achy joints all the time, it's amazing what it does for them. And the other thing you have to know with peptides is you have to get the right form because some of the peptides may come in an oral form, they may come in a nasal spray, they may come IV or sub Q that you inject in the fat. And people may out there, bad providers may make a certain kind of peptide orally. And actually it doesn't work when it goes through the GI tract. It has to get into the bloodstream. And so you can get some peptides but they're not working if you don't get the right form of them. And unfortunately there's not just a one size multi peptide that you can take by appeal. I wish there was that. You get a little bit of everything, but it's not out there.
[00:16:05] Speaker B: And I see people selling peptide pills and supplements that obviously aren't going to do any good.
[00:16:12] Speaker A: Yeah, you know, some of them do. Like BPC157 in the oral form works great for people with irritable bowel syndrome. It goes through the gut, it works great. But if you're looking at joint pain or healing a fracture, you don't want to take it in the oral form. You need to take an injectable form.
You can buy glutathione to take orally. It doesn't work. Your body deactivates it through the GI tract. You really need to do it IV or IM so that having somebody that knows what's bioavailable, how it works, what's the right form for what you're doing and then which peptide is right for you.
[00:16:50] Speaker B: I love that they're so targeted though.
[00:16:52] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:16:52] Speaker B: Specifically targeted for certain things.
[00:16:54] Speaker A: They really are. And you know, you can go crazy. And I know people that are spending thousands of dollars a month on peptides doing every one of them. And there's people out there that biologically, chronologically, they're 60 years old. And you look at them and you look at their health markers and they look like they're 25.
But that's not realistic for all of us. We don't all want to take ten injections a day and we don't have two grand spend. Right.
[00:17:21] Speaker B: So we have done prioritize, you know which ones.
[00:17:24] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:17:25] Speaker B: Well, which one are you the most excited about right now and why?
[00:17:29] Speaker A: Gosh, hard to pinpoint. I would say overall, I get the most feedback. People just loving and can't live without BPC 157 once we start them on it.
People with fibromyalgia love it. People with chronic joint pain, love it. People with IBS love it.
So that one, I would say. And then nad, which is kind of an overall boost your immune system helps your cells build healthy, robust cells, help you get over, you know, fatigue and soreness from working out and stuff.
People like NAD a lot. Gives them a lot of energy.
[00:18:13] Speaker B: Yeah.
Do you see it ever replacing traditional medicine?
[00:18:18] Speaker A: I. I think there will come a time when traditional medicine will start to recognize the value of peptides. I think the GLP ones are opening that door.
[00:18:27] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:18:29] Speaker A: And now once the providers start to really realize this is a peptide, it's not a drug, it's a peptide that the body produced and we've reproduced and gosh, there's all these other peptides out there. You know, our. Our professional athletes are already know that they're way ahead.
They all, if they get injured, they're injecting peptides. It's not widely advertised, but they're doing it.
One of the gentlemen that is taught a lot of the Pepco horses, he's on every. He's on the NBA medical team, he's on NFL medical team. I mean, they're. They're doing peptides like crazy. So when you wonder why so and so sprained an ankle and was supposed to be out six weeks and he's back in two.
[00:19:12] Speaker B: That's why it is crazy how fast they work.
[00:19:15] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:19:15] Speaker B: And then are we just scratching the surface obviously on what peptides?
[00:19:18] Speaker A: There's no telling what we're going to uncover and be able to replicate in the next few years. They're just coming out quicker and quicker and quicker. Yeah.
[00:19:27] Speaker B: I've seen some cancer patients that are peptides that have foregone traditional chemotherapy and they're trying, and I don't know what peptides they were, but they were trying peptides.
[00:19:38] Speaker A: You'll see a lot of those. If, if online. You'll see even some physicians who were diagnosed with terminal cancers that went, I rejected all this and I'm drinking hydrogen water and I'm grounding and I'm doing peptides. A lot of them are doing NAD or glutathione.
If you look, you'll find a lot of what I think are fairly reputable people that talk about that.
[00:20:03] Speaker B: It's interesting to Me.
So let's talk about just preventive care in, in the wellness world. How is, how important is it to personalize medicine in the future of wellness? And how is it different? Personalized medicine? Sorry. And how is it different from what people experience in standard care?
[00:20:22] Speaker A: I think standard care for the most part is very algorithm based.
If your blood pressure is this, then you get a beta blocker and if it's still high, then you get an arb and if it's still high, you get an ACE inhibitor. You know, it's just algorithm based. I think as we get more evolved, it will be more personalized. We'll be able to look at genetics more. We're starting to look at that in cancer care. And see, you know, 10 years ago if a woman had breast cancer, we knew she was getting chemo, she was getting radiation and she was getting surgery. And today a lot of times you're getting surgery and that's it. Because they've done the genetic testing and said you don't need all this. So I think we'll see more genetic testing that will really focus on. Well, you're not really.
Yeah, your blood pressure's high and maybe we need to bring it down. But genetically you're not predisposed to stroke or dementia or this. And. Or maybe you are predisposed to dementia. And let's start taking care of this today because you know, when we are now starting to call alzheimer's disease type 3 diabetes, we're finding it linked to insulin resistance. So if you know when you're in your 20s and you have a female, say you're a female in your 20s, you have PCOS, you know, a, you're more likely to be obese later in life, you're more likely to be a type 2 diabetic later in life, which possibly going to push you more towards dementia, Alzheimer's as you get older. So let's get your insulin resistance under control now so you don't have all those issues down the road.
[00:22:01] Speaker B: That's interesting. Well then speaking of that genetic testing and everything, you know, there's a body scans that everybody's doing proactively and finding out that there's actually somebody, I think she's local, that did a body scan, found out she has a cyst on the base of her brain.
So she went and had it tested. It's not cancer, but she's going to go ahead and have it removed. She has no symptoms. It's not affecting her at all. She wouldn't have never known, you know, she didn't know it was there until she did this body scan. So there's so much preemptive stuff happening, happening now and getting biopsies and. Which makes me worry that you are opening up yourself to. Are you biopsying a cancer and now it's now spreading throughout your body? I mean, there's just so many things that are happening. What is your take on all the preemptive stuff?
[00:22:47] Speaker A: I mean. Well, medicine is. It is an art and it's a science and it's always evolving, you know, and we'll see changes. I know back 10 years ago, we always biopsied an enlarged prostate or somebody's prostate specific antigen. Their PSA was high. We immediately went in and did a biopsy. Well, now we know that that can actually cause the cancer to spread. And so now we're getting smarter about. We're just surveillance and, and watching them and watching their levels and, you know, doing scans versus just going in and doing a biopsy. So I think we'll see more of that in more disease processes as we go forward.
[00:23:27] Speaker B: Just seems kind of scary to me that things that you weren't even. Didn't even know it was there probably never would have affected you. All of a sudden, now you know it's there. So you're gonna have it removed.
[00:23:35] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:23:36] Speaker B: And then there's a lot of side effects that could come with that too.
[00:23:39] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm. I'm a bit more of the, if it's not broke, don't fix it.
[00:23:45] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:23:45] Speaker A: If I didn't know it was there, wasn't causing me problems, and we know it wasn't cancerous, I'd probably left it there and just maybe did a scan every once in a while to make sure. But especially when you're dealing with brains. I think I just, I don't want probes in my brain, but it just.
[00:24:00] Speaker B: Seems like sometimes there. We're so advanced in medicine that it's almost a detriment to some degree.
[00:24:06] Speaker A: I think we have to be smart enough to always look at what's the benefit? What's the burden? Okay, I've got this cyst on my brain.
What's the burdens of it? Well, nothing. I didn't know it was there, but.
Well, what's the benefit of doing surgery? Well, it's gone. I don't have to think about it, but what's the risk of that? Well, it could cause a bleed, it could cause a stroke, it could make it grow, you know, who knows? So, yeah, I think you really have to be your own advocate and ask a lot of questions before you just.
[00:24:39] Speaker B: Decide what you're going to do. How do advanced labs and genetics testing change what you recommend to a patient?
[00:24:46] Speaker A: Well, they can't. They definitely. I mean there's more and more out there testing, especially in functional medicine. You know, they're doing a lot of nutritional testing.
A lot of people are running around with a gluten intolerance that they have no idea that they have. And they may not even have celiac disease. But pretty much, if you've got some sort of autoimmune disorder, your body's an inflammatory state and you probably do have some gluten intolerance. And so I think we're getting more advanced in testing that kind of thing. What other food allergies or maybe not even a full blown allergy. You don't have an allergic reaction to it, but it just doesn't agree with your body and your genetics. And you know, I think you went through a nutritional testing and, and it can be great if it can tell you what to avoid. But like yours, I think if I remember it said you need to quit eating so much corn. And you're like, I haven't eaten corn. Yeah, I haven't eaten Cor.
[00:25:43] Speaker B: Had nothing on there. Actually, I didn't, I didn't eat anything. It told me I was sensitive to. It's like, I don't even eat that. So.
[00:25:49] Speaker A: So what good did that panel do for you?
[00:25:52] Speaker B: Yeah, it's like nothing.
[00:25:54] Speaker A: Yeah, we needed a little more selectiveness about these are the things you eat. This is what your diet looks like. Let's test for these things. And not everything under the sun that didn't have anything to do with what you.
[00:26:07] Speaker B: Right.
[00:26:08] Speaker A: Eat anyway.
[00:26:08] Speaker B: Yeah, it was weird. Things like, I don't even know, can't even remember now, but it's like I, I don't even know what that is, but I've never had it before in my life, so it didn't really tie back to me at all. Do you think in 10 years we'll be treating aging itself and not just a disease?
[00:26:23] Speaker A: Yes, I do. And I, I hope we start doing more and more of that.
We definitely know there are zones in this world where people live well, well into their late years. You know, they're very healthy hundred year olds running around in Italy and Japan and California and it's because of their lifestyle and their diet and I think we should go more towards that.
It's not great to live to be 85 if you're an invalid.
[00:26:59] Speaker B: Right.
[00:26:59] Speaker A: And totally dependent on other people. It's great to live 85 if you're pretty independent and vital and you know, health is good, but it's not good if you're sitting in a long term care facility getting, just waiting to die, basically sitting in a wheelchair waiting to go. So I definitely think we are getting older as a population, but let's get healthier Older, not invalid older.
[00:27:28] Speaker B: That's true. What do you wish patients understood about taking control of their own health so that they're not 85 sitting in an.
[00:27:35] Speaker A: I think one. You gotta move, you've gotta move.
You gotta control your weight one way or another.
The more weight you have on your body, the harder it is to move. The less you move, the less muscle mass you have. Muscle is the currency of aging. If you want to age healthy, well, you need muscle and so, you know, walking and cardio is good, but you need to be lifting some too and you just, just keep moving.
[00:28:06] Speaker B: Found that the hard way with my mom.
How do you, how do you help people shift from reacting to problems to proactively optimizing their wellness? I think you guys do a pretty good job of that.
[00:28:16] Speaker A: I think just one, being your own advocate, doing your own research. Questioning, questioning. Don't, don't take.
I know our parents for sure were at that. The doctor said no, it's what I'm going to do.
And don't question it. But sometimes you need to question it, you know, and there's, like I said, there's everybody out there over 40, just about, they're trying to put on a statin and we know that it doesn't do anything for morbidity or mortality and it comes with some nasty side effects. So question and be okay to say no. Sometimes you have to be a little, little feisty.
[00:28:56] Speaker B: Okay, so if you could leave the listeners with one message about the future of wellness, what would it be?
[00:29:01] Speaker A: I think just again, be an advocate for yourself. Don't be afraid to fight for what you think is right.
[00:29:07] Speaker B: And there's a lot of options out there.
[00:29:08] Speaker A: There is a lot of options out there. And if you and your provider just are butting heads and they're not willing to listen, find another one.
