Beyond Ozempic: Metabolic Dysfunction Is Impacting Fertility, Weight, & Energy (+ A Stanford MD’s Plan To Fix It)

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[00:00:00] LM: Hello friends and welcome to the Liz Moody podcast where every week we’re sharing real science, real stories, and realistic tools that actually level up every part of your life. I’m your host, Liz Moody, and I’m a bestselling author and longtime journalist. Let’s dive in. We are back with Dr. Casey Means to finish out our conversation about weight loss, metabolic health, ozempic, and the key things that we are all missing when it comes to our health and longevity.

[00:00:27] If you did not listen to part one last week, Go back and listen to that after this episode. You definitely do not need to listen to these in order, but you definitely do want to hear all of the information that is shared across both episodes. In part one, we dove into the impact ozempic is having on our metabolic health, why our cravings for unhealthy foods are greater than they have ever been in history.

[00:00:50] It’s part two. really fascinating historical perspective and how we can change those cravings in as little as four weeks, the natural ways that you can [00:01:00] manipulate the peptides in your body that ozempic is mimicking, and so much more. In this episode, we’re going to talk about the exact exercise, nutritional, and lifestyle plans that you can use to heal your mitochondria, which are the source of So many problems like fatigue, illness, weight gain, and so much more.

[00:01:19] We’re also going to discuss how ozempic and metabolic health are hugely impacting our fertility. If you have heard of ozempic surprise babies, you’re going to find out why that is happening in this episode. And it is a conversation that is equally important if you’re not considering Ozempic at all, because this is fertility information that everybody needs to know.

[00:01:41] We dive into the role of hormones in weight management and how to utilize your hormones for sustainable weight loss, as well as what happens to your metabolism during menopause when your hormones change. We’re also going to get into some hot button issues like weight loss drugs for children and Ozempic’s role in the addiction crisis, which you definitely want [00:02:00] to hear.

[00:02:01] Dr. Kasey Means is one of the world’s leading metabolic health experts. She is a Stanford Medical School trained doctor. She’s a former researcher at the NIH, Stanford and NYU, the co founder of the metabolic health tech company Levels, and the number one New York Times bestselling author of Good Energy, the surprising connection between metabolism and limitless health.

[00:02:22] One super quick note, I know that 50 percent of you listening to this episode do not follow the podcast. Take a second now to hit that follow or subscribe button. It is the best way to support the podcast, and it makes sure that episodes show up right in your feed. Go ahead, do it right now. I’ll wait.

[00:02:38] Trust me, you do not want to miss out on any of our upcoming shows. They are jam packed with science and stories that will change your life. Alright, let’s get right into the episode. One of the big things that I think we’re not talking about is that, as you have mentioned, many of us are at higher weights, which makes it harder to lose weight on a physiologic level.[00:03:00]

[00:03:00] How do we address that?

[00:03:01] CM: The way that I think about these things always is I go back to the cell, because we’re made up of 40 trillion cells, and each of those cells, they all bubble up into our lives. And so, um, One of the reasons why I think it can feel a lot harder to get started with weight loss, if we have been overweight or dealing with metabolic issues for many years, is because our cells in some ways have been dealing with the damage of that dysfunction for so long that the parts of our cells that actually process fat and glucose to energy are hurt.

[00:03:33] Like you can think of a mitochondria that’s like so tired and has been kind of dealing with this for a long time. So when we are dealing with metabolic dysfunction. One of the things that happens is our cells actually fill with intracellular fats that are toxic lipids. And the names for these don’t matter too much, but ceramides and diacylglycerol, DAGs.

[00:03:54] We also know that there’s increased inflammation and oxidative stress when we’re dealing with metabolic [00:04:00] dysfunction and obesity associated with metabolic dysfunction. So there’s a lot of these Processes that are like stewing in the body that just make it harder for the machines to even do their work properly.

[00:04:11] So how to back your way out of that? I think about, okay, well, what can we do to essentially jumpstart the part of the cell that is actually to lose weight and for the cells to make energy better? We need to process energy substrates, which is fat. and glucose to cellular energy, which is ATP. That’s done in the mitochondria.

[00:04:29] The mitochondria may have been dealing with years of increased demand and essentially damage. And so how do we help them? And the way I think about it is really first principles. Okay. We want to build more mitochondria. You want to make each mitochondria we have basically more efficient and we can actually recycle our mitochondria to make them stronger.

[00:04:49] And then we want each mitochondria to process more energy because ultimately to lose weight and to lose fat, we need to burn that fat or the glucose into energy. And there’s different ways that we can [00:05:00] do each of those. Print more mitochondria, make each one more efficient, and have them each do more work.

[00:05:04] The research tells us how we can do each of those. So print more mitochondria, For number one, making more mitochondria, we essentially want to 3D print more copies of this. And that’s mitochondrial biogenesis. One of the best ways that we can do this is resistance training. You lift weights or put force against your muscles.

[00:05:22] And that’s a stimulus telling the muscle, you need to print more mitochondria to be able to do more work. work. So this is why resistance training can be such a great jumpstart for weight loss in part because you’re literally 3D printing more mitochondria to process more energy substrates that are stored into human energy.

[00:05:39] Mitochondrial biogenesis. Resistance training is the name of the game. We also know that high intensity interval training, where we’re doing more like sprint workouts, like HIIT training where we’re going all out for a short period of time and then resting, that’s a potent mitochondrial biogenesis signal.

[00:05:56] When we’re thinking about Mitochondrial efficiency and really [00:06:00] helping on that element. We’re talking about mitophagy, which is the recycling of mitochondria from oldie mitochondria to new mitochondria. And that is what’s going to help us again convert more fat and sugar to energy. And the way that we do that is more of the endurance training.

[00:06:14] So that’s like the longer. less intense workouts like biking or swimming or a hike where our heart rate is more in like the 60 to 70 percent of our max and we’re doing that for a longer period of time. That’s like a potent mitophagy signal. There’s also compounds like pomegranate seeds that we can eat which our microbiome convert to urolithin A, which is a compound that goes into our bodies and tells our mitochondria to recycle themselves.

[00:06:40] So there’s different ways to do that as well. And then for actually making each mitochondria do more work, that’s where we’re talking about glucose disposal and It’s taking those new mitochondria and more efficient mitochondria and then having them process as much energy as possible throughout the day.

[00:06:56] So that’s basically just moving your muscles more and that’s where walking can [00:07:00] be amazing. So our body’s been at this state where it’s not processing energy effectively for many years and maybe damage has accumulated. What’s in our toolbox for building more mitochondria, making them healthier and then making them do more work?

[00:07:13] That might look like a week that includes a couple focused resistance training workouts, some more endurance training, maybe walking uphill on a hike or doing a bike ride or something like that, and then trying to get 7, 000 steps a day. And a lot of that is going to jumpstart a lot of our mitochondrial activity and allow them to do that work to push through that damage that might’ve accumulated over the years so they can be a little bit healthier.

[00:07:37] And then of course, on top of that, There’s all the other elements around the mitochondria that can protect them, which is giving them the nutrients they need to do their best work. So when we think about a mitochondria, it needs to convert food energy to cellular energy. It requires several nutrients to even make that process happen.

[00:07:58] B vitamins, magnesium, [00:08:00] vitamin C, manganese, zinc. Supporting the mitochondria with nutrients, that’s super, super helpful as well. On the sleep side, if we sleep more, our cortisol lowers and that protects our mitochondria. So all the pillars help, but especially on the activity side, there’s ways that we can really stimulate better mitochondrial activity even after years of them getting a little bit rusty.

[00:08:22] LM: It’s so interesting because you hear people say all the time, working out is so, so good for you, but that’s not the thing that’s going to change your body composition. And from what you’re saying, that feels a little myopic because it’s just viewing it in terms of you’re not going to burn enough calories to change your body composition through working out versus the calorie deficit that you can create by eating less.

[00:08:41] But you’re saying we need to think about our bodies as this complex system that’s starting with our mitochondrial health and the workouts that we’re doing are actually having a significant impact on our mitochondrial health, which is going to have an impact on our body’s ability to reach a weight that’s healthy and happy for us.[00:09:00]

[00:09:00] CM: That’s exactly right. And ultimately, if we have excess fat stores in the body, adiposity, which is stored energy. To get rid of that, it has to be processed to human energy. And so we want to do everything we can to make that process happen better. And if it’s been that way for a long time, there can be essentially rusty machinery, right?

[00:09:24] It’s harder to do. So, This is where I just go back to all the pillars and especially movement, which we know is a specific potent signal for mitochondrial function. Thinking about the world that our bodies are existing, we’ve got this bank of stored energy that built up because it overwhelmed the capacity of the mitochondria to process it at the time that it was put in, so now it’s stored.

[00:09:46] There’s no judgment in that. It’s just stored energy in the body. That’s what it is. If our goal is to lose weight, we need to process that stored energy. We need to do that by building mitochondrial capacity so it can do that work. We can do that through [00:10:00] supporting those little machines with the right nutrients, with the right exercise stimuli to make that little machine more effective and to make more of them to utilize other pillars like Temperature, for instance, cold temperature, can tell your mitochondria to do more work to get rid of the toxins that are poisoning the mitochondria.

[00:10:18] I think that when we truly just focus on this sense of compassion for this little machine that’s trying to burn through all that energy but is damaged and hurt and there’s not enough of them and it’s overwhelmed, we can cobble together sort of a lifestyle that is really supportive on giving that machine everything it needs to survive.

[00:10:37] Do the work we need it to do when we talk about something like ozempic. The main way it’s approaching that is just by saying, okay, we’re going to put in way less energetic substrates to your body by, by curbing your hunger so that you have to work through the energy that’s stored process that because you’re not putting enough in to sustain yourself each day.

[00:10:55] So that’s one approach that focuses on putting so much less in and then the mitochondria can start [00:11:00] working to the backlog essentially. But I think you can amplify that so much more by thinking about the holistic way to support that machine through all the different levers in our environment to create a functional little mitochondrial unit.

[00:11:13] LM: Does putting less in help the mitochondria in any way? Or do you think that one of the reasons that people tend to regain weight when they go off ozempic is because their mitochondria are still not functioning optimally?

[00:11:24] CM: Certainly putting less in is going to be helpful for the mitochondria because it’s essentially asking it to do less work each day.

[00:11:31] The more we’re eating, and there’s like a term for that now, which is chronic overnutrition, and older processed foods drive us towards chronic overnutrition because they override our satiety hormones. So then you’re just dumping all this load into the body to be processed. And just like any machine that was given way too much work to you, it would become dysfunctional, and that’s exactly what’s happening with our mitochondria.

[00:11:51] So when you look at a drug like Ozempic, because it’s causing you to eat so much less, you’re freeing up the work it has to do each day, [00:12:00] processing all that energy, and then it can tap into the stores and the backlog and work through that. And that’s why we’re going to burn fat and lose weight. So there’s of course diets that just without Ozempic have said, or with Govee really, because Ozempic’s for diabetes patients.

[00:12:14] will just eat less. And that’s of course not really a sustainable strategy for people because our hunger cues are so strong and we’re eating so much processed food that it’s very hard to just will ourselves to eat less, which is why the focus that I have is how do you actually give the body as much as it needs as possible, which you can do through real nutrient dense, fresh foods.

[00:12:36] So the body naturally regulates its hunger because once it gets what it needs and stimulates will just stop being hungry. Like Every other animal in the wild that regulates its weight naturally. And so I think that the eat less calorically restrict yourself. That’s usually a failing strategy because our bodies are so strong in their signals.

[00:12:56] But if we give the body what it needs through real whole foods, we often [00:13:00] will regulate our satiety very naturally.

[00:13:02] LM: And as we talked about in part one, that process is pretty quick. It takes about a month to do. Do you have any tips on getting us through that month though? Because that’s when our cravings are going to be at their highest and we’re going to want to reach for those foods that we’re so used to.

[00:13:17] CM: I think community is number one, like doing it with other people or a program. So finding an accountability buddy, someone to check in with. I think step two would be. clearing out all the temptations in your house that basically are ultra processed food or things that do tempt you and just loading your kitchen with swaps for things that will, I think, satiate what that desire is, but in like a more healthful way.

[00:13:41] So like if you’re someone who does have a sweet tooth, make sure there is tons of berries and other things that might satiate that desire. that sweet itch or like you have a really good smoothie recipe that you love so that you have something when that comes up, but much more nutrient dense. And [00:14:00] then I would say the third thing is make it really easy for yourself.

[00:14:03] If you don’t like to cook or time is an issue, I would consider just doing. a month of daily harvest or a meal delivery service like that that’s all whole organic foods because you don’t even have to think about it. Sometimes when I’m really busy and don’t have time to cook, I’ll do something like that.

[00:14:20] And then I’ll just top it with like a can of salmon or some hemp seeds or some garbanzo beans to give it a little bit more protein, but make it easy for yourself. and make it simple. Stick with like five or six meals that are super easy to make that you can put on rotation.

[00:14:37] LM: You can also do a meal prep session on a Sunday.

[00:14:39] I have to shout out my old team member. Her name is Jen. She’s Jen eats good on Instagram and she does these meal preps that are under 50. I think she does 20 meals for 50 or something like that and they’re all whole foods and they’re amazing so it can be done and it can be done on a budget. Yeah and quickly.

[00:14:55] Does losing weight get harder as we age?

[00:14:59] CM: Losing weight [00:15:00] does tend to get harder when we age. Unfortunately, it’s different for men and women because sex hormones are so related to our weight. So for women, we tend to put on weight starting around age 35, 40 in part because estrogen is starting to decline towards perimenopause.

[00:15:17] Estrogen has a very potent. Insulin sensitizing effect, so it actually promotes insulin sensitivity, and as we lose that estrogen, we lose some of that pro insulin sensitivity signal, and so that makes it more challenging for women and often why people during menopause find that they gain weight and especially belly fat, because that’s going to be that fat that’s stored in relation to insulin resistance.

[00:15:42] There’s so much more information coming out, like thank goodness for Sarah Gottfried and Mary Claire Haver and so many others who are saying like we need to be preparing for menopause like 10 years before it starts by lifting weights, building the muscle, building the mitochondrial capacity, supporting our metabolic health so that when this hits and the estrogen does [00:16:00] decline, um, We have some resources to face that.

[00:16:03] And then of course, hormone replacement therapy is becoming a much more dominant part of the conversation as well, because there’s this new reality, which is that we don’t actually have to have estrogen decline if we don’t want it to. For men, it’s a little bit different. Testosterone is one of the key hormones that Maintains our muscle mass and it does decline naturally for men as they age as well.

[00:16:21] And so similarly for men doing strategies that boost our testosterone, which can include weightlifting. Weightlifting is an answer for a lot of the different questions, but weightlifting and especially getting really good sleep because sleep is so important for testosterone secretion in men and of course focusing on a whole food nutrient rich diet.

[00:16:41] Those can be things that help support the unfortunate. Decline in sex hormones that has a secondary effect on our metabolic health and propensity to store fat.

[00:16:52] LM: Well, and the reason for that is because as we age, we’re naturally losing muscle mass, right? Which is one of the reasons that it’s harder to [00:17:00] lose weight.

[00:17:00] Right. About 1 percent per year. Right. So we have to find a way to combat that. So a Ozempic, you’re not only shedding fat, you’re shedding muscle mass. Uh, so would Ozempic actually over time make it harder for you to. lose weight naturally or maintain weight loss because you’re losing that muscle mass that is so important for healthy weight maintenance.

[00:17:22] CM: Yeah, some of the concerning early data about some of these agonists is that with the rapid weight loss that we’re seeing, it’s not just fat that you’re losing. It’s also lean tissue. Lean tissue is like, muscles. Lean tissue is absolutely critical for our metabolic health. Muscles are metabolic armor, as Dr.

[00:17:43] Gabrielle Lyon says, and it’s our biggest glucose disposal organ. It protects us against sarcopenia and frailty in old age. One of the leading causes of death in older people is literally just falling and, you know, breaking a hip and then just really having trouble getting [00:18:00] active again. So muscle is protective against that frailty.

[00:18:03] And so a big concern with some of these medications is that if you’re just melting a lot of someone’s tissue, that the muscle is going disproportionately with these drugs compared to if you lose weight just on a diet. I think the data is mixed on that. Like I’ve seen different things saying that you’re disproportionately losing muscle mass.

[00:18:19] And some say that it’s actually similar to what you would lose if you went on a diet. I think the key point, no matter what, no matter how you’re losing weight, whether it’s dietary strategy or Ozempic, we are so under muscled in our country. We are just not focused enough on resistance training. Like we need to think of ourselves as warriors as we’re going into pregnancy, midlife, menopause, older age, whether we’re men or women and building muscle so that we can face this big complex world that we’re living in.

[00:18:49] Anyone who’s thinking about taking a GLP 1 receptor agonist, try resistance training because you might actually get the results that you want. Especially if you’re going to take the drug, focus on [00:19:00] eating protein, taking the creatine, doing things that are going to help with muscle mass, and lift weights a lot because you do not want to be disproportionately losing too much muscle when you’re on that medication.

[00:19:12] And of course, if you’re losing weight any other way, resistance training is an important strategy as well.

[00:19:17] LM: So, we’ve been talking a lot about GLP 1, but new drugs coming down the line, like Munjaro, mimics both GLP 1 and something called GIP, and I know there’s a whole batch of new drugs that are going to work on our bodies in an array of different ways, on an array of different hormones and receptors.

[00:19:31] So, can you speak to that a little bit?

[00:19:33] CM: Yeah. Fundamentally, these companies are trying to make drugs that are more and more effective lowering our glucose levels and ultimately getting us to lose weight. G. I. P. is another incretin hormone similar to G. L. P. 1. It’s secreted by different cells in the gut. It has a very long name, glucose dependent insulinotropic polypeptide.

[00:19:55] It’s released by the K cells of the gut. What it does is seems to [00:20:00] potentiate the effect of G. L. P. 1 receptor agonists in the pancreas. So insulinotropic means that it’s causing you to secrete insulin. Therefore, keep our blood sugar levels under better control. So it’s naturally secreted this G. I. P. when we eat, and then this medication in theory would potentiate the effects of G.

[00:20:21] L. P. So very similar effects, delayed gastric emptying and affecting the pancreatic beta cells to cause us to secrete more insulin.

[00:20:30] LM: Would you have any concerns about Munjaro that you wouldn’t about Ozempic with this additional mechanism of action?

[00:20:37] CM: One of the things that I think is interesting about both of these two compounds and peptides is that they’re, in a sense, causing our pancreas to secrete more insulin.

[00:20:46] We want our insulin levels to actually be low, naturally, because insulin is a hormone that promotes blood circulation. all sorts of issues throughout the body if it’s too high for too long of a period of time. These medications, though, they [00:21:00] don’t seem to be contributing to insulin resistance by stimulating more insulin.

[00:21:03] They seem to have an insulin sensitizing effect. So fundamentally, what I would say is that if you’re on the medications, you should still be tracking your metabolic health incredibly carefully. You should be tracking those biomarkers that we talked about. Every three to four months if you’re on these drugs and making sure that things are moving in the right direction Like I would want to know what are my fasting insulin levels when I’m taking these medications I want to know what my inflammation levels are my triglycerides my fasting glucose my HDL my hemoglobin A1c My liver function tests because I want to know if I’m putting a medication in my body that’s acting on my metabolic pathways that My metabolic biomarkers are looking good.

[00:21:41] And then of course, testing my blood pressure regularly as well. So that would be what I would say is like, if you are taking these medications, like make sure you’re not ignoring your metabolic health and make sure that those things along with weight loss are also in a good range and hopefully improving because weight loss is different than metabolic health.[00:22:00]

[00:22:00] And so you want to make sure you’re tracking both and not ignoring actually the much more important side of the coin, which is metabolic health, than just the weight loss, because there are many people who are lean who are very metabolically dysfunctional. So what you don’t want is to become thin and have metabolic dysfunction.

[00:22:16] You know, I can’t say in a blanket statement what this medication is going to do in an individual. So that’s something that people need to track and know to track over time.

[00:22:22] LM: People have been taking GLP 1 agonists for 18 years for PCOS, for diabetes. As a doctor, how comforting do you find that in terms of safety?

[00:22:32] CM: It’s always helpful when we have long term safety data. I think it is important to know what the manufacturer does even list as their side effects on the medication because it’s pretty extreme when you look at what is on the package inserts and as more people take these medications, we are going to see more side effects, right?

[00:22:52] Because there’s just more people taking them. So, I think having the long term safety data is. Excellent and fantastic. And do you consider [00:23:00] 18 years long term? It depends on when people started the medication, for sure, because obviously we want to know how this is affecting people into their aged years.

[00:23:09] But 18 is longer than we have for a lot of medications. So I would say from a standpoint of safety data, that’s pretty strong.

[00:23:17] LM: Ozempic in kids. This is a huge, huge, huge debate. What do we know at this point about the impact of something like Ozempic on a child’s developing brain and body?

[00:23:29] CM: I think the scary part is we know very, very little because we do not have long term studies in young children.

[00:23:35] And I think it’s somewhat of a scandal that we are allowing these medications, which Are intended to be lifetime medications to be used as some of the first line defenses in children who are being born into a world in which essentially, like we talked about earlier, it’s the dirty fish tank and it’s showing up in kids more than it ever has [00:24:00] in human history.

[00:24:00] You’ve got cancer rate going up, high blood pressure, prediabetes and 30 percent of young people, 25 percent of teens having. Fatty liver disease and 40 percent of 18 year olds having a mental health diagnosis, all of which are related to metabolic dysfunction. So we see this dirty fish tank that kids are living in, chronities are rampant, and then we’re saying, and the American Academy of Pediatrics is saying, is that one of the best solutions we have is to inject these kids.

[00:24:31] Daily or weekly, because there’s different versions of the drug essentially for the rest of their lives for an individual patient in a difficult situation. Certainly this may be something that helps them lose weight. I think we have to think about the public health. magnitude of this. And we’re talking about it because if you include children and adults taking this medication, people who are eligible for it, we’re looking at close to 80 [00:25:00] percent of the U.

[00:25:00] S. population who are eligible, including kids as young as 12. And, um, There’s an act that is being pushed through Congress right now, which is the Obesity Treatment and Prevention Act, which very specifically states that it is to get Medicare funding for obesity medications like somaglutide and wagovi.

[00:25:24] This is very much a bill that is supported by the industries that want these medications to be covered by insurance. If everyone. Who is eligible for these medications, including children, got the medication as the treatment for obesity, we would be looking at 2. 2 trillion a year of taxpayer money potentially going towards these medications.

[00:25:44] Right now, our healthcare system is 4. 3 trillion a year, which is 23 percent of the largest GDP in the world. This would be adding a 50 percent increase in that this medication costs about 11, 000 per year. And so I just think. [00:26:00] If we step back for five minutes and thought about what we could do with 2. 2 trillion, which is estimated to have a 16 percent reduction in body weight in the U.

[00:26:09] S. 16%. What we could do with that and with basic policy changes to actually improve the health of Americans and American children, especially to clean up the environment, the dirty fish tank that the kids are living in, it would be monumental. We could probably serve healthy organic food to every family in America every day for 2.

[00:26:28] 2 trillion a year. Of course, people say, Oh, that’s a lot. That’s too complex. It’s so hard to do. You know what’s hard to do? Injecting 250 million Americans once a week with a medication that comes from a pharmacy. Like that’s also complicated. There’s trillions of dollars on the line for industry to essentially make us think that this is the easiest, simplest answer for kids and adults.

[00:26:48] And I just think that that is the most monumental. form of gaslighting I’ve ever experienced in the years I’ve been on this planet. Like, there’s so much more we could be doing. And I think we’re failing kids. We’re basically saying we’re [00:27:00] too busy and we don’t care enough to think about a creative solution to make your environment better.

[00:27:04] And so we’re going to give you a shot weekly for life, even though we know exactly how to fix this issue.

[00:27:10] LM: I think all of that makes All of the sense in the world on a systems level. I’m curious what you would say to the 12, 13, 14, 15 year old out there who isn’t really in control of their environment.

[00:27:26] They’re not doing the food shopping. They don’t have an income. They’re in school and they’re experiencing a level of obesity that’s impacting their health. Their health and their life, what on a very individual level are they supposed to do?

[00:27:42] CM: Kids are actually incredibly smart, and I think most people above the age of about 12 can understand these metabolic health concepts.

[00:27:49] A lot of it starts with education. We live in a world where doctors are telling patients that nutrition doesn’t matter. There are literally GI doctors talking to patients with Crohn’s disease that says that food doesn’t have anything to do [00:28:00] with their gut autoimmune disorder. That’s the reality of the world we’re living in.

[00:28:03] LM: Why is that? It’s money. Can I just stop you there? Do you believe that is because these doctors, these people who have gone to medical school for years and years and years and ostensibly have a real interest in helping people, they’ve bought off by pharmaceutical companies? It’s not about

[00:28:18] CM: being bought off because I’m a doctor.

[00:28:20] And when I was at Stanford Medical School, Pfizer gave a 3 million educational grant to the medical school to help with the curriculum redesign. It’s not like the regenerative beef companies were giving a 3 million grant to the medical school. And so this is not about, I think, people necessarily being bought off.

[00:28:39] It’s about an invisible hand that is so strong that corrupts every element of how we think about the body, how we look at the body, how we are taught education to basically ignore the root causes, let people get sick, and then treat them with medication. That is basically doctrine in our country, that that’s the way it’s practiced.

[00:28:57] But I would say, why is it the case? I think it’s [00:29:00] two reasons. One is ignorance and one is a little bit more nefarious. The ignorance piece is that when we were basically figuring out how to name diseases over the past several hundred years, like, we didn’t have all the tools we have today to understand what’s actually happening inside the cells.

[00:29:16] We didn’t really understand the physiology. The way we could describe diseases was what are the symptoms? And, you If we cut a piece of tissue and look at it under a microscope, what do the cells look like? So that’s pathophysiology, histopathology, which is looking at cells under the microscope, and symptoms.

[00:29:32] And then we have some labs and biomarkers. So when we describe diseases like Alzheimer’s and polycystic ovarian syndrome and fatty liver disease and heart disease and heart failure and erectile dysfunction, we describe them based on those things. What we could see. We couldn’t see. Mitochondrial dysfunction, or oxidative stress, or chronic inflammation, or the invisible things happening in the cells and around the cells.

[00:29:57] So we describe diseases the best way we knew how. [00:30:00] That’s why we treat everything in silos, because of course we think arthritis is different than Alzheimer’s, and infertility is different than depression, because they look different. Now, based on what we know, based on the invisible physiology of disease, we know that most of those diseases, every disease I just mentioned, and you could add dozens more, migraine, fibromyalgia, peripheral vascular disease, retinopathy, hearing loss, they all, if you look at what’s happening inside the cell, it’s all the same thing.

[00:30:28] It’s a few core pathways that are going awry. Like oxidative stress and mitochondrial dysfunction and in different parts of the body that looks like different symptoms, but because we didn’t know that because we couldn’t see it, siloed them. So now we have an entire system based on silos that doesn’t even understand the root cause and now let’s get to the nefarious part.

[00:30:51] We’ve built a system based on incentives where A sick patient is profitable and a healthy patient is not profitable. And that drives [00:31:00] the largest and fastest growing industry in the United States, which is healthcare, which employs tens of millions of people. More volume through the system creates more money.

[00:31:08] And so how do we create more volume through the system? We manage patients for life and we don’t heal them. The average doctor doesn’t even realize that they’re in this matrix of incentives that have totally dictated what is even valued in medical education. When I found functional medicine, it felt like Being ripped out of a slumber because you don’t even know what you don’t know that doctor in that room with that patient.

[00:31:31] If they said you need to do this, what’s happening is shortening your life. Here are the simple things you need to do. I think that family would probably take the doctor very seriously. Patients listen to doctors and right now, doctors are not even remotely being strong enough about talking about root causes and diet and lifestyle.

[00:31:48] And so to me, a lot of this is about it. Evangelizing people to ask more from their doctors and then hopefully also change the healthcare system towards understanding that [00:32:00] there is a very, very broken incentive system that has designed every single way that our research is done and our curriculums are designed.

[00:32:09] created and therefore taken really good people with good intentions, doctors, and put them in a system that’s very broken. Right now, most people don’t know that. They just, they want to listen to what their doctor’s saying, which is here, I’ve got a solution for you. Here’s a shot.

[00:32:25] LM: Well, and there’s so many overlapping systems at play.

[00:32:29] Like, I’m picturing an overworked, overstressed parent taking their kid to the doctor. The doctor saying, okay, here’s a plan for you. Do all these things. The parent saying, I have to work so hard to even put any food on the table to keep the roof over our house. People are just feeling really taxed on so many levels, and I’m picturing the person saying that lift feels like too much right now.

[00:32:56] CM: And I totally hear that, and I have compassion for that. I mean, I think [00:33:00] also getting your 14 year old to inject themselves every week with a medication and getting that from the pharmacy and the cost of that is also a big lift. Dr. Robert Lustig has done some amazing research at UCSF about childhood obesity.

[00:33:12] He’s Professor Emeritus of Pediatric Neuroendocrinology, and he actually did a study that showed how you could get the exact family that you’re talking about to actually get their kid to eat healthier food. And it was essentially four things had to be true for that to actually happen. And when these things were all true, the parents were totally bought in.

[00:33:32] The doctor had to educate the patient on Metabolic health and how food impacts that they had to go to a group teaching class about how to eat healthy food and how to cook healthy food. A couple sessions with the metabolic nutritionist who showed them essentially how to prepare healthy food. But two other things had to be true.

[00:33:52] They had to know that they could afford that food and so that the nutritionist had to tell them how to get it on their budget, which you can eat healthy on almost any [00:34:00] budget. And then their child had to see other kids in the group eating the food as well for it to be successful. So you had to actually have social buy in from other kids.

[00:34:11] And that’s actually been something that we’ve also seen with this amazing organization, Eat Real, that’s trying to change school lunches towards healthier whole food versions. For the kids to adopt the dietary habits, they have to see other kids eating the food. So that’s actually a really interesting intervention.

[00:34:24] How do you get it to be more of like a community based thing? So for those of you who There’s actually data that helps us understand what are the steps to getting buy in, but like, none of this is actually being practiced or implemented, and it’s worth also knowing Novo Nordisk, which makes Ozempic, which is a Danish company, which is now the largest company in Europe, and they’re not making their money off Europeans, they’re making them off Canadians.

[00:34:46] The U. S. They spent 33 million on direct payments to U. S. doctors last year and actually put out over a hundred thousand payments to general practitioner, obesity medicine doctors and researchers. So there’s just a [00:35:00] direct funneling of money to blanket the physicians and obesity medicine and internal medicine who are taking this money.

[00:35:06] One doctor from UCLA has taken over a million dollars from Nova Nordis. I think it’s just absolutely malpractice if a doctor is not aggressively talking to a patient about simple metabolic health habits that can have a huge impact. It’s also important to remember that health care issues are the number one cause of bankruptcy in the United States, and health care costs for someone with obesity and diabetes can be 10, higher per year than someone without.

[00:35:35] So there’s costs on all sides of this, and we just don’t really think about that.

[00:35:39] LM: Yeah, I think that we often will say, well, what about this? What about this? What about this? And we’re not considering the alternative of what about if you don’t do those things. So I think comparing like for like with cost as much as possible is really, really important.

[00:35:56] I also love the interventions that you mentioned because even if you’re not doing the whole four [00:36:00] step system, understanding that community is really important, say, okay, can we work with another family in our neighborhood and we all. Cook together, we all overhaul our diets together, figuring out ways, particularly for children to have the people around them eating these types of foods.

[00:36:19] That’s a huge unlock, I think, and it’s not an impossible to overcome hurdle. Is there anything else you would say to a parent out there who is considering having their child take one of these medications?

[00:36:30] CM: It’s tough, because I’m not a parent yet. I have a lot of compassion for parents. Truly, I did write this book with parents in mind, because I think that a lot of the things that parents are pulling their hair out over, like behavioral issues in kids, and screen time addiction, and processed food addiction, it’s all interrelated, and There are escape hatches here that are actually pretty simple that the mainstream does [00:37:00] not want them to know about because it makes them much less profitable.

[00:37:02] And so I would just say, know that there are some simple strategies and that are affordable and accessible and Explore them. Just know that kids are being taken advantage of in this country right now by industry. And it’s our job as parents to help opt out of that. I think there is nothing more profitable for the healthcare industry in the United States than a sick child, than a chronically sick child.

[00:37:26] And I think that is probably why chronic illnesses in children have exploded over the past 20 years. There’s nothing more profitable. If you can get a kid metabolically dysfunctional and then keep them on the drug pharmaceutical intervention hamster wheel for 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 years while they rack up other comorbidities, that is a highly profitable patient.

[00:37:49] And so be aware of these factors that a child. In the American healthcare system who has chronic metabolic issues and is on a drug for potentially life is a [00:38:00] cash cow, become aware and learn the basics of metabolic health and I think you might find that there’s a lot of solutions that are out there that might be simpler than we think.

[00:38:08] LM: What would you say to somebody who says This all feels really conspiracy theory proximate. These companies are making life saving medications. They’re changing people’s lives for the better. Where would we be without them? What would you say to that person?

[00:38:23] CM: I think the healthcare industry has produced absolute miracles over the past hundred years.

[00:38:27] That’s why I went into being a doctor, climbed its ranks, but the thing we need to realize is that where the healthcare system has shined is on acute issues, not chronic issues. And they’ve tried to get us to be confused about the difference between those two. So acute issues are things that are going to immediately be life threatening to you, like an infection.

[00:38:44] Amen. or complicated childbirth or a trauma, we are great at that. And we have extended lifespan because of treatments for a lot of those things. And that’s amazing. And we should celebrate that when it comes to chronic diseases, [00:39:00] which are a much more recent phenomenon that are caused by our environment.

[00:39:03] They are caused by. diet and lifestyle and the way that interplays with many of our genes. That is where the healthcare system has essentially abjectly failed. We have medicalized conditions that are rooted in environment. And as we’ve done that, the rates have exploded, literally exploded. We have increasing rates of autoimmune disease.

[00:39:26] Infertility is going up 1 percent a year. This is the first year in human history we’re anticipating to have over 2 million new cases of cancer. Mental illness is through the roof. We’ve got, of course, heart disease is the leading cause of death in both men and women. Most of those cases are preventable.

[00:39:43] Prediabetes or type 2 diabetes is affecting 50 percent of American. Alzheimer’s dementia is creeping earlier and earlier in life. So these are exploding. And trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars each year. They’re going up and life expectancy is going down. That is an unsustainable [00:40:00] system. So they’ve asked us to take the trust engendered by acute interventions and apply it to chronic, even in the face of data that’s showing this is not working.

[00:40:08] It’s also important to realize that these medications for chronic illnesses I cannot really think of a medication for which giving a medication for a chronic disease has actually decreased the rates of the disease. The more SSRIs we prescribe, the more depression there is. The more statins we prescribe, the more heart disease we have.

[00:40:33] Somewhat less heart disease deaths, but heart disease rates are going up. The more metformin we prescribe, the more type 2 diabetes is going up. We’ve invested hundreds of millions in Alzheimer’s drugs, and we don’t have a single one that works. Those rates are going up. The more we prescribe hypertension medications, the more cases of hypertension we have.

[00:40:54] The more drugs we prescribe. For these conditions, the rates are going up, [00:41:00] not down. So why do we think that for some magical reason that this drug, Ozempic, is going to be the first drug that actually decreases the rate of the disease over the long term? So it’s interesting to think about, like, yes, these medications do exist and they’re being taken, but they are not slowing the rates of the diseases.

[00:41:25] From continuing to come, the rates aren’t going down the more we drug them.

[00:41:30] LM: Is there an argument to be made that those drugs aren’t designed to bring the rates down? They’re designed to increase the quality of life for the people taking them? And that Ozempic would be similar? We’re still going to have obesity as a crisis in this country, but can we make life better for people who are the victims of that crisis?

[00:41:47] CM: I would argue that in some ways they are problematic in that they are purported to be a solution. Like you walk into a doctor’s office with hypertension, they say, it’s okay, we’ve got a pill for that. What does [00:42:00] that do? It essentially pushes a pathway that is a lifetime management drug that changes a biomarker, but does not actually fix the underlying problem.

[00:42:09] metabolic health that will crop up as the cancer and the type 2 diabetes and the dementia and all these other comorbidities that then each get another pill. So I would argue, I’m not certain they’re necessarily holistically increasing quality of life, although that’s debatable and we’d have to really dig into the research, but because they’re not actually getting better.

[00:42:27] At the root cause. And I think it’s sort of like a sin of omission to not talk about the ways that we could actually reverse these conditions, which we absolutely know how to do. I would argue that many of the drugs are extremely ineffective. SSRIs, for instance, which are being prescribed like candy, have significant efficacy in less than 25 percent of people who take them.

[00:42:48] The number needed to treat for a lot of these drugs, meaning the number of people who have to actually take the medication for one person to have clinical benefit, is sometimes at the lowest end, it might be two or three, but it can be up to like 15. [00:43:00] So 15 people need to be treated for one person to have the positive outcome.

[00:43:03] I’m not totally anti medication, but we need to have an open conversation about what’s really happening in our country right now. And. What the actually effective solutions could be if we could marshal far more resources and attention towards them.

[00:43:17] LM: What do you think about the use of something like Ozempic for addictions like gambling or smoking or alcoholism?

[00:43:24] Um,

[00:43:25] CM: that research has been really interesting and looks promising for some people that it’s reducing desire for some of these other addictive substances. And so for the individual patient, I think that’s a conversation to be had with the doctor. I’m always a little nervous about a medication that’s acting deep on the reward circuitry of the brain, which is like a pretty important part of the brain.

[00:43:51] And I think that. If that helps an individual patient, that’s great. I don’t think we have enough data to have this be the solution for all [00:44:00] addictions, but I also think it’s important to educate doctors and individuals on a more holistic understanding of the dopamine loops that we’re living in. Really diving into books like Dopamine Nation or Hacking of the American Mind or books that really help us understand what’s actually happening with our word circuitry living in America today is a important part of the puzzle as well.

[00:44:23] LM: You live in L. A. There’s a sense that a lot of people in L. A., a lot of celebrities are on Ozempic and just not talking about that. Do you have any sense of how many people are kind of secretly taking it?

[00:44:36] CM: Oh my gosh. I don’t know for certain. I don’t hear about it very much, probably just because of the people that I know.

[00:44:45] Um, but I’ve definitely heard those rumors that it’s like every other person on the street. Do you have a sense? Because you spend a lot of time here.

[00:44:54] LM: I have a sense that a lot more people are taking it than talking about it. And that brings me to [00:45:00] my next question, which is, Do you think that we should be talking about it, other people to be talking about it if we’re taking it so that we’re not creating this false perception of what we’re doing or skewing further the notion of what an ideal body should look like?

[00:45:17] Or do you think then everybody is like, well, this is great, everybody’s taking this and I should thus take it too?

[00:45:22] CM: Yeah. I don’t think anyone owes anyone else. information about themselves that they don’t want to share. On the other hand, I think we’re dealing with like a very troubling environment right now of like lack of authenticity in culture.

[00:45:37] I think that’s partially driven by social media. It’s like on the one hand, it allows people a platform to share more of their voice, but on the other hand, because of the risk of being taken down or canceled, there’s this verbal constipation that I think is happening, not only on social media of like what you really feel versus like what you should say.

[00:45:56] It also trickles into our everyday life [00:46:00] where there’s definitely this sense of like tiptoeing around things because everything can be blown up out of proportion. And so I do think I see a lot of fear of living like loudly and authentically even though we have tools and capability to do that more.

[00:46:13] It’s like it almost causes us to self censor. Going back to your question, if I were taking it and I had a public presence, like I would talk about it because it’s, if you’re living your life publicly, like why hide that one part? But I think it absolutely is creating unrealistic. beauty standards. I’ve seen some people who are just shrinking down so rapidly.

[00:46:31] Knowing what I know about metabolic health, to me, thinness, it just doesn’t matter. Like what matters is like, are you healthy? Are your cells functioning properly? Because if your cells are functioning properly, then that will bubble up into a functional life across all body systems. And then we can like be joyful and live our highest purpose.

[00:46:48] That’s what I care about on this planet. And that’s what I care about sharing how to do. Thinness is somewhat unrelated to that, because you can be thin and nutrient depleted, and you can be thin and very [00:47:00] metabolically unhealthy. I just would really love us to orient the conversation away from just weight as such a myopic focus to really seeing obesity as, in many cases, a symptom of an underlying metabolic issue that will cause problems.

[00:47:11] all throughout our body. And how do we focus on that? Which is so much more empowering because there’s no looks to it, easy to track with simple, cheap biomarkers, and we can improve it rapidly. And then the weight often will be downstream of focusing on metabolic health, which is just so much easier.

[00:47:29] easier to talk about. It’s so much less like value driven in our culture, like metabolic health versus weight. Well, weight is laden with just so much ridiculous cultural stigma. It’s going to be sad if one of the outcomes of this is that we have A new celebration of essentially like rapid weight loss and people being underweight.

[00:47:53] And then it drives more people to want to strive towards that and actually orients us away from metabolic [00:48:00] health. So,

[00:48:00] LM: well, and still, yeah, to your point, a lot of these people are still really unwell. You see some of the pictures of people who are on ozempic and not universally in any way, shape or form, but especially when you have.

[00:48:14] Already thin people who start to take it and their face looks sallow and their eyes look Sunken and it’s pretty scary Yeah

[00:48:23] CM: And I will say even from my own personal experience of having very fluctuating weight throughout my lifetime And having gone to very heavy weights twice and losing the weight. I will say as I become more Focused on metabolic health.

[00:48:36] I like never really think about my weight so much anymore The reason being is that I know You Or I can track that I’m metabolically healthy. And therefore, I have that to sort of be like, okay, so even if my weight is 10 pounds higher or 10 pounds lower or whatever, and it does fluctuate sometimes. If I know that I’m metabolically healthy, then like I kind of don’t care if someone on social [00:49:00] media wants to say like, Oh, she’s too fat or she’s too thin.

[00:49:02] I’m like, I actually have the receipts on how my health is. And so it doesn’t really matter to me what you’re saying. Because I think sometimes if we don’t separate the two, we can think of the judgment about weight. as a judgment on our health. But if you’re actually more clear about your health, and you own that understanding, it makes it a little impervious to the cultural stigma in a way that’s very empowering for me.

[00:49:25] Personally, I can feel confident that I’m good, you know, even if I’m not at my thinnest.

[00:49:31] LM: I love that because the weight that we quote unquote should be at any moment is subject to trends. It goes in these cycles and getting your biomarkers, knowing what your metabolic health state is, allows you a concrete way to break free of one week your butt’s supposed to be big, and the next week your butt’s supposed to be small, and this week we’re wafey, and this week we’re curvy, and all of these ideas of your body as a [00:50:00] Yeah.

[00:50:00] Which is wild to even think about, but it’s the way

[00:50:03] CM: that we’ve structured our society. Totally. It’s such a roller coaster that, like, I think you can partially get off if you can focus on knowing that what’s happening inside your body is actually healthy and that there is a thinner state you could be at that might not be healthier, actually.

[00:50:17] At this point in life, what I’m competing against is my triglyceride levels from three months ago and my fasting insulin level from three months ago, like, not my weight. And I think you can add on body composition to that as well. The thing I look at on a body composition score, I barely look at my weight because that can be somewhat triggering for me just with my history.

[00:50:35] And so I’m like, has my muscle grown or shrunk? It’s like very simple. Is it a bigger number of pounds or a less number of pounds of muscle? If it’s going up, that’s good. If it’s going down, I probably need to like, recommit, you know? And so it just makes it so much more like emotionally sterile, which I love, like as much as we can do that around the weight conversation, I think the better.

[00:50:58] LM: Ozempic surprise [00:51:00] babies. What is happening there?

[00:51:02] CM: Yeah, it’s really interesting. Like, people are noticing that after going on Ozempic, they’re able to get pregnant. And I think the mechanisms for this make a lot of sense because the leading cause of infertility in the United States is polycystic ovarian syndrome, which is fundamentally a metabolically rooted condition.

[00:51:18] There’s genetic Aspects to it and also lifestyle aspects, but the reality is, is that most people who have PCOS are dealing with insulin resistance and have a much higher likelihood of developing type two diabetes in an early age. So fundamentally what’s happening is that insulin resistance in these individuals is causing high insulin levels in the bloodstream, which stimulates the ovaries to make more androgens, which are what we.

[00:51:42] call quote unquote male hormones, but actually they’re in high circulating concentrations in the female body. Insulin stimulates more androgens. Androgens then disturb the delicate balance of testosterone and estrogen and progesterone. And then we end up getting menstrual regularity and infertility and many other [00:52:00] symptoms.

[00:52:00] So with these medications, dropping the blood sugar levels, potentially improving insulin sensitivity, lowering insulin levels, and getting to a lower weight, which may improve inflammation. All of that’s freeing up the ovary essentially to have more regular hormonal balance with estrogen and progesterone.

[00:52:18] So lowering the androgen drive. And so people are gaining their fertility back, which is really interesting. It’s a trend that I feel like it’s all over social media right now, but from a mechanistic perspective, like it makes a ton of sense because the leading cause of infertility right now is. It’s very metabolically rooted.

[00:52:35] It also, interestingly, may have positive impacts in men who are overweight or have metabolic dysfunction because in men, we’re seeing a 50 percent decrease in sperm count compared to 50 years ago. And that’s pretty wild. And there’s a lot of reasons for this. But one of the big ones is obesity because the fat around our midlines expresses a protein called aromatase [00:53:00] that converts testosterone to estrogen.

[00:53:01] So for men, one of the reasons they’re not making sperm properly is because of low testosterone because the fat along their midline is actually converting testosterone to estrogen. So of course, if you’re losing some of that fat, you can potentially not convert so much of testosterone to estrogen and have better spermatogenesis.

[00:53:18] In men, the leading cause of infertility is Testosterone, Taurine, Estrogen, and women, it’s too much testosterone. So it’s kind of this funny like flip flop between the genders. But on both sides, if we get the metabolic health under better control, it can have hugely positive impacts on fertility.

[00:53:35] LM: It’s so interesting because the way that it’s being covered is almost like a, isn’t this crazy.

[00:53:41] These. Surprise babies, but it’s this huge arrow pointing at we need to be looking at our metabolic health. It’s a huge missing piece of the fertility conversation.

[00:53:49] CM: It’s the missing piece of the fertility conversation. Yeah, I mean, our infertility crisis in the US right now is a metabolic crisis for both men and women, and it is astounding [00:54:00] how wild the rates are.

[00:54:02] We have 1% increase in infertility per year. It just total infertility rates. 1% decline in sperm counts. per year, 1 percent increase in miscarriage rates per year. So it’s basically a 1 percent rule, any way you look at it. And we need to stop as a culture and just like truly take stock of, I think what we want our future as a species to be like, this is the moment because things are changing so, so fast that like, we need to stop and be like, are we going to change course?

[00:54:32] Or are we not? Because what could be more of a blaring signal from our bodies that this environment is no longer working for our fundamental cellular health than our bodies for both men and women saying we are not going to facilitate reproduction anymore. Like that is a big red flag from our bodies saying This environment has essentially told my body that it is not safe to create more humans.

[00:54:59] We need to [00:55:00] take that seriously. And of course, in our capitalistic society, it all goes towards what’s the shot? What’s the pill? How many embryos can we freeze? Assisted reproductive technology is just now becoming this like booming industry. We look at how can we make money off this trend rather than how can we actually see this as a sign that This world is not working for our bodies.

[00:55:21] How do we change the world? I have so much faith in humanity. I know that we can change the world. I think COVID was a, unfortunately, a sad example of this, but when there was a national emergency and. Basically, they said, stay in your homes, wear masks, get the shot. Almost everyone did it. I mention that because we know that when there is a true emergency, people actually can come together.

[00:55:44] The government can move quickly. We shut down schools. Like this is crazy what happened in the course of like six months. We need to be looking at this infertility crisis in a similar way. Like Our bodies are shutting down from successfully propagating the species, like, [00:56:00] what is that saying about the world that we’re living in and what it’s doing to our minds, bodies, and spirits?

[00:56:04] And of course, if we did have that conversation in a really meaningful way, not just a consumeristic way, it would lead us directly to metabolic health. It would lead us directly towards, we’ve got to clean up, we’ve got to create healthier mitochondria. that can do their work to power ourselves so they can actually do these things.

[00:56:20] It’s devastating, you know, but I think for anyone thinking about pregnancy, thinking about fertility, thinking about menopause, thinking about any phase of the female life cycle, it’s like really if you focus on optimizing your metabolic health, it’s all going to be easier. All of it. So. Is

[00:56:34] LM: there anything else that you think is missing from the Ozempic conversation?

[00:56:38] Most of what we

[00:56:38] CM: talked about in this last few hours is missing from the conversation. For every ad spot for this stuff on TV, like, where are the ad spots telling people, like, the basic things that would really help their health? Instead of full page ad spreads in the New York Times pushing a medication, like, why aren’t we helping Americans just, like, foundationally be healthier?

[00:56:58] We get really confused, and we [00:57:00] think, Even as so far as to say it’s a social justice issue to say that we need to cover Ozempic by taxpayer dollars because there’s food deserts and the world is just so difficult. I get that. I hear that. But we understand like how much that type of rhetoric is actually just so advantageous for industry.

[00:57:18] Not for people necessarily, but for industry. We need so much better access to high quality food and healthy lifestyles and safe environments, unquestionably, but I think people need to really understand that like a lot of these narratives are being directly co opted by industry because if that happens, where we do have Medicare and Medicaid and taxpayer funding going towards covering these medications, If they go to the all eligible people and is covered by taxpayer dollars, that’s looking like over 2 trillion of increased cost, which is money that most of which will be directly funneled to Denmark out of the U.

[00:57:54] S. to a country who isn’t super concerned about American health and thriving. We need to [00:58:00] not be defeatist about what’s possible here with these amounts of resources and really start thinking in community, thinking creatively, like, Rome is burning. Our health is very poor in the U. S. We need to get creative.

[00:58:13] We can’t get hopeless. We have to stay hopeful. And I think that part of the dynamic is things are so bad. This is what we’ve got. But we’re talking about trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars of resources. Like there’s more we can do. And that’s like each of our responsibility. It’s all of our responsibility.

[00:58:31] We all live in this country and it’s our money, all of ours, everyone listening, that’s going to go towards these. Quote unquote solutions when like, we actually could clean up our environment to create a healthier world, which, like I mentioned earlier, would also drastically help the environment. And so I just hope people can see a bigger picture for what this conversation is happening in and really just think about your body with compassion.

[00:58:54] Like, Even excess fat is a way of our bodies telling us that [00:59:00] something’s not quite working inside ourselves and like we can approach that with trying to like stomp it out or we can look at it with compassion of like what does my body need to do its best work and I just would really hope that people can approach it that way and actually know that it is simpler than we’ve been Lied to believe

[00:59:16] LM: can you leave us with one homework assignment, something that we can all do as soon as we turn off this podcast to begin to have a different relationship with our body and our metabolic health.

[00:59:26] CM: Yeah. I’ll do one sort of philosophical and one practical. So philosophical, every time you have like a symptom or aren’t feeling totally your best, instead of thinking about how to maybe like squash that with an Advil or an antacid or a Tylenol, before doing that, just stop and sit down quietly and ask your body, what is it trying to tell you with that symptom?

[00:59:50] Um, like symptoms are a result of dysfunction happening inside the body and We can talk to the body with more [01:00:00] compassion of like, what are you trying to tell me? Like, if you think of yourselves almost as like infants, their way of crying is to give you symptoms. Like, how can you actually like meet the needs and not fight the body?

[01:00:10] And I think that simple reframe can help us like have a lot more love for our body and think of it as something that we’re like caring for rather than fighting or like squashing or like it’s against us. Cause it wants to give us the best life possible, but it does need to get its needs met just like a baby would by its parents.

[01:00:27] The second The second one is going for walks. I am so astounded, monumentally astounded by the data on walking that I feel like is almost like hidden. And just to recap, there was a study with 7, 000 patients in a premier medical journal that showed that if you walked 7, 000 steps per day in the follow up, you had a 65 percent lower chance of dying.

[01:00:53] In other follow up studies that looked at similar size populations and looked at walking between eight and [01:01:00] 12, 000 steps today, they show between a 40 to 60 percent reduction in Alzheimer’s dementia, obesity, type 2 diabetes, gastroesophageal reflux disease, and several other conditions. So we just need to keep it simple and make sure we’re moving enough throughout the day and ideally doing it outside so we get the sunshine.

[01:01:18] So the task is get out a piece of paper, Write down a list of things you do every single day and then figure out which of those you can do on your feet or moving and ideally on your feet moving and outdoors. So this is why I get up every morning and I usually go brush my teeth outside in my backyard pacing around because it’s one thing I can do where I’m actually just like moving and outdoors.

[01:01:42] And so we got to get creative. The world’s a crazy place and it’s up to us to make it fun and get creative. And that’s one of the simplest things we can do.

[01:01:50] LM: Your outside teeth brushing is memorialized in a hundred ways to change your life. Yes,

[01:01:54] CM: it is. That’s

[01:01:56] LM: right. Yes. Because you said it and I was like, whoa.

[01:01:59] And you were [01:02:00] living in Bend at the time. I was. I want to point that out because people might be like, oh, she’s in L. A., it’s sunny. You were living in a place with real winters and you were still brushing your teeth outside every day.

[01:02:10] CM: My favorite thing from living in Oregon was learning the statement, there’s no bad weather, there’s only bad gear.

[01:02:15] And to get your walks when it’s raining or cold, invest in some boots, invest in some rain pants. It’s like. You can do it.

[01:02:22] LM: Can you tell us a little

[01:02:22] CM: bit in your own words about your wonderful book? Sure. So my book is called Good Energy, The Surprising Connection Between Metabolism and Limitless Health.

[01:02:32] This is the ultimate metabolic handbook. So it’s really in three parts. The first part is basically the science class you never had that like I wish everyone could have to understand their body on a deep level and to really appreciate how awe inspiring it is. So it’s the science. what metabolic dysfunction is, what it really means.

[01:02:50] Then we get into some of the systems issues, which is like, why have we got into a place where almost every American is metabolically dysfunctional? Literally 93%. Like, why has that happened? We [01:03:00] unpack it because I think it’s important to understand the context we’re living in. And then the second half of the book is just like exactly how to understand and fix it.

[01:03:06] So the biomarkers that you need to ask your doctors for to understand your metabolic health, they’re cheap, they’re easy. Um, Which wearables actually have value, which don’t optimal ranges, not just normal ranges. You will understand deeply what triglycerides mean, what uric acid means. And it’s not that complicated.

[01:03:25] And then all the pillars that we can basically impact in our life that affect our mitochondrial health and metabolic health and These simple evidence based strategies to improve those pillars, often it’s totally free. And so how to basically focus your arrow on what matters. And then there’s 30 recipes and there’s a four week plan for improving metabolic health.

[01:03:46] I hope that people just really, that it absolutely changes their life. It makes them feel more empowered and more like The miracle that they are.

[01:03:53] LM: You packed a lot into that book, and I can say I’ve personally seen you pour your heart and soul into it [01:04:00] for a really long time, and you’re so mission driven, and I just admire the change that you’re trying to make in the world so much.

[01:04:06] Thank you. Thanks, Liz. Thanks for coming on. Thank you. That’s all for this episode of the Liz Moody Podcast. If you loved this episode, one of the best ways that you can support the pod is by sending a link to your friends, your family, your partner, your coworkers, you name it. You’re helping grow the podcast and you’re helping the people you love change their lives.

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[01:05:07] Oh, just one more thing. It’s the legal language. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. It is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, a psychotherapist, or any other qualified professional.