Welcome back. It's the Stay Off My Operating Table podcast with Dr. Philip Ovadia. Doctor O., I want to call this episode, "Doctors and Children." What do you say?
Sounds like good topic.
So this is something that I have wondered about. My kids are grown and out of the house, but I've got a bunch of grandkids. And I watch how they eat. And I've had this question, "Should children of any age from infancy to the time they're adults out of the house - should we require them to eat the same way that we as adults eat in order to be metabolically healthy?" Just give me the whole nine yards.
Sure thing. And you know, I have children of my own, I have nine and 11 year old daughters. And so obviously, this topic is very near and dear to my heart. I think ultimately, the the things that are healthy for adults to eat are the same things that are healthy for children to eat. So when I talk about eating whole real food as a central principle, that goes for adults, as well as it does for children,
That makes sense to
me. The question that's more pressing to me is, "are the things that are unhealthy for adults, just as unhealthy for children?" And I think that the unspoken question that I've had - now that I say it out loud - is "Do children have something going on that allows them to use the less healthy foods positively that adults no longer have?" I mean, I guess I thought maybe something happens in adolescence where now we got to be more aware of it, but prior to adolescence, yeah, they can
eat all the crap. In just hearing myself say that I feel bad about it. But I really have had that question.
Yeah. And I think we all kind of struggle with this. I think ultimately, the answer is "no." You know, I don't think children are better able to, let's say compensate for quality food. It's just that the effects of that poor quality food are cumulative over time. And so they're not as obvious to us in children as they are
adults. The probably the biggest concern I have about, you know, children eating a lot of processed food and eating these unhealthy foods that we've talked about, is that it's setting up those habits for life. And so that's why, you know, I do think it is important for children to develop the healthy eating habits early in life. You know, we do see that the incidence of childhood obesity is skyrocketing.
That one scares me. "Scares" it probably too strong a word, but it horrifies me more than anything else I look at. I've said this before, but I look at photos of my high school yearbook. Went to high school with 800 kids. Of those 800 kids, there might be two that were legitimately obese, and a handful that were maybe pudgy, as some kids tend to be. Today, if you took a population of 800 - what would that be - 14 to 18 year olds? Ny guess is a full third of them would be
legitimately obese. And that to me, that is absolutely horrifying.
Yeah. And that's exactly what the, you know, the statistics show, there was just a study that came out, you know, probably a month or two ago, looking at the increase the the accelerating rate of increase of the childhood obesity rates, and, you know, it was framed in the context of everything that's been going on around COVID and lock downs and, you know, decreased activity started. Really, exactly, it
didn't start in March 2020. It has been going, you know, that pattern has been developing over the past, you know, two decades. And, you know, unfortunately, you know, while you might not be able to measure the same metabolic health, you know, deficiencies in these children. And we know that being, you know, obese and overweight as a child greatly increases your chances of, you know, developing
metabolic disease. And you know, the things that come with it high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, you know, when you get older, and you know, so what I am seeing, you know, as a heart surgeon, is that the patients that I am operating on are getting younger and younger.
You probably said that before, because it sounds familiar, but the impact of that just hit me.
Yeah. You know, when I started my career, 20 years ago, the, you know, it was unusual for me to operate on someone that was under 60 years old. And now it's commonplace. And, you know, I open my book with the story of an unfortunate, you know, woman in her late 30s, who developed devastating, you know, form of heart disease, and ultimately succumb to that. And, you know, again, it's, it's not that unusual anymore, that that 30 and 40 year olds are ending up
on my operating table. And, you know, that clearly is because of these habits that start in childhood. So while yes, children do have, you know, more capacity to sort of, you know, not show the bad effects of these dietary habits, they are having effects and they're setting up the habits that are going to there we go, that carry on,
That's the key idea that I think I've been missing, the immediate effect might be less obvious in a child than it will be in an adult, but you're laying the foundation, and the effects are cumulative. So okay,
it makes sense. You know, I, I've got a, I think, a parallel situation, it's, I think it's fairly well understood now, that if you take a boy as he's entering adolescence, and get him started in weight training, with really, with really good weight training, the right technique, the right form the right weights, and just during that 345 year period, in his mid to late teens, if he does good weight training, he sets himself up for the rest of his life, to be physically stronger, not just
in terms of muscle, but but bone. In a way, that if you wait until you're in your 20s, your 30s, or 40s, or your 50s, you will not see those benefits, even if you do way more training later in life, so that the boy 14, 15, 16, to train for five or six years has physiological advantages for the rest of his life that cannot be regained any other way. It may not be that severe. But is there an analog there?
Yeah, I think there certainly is, you know, we refer to childhood as the formative years for a very good reason. And that these habits, you know, both from a short of mental psychologic standpoint, as well as, from a physical standpoint, are going to be ingrained. And I think, when you look at things like exercise,
you know, that holds true. And when you look at things like nutrition that holds true, you know, is I would say it is unusual, for you know, someone to all of a sudden start, you know, an exercise program, whether it be you know, kind of weightlifting or, you know, running, you know, aerobic type stuff, later in life later you get in life, the less likely it becomes that you're all of a sudden going to develop these
good habits. And, you know, similarly for dietary habits, the go, you know, it's never too late to start, but the later you start, the more difficult it is to, you know, get those to become ingrained habits.
And I think about it on the on the negative side, the earlier you start digging that hole, the deeper the hole, you're gonna have to get out of, right.
You know, and as I often times, say around health problems, it is always better to prevent a health problem than to try and undo that health problem or treat that health problem.
I think there was a famous American who said something about ounces and pounds and Prevention's and cures. Exactly. Alright, I want to take a sharp turn here. And we've dealt with children. This is where I wish we had a call in feature where people could could call in with their questions about their kids, but we don't, maybe someday. Let's talk now about health care professionals.
I realize that the this the overall subject of this podcast, metabolic health is not widely accepted as gospel amongst health care professionals. On the other hand, this is not new, or scientifically unsupported or, or proven out in real life by real people in very public situations. So the question becomes, why is the why our health care professionals as individuals and medical institutions, so utterly bass ackwards And I don't mean to overstate it, but that's, that's
how it seems to me. Why are the why is there so much ignorance and bad practice? Amongst the health care professionals who we are kind of stuck with trusting what's going on? I realized that's a big broad question, but I throw it in your lap.
Yeah, and, you know, realize that, you know, we just got done talking about children, and I view what is going on in healthcare as a generational problem. Because most of the physicians who are in practice today have been raised, and I guess I should say, have been educated have been trained in an environment. You know, that is based on the common thinking, you know,
that's pervasive today. So, you know, from a nutritional standpoint, the things like the the food guidelines, the food pyramid, low fat diets, you know, the basis of your diet should be whole, you know, grains, calories in calories out, you know, these concepts have now been the kind of accepted norm for, you know, 40 or 50 years. And so it's really nearly impossible anymore to find physicians who, you know, were trained or educated were in practice, before these things
became common. And so all the guys who thought differently, are no longer practicing medicine. Basically, all of the leaders of the societies that, you know, again, sort of educate doctors, quite frankly, you know, credential them and judge them, you know, as to whether or not they're practicing good medicine. And I put that sort of in air quotes. It's all based
upon the same ideas. And the idea has become so ingrained and so self reinforcing, that anyone that questions these ideas, you know, gets labeled as a quack or, you know, they're not practicing evidence based medicine, or are terms that kind of get thrown around. And ultimately, I think, like any other system, the system ends up, you know, reinforcing itself. The system wants to maintain the status quo, ultimately, and so, physicians are largely trapped within that
system. And it's impossible for the most part for them to even see that there are other ideas out there. I think most doctors what I would say is that doctors have been trained that their success is in treating diseases, how well they treat the diseases that their patients have, they measure their success.
"I had this horrible situation that presented. I did my thing, and now that horrible situation is better. Therefore, I have successfully done my job."
Exactly. And you know, we're not measured on preventing those problems in the first place. Because the way that the system looks at it, it is not possible to prevent these things, these these diseases, these things are inevitability, right? Exactly these diseases that have become so common things like heart disease and diabetes, and obesity, and Alzheimer's disease and cancer are felt to be inevitable because they have become so
common. So we don't even expect physicians to be able to prevent them, we have no real way of measuring whether physicians prevent them. So instead, the system emphasizes trying to manage these conditions, the best you can physicians get educated to manage these conditions, the best day can and they it's not even really felt to be, you know, possible to prevent these conditions in the first place.
Is this why, and you, you will very frequently hear a story that goes something like this, I went to a doctor and I had these problems. And he basically blew me off. And I went to another doctor and I had these problems. And he basically blew me off. And I went through Doctor, Doctor doctor after getting blown off multiple times. And eventually it got so bad that somebody finally did something. Is it just simply that until a problem becomes
acute enough? The medical system itself doesn't recognize it as anything that the system is designed to deal with? Yeah, I would say you got to be, you've got to pass a certain threshold of illness before we even have the capacity to perceive you as having a problem, let alone having a solution.
Yeah, I mean, that is essentially true. And, you know, when you look specifically at, you know, diet, at what we eat, which is clearly one of the biggest influences on our health, but the health care system does not recognize that.
Doctors, that's just fascinating to me, it really horrifying and fascinating that the medical system doesn't, is literally blind, to the effects of what we stick in our mouth and swallow. As to how it relates to the problems we show up in medical institutions with. I'm not overstating that EMI.
No, you're really not, you know, wow, I mean, doctors, it's, it's, you know, well known, it's often repeated, that doctors get very little training around nutrition and medical school, it's usually measured, you know, in a couple of hours out of the, you know, four years of very intensive study that goes on in medical school, you know, literally 1000s and 1000s of hours that we spend getting educated, and very little of that is focused on nutrition.
So, Oh, good grief. I think I told you several episodes ago that I've always been a little skeptical about the the medical system and had been trying to relieve myself of some of my skepticism. And all these conversations with you have convinced me I haven't been skeptical enough.
Yeah, it is sadly true. And you look at, you know, my personal experience is that I had to go outside the medical system, you know, for
these concepts. You know, again, my first introduction to you know, metabolic health came from a scientific journalist and an author, not a doctor or a physician, many of the ideas, you know, that, you know, I talk about around heart disease, you know, come from non physicians, engineers and computer scientists who looked at the data, without the skewed perspective of, you know, a medical education and just looked at the facts, and said that, you know, the conclusions
that the healthcare industry has come to, based on those facts simply cannot be true. But, you know, the bias within the healthcare system is so strong, that those within the system, it's hard for us, it's hard for, you know, to see outside the system.
I would emphasize that that's really not an overstatement in terms of the words you're using. It's hard to say. There's a psychological phenomenon known as, (I believe I've got this right), inattentional blindness. And essentially boils down to, we don't see what we're not looking for, like we are literally blind to things that we aren't looking for. But the positive way to say that is we only see the things
we expect to see. And, and so that the phenomenon is, is writ large, with the medical the entire medical community, because there is an expectation of what we're seeing. And anything that violates that expectation we don't, we don't merely ignore, this is not a medical problem. This is a human problem. We literally are blind to it, we don't see it, it takes something extraordinary to happen to see things that that we do not expect to see. It's a it's the brain, it's how our
brains work. I got to tell you, that actually makes me feel a little better about the what I consider the horrendous care I've gotten from the medical system over the years. Knowing that, that physicians suffer from inattentional blindness in the same way that I do, makes me feel a little less upset, I guess about it. However, having said that, as individuals, and that I'm going to throw it back into your lap, because I'm talking way too much here.
Knowing that's true, what does what does an individual issue this? Who has any kind of health problem? How do they find health care providers? That can actually that aren't blind? How do we do that? I got lucky myself, I'll tell you, I found my physician through sheer good luck. So I have no idea how to tell people how to do it.
Yeah, I think ultimately, you know, in our modern environment, you need to use the tools that are available to you, you need to what are that? Yeah, what are those things get out of the or I should say, you need to not just accept what the system is, is
putting out in front of you. You know, so when most people are looking for a physician, their first and oftentimes only maneuver is, you know, they go through their insurance companies directory, or they call the insurance company, and they, you know, find their the local physician for whatever condition they're looking to treat. And I think you can start
like that. But you need to be asking the proper questions of those physicians, you know, you need to be asking, what are the root causes of the condition that I have? Can the condition be reversed? You know, is this related to what I'm eating?
These are some basic questions that I think need to be, you know, asked, and if the answers that you're getting are not to your satisfaction, find other people to ask those questions of, oftentimes today, that means going online, you know, finding the communities of people who have the conditions you're you're dealing with, or you're concerned about, and the people who are successful in reversing or treating or preventing the condition, you know, find out who they learned from who they
work with, is a very good strategy to start with. You know, and if you can do that in real life, if you have people around you, you know, directly who you can connect to, that that kind of networking effect, works well in healthcare as well. I think another important consideration, you know, when you're considering, you know, working with physicians, is asked them about, you know, what they do to stay educated, you know, to get new, you know, to continue their education,
throughout their careers. You know, it is not possible for a physician to just, you know, graduate medical school, and then go through, you know, 40 or 50 years of a career without learning new stuff, because things change. And if it's been a long time, since that physician, change their thinking about something, then, you know, that may be a problem because the world is changing around us, and we need to be changing how we're dealing with these with these issues.
Maybe a good question to ask Tell me what you think of this is to ask your doctor, when's the last time you changed your thinking around a medical situation?
Yeah, I think that's an excellent question to ask your physician.
And if the answer is "when the pretty blonde pharmaceutical rep came in with a new medicine," you probably need to look elsewhere.
Yes, that may be true as well. You know, one of the things I oftentimes say is the worst trait I think that a physician could have, is not being curious. I think physicians who think they know all the answers and are unwilling to consider new information, conflicting information that's put in front of them is the worst type of physician. And unfortunately, you know, I do see that a lot.
I think we talked one time about why that seems to be so prevalent in the, in the medical industry. So we won't, we won't go down that road. Now. As I understand it, you have? Well, I know this for a fact you have a telemedicine practice. What states do you know off the top of your head? What state are you licensed to practice in?
So the list is long and it's always changing. So I encourage people to go to my website for updated information, but give us the website as of today. So Aveda heart health.com And as of today, I am licensed in Florida, Tennessee, New Mexico, Virginia, California, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and Illinois. And again, that list is always being added to But importantly, you know, I can see patients from anywhere in the United States because my telemedicine practice is based
in Florida. And that allows me to see patients Oh, throughout the United States, excellent. There are some, you know, minor limitations in some of the states that I'm not licensed in that I might not be able to do, you know certain things, but practically it doesn't become too much of a barrier. Okay. So Aveda heart health.com is the website to go to.
And before we started this episode, you were telling me about some sort of new online group that you have started correct? Because this does this applicable here.
Yeah, so I have an online group coaching community now it's called the stronger heart society, and you can go to stronger hearts.co. To sign up for that, what we do is we have twice weekly meetings, where we discuss a lot of these same concepts that I talked about in the book that I talked about, you know, on the podcast, about how to be metabolically
healthy. And, you know, we, while I can't give the individualized, you know, medical advice, medical treatments that I give, you know, to the members of my practice, this allows me to connect with more people in a group setting and, you know, help them educate them on these concepts. You know, ultimately, a physician is supposed to be an educator, they're supposed to be teaching the people that they work with, you know, how to be healthy. And so that's what I do through the stronger heart
society. I can, you know, in a group setting, kind of scale up, you know, my ability to educate people on these important topics, and, you know, help them seek the answers that they need, you know, if, you know, they are not able to work with me one on one in my telemedicine practice, Stronger Hearts dot C O.
And is that primarily for people who would be patients or for is that for other physicians?
Um, you know, really it can be for either I mean, physicians who want to learn these things, I certainly welcome them welcome them into the society as well. It's for anyone who wants to be educated about how to be metabolically healthy, how to stay off my operating table, prevent heart disease, and these other chronic diseases that result from poor metabolic health.
I think it's important we I think we were talking about this last episode about Yeah, it was it was the American Heart Association's dietary guidelines and and how they are captive to the big food companies. In other words, their guidelines promote those of their promote the The interests of their sponsor. What is remarkable to me and what what gives your work so much credibility is that your primary source of income is cutting
people's chests open. And you are here week after week, advocating a lifestyle that will, if everybody followed it would put you out of business. Now to me that says, Listen to Dr. oveja. He's, he's literally because he has personally benefited from from the advice he's giving in his own body and his own health. If you follow his advice, you will have the same person without benefits and he's not going to benefit
financially. And if you don't follow it, you're going to end up on his table or somebody like him, with your life permanently altered because of your poor choices. So I just thought that was worth worth pointing out that you're, you're here advocating for people to do something that will ultimately will will end your career as a surgeon or at least as a heart surgeon. All right. That's a good rant. Okay, well, I think this is a good place to wrap it
up. Let's just reiterate the various ways people can connect with you and talk with you. Follow Dr. Ovadia on Twitter at "I fix hearts." Go to his website Ovadia Heart Health dot com. He has a telemedicine practice; if you're in the United States, he can help you and if you're interested in that group coaching that is Stronger Hearts dot C O. Is that right? I got it. All right for Dr. Philip Ovadia and the Stay Off My Operating Table Podcast. I'm Jack Heald. We'll talk to you next time.