Fixing The Obesity Problem & The Dash Diet

be on call on the weekend. And what I would say, in the twenty one years since two thousand and three, I've been doing the program, and I've been on call many, many many weekends that the show goes on, and not a single time has the program ever had to be canceled or abbreviated because I was on call. Now I will say the truth is during commercials, during breaks, I do have to run out and answer phone calls, text messages from the answering service, the emergency room, patients in

the intensive care unit, other colleagues. But the show's never been canceled, and I'd like to say in the showbiz world, this show must go on. And here we are. I'm so happy we're here every Sunday now to be part of the program, which you should all be familiar with, but if not, there may be some newcomers in the audience. Our website doctor Joegalotti dot com. That's my name, doctor

Joe Galotti GA l a TI dot com. And when you go there, there's lots of information Sona for our weekly newsletter that goes out on Saturday morning across the country. All of our social media is there. Follow us along on our YouTube page, Facebook, Instagram, our practice website which is Liver Specialists of Texas. We take care of people at Livy Disease. It is all there, but you have to go to doctor Joegalotti dot com and while there, feel free to take a look at my book Eating

Yourself Sick, Eating Yourself Sick. All right, So for the program, today, a bunch of I would say, it's you know, sometimes I do the show more of a popery show. It's a basket of interesting things to talk about. And the one topic which we'll try and spend a little bit

of time on today has to do with your weight. Now, we talk about weight and obesity a lot on this program because if I, if I tell you that the root cause of you getting sick either acutely ill or chronically ill, with the usual cast of characters, which will be high blood pressure, diabetes, cardiovascular disease which may take its form in a heart attack, a stroke, congestive heart failure, cardiomyopathy,

lots of different things. Liver disease and of course that's what I do, fatty liver disease which leads to cirrhosis and liver cancer, the need for a liver transplant. It is a colossal disaster. Orthopedic issues related to weight. Obesity is related to a number of internal cancers, cancer related to weight, and of course there's a whole slew of evidence pointing towards obesity and inflammation related to a number of neuro psychological problems, depression, and the list goes on

and on. So it is if you want to look at the root of the problem, it is weight. Now we're not necessarily going to get into why people are overweight or why people are obese my commentary for right now, and many of you may be able to relate to this.

So in your typical encounter with a doctor or a nurse practitioner, or a physician assistant, whatever the case may be, your healthcare team, in addition to hopefully spending time talking with them about your ills, your complaints, your concerns, whatever the case may be, and a physical examination. They're going to send you for blood work, they may send you for an EKG. They may and you for a chest X ray, an ultrasound, a mammogram, a cat scanner, MRI,

whatever it may be. Some data is going to be generated, okay, and so information is going to come back. Your blood pressure is high. Let's say the top number, the systolic number is two hundred, the bottom number is ninety five. Two hundred over ninety five serious medical condition. It should not go unaddressed, and it probably will not go unaddressed because uncontrolled high blood pressure at that level can lead to heart attack, heart failure, stroke, kidney damage, bad no boy,

and oh it's bad stuff. Your doctor and or your treatment team's going to address this. Let's say you go for blood work and your blood sugar comes back at three hundred. So clearly, if you're not diabetic, you're diabetic now, or if you do have diabetes, it's poorly controlled and someone is going to address this because high blood sugar leads to an assortment of problems. Let's say you go for your annual mammogram and it comes back that there's

a spot on your breast. It's going to be followed up with either a different kind of mammogram or imaging study, or a referral to a surgeon, or a discussion that it may need to be biopsied because we're concerned it may be breast cancer. You end up having blood in your stool, well that may be a sign of colon cancer. It's going to be evaluated. And the list goes on and on. So keep in mind that you go to the doctor, tests of some kind are going to be done.

Those results come in and they're analyzed, and the things that are abnormal will get addressed. Okay, I think we're all comfortable with that at scenario, but The one bit of data that is collected at almost every single physical examination clinic visit is your weight. You step on the scale and a number is spit out and it's recorded. And my point here, and that's the whole you know, I've been talking for eight minutes and fifty seconds. Now, My whole take here is that that very important metric

is being ignored. Patients are over weight, and the doctors, the nurses, the pas, whoever you're seeing basically say, Bob, you're overweight, try to lose weight. Oh okay, well I sort of know that I've been gaining weight for the past decade. Okay, well I'll try to do better. Nobody really says it's down with them to say, now, look, this is a serious health concern. This weight of yours

is as risky as uncontrolled blood pressure. This weight is likely going to lead to a number of metabolic complications. You'll be at risk for diabetics, heart disease, cancer, fatty, liver, cirrhosis, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But yet this little bit of information is sort of ignored. You see it and it's completely glossed over. Now, how do we change that? We need to have an overhaul in the way physicians, my colleagues need to look at the weight. The weight

has to be formally addressed. The patients and their families need to be made aware what the long term complications are. Now, you may have an idea in the back of your head, Yeah, being overweight is not good, but I feel okay. Well you may feel okay, but you know your blood sugar is at a whack, and you are hypertensive on two drugs and oh, by the way, you're on a stanton because your cholesterol is up. All of this is going

to add up to a set of colossal complications. Chronic disease, decreased quality of life, the likelihood that you're going to die sooner than you should. Now, I would say for most of you, my patients included, this is not necessarily an okay thing. But the hard discussion is not brought up, and we are just kicking the can down the road. And when we look at our healthcare system, everyone says

it's going broke. Well, yeah, it's going broke because we have all these people with these chronic diseases such as obesity, that it's almost like these conditions are multiplying. So you come in with obesity, you walk out the door with four other diseases which I just listed, and the management of these are expensive. The complications are expensive, the testing expensive, the hospitalizations, the surgeries for all of this is expensive.

And while many people may not be talking about this, I would say that public health crisis number one is obesity and eighty percent of the population has fallen victim to it, but they're not looking at it that way. So my message to everybody would be, and I hate to say, you know who, you are here to fat shame anybody or put anybody on the spot, but if you know that you are overweight or obese, the message is that you're at risk for lots of other complications.

And if you could get the obesity and weight under control, which we'll talk about after the break, your likelihood of having serious complications goes down dramatically. Less medications, you could throw those darned pills out, all right, So we're going to take a break right now. I'm doctor Joe Galotti. This is your health First. Every Sunday between eight no not eight o'clock, seven and eight o'clock go to doctor Joegalotti dot com. For more information. Stay tuned, We'll be

right back. Welcome back, everybody, Your health First, doctor Joe Galotti. Every Sunday between seven and eight pm. We want you to be here, tuned in, dialed in, listening to the program. And as I say every week, our goal is to raise your health.

in any other way. If you know that driving high speed without a seat belt on is bad, you put a seatbelt on, you slow down. That'll save your life and save misery for a lot of people. Same thing here. If you know that you have certain risk factors, diseases, things that you need to be alerted to, maybe even if you did not know it and you learned it here through us, and now we're your health first team. You are that far better off. Trust me, all right,

don't forget doctor Joegalotti dot com is our website. So to continue on the obesity discussion now, I posted a video commentary on this about a week or so ago, and I had a fair amount of feedback from it, and you know what people were writing, and I understand their frustration. Please please please understand that I know that this is not a quick fix problem. There's no pill. Well you could argue that there's a pill, but there's no pill to really combat obesity because it is a

lifestyle problem. But people writing to me saying, yeah, we get it, we get it, but we do not have the tools. We do not have the support available to work on a weight loss journey. And that's where I sort of lose everybody, because I'm saying to myself, what tools are you looking for? Are you looking for tools on how to exercise more? Well, those tools are available everywhere you go online. And there are YouTube videos golaw on exercise or Instagram or Twitter or TikTok. They're there.

There are health clubs on every corner practically, So I'm not quite sure what tools you're looking for tools to eat better, cook better. There is a ton of information on the proper nutritional journey to follow. Follow the Mediterranean diet. Well, gee, I don't know what the Mediterranean diet. You could talk to your physician, talk to a dietitian, a nutritionist type in what is a Mediterranean diet and you'll find out the content of a Mediterranean diet. I want to cut

down on sugar, added sugar. Well, read the labels, pardon me, read the labels. Look for foods that do not have added sugar. Look at foods that have decreased fat content. It's on the labels. You could read about it. So, I don't know if we have created a society that they want everything done. You have to look at this and say, what is my responsibility in this? I have

to own this. It's not the doctor's fault. Now, it may be the doctor's fault that they're not bringing it up and really sitting you down and having a heart to heart talk about this. But you have to get with your family, your community to say, look, this weight that I am caring is no good, even if it's just ten fifteen pounds or it is fifty pounds or

one hundred pounds. There is information out there, but you need to take the responsibility to own this and talk with your physicians say what are the options, where do I get help? What do I need to do right now? So again, feedback like this is very important, but at the same time, there is that personal responsibility that you

need to really become a student of health. And you can look through the archives of this radio program over twenty plus years, and we have a lot of information online, YouTube videos and our websites, a lot of information on the tools that you need to be successful. All right, we're gonna take a break right now, news, weather, traffic. We're gonna hear about the astros coming up in just a minute. Doctor Joe Galotti dot com every Sunday between seven and eight pm to live right back. Welcome back,

everybody that your health first. I'm doctor Joe Galotti every Sunday. I'm so glad you could join us. And as I have always said, Sunday evening is really one of the best parts of the week for me because I really cherish this opportunity to be able to talk with the community and help them be well. I see so much in my medical Practice Liver Specialist of Texas. So many patients that get to us too late. We like to call it the late referral, and it is at epidemic numbers.

People just come late. They're being watched. Action is not being taken on various issues that are uncovered. Now we deal with liver disease, and so we see patients that have had abnormal liver chemistries. It's on your blood work, the liver test, the alt and the ast billy rubin alkalin phosphatase, things like that, or abnormal ultrasounds of the liver. We see people that have had these abnormal findings for

years upon years, ten years, twelve years. Oh yeah, I've known about the fatty liver, but my doctor told me not to worry about it. Well, I'm sorry to tell you it is something you should have worried about because now you have advanced damage. So my whole goal here It may be that I am yelling into the woods and nobody hears me, but we have to become more engaged understand our bodies. You have to be better students.

And you know, I think if I was just to poll anybody, you probably have more knowledge of how your refrigerator works than how your body works, or how your car works, or some other thing you doodle with. Oh yeah, I'm an expert on that, but you neglect being an expert on your body, the most complicated thing on earth.

you can directly message me. You could directly message you. It says contact us hit it. A form will come up and write your heart away as to what you would like to say to me, But you have to go to these websites. Okay, a few miscellaneous little things. There is a little magazine that I subscribe to, and I would say, if you want to get this for someone's birthday, Christmas special occasion. It's called Nutrition Action, and it comes out every month or two. And I have

been a long term subscriber to this little magazine. It's more like a big newsletter, but it is a magazine. I guess how many pages is it. It's a twenty and it is when we get to that our home, my wife and I the kids, we really look at it and become ourselves a better consumer. But I always say this is I get good radio discussion from here, and it is mostly related to chronic disease and nutrition and again, making you a better consumer of healthcare, that

is the prevailing thing. So there's a little section here usually every month they call it Quick Studies, a snapshot of the latest research on diet, exercise and more. And so these are good little nuggets to talk about with all of you. One of them has to do with what's called microplastics. Okay, microplastics are exactly what you think. These are super super small pieces of plastic that get into your body through your skin, your food, and the

air you breathe. Were surrounded by this stuff. And what they're finding is that this stuff ends up in your arteries, yes, your arteries of your heart and brain, and you could get a heart attack or stroke. So researchers examined the plaque that they removed from two hundred and fifty seven patients who needed surgery to open up their narrow, narrowed carotid arteries. These are the arteries that are in your neck that go up and feed the blood to your noggin.

Analysts detected polyethylene and fifty eight percent and polyvinyl chloride in twelve percent of the patients. What's more, in the ten plaques examined with electron microscope, so that's really getting down close, the scientists saw jagged edge foreign particles and after roughly three years, the risk of heart attack, stroke and death was four and a half times higher. And people with these microplastic nanoparticles in the uteries. Now what do you do, right, We're not just gonna sit here

and frighten everybody. Minimize your use of plastic, starting with bottled water, the biggest source. This study can't prove that pmns caused cardiovascular disease, even though the researchers accounted for many factors that raise a heart the risk of heart attack, but it is still worth limiting your exposure to plastic and so instead of getting plastic bottles, get a source, keep it in glass where possible. Okay, another one is they title this size matters. When people were offered bottomless

plates of large, medium, and small pretzels. Now, I don't know about you, but I really enjoy a good pretzel. The interesting thing is that they ate more of the large pretzels sixty eight calories worth than the medium calories fifty one calories or the small pretzels forty seven calories. The participants also ate the large pretzels more quickly and with bigger bites than they ate the medium or small pretzels.

So what do we do? Keep in mind that larger unit foods like cookies, crackers, chocolates, et cetera, may lead you to eat more and quickly. So what you want to do is if you are going to indulge in pretzels, it seems that the research would say buy small pretzels. I think that is reasonable. Now there's before we take the break. Here a lot of talk about beef. People have this idea that they need to eat beef to

get protein to stay strong. So the question here was can beef boost muscle or tendon strength when you do strength training. Good question. Research, which was partially funded by the beef industry, randomly assigned forty nine older women to eat a normal protein diet, a higher protein diet, or a higher No wait, let me just say this. They eat a normal protein diet, a higher protein diet, or a higher protein diet with three ounces of lean beef

per day. Okay, so regular protein, a higher protein, and then higher protein with an extra three ounces of beef. So this was the study arm The first two group eate three ounces of lean beef per week. All three groups also got protein from chicken, eggs, dairy beans, grains, nuts, and did supervised training three times a week. After twelve weeks, all three groups had stronger thigh muscles, but muscles and tendon strength didn't differ amongst the groups. So what to do?

Rely on strength training, not extra protein to keep your muscles and tendons strong. I think this idea that you have to have beef, red meat, hamburger steaks is not necessarily correct. You're going to put yourself at risk for obesity and heart disease. Okay. Coming up on the final segment after Joe Galotti, so glad you're having a little bit of time to spend together with us tonight on

this Sunday night, Stay tuned. Final segment coming up will be right back, Welcome back to your Health First every Sunday between seven and a pm. Final segment four tonight's installment. And as many of you know, I get great joy playing quirky music on the show. And what could be better than Tijuana Brass from the nineteen sixties. I'm sure some of you have said, Hey, when I was a kid, I remember listening to that. So we're just going to take you on a little bit of a throwback now.

As I have said before, there's for those that are Herb Albert aficionados has a great documentary on him on Netflix that goes through his whole history with A T Tijuana Brass and A and M Records, and it's uh. I learned a hell of a lot about herbal bit and a great deal of respect for him. Quite quite the musician. All right. Our website Doctor Joe Galotti dot com signer for our newsletter. It's it's important to sign up for the newsletter so that you could stay in

touch with us. So by going to doctor Joegalotti dot com. At the top there there's a tab that says newsletter. Click it, fill in your information and you will be locked and loaded because what I'm going to talk about now is going to be featured in next week's newsletter. So you can get a little bit of a leg up in what we're talking about. But you have to

go there to the website doctor Joe Goli. And again, all of our social media is they follow us along, especially Instagram, YouTube, lots of videos will be putting on. All right, So what I want to talk about, and you may have heard about this before. It's called the Dash diet DASH, and it's something that really the American Heart Association came up with a good number of years

ago to help control blood pressure. Now, we were talking earlier about obesity and all of its complications, but here is a diet that rooted in science shows that following this diet will help with your blood pressure. And this is an article out of the New York Times. We're going to feature it next week in the newsletter. So

sign up doctor Joeglotti dot com. All right, And the way the article goes is the researchers found that those who followed the DASH diet had significantly larger reductions in blood pressure than those on other diets. The following is the American. Those following the American diet with extra fruits and vegetables also enjoyed reductions in blood pressure, but to

a lesser extent. And so the key to the DASH diet is that it is lower in sodium than the typical American diet, containing roughly one thousand to two thousand milligrams of sodium per day. The standard American diet, said has three to four thousand milligrams per day, and sodium in the diet is the killer. Where do you get sodium or salt. It's in processed foods. So if you eliminate processed foods, you eliminate sodium, you'll lose weight and

your blood pressure will go down. Now, in this article they give several different recipes for some DASH diet friendly foods that you could eat. One of them is overnight oats. One is charred bokchoi and canaloni. Bean salad. Sounds delicious, sweet potato hash with tofu, baked fish with slow cooked peppers, Citrus salad with fennel and olives. I love fenyl, so lots here to look about. Now if you're saying, look, I just want the bridge notes or the crib notes here.

So the Dash diet eating plant is rich in vegetables and fruits, whole grains, fat free or low fat dairy, fish, beans, nuts, and vegetable oils. Typically I would say go with the olive oil. Now, in a sense, this is very Mediterranean diet esque. They also add poultry, chicken. They don't mention

anything about beef, pork, sausage, processed meats. Now, the things you want to limit in the Dash diet fatty meats, well, this is going to be the sausage, the boo Dan well boo dan like foods, steak, ribbi, pork, brisket, barbecue, all that kind of stuff. You want to limit, full dairy, dairy, full fat dairy. You want to eliminate all sugar sweetened beverages. That is another if you're looking to say, how could

I change my diet right now? Cut out all the soda and sweetened teas and whatnot, eliminate all sweets and desserts, cookies, and reduce your sodium intake. So that is the Dash diet. It will be featured in the newsletter next week. Please please please sign up for it. It's something free, there's no ads, it's just pure information. As I said at the beginning of the show, Raise Your Health IQ. That's

as simple as it gets. The other article has to do with dietary fiber, and we talk about this a lot, and people still don't get it straight. There are so many fiber supplements on the market that people are utterly confused, and they really really have this sense that taking these dietary supplements, the fiber gummies, etc. Is going to replace fiber in your diet. And I would say not so fast. And so the number to keep in mind you want

about thirty five to forty grams of dietary fiber per day. Now, the issue is are these supplemental fibers as good as food? And I will say categorically no, they are not as good as eating the food. The reason is when you eat food that is high in fiber, you are getting all of the additional micro macro nutrients in that food, the additional vitamins minerals that reduce inflammation, lower the risk of cardiovascular disease, and you're missing the goodness of what

nature made for us, So do not bypass. A cup of blueberries not only contains fiber, but you get vitamin B and C, potassium, magnesium, and so much more. And you could replicate this for oranges, apples, broccoli, cauliflower, squash, zucchini, carrots. So I think the key thing is if you are on a journey to increase your dietary fiber by getting more fruits and vegetables in your diet, you could supplement

it with dietary fiber. And I would say, go start off with something like meta mucil, metamucil or one of the generic forms of silium. Start with that every day, every other day. But you have to make sure you're getting in enough water. Now, if you take some of these other fiber supplements, they could be quite irritating to your gut. You're going to get cramps, you're going to get diarrhea, you're going to wish you never did it, and your compliance is going to go down. So I

would say, first and foremost food is best. Get this food into your gut. It's going to be beneficial. If you had to or want to add a dietary supplement, I would go with the meta mucil sillium type products that are out there, and there's many many generic over the country. You get a met Costco, Walgreens, you know your local supermarket has some sort of local brand of cillium. Is the is the product that you would be looking for? All right? So the DASH diet information I'm going to

post on the newsletter for next week next Saturday. Do signer for the newsletter. Follow along with all of your of our social media offerings and what I would say. We are here as a resource. We want to help the public coast to coast with their health, with their wellness, and answer questions. There's so many of you that are sitting out there confused, this misunderstanding about what my condition is. How do I get the best care for my father,

my mother, my son, my daughter, my wife, myself. We're here as a resource. Check check the opportunity to communicate with us through our website Doctor Joegalotti dot com. There's a contact us tab and you could send us a message that comes right to me and my team. So that is is it. I want you to think about your health, your wellness. What are you eating? Are you getting enough sleep? Are you getting enough exercise? Are you getting enough fiber in your diet? Are you getting too

much salt in your diet? Try to reduce it to less than two thousand milligrams per day. And if for those that are going to the doctor this week that have a weight problem, it really behooves you to sit the doctor down or the nurse practitioner or the PA and have a conversation to say, hey, how am I going to tackle this because you're at risk for all of these other serious complications that we don't want you to get.