Understanding Visceral Fat and Solutions

Welcome to Everyday Wellness podcast. I'm your host, nurse practitioner, Cynthia Thurlow. This podcast is designed to educate, empower and inspire you to achieve your health and wellness goals. My goal and intent is to provide you with the best content and conversations from leaders in the health and wellness industry each week and impact over a million lives This is Bonus Monday, your most downloaded favorite podcast. I love that this community runs the gamut from medical professionals, research scientists, science writers, personal trainers, and more. These are your favorite, most loved podcasts of the last five years. I could not be more proud of The diversification of guests that appeal to all of you. Thanks for tuning in I have the honor of reconnecting with Dr. Ken Barry. He is joining me for our fourth podcast together. He is a physician, best selling author, and passionate health advocate with a no nonsense approach to health and wellness. He has been practicing at the Barry Clinic since two thousand three and is an active community member. He has written multiple books He has a YouTube channel that is prolific, serving over two million subscribers and he's one of my favorite go to resources for patients. Today we dove deep into a recent time news article and how media sources in many instances are no longer as trustworthy as they once were, But the beauty is that our voice matters. The limitations of observational research Why celebrity endorsements of ultra processed foods is problematic ObC rates in kids and teens Is obesity genetic? This is from a recent sixty minutes presentation. the impact of sugar, grain, and seed oils, and lastly, the importance and significance of visceral fat I know you will find this to be an invaluable conversation with Dr. Berry. So doror Berry, always a pleasure to have you on the podcast. This is our fourth podcast together. always a fan favorite. You know, we talked earlier this year and we had such an amazing conversation. I knew that I needed to bring you back Today, start the conversation around this recent time article that not only elevated ultra processed foods as being acceptable. This was written by a loan registered dietician, Jessica Wilson But because time got so much feeedback predominantly negative They went ahead and changed the title of the article. not per se the content Yeah, it was When I first saw this article I was like, o, here we go again, right? But I think there's several deeper issues about this that we really need to break down So first of all, we have to think about the media source, time Time magazine. Pan. com Think about this. for the average person who's over the age of forty, they're fifty, sixty, seventy Time magazine in their heart, in their mind. That's a magazine of record. I mean, Te magazine I grew up. I had a subscription to time in my teens and twenties and I trusted it above almost all the sources, that in the national geographic. Right? And this is Reality, this is fact. if they say it in Time magazine You can put it in the bank. And so that's I think that's a very important thing to understand. So I think our most important question should be after you've read this article is what the hell happened to Time magazine What happened to time d. com. They are obviously no longer a journal of record. You cannot trust them anymore And I think a lot of people now have started to understand this since the pandemic that just because that newspaper or magazine or television news show that you used to just trust blindly. And that served you well for decades, maybe. You could trust them blindly because their reputation was so important to them They would never put something out that was half researched or half fact checked. And so when that's what was just yelling in my ear when I was reading this article is what the hell has happened to T? They've given up on Be being trustworthy They're literally trying to sway people's opinions. And then you would ask, well, why in the world would they do that? And I think it's because journalism has changed so much Since the internet has basically taken over all things, it's all about clicks now. They've got to get clicks and also they've got to get ad dollars. And so in order to get the ad dollars, they have got to get lots of clicks on an article And people need to spend at least a few seconds on that article because the advertisers can see that on the bkend. How many clicks? How long did the person stay on this article When you read this article, it is immediately obvious to anybody with an IQ above one hundred This is I don't know what the proper adjective is for this. This is their second title was much more Factual. Here's the opinion of one dietician basased on no research whatsoever. based on nothing, really. we just decided to interview this random dietitian who has some very unorthodox opinions about Nutrition advice And we decided to just post that with this very misleading article. And I think the initial title to the article was a hat tip T' are a big f. manufacturing advertisers This is the big tobacco playbook Let's introduce some uncertainty here. Let's muddy the waters We're not really sure. I mean, maybe ultra processed food is healthier than we think Well now who stands to benefit from that title Obviously not the average consumer's health. That's not who stands to benefit. Who stands to benefit from introducing uncertainty around ultra processed food The ultra processed food manufacturers. That's who's going to directly financially benefit from that title, right? And so in the past, this article would have come and went and you know, they would have gotten lots of clicks and they would have gotten some good ad dollars from the advertisers. But I think the conversation has shifted so much. so many people listening to your podcast and listening to m wouldould I put out They're like, no, this is bullshit and we're not gonna to just quietly take this anymore. Because in the past, people would read that, be like, I don't think that's right, but you know, whatever. Now people have are much more militant. They're like enough of this foolishness, enough. I'm not gonna to sit quietly and let you just inundate me with effectively big food advertising That's what this is. And so many people flared up on social media, on Twitter, on Facebook, on Instagram, just call bullshit for what it was. They're like, this is bullshit. this is this is not worthy being under the mas head of time What is wrong with you And they got so much kickback That I think it was what? two hours later, two hours and five minutes later, they changed the title fromr what if to the opinion of one dietician, and I'm sure you might share those the before and after title with your vers And I actually talked about these yesterday on my YouTube live. I'm like You guys did this. You did this. Don't think you're powerless When you get a news story like that, that's just obviously Call it out. Vverbally, loudly retweet it, share it and say, what is this rap The more we do that, because you actually have more power now thanks to social media than we've had as consumers ever in the history of the world We actually made time d. com Change the title of this Now, you know, used to there was a time when time magazine, timee dot com they had fact checkers that actually checked for actual facts. and they had a probably had a science medical and nutrition editor who once this was written, you would submit that to the editor and then they would just red pin the hell out of this like this is foolishness. What is this? No, back to the drawing board. We're not going to put this under our mask head. This is embarrassing they've lost that gatekeeping ability because They're in such financial trouble That their current profit model is, get as many articles up and out as we possibly can and try to help our advertisers try to get as many clicks as we can. And I think that's what this is is the perfect example of several things. a perfect example that even the bigger, more trustworthy news outlets that you used to really trust You cannot trust them anymore That's the first lesson. Never, ever again should you just read a headline or a subtitle. fromrom the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Time, newewsweeek, US. News and World Report, you can't just blindly trust what they say anymore You have to now have the filter of an informed interesterested consumer. You can't just consume this stuff. You've got to kick back and push back. That's the first lesson. The second lesson is Your voice matters. If enough of us stand up and verbally protest on social media You can actually affect the conversation And that's exactly what happened here. And I think people should take heart at that second part, but also The first part You should be very wary. And now So and then here's the third thing that everybody needs to understand Very often when a news organization like Time, when they put out an article like this, that's in your wheelhouse, you know it's bullshit because you study that stuff. You and I both are constantly in the nutrition research, the medical research, the anthropology, the historical research. And we just immediately recognize. But here's the danger is that everything else time puts out since it's not in our wheelhouse, since we're not interested in it, since we're not actively researching it, we still just blindly believe that. That's it. I think everybody should go hu So you're saying that maybe they're doing this same kind of thing when it comes to other topics as well Yeah, probably. whyy would they just choose nutrition to do this? Why would they just choose that? And then on everything else, they're one hundred percent factually accurate. But when it comes to nutrition, they've lost the plight. That doesn't really make sense Right? They T has a board of directors They have whatever few editors they have. this is a systemic problem with time And I've seen the same thing in national geographic. I've seen the same thing with New York Times, Wall Street Journal, London Times. Like I could just go on and on and on because I read media Every morning over coffee, I read at least twenty to thirty different newspapers now news websites all over the world, not just US media. This is ubiquitous all over the world. And so I think for some people, it's disheartening, Cynthia, they're like, well, God, how can we even know it's true or not Well, there's this thing that human beings have been doing since before recorded history and that's looking for patterns pattern recognition. doing personersal experiments with your own life Trying stuff out for yourself. and then now we have to consider the sooreres. So if the crazy person in your tribe fifty thousand years ago came back and over the campfire that evening, they said, Hey, if you eat the bark off this tree, blah blah blah happens. Well, that guy's not very trustworthy. And so everybody's like, I don't know. I don't think I'm probably going try the bark from that tree because everybody knows you're crazy Well time . com just reveal themselves for what they are. And so going forth in the future, anyime magazine article, you should be wary. They might be the crazy person around the campfire giving you bad advice. And so you take that with a grain of salt and you maybe don't listen to them blindly anymore. so It is sad in a way, but in a way it's also empowering because What it does, ultimately is it leaves the consumer to their own devices. And for many people, that's exciting. Like, oh, challenge accepted, but for a significant chunk of people out there It's scary. It's worrisome. It's depressing. L God, I can't trust anybody. This sucks. Who do we even believe anymore? That's what you've got that thing between your ears for. is to keep learning, keep researching, keep doing little experiments on your own health. You got to figure this out on your own. Nobody's coming to save you, which is bad if you look at it from one perspective, but it's actually good from another perspective because it now you have to actually stand up. be the human that you should have been all along, but this is an excellent opportunity for you to now say, okay, fine, I'll stand up and actually be a rational, reasonable logical human, and I'll think through all this stuff instead of just blindly accepting this narrative. Something I hear constantly from women in our community and something I understand personally is this Nothing about your effort has changed, and yet our bodies are responding differently Your midsection feels different, Y blood sugar is much less stable and your cravings may have shifted And let's be honest, your energy probably isn't what it used to be As a nurse practitioner with over twenty five years of experience, I want to be completely transparent with you about why Estrogen is one of the body's master regulators of metabolic health. It influences how we store fat, how our tissues respond to blood sugar changes, and how efficiently our metabolism functions at the cellular level Eestrogen shifts during perimenopause and menopause, the same lifestyle choices, diet, exercise, sleep, genuinely do not produce the same results. This isn't a failure of effort. 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And increasingly, we're learning about the role mitochondrial health plays in maintaining muscle quality as we age That's why I've been paying attention to the science behind Might Aure from Teline Mitopure contains realithin A, a clinically studied nutrient that supports mitochondrial renewal through a process called mitophagy Think of it as supporting the energy systems that help keep your muscles functioning at their best For women who want to remain strong capable and resilient for decades to come. this is an essential area of research worth knowing about Visit timeline d. com and use code Cynthia for twenty percent off your order Again, that's timeline dot com and use code Cynthia for twenty percent off your order This is one of my foundational supplements that I never miss Well, it's so interesting to me because much to your point, I grew up. My dad had me subscribe to Time Magazine in my teens and twenties. That became a large print of additional ancillary information week to week because it came out every week. and this is back in the days where I read the newspaper and watched the news. I'm going to date myself and say that, you know, this all preceded, you know, the internet, you know, that's how we got most of our news And things have changed so substantially since the advent of the internet. And thinking about how What I would think years ago were powerhouses of this industry Time magazine, Wall Street Journal, etcetera. you start to realize that They are coming if they don't evolve They will be gone And so they're so desperate for ad dollars that they've lessened the quality control that they used to have, the editorial control And that's where articles like this occur Obviously, it's probably unprecedented that they changed the title of an article that quickly. It must have been a tsunami of feedback about this one loan registered dietitician's opinion, her N of one about how she changed her diet to ultra processed foods and she felt fine. She felt better. She had more mental clarity. and I thought to myself That does not resonate in any capacity based on any research or any experts that I've had the privilege of speaking to. And so for everyone listening, trying to make sense in a nonsensical world, we are now forced to experiment, which is not per se, a bad thing, but it also forces us to question rigid dogma. We see it on social media. peoplee will You know, they are not open to changing their minds. They are still practicing medicine the way that they did when they were trained You and I probably trained in the same era And I remind people, I do not practice as a nurse practitioner the way that I did in two thousand in two thousand one. As I do now, we are designed as human beings to evolve and change our opinions. and that's actually a sign of critical thinking. You know A lot of what you are advocating for is helping people understand that there's this pattern recognition, the power of the end of one, but also saying, if most Americans are not metabolically healthy And we know most Americans, seventy percent of the food consumed is ultra processed food And we know that that leads to consuming more calories from foods that are Hyper palatable. full of processed carbs, seed oils, etcera. shouldn't be doing the We should be doing the opposite. of what most organizations, individuals are advocating for And so I found it really interesting when I You know, I always find X for me or Twitter to me is a litmus test for what is popular or what is resonating or what is creating conflict. And I've been watching this over the past week and I found it really interesting. I didn't actually realize you did a whole discussion on this last night But it's interesting. You had a quote on Twitter that said leading people to believe that observational research proves anything makes you either ignorant lazy or dishonest And so I think about how you are this profound beacon of hope and in many ways, you're saying the things that so many other people are probably thinking but aren't actually articulating. So this is a good example. This is observational the end of one which in most instances, there's nothing wrong with saying Hey, I went from eating an ultra processed diet to eating autrient dense diet, and I felt better. That's great. But you don't extrapolate and then say that you know, when you're doing the opposite, that somehow you're trying to convince individuals that they should you know, it's like you're leaving breadcumbs directly to the processed food industry, which is actually funding the newspaper slash website that is publishing the same article And so here's what the average person does When they're scrolling on the internet, they see, o Here's an article from Time, somethingomet about ultra processed food. So they see time. comot Okay, I trust them. Then they read the title. Okay, and then they probably read the first paragraph And then they get bored and they move on Now what just happened to that person? What message did they take away from this? They didn't read down to the point where her only evidence of this is that she was more mentally alert or had more mental energy or some foolishness. That was her evidence for this. They just get the takeaway message, which is exactly what was intended was, oh, ultra processed food's not that bad. Okay, got it Next article, nextext whatever. next cute cat video That's exactly the goal of Kellogg's and General Mills and Mondalas and Kraft Hins is, o, there's a lot of debate about whether ultra processed food's so bad or not. so it's probably fine. I'm gonna to have the lucky charms for breakfast in the morning That's the go That was the primary goal of the big food advertisers because just imagine, Cynthia, if you started eating a diet of youe started eating lots of dandelion greens out of your And you felt like your hair was more shiny And you contacted Tim magazine, timee. com and you said, hey, I'm a, you know, hear my credentials. I've been eating dandelion greens and my hair is shinier. And time was like, holy shit, fly Cynthia in we got to interview her right now No, that's not how this is supposed to work, but that's exactly how it worked in this case. I don't know if she contacted them or they contacted her. But when you start looking into this dietician, You immediately go I don't think that's somebody I want to take nutrition advice from because she literally says things on her Instagram Like all foods are healthy Never let anybody shame you. If you want to eat the donoughnuts, that donut the only time a donoughnut is bad is if it's spoiled or moldy. Otherwise a donoughut is good food for humans and you eat a donoughut when you want to.s that's her message in a nutshell. How do you I mean, how is she not visited by the dietician board? I don't know, because that's foolishness And I understand what her Overall motivation is But if you just read the first paragraph of this and you don't get down to what the nitty gritty of her argument is, you don't realize that she is very, very far removed from anything scientific or logical. What she's saying is social foolishness She's more interested in talking about class and race and body inclusivity. She literally is not talking about your A one C or your insulin level or your triglyucceride. She's not talking about any of that. That's not her goal at all But yet, you know, probably a million people read the title and the first paragraph and then moved on. And so there's now one million people out there who think, o, yeah, ultra processed food iss not that bad. That's a victory For Kellogs and General Mills and Posts. they won Even though we force them to change title. They still won because they've got a million customers out there now are thinking, it's fine. I'm just gonna to have the cinnamon tooast Crunch or the Kelsey Brothers blend of two different shit cereals put together. It's fine. because there's a lot of debate about this ultra processed food thing They won. And so we did win a victory, but they actually they're going to make more money because of this article in time d. com. It's interesting because if you read farther into the article, which I know very appropriately you said most people probably read one paragraph and moved on. I read it twice And there's Dr. Chris Van Tolkien, who is the author of Ultra Process People There's some mention in this article that banning ultra processed food quote unquote, isn't practical and would wipe out the modern food system. I read that and I thought to myself, it is a domino effect. It's like they will find clinician to meet the narrative that they're trying to spout. And to me ultimately Yes, there's varying degrees of ultra processed foods. However, if we're somehow going to suggest that ulra processed foods, if they were removed or banned that somehow we would have no food left is complete BS. And well, you came in and you did it overnight. The dictator took over the United States and said that's it. Ban all ultra processed food right now. Like by midnight, I want it all off the supermarket shelves Yeah, there'd be a lot of hungry people because we've went so far down this road for so many years that there are people that that's ninety percent of their diet. So yeah, there would be hungry people if that happened. but no one is advocating that that I know of, that we remove it overnight. What we're all advocating is a, you know, this bus that we're all riding on has went way too far down this road in the wrong direction. It's time to start turning that bus around and going back towards real food Nobody's advocating junking all the ultra processed food overnight. That's just like the factory farming Yeah, grass finished beef is healthier for you And it's more ethical and more moral, yes But nobody's advocating shut down all the factory farming tomorrow. That would be idiotic We can't do that, but we can encourage regenerative ranchers and we can vote with our dollars so that one day, a year, five years, ten years from now Most people will be getting regeneratively raised, ethically sourced meat, which is part of a proper human diet. Same goes for the ultra processed food. I'm not advocating banning it. I'm saying let's help people understand that is less healthy than eating real food. And the more you eat Ultra processed junk food, the unhealthier you're going to become So let's start to minimize that. And that's the message that you and me and I think everybody's out there, but like this guy, the ultra processed people, which I've read his book, it was not a bad book. But who's advocating overnight just shutting down ultra processed food? Nobody. So why would you even say that when no one else is saying that? Why would you putut that up as, oh, here's the solution that all these crazy people are saying is ban ultra processed food o No. No. Nobody said that. But if you want to put up an argument, then you would say something like that if you're literally trying to help Kelloggs make more money. Yeah, I think it also it's a degree of fear mongering. You know, for people that, you know, I trained in inner city Baltimore. I know you trained in the inner city There are, you know food deserts, there are people that their corner grocery is the only place they can get food. If we were to effectively remove ultra processed foods, there would be no food in some of those locations. And I agree with you that helping people understand the value of eating some whole nutrient dense foods is one that I think everyone ultimately benefits from. Now because you brought it up, I'm going to bring it up. The Kelsey Brothers. let's talk about how they are promoting consumption of ultra processed foods and somehow they're wanting us to believe that they themselves are consuming these ultra processed foods and that somehow it's beneficial. And I think for me, you know my teenagers are now at an age where they probably don't have them elevated in their mindset, but certainly younger children, younger teens, you know, they look at professional athletes and they hold them up to a probablyb unrealistic expectations, but somehow validating that these individuals who are you know, the best in their industry, their're incredibly talented athletes, guaranteed, they're not eating that garbage And they're d One of them's dating Taylor Swift. so there's d. Right. so I'll give you an example. When I was a young boy under ten years of age, I don't remember the exact year. I wanted to be an athlete so bad. I can remember in fourth grade, I would get up before I had to catch the school bus and I would run three or four laps around our yard, which is probably quar m but still I was training. I was constantly training. wanted to be in the Olympics so bad and so wheedies was the breakfast of Champions. That was in the name. But then all of a sudden Bruce Jenner was on the box and he was a pentathlete. He won the gold. I was idolized him and let me just say I'm speaking past tense here. so I'm not being insensitive. I'm talking about when I was a child I wanted to grow up and become Bruce Jenner It was my hero. I cut the front of the box out and put it on my bedroom wall And I would do little push upps and sit ups in my bedroom and I would go run down the road. I was constantly training. And also I was eating whedies every single morning that Granny Bry didn't cook bacon and eggs. and sometimes even when she did I want to eat weedies because That's what Bruce Generates in my child brain that he one hundred percent was the gold medalist because he ate wheaties. Otherwise, why would he be on the box That's how a child thinks. And so now looking back, that's obvious foolishness. you know, he was probably eating steak and eggs for breakfast like every other great athlete But now we got the Kelsey Brothers and you can't tell me that there's not seven, eight nine, ten, eleven, twelve year old young boys and girls who want to be an athlete And here's the Kelsey Bothers. It's all cutes and all funny, likeike, oh, these are my two favorite cereals as a kid, and we're gonna smash them up together. When the epidemic of childhood obesity is raging out of control in the United States, the rate of childhood type two diabetes is off the charts. There's actually clinics set up now in multiple Universities around the country for childhood fatty liver which when I first started training and first started practicing medicine two diabetes and kids. Unheard of. That was just twenty years ago. Fatty liver and a child unless they have some genetic inborn genetic error They never had that stuff. And then, you know, when I was in third grade, that'd be about the time that Bruce Jenner was on the cover of the Weedies box. We had one fat kid out of our entire third grade class. I remember his name, He was one of my best friends And we're still friends today. We had one fat kid in out of one hundred and fifty kids in all the different third grade classes. Now if you go to a third grade class, what's the percentage of obesity of overweight of pre diabetes and type two diabetes in those third graders? It's egregious. The Kelsey Brothers are not medical or nutrition specialists. I understand that they're football players. But they have to be somewhat aware that there's a whole lot of fat kids running around And they've got to be at least somewhat aware that ultra processed added sugar cereal probably contributing to that to at least some degree, right They've got to be smart guys. They got through college, right And so whether they're academically smart or whether they're, you know empathetic enough that they were able to use their football ability to get their professors to give them a passing grade when they didn't really earn one. St, there's some degree of intelligence there. They got through the system. How are you going to take a check from General Mills to promote an obesogenic Diabetogenic you know, fatty liver promoting breakfast cereal As an athlete Two children. And yeah, there's definitely a lot of adults who eat this crap too. But I'm adults after the age of eighteen, twenty one, somewhere in there, you've got agency. You're making your own choices and you're going to suffer from them. But little kids are going to be eating this stuff. And so I' actually tweeted out A couple of times to the Kelsey Bothers. Me and Kalie Means and several other people were like, Dude, come on. Wh don't you be a real hero to kids? Why don't you give that money back? Tell them to take your face off the box Take your name off the box and tell kids to eat bacon and eggs for breakfast, or at least eggs, if you think bacon's magically dangerous Why don't you do that? Then you would actually be a true hero to children? And I think they answered a couple of people like,, we eat this growing up. We don't think it's a big deal And yeah, it's fine. They're grown adults. They can make their money however they want to, but Again, they actually answered the claims. I don't remember if it was Cali or somebody else, but they actually responded on Twitter and with at least some kind of an argument. And so again, you guys got the power. if you start calling people out for foolishness loudly enough and long enough You're going to have an effect. and this is the power of social media The power of social media is not that you get to watch lots of cute puppy videos The power of social media is that your voice, if you say something articulate and meaningful, it can get amplified far past anything that your mom and dad could ever have done So you need to start using that power, especially if you believe strongly that Every human on planet Earth deserves the health benefits of a proper human diet then you're kind of a PhD warrior and you can call out bullshit when you see it, like this time article like the Kelsey Brothers serial. and we can with a loud enough collective voice, we can hold these people to account. I think it is without officially stating it I think that social media is both good and bad, but this is a really good utilization of social media to actually actively involve individuals and provide the feedback Now you touched on some obesity statistics and I pull these up Now obesity in kids was six percent twenty five years ago. Now it's nineteen percent. In teens, eighteen percent have fatty liver thirty percent are pre diabetic and forty percent are overweight or obese What's interesting to me You know, you have children, I have children You know, my kids because of choices that we have made, choices they have made, they have certainly been in a point of privilege. that they have been informed about the value of nutrient dense whole foods What's interesting to me is that I feel as if there's a vacuum. It's almost as if many people, it's such a degree of cognitive dissonance that they're not willing to have those difficult conversations And there's nothing more sad to me than when I see obese kids or kids that are clearly not metabolically well because if you are you know, elementary, middle, high school, even, you know, college age kids You are setting yourself up for so many health ramifications And that is what I found profoundly disturbing. I know when I initially trained as a nurse Even as a nurse practitioner, it was so rare to see metabolic disease in kids. You know, other than you know, you see some type one diabetes, that's an autoimmune condition, that's very different But certainly as a parent, as a clinician, I think that if we aren't concerned about the health of our children And that goes back to the Kelsey discussion, the Kelsey brothers. then we've got a lot of work to do Absolutely. And then, you know, you you would say, well, who's kind of the voice of authority when it comes to s health. Well, the American Academy of Pediatrics. That's who should be the voice. And some things they do get rights like when it comes to giving your kids fruit juice. Most people don't know this, but their official guidelines are I think up until the age of two kids don't need any fruit juice at all. And then for maybe two to four or two to five, maybe two ounces a day, max, they say the maximum. They don't say it's healthy to give them that. They say that the most you should give them is two ounces And then for older kids, four ounces But nobody nobody follows those guidelines. But they recently came out as you know, Cynthia and said that for kids twelve years and older who have severe obesity They actively recommend Ozimmpic injections or bariatric surgery for kids as young as twelve and they're trying to change it to kids as young as six. That is their first line recommendation is the GOP one injections Yeah. bariatric surgery the American Academy of Pediatrics. When I saw their press release, I was speechless like Wow. The makers of Ozmpic and Wigovi and Monero, they must have written you guys a check with a lot of zeres for you to say twwelve year old children need to use this weekly injection that we literally have no long term safety data in twelve year old children Zero. None We recommend as the American Academy of Pediatrics that you basically enroll your twelve year old child in this trial 'use that's what this is is a drug trial. The twelve year old children are the guinea pigs And we'll watch that cohort as they get older, We'll watch them. and then if if a lot of bad things happen to them, we'll be like, oh, we no longer recommend that. I mean That is almost Ni Germany level Stuff, isn't it? Like let's just do an experiment on everybody's twelve year old Kids. We don't know what's going to happen. We think it's going to be fine, but we don't know because there's no long term data proven safety this dosage, right? because we've used the GOP one andhibers for a while now for type two diabetes where it's been a decade, but it was at a lower dose for type two diabetes. Now this new higher dose for obesity. There's no long term safety data for in adults, defefinitely not in children But they have made that their formal recommendation. And there's no proof that it's safe. And now they're trying to lower that recommendation down to six years old So a six year old who's been fed the Kellogg's General Mills post diet For their first six years of life. Their first foods were the little gerber crunchy sugar added crackers, right And so now they're severely obese for their age. Instead of trying to counsel parents, Hey, you know what? You're feeding them the wrong stuff. This is going to lead to terrible health complications. The American Academy of Pediatrics is about to say, I'm going to prescribe some Ozmpic for your six year old child who has fatty liver, pre diabetes, and severe obesity That's what we're going do. And just keep feeding them the Kelsey Bothers cereal And we're going to start giving them a shot of Ozimpic once a week, even though there's no data showing that that's safe That's happening. Right now with twelve year olds and if they have their way, that'll be happening with six year old children in the near future Well, what I think is concerning is that there's certainly been plenty of research on tweenens and teens about how effective a low carb, even ketogenic diet can be. I'm not talking about intermittent fasting, but just removing processed carbohydrates and really concentrating on, you know quality protein and healthy fats And to me to suddenly jump directly to drug therapy is missing the point of why lifestyle is the first intervention that should be frontline therapy for everyone. this is where I think that current system is really devolved into we're so focused on drug therapy to control symptoms as opposed to taking the time. And if it's not the physician or nurse practitioner Having someone on their team, whether it's a health coach or a registered dietician, helping them counsel families on how to properly eat That to me seems to make much more sense and is probably much more cost efficacious than jumping directly to drug therapy. You know, I was looking the other day for a family member who is appropriately in conjunction with lifestyle changes using Turzeepatide, which is one of these second generation GLP ones. And they know it's a short term thing. they're gonna to lift weights, they're going en up protein. They know it's a short term fix And they were talking to me about the cost of these drugs And how if you're if you're not obese enough, you don't qualify, you have to pay out of pocket, they're exceedingly expensive. Yes. someomewhere between five hundred to tw thousand two hundred dollars a month. for compounded varieties is not maybe not even the, you know, the the regular run of the mill products and all I could think of was you know, there's so many confounding issues related to this. If it's an appropriate decision and you're an adult That's one thing but keep your hands off the kids. I just that bothers me to my core as an individual, knowing that there's lots of good research about nutritional interventions and lifestyle interventions first, which have you know have excellent data points on how health and metabolic health can be improved upon by changing nutrition and more physical activity, high quality sleep, et cetera. to somehow to jump to very, very expensive drugs without the long term effects in a child, I think is setting people up for potential problems. Yeah, and make no mistake. this is happening in adults as well. One of the leading experts on obesity treatment in the United States. I forget her name. I think she was on sixty minutes. And she effectively said that obesity is genetic that there's really nothing that people can do about it that you just need to take The injections And, you know, there was a time sixty minutes. anotherother great example. There was a time when they would have fact checked that in one second. They would have pushed back. they would have had a follow up question. They just accepted it because they are also in trouble financially and they've got to get the views, they got to get the clicks and they've got to get the ad dollars from Guess who's advertising against their show? Hm, I don't know, I'll let you take a while, guess. And so this leading In the world said obesity is genetic Now Every doctor who has two brain cells should have immediately been up in arms, likeike why would you say such an ignorant thing Well, now that so exactly what's happened is this is what you would expect if this were kind of a playbook So the leading obesity Doctor says that. And there's not a lot of kickback. and they're like, aha, okay, we're good to go. And then a few months later, the American Academy of Pediatrics comes out and says, Ohh, yeah, for twelve up, we're going to start making this our recommendation. Well, if she, the obesity expert If she had it just been smmothother with doors and dietiticians saying, what the hell is wrong with you on social media? All everywhere, letters to the editor, call your congressman like literally if there had just been a huge revolt against her statement And she was forced to retract that statement I bet the AAP would have been like, ye, yeah, we're not gonna to make that our official stance yet. We're going wait and we're going to wait for more research, right? which is what they should have done. But they didn't because her statement, although ignorant and false, was accepted. likeike, okay, yeah, okay. obesity is genetic. There you go. Now thatsin millions of people's head who have overweight obesity, severe obesity, That's genetic, notothing I can do about it. So I can just eat whatever I want, AKA, Kelsey Brother cereal, and I'll just take this injection once a week. There you go. It's not my fault. There's nothing I can really do about it. I hear all these keto people out there, you know, humming and hawing, but The leading obesity researcher and doctor in the world said, this is genetic. I'm not going to listen to some random, you know, keto carnivore doctor on YouTube Some redneck from Tennessee, I'm going gonna listen to him. the leading doctor. who takes care of people with obesity said this is genetic. So there you go. Okay, I'm done. So I can eat all the cereal I want I'll just take this injection. That's exactly what they want it to happen. and that's exactly what's currently happening And it's sad, it's disappointing. and all you and I and others can do is just keep pushing back and saying that's actually incorrect. That's it's actually probably dangerous becausee thever think about the average patient, Cynthia They're eating a junk diet I just read this time article saying You know, maybe ultra processed food iss not as bad as we thought Right? They didn't see that the title got changed later. They just saw that. They see the Kelsey Bothers. They hear the world leading obesity treater sayaying obesity is genetic Now OzMpic is approved for twelve year olds. so it's got to be safe, right? When you see all this just as a normal patient, you're just like, you or I go to their exam room and we're like, no, no, no, no, no, no. We sound like the crazy people, even though what we're advocating is Just a real whole food Diet. Go outside and play in the sun. You know, get sweaty, have fun, go outside and play and eat real food. That's our message. We We sound like the cooks the inversion that's happened I mean, it's a masterstroke of propaganda and a masterstroke of advertising. I mean, it's brilliant. Somebody should win whatever award you win for for ad campaigns. This is the best one ever. Everybody fell for it, but the Really worrisome thing is a lot of doctors spell for it I think it's so interesting because it puts patients in a position where they feel powerless If it's genetic, then I can't do anything about it. therefore, prescribing X, Y, and Z drug therapy is the only way to address this No What was interesting is as I was kind of preparing for a conversation, I started looking at some statistics You know, when we think about ultra processed foods, we realize that this is the conduit to High fructose corn syrup, processed sugars, seed oils In the United States, right now, we are consuming seventy seven to one hundred and fifty two pounds of sugar a year That's quite a range notot to mention the seed oils. and this is where when I posed on my account slash Twitter. people were asking, is it really true that seed oils are problematic And so I got, I don't know, ten questions in my DMs and one frontwardward facing on that post And so when you're counseling, talking to your patients from where you're promoting Your message What do you think is worse? Do you think it's the sugar, the seed oils, the combination of both? Where do your thoughts lie? So back in twenty seventeen, when I started doing this social media thing, my three rules were eliminate sugar from your diet Number two, eliminate all the grains from your diet. Number three, eliminate the vegetable seed oils from your diet. And so we've had so many thousands and thousands of people reverse so much chronic disease by that and then, you know, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten that we talk about in other videos. But for I'd say eighty percent of people, if you just do those three things Your health is going to turn around for many people with prediabetes, just following those three rules You're going to reverse your prerediabetes, Your blood pressure is going to come down. you're going to lose twenty pounds. Like for seventy percent of people, that's going to fix you metabolically. You don't have to get off into the keto and carnivore weeds for many, many people I'm not sure how big of a deal the vegetable seed oils are. When you look at just the association between the rates of increase of chronic disease and the rate of increase of seed oil consumption They go hand in hand, but that's an association, right? There are several people online Tucker Good Rich, he's a friend of mine. He talks, he really digs down into the mechanisms of how seed oils could be causing harm. And I don't disagree with him, but I kind of agree with Dr. Eric Westman. I think that the research about sugar total carbohydrate intake is so much more robust that I can make that That recommendation with no reservations whatsoever. If you're eating added sugar foods, you're gonna have hypergllycemia. Hyper insulinemia, you're going to store more fat than you should. The following things are absolutely going to happen. We understand the mechanism and we've got the research that shows us that's what happens for the majority of people But when it comes to seed oils, I believe, just my personal belief, they've only been in the human food supply for a few decades, right? We haven't had time to adapt to that as a species And so just looking coming from biological principles and from evolutionary principles There's no way that that's a good thing Now maybe we just got lucky and that it is a good thing and it's actually a healthy thing like many dietitians would promote. That doesn't make any sense. how we got so lucky that we just happened upon This fat source of fat That turns out luckily was just super healthy for us And also super profitable for the big corporation. Mbe, maybe that happened, but I don't think so But I'm the first to admit that our evidence against vegetable seed oils is not nearly as robust as our evidence against added sugar against simple carbohydrates, ultra processed carbhydrates That stuff's making you metabolically sick, no doubt. But Dr. Westman said this recently at our first board meeting with the American Diabetes Society, he said, you know, if you just tell people to cut the carbs, what's going to naturally happen is they're going to quit they're going to not be eating as much ultra processed, pre prepared food which is going to naturally slash The ingestion of vegetable seed oils. And so we decided as the board of the ADS that we're not going to talk about seed oils, at least for now becausecause the research is not as robust. But effectively, if you follow step one and step two Stop eating anything with added sugar and stop eating grains, you're going to cut your vegetable seed oil consumption by somewhere between fiftycent and seventy five percent right off the bat because everything in the supermarket that contains sugar and wheat, sugar and corn, right? like all the cereals is going to also have vegetable seed oil. And so also you start cooking at home more when you stop the sugar and you stop the grains Well what am I going to eat? Okay, vegetables. Well, I probably should cook them and then meat. o, okay, I probably need to cook that. don't eat it raw. So you're going to start cooking at home and then you're gonna have leftover beef toallow, you're gonna have leftover bacon grease. You're gonna have butter because you're cooking in every recipe you need a little butter. And so now you've got these healthy fats at home and you've cut your seed oil intake by fifty to seventy percent. That's a net victory for the health of that person eating that food. Well, that's one of the messages that I appreciate the most from your content as well as Dr. Westman is just really keeping things simple. You know, no sugar, no grains. Lastly, I'd love to touch on visceral fat. I know that There know doctor Sean O'Marrs is doing a really great job kind of making people more aware of deep visceral fat. Are you a fan of obviously, runs the gamut from bio impedance scales to looking at DEXas to if you have the financial ability doing an MRI, which I have not yet done, but there's lots of things that you can do way ahead of that expensive testing Are you looking at visceral fat metrics for your patients? or you kind of trending where their body composition is shifting Well, in the interest of keeping things simple and keeping things inexpensive because most people appreciate both of those things. If you follow the guidelines that I lay out for you Stop all added sugar for sure and most naturally occurring sugar, stop all grains, stop vegetable seed oils. Your visceral fats going to go away So even if you currently have Non alcoholic fatty liver disease or metabolic associated fatty liver It's going to go away. That's one of the very first things that goes away when you adopt a very low carb diet, when you adopt a proper human diet. Dr. Jason Feng and I have talked about this at length. That's fatty pancreas is probably the most dangerous visceral fat you can have. is fat that's deposited inappropriately in your pancreas. The next most dangerous is fatty liver Your body's not an idiot. Your body is very wise and very intelligent As soon as you cut the carbs in your diet enough The first fat that your body's going to get rid of is the fat in your pancreas before anything else. then it's gonna start working on the fat in your liver as you're losing other visceral fat. ' a lot of it is just o mental fat, fat around the organs There's also Fatdy Hart, Fatdty Kidney Fatty lung, fatty tongue, These are all real things that cause problems in people But they've never heard of that before. and many doctors have never heard of that. When I was first starting to do this years ago, I came upon Fatty Pancreas. and I'm like, I've never ever heard that in my life as a doctor. I started looking into it, and there's a radiologist on YouTube. He's like o Oh, you can see a little You know, Fattys drreinking in the pancreas now, that's so ubiquitous. We don't typically report. we don't even comment on that in the radiology report. We send back to primary care and I was can imagine. It's like, o my God. That is the worst marker you can possibly have and radiologists don't even comment on it Unbelievable. but and so I love Dr. Sean O'meara. I've had him on I've interviewed him on the channel. I think he's exactly right about virtually everything, but there's a lot of people that definitely can't afford an MRI Right? Be you're going to be paying cash for that. That's gonna be, I don't know, five hundred seven fifty dollars Oh A lot of the scales that you can buy on Amazon where you hold the handles And they're supposed to tell you your visceral fat are notoriously inaccurate. And if anybody has those scales, I'll tell you a quick way that you can prove to yourself that they're inaccurate is to do it and then drink a glass of water and then do it again drink ten ounces of water and then do it again I immmediately, you're going like, okay. so that's Not really measuring actually measuring visible fat at all. Okay So it confuses a lot of people and it's too expensive for many people And if you follow what Dr. Westman or Dr. Feng or I or you or any of us, if you follow what we recommend You probably do have fatty liver right now, but it's going to be gone in a few weeks or a few months. Just follow the guidelines, save your money, use your money that you would have paid for that MRI. Use that money to buy better quality food Yeah, and it's so interesting to me because as soon as you started talking about streaks in the pancreas, I thought Gs in cardiology, we got a lot of diagnostic modalities because most of our patients were hospitalized and even backack when I was still practicing in cardiology, I see the streaking in the pancreas and at the time, it didn't resonate. You know, we saw plenty of fatty liver, I mean, tons and tons of fatty liver, but having said that I love the message, keeping things simple, keeping things affordable. That's how we make impact. Always a pleasure connecting with you, Dr. Berry. Please let listeners know how to connect with you How to listen to your incredible YouTube channel, get real access to your books, leararn more about your work. Yeah, so I have three books available on Amazon. lies my doctor told me, ticking ass after fifty and common sense labs to kind of help people understand what's going on with their health and with their food I've got a YouTube channel. I've got, I think over tw thousandve hundred videos And so a great way to use my YouTube channel is whatever you suffer from Let's say it's psoriis. Just go to my YouTube channel And there's a little magnifying glass icon. Click that and just type in psoriasis or whatever you suffer from, orr you can just go to YouTube and type Dr. Berry Hypertension, Dr. Berry Fatty liver, Dr. Berry, Fatty pancreas. and any videos I have will pop up because nobody needs to watch all twelve hundred videos and I do want to take this opportunity to introduce every one of your listeners to the American Diabetes Society This is something that me, doctor Eric Westman, Professor Ben Bickman, doctor Tony Hampton, doctor Maryela Gant, doctor David Kavin, and then Michelle Hearne, a registered dietician, Temple Stewart, a registered dietian and a couple more dieticians have come on board now. We started a diabetes society because we're sick and tired of the American Diabetes Association They doing exactly what the time article did, which is muddy the water Like, o, people with diabetes, you can eat you can eat grains. It's fine. You can have some added sugar. Just don't, you know, eat it in moderation Knowing that so many of these people are sugar addicts have carb addiction knowing that a lot of the foods they're recommending are hyper palatable. There's no way you can just eat one tiny you know, serving the size of a die that you would play mononopoly with. Nobody can do that. So the ADS is gonna be giving people with diabetes good nutrition advice. commommon sense cost cost of, you know, affordable nutrition advice. So if you have type two diabetes, you can completely reverse that And if you have type one diabetes, you can have a normal A one C and use eighty percent less expensive insulin. The American Diabetes Society, We've got a webpage that's live now. I'll send you the link Cynthia. We've got a Twitter account, we've got a Facebook account, Instagram, TikTok, and we're building up a LinkedIn account right now. And we're going to start putting out guidelines for practicing physicians and advanced practice nurses So that you can say, okay, here's how I should treat and talk to somebody with type two diabetes or type one diabetes or LADA or MODY. Here's how I as a healthcare provider can actually help my patients