Podcasts about stanford medical school

There's an endearing saying that the U.S. surgeon general's primary role is to be the nation's family doctor. They represent America's medical community, educate the public on current health risks, and wield tremendous influence over medical and scientific information. On Thursday, President Trump nominated Dr. Casey Means to take on this important role. Casey's background is unique. After attending Stanford Medical School, she dropped out of her residency program in her ninth year, when she realized the course wasn't addressing the root causes of illness. Since then, she, along with her brother Calley Means, co-founded Levels, a company focused on glucose monitoring, and the pair co-authored Good Energy: The Surprising Connection Between Metabolism and Limitless Health. In recent years, she has been a leading figure in the Make America Healthy Again movement, speaking out against pharmaceutical, food, and chemical companies, and advocating for “root cause” medicine. We had Casey on Honestly back in 2022, and today, we're replaying that episode so you can better understand who Casey Means is, what she believes, how we got so sick, and how she wants to tackle chronic illness. The Free Press earns a commission from any purchases made through all book links in this article. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Secrets of Superb Interviewing-- How to Be Everyone's Number 1 Choice! Today we feature our beloved Kyle Jones, Ph.D, a clinical psychologist who suggested we might do a really cool podcast on the interviewing skills featured in Chapter 16 of my Feeling Good Handbook. Rhonda and I are absolutely delighted to welcome Kyle for his third appearance on to the Feeling Good Podcast. (Rhonda had to excuse herself after introducing this episode because she was not feeling well) In that chapter on interviewing skills, I listed the five basic principles of successfully interviewing for a job, for admissions to a school, or really almost any type of interview at all. I have to warn you that these ideas may be unfamiliar, and will definitely be quite different from what you've been taught about winning interviews. #1: Be personable and friendly. Don't try to impress the person who's interviewing you! #2 Make them sell themselves to you. #3 Be honest, but present yourself in a positive light. #4 Don't get defensive. #5 Punt when you don't know the answer to the question. To illustrate the first idea, I told a story from Dale Carnegie's book on How to Win Friends and Influence People, in which he describes his interview with a wealth and powerful man in the hopes of soliciting a donation  for the Boy Scouts of America. This was back in the era many years ago when the Scouts were still very popular. The receptionist who made the appointment warned Dale Carnegie that he would have only 15 minutes, and emphasized that her boss was 100% meticulous about time. He started exactly on time, and ended exactly on time, whether or not you were done, so he better talk fast once the interview started. When the time came, and Dale Carnegie entered the office, the receptionist again reminded him that he'd be kicked out after 15 minutes no matter what! As he walked in, Dale Carnegie spotted a trophy fish proudly displayed on the wall above the rich man's desk, and asked, if the wealthy man he'd caught it. himself, The rich man said he had caught it in lake so and so. Dale Carnegie got excited and said, "I fish there too. Where, exactly, were you fishing on the lake when you caught this fish?" The man told him where his favorite fishing hole was, and they become engrossed in a vibrant conversation about the joys of fishing. Suddenly, the office door opened, and the receptionist appeared and said the time was up. On the way out, the wealthy man said, "Oh, I forgot to ask you what the purpose of the interview was." Dale Carnegie said, "Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot to mention that I am trying to raise money to support the Boy Scouts of America." The man replied, "You'll receive a check in the mail tomorrow for a million dollars." And those were the days when that was an enormous amount of money. What's the moral of the story? Relate to the person who's interviewing you as a person, and show an interest in them, instead of pitching your talking points and trying to impress them. People usually make decisions influenced greatly by how much they like the person they are talking to. Don't try to be impressive. Aim for friendly, real and human. How do you do this? Well, let's say that you have an interview with a law firm, hoping to get hired, and you're just out of law school. I used to be the shrink for the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and at the time there were too many law school  graduates looking for too few job openings, and almost no one was hiring. They referred despondent and panicky students to me who'd had a string of rejections. At the time, the top firms had at least 50 to 100 top notch candidates for every position. Was there any hope of starting their careers? I told them to do some research on the person who was going to interview them, or on their firm. Find something interesting about them. Then, at the start of the interview you can say something like this: "I'm so excited to meet you because I've been following your work for some time. I was amazed and blown away by your strategy in the X, Y, and Z case, and I was wondering if you're still using that approach in litigation and how it's been working out? I'd love to hear more about your work, and how you came up with the approach you're using, and what you like the best about this firm." This will get them to talking about themselves. DON'T try to impress them with how great you are . That will just bore them, or turn them off, and it will certainly put you under pressure to perform. This pressure will probably make you anxious, and your  anxiety and insecurity will show. Instead, impress them with how great THEY are. They'll love you! I trained the students in this doing role-playing of imaginary job interviews. Every student I trained in this approach became the #1 choice at every firm they interviewed at! This approach is not just for law students, it's for every type of job, as well as interviews for college, graduate school, and more. Here's the underlying idea. People don't really care much about you. They care about themselves. This is true of all of us. So, use this to your advantage, and you'll suddenly be super happy and glad you were OTHER centered and not SELF centered! Does this mean you should hide your own skills and accomplishments? Of course now. You can answer questions about what you offer with humility and integrity. But that alone will rarely be enough. #2 Make them sell themselves to you. Let's say you're applying for graduate school, and it's very competitive. Again, they have 100 brilliant candidates for every position. Suppose the interview says something challenging, like "As you know, all the top candidates in the Unites States apply to us here at Harvard. Most of them were #1 in the their college classes and several have already been nominated for Nobel Prizes. Why should we be interested in you?" This, of course, is absurd, but I'm taking the worst imaginable question in an interview. Yikes! This sounds impossible, right? How in the world could you respond? Actually, it's easy. You can just say, "Gosh, I don't know if I'd be a good fit here. That's what I'm hoping to learn today. Maybe you can tell me what you're looking for in a top notch candidate. What kinds of candidates have gone on to be stars, and what types have been disappointments? Then I can give you a better answer on whether or not I might be a good fit. Although I love your company, and I'm so impressed with your own career, I wouldn't want to accept a job unless I was convinced I could really contribute to your firm." Is this realistic, or just some David fantasy? During my senior year in college, I was planning to go to graduate school in clinical psychology, since I'd majored in philosophy and psychology seemed like a way more practical career.  However, my college adviser said that medical school would be a far better choice because medications were becoming more and more important in treating mental illnesses, and only psychiatrists could prescribe drugs. I told him that I'd never had any interest in being a medical doctor, and wasn't even a premed student, so there was no way I could get into medical school. I hadn't even had a single biology class in college. He said "That won't be a problem I don't think. You've got the gift of gab, and they probably won't even notice." So, I applied to a number of medical schools and landed an interview at Stanford, and several others. My interview was with someone in the Anatomy Department which was located in the basement of the museum on campus. I went down the stairs and into a room where I met the man who was interviewing me. I said, "It's a bit dark down here. Is this where the medical students dissect their cadavers?" He said, "Absolutely. But it's actually pretty awesome down here. In fact, my laboratory his just down the hall. I said, "Oh, could I see your laboratory? I'd love to take a look and find out what kind of research you do." He seemed excited and as we walked into his lab I noticed all kinds of fancy equipment and read the name on one of them, so kind of photometer or something. I had no idea what it was, but said, "Oh, I see you have an X, Y Z photometer. (or whatever it was). Do you use this in your research?" He said, "Oh, absolutely, it's extremely important in my research." I asked him about the research he did. He excitedly started explaining it, and for the most part I had no idea what he was talking about, but kept expressing interest and asking him for more and more information. I was terrified that he'd ask me questions about my undergraduate work and my research, which of course did not exist. I'd never done any research! Just philosophy classes and such. Well, we had quite the conversation, but after a while he suddenly looked at his watch and said, "Oh, my goodness. We were only supposed to talk for 15 minutes, and we've been talking for nearly two hours. I have to rush over to the medical school quad for an important meeting I'm almost late for. Why don't we walk over in that direction together?" As we were walking out of the basement, he said, "Oh, my goodness, I forgot to ask you who you are and where you're from." I said, "Oh, I'm David Burns from Amherst College." He said, "Well, David Burns, I want you to know that you're the kind of young man we need at the Stanford Medical School.!" I said, "It's really kind of you to say that, but I'm afraid I won't be able to come to the Stanford for medical school." He said, "That's nonsense? Of course you can come! Do you think Harvard is going to make you a better offer? We'll top anything they offer." I said, "Oh no, sir, that's not it. You see, my father is a minister, and we don't have much money, and I've heard that attending medical school would cost more than one hundred thousand dollars. And he believes that borrowing money is a sin." He said, "David Burns, I'm the head of the admissions committee, and that's where I'm headed right now. And I'm going to tell them that you're the #1 choice for admission this year. And you won't have to pay a thing. We'll pay for tuition, room, board, books, expenses, everything. It won't cost you one cent to go to Sanford medical school." I said, "Oh, thank you so much! That's an offer I can't refuse!" I got my acceptance letter two days later and the rest, as they say, is history. But to spell it out. Why was I accepted to a top-flight, highly competitive program when I had absolutely NO credentials? Because I expressed an interest in him, and I was friendly, and I believe that meant a great deal to him. And I'll always be grateful for his help. My wife and I returned to Stanford almost 30 years ago, where I've served on the voluntary (unpaid) faculty at the medical school, teaching  and doing research and continuing to develop TEAM CBT. I turned out to be a terrible medical student, and dropped out for a full year on two different times because I just wasn't the "medical" type. I had very little aptitude or interest in medicine. But I did end up as a psychiatrist, and came to love medicine and healing people who were suffering, and doing research. And my voluntary work is my way of trying to repay my tremendous debt to Stanford! And I'll never forget the kind gentleman who interviewed me. Kyle and I jammed on all five examples, including many additional stories to bring these ideas to life. Kyle used this strategy when interview for his internship in psychology, and it worked like a charm. I would say that I've taught many people how to use these ideas, including family members, students, and colleagues. The impact has been nothing short of incredible. That probably sounds over the top, and I "get it." But the stories are true, and the ideas can change your life. Remember what the Buddha said, 2500 years ago: "Selling yourself sucks! So, Stop it, and do what works!" Warmly, Rhonda, Kyle, and David Contact information Kyle is a superb TEAM CBT therapist who practices virtually throughout California. Here's his contact information:  Dr. Kyle Jones

Join Elevated GP: www.theelevatedgp.com Free Class II Masterclass - Click Here to Join Follow @dental_digest_podcast Instagram Follow @dr.melissa_seibert on Instagram Dr. Stanley Liu (“Leo”) received his undergraduate education from Stanford University. He completed DDS and MD degrees, with General Surgery internship and Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery residency, from the University of California – San Francisco (UCSF). After Sleep Surgery Fellowship at Stanford Medical School in 2014, he was appointed faculty in the Department of Otolaryngology until 2023. He rose to the rank of Associate Professor, and Director of the Sleep Surgery Fellowship. Concurrently, he was a Preceptor of the Oculoplastic Surgery Fellowship and held a courtesy appointment to the Division of Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery.  In February 2024, he joined Nova Southeastern University as the Chair of the Department of Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery, and Assistant Dean of Hospital Affairs. Dr. Liu is a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons (FACS), and the American College of Oral & Maxillofacial Surgeons. He has been a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Scholar, and Stanford Biodesign Faculty Fellow. He serves on the board or executive positions of the California Sleep Society (CSS), American Academy of Physiologic Medicine & Dentistry (AAPMD), and the World Dentofacial Sleep Society (WDSS). He is a consultant member in the sleep section of the American Academy of Otolaryngology – Head & Neck Surgery (AAO-HNS). Dr. Liu's clinical and research focus are on surgical approaches to obstructive sleep apnea. With his surgical mentor and sleep surgery pioneer, Dr. Robert Riley, the Stanford Sleep Surgery approach was updated to integrate drug-induced sleep endoscopy (DISE), nasal surgery including maxillary expansion (DOME), pharyngeal surgery (UPPP), hypoglossal nerve stimulation (HGNS), and maxillomandibular advancement (MMA).  His bibliography lists over 90 journal articles and 20 book chapters. He has been a Grand Rounds speaker at academic programs including UCSF, Northwestern, OHSU, LSU, and Stanford. He has been a Keynote Speaker for preeminent sleep and surgery meetings, including the 33rd SLEEP in 2019, and World Sleep in 2023.

The intersection of nutrition, dermatology, and skin health is an area of growing interest, yet one that remains riddled with misinformation and oversimplified claims. The influence of dietary patterns, specific nutrients, and lifestyle factors on conditions such as acne, eczema, psoriasis, and skin aging has been widely debated, with varying levels of evidence supporting different interventions. While some nutritional strategies may play a role in optimizing skin health, the challenge lies in distinguishing practical, evidence-based approaches from overstated or anecdotal claims. A significant issue in this space is the naturalistic fallacy—the belief that diet alone can replace medical treatments, or that conventional dermatological interventions should be avoided in favor of “natural” approaches. This has led to widespread vilification of certain foods, such as dairy, gluten, and sugar, despite a lack of strong supporting data. Similarly, supplements and probiotics are often promoted with broad claims, while their actual efficacy is highly context-dependent—varying based on individual nutrient status, disease severity, and baseline dietary intake. In this episode, Dr. Thivi Maruthappu, a consultant dermatologist and researcher in nutritional dermatology, joins Danny Lennon to explore the current state of evidence in this field. Guest Information Dr Thivi Maruthappu MA PhD FRCP ANutr is a consultant dermatologist, nutritionist and leading researcher. As the UK's first and only dual-qualified dermatologist and nutritionist, her pioneering expertise bridges the gap between diet and skin health. Dr Thivi continues to work in the NHS and has her own practice based at London's renowned Cleveland Clinic. Dr Thivi studied Medicine at Oxford University and completed Dermatology training in London. She undertook a PhD to understand the links between our skin and internal health and this research featured in top tier scientific journals. She is one of a handful of dermatologists to have completed training in severe eczema and psoriasis during a fellowship at St John's Institute of Dermatology, London and achieved a Certificate in Nutrition Science from Stanford Medical School, USA. Timestamps [02:52] Start of interview [03:37] Dr. Maruthappu's background and expertise [05:57] Sunscreen and skin health: myths and facts [12:15] Effective skincare ingredients [16:07] The role of nutrition in skin health [20:25] Dairy and skin conditions [24:10] Collagen supplements: do they work? [27:45] Probiotics for skin health [31:35] Research outcomes and challenges [35:20] Practical applications in clinical practice [43:05] Key ideas segment (premium-only) Related Resources Join the Sigma email newsletter for free Subscribe to Sigma Nutrition Premium Enroll in the next cohort of our Applied Nutrition Literacy course Dr. Maruthappu's website

  Join Elevated GP: www.theelevatedgp.com Free Class II Masterclass - Click Here to Join Follow @dental_digest_podcast Instagram Follow @dr.melissa_seibert on Instagram Dr. Stanley Liu (“Leo”) received his undergraduate education from Stanford University. He completed DDS and MD degrees, with General Surgery internship and Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery residency, from the University of California – San Francisco (UCSF). After Sleep Surgery Fellowship at Stanford Medical School in 2014, he was appointed faculty in the Department of Otolaryngology until 2023. He rose to the rank of Associate Professor, and Director of the Sleep Surgery Fellowship. Concurrently, he was a Preceptor of the Oculoplastic Surgery Fellowship and held a courtesy appointment to the Division of Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery.  In February 2024, he joined Nova Southeastern University as the Chair of the Department of Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery, and Assistant Dean of Hospital Affairs. Dr. Liu is a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons (FACS), and the American College of Oral & Maxillofacial Surgeons. He has been a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Scholar, and Stanford Biodesign Faculty Fellow. He serves on the board or executive positions of the California Sleep Society (CSS), American Academy of Physiologic Medicine & Dentistry (AAPMD), and the World Dentofacial Sleep Society (WDSS). He is a consultant member in the sleep section of the American Academy of Otolaryngology – Head & Neck Surgery (AAO-HNS). Dr. Liu's clinical and research focus are on surgical approaches to obstructive sleep apnea. With his surgical mentor and sleep surgery pioneer, Dr. Robert Riley, the Stanford Sleep Surgery approach was updated to integrate drug-induced sleep endoscopy (DISE), nasal surgery including maxillary expansion (DOME), pharyngeal surgery (UPPP), hypoglossal nerve stimulation (HGNS), and maxillomandibular advancement (MMA).  His bibliography lists over 90 journal articles and 20 book chapters. He has been a Grand Rounds speaker at academic programs including UCSF, Northwestern, OHSU, LSU, and Stanford. He has been a Keynote Speaker for preeminent sleep and surgery meetings, including the 33rd SLEEP in 2019, and World Sleep in 2023.

Listen to ASCO's Journal of Clinical Oncology Art of Oncology poem, "The First Hero” by Christopher Kim, who is a research assistant at Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine at Stanford University. The poem is followed by an interview with Kim and host Dr. Mikkael Sekeres. Kim reflects on his post-surgery sonnet. TRANSCRIPT Narrator: The First Hero, by Christopher Kim, BS  When he is like this—eyes closed, face still— he is unfamiliar. He wears a face younger than usual; fragile limbs washed in fluorescent light, eyes blurred with a diagnosis or ripe hyacinths or the last words we shared. Be good, son. Be bright. When he is still, anesthetized into memory, so too are the aphids in the garden. Lines of buzzing bodies descended from flight but clustered in quiet surrender. Fathers of sons who are trying to heal, who are failing, who retreat into the silence of sterile rooms. A heartbeat stutters and everything sings. Like the birds we watch outside the ICU window: how they peck at unyielding concrete and fill themselves with sharpness, their bodies frenzied, their bodies temporary.   Mikkael Sekeres: Hello and welcome to JCO's Cancer Stories: The Art of Oncology, which features essays and personal reflections from authors exploring their experience in the oncology field. I'm your host, Mikkael Sekeres. I'm Professor of Medicine and Chief of the Division of Hematology at the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of Miami. Today, I am so thrilled to be joined by Christopher Kim. He's a research assistant at the Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine at Stanford University. In this episode, we will be discussing his Art of Oncology poem, “The First Hero.” At the time of this recording, our guest has no disclosures. Both he and I have agreed to address each other by first names during the podcast. Chris, welcome to our podcast and thank you for joining us. Christopher Kim: Of course. Thank you so much for having me. It's just such an honor to be here. Mikkael Sekeres: We absolutely loved your poem. It was incredible and addressed a topic I think a lot of us face at some point in our lives and that's when we see a family member who's sick. Before we get into that, I was wondering if you can tell us a little bit about yourself. Where are you from and how did you get to this point? Christopher Kim: Absolutely, yeah. As you mentioned before, I'm working as a research assistant at the Stanford Medical School and I pretty much only recently graduated from college so I feel like I'm still in this like ‘in between' stage. I'm a Bay Area native. I went to Stanford for undergrad, just kind of stayed on with the lab that I worked with while I was an undergrad. I would like to go on to medical school in the future. I'm learning a lot working as a research assistant, getting some hands-on experience with basic biology research. And another thing about myself is I'm an avid musician, play violin, play guitar. I like to sing. And of course, I really enjoy writing as well. Mikkael Sekeres: That's a great background. Well, we definitely need more doctors who are writers, musicians and singers. So you fit that bill. And then the fact that you do some lab based research is just amazing. You sound like a polymath. Christopher Kim: Oh, I don't know about that. I try my best. Mikkael Sekeres: Can you tell us a little bit about your own story as a writer? How long have you been writing poetry? When did you get started? And how did you get started? Christopher Kim: Yeah, absolutely. So, I've always written sort of on my own, so I don't think I ever had the courage to share my writing with others because, you know, it's kind of a vulnerable thing to share your inner thoughts with someone. So I have been kind of writing on my own since maybe late middle school and early high school. That's when I started putting my thoughts onto paper. But I only recently started to submit my poetry to, you know, these journals because, you know, after a while I was thinking, I think they're worth sharing with others because maybe some people may be going through similar situations where they can feel a little bit encouraged by the words that I write in terms of, you know, feeling the emotions that they feel. Mikkael Sekeres: Well, lucky for us, you made that decision. So when you were an undergrad, did you take any writing courses? Because it's interesting, you've been in the area of writing since you were in middle school, high school. That must have continued through college. And sometimes formal courses help us refine those skills. But then there are also plenty of examples of people who just did it on their own. Christopher Kim: Absolutely. The main writing course I took, funnily enough, they weren't really creative writing courses. They were more rhetoric based or kind of just like the regular English writing classes at college undergraduates take. However, I did have a group of friends who I would share my writing with. I think that was like the most important part of my sort of evolution as a writer. Because before I would just kind of write on my own and maybe kind of hide it away, you know, in my little locked box, I guess. But then having this opportunity to meet other people my age, my peers, who, you know, I finally gained enough kind of courage to– I say courage, but I really mean, like I finally gained enough comfort to share it with them. And, you know, gaining their feedback and seeing their response was really the most important part of, I think, my writing in college. So not necessarily like formal classes, but more like the people I met and how they responded to my writing, which is- I'm really thankful for them. Mikkael Sekeres: You know, it's so interesting because there is this temptation to be like Emily Dickinson and write your poems and squirrel them away in your desk and never show them to anyone. And then, you know, the body of your work is discovered posthumously, which I think is kind of sad. I mean, you know, great that we have Emily Dickenson poetry, but it would have been nice that, you know, she had known how appreciated she was during her lifetime. Christopher Kim: Oh, absolutely. Mikkael Sekeres: And I think the hardest first step is that word that you use, courage. The courage to identify people outside of ourselves, to share our poetry with, or our narrative pieces. So how did you find those people? Christopher Kim: It's often the case that, you know, you make your closest friends when you kind of struggle together. So I think a lot of these friends I met were through taking courses together that were difficult and that sort of combined, I don't want to say misery, that's maybe too strong a word, combined struggle against one common goal. I think that's when we started becoming close. And then it was like outside of a writing context. But I think, I don't know, it's like part luck and part finding these people in these classes and then having conversations with them late at night and then eventually going towards sharing your arts, whatever. Some of them are musicians. They share their music. Some of us share our writing. Mikkael Sekeres: Yeah. No, I hear you. There's that shared experience of being in difficult situations. I think a lot of us who've gone through undergrad and med school and then became doctors and started our training, we have incredibly close friends. We met in our residencies and fellowship because those were major stressor points in our lives and major transitional phases also when we felt that we grew. The other aspect that I've heard in identifying people to be first readers of your poetry or prose is to identify people you trust. People who are friends will give you a good read, will be appropriately critical, and will also be encouraging. You need those people to feed back to you truth about the quality of your writing and provide substantive criticism that helps you grow as a writer. Christopher Kim: Definitely agree. You know, you've found your true friends when they're not afraid to criticize you because they're so close to you and they really want you to be better. So, yeah, I definitely agree with that. Mikkael Sekeres: Yeah. And those who will take it seriously where, I think plenty of times in my own life where I've given a piece of writing to somebody, hoping for good feedback, and then you feel like you have to hound them to finally get that feedback. And obviously they're not invested in it, as opposed to a trusted body of readers where they are going to take it seriously, they're going to read it closely, and then they're going to get back to you without you feeling as if you're imposing on them. Christopher Kim: Absolutely. Yeah. It's very valuable once you've found that group of people or friends, and you know, I still contact them regularly today. So, yeah, as you mentioned, you know, I think it's definitely like maybe a lifelong process or lifelong friendship where you can always go back to them for sort of that support. And you also are able to provide that support for your friends, too. Mikkael Sekeres: Yeah. I'm curious about your writing process. What triggers you to start a poem? And, you know, how do you face that dreaded blank page? Christopher Kim: Bay Area traffic can be very long and the commute can be pretty rough. Mikkael Sekeres: Not at all like that in Miami, by the way. In Miami, we just breeze through traffic. Yeah, not at all. Christopher Kim: I would love to visit someday to compare. But yeah, Bay Area traffic can be pretty rough. As much as I love podcasts and music, there comes a point where I kind of run out of things to listen to after a while. So I really found myself driving along, but then letting my thoughts wander. And funnily enough, that's when my creative inspirations hit. Maybe it's because there's something about driving that's like the perfect amount of not thinking. You know, it's like an automatic process and that let's your– obviously I'm paying attention to the road - but you kind of let your mind wander through creative thoughts, and that's on place of creative inspiration. I've had close family members who have struggled with cancer specifically, and other serious health issues, and I've had experiences being a caretaker for them, like ‘The First Hero'. Being in that position really inspires you to write, I think, for me. Mikkael Sekeres: So I wonder if I could follow up on that and if you're only comfortable doing so. Can you tell us what prompted you to write “The First Hero”? Christopher Kim: So it's kind of a combination of experiences. My grandfather struggled with cancer for a long time, and eventually he passed away from cancer. Mikkael Sekeres: I'm sorry. Christopher Kim: I appreciate that. Thank you. And he had cancer when I was a young child, which luckily went into remission for a couple years. But then later on, you know, as I started college, that's when it came back, and that's when he passed. And I think seeing his struggles with cancer, that was one big part of inspiration for this poem. But also another thing was my father also went through some health issues where he had to go through surgery and a long period of recovery, and he still kind of struggles with some issues today. And seeing people that you love that much in a position where it's really hard, especially when they're father figures in your life. They're your grandfather and your father. And, you know, when you're a kid, you know, your dad is like, they're a superhero. Your dad is the hero who can do anything, who can achieve any answer, any question you have, who can build anything you want, can buy you things, you know, all that stuff. But now seeing them in this reverse state of being vulnerable and not being able to do too much, it really affected me. And those two experiences were my main inspiration for this poem. Mikkael Sekeres: That was really beautifully said, Chris. I'm a parent of three, and I think that it comes with a lot of responsibility to remember that just carrying the title of mom or dad implies so much to one of your own children that you have to remember the import of everything that you do for them, for your kids, and everything that you say. And it carries just that much added significance because of the role we play as parents. It's so interesting to hear it enunciated by you in that way as well. And I think part of what makes good parents, there are a thousand things that go into the formula of a good parent, and we only know for sure if we made it, if, depending on the amount of therapy our kids have to go through when they're older, right? I think part of that, though, is remembering the great responsibility that comes with just simply the title of being a parent. Christopher Kim: Absolutely. Mikkael Sekeres: You started to talk a little bit about this. I'm curious about how the dynamic between parents and children changes when a parent is sick. Christopher Kim: Yeah, it's kind of a reversal of roles in a way, because your parents, when you're born, you're the most vulnerable. They're responsible for sort of ushering you into this world, keeping you alive. Seeing your parents grow older and seeing them aging is a tough experience. And my mom often tells me whenever she would see her parents, after a while, in her mind, she still sees her parents as when they were their younger selves, when she was younger. But then suddenly it would hit her that they're, like, much older and that also makes you feel a little bit more aware of how you are aging and how much older you are. But at the end of the day, they're always going to be your parents. Mikkael Sekeres: They really are. Our parents age and we age with them, and we evolve in how we view parents, and we all go through this, and I don't think it ever ends until your parents pass. I'm sure you're familiar with this. There's a saying that you never really become an adult until your parents pass. Christopher Kim: You mentioned that you're more aware of what parenthood is as you get older. I mean, obviously I don't have any kids myself, but I'm sure my parents always USED say to me, you know, “You'll understand when you have kids.” Mikkael Sekeres: You sort of do. You sort of do. Christopher Kim: I sort of do. Right, exactly. Mikkael Sekeres: My dad always said to me that parenting is unskilled labor. So you sort of get it when you're a parent, you're still really figuring it out. Christopher Kim: Absolutely. Yeah. And the older I get, it's like I realize. I think I've gained more appreciation for the sacrifices my parents have made for me, and I've definitely taken their parenthood lessons to heart for whenever, if I choose to have kids later on. Mikkael Sekeres: So that's great. I'm sure they'd be thrilled to hear that, Chris. I wanted to end with one last question for you. Are there poets who've been a particular influence on you or favorite poets you want to name? Christopher Kim: One name that kind of comes to mind is there's a poet named Ocean Vuong. Their work blends together personal history and like, family history with beautiful lyricism. They always feel like musical in a way. Their words kind of often linger on with you long after. Mikkael Sekeres: That's great. Well, listen, Chris Kim, I'd like to thank you so much for joining us on today's podcast and for your absolutely beautiful poem, “The First Hero.” Christopher Kim: Thank you so much for having me. I'm super thrilled to be on. This is my first podcast ever, so it was such a great experience. I felt so welcomed. So thank you for, you know, hearing my thoughts or listening to my thoughts. I appreciate it. Mikkael Sekeres: Well, you're good at them. Keep them up. Until next time. Thank you for listening to JCO's Cancer Stories: The art of Oncology. Don't forget to give us a rating or review and be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. You can find all of the ASCO shows at asco.org/podcasts. Until next time. Thanks so much for joining us.   The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. This is not a substitute for professional medical care and is not intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of individual conditions. Guests on this podcast express their own opinions, experience and conclusions. Guest statements on the podcast do not express the opinions of ASCO. The mention of any product, service, organization, activity or therapy should not be construed as an ASCO endorsement. Like, share and subscribe so you never miss an episode and leave a rating or review.  Guest Bio: Christopher Kim is a research assistant at the Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine at Stanford University.

This episode is brought to you by Pique Life, Momentous, and Lumebox.  When we think about disease and chronic illness, we don't usually consider the possibility of a lab leak or a government experiment gone wrong. Today's guest sheds light on her investigation into Lyme disease, its disturbing origins, and how it's impacted patient treatment.  Today on The Dhru Purohit Show, Dhru sits down with writer and producer Kris Newby to discuss her theory on the origins of Lyme disease. She explores the possible role of weaponized ticks, the mismanagement of Lyme disease treatment, and the implications of military secrecy surrounding biological experiments. Kris also emphasizes the need for a deeper understanding of Lyme disease's complexity and its broader impact on public health. She highlights the importance of awareness, research, and advocacy for better treatment options while sharing her personal journey with Lyme disease and how it affected her family. Kris Newby is an award-winning science writer and the senior producer of the Lyme disease documentary UNDER OUR SKIN, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and was a 2010 Oscar semifinalist. Her book, BITTEN, won three international book awards for journalism and narrative nonfiction. Previously, she worked as a science and technology writer for Stanford Medical School, Apple, and other Silicon Valley companies. She is currently working on her second book. In this episode, Dhru and Kris dive into: The sinister origins of Lyme disease (00:10) What's known so far and piecing together the facts (2:30) The discovery of Lyme, its impact on public health, and the role of Big Pharma (10:30) Theories of lab leaks and tick weaponization (17:00) Military secrecy and cover-up tactics (23:00) A congressman's journey to investigate the origin of Lyme (28:00) Optimism for future research and treatment (30:00) Navigating tick-borne illness (32:30) Historical context of biological warfare (35:00) Connections between modern disease and bioengineering (36:20) The role of ethics and accountability (39:20) Kris's personal journey with Lyme disease (41:20) Also mentioned in this episode: Kris' book Bitten Lyme Disease Resources IGeneX Lab  Galaxy Labs For more on Kris, follow her on Instagram, Facebook, X/Twitter, LinkedIn, and her Website. This episode is brought to you by Pique Life, Momentous, and Lumebox.  Right now, Pique Life is offering 20% off the Radiant Skin Duo plus a free beaker and frother when you go to piquelife.com/dhru. Optimize your energy and mental clarity with the purest form of creatine made by and used by the best. Go to livemomentous.com and enter promo code DHRU to get 20% off any order. Lumebox is offering my community $260 off their FDA-registered portable Red Light device!  That's over 40% off! Go to thelumebox.com/dhru and get your Red Light device.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Genentech VP, CMO Erica Taylor joins The Current Podcast to share her unique journey from immunology to biotech marketing, and the evolving role of biotech brands in mainstream media.  Episode TranscriptPlease note, this transcript  may contain minor inconsistencies compared to the episode audio.Kat Vesce (00:00):I'm Kat Vesce. And I'm Ilyse Liffreing and welcome to this edition of The Current Podcast. In honor of International Women's Day and Women's Month, we're spotlighting trailblazing women in marketing at this year's South by Southwest.Ilyse Liffreing (00:16):For this episode, we're excited to be joined by Erica Taylor, vice president and chief marketing Officer at Genentech, a company at the forefront of biotech innovation for over 40 years.Kat Vesce (00:28):Erica has a unique background transitioning from a PhD in immunology and a product development into the world of marketing, bringing a scientific perspective to how Genentech connects with global healthcare providers and patients.Ilyse Liffreing (00:41):We'll dive into how that background informs her approach to marketing, the game changing campaign she's led, and how the biotech industry is evolving to embrace more creative, emotionally driven storytelling.Kat Vesce (00:54):Plus Erica will share her perspective on how women in STEM can break barriers and what the future of healthcare marketing holds. Let's get started.Ilyse Liffreing (01:01):So Erica, thanks for being here at South by Southwest. Thanks for having me. Of course. So you have a unique background for a CMO growing part of your career on the product development side of biotech. After earning your PhD from Stanford Medical School, what drew you to the marketing side of biotech and why don't we see more medical students transition into heading up marketing departments?Erica Taylor (01:25):Yeah, I sometimes think that I have the habit of just showing up in places I'm not supposed to be, and so I certainly didn't go into my studies in immunology with the idea that I was going to end up in marketing. I would've never have thought that that would be the case. It really sort of became apparent to me that I was very much interested in the intersection of business and science when I was nearing the end of my graduate program, but I wasn't really sure how to do that or how to get there. So I explored a lot and I often share when I do development conversations with folks in the industry that I've probably not gotten more jobs than I've gotten in my life trying to figure out how to be in these other spaces. But for me, the journey really started in consulting.(02:07):I was in management consulting for biotech and pharma industry, and that is what led me to Genentech. And at my career there I have had roles in analytics and in sales, and it was probably my time in sales that really got me interested in marketing. And so I was able to sort of land a role in marketing and to do so at a company that innovates on science. I think they were able to sort of see, okay, she maybe doesn't have a background in marketing, but she understands the science, she understands how to communicate it and what actually moves markets when you're in the sales field.Ilyse Liffreing (02:38):How has that background informed your approach as a CMO? Why is that scientific medical knowledge and maybe even sales knowledge so valuable?Erica Taylor (02:48):Yeah, I think one of the things that was a bit of an aha for me in my sales role was I'll say one of the most professionally transformative experiences I had, which is code for saying it was the hardest thing I've ever done. And you learn a lot about what actually motivates people in the decisions that they make. And marketing is really focused on influencing a decision that people make and you realize even though I have a background in science and people very much need to understand why they're making the decision they're making. If you're a provider making a prescribing decision or a patient choosing between options for medicines available to you, you need to understand the why of that. But really there has to be some kind of emotional pull there. And I was really fascinated with that because I sort of come from a very cerebral training of like, well, we've got this data and here are the patients for which benefit the most, and so therefore this is the natural conclusion of the decision you would make. In fact, it's far more complex than that and it's that complexity of human behavior that I got really interested in as I grew in the marketing organization. So I try to bring both the left and right brain such as it were to that thinking.Kat Vesce (03:53):As the best marketers do. We ask everyone this question, I want to go a little bit deeper. Is there a specific moment that changed the game for you as a marketer? Tell us your most defining career moment or pivot to date and what the obstacles were there.Erica Taylor (04:10):Yeah, I could probably name a few. I get the most depth in moments and insights when I actually get to interact with patients and with providers and sort of understand deeply their experiences. And one of the ahas that I got actually both in my sales and then later in my marketing role is that yes, Genentech, you guys have been trailblazing and biotech and you have been innovating, but the data is so complex even though I'm trained in this field with the patient loads that I see every day, I don't have time and you guys don't make it simple for us. And so the aha there is like, okay, then marketing campaigns have to really focus on taking very complex science, which I feel fortunate to understand, but boil it down to something that's very simple, that's very memorable. And the same for patients. Very often when I'm in conversations with providers, I have the patient in mind when I'm thinking about how I would want this medicine explained to me, and that is how I explain it to the provider thinking maybe if a couple of my phrasing or words sort of land, well then that's what gets repeated to the patient so that they understand the choices that they have before them.Kat Vesce (05:17):I love that. And as a biotech company now over 40 years old, how would you say your approach to campaign strategy differs from typical healthcare campaigns?Erica Taylor (05:25):Yeah, well for one,Kat Vesce (05:26):A little bit of that patient in mind.Erica Taylor (05:28):Yeah, the patient for sure in mind. And one of the things that I'm very happy to spearhead as the chief marketing officer is really thinking about how do we make that more and more personal? It's not the patient, it is the patient that may be a single parent that lives 45 minutes from their local healthcare system. How do I speak to that patient just as much as I speak to the patient that has a high powered career and really doesn't have the time to focus on themselves and needs something to be quick and convenient? And so really the opportunity before us is to figure out how to become more nuanced, relevant and personalized when we tell the stories of our medicines. What I love about Genentech and our ability to do that is we've always been focused on two things, patience and science. And as long as we keep those two centered in everything that we do, I think we're able to kind of meet that mark.(06:14):Maybe the other thing I'll add, because the idea of speaking in personalized ways is not new. It's not rocket science, it's not even the more complex things that we do, but the technology and the capabilities that exist maybe outside of healthcare are now being applied in our space. And so very excited about what things like generative AI can do for us and really being able to personalize our stories around our medicines and our development. But at scale, we market over 40 medicines, and so it's great to do this in one or two places, but imagine doing that across the full breadth of our portfolio.Kat Vesce (06:47):And I imagine that 40 medications or medicines times however many profiles fit the many faces of patients.Erica Taylor (06:57):Exactly.Kat Vesce (06:58):Yeah, you really need some automation there.Erica Taylor (07:00):Absolutely. The scale of the problem is impossible, and unless I'm getting sort of a complete blank check to build all the resources that I need, we've got to find ways to be more efficient with that.Ilyse Liffreing (07:09):So that has really got me thinking because as much as the customer is number one and everything, but you also have to speak to the provider and they're the ones who are going to be really selling your medicine to the patient themselves. How do you solve, I guess, for your need to resonate with both the customer provider and then who would you consider highest priority in those campaigns?Erica Taylor (07:34):No, it's a really, really great question. One of the things that I love about the healthcare space is that your decision maker and your end user are almost never the same person. And that's not totally unique. It's uncommon. But you could imagine parents buying baby formula are also decision makers, but generally not. And users, unless you were like me and got desperate and ran out of half and half and put baby formula in, coffee works great. Extra nutrients. Exactly. Yeah, life hack. So it's not totally unique, but you have to kind of speak to two audiences. So because of the breadth of our portfolio, we really do think about this disease state by disease state. So there are some disease states where really the provider is the driving decision maker. Examples of this can be if you're having a stroke and you're in the hospital, you're probably not deciding between which medications are right for now, you're really driven by the provider's decision maker.(08:31):You can think about that in some of our later line cancer portfolios. When you're in your past, your first two lines of treatment, you're really going to be relying on your provider to understand what are the next, so in those cases, we tend to focus more on the provider and the prescribing decision maker. There are other parts of our portfolio where it's really very much patient driven. We have a medicine that treats food allergy, and that really then tends to involve in some cases, adolescents, their parents. And so we really need to elevate their voices when we're thinking about how we make sure they have the right information. So it really can span the gamut, and it's about taking a specific view of that particular disease state and how decision-making is made.Ilyse Liffreing (09:09):That's amazing. Now the biotech category is not known for being exactly sexy when it comes to creative marketing. It's bogged down with side effects and similar storylines usually. How are you guys moving the needle in terms of creating those powerful maybe storytelling campaigns?Erica Taylor (09:30):Yeah, I mean, we are a regulated industry and I'll state first. It's actually really important that we give that information. Any medicine that anyone is going to take, you have to weigh the benefits and the risks, and it is on us to communicate that fairly. And so I very much stand behind that. As a scientist, we really have to do that, but that can also make it really hard to know what's what we're trying to do this. So for me, I always try to root in the emotion and what I tell my teams all the time at the end of everything we do is someone who is sick and scared and how do we really tap into that? What do they need in that moment of diagnosis? What do they need in that moment when they're a week out from treatment and they're not really sure if what they're experiencing is normal?(10:14):Really kind of capturing those moments along the patient's journey. And similarly for the provider's journey, if I were to be oversimplified providers saying 15, 20 patients a day, how do we find ways to make their challenging lives as easy as possible, as simple as possible? And so we kind of think of that almost in two tracks. Some of the best creative that I see really speaks to that emotion. We did a campaign in our ophthalmology franchise last year called A Beautiful Site, which really chronicles a parent watching their child go through the education and then that parent one day becoming a patient. And it's really a motive. We actually don't talk a ton about the medicine itself, but more the experience of what it's like when you're struggling with your eyesight and it's gotten a lot of traction just by speaking to that lived experience.Kat Vesce (11:03):We're going to shift the conversation and zoom out a little bit.Erica Taylor (11:05):Okay.Kat Vesce (11:05):Though biotech is not new by any means, the category was catapulted into the spotlight in mainstream media during the height of COVID-19 something very intimately a thing or two. Yes. Yeah. Gilead at the time, you saw this firsthand with your previous role. And tell us a little bit about that experience. What do you think has changed for the industry as a whole since then?Erica Taylor (11:27):Oh wow. So many things. I had so many reactions kind of experiencing as we all did. The sort of the Covid Ovid 19 crisis, the first among them is that science really became front and center. And as a scientist, I get excited, finally, we're getting the credit we deserve, but so much about it was what I understand is science. Science is slow and painstaking. It's a step forward, it's a step to the right, it's a step back. It's two steps forward. That is how science happens. The lay public for the most part just sees it at the end. And so you get to tell this story, but that's not actually how it went down. Think about your vaccines for things like polio. We weren't following the day to day of that. We just had it. And we go, great. That's wonderful science. So when looking through the vaccine development for Covid, we're kind of watching day by day, is it six feet?(12:17):What kind of mask? How do I do this? And so we got, I think people lost trust in science and that really was heartbreaking because that's actually how it is. And for me it's the resilience of the people that continue to pursue when you get up and the thing you thought was going to work didn't work today, and you get up tomorrow and go do it. And we were able to break through in that way. That's the one thing on the science side, on the marketing side, we now know names of biotech companies. No one generally does know that I get true. My branded medication, I get this branded, that branded medication. Now the names of the companies that produced the vaccines, you would go in and say, I want the Moderna one or the Pfizer one. That has never really happened before in our industry.(13:03):And we've had to go from being a sort of what I'll call a house of brands, the branded medication, to really thinking about, well, what is the worth in branding the house, the Genentechs of the world? We're actively thinking about how we do that, especially as we come to our 50th anniversary as a company next year. So I know there's a lot of activity and thinking, how do we strategically do this that is authentic to who we are as an organization and elevates all of the work that we do, all of the scientists that pursue day in and day out, all of the patients that we've been able to help improve the lives of.Kat Vesce (13:39):So in a world that we've been talking about has changed so much since Covid. Absolutely. People also expect more from companies than ever before. How do you align your corporate positioning with Genentech, with your creative output?Erica Taylor (13:51):Yeah. I think to me this is about relevance and authenticity. I think there's so much content in your life in and out of healthcare to consume, and I think people are far more discerning of what feels authentic to them, what feels true, what feels pandered to right today is International Women's Day. There's lots of celebrations around Women's Day. Not everyone has been consistent about really centering women and thinking about what are the things that women could benefit from and could use, I think, and the women walking around here today, they know the difference. And so I think for us, the onus is being true to who we are, being authentic, really, and as relevant as we can. And I think about that just sort of from the broader Genentech, but also how do we think about this product by product? What is the authentic experiences and where do we show up really matters? One of the things that I tell my teams all the time, I'm like, we'd say the word patient. They are people, which sounds obvious, but you can easily lose sight of the fact that the fact that someone is a patient is probably in the bottom five of the top 100 things they like about their life. So you want to be there when needed and the hell out of their lives when not. Right. And so how do we thread that line appropriately,Ilyse Liffreing (15:13):Right? Yeah,Erica Taylor (15:14):It's hard. It's hard. It's hard.Ilyse Liffreing (15:16):You could argue it's harder than your average CPG brandErica Taylor (15:19):ForIlyse Liffreing (15:19):Instance.Erica Taylor (15:20):Absolutely.Ilyse Liffreing (15:21):Absolutely.Erica Taylor (15:22):So it keeps it interesting for sureIlyse Liffreing (15:23):Yeah. Now, I know we kind of talked about this a little bit, but I wanted to zoom out here a little bit because of this trend, it seems like it's a trend anyway, and I'm curious what you think, but during the Super Bowl, there were stronger examples of creative lead pharma and biotech ads competing against the typical ads you would see during the Super Bowl usually. What do you think about this? Is that where we're moving as an industry?Erica Taylor (15:51):I think it's interesting. I feel like I'm a student of commercials. I actually personally love football, so I consume every second of the Super Bowl bowls for the game and then the ads that show. I think it's interesting and I think it's a space worth exploring as an industry. And I think we've seen, there's a Pfizer ad that was released this year. I think they did one last year as well. I think we're still trying to figure out how to land the mark. And Super Bowl is an interesting venue to do that. Most people don't want to see a drug commercial. They're eating nachos, they're watching a game, they're maybe cheering on a team, they're waiting for the halftime show, whatever. But how do you land in a space that is supposed to be celebratory in light with something that's relevant and important? I think it's worth exploring personally. I'm sort of like, let's see where there might be a relevant kind of meeting of the moment. And it might be specific to just that year, right? Or just this particular thing that we have in our portfolio that's innovative that we want to make sure people know about.(16:54):I don't know that I'd paint a brush and do it everywhere for all things personally, a hundredKat Vesce (16:58):Percent. ButErica Taylor (16:59):I'm sure there's probably other marketers on this listening here that'll say, no, you should be pushing. And I'm curious, sort of very curious about where this could go and interested to see,Ilyse Liffreing (17:10):Since we're at South by Southwest and this is International Women's Day, I'd love to get your take on some of these female focused questions. Sure. So first of all, what inspired you to pursue a career in marketing and how has your journey been as a woman in the industry? I know with your strong STEM background especially, do you feel like there's still a much needed boost in how women pursue stem?Erica Taylor (17:34):Well, I am particularly passionate about STEM fields and as a self-proclaimed and bonafide nerd, I think the more in which ways in which we can celebrate that the better. I think it is interesting. We've seen increasing percentages of women pursuing STEM careers, which I applaud. It's not even the painted, I think more in medicine and healthcare related fields, I think there's still more gains to be had in fields like engineering and computer science. And one of the things that are very critical if we want to truly unlock things like artificial intelligence, I think there's more to do there. But I feel very much the, I feel like I'm coming behind women that have gone before and have really blazed trails, and I feel the same responsibility to make sure that whatever trail someone believes I've blazed or not is easier for whoever comes behind me. And I feel a deep obligation that I spend a good amount of my time mentoring and developing everyone, not just women, but folks that are interested in, as I call it, being in places you're not supposed to be. I think it just makes for a an interesting career path and journey. And I don't know what I'll do in the future. I still dunno what I want to do when I grow up. I'm having a great time now. And so I look to mentors that help see, oh, okay, that's how you did that.Kat Vesce (18:59):Can we better support women in leadership roles? You mentioned mentorship. What are some other ways you're leaning into that?Erica Taylor (19:06):Yeah, I think it can come up in both direct ways, like mentorship. I think those programs benefit everyone. And both I learned from them and I learn a lot about some of the challenges that people face in their careers now. I think there's subtle ways. One of, I think the most powerful things that we can do is as leaders show up honestly and authentically and not be afraid of showing moments of vulnerability. And I think it humanizes you. I had an experience last year where my husband got very, very ill and I needed to have a pretty major surgery. He's doing great now. But sort of living through that and thinking about how do I do the job? I've asked, I've been asked to do, but show up authentically with my team and let them know, Hey, I've got kind of a lot going on at home right now and I don't even know that I navigated that line well. But more recently actually got up on stage in front of my full organization and kind of shared the story. And I did it in the context of marketing and what it meant to have healthcare providers sort give me exactly what I need in the moment to help support him through this.Kat Vesce (20:22):What a full circle moment.Erica Taylor (20:24):It was somewhat of a spontaneous decision, but I think as certainly women leaders as leaders, your podcasters don't know this, but I'm a woman of color, so a lot of things that are not typical about where I show up in spaces. And the more that I can make it that I'm still human, I'm still me, and I go through life the same way you do, you never know what people are walking around with kind of position. I think that helps invite others to say, okay, maybe I didn't get a PhD. Maybe I don't have these things, but I am as human as she is and maybe I can make it there too. I think there's value in that, even though I was literally shaking in my boots to tell that story to one stage, that's a hard thing to do. And fighting to keep my composure and be as authentic as I could. Well,Kat Vesce (21:13):That's the most humanErica Taylor (21:14):Response ever. Yeah.Kat Vesce (21:15):So inspiring. What advice would you give to the next generation of marketing leaders, including we talked about not just young women, but everyone looking to grow into that leadership role?Erica Taylor (21:29):Yeah, I usually give, and there's a couple schools of thought on this, so this is sort of Erica's school of thought on this, right? I think that you have to strike this balance between having depth of knowledge but getting breadth of experience. And it's a really hard one to thread, especially if you're doing something you love. You just want to do more and more and more and more. And there may be great growth paths to be had in that. But a lot of the advice that I give to folks, it's like every time you think about pursuing another role, I am going to apply for this role. It's a promotion, it's a lateral, it think two moves ahead. Does it unlock more options for you? And be very aware, my more senior leaders, I'm like, you have to understand you're at a point in your seniority where making lateral moves gets harder.(22:12):And so you want to make them in your earlier points in your career when you can. Because one, there's just more of those roles. I'm a vice president, there's not a lot of us at Genentech. And so if I want to move laterally, I have fewer options. I have to be that much more thoughtful about it. But I feel like I come at this with the space of a more breadth of experience, but you still got to know the job. So you kind of have to navigate this sort of, as I call it, the difference between scuba and snorkel. If you can scuba dive and go deep, understand that that has ramifications for your career development. If you only snorkel, also ramifications for your career development. And then the other piece of advice I give folks is try not to plan more than a couple of years ahead because 10 years from now, you're going to do a job that doesn't exist today.(22:59):So I'm first CMO, so I couldn't have won this job. It didn't exist until three years ago, right? Plan for a couple of years at a time. And if you're weighing a couple of options that are otherwise equal to you go with the team you'd rather have more fun with, go with the team. You want to come hang out in Austin, Texas with, right? And you're never going to go wrong. Working on teams that you enjoy with each other. We have a really great and strong culture at Genentech, and I'm always like, if you see a leader you want to go work with, find a way to get on that person's team. So those are usually the kinds of advice I give to everyone. And then maybe the other, and this is more, I'm of a certain age wouldn'tKat Vesce (23:41):Know it. PodcastersErica Taylor (23:43):Of a certain age worry a lot less, and someone gave me this advice, what am I going to do? How am I going to get that job? Blah, blah, blah. You've got to work a long time. Most if you're lucky, and many people do, and so worry a lot less about what's going to happen in a decade, worry a lot less about that person that's your peer that just got that promotion and they're going to go farther than you. Career path is their own and everything happens kind of exactly as it should. And so I try really hard to, especially for folks that I get the sort of fresh from business school and they're like, I've got to be CEO in five years. And I'm like, I don't dunno. Let's worry a little less about the timing and worry much more about the kinds of experiences you get to have along the way, what you get to learn and who you get to meet.Kat Vesce (24:37):Well,Erica Taylor (24:37):Erica, thank youKat Vesce (24:38):So much and thanks for your vulnerability and sharing those tidbits and stories. I so appreciate this time. I know we're both leaving really inspired soErica Taylor (24:46):Much. Thank you. I'm so happy to do this. I appreciate the invite. I hope it's helpful for your listeners. Yeah, no, it great. I'm sure it will be. Thank you so much. Thanks.Kat Vesce (24:55):Wow. I am blown away. I am walking away from that conversation with Erica Taylor. So inspired. I don't know about you.Ilyse Liffreing (25:02):Oh my gosh, yes. I love how vulnerable she was about talking about her husband, and not only to, I mean us, but to her whole company. And it takes a very brave and smart woman to be able to be open like that.Kat Vesce (25:17):And also what a full circle moment. I mean to be the CMO of a company that is marketing, I think she said 40 different medications, and then to be on the receiving end of that and navigating as your own family is going through the fear and intensity of recovering from an ailment.Ilyse Liffreing (25:40):As she said, everybody has their own stuff they're going through.Kat Vesce (25:43):Yeah. Yeah. That was really inspiring. I also just loved how she went into the tension that she faces as a marketer, which I can't think of any other category that has this same predicament of wanting to stay relevant and be top of mind for the inpatient or the provider, but also not wanting to be there all the time, and to be able to dip in and out when needed. Because ultimately her end goal she was saying was to keep people healthy. And so I think that's a really refreshing take, especially hearing it from a biotech company like Genentech, that you could hear horror stories about companies being incentivized to keep people sick. And I just loved that as a marketer. She's thinking through it from a place of just being authentic to getting people healthyIlyse Liffreing (26:35):Completely. And she also mentioned in a world like Post Covid, everybody now has their eyes on those companies, which is huge because pre covid, nobody knew what shots you were getting from whom. And now it's like, what shot did you get? The Pfizer or the Moderna.Kat Vesce (26:55):Yeah. And there was even some kind of ranking around them at one point. Yeah, totally. So yeah. Yeah, that's really interesting how biotech and pharma are now getting into the brand marketing side of the house. And I liked her answer that she's trepidatious about how and when to deploy that. So overall, just super inspiring conversation. I'm walking away just beaming talking to all these amazing women. That's wonderful. And that's it for this edition of the current podcast. Be sure to tune in this whole month as we release all the recordings from South by Southwest. See you next time.

How to Handle Pressure & Vitamin D Deep Dive Podcast on SpotifyWe are delighted to having many more people listening to this podcast. Please share it with someone today to enhance their vitality & performance.FIVE PRIMARY POINTS of the PODCAST* The Power of Post-Meal Movement* Walking for 20 minutes after a meal significantly lowers blood glucose levels, reducing the risk of inflammation and chronic diseases like diabetes and heart disease.* Multiple randomized controlled trials support this simple yet effective habit for metabolic health.* Taurine and Longevity* Taurine, an amino acid found in the energy drink RedBull and naturally in the body, has anti-inflammatory and cardiovascular benefits.* Research suggests taurine supplementation improves heart function and could extend lifespan, though further studies are needed.* Irisin: The Muscle Messenger* Irisin, a protein released by muscles during exercise, has neuroprotective and anti-inflammatory effects.* It enhances cognitive function, bone strength, and metabolism, positioning exercise as a critical tool for vitality.* Movement as a Longevity Hack* Studies show active individuals can add up to 11 years to their lifespan, with even moderate movement (walking, biking, or dancing) offering major benefits.* Strength, agility, and power (rather than just muscle size) play a key role in longevity.* The Brain-Gut-Bone Connection* The body's systems are interconnected: gut microbiota influence brain function, while bone-derived hormones affect memory and mood.* Exercise supports this communication network, improving overall health and resilience.Dr. Mishra is creating a course for Vitality Explorers based on a new course at he will be teaching at Stanford Medical School this Spring Quarter called: Vitality & Performance Optimization: 8 Weeks to AwesomeClick on the link above to join the waitlist. Priority will be given to those people that sign up first. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit vitalityexplorers.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, we explore the transformative potential of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) with world-renowned expert Dr. Peter Attia, a physician specializing in longevity, health optimization, and performance. Dr. Attia, a Stanford Medical School graduate and former surgical oncology fellow at the National Cancer Institute, unpacks the science behind HRT and its profound impact on addressing symptoms of menopause—including low sex drive, hair loss, weight gain, and mood swings. From combating these challenges to enhancing overall vitality and longevity, this conversation sheds light on HRT as a powerful, life-changing medical tool. Follow Jillian on IG: @JillianMichaels Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast for free wherever you're listening or by using this link: https://bit.ly/KeepingItRealwithJillianMichaels Watch Keeping It Real on YouTube: https://bit.ly/KeepingItRealwithJillianMichaels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this episode, we explore the transformative potential of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) with world-renowned expert Dr. Peter Attia, a physician specializing in longevity, health optimization, and performance. Dr. Attia, a Stanford Medical School graduate and former surgical oncology fellow at the National Cancer Institute, unpacks the science behind HRT and its profound impact on addressing symptoms of menopause—including low sex drive, hair loss, weight gain, and mood swings. From combating these challenges to enhancing overall vitality and longevity, this conversation sheds light on HRT as a powerful, life-changing medical tool.Follow Jillian on IG: @JillianMichaelsDon't forget to subscribe to the podcast for free wherever you're listening or by using this link: https://bit.ly/KeepingItRealwithJillianMichaelsWatch Keeping It Real on YouTube: https://bit.ly/KeepingItRealwithJillianMichaels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The Story of My Life, Part 1 David is interviewed by Joshua Gibson, Host of the Psychological Weightlifting Podcast   Hi! Today will be a bit different. I appeared as a guest on a cool podcast called Psychological Weightlifting, hosted by Joshua Gibson. I kind of described the trajectory of my career, starting with my post-doctoral depression research at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, with an intermediate stop at the former Presbyterian University of Pennsylvania Medical Center, where I had a run-in with a violent individual named Bennie, and culminating in my work refining TEAM-CBT in my years on the adjunct faculty at the Stanford Medical School. Joshua and I really hit it off, and at the end of the podcast, he asked me if I could briefly illustrate some of the techniques I've developed in TEAM-CBT. I asked if he had an negative thoughts that we might work with, and boy, was I in for a big surprise. In fact, you'll hear all about it next week! Thanks for listening today! Joshua, Rhonda, and David

This week we speak to the authors of the brilliant book 'Preventing Prostate Cancer: Reduce Your Risk with Simple Proactive Choices' , Dr Benny Gavi M.D and Maya Eylon. Dr Gavi is a Harvard trained medical doctor who works at Stanford Hospital and Stanford Medical School in California, and Maya Eylon is a medical researcher and medical student . In this episode they talk to us about how lifestyle and nutrition can play a role in reducing the risk of developing prostate cancer, as well as slowing the progression and improving outcomes in men already diagnosed with prostate cancer. They analysed hundreds of studies to bring us the most concise up to date medical evidence on the impact of lifestyle choices, to empower men to take back control and improve their health. The studies referenced in today's episode can all be found here: https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/preventing-prostate-cancer-reduce-your-risk-with-simple-proactive-choices-benny-gavi/7039574?ean=9781570674099

There are dangers lurking in our food that affect your health and the health of our entire society, and you should know about them. In this episode, get the highlights from two recent Congressional events featuring expert testimony about the regulation of our food supply, as well as testimony from the man who is soon likely to be the most powerful person in our national health care system. Please Support Congressional Dish – Quick Links Contribute monthly or a lump sum via Support Congressional Dish via (donations per episode) Send Zelle payments to: Donation@congressionaldish.com Send Venmo payments to: @Jennifer-Briney Send Cash App payments to: $CongressionalDish or Donation@congressionaldish.com Use your bank's online bill pay function to mail contributions to: Please make checks payable to Congressional Dish Thank you for supporting truly independent media! Background Sources Joe Rogan Episodes The Joe Rogan Experience. The Joe Rogan Experience. The Joe Rogan Experience. The Joe Rogan Experience. Ron Johnson Scott Bauer. January 3, 2023. AP News. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Daniel Cusick. October 28, 2024. Politico. Rachel Treisman. August 5, 2024. NPR. Susanne Craig. May 8, 2024. The New York Times. Department of Health and Human Services U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. FDA “Generally Recognized as Safe” Approach Paulette M. Gaynor et al. April 2006. U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Paulette Gaynor and Sebastian Cianci. December 2005/January 2006. U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Glyphosate September 20, 2023. Phys.org. Lobbying and Conflicts of Interest OpenSecrets. OpenSecrets. OpenSecrets. LinkedIn. Shift from Democrats to Republicans Will Stone and Allison Aubrey. November 15, 2024. NPR. Helena Bottemiller Evich and Darren Samuelsohn. March 17, 2016. Politico. Audio Sources September 25, 2024 Roundtable discussion held by Senator Ron Johnson Participants: , Author, Good Energy; Tech entrepreneur, Levels , Co-founder, Truemed; Advocate, End Chronic Disease , aka the Food Babe, food activist Jillian Michaels, fitness expert, nutritionist, businesswoman, media personality, and author Dr. Chris Palmer, Founder and Director, Metabolic and Mental Health Program and Director, Department of Postgraduate and Continuing Education, McLean Hospital; Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School Brigham Buhler, Founder & CEO, Ways2Well Courtney Swan, nutritionist, real food activist, and founder of the popular platform "Realfoodology" , Founder and CEO, HumanCo; co-founder, Hu Kitchen Dr. Marty Makary, Chief of Islet Transplant Surgery, Professor of Surgery, and Public Policy Researcher, Johns Hopkins University Clips Robert F. Kennedy, Jr: When discussing improvements to US healthcare policy, politicians from both parties often say we have the best healthcare system in the world. That is a lie. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr: Every major pillar of the US healthcare system, as a statement of economic fact, makes money when Americans get sick. By far the most valuable asset in this country today is a sick child. The pharma industry, hospital industry, and medical school industry make more money when there are more interventions to perform on Americans, and by requiring insurance companies to take no more than 15% of premiums, Obamacare actually incentivized insurance companies to raise premiums to get 15% of a larger pie. This is why premiums have increased 100% since the passage of Obamacare, making health care the largest driver of inflation, while American life expectancy plummets. We spend four times per capita on health care than the Italians, but Italians live 7.5 years longer than us on average. And incidentally, Americans had the highest life expectancies in the world when I was growing up. Today, we've fallen an average of six years behind our European neighbors. Are we lazier and more suicidal than Italians? Or is there a problem with our system? Are there problems with our incentives? Are there problems with our food? 46:15 Robert F. Kennedy, Jr: So what's causing all of this suffering? I'll name two culprits, first and worst is ultra processed foods. 47:20 Robert F. Kennedy, Jr: The second culprit is toxic chemicals in our food, our medicine and our environment. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr: The good news is that we can change all this, and we can change it very, very, very quickly, and it starts with taking a sledgehammer to corruption, the conflicts in our regulatory agencies and in this building. These conflicts have transformed our regulatory agencies into predators against the American people and particularly our children. 80% of NIH grants go to people who have conflicts of interest, and these scientists are allowed to collect royalties of $150,000 a year on the products that they develop at NIH and then farm out to the pharmaceutical industry. The FDA, the USDA and CDC are all controlled by giant for-profit corporations. Their function is no longer to improve and protect the health of Americans. Their function is to advance the mercantile and commercial interests of the pharmaceutical industry that has transformed them and the food industry that has transformed them into sock puppets for the industry they're supposed to regulate. 75% of FDA funding does not come from taxpayers. It comes from pharma. And pharma executives and consultants and lobbyists cycle in and out of these agencies. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr: Money from the healthcare industry has compromised our regulatory agencies and this body as well. The reality is that many congressional healthcare staffers are worried about impressing their future bosses at pharmaceutical companies rather than doing the right thing for American children. Today, over 100 members of Congress support a bill to fund Ozempic with Medicare at $1,500 a month. Most of these members have taken money from the manufacturer of that product, a European company called Novo Nordisk. As everyone knows, once a drug is approved for Medicare, it goes to Medicaid, and there is a push to recommend Ozempic for Americans as young as six, over a condition, obesity, that is completely preventable and barely even existed 100 years ago. Since 74% of Americans are obese, the cost of all of them, if they take their Ozempic prescriptions, will be $3 trillion a year. This is a drug that has made Novo Nordisk the biggest company in Europe. It's a Danish company, but the Danish government does not recommend it. It recommends a change in diet to treat obesity and exercise. Virtually Novo Nordisk's entire value is based upon its projections of what Ozempic is going to sell to Americans. For half the price of Ozempic, we could purchase regeneratively raised organic agriculture, organic food for every American, three meals a day and a gym membership for every obese American. Why are members of Congress doing the bidding of this Danish company instead of standing up for American farmers and children? Robert F. Kennedy, Jr: For 19 years, solving the childhood chronic disease crisis has been the central goal of my life, and for 19 years, I have prayed to God every morning to put me in a position to end this calamity. I believe we have the opportunity for transformational, bipartisan change to transform American health, to hyper-charge our human capital, to improve our budget, and I believe, to save our spirits and our country. 1:23:10 Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI): Our next presenter, Dr. Marty Makary also bears a few scars from telling the truth during COVID. Dr. Makary is a surgeon and public policy researcher at Johns Hopkins University. He writes for The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, and is the author of two New York Times best selling books, Unaccountable and The Price We Pay. He's been an outspoken opponent of broad vaccine mandates and some COVID restrictions at schools. Dr. Makary holds degrees from Bucknell University, Thomas Jefferson University and Harvard University. Dr. Marty Makary: I'm trained in gastrointestinal surgery. My group at Johns Hopkins does more pancreatic cancer surgery than any hospital in the United States. But at no point in the last 20 years has anyone stopped to ask, why has pancreatic cancer doubled over those 20 years? Who's working on that? Who's looking into it? We are so busy in our health care system, billing and coding and paying each other, and every stakeholder has their gigantic lobby in Washington, DC, and everybody's making a lot of money, except for one stakeholder, the American citizen. They are financing this giant, expensive health care system through their paycheck deduction for health insurance and the Medicare excise tax as we go down this path, billing and coding and medicating. And can we be real for a second? We have poisoned our food supply, engineered highly addictive chemicals that we put into our food, we spray it with pesticides that kill pests. What do you think they do to our gut lining and our microbiome? And then they come in sick. The GI tract is reacting. It's not an acute inflammatory storm, it's a low grade chronic inflammation, and it makes people feel sick, and that inflammation permeates and drives so many of our chronic diseases that we didn't see half a century ago. Who's working on who's looking into this, who's talking about it? Our health care system is playing whack a mole on the back end, and we are not talking about the root causes of our chronic disease epidemic. We can't see the forest from the trees. Sometimes we're so busy in these short visits, billing and coding. We've done a terrible thing to doctors. We've told them, put your head down. Focus on billing and coding. We're going to measure you by your throughput and good job. You did a nice job. We have all these numbers to show for it. Well, the country is getting sicker. We cannot keep going down this path. We have the most over-medicated, sickest population in the world, and no one is talking about the root causes. Dr. Marty Makary: Somebody has got to speak up. Maybe we need to talk about school lunch programs, not just putting every kid on obesity drugs like Ozempic. Maybe we need to talk about treating diabetes with cooking classes, not just throwing insulin at everybody. Maybe we need to talk about environmental exposures that cause cancer, not just the chemo to treat it. We've got to talk about food as medicine. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI): So, Dr Makary, I've got a couple questions. First of all, how many years have you been practicing medicine? Dr. Marty Makary: 22 years. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI): So we've noticed a shift from decades ago when 80% of doctors are independent to now 80% are working for some hospital association. First of all, what has that meant in terms of doctors' independence and who they are really accountable too? Dr. Marty Makary: The move towards corporate medicine and mass consolidation that we've witnessed in our lifetime has meant more and more doctors are told to put their heads down, do your job: billing and coding short visits. We've not given doctors the time, research, or resources to deal with these chronic diseases. 1:32:45 Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI): Dr. Casey Means is a medical doctor, New York Times Best Selling Author, tech entrepreneur at Levels, an aspiring regenerative gardener and an outdoor enthusiast. While training as a surgeon, she saw how broken and exploitative the health care system is, and led to focus on how to keep people out of the operating room. And again, I would highly recommend everybody read Good Energy. It's a personal story, and you'll be glad you did. Dr. Casey Means: Over the last 50 years in the United States, we have seen rapidly rising rates of chronic illnesses throughout the entire body. The body and the brain, infertility, obesity, type 2 diabetes and pre-diabetes, Alzheimer's, dementia, cancer, heart disease, stroke, autoimmune disease, migraines, mental illness, chronic pain, fatigue, congenital abnormalities, chronic liver disease, autism, and infant and maternal mortality all going up. Americans live eight fewer years compared to people in Japan or Switzerland, and life expectancy is going down. I took an oath to do no harm, but listen to these stats. We're not only doing harm, we're flagrantly allowing harm. While it sounds grim, there is very good news. We know why all of these diseases are going up, and we know how to fix it. Every disease I mentioned is caused by or worsened by metabolic dysfunction, a word that it is thrilling to hear being used around this table. Metabolic dysfunction is a fundamental distortion of our cellular biology. It stops our cells from making energy appropriately. According to the American College of Cardiology, metabolic dysfunction now affects 93.2% of American adults. This is quite literally the cellular draining of our life force. This process is the result of three processes happening inside our cells, mitochondrial dysfunction, a process called oxidative stress, which is like a wildfire inside our cells, and chronic inflammation throughout the body and the gut, as we've heard about. Metabolic dysfunction is largely not a genetic issue. It's caused by toxic American ultra processed industrial food, toxic American chemicals, toxic American medications, and our toxic sedentary, indoor lifestyles. You would think that the American healthcare system and our government agencies would be clamoring to fix metabolic health and reduce American suffering and costs, but they're not. They are deafeningly silent about metabolic dysfunction and its known causes. It's not an overstatement to say that I learned virtually nothing at Stanford Medical School about the tens of thousands of scientific papers that elucidate these root causes of why American health is plummeting and how environmental factors are causing it. For instance, in medical school, I did not learn that for each additional serving of ultra processed food we eat, early mortality increases by 18%. This now makes up 67% of the foods our kids are eating. I took zero nutrition courses in medical school. I didn't learn that 82% of independently funded studies show harm from processed food, while 93% of industry sponsored studies reflect no harm. In medical school, I didn't learn that 95% of the people who created the recent USDA Food guidelines for America had significant conflicts of interest with the food industry. I did not learn that 1 billion pounds of synthetic pesticides are being sprayed on our food every single year. 99.99% of the farmland in the United States is sprayed with synthetic pesticides, many from China and Germany. And these invisible, tasteless chemicals are strongly linked to autism, ADHD, sex hormone disruption, thyroid disease, sperm dysfunction, Alzheimer's, dementia, birth defects, cancer, obesity, liver dysfunction, female infertility and more, all by hurting our metabolic health. I did not learn that the 8 billion tons of plastic that have been produced just in the last 100 years, plastic was only invented about 100 years ago, are being broken down into micro plastics that are now filling our food, our water, and we are now even inhaling them in our air. And that very recent research from just the past couple of months tells us that now about 0.5% of our brains by weight are now plastic. I didn't learn that there are more than 80,000 toxins that have entered our food, water, air and homes by industry, many of which are banned in Europe, and they are known to alter our gene expression, alter our microbiome composition and the lining of our gut, and disrupt our hormones. I didn't learn that heavy metals like aluminum and lead are present in our food, our baby formula, personal care products, our soil and many of the mandated medications, like vaccines and that these metals are neurotoxic and inflammatory. I didn't learn that the average American walks a paltry 3500 steps per day, even though we know based on science and top journals that walking, simply walking 7000 steps a day, slashes by 40-60% our risk of Alzheimer's, dementia, type two diabetes, cancer and obesity. I certainly did not learn that medical error and medications are the third leading cause of death in the United States. I didn't learn that just five nights of sleep deprivation can induce full blown pre-diabetes. I learned nothing about sleep, and we're getting about 20% less sleep on average than we were 100 years ago. I didn't learn that American children are getting less time outdoors now than a maximum security prisoner. And on average, adults spend 93% of their time indoors, even though we know from the science that separation from sunlight destroys our circadian biology, and circadian biology dictates our cellular biology. I didn't learn that professional organizations that we get our practice guidelines from, like the American Diabetes Association and American Academy of Pediatrics, have taken 10s of millions of dollars from Coke, Cadbury, processed food companies, and vaccine manufacturers like Moderna. I didn't learn that if we address these root causes that all lead to metabolic dysfunction and help patients change their food and lifestyle patterns with a united strong voice, we could reverse the chronic disease crisis in America, save millions of lives, and trillions of dollars in health care costs per year. Instead, doctors are learning that the body is 100 separate parts, and we learn how to drug, we learn how to cut and we learn how to bill. I'll close by saying that what we are dealing with here is so much more than a physical health crisis. This is a spiritual crisis we are choosing death over life. We are we are choosing death over life. We are choosing darkness over light for people and the planet, which are inextricably linked. We are choosing to erroneously believe that we are separate from nature and that we can continue to poison nature and then outsmart it. Our path out will be a renewed respect for the miracle of life and a renewed respect for nature. We can restore health to Americans rapidly with smart policy and courageous leadership. We need a return to courage. We need a return to common sense and intuition. We need a return to awe for the sheer miraculousness of our lives. We need all hands on deck. Thank you. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI): I'm not letting you off that easy. I've got a couple questions. So you outlined some basic facts that doctors should know that truthfully, you could cover in one hour of an introductory class in medical school, yes. So why aren't we teaching doctors these things? Dr. Casey Means: The easy thing to say would be, you know, follow the money. That sounds sort of trite, but frankly, I think that is the truth, but not in the way you might think that, like doctors are out to make money, or even medical schools. The money and the core incentive problem, which is that every institution that touches our health in America, from medical schools to pharmaceutical companies to health insurance companies to hospitals offices, they make more money when we are sick and less when we are healthy. That simple, one incentive problem corrodes every aspect of the way medicine is thought about. The way we think about the body, we talked about interconnectedness. It creates a system in which we silo the body into all these separate parts and create that illusion that we all buy into because it's profitable to send people to separate specialties. So it corrodes even the foundational conception of how we think about the body. So it is about incentives and money, but I would say that's the invisible hand. It's not necessarily affecting each doctor's clinical practice or the decision making. It's corroding every lever of the basics of how we even consider what the human body is and what life is. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI): In your book, you do a really good job of describing how, because of the specialization of medicine, you don't see the forest for the trees. The fact is, you do need specialized medicine. I mean, doctors can't know it all. So I think the question is, how do we get back to the reward for general practitioners that do focus on what you're writing about? Dr. Casey Means: I have huge respect for doctors, and I am incredibly grateful for the American health care system, which has produced miracles, and we absolutely need continue to have primary care doctors and specialists, and they should be rewarded highly. However, if we focused on what everyone here is talking about, I think we'd have 90% less throughput through our health care system. We would be able to have these doctors probably have a much better life to be honest. You know, because right now, doctors are working 100 hours a week seeing 50, 60, 70 patients, and could actually have more time with patients who develop these acute issues that need to be treated by a doctor. But so many of the things in the specialist office are chronic conditions that we know are fundamentally rooted in the cellular dysfunction I describe, which is metabolic dysfunction, which is created by our lifestyle. So I think that there's always going to be a place for specialists, but so so many, so much fewer. And I think if we had a different conception for the body is interconnected, they would also interact with each other in a very different way, a much more collaborative way. And then, of course, we need to incentivize doctors in the healthcare system towards outcomes, not throughput. 1:46:25 Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI): Our next presenter is Dr. Chris Palmer. Dr. Palmer is a Harvard trained psychiatrist, researcher and author of Brain Energy, where he explores a groundbreaking connection between metabolic health and mental illness. He is a leader in innovative approaches to treating psychiatric conditions, advocating for the use of diet and metabolic interventions to improve mental health outcomes. Dr. Palmer's work is reshaping how the medical field views and treats mental health disorders. Dr. Chris Palmer: I want to build on what Dr. Means just shared that these chronic diseases we face today. Obesity, diabetes, fatty liver, all share something in common. They are, in fact, metabolic dysfunction. I'm going to go into a little bit of the science, just to make sure we're all on the same page. Although most people think of metabolism as burning calories, it is far more than that. Metabolism is a series of chemical reactions that convert food into energy and building blocks essential for cellular health. When we have metabolic dysfunction, it can drive numerous chronic diseases, which is a paradigm shift in the medical field. Now there is no doubt metabolism is complicated. It really is. It is influenced by biological, psychological, environmental and social factors, and the medical field says this complexity is the reason we can't solve the obesity epidemic because they're still trying to understand every molecular detail of biology. But in fact, we don't need to understand biology in order to understand the cause. The cause is coming from our environment, a toxic environment like poor diet and exposure to harmful chemicals, and these are actually quite easy to study, understand, and address. There is no doubt food plays a key role. It provides the substrate for energy and building blocks. Nutritious foods support metabolism, while ultra processed options can disrupt it. It is shocking that today, in 2024, the FDA allows food manufacturers to introduce brand new chemicals into our food supply without adequate testing. The manufacturer is allowed to determine for themselves whether this substance is safe for you and your family to eat or not. Metabolism's impact goes beyond physical health. I am a psychiatrist. Some of you are probably wondering, why are you here? It also affects mental health. Because guess what? The human brain is an organ too, and when brain metabolism is impaired, it can cause symptoms that we call mental illness. It is no coincidence that as the rates of obesity and diabetes are skyrocketing, so too are the rates of mental illness. In case you didn't know, we have a mental health crisis. We have all time prevalence highs for depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, deaths of despair, drug overdoses, ADHD and autism. What does the mental health field have to say for this? Well, you know, mental illness is just chemical imbalances, or maybe trauma and stress that is wholly insufficient to explain the epidemic that we are seeing. And in fact, there is a better way to integrate the biopsychosocial factors known to play a role in mental illness. Mental Disorders at their core are often metabolic disorders impacting the brain. It's not surprising to most people that obesity and diabetes might play a role in depression or anxiety, but the rates of autism have quadrupled in just 20 years, and the rates of ADHD have tripled over that same period of time. These are neuro developmental disorders, and many people are struggling to understand, how on earth could they rise so rapidly? But it turns out that metabolism plays a profound role in neurodevelopment, and sure enough, parents with metabolic issues like obesity and diabetes are more likely to have children with autism and ADHD. This is not about fat shaming, because what I am arguing is that the same foods and chemicals and other drivers of obesity that are causing obesity in the parents are affecting the brain health of our children. There is compelling evidence that food plays a direct role in mental health. One study of nearly 300,000 people found that those who eat ultra processed foods daily are three times more likely to struggle with their mental health than people who never or rarely consume them. A systematic review found direct associations between ultra processed food exposure and 32 different health parameters, including mental mental health conditions. Now I'm not here to say that food is the only, or even primary driver of mental illness. Let's go back to something familiar. Trauma and stress do drive mental illness, but for those of you who don't know, trauma and stress are also associated with increased rates of obesity and diabetes. Trauma and stress change human metabolism. We need to put the science together. This brings me to a key point. We cannot separate physical and mental health from metabolic health. Addressing metabolic dysfunction has the potential to prevent and treat a wide range of chronic diseases. Dr. Chris Palmer: In my own work, I have seen firsthand how using metabolic therapies like the ketogenic diet and other dietary interventions can improve even severe mental illnesses like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, sometimes putting them into lasting remission. These reports are published in peer reviewed, prestigious medical journals. However, there is a larger issue at play that many have talked about, medical education and public health recommendations are really captured by industry and politics, and at best, they often rely on weak epidemiological data, resulting in conflicting or even harmful advice. We heard a reference to this, but in case you didn't know, a long time ago, we demonized saturated fat. And what was the consequence of demonizing saturated fat? We replaced it with "healthy vegetable shortening." That was the phrase we used, "healthy vegetable shortening." Guess what was in that healthy vegetable shortening? It was filled with trans fats, which are now recognized to be so harmful that they've been banned in the United States. Let's not repeat mistakes like this. Dr. Chris Palmer: So what's the problem? Number one, nutrition and mental health research are severely underfunded, with each of them getting less than 5% of the NIH budget. This is no accident. This is the concerted effort of lobbying by industry, food manufacturers, the healthcare industry, they do not want root causes discovered. We need to get back to funding research on the root causes of mental and metabolic disorders, including the effects of foods, chemicals, medications, environmental toxins, on the human brain and metabolism. Dr. Chris Palmer: The issue of micro plastics and nano plastics in the human body is actually, sadly, in its infancy. We have two publications out in the last couple of months demonstrating that micro plastics are, in fact, found in the human brain. And as Dr. Means said, and you recited, 0.5% of the body weight, or the brain's weight, appears to be composed of micro plastics. We need more research to better understand whether these micro plastics are, in fact, associated with harmful conditions, because microplastics are now ubiquitous. So some will argue, well, they're everywhere, and everybody's got them, and it's just a benign thing. Some will argue that the most compelling evidence against that is a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine a few months ago now, in which they were doing routine carotid endarterectomies, taking plaque out of people's carotid arteries. Just routinely doing that for clinical care, and then they analyzed those plaques for micro plastics. 58% of the people had detectable micro plastics in the plaques. So they compared this 58% group who had micro plastics to the ones who didn't, followed them for three years, just three years, and the ones who had micro plastics had four times the mortality. There is strong reason to believe, based on animal data and based on cell biology data, that microplastics are in fact, toxic to the human body, to mitochondrial function, to hormone dysregulation and all sorts of things. There are lots of reasons to believe that, but the scientists will say, we need more research. We need to better understand whether these micro plastics really are associated with higher rates of disease. I think people are terrified of the answer. People are terrified of the answer. And if you think about everything that you consume, and how much of it is not wrapped in plastic, all of those industries are going to oppose research. They are going to oppose research funding to figure this out ASAP, because that will be a monumental change to not just the food industry but our entire economy. Imagining just cleaning up the oceans and trying to get this plastic and then, more importantly, trying to figure out, how are we going to detox humans? How are we going to de-plasticize human beings? How are we going to get these things out? It is an enormous problem, but the reality is, putting our heads in the sand is not going to help. And I am really hopeful that by raising issues and letting people know about this health crisis, that maybe we will get answers quickly. Dr. Chris Palmer: Your question is, why are our health agencies not exploring these questions? It's because the health agencies are largely influenced by the industries they are supposed to be regulating and looking out for. The medical education community is largely controlled by pharmaceutical companies. One and a half billion dollars every year goes to support physician education. That's from pharmaceutical companies. One and a half billion from pharmaceutical companies. So physicians are getting educated with some influence, large influence, I would argue, by them, the health organizations. It's a political issue. The NIH, it's politics. Politicians are selecting people to be on the committees or people to oversee these organizations. Politicians rely on donations from companies and supporters to get re-elected, and the reality is this is not going to be easy to tackle. The challenge is that you'll get ethical politicians who say, I'm not going to take any of that money, and I'm going to try to do the right thing and right now, the way the system is set up, there's a good chance those politicians won't get re-elected, and instead, their opponents, who were more than happy to take millions of dollars in campaign contributions, will get re-elected, and then they will return the favor to their noble campaign donors. We are at a crossroads. We have to decide who are the constituents of the American government. Is it industry, or is it the American people? 2:09:35 Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI): Calley Means the co-founder of Truemed, a company that enables tax free spending on food and exercise. He recently started an advocacy coalition with leading health and wellness companies called End Chronic Disease. Early in his career, he was a consultant for food and pharma companies. He is now exposing practices they used to weaponize our institutions of trust, and he's doing a great job doing interviews with his sister, Casey. Calley Means: If you think about a medical miracle, it's almost certainly a solution that was invented before 1960 for an acute condition: emergency surgical procedures to ensure a complicated childbirth wasn't a death sentence, sanitation procedures, antibiotics that insured infection was an inconvenience, not deadly, eradicating polio, regular waste management procedures that helped control outbreaks like the bubonic plague, sewage systems that replaced the cesspools and opened drains, preventing human waste from contaminating the water. The US health system is a miracle in solving acute conditions that will kill us right away. But economically, acute conditions aren't great in our modern system, because the patient is quickly cured and is no longer a customer. Start in the 1960s the medical system took the trust engendered by these acute innovations like antibiotics, which were credited with winning World War Two, and they used that trust to ask patients not to question its authority on chronic diseases, which can last a lifetime and are more profitable. But the medicalization of chronic disease in the past 50 years has been an abject failure. Today, we're in a siloed system where there's a treatment for everything. And let's just look at the stats. Heart disease has gone up as more statins are prescribed. Type 2 diabetes has gone up as more Metformin is prescribed. ADHD has gone up as more Adderall is prescribed. Depression and suicide has gone up as more SSRIs are prescribed. Pain has gone up as more opioids are prescribed. Cancer has gone up as we've spent more on cancer. And now JP Morgan literally at the conference in San Francisco, recently, they put up a graph, and they showed us more Ozempic is projected to be prescribed over the next 10 years, obesity rates are going to go up as more is prescribed. Explain that to me. There was clapping. All the bankers were clapping like seals at this graphic. Our intervention based system is by design. In the early 1900s, John D. Rockefeller using that he could use byproducts from oil production to create pharmaceuticals, heavily funded medical schools throughout the United States to teach a curriculum based on the intervention-first model of Dr. William Stewart Halsted, the founding physician of Johns Hopkins, who created the residency-based model that viewed invasive surgical procedures and medication as the highest echelon of medicine. An employee of Rockefeller's was tasked to create the Flexner Report, which outlined a vision for medical education that prioritized interventions and stigmatized nutritional and holistic remedies. Congress affirmed the Flexner Report in 1910 to establish that any credentialed medical institution in the United States had to follow the Halsted-Rockefeller intervention based model that silos disease and downplay viewing the body as an interconnected system. It later came out that Dr. Halsted's cocaine and morphine addiction fueled his day long surgical residencies and most of the medical logic underlying the Flexner Report was wrong. But that hasn't prevented the report and the Halsted-Rockefeller engine based brand of medicine from being the foundational document that Congress uses to regulate medical education today. Calley Means: Our processed food industry was created by the cigarette industry. In the 1980s, after decades of inaction, the Surgeon General and the US government finally, finally said that smoking might be harmful, and smoking rates plummeted. We listened to doctors in this country. We listened to medical leadership, and as smoking rates plummeted, cigarette companies, with their big balance sheets, strategically bought up food companies, and by 1990 the two largest food companies in the world were Philip Morris and RJ Reynolds, two cigarette companies. These cigarette companies moved two departments over from the cigarette department to the food department. They moved the scientists. Cigarette companies were the highest payers of scientists, one of the biggest employers of scientists to make the cigarettes addictive. They moved these addiction specialists, world leading addiction specialists, to the food department by the thousands. And those scientists weaponized our ultra processed food. That is the problem with ultra processed food. You have the best scientists in the world creating this food to be palatable and to be addictive. They then moved their lobbyists over. They used the same playbook, and their lobbyists co-opted the USDA and created the food pyramid. The Food Pyramid was a document created by the cigarette industry through complete corporate capture, and was an ultra processed food marketing document saying that we needed a bunch of carbs and sugar. And we listened to medical experts in this country, the American people, American parents. Many parents who had kids in the 90s thought it was a good thing to do to give their kids a bunch of ultra processed foods and carb consumption went up 20% in the American diet in the next 10 years. The Devil's bargain comes in in that this ultra processed food consumption has been one of the most profitable dynamics in American history for the health care industry. As we've all just been decimated with chronic conditions, the medical industry hasn't. Not only have they been silent on this issue, they've actually been complicit, working for the food industry. I helped funnel money from Coca Cola to the American Diabetes Association. Yeah. 2:31:40 Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI): Next presenter will be Brigham Buhler. Brigham is the Founder and CEO of Ways2Well, a healthcare company that provides personalized preventive care through telemedicine, with a strong background in the pharmaceutical industry. Brigham is focused on making healthcare more accessible by harnessing the power of technology, delivering effective and tailored treatments. His vision for improving health outcomes has positioned him as a leader in modern patient centered healthcare solutions. Brigham Buhler: We hear people reference President Eisenhower's speech all the time about the military industrial complex, but rarely do we hear the second half of that speech. He also warned us about the rise of the scientific industrial complex. He warned us, if we allow the elite to control the scientific research, it could have dire consequences. 2:36:30 Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI): I'm going to call an audible here as moderator, I saw that hopefully the future chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Senator Mike Crapo from Idaho, came into the room. I asked Mike to share his story. He used to wear larger suits, let's put it that way. But he went down the path of the ketogenic diet, I believe. But Mike, why don't you tell your story? And by the way, he's somebody you want to influence. Chairman of Senate Finance Committee makes an awful lot of decisions on Medicare, Medicaid, a lot of things we talked about with Ozempic, now the lobbying group try and make that available, and how harmful, I think, most people in this room think that might be so. Senator Crapo, if you could just kind of tell us your story in terms of your diet change and what results you had. Sen. Mike Crapo (R-ID): Well, first of all, let me thank you. I didn't come here to say anything. I came here to listen, but I appreciate the opportunity to just have a second to tell you my personal story. I'll say before I do that, thank you for Ron Johnson. Senator Johnson is also a member of the Finance Committee, and it is my hope that we can get that committee, which I think has the most powerful jurisdiction, particularly over these areas, of any in the United States Congress, and so I'm hopeful we can get a focus on addressing the government's part of the role in this to get us back on a better track. 2:54:35 Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI): Vani Hari, known as the Food Babe -- they wrote that for me, that wasn't me, that's my not my nickname -- is a food activist, author and speaker committed to improving food quality and safety. She has built a powerful platform through her blog advocating for transparency in food labeling and the removal of harmful chemicals from processed food. Her activism has spurred significant change in the food industry, encouraging consumers to make healthier, more informed choices, while prompting companies to adopt cleaner practices. Vani Hari: Our government is letting US food companies get away with serving American citizens harmful ingredients that are banned or heavily regulated in other countries. Even worse, American food companies are selling the same exact products overseas without these chemicals, but choose to continue serving us the most toxic version here. It's un-American. One set of ingredients there, and one set of ingredients here. Let me give you some examples. This is McDonald's french fries. I would like to argue that probably nobody in this room has not had a McDonald's french fry, by the way, nobody raised their hand during the staff meeting earlier today. In the US, there's 11 ingredients. In the UK, there's three, and salt is optional. An ingredient called dimethyl polysiloxane is an ingredient preserved with formaldehyde, a neurotoxin, in the US version. This is used as a foaming agent, so they don't have to replace the oil that often, making McDonald's more money here in the United States, but they don't do that across the pond. Here we go, this is Skittles. Notice the long list of ingredient differences, 10 artificial dyes in the US version and titanium dioxide. This ingredient is banned in Europe because it can cause DNA damage. Artificial dyes are made from petroleum, and products containing these dyes require a warning label in Europe that states it may cause adverse effects on activity and attention in children, and they have been linked to cancer and disruptions in the immune system. This on the screen back here, is Gatorade. In the US, they use red 40 and caramel color. In Germany, they don't, they use carrot and sweet potatoes to color their Gatorade. This is Doritos. The US version has three different three different artificial dyes and MSG, the UK version does not and let's look at cereal. General Mills is definitely playing some tricks on us. They launched a new version of Trix just recently in Australia. It has no dyes, they even advertise that, when the US version still does. This is why I became a food activist. My name is Vani Hari, and I only want one thing. I want Americans to be treated the same way as citizens in other countries by our own American companies. Vani Hari: We use over 10,000 food additives here in the United States and in Europe, there's only 400 approved. In 2013, I discovered that Kraft was producing their famous mac and cheese in other countries without artificial dyes. They used Yellow 5 and Yellow 6 here. I was so outraged by this unethical practice that I decided to do something about it. I launched a petition asking Kraft to remove artificial dyes from their products here in the United States, and after 400,000 signatures and a trip to their headquarters, Kraft finally announced they would make the change. I also discovered Subway was selling sandwiches with a chemical called azodicarbonamide in their bread in other countries. This is the same chemical they use in yoga mats and shoe rubber. You know, when you turn a yoga mat sideways and you see the evenly dispersed air bubbles? Well, they wanted to do the same thing in bread, so it would be the same exact product every time you went to a Subway. When the chemical is heated, studies show that it turns into a carcinogen. Not only is this ingredient banned in Europe and Australia, you get fined $450,000 if you get caught using it in Singapore. What's really interesting is when this chemical is heated, studies show that it turns into a carcinogen. Not only is this ingredient banned, but we were able to get Subway to remove azodicarbonamide from their bread in the United States after another successful petition. And as a bonus, there was a ripple effect in almost every bread manufacturer in America followed suit. For years, Starbucks didn't publish their ingredients for their coffee drinks. It was a mystery until I convinced a barista to show me the ingredients on the back of the bottles they were using to make menu items like their famous pumpkin spice lattes. I found out here in the United States, Starbucks was coloring their PSLs with caramel coloring level four, an ingredient made from ammonia and linked to cancer, but using beta carotene from carrots to color their drinks in the UK. After publishing an investigation and widespread media attention, Starbucks removed caramel coloring from all of their drinks in America and started publishing the ingredients for their entire menu. I want to make an important point here. Ordinary people who rallied for safer food shared this information and signed petitions. Were able to make these changes. We did this on our own. But isn't this something that the people in Washington, our elected politicians, should be doing? Vani Hari: Asking companies to remove artificial food dye would make an immediate impact. They don't need to reinvent the wheel. They already have the formulations. As I've shown you, consumption of artificial food dyes has increased by 500% in the last 50 years, and children are the biggest consumers. Yes, those children. Perfect timing. 43% of products marketed towards children in the grocery store contain artificial dyes. Food companies have found in focus groups, children will eat more of their product with an artificial dye because it's more attractive and appealing. And the worst part, American food companies know the harms of these additives because they were forced to remove them overseas due to stricter regulations and to avoid warning labels that would hurt sales. This is one of the most hypocritical policies of food companies, and somebody needs to hold them accountable. Vani Hari: When Michael Taylor was the Deputy Commissioner of the of the FDA, he said, he admitted on NPR, we don't have the resources, we don't have the capabilities to actually regulate food chemicals, because we don't have the staff. There's no one there. We are under this assumption, and I think a lot of Americans are under this assumption, that every single food additive ingredient that you buy at the grocery store has been approved by some regulatory body. It hasn't. It's been approved by the food companies themselves. There's 1000s of chemicals where the food company creates it, submits the safety data, and then the FDA rubber stamps it, because they don't have any other option. 3:09:15 Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI): So our next presenter is Jason Karp. Jason is the founder and CEO of HumanCo, a mission driven company that invests in and builds brands focused on healthier living and sustainability. In addition to HumanCo, Jason is the co-founder of Hu Kitchen, known for creating the number one premium organic chocolate in the US. My wife will appreciate that. Prior to HumanCo, Jason spent over 21 years in the hedge fund industry, where he was the founder and CEO of an investment fund that managed over $4 billion. Jason graduated summa cum laude from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. 3:11:10 Jason Karp: I've been a professional investor for 26 years, dealing with big food companies, seeing what happens in their boardrooms, and why we now have so much ultra processed food. Jason Karp: Having studied the evolution of corporations, I believe the root cause of how we got here is an unintended consequence of the unchecked and misguided industrialization of agriculture and food. I believe there are two key drivers behind how we got here. First, America has much looser regulatory approach to approving new ingredients and chemicals than comparable developed countries. Europe, for example, uses a guilty until proven innocent standard for the approval of new chemicals, which mandates that if an ingredient might pose a potential health risk, it should be restricted or banned for up to 10 years until it is proven safe. In complete contrast, our FDA uses an innocent until proven guilty approach for new chemicals or ingredients that's known as GRAS, or Generally Recognized as Safe. This recklessly allows new chemicals into our food system until they are proven harmful. Shockingly, US food companies can use their own independent experts to bring forth a new chemical without the approval of the FDA. It is a travesty that the majority of Americans don't even know they are constantly exposed to 1000s of untested ingredients that are actually banned or regulated in other countries. To put it bluntly, for the last 50 years, we have been running the largest uncontrolled science experiment ever done on humanity without their consent. Jason Karp: And the proof is in the pudding. Our health differences compared to those countries who use stricter standards are overwhelmingly conclusive. When looking at millions of people over decades, on average, Europeans live around five years longer, have less than half our obesity rates, have significantly lower chronic disease, have markedly better mental health, and they spend as little as 1/3 on health care per person as we do in this country. While lobbyists and big food companies may say we cannot trust the standards of these other countries because it over regulates, it stifles innovation, and it bans new chemicals prematurely, I would like to point out that we trust many of these other countries enough to have nuclear weapons. These other countries have demonstrated it is indeed possible to not only have thriving companies, but also prioritize the health of its citizens with a clear do no harm approach towards anything that humans put in or on our bodies. Jason Karp: The second driver, how we got here, is all about incentives. US industrial food companies have been myopically incentivized to reward profit growth, yet bear none of the social costs of poisoning our people and our land. Since the 1960s, America has seen the greatest technology and innovation boom in history. As big food created some of the largest companies in the world, so too did their desire for scaled efficiency. Companies had noble goals of making the food safer, more shelf stable, cheaper and more accessible. However, they also figured out how to encourage more consumption by making food more artificially appealing with brighter colors and engineered taste and texture. This is the genesis of ultra processed food. Because of these misguided regulatory standards, American companies have been highly skilled at maximizing profits without bearing the societal costs. They have replaced natural ingredients with chemicals. They have commodified animals into industrial widgets, and they treat our God given planet as an inexhaustible, abusable resource. Sick Americans are learning the hard way that food and agriculture should not be scaled in the same ways as iPhones. 3:16:50 Jason Karp: They use more chemicals in the US version, because it is more profitable and because we allow them to do so. Jason Karp: Artificial food dyes are cheaper and they are brighter. And the reason that I chose to use artificial food dyes in my public activist letter is because there's basically no counter argument. Many of the things discussed today, I think there is a nuanced debate, but with artificial food dyes, they have shown all over the world that they can use colorants that come from fruit. This is the Canadian version. This is the brightness of the Canadian version, just for visibility, and this is the brightness of artificial food dyes. So of course, Kellogg and other food companies will argue children prefer this over this, just as they would prefer cocaine over sugar. That doesn't make it okay. Calley Means: Senator, can I just say one thing? As Jason and Vani were talking, it brought me back to working for the food industry. We used to pay conservative lobbyists to go to every office and say that it was the "nanny state" to regulate food. And I think that's, as a conservative myself, something that's resonated. I just cannot stress enough that, as we're hopefully learned today, the food industry has rigged our systems beyond recognition. And addressing a rigged market is not an attack on the free market. Is a necessity for a free market to take this corruption out. So I just want to say that. 3:21:00 Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI): Our next presenter is Jillian Michaels. Ms. Michaels is a globally recognized fitness expert, entrepreneur, and best selling author. With her no nonsense approach to health, she's inspired millions through her fitness programs, books and digital platforms, best known for her role on The Biggest Loser, Michaels promotes a balanced approach to fitness and nutrition and emphasizing long term health and self improvement. Jillian Michaels: The default human condition in the 21st century is obese by design. Specific, traceable forms of what's referred to as structural violence are created by the catastrophic quartet of big farming, big food, Big Pharma, and big insurance. They systematically corrupt every institution of trust, which has led to the global spread of obesity and disease. Dysfunctional and destructive agricultural legislation like the Farm Bill, which favors high yield, genetically engineered crops like corn and soy, leading to the proliferation of empty calories, saturated with all of these toxins that we've been talking about today for three hours, it seems like we can never say enough about it, and then this glut of cheap calories provides a boon to the food industry giants. They just turn it into a bounty of ultra processed, factory-assembled foods and beverages strategically engineered to undermine your society and foster your dependence, like nicotine and cocaine, so we literally cannot eat just one. And to ensure that you don't, added measures are taken to inundate our physical surroundings. We're literally flooded with food, and we are brainwashed by ubiquitous cues to eat, whether it's the Taco Bell advertisement on the side of a bus as you drive to work with a vending machine at your kids school, there is no place we spend time that's left untouched. They're omnipresent. They commandeer the narrative, with 30 billion worth of advertising dollars, commercials marketed to kids, with mega celebrities eating McDonald's and loving it, sponsored dietitians paid to promote junk food on social media, utilizing anti-diet body positivity messaging like, "derail the shame" in relation to fast food consumption, Time Magazine brazenly issuing a defense of ultra processed foods on their cover with the title, "What if altra processed foods aren't as bad as you think?" And when people like us try to sound the alarm, they ensure that we are swiftly labeled as anti-science, fat shamers, and even racists. They launch aggressive lobbying efforts to influence you. Our politicians to shape policy, secure federal grants, tax credits, subsidy dollars, which proliferates their product and heavily pads their bottom line. They have created a perfect storm in which pharmaceuticals that cost hundreds, if not 1000s per month, like Ozempic, that are linked to stomach paralysis, pancreatitis and thyroid cancer, can actually surge. This reinforces a growing dependence on medical interventions to manage weight in a society where systemic change in food production and consumption is desperately needed and also very possible. These monster corporations have mastered the art of distorting the research, influencing the policy, buying the narrative, engineering the environment, and manipulating consumer behavior. Jillian Michaels: While I have been fortunate enough to pull many back from the edge over the course of my 30 year career, I have lost just as many, if not more, than I have saved. I have watched them slip through my fingers, mothers that orphan their children, husbands that widow their wives. I have even watched parents forced to suffer the unthinkable loss of their adult children. There are not words to express the sadness I have felt and the fury knowing that they were literally sacrificed at the altar of unchecked corporate greed. Most Americans are simply too financially strained, psychologically drained and physically addicted to break free without a systemic intervention. Attempting to combat the status quo and the powers that be is beyond swimming upstream. It is like trying to push a rampaging river that's infested with piranhas. After years of trying to turn the tide, I submit that the powers that be are simply too powerful for us to take on alone. I implore the people here that shape the policy to take a stand. The buck must stop with you, while the American people tend to the business of raising children and participating in the workforce to ensure that the wheels of our country go around. They tapped you to stand watch. They tapped you to stand guard. We must hold these bad actors accountable. And I presume the testimonials you heard today moved you. Digest them, discuss them, and act upon them, because if this current trend is allowed to persist, the stakes will be untenable. We are in the middle of an extinction level event. The American people need help. They need heroes. And people of Washington, your constituents chose you to be their champion. Please be the change. Thank you. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI): There was one particular piece of legislation or one thing that we could do here in Washington, what would it be? Jillian Michaels: Get rid of Citizens United and get the money out of politics. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI): Okay. 3:37:00 Calley Means: To the healthcare staffers slithering behind your bosses, working to impress your future bosses at the pharmaceutical companies, the hospitals, the insurance companies, many of them are in this building, and we are coming for you. 3:37:25 Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI): Next up is Ms. Courtney Swan. Ms. Swan is a nutritionist, real food activist, and founder of the popular platform, Realfoodology. She advocates for transparency in the food industry, promoting the importance of whole foods and clean eating. Courtney is passionate about educating the public on the benefits of a nutrient dense diet, and she encourages sustainable, chemical-free farming practices to ensure better health for people and the planet. Courtney Swan: Our current agriculture system's origin story involves large chemical companies -- not farmers, chemists. 85% of the food that you are consuming started from a patented seed sold by a chemical corporation that was responsible for creating agent orange in the Vietnam War. Why are chemical companies feeding America? Corn, soy and wheat are not only the most common allergens, but are among the most heavily pesticide sprayed crops today. In 1974 the US started spraying our crops with an herbicide called glyphosate, and in the early 1990s we began to see the release of genetically modified foods into our food supply. It all seems to begin with a chemical company by the name IG Farben, the later parent company of Bayer Farben, provided the chemicals used in Nazi nerve agents and gas chambers. Years later, a second chemical company, Monsanto, joined the war industry with a production of Agent Orange, a toxin used during the Vietnam War. When the wars ended, these companies needed a market for their chemicals, so they pivoted to killing bugs and pests on American farmlands. Monsanto began marketing glyphosate with a catchy name, Roundup. They claimed that these chemicals were harmless and that they safeguarded our crops from pests. So farmers started spraying these supposedly safe chemicals on our farmland. They solved the bug problem, but they also killed the crops. Monsanto offered a solution with the creation of genetically modified, otherwise known as GMO, crops that resisted the glyphosate in the roundup that they were spraying. These Roundup Ready crops allow farmers to spray entire fields of glyphosate to kill off pests without harming the plants, but our food is left covered in toxic chemical residue that doesn't wash, dry, or cook off. Not only is it sprayed to kill pests, but in the final stages of harvest, it is sprayed on the wheat to dry it out. Grains that go into bread and cereals that are in grocery stores and homes of Americans are heavily sprayed with these toxins. It's also being sprayed on oats, chickpeas, almonds, potatoes and more. You can assume that if it's not organic, it is likely contaminated with glyphosate. In America, organic food, by law, cannot contain GMOs and glyphosate, and they are more expensive compared to conventionally grown options, Americans are being forced to pay more for food that isn't poisoned. The Environmental Working Group reported a test of popular wheat-based products and found glyphosate contamination in 80 to 90% of the products on grocery store shelves. Popular foods like Cheerios, Goldfish, chickpea pasta, like Banza, Nature Valley bars, were found have concerning levels of glyphosate. If that is not alarming enough, glyphosate is produced by and distributed from China. In 2018, Bayer bought Monsanto. They currently have patented soybeans, corn, canola and sugar beets, and they are the largest distributor of GMO corn and soybean seeds. Americans deserve a straight answer. Why does an agrochemical company own where our food comes from? Currently, 85 to 100% of corn and soy crops in the US are genetically modified. 80% of GMOs are engineered to withstand glyphosate, and a staggering 280 million pounds of glyphosate are sprayed on American crops annually. We are eating this roundup ready corn, but unlike GMO crops, humans are not Roundup Ready. We are not resistant to these toxins, and it's causing neurological damage, endocrine disruption, it's harming our reproductive health and it's affecting fetal development. Glyphosate is classified as a carcinogen by the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer. It is also suspected to contribute towards the rise in celiac disease and gluten sensitivities. They're finding glyphosate in human breast milk, placentas, our organs, and even sperm. It's also being found in our rain and our drinking water. Until January of 2022, many companies made efforts to obscure the presence of GMOs and pesticides in food products from American consumers. It was only then that legislation came into effect mandating that these companies disclose such ingredients with a straightforward label stating, made with bio engineered ingredients, but it's very small on the package. Meanwhile, glyphosate still isn't labeled on our food. Parents in America are unknowingly feeding their children these toxic foods. Dr. Don Huber, a glyphosate researcher, warns that glyphosate will make the outlawed 1970s insecticide DDT look harmless in comparison to glyphosate. Why is the US government subsidizing the most pesticide sprayed crops using taxpayer dollars? These are the exact foods that are driving the epidemic of chronic disease. These crops, heavily sprayed with glyphosate, are then processed into high fructose corn syrup and refined vegetable oils, which are key ingredients for the ultra processed foods that line our supermarket shelves and fill our children's lunches in schools across the nation. Children across America are consuming foods such as Goldfish and Cheerios that are loaded with glyphosate. These crops also feed our livestock, which then produce the eggs, dairy and meat products that we consume. They are in everything. Pick up almost any ultra processed food package on the shelf, and you will see the words, contains corn, wheat and soy on the ingredients panel. Meanwhile, Bayer is doing everything it can to keep consumers in the dark, while our government protects these corporate giants. They fund educational programs at major agricultural universities, they lobby in Washington, and they collaborate with lawmakers to protect their profits over public health. Two congressmen are working with Bayer right now on the Farm Bill to protect Bayer from any liability, despite already having to pay out billions to sick Americans who got cancer from their product. They know that their product is harming people. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI): Couple questions. So you really have two issues raised here. Any concern about just GMO seeds and GMO crops, and then you have the contamination, Glycosate, originally is a pre-emergent, but now it's sprayed on the actual crops and getting in the food. Can you differentiate those two problems? I mean, what concerns are the GMO seeds? Maybe other doctors on t

Artificial Intelligence holds the potential to transform much of our lives and healthcare professions are embracing it for everything from cost savings to diagnostics. But who is to blame when AI assisted healthcare goes wrong? How is the law developing to balance the benefits and risks? In this episode, Pam and Rich are joined by health policy expert Michelle Mello and Neel Guha, a Stanford JD/PhD candidate in computer science, for a discussion on the transformative role of AI in healthcare. They examine AI's potential to enhance diagnostics and streamline workflows while addressing the ethical, legal, and safety challenges this new technology can bring. The conversation highlights the urgency of adapting regulatory frameworks, the complexities of liability among hospitals, developers, and practitioners, and the need for rigorous testing to ensure patient safety as AI integration in healthcare advances.Connect:Episode Transcripts >>> Stanford Legal Podcast WebsiteStanford Legal Podcast >>> LinkedIn PageRich Ford >>>  Twitter/XPam Karlan >>> Stanford Law School PageStanford Law School >>> Twitter/XStanford Lawyer Magazine >>> Twitter/XLinks:Michelle Mello >>> Stanford Law page(00:00:00) Chapter 1: Understanding AI in MedicineThe episode begins with a broad introduction to AI's applications in medicine. Neel Guha explains generative AI systems and their rapid advancement, including practical applications like chatbots, imaging, and decision-making tools. Michelle Mello highlights AI's widespread integration, from diagnostic tools like radiological imaging and predictive algorithms to administrative uses that aim to reduce physician burnout.(00:07:04) Chapter 2: The Benefits and Risks of AI in HealthcareThe group explores the advantages of AI in medicine, such as enhanced diagnostic precision, reduced administrative burdens, and improved patient outcomes. Michelle Mello identifies potential risks, like automation bias, where reliance on AI might lead to unchecked errors, highlighting the tension between time-saving tools and maintaining human oversight.(00:08:22) Chapter 3: Legal Challenges and Liability in AI-Driven MedicineThe conversation turns to the legal implications of AI in healthcare. Neel Guha outlines scenarios where AI contributes to patient harm, discussing negligence claims, product liability, and the complexity of determining accountability. Michelle Mello and the hosts analyze how liability standards might evolve, comparing AI's systematic errors to human fallibility and addressing the interplay of human-AI collaboration in preventing mistakes.(00:14:47) Chapter 4: The Challenges of AI and Transparency in Decision-MakingThe group explores parallels between medical and anti-discrimination fields in understanding machine learning's opaque decision-making. Neel Guha delves into the evolution of AI systems from rule-based programming to complex machine learning, emphasizing challenges in identifying points of failure across stakeholders like hospitals, physicians, and developers.(00:17:35) Chapter 5: Regulation and Liability of AI in HealthcareMichelle Mello discusses the regulatory framework for AI as a medical device, comparing outdated 1976-era regulations to modern challenges. The conversation shifts to gaps in tort liability and the risks of developers limiting their liability through contracts. Proposals for redistributing liability to incentivize better private governance are examined alongside the need for robust AI quality assurance akin to crash tests or clinical trials.(00:23:13) Chapter 6: The Road Ahead: Balancing Innovation and SafetyThe speakers analyze the distinct challenges of regulating AI across diverse healthcare environments. Neel Guha and Michelle Mello discuss adapting evaluation practices to align with AI's real-world complexities. Optimism prevails as Michelle highlights AI's potential to address critical issues like diagnostic delays, advocating for guardrails to ensure safety without stifling innovation. The episode concludes with reflections on Stanford's interdisciplinary approach to these pressing issues.

Dr. David Burns, clinical psychiatrist, Adjunct Clinical Professor Emeritus at Stanford Medical School, bestselling author of numerous books, an award-winning researcher and teacher, and podcast host joins me on this episode. David graduated magna cum laude from Amherst College, received his M.D. from Stanford University School of Medicine, and completed his psychiatry residency at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. Articles about him have been featured in notable media outlets including The New York Times and Reader's Digest, and he's been interviewed on more than 1,000 radio and TV shows. Topics we cover include David's journey into psychiatry, experiences that shaped his groundbreaking work in cognitive behavioral therapy, what's behind our feelings, cognitive distortions, why we resist change, TEAM CBT, and more. Get connected with David: Website: https://feelinggood.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DavidBurnsMD/ Twitter: https://x.com/daviddburnsmd LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-burns-86178657/ Purchase a copy of Feeling Great: https://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Great-Revolutionary-Treatment-Depression/dp/1962305392 Try the Feeling Great app: https://www.feelinggreat.com/ Listen to the Feeling Good Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/feeling-good-podcast-team-cbt-the-new-mood-therapy/id1171155453 Leave a 5-star review with a comment on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/business-minds-coffee-chat/id1539014324  Subscribe to my Business Builder Newsletter: https://bit.ly/32y0YxJ  Want to learn how you can work with me to gain more clarity, build a rock-solid foundation for your business, and achieve the results and success you deserve? Visit http://jayscherrbusinessconsulting.com/ and schedule a 1:1 discovery coaching call. Enjoy, thanks for listening, and please share with a friend! To your success, Jay

For a long time, people could tell that there was some connection between chickenpox and shingles. But exactly how they were related was a mystery. Then, in the 1950s, a family doctor shipped out to a remote Scottish island to investigate an outbreak, and made a discovery that shaped our understanding of shingles. On today's show, Ann Arvin, professor emerita at Stanford Medical School, tells us that detective story. Then Robert Johnson of the University of Bristol explains what he's learned about treating pain in his decades working with shingles patients.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In EPISODE 177 OF GROWING OLDER LIVING YOUNGER, Dr. Gillian Lockitch talks with Dr. Brad Stuart about his book "Facing Death: Spirituality, Science, and Surrender at the End of Life." Dr. Stuart discusses his transition from emergency medicine to hospice care, emphasizing how he came to realize the importance of healing over simply curing. He shares personal experiences and scientific insights into near-death experiences and the role of the default mode network in the brain. He highlights the spiritual and emotional aspects of end-of-life care, advocating for a holistic approach that includes mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being. He also touches on the potential of psychedelic therapy in addressing death anxiety and depression. Brad Stuart, MD is a physician specializing in end-of-life care, a healthcare innovator, and an author and international speaker. He has devoted his career to helping make the end of life a vital part of life itself. After graduating from Stanford Medical School and practicing internal medicine in the ER and ICU, he switched over to hospice practice to care for the dying. As Senior Medical Director for the largest healthcare system in Northern California, he created the first large-scale Advanced Illness Management (AIM) program in the US, funded by a $13 million award from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation. He was featured in the HBO special, Letting Go: A Hospice Journey. Brad has been recognized as Physician of the Year by the California Association of Health Services at Home, named a Top 20 national difference-maker by HealthLeaders' Media, and designated as a Visionary by the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine. Episode Timeline 0:01 Introduction to Dr. Stuart's journey from ER/ICU doctor into end-of-life care 12:48 The evolution of Dr. Stuart's approach to medicine 17:49 Personal experiences with death and recalled experiences   36:42 Neuroscience and Near-Death Experiences   43:16 Conclusion and Final Thoughts   Book : Facing Death: Spirituality, Science, and Surrender at the End of Life. https://www.bradstuartmd.com Schedule a free Discovery Call with Dr. Gillian And if you have not already done so, follow, rate and review this Growing Older Living Younger podcast.

HURRY! Tickets Available for The Embodied Healing Intensive http://jjflizanes.com/ehi   Bruce H. Lipton, PhD, cell biologist and lecturer, is an internationally recognized leader in bridging science and spirit. Bruce was on the faculty of the University of Wisconsin's School of Medicine and later performed groundbreaking stem cell research at Stanford Medical School. His pioneering research on cloned human stem cells presaged today's revolutionary new field of epigenetics. He is the bestselling author of The Biology of Belief and The Honeymoon Effect, and he is the coauthor, with Steve Bhaerman, of Spontaneous Evolution. Bruce received the prestigious Goi Peace Award (Japan) in honor of his scientific contribution to world harmony. http://brucelipton.com   JJ Flizanes is an Empowerment Strategist and the host of several podcasts including People's Choice Awards nominee Spirit, Purpose & Energy. JJ Flizanes works with conscious, spiritual truth seekers who want to remove emotional blocks to success. She helps people identify sabotaging patterns and transmute struggle into joy. Through a series of clarifying exercises, she is able to curate a personalized roadmap to emotional healing.  JJ is passionate about empowering people with the knowledge and awareness of how they can live the life of their dreams. http://jjflizanes.com

HURRY! Tickets Available for The Embodied Healing Intensive http://jjflizanes.com/ehi   Bruce H. Lipton, PhD, cell biologist and lecturer, is an internationally recognized leader in bridging science and spirit. Bruce was on the faculty of the University of Wisconsin's School of Medicine and later performed groundbreaking stem cell research at Stanford Medical School. His pioneering research on cloned human stem cells presaged today's revolutionary new field of epigenetics. He is the bestselling author of The Biology of Belief and The Honeymoon Effect, and he is the coauthor, with Steve Bhaerman, of Spontaneous Evolution. Bruce received the prestigious Goi Peace Award (Japan) in honor of his scientific contribution to world harmony. http://brucelipton.com   JJ Flizanes is an Empowerment Strategist and the host of several podcasts including People's Choice Awards nominee Spirit, Purpose & Energy. JJ Flizanes works with conscious, spiritual truth seekers who want to remove emotional blocks to success. She helps people identify sabotaging patterns and transmute struggle into joy. Through a series of clarifying exercises, she is able to curate a personalized roadmap to emotional healing.  JJ is passionate about empowering people with the knowledge and awareness of how they can live the life of their dreams. http://jjflizanes.com

HURRY! Tickets Available for The Embodied Healing Intensive http://jjflizanes.com/ehi   Bruce H. Lipton, PhD, cell biologist and lecturer, is an internationally recognized leader in bridging science and spirit. Bruce was on the faculty of the University of Wisconsin's School of Medicine and later performed groundbreaking stem cell research at Stanford Medical School. His pioneering research on cloned human stem cells presaged today's revolutionary new field of epigenetics. He is the bestselling author of The Biology of Belief and The Honeymoon Effect, and he is the coauthor, with Steve Bhaerman, of Spontaneous Evolution. Bruce received the prestigious Goi Peace Award (Japan) in honor of his scientific contribution to world harmony. http://brucelipton.com   JJ Flizanes is an Empowerment Strategist and the host of several podcasts including People's Choice Awards nominee Spirit, Purpose & Energy. JJ Flizanes works with conscious, spiritual truth seekers who want to remove emotional blocks to success. She helps people identify sabotaging patterns and transmute struggle into joy. Through a series of clarifying exercises, she is able to curate a personalized roadmap to emotional healing.  JJ is passionate about empowering people with the knowledge and awareness of how they can live the life of their dreams. http://jjflizanes.com

HURRY! Tickets Available for The Embodied Healing Intensive http://jjflizanes.com/ehi   Bruce H. Lipton, PhD, cell biologist and lecturer, is an internationally recognized leader in bridging science and spirit. Bruce was on the faculty of the University of Wisconsin's School of Medicine and later performed groundbreaking stem cell research at Stanford Medical School. His pioneering research on cloned human stem cells presaged today's revolutionary new field of epigenetics. He is the bestselling author of The Biology of Belief and The Honeymoon Effect, and he is the coauthor, with Steve Bhaerman, of Spontaneous Evolution. Bruce received the prestigious Goi Peace Award (Japan) in honor of his scientific contribution to world harmony. http://brucelipton.com   JJ Flizanes is an Empowerment Strategist and the host of several podcasts including People's Choice Awards nominee Spirit, Purpose & Energy. JJ Flizanes works with conscious, spiritual truth seekers who want to remove emotional blocks to success. She helps people identify sabotaging patterns and transmute struggle into joy. Through a series of clarifying exercises, she is able to curate a personalized roadmap to emotional healing.  JJ is passionate about empowering people with the knowledge and awareness of how they can live the life of their dreams. http://jjflizanes.com

HURRY! Tickets Available for The Embodied Healing Intensive http://jjflizanes.com/ehi   Bruce H. Lipton, PhD, cell biologist and lecturer, is an internationally recognized leader in bridging science and spirit. Bruce was on the faculty of the University of Wisconsin's School of Medicine and later performed groundbreaking stem cell research at Stanford Medical School. His pioneering research on cloned human stem cells presaged today's revolutionary new field of epigenetics. He is the bestselling author of The Biology of Belief and The Honeymoon Effect, and he is the coauthor, with Steve Bhaerman, of Spontaneous Evolution. Bruce received the prestigious Goi Peace Award (Japan) in honor of his scientific contribution to world harmony. http://brucelipton.com   JJ Flizanes is an Empowerment Strategist and the host of several podcasts including People's Choice Awards nominee Spirit, Purpose & Energy. JJ Flizanes works with conscious, spiritual truth seekers who want to remove emotional blocks to success. She helps people identify sabotaging patterns and transmute struggle into joy. Through a series of clarifying exercises, she is able to curate a personalized roadmap to emotional healing.  JJ is passionate about empowering people with the knowledge and awareness of how they can live the life of their dreams. http://jjflizanes.com

Dr. Boris Heifets, a neuro-anesthesiologist at Stanford Medical School, discusses the use of psychedelics and the placebo effect. Then, local author Dick Gary shares his new book, “Just Another Dick: The Presumptuous Memoir of a Truly Unimportant Person.”

I'm thrilled to bring you my conversation with Dr. Casey Means, who is an expert in metabolic health. In this episode, we explore the science behind metabolic function and its impact on our overall health and wellbeing.Introduction to Live Well, Be Well (00:00)Metabolic Health Explained: The Secret to Vibrant Living (00:31)Understanding the American Health Crisis: A Call for Change (07:02)5 Simple Steps to Boost Your Metabolic Wellbeing (15:02)Nutrition Guide: Using Food as Fuel for Optimal Health (26:07)How to Break Free from Food Cravings and Processed Foods (34:55)Dr Casey Means' Journey: From Surgeon to Prevention Advocate (43:08)Self-Care Techniques: Building Your Personal Wellbeing Sanctuary (52:02)Top 10 Practical Tips for Achieving Glowing Health (01:08:48)Exploring the Live Well, Be Well Philosophy (01:15:00)Conclusion: Inspirational Takeaways for Better Health (01:17:31)Dr. Casey Means is a Stanford-trained physician and entrepreneur who graduated top of her class from Stanford Medical School. After completing four years of residency in head & neck surgery, she made the decision to leave traditional medicine to focus on addressing the root causes of illness.Driven by personal experience - her mother's death from pancreatic cancer after decades of overlooked metabolic warning signs - Dr. Means and her brother Calley have dedicated themselves to revolutionising our approach to health.Dr. Means and I delve into research that suggests many common health conditions - from depression and anxiety to heart disease and cancer - may share a common root cause in metabolic dysfunction. We discuss evidence-based strategies for optimising cellular energy production and its far-reaching effects on both physical and mental health.This episode offers invaluable insights into the future of preventive health and empowers you with practical, science-based strategies to enhance your metabolic function and overall wellbeing.Until next time, take care and remember to live well and be well.Sarah Ann***If you enjoyed this episode you might also like:Simon Sinek: How to Be a Better Friend and Why It MattersNo.1 Gut Scientist: Insane Fiber Benefits to HEAL YOUR GUT & Beat Disease | Dr Will BulsiewiczThe Surprising Truth on How Snacking Impacts Gut Health & Blood Sugar Spikes | Dr Sarah BerryDr. Will Bulsiewicz: Heal Your Gut Microbiome in 24 Hours***Thank you to my wonderful sponsors!BON CHARGE | Science-backed beauty, wellness and recovery products.Use code LIVEWELL for 15% off.OptimallyMe | Personalised insights for optimal health.Use code LWBW20 for 20% off.Squarespace | A website makes it real.Get a free trial and use code LIVEWELL for 10% off your first website or domain purchase.***Join my inner circle: https://sarahannmacklin.com/members-hub-subscribeUnlock Stress-Busting Recipes: Get My Top 5 Mood-Boosting Meals Now!

Tickets Available for The Embodied Healing Intensive http://jjflizanes.com/ehi   Use code “JJ” to save $200 OFF The Consciousness Upgrade Summit http://theconsciousnessupgrade.com   Bruce H. Lipton, PhD, cell biologist and lecturer, is an internationally recognized leader in bridging science and spirit. Bruce was on the faculty of the University of Wisconsin's School of Medicine and later performed groundbreaking stem cell research at Stanford Medical School. His pioneering research on cloned human stem cells presaged today's revolutionary new field of epigenetics. He is the bestselling author of The Biology of Belief and The Honeymoon Effect, and he is the coauthor, with Steve Bhaerman, of Spontaneous Evolution. Bruce received the prestigious Goi Peace Award (Japan) in honor of his scientific contribution to world harmony.   Join me at his event and buy his book http://brucelipton.com   JJ Flizanes is an Empowerment Strategist and the host of several podcasts including People's Choice Awards nominee Spirit, Purpose & Energy. JJ Flizanes works with conscious, spiritual truth seekers who want to remove emotional blocks to success. She helps people identify sabotaging patterns and transmute struggle into joy. Through a series of clarifying exercises, she is able to curate a personalized roadmap to emotional healing.  JJ is passionate about empowering people with the knowledge and awareness of how they can live the life of their dreams. http://jjflizanes.com

Tickets Available for The Embodied Healing Intensive http://jjflizanes.com/ehi   Use code “JJ” to save $200 OFF The Consciousness Upgrade Summit http://theconsciousnessupgrade.com   Bruce H. Lipton, PhD, cell biologist and lecturer, is an internationally recognized leader in bridging science and spirit. Bruce was on the faculty of the University of Wisconsin's School of Medicine and later performed groundbreaking stem cell research at Stanford Medical School. His pioneering research on cloned human stem cells presaged today's revolutionary new field of epigenetics. He is the bestselling author of The Biology of Belief and The Honeymoon Effect, and he is the coauthor, with Steve Bhaerman, of Spontaneous Evolution. Bruce received the prestigious Goi Peace Award (Japan) in honor of his scientific contribution to world harmony.   Join me at his event and buy his book http://brucelipton.com   JJ Flizanes is an Empowerment Strategist and the host of several podcasts including People's Choice Awards nominee Spirit, Purpose & Energy. JJ Flizanes works with conscious, spiritual truth seekers who want to remove emotional blocks to success. She helps people identify sabotaging patterns and transmute struggle into joy. Through a series of clarifying exercises, she is able to curate a personalized roadmap to emotional healing.  JJ is passionate about empowering people with the knowledge and awareness of how they can live the life of their dreams. http://jjflizanes.com

Tickets Available for The Embodied Healing Intensive http://jjflizanes.com/ehi   Use code “JJ” to save $200 OFF The Consciousness Upgrade Summit http://theconsciousnessupgrade.com   Bruce H. Lipton, PhD, cell biologist and lecturer, is an internationally recognized leader in bridging science and spirit. Bruce was on the faculty of the University of Wisconsin's School of Medicine and later performed groundbreaking stem cell research at Stanford Medical School. His pioneering research on cloned human stem cells presaged today's revolutionary new field of epigenetics. He is the bestselling author of The Biology of Belief and The Honeymoon Effect, and he is the coauthor, with Steve Bhaerman, of Spontaneous Evolution. Bruce received the prestigious Goi Peace Award (Japan) in honor of his scientific contribution to world harmony.   Join me at his event and buy his book http://brucelipton.com   JJ Flizanes is an Empowerment Strategist and the host of several podcasts including People's Choice Awards nominee Spirit, Purpose & Energy. JJ Flizanes works with conscious, spiritual truth seekers who want to remove emotional blocks to success. She helps people identify sabotaging patterns and transmute struggle into joy. Through a series of clarifying exercises, she is able to curate a personalized roadmap to emotional healing.  JJ is passionate about empowering people with the knowledge and awareness of how they can live the life of their dreams. http://jjflizanes.com

Tickets Available for The Embodied Healing Intensive http://jjflizanes.com/ehi   Use code “JJ” to save $200 OFF The Consciousness Upgrade Summit http://theconsciousnessupgrade.com   Bruce H. Lipton, PhD, cell biologist and lecturer, is an internationally recognized leader in bridging science and spirit. Bruce was on the faculty of the University of Wisconsin's School of Medicine and later performed groundbreaking stem cell research at Stanford Medical School. His pioneering research on cloned human stem cells presaged today's revolutionary new field of epigenetics. He is the bestselling author of The Biology of Belief and The Honeymoon Effect, and he is the coauthor, with Steve Bhaerman, of Spontaneous Evolution. Bruce received the prestigious Goi Peace Award (Japan) in honor of his scientific contribution to world harmony.   Join me at his event and buy his book http://brucelipton.com   JJ Flizanes is an Empowerment Strategist and the host of several podcasts including People's Choice Awards nominee Spirit, Purpose & Energy. JJ Flizanes works with conscious, spiritual truth seekers who want to remove emotional blocks to success. She helps people identify sabotaging patterns and transmute struggle into joy. Through a series of clarifying exercises, she is able to curate a personalized roadmap to emotional healing.  JJ is passionate about empowering people with the knowledge and awareness of how they can live the life of their dreams. http://jjflizanes.com

Tickets Available for The Embodied Healing Intensive http://jjflizanes.com/ehi   Use code “JJ” to save $200 OFF The Consciousness Upgrade Summit http://theconsciousnessupgrade.com   Bruce H. Lipton, PhD, cell biologist and lecturer, is an internationally recognized leader in bridging science and spirit. Bruce was on the faculty of the University of Wisconsin's School of Medicine and later performed groundbreaking stem cell research at Stanford Medical School. His pioneering research on cloned human stem cells presaged today's revolutionary new field of epigenetics. He is the bestselling author of The Biology of Belief and The Honeymoon Effect, and he is the coauthor, with Steve Bhaerman, of Spontaneous Evolution. Bruce received the prestigious Goi Peace Award (Japan) in honor of his scientific contribution to world harmony.   Join me at his event and buy his book http://brucelipton.com   JJ Flizanes is an Empowerment Strategist and the host of several podcasts including People's Choice Awards nominee Spirit, Purpose & Energy. JJ Flizanes works with conscious, spiritual truth seekers who want to remove emotional blocks to success. She helps people identify sabotaging patterns and transmute struggle into joy. Through a series of clarifying exercises, she is able to curate a personalized roadmap to emotional healing.  JJ is passionate about empowering people with the knowledge and awareness of how they can live the life of their dreams. http://jjflizanes.com

Ask David Unfairness Worthwhileness Erasing Depression with Lasers TEAM in the UK What's the Most Powerful Technique? We have lots of great questions today. The answers in the show notes were written prior to the podcast, and the answers in the live podcast as we discussed these questions may differ somewhat or amplify the written materials in these show notes. We love your questions. Remember to send them to David@feelinggood.com. Special Announcement Attend the Legendary Summer Intensive Featuring Drs. David Burns and Jill Levitt August 8 - 11. 2024 Learn Advanced TEAM-CBT skills Heal yourself, heal your patients First Intensive in 5 years! It will knock your socks off! Limited Seating--Act Fast Click for registration / more information! Sadly, this workshop is a training program which will be limited to therapists and mental health professionals and graduate students in a mental health field  Apologies, but therapists have complained when non-therapists have attended our continuing education training programs. This is partly because of the intimate nature of the small group exercises and the personal work the therapists may do during the workshop. Certified coaches and counselors are welcome to attend. But there's some good news, too! The Feeling Great App is now available in both app stores (IOS and Android) and is for therapists and the general public, and you can take a ride for free! Check it out! Today's Questions Kiernan asks about “unfairness” and the connection between worthwhileness and achievement. Brittany asks: Can you “erase” feelings of sadness and depression by shining lasers in the patient's eyes? James asks about the use of TEAM methods in the NHS in the UK Brian asks: Is positive reframing the most successful technique you have used with your patients? 1. Kieran asks (slightly edited for clarity): How would you talk back to negative thoughts like this one: “It's not fair that I can't afford quality food when there are millionaires that will have access to better food and a healthier lifestyle which has an effect on overall health and longevity'”? Or what if you feel like it's unfair that you should have to pay a lot of money for an expensive dental treatment that you can't afford? Kieran also asks (slightly edited by david): What if worthwhileness is not based on achievement but there are still things you would like to have and enjoy? They would buy and own things that they happen to like and not to impress others. Hi David and Ronda, and if Matt is on I have been listening to your wonderful podcast for about the last 3 years as I drive to work. It has really opened my eyes about how your thoughts create your interpersonal reality. Loved the podcasts on jealousy addiction, perfectionism, achievement addiction and many more. My questions would be: What about if someone wants to achieve more but it isn't based on worthwhileness? They would buy and own things that they happen to like and not to impress others. Let's say they wanted to be able to afford a nice house, healthier higher quality food and water. As the quality does have an effect on health especially in the US as the regulations are not the greatest. However, the fact that they couldn't afford to buy these upsets them? Thoughts: 'It's not fair that I can't afford quality food but there are millionaires that will have access to better food, lifestyle which has an effect on overall health and longevity' Or if someone has to pay for unexpected expensive dental treatment. Thoughts: 'It's not fair that I have to pay £14,000 for this treatment'. 'It should be more affordable to lower income households, as it is essential to have functional teeth' I hope I have explained this well, I would love to hear your thoughts. Keep doing what you are doing and all the best. Kieran   David's response Sure Kieran, if you like I will make this an Ask David question for a podcast. LMK if that's okay, and if it is okay to use your first name. Great question, and has to do with the theme of acceptance: should I or shouldn't I? Here are the quick versions, but we can discuss in more detail on the live podcast. First, I do not find it useful to base my worthwhileness on my achievements or on my failures. I do work hard and like creating things that are helpful to people, and I enjoy earning money to support my family. I can be motivated to work hard to get things we want or need, but I don't base anyone's worthwhileness on how much money they have, or anything, to be honest. In fact, I could also easily accept wanting to buy something really cool, not just because I like it, but because it might impress others, or because they might find it fascinating, too! I don't try to regulate my life with a lot of shoulds and shouldn'ts, and find that I am happier and more peaceful without lots of shoulds. In the Feeling Great App I have created a class called “Your PhD in Shoulds.” You might enjoy it! Second, you can say that it is unfair that some people have more money and resources than other people if you like. And you have every right to feel angry if that's what you want, as well. Acceptance is more of a decision than a technique. Take the fact that lions kill deer when they are hungry. You can say, “they should not do that. It's unfair!” But that won't stop a hungry lion. You don't have to LIKE seeing a lion kill an innocent deer, but you can accept it. Again, that's a choice. The behavior of a lion is dominated by millions of years of evolution. Humans are no different. One thing that sometimes helps is to make a list all the REALLY GOOD reasons NOT to accept the “unfairness” in the world. I'll bet you could come up with at least ten to fifteen strong reasons. Then you can ask yourself, “Given all those good reason NOT to accept the fact that some people have more and some people have fewer resources, maybe I should just stay good and angry! Why in the world would I want to change?” Also, when you find an injustice, you can use your energy being good and angry, and complain about it, or you can use your energy to do something about it. Or, you can also work to change yourself, instead of complaining about the world. I also have a new class on acceptance. It's called, “Accept this shit? Hell NO!” You might like it as well. I am babbling so will stop. Warmly, david   2. Brittany asks: Can you “erase” feelings of sadness and depression by shining lasers in the patient's eyes? Hi David, My husband's boss was telling him she's going to be doing some laser therapy to “cure” her depression. She had to undergo 9 hours of testing to see if she'd be a candidate. Apparently, they plan to shine lasers in her eyes to “erase” her sadness. Obviously, I assume this is a load of garbage. But have you ever heard of such a thing? Is this just hypnosis? Best, Brittany David's Reply Hi Brittany, Probably. As they say, follow the money! There is a placebo effect if you believe something will help, so tons of garbage gets served up as costly gourmet food. You can read up on this on the internet I suspect. Let me know what you learn! Best, david Brittany responds to David Love your answer! I was looking into it and read they use a cold laser in the eyes which allegedly releases endorphins. I already know from you that just like with exercise and that study about the endorphin blockers, it made no difference. People just feel better because they think they are doing something good for their body by exercising. They also allege that the lasers aid damaged neurological tissue. They claim it has helped many patients but there is no data backing it up that I see. They really lost me when I read that lack of activity, stress, and maternal deprivation cause depression in the first place. Thanks! Brittany David adds As it turns out, I know two laser experts who are regulars on my Sunday hikes. Dr. Alexander Makowski is a brilliant scientist who is involved in the research and development of lasers and their marketing. Here is his email, along with some terrific links to articles about the hype of “low light lasers.” Hope you enjoy the email and links from Alex: Hi David, I'll chime in too! From a different angle. Zak knows some great doctors who are doing real work, but the general field of low-level laser/ light therapy (LLLT) for medical issues has been fraught with charlatans for some years. (David note: Zak is a laser expert at the Stanford Medical School and is currently preparing a blog on the topic of LLLT. I will include a link to her blog when it is published, likely in a couple weeks. She is awesome and also often joins our Sunday hikes!) Dr, Alex Makowsy continues Good work by Tiina Kaaru (https://www.spiedigitallibrary.org/profile/Tiina.Karu-8010) and Juanita Anders (https://www.usuhs.edu/profile/juanita-anders-ms-phd) on mechanisms behind using light to stimulate our mitochondria or deactivate infectious bacteria are well documents However, the good work done by the few was overshadowed and worse, was perverted for many years into crackpot devices using bad stats and poorly designed studies. Or sometimes just straight preying on vulnerable people. It is the great shame of the laser industry. Worse yet, some of these devices were actual lasers that led to people getting hurt. I can't recommend in good conscience that lasers be shone into eyes at any time other than diagnostic devices meant to diagnose the eye itself. It may be that some day soon a good scientific body of evidence changes my stance but not yet... The story starts in the origin of my journey into light and lasers. I got involved in this field in 2005 while taking an elective class on optics and lasers when I got a call from my mom that she was seeking a laser therapy for her fibromyalgia. My mother's desire to get her fibromyalgia treated with a "cold laser" pulled me into this field since I was taking a class with a professor who later became my doctoral mentor. A full semester of my free time disappeared as I tried to source out of print articles and do a deep dive on whether this was real or garbage. A research term paper and a conference visit later I could finally see the same trends you saw with medication. I talked her out of the potentially dangerous unproven device usage. [As you may have suspected, In fact my mom was having significant issues in her marriage and life and a very good doctor set her straight. My mom divorced and is now happily remarried, about 95 pounds lighter, no fibromyalgia or serious insomnia. If only we had known you back then she would have recovered in a session or two rather than 3 years] However, in the process, I dug into some of the real research that small doses of light can affect our bodies in ways we don't understand fully due to lack of research. Fast forward several decades and some of the best researchers survived the public scandal of LLLT and found a scientific mechanism (cytochrome c oxidase activation) to explain observed changes in mitochondrial activity. However, the scientists don't claim to cure everything or anything. Then they published this mitochondrial activation and suddenly: This, of course, proves that blogablum does in fact exist and now the truth about the panacea is available for all!! David note: “blogablum” is a fake nonsense word I made up that refers to nothing meaningful. Now continuing with the Alex email: This is a good review of the history and current evidence about it : https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/medical-critical-thinking/hype-around-photobiomodulation But if you want the real goods, the hard truth about cold lasers has been out there for over 15 years: Introducing the New Low Level Laser Treatment! youtu.be The following search on YouTube will reveal the secrets of the universe: "cold laser before:2009" Warmly, Alexander J Makowski, Ph.D. Dr. Matt May's reply Hi David, Thank you for forwarding this question to me.  I am very concerned and wonder if this may fall under the category of 'malpractice'. For one, I am unaware of any FDA approved treatment for depression that involves shining lasers into people's eyes to erase their sad memories.  For a list of FDA approved treatments for depression, you could refer to: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK559078/ It's possible that there is new evidence I'm not aware of, but I searched online for studies of light in treatment of depression and was unable to find any placebo-controlled trials.  This is a problem because placebo responses can be so high in the case of depression and anxiety.  There were some studies on light therapy, but nothing fitting the description of 'shining lasers into eyes to erase sad memories'. Other concerns I have relate to the high cost of such an extensive “evaluation”, as well as possible risk of shining lasers into someone's eyes.  In the absence of evidence supporting the treatment, it seems like a high cost, and potential risk, to the patient, hence my concern for malpractice. It's pretty common for people with depression to feel a sense of desperation, especially after many failed efforts to address their symptoms.  This group of individuals are likely to be extremely susceptible to scams and purveyors of 'snake oil' (sham treatments). It's also concerning to me because the theory behind the idea of shining light into people's eyes to erase sadness doesn't make logical sense to me.  It's a potentially-testable hypothesis, but it's such an absurd hypothesis that I don't see it as worth testing or entertaining. If we are defining depression as some combination of worthless, hopeless, ashamed and guilty feelings, then the hypothesis that such feelings could be meaningfully addressed by such a crude instrument as a laser or a pill or an electrical impulse is absurd. This is because our feelings arise from our thoughts/perceptions.  I've never met a single person or patient who was suffering from depression but had healthy positive thoughts about themselves.  I've also never met someone who had patterns of negative thinking, but felt fine, up-beat and positive. The idea that a pill, a laser, a magnetic pulsation or electrical current could selectively alter the specific thoughts that cause depression doesn't make sense with what we know about the brain and thoughts and feelings.  How could a pill, for example, which crosses the blood-brain barrier and impacts every neuron in the brain, selectively target only the neurons that give rise to depressed thinking?  It's like imagining that we could carpet-bomb a city but only kill the murderers and rapists. I'd encourage all potential clients who are receiving treatment for depression or other conditions to ask their providers for literature that documents the effectiveness of the treatment and to get a second opinion if they are unsure. These are my 2-cents on the topic and I could be completely wrong about it all.  Hoping to hear from others what they think. Also, David, I saw several other people included in the invitation to respond to this question but I didn't see them cc'd.  Perhaps they were bcc'd? Wishing you the best, fondly, Matt David's reply to Matt Thanks, yes, I have a fantastic response already in the show notes from Dr. Alex Makowski who does research and development of lasers with valid medical applications. His thrust is similar to yours. Our field is littered with junk “scientism” intended to fool and exploit people, similar to the snake oil salespeople who use to go from town to town in America selling magical “elixirs” that “cured” just about everything! But people are endlessly gullible, and con artists are still in endless abundance these days, it seems! Best, david Will add your kind and thoughtful comment to the show notes!   3. James asks about the use of TEAM methods in the NHS in the UK. Hi Rhonda, I hope you are well. I had a couple of questions for an 'ask David' on the podcast if that's okay. A bit of background.... I am Level 1 Team and have attended David's training in Atlanta. I live in the UK and have recently changed career to work in the NHS delivering CBT interventions for patients because David's work inspired me so much. The NHS uses specific interventions for particular diagnoses and because I am in training I have to try and stick to this. I do use the TEAM materials and approach when I can and have already seen some great results. The NHS uses 'Behavioural Activation' for certain patients with Depression and I just wondered what David thought about the effectiveness of this (perhaps compared to Cognitive Restructuring). I believe Beck introduced this into the CBT model as he thought it was useful. Another question was regarding treatment of GAD and whether dividing worries between hypothetical and practical, and then using a certain time to actually worry rather than letting the worries dominate throughout the day was something he thought was useful or had heard about. Thanks so much for all the great work you are all doing and inspiring people all over the world! Kind Regards James Bibby. David's response Hi James, Thanks for the great questions. In today's recording of an upcoming Ask David podcast, we can address: The history of “Behavioral Activation,” including the pros and cons of this approach. The history and pros and cons of “Worry Breaks.” The idea of matching a “technique” to a “diagnosis,” as opposed to learning to treat the whole patient with TEAM. The results of our latest research with the Feeling Great App, and whether it might have some value for patients struggling with depression and anxiety disorders in the UK. Best, David Matt's Thots: Great question! I'm looking forward to discussing. There are certainly some techniques that are more effective, than others, for addressing specific negative thoughts. Meanwhile there are a number of problems that come up when we are, as clinicians, throwing solutions at diagnoses, rather than treating the human being who is suffering. Studies on the treatment of PTSD at the VA, for example, showed veterans often got worse after this approach, in which their diagnosis was matched with a method, ‘prolonged exposure', without any agenda-setting. This just retraumatized lots of veteran! Similarly, if someone is secretly blaming, and haven't experienced the ‘death of the blaming self', they might be assigned ‘communication skills training', only to see this backfire, because their intent is still to try to change someone, rather than accept them. You might tell a patient with depression that they should go exercise, only to cause them to resist you, ‘you don't understand, I can't even get out of bed!'. In short, most therapy fails or even makes patients worse because it doesn't consider the good reasons to continue to blame, give up, criticize ourselves, etc. 4. Brian asks: Is positive reframing the most successful technique you have used with your patients? I can see how it would cure someone in 2 hours! Feel free to use my question and do and use my name if you wish. I'd be honored. Best, Brian David's reply Hi Brian, Thanks. Great question! It's one of the latest powerful techniques, but Ext of Voices might still be the “champion.” Using them in the T, E, A, M sequence is especially powerful. Positive Reframing often gets them closer, but not quite all the way to enlightenment. Externalization of voices (EOV) often gets them over the finish line, especially if you know how to use it skillfully, incorporating Self-Defense with the Acceptance Paradox and Counter-Attack Technique! In fact, you can incorporate many of my > 100 techniques when using EOV, such as Be Specific, Semantic Technique, Examine the Evidence, and a host of other. Best, david Matt's comments I agree, Positive Reframing and Externalization of Voices are incredibly powerful and it's often what we're doing when we see recoveries. What works for a given individual, however, is quite hard to predict, in advance and there's a ‘process' to therapy, such that we can't really skip steps, except in some unusual circumstances. Some other super-powerful methods include Externalization of Resistance, Double Standard, Flooding, Feared Fantasy, and the Hidden Emotion Technique. I'm probably forgetting some. Thanks for listening today! Matt, Rhonda and David

The world of therapy is changing, and it's time to challenge the status quo. And I'm here to share why some of the most common diagnoses in the DSM, such as anxiety, depression, addiction, body dysmorphia, and PTSD, are not only limiting but can actually cause harm to both clients and therapists. By exploring the concept of "programming" and how our early experiences shape our beliefs, behaviors, and emotional responses, I'm offering a fresh (and maybe a little controversial) perspective on mental health diagnoses. I don't believe that we're defined by our diagnoses but that we're a product of our coding, which starts at birth. When the collective “we” understand this, therapy clients can break free from limiting labels and reprogram ourselves for a more empowered future. And therapists can truly support their clients in the way they deserve. This episode provides practical tools for both therapists and clients to enhance their therapeutic journey and move beyond labels. And you'll gain insights that will help you to understand the complexity of the human experience and how EMDR-informed therapy can create lasting change. If you've ever felt stuck or defined by your diagnosis, or watched a client struggle, this episode offers a path forward. Discover the power of reprogramming your mind and unlocking your true potential. The Zero Disturbance podcast is for educational purposes and is not a replacement for a therapeutic relationship or individualized mental health or medical care. Come learn with us at Zero Disturbance: Want to learn more about empowering yourself to experience therapy or coaching on your terms? If you appreciated this episode, you won't want to miss out on The Client Workbook! We also offer free resources for clients and therapists! Get access to our free client resource library for the most up-to-date tools and resources for your own journey. Therapists, access our favorite free resources for designing high-value offers in The Zero Disturbance Welcome Bundle. With a Masters in Education from Vanderbilt, Kambria has been creating trainings and teaching adult learners for over 20 years. As the Director of Education and Quality Improvement at Stanford Medical School, she created ease in complex systems, thereby giving medical trainees successful learning experiences. Now, as a dedicated mom, therapist, and EMDR Consultant, Kambria knows what it means to do things efficiently, effectively, and in a learner-centered way. When she isn't podcasting or creating online courses, you can find Kambria playing with her twins on a beach in California.

In this episode of the Back to the People Podcast, host Nicole Shanahan sits down with Dr. Mary Talley Bowden about what true health freedom looks like in today's world. Dr. Bowden, trained in otolaryngology at Stanford Medical School, one of the top ENT programs in the country, is renowned for her use of ivermectin to treat patients during the pandemic and her critical stance on Covid vaccines. The conversation delves into the pressures facing independent medical practitioners, the significance of patient autonomy, and Dr. Bowden's experiences in confronting the status quo within the current healthcare system.

Discover the untold stories behind pandemic decision-making in COVID-19 responses and their seismic effects on society. Hear how early prevalence studies contradicted widespread measures, challenging the effectiveness of lockdowns and calling into question the ethical boundaries of public health compliance.This conversation is as much about ethics as it is about health policy.Jay Bhattacharya is a professor of health policy at Stanford Medical School and also in the economics department at Stanford University. He co-wrote an opinion piece entitled “Is the Coronavirus as Deadly as They Say?”Jay and Greg discuss the lab leak theory's influence on global policy and the issues faced by leaders in real-time crisis management. Jay weighs the stark health economics versus public health trade-offs, highlighting the profound yet often ignored consequences that lockdowns had on global poverty and social well-being. Greg points out the unprecedented speed of vaccine development, and they reflect on what seen and unseen effects of that time were really caused by the pandemic response and not the pandemic.  *unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:The real costs of flattening the curve59:45: People died at home with heart attacks, they would've lived. And, of course, who faced tremendous pressure on hospital systems – in New York and Bergamo, and and during the pandemic, a few other places experienced that. But the modal hospital system in this country did not experience that, right? They were empty. And a lot of people who should have gotten care didn't get care for other conditions. Cancer screenings went down, heart attack treatment went down, diabetes management went down, stroke management went down, basic fundamental care that happened didn't happen. And, the cost of flattening the curve was exactly that, right? This suppression of fundamental care that ought to happened. We decided we were going to refocus all of healthcare just to manage COVID rather than all of the myriad health conditions that people are really subject to.The longitudinal effect of the vaccine rollout57:59: The vaccines, I think, were good, but they were not an unmitigated good. And I think the aftermath of that, of the tremendous mistakes public health made in the rollout of the vaccines, and that governments everywhere made in distinguishing clean and unclean on the basis of vaccine status, are going to be with us for a very long time to come.Did the lockdowns help prevent COVID?49:51: No matter what you think about how bad long COVID is, it does not justify lockdowns because the lockdowns do not prevent long COVID. I'm not even sure; the evidence is that the vaccines prevent long-term COVID, but it's very equivocal. So, the question of long COVID is not germane to the question of whether lockdowns were the right or wrong thing to do.How lockdowns hurt the poorest countries48:15:The poorest countries reorganize their economies to fit in with the West. That's what brought a billion people out of poverty. The lockdowns essentially were a violation of that promise, right? What the West basically said was, "We're going to pull up the drawbridge because we're scared." And all of those trade promises we made to you were gone. The markets that we promised to you are gone, and the people at the lowest rungs of world society, meaning the poorest of the poor, became even poorer, and millions died as a consequence of that. On the first day of the lockdown, Prime Minister Modi of India ordered half a billion people to walk, bike, and find some way to go back from the city centers where they were working, migrant workers, to their home villages. And a thousand died en route that day. The life savings of those half a billion people were crushed overnight.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Space Shuttle Challenger disasterCoronavirus disease (COVID-19)London BreedCOVID-19 lockdownsGavin NewsomAnthony FauciFrancis CollinsDeborah BirxScott AtlasMax PlanckWorld Trade OrganizationAustan GoolsbeeBarry MarshallVariolationAndrew CuomoGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at Stanford School of MedicineProfile on WikipediaProfile on XProfile on LinkedInHis Work:Is the Coronavirus as Deadly as They Say? - WSJHealth EconomicsGoogle Scholar PageResearchGate Page

GUEST BIODr. Sophia Yen is a Co-Founder of Pandia Health, expert online women's hormonal healthcare: from birth control to menopause and more. She graduated MIT, UCSF Medical School, and UC Berkeley with an MPH. With 20+ years in medicine, she's also a Clinical Associate Professor at Stanford Medical School in Adolescent Medicine. Her passion is making women's lives better She's also the Mother of 2 future sheheroes and wife of a feminist. Taiwanese-American married to a Korean-American (feel free to cut the last 2 lines or edit as you will). Instagram | TikTok | Twitter | YouTube | Facebook | LinkedIn | Web MENTIONEDPlan C Pills - Abortion AccessInequality in Maternal OutcomesMaternity leave in MexicoMaternity leave in CanadaMaternity leave in the U.S.Dr. Rebecca Gomperts from the NetherlandsCalculate your BMITAKEAWAYSSex Ed is more than just "how to not get pregnant". And. Ladies, you deserve satisfaction too. Emergency contraception: Plan B only works well if your BMI is

This week, I am joined by Dr. Lloyd Minor, the Carl and Elizabeth Naumann Dean of the Stanford University School of Medicine and Vice President for Medical Affairs at Stanford University. Dean Minor talks about the transformative potential of AI in healthcare delivery, research, and diagnostics. We discuss its nuanced pros and cons, including impacts on accessibility, safety, and efficiency. Dean Minor examines AI's benefits in drug discovery, Precision Health, and early disease detection. He elaborates on wearables and the shift towards a proactive approach, integrating tools like virtual reality into medical education and emphasizing nutrition in training. Addressing ethical considerations and industry influence, we delve into the regulatory framework driving transformative changes. We also explore groundbreaking diagnostics, envisioning a future revolutionized by growing and 3D printing organs, and much more.  Enjoy! Show notes + MORE Watch on YouTube Newsletter Sign-Up  Today's Sponsors: Brain.fm: Focus music for productivity—listeners can get 30 days FREE 

This week, we're super excited to chat with Dr. Matt Lungren, Chief Data Science Officer for Microsoft Health & Life Sciences. At Microsoft, Dr. Lungren focuses on translating cutting-edge technology, including general AI and cloud services, into innovative healthcare applications. As a physician and clinical machine learning researcher, he maintains a part-time clinical practice at UCSF while also continuing his research and teaching roles as adjunct professor at Stanford.  Prior to his role at Microsoft, Dr. Lungren was a clinical interventional radiologist and research faculty at Stanford Medical School where he led the Stanford Center for artificial intelligence and medicine and imaging. His scientific work has led to more than 150 publications including work on multimodal data fusion models for healthcare applications. On top of all of that, Dr. Lungren is also a top-rated instructor on Coursera with his AI and Healthcare course designed to help learners with non-technical backgrounds.  In this episode, we talk about Matt's clinical, academic, and private sector experiences, how technology within the radiology field has developed throughout time, and exciting new Microsoft HLS Research projects and the impact of AI research on healthcare.

In her final year at Stanford Medical School, scholar Nadine Jawad joins the Imagine A World podcast to reflect on her upbringing, sharing how she tempers cynicism, embraces joy and grief simultaneously, and is working relentlessly to make healthcare accessible to all. Highlights from the episode:(6:21) Nadine's experience growing up in Dearborn and how it contrasted with her college experience attending the University of Michigan(11:59) How the public policy major at Michigan shaped Nadine's college experience, and how it related to her aspirations to become a doctor(18:10) How Nadine tempers and wrestles with cynicism about change, from her nonprofit initiative Books for a Benefit, to her experiences in student government, to working for Amnesty International(28:12) Nadine's Imagine a World Statement about the importance of accessible healthcare (check out her video: “Collective Grief, A Cup of Chai and Blood Pressure Medication”)(32:12) The role that Nadine hopes writing will play in her work in the future, as a way to open hearts and minds and bring about impact the world, and how she thinks about her positionality as a Knight-Hennessy and Rhodes Scholar in putting out writing(39:52) How Nadine thinks about activism, and balances the reckoning with atrocity and feelings of guiltwith joy(44:29) The support the Knight-Hennessy community has given to Nadine throughout her medical school experience(46:54) Nadine's improbable facts, advice to Knight-Hennessy applicants , and plans for the immediate future!

Featured Photo is Dr. Amy Huberman The Amy Story Part 1: True Confessions of a “Fraud” and a “Failure” Part 2: The Joys of Doing the Laundry Amy and her exuberant son, Sasha, and husband, Poppy Today's podcast, and next week's podcast, include a single, two-hour session with Amy Huberman, MD. Amy is a psychiatrist in private practice in Baltimore, MD. She also serves on the volunteer faculty at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Amy specializes in brief, intensive psychotherapy to help people overcome struggles with anxiety, OCD, and trauma, but today comes to us to get some help with her own anxiety. Often doing our own work can be a vitally important part of our training and growth as mental health professionals. Amy has been upset because she is stuck with two of her patients, and she's telling herself that she's a “fraud” and a “failure.” Although her life is undoubtedly very different from yours, the root cause of her problem might be very similar to the source of your unhappiness, especially if you sometimes get down in the dumps and tell yourself that you're just not good enough. My co-therapist for this session is Jill Levitt, Ph.D. co-founder and Director of Clinical Training at the Feeling Good Institute in Mt. View California. Jill also serves on the Adjunct Faculty at the Stanford Medical School and is co-leader of my weekly TEAM Therapy training group at Stanford, Tuesdays from 5-7:00 pm pst.  If you are interested in joining David and Jill's Tuesday group, please contact Ed Walton, edwalton100@gmail.com. That group is now virtual and therapists from the Bay Area and around the world are welcome to attend. It is free of charge. Rhonda Barovsky also runs a free weekly training group with Richard Lam, on Wednesdays, from 9-11:00 am pst, which is also free of charge. If you are interested in joining the Wednesday group, please contact Ana Teresa Silva, ateresasilva6@gmail.com.  Because the groups are virtual, they are open to therapists from around the world. Amy has been a member of our Tuesday training group, and is a highly skilled, certified TEAM therapist. Like nearly all the mental health professionals who come for training every Tuesday, Amy has incredibly high standards and is sometimes harshly self-critical when she feels she is not living up to them. At the same time, those high standards can be strongly motivating, and this can create strong feelings of ambivalence when it's time to change. Sound familiar? If you're struggling with perfectionism, you might want to check out these two podcasts! Part 1. The True Confessions of a “Fraud” and a “Failure” Amy opened by saying she was anxious and telling herself: I'm about to reveal my weaknesses and my inner self—This is something I've never done before in such a public setting. . . I also have to confess that I'm struggling with social anxiety right now. I'm afraid that my patients might see this and think, “I don't want to work with her! I want to work with a competent psychiatrist.” I Included that because I am hoping you will appreciate Amy's incredible courage and gift of sharing her true inner self today! Amy described the problem that's been bothering her for several weeks. Although she specializes in the short-term treatment of anxiety, she has been struggling with two patients with OCD symptoms who have been stuck and not making significant progress for a long time. This has triggered feelings of shame and intense anxiety which have invaded Amy's every moment when she's NOT seeing patients, and has even prevented her from getting restful sleep at night. She keeps ruminating and beating up on herself. You can see Amy's  Daily Mood Log Amy here.. As you can see, she was feeling intensely sad, panicky and ashamed, and rated these three feelings as 80% on a scale from 0 (not at all) to 100 (the most severe). She was also feeling worthless and defective which she rated at 100%, as well as hopeless (90%) and stuck (80%). As you know, feelings do not result from the events in our lives (in Amy's case, the fact that two of her patients were stuck), but rather from her thoughts, or interpretations, of those events. You can see on her Daily Mood Log that she was being intensely self-critical, telling herself that she was failing her patients, that she should refund their money, that she was not competent to practice psychotherapy and should find a new career, that she “should” know how to get them unstuck, and more, and finally that she was a fraud and a failure. Her belief in all of these thoughts was super high, ranging from 80% to 100%. And if you've ever felt down or inadequate, I'm sure you recognize the same types of thoughts in your own thinking, telling yourself that you're a failure, or not good enough, and so forth. During the session, Jill and David went through the TEAM acronym: T = Testing We measured her negative feelings at the start of the session so we could measure them again at the end to see how we did. E = Empathy We listened and supported Amy without trying to “help” or “save” her. The goal was to understand her thoughts and feelings accurately, while providing a sense of compassion, warmth, and acceptance. This phase of the two-hour session lasted about 30 minutes, and Amy told us how she constantly ruminated about those two patients, asking herself “What am I doing wrong, what am I missing, what should I be doing differently?” She described these thoughts as a relentless “broken record in my brain.” She confessed that her deepest fear was, “What if they kill themselves and I was responsible for their deaths?” She said this fear was almost unbearable!” I pointed out that was also my deepest fear when I was in private practice—I was never upset by treating large numbers of severely depressed patients in back-to-back sessions, and it always made me happy, since I felt I had something to offer. But if I said something that hurt someone's feelings, I found that pain almost unbearable until I saw the patient again the next week, and could talk things over and get back on a positive track. Jill pointed out that Amy's ruminations showed that she was a highly responsible psychiatrist who cared deeply about her patients! And while that is certainly a positive thing, the intensity of her fears had invaded every minute of her life, making her life miserable, even when she was with her family. Amy said her fears have intensified since 2020, when she transitioned away from a traditional psychiatric practice involving long-term weekly psychotherapy and med-management, to focusing on short-term intensive psychotherapy using the TEAM model. Then we asked her to grade us at the end, thinking about three categories of Empathy: Did we understand how she was thinking? Did we understand how she was feeling? Did she feel cared about and accepted? She gave us an A, which triggered our move to the next phase of our work with Amy. A = Assessment of Resistance In this phase of the session, we pinpointed Amy's goals for our session and  melted away her potential resistance to her stated goal of learning to give up that self-critical voice in her brain. We asked her to imagine we had a Magic Button, and if she pushed it, all of her negative thoughts and feelings would instantly disappear, with no effort on her part, and she'd feel jubilant and happy. She said she wasn't so sure she'd do that. Most patients say YES, but Amy is familiar with the TEAM approach and knows that negative thoughts and feelings often result from some of our positive qualities. Our strategy at this phase of the session was paradoxical: Instead of trying to help, save, or rescue Amy, and instead of trying to persuade her to change, we took the role of her subconscious resistance to change. With her help, we listed some of the many positives in her negative thoughts and feelings by asking these two questions. What does this negative thought or feeling show about you and your core values that's positive and awesome? How might this this negative thought or feeling be helping you and your patients? Here are just a few of the positives we found in her negative thoughts and feelings: The Positives in Amy's Negative Feelings Feeling What this Shows Inadequacy Keeps me from being overconfident   Keeps me humble, so I'm open to what I may be missing   Shows I care about constant growth and learning   Shows I'm listening   Shows I care about my patients Anxiety Motivates me to think about things from other perspectives   Motivates me to work hard   Keeps me honest   Shows that I have high standards   My high standards have motivated me to learn a lot. You can do the same kind of Positive Reframing with all Amy's negative thoughts and feelings, as well as your own. The list of positives would be long and impressive! After listing these positives, we asked Amy these three questions: Are these positives real? Are they important? Are they powerful? How would YOU answer these questions if you were Amy? She gave a strong yes to all three questions. At the end we pointed out that it might not be such a great idea to push the Magic Button to eliminate the negative voice in her brain, because then all these positives would also disappear. Instead, she decided to use the Magic Dial to reduce her negative feelings to some lower level where she could keep all the positives but suffer much less. Here you can see her goals for how she wanted to feel at the end of her session.   Emotions % Now % Goal % After Sad, blue, depressed, down, unhappy 80 25   Anxious, worried, panicky, nervous, frightened 80 20   Guilty, remorseful, bad, ashamed 90 5   Worthless, inadequate, defective, incompetent 100 15   Lonely, unloved, unwanted, rejected, alone       Embarrassed, foolish, humiliated, self-conscious       Hopeless, discouraged, pessimistic, despairing 90 5   Frustrated, stuck, thwarted, defeated 80 5   Angry, mad, resentful, annoyed, irritated, upset, furious       Other         As you can see, she decided to aim for fairly large reductions in all six of her negative feelings. These goals are not guarantees she will be able to reduce her feelings. In addition, the goals are not rigid, since she may be able to reduce them even further once she begins to challenge her negative thoughts. Our real aim at this phase of our work was to reduce her feelings of shame and failure so she could see that her “symptoms” were NOT the expression of what was WRONG with her, but the expression of what was RIGHT with her. Paradoxically, this often reduces the resistance to change and vastly enhances the possibility of rapid and dramatic change during the final, M = Methods portion of the session that you'll hear next week, along with some follow-up information. The important thing we've hopefully accomplished is reducing Amy's resistance so she can learn how to challenge and defeat the relentless and hostile voice in her brain that constantly puts her down whenever she fails to live up to her extremely high, and arguably perfectionistic, standards. End of Part 1 Thanks for listening today. Be sure to tune in to the exciting conclusion of the work with Amy next week! Rhonda, Amy, Jill, and David

“We saw that the recommended behaviors everyone knows about — eating fewer high-fat or high-sugar foods and fewer calories, increasing physical activity, and reducing screen time — can slow down biological aging associated with obesity in children,” said the study's senior author, Thomas Robinson, MD, who is the Irving Schulman, MD, Professor in Child Health and a professor of pediatrics and of medicine. “It's remarkable to see effects on the chromosomes with behavioral treatments,” he said.": Quote from: https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2024/01/obesity-telomeres.html This must listen-to episode of the MindBodySpace podcast features Dr. Thomas Robinson, a renowned scientist focused on obesity prevention, discussing the significant health and behavioral impacts of healthy eating, exercise, and reducing screen time in children. Dr. Robinson introduces the Stanford Solution Science Lab's approach to solution-oriented research, which prioritizes practical, actionable outcomes over traditional problem-focused studies. Additionally, the episode dives into the stealth interventions concept, aiming to implement health-improving behaviors through ideologically or value-driven motivators rather than direct health advice. The podcast also explores Dr. Robinson's involvement in the Human Screenome Project, which analyzes real-time screen usage to understand its effects on different aspects of life, including mental health and physical well-being, with an emphasis on creating personalized interventions. Dr. Robinson stresses the importance of modeling healthy screen usage behaviors for children and discusses the potential of tools like augmented reality in health interventions. 00:00 The Impact of Reducing Screen Time on Children's Health 00:51 Welcome to the MindBodySpace Podcast 02:28 Introducing Dr. Thomas Robinson: A Pioneer in Obesity Prevention 04:22 Exploring the Stanford Solution Science Lab and Solution-Oriented Research 12:20 The Journey to Pediatric Obesity Research 21:13 Understanding the Health Effects of Obesity 27:09 Innovative Research on Telomeres and Aging 33:12 Exploring the Impact of Obesity on Biological Aging 33:53 Stealth Interventions for Behavioral Change 35:02 Harnessing Ideological Movements for Healthier Lifestyles 38:00 The Power of Community and Collective Purpose in Health Interventions 43:03 Screenomics: A Deep Dive into Our Digital Lives 58:36 The Future of Personalized Health Interventions and the Role of Augmented Reality 01:00:02 Practical Advice for Parents and Educators on Screen Time --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/mindbodyspace/support

For more than five decades, Ms. magazine has been a beacon of feminist ideas, sparking conversations and setting the stage for transformative discussions on women's rights, equality and empowerment. As the first magazine to feature prominent American women demanding the repeal of laws that criminalized abortion, explain and advocate for the Equal Rights Amendment, rate presidential candidates on women's issues, feature domestic violence and sexual harassment on its cover, and commission and publish a national study on date rape, the voice of Ms. has shaped modern day feminism and many contemporary issues.  Join us in a celebration of Ms. at The Commonwealth Club as our featured speakers Katherine Spillar (Ms. executive editor), Dr. Sophia Yen (CEO and co-founder of Pandia Health), Hon. Betty Yee (former California state controller), and Aimee Allison (founder and president of She the People) explore the voices that have shaped feminism and continue to shape our world. About the Speakers Aimee Allison is the founder and president of She the People, a national organization that elevates the voice and power of women of color as leaders of a new political and cultural era. She organized and moderated the nation's first presidential forum for women of color in 2019. Katherine (Kathy) Spillar is the executive editor of Ms. and editor of and contributor to 50 Years of Ms: The Best of the Pathfinding Magazine that Ignited a Revolution. She is also the executive director of Feminist Majority Foundation and Feminist Majority, national organizations working for women's equality, empowerment and nonviolence; one of the founders, she has been a driving force in executing the organizations' diverse programs securing women's rights both domestically and globally since its inception in 1987. Hon. Betty Yee has served as the female vice chair of the California Democratic Party since May 2021 and also recently served as California state controller from 2015 to 2023. She has 35 years of experience in state and local finance and tax policy. Sophia Yen, M.D., M.P.H. is the CEO and co-founder of birth control delivery service Pandia Health and has a passion for making women's lives easier, preventing unplanned pregnancies, and educating women about Periods Optional. She also serves as a clinical associate professor at Stanford Medical School in the Department of Pediatrics in the Division of Adolescent Medicine. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a Text Message.Join me and my very special guest, Dikla Hertzog-Twig, a remarkable individual who has dedicated decades to promoting compassion in the Israeli healthcare system. In this podcast, we delve into the significance of compassion within the healthcare field, with a particular focus on mental health. We also discuss the challenges of maintaining compassion following the brutal Hamas attack on Israel that occurred on October 7th. Together, Dikla and I explore the profound journey of finding humanity and compassion when it is needed most.Dikla and I crossed paths during a program we completed two weeks ago, where we both became certified as Ambassadors of Applied Compassion. This podcast is my way of contributing a compassionate voice to the world. I have titled it "Heart over Matter," as a departure from my usual advocacy of "Mind over Matter" as a mental health advocate. Meeting Dikla has shown me the importance of leading with the heart, and this is one of the invaluable gifts she has bestowed upon me.This episode is dedicated to the Center for Compassion and Altruism Institute at Stanford Medical School, and specifically to my mentor, Monica Hanson. I can confidently say that Monica is the mentor I have been waiting for my whole life.As always, I encourage you to listen attentively and practice the listening tools we have explored in previous episodes, while also adding a new layer to your understanding. Visit: ccare.stanford.eduConnect with Dikla Hertzog Twig hereCheck out svetlanasaitsky.comFacebook: @Svety SvetInstagram: @jetsvetterLinkedIn: @Svetlana Saitsky, CPCCSeason 3 is sponsored by Rad Hats For Rad Humans. 30% of every purchase goes towards mental health initiatives. If you write a review of the show, you get 20% off a Rad Hat of your own. Visit svetlanasaitsky.comEmail: Svetlana.thisisit@gmail.comInstagram: @jetsvetterFacebook: @Svety SvetTikTok: @jetsvetter

In this episode, we explore the correlation of the importance of caring for women's health to her success in business. For this, we turn to Dr. Sophia Yen, one of the top authorities in this space in the US. Dr. Yen also shares her journey in founding Pandia Health and its mission to revolutionize women's hormonal and reproductive health. When you listen to this episode you will recognize why Dr. Yen was named one of Inc's Female Founders 200 in 2023.   Here are the key points of our conversation:   - Breaking Down Taboos: Dr. Yen discusses the need to break the taboo surrounding women's health and why women must seek help and not "suck it up." - The Intersection of Women's Health and Business Success: Discover how women's health, including menstrual care, impacts professional success, and why it's essential for businesses to care about these issues. - The Birth Control Revolution: How Pandia Health is focused on transforming the landscape of women's health by providing an end-to-end solution for hormonal health. Dr. Yen has developed a unique algorithm for birth control options to match individuals with the most suitable birth control based on factors like age, body mass index, and race. - A Mission to Empower Women: Understand the importance of eliminating obstacles in accessing birth control, such as the need for prescriptions, to empower women to take control of their health and life. - Menopause Matters: Dr. Yen explains the lack of knowledge and expertise related to menopause and how she is poised to provide expert care for this stage of life. - Challenges and Growth: Insights into business building in the highly regulated healthcare industry and Pandia Health's vision for the future, including expansion and growth that leads to ringing the Nasdaq bell.   Sophia Yen, MD, MPH is the co-founder and Chief Medical Officer of Pandia Health, the only women-founded and women-led birth control delivery service and is one of Inc.'s 2023 Female Founders. Pandia Health has recently expanded into acne services and will be launching menopause services by the 2023 holiday season. Dr. Yen has more than 20 years of experience in medicine and graduated with a B.S. from MIT, M.D. from UCSF Medical School, and M.P.H. from UC Berkeley in Maternal Child Health. She serves as a Clinical Associate Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Adolescent Medicine at Stanford Medical School and has co-founded three non-profit organizations and projects in her endeavors to improve the lives of women: The Trust Women Silver Ribbon Campaign, SheHeroes.org and the #FFF movement.   Connect with Dr. Yen:   Pandia TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@pandiahealth Pandia Instragram: https://www.instagram.com/pandiahealth/ Dr. Yen TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@drsophiayen Dr. Yen Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drsophiayen Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pandiahealth/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/pandiahealth YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/pandiahealth Website: https://pandiahealth.com/periodsoptional     Connect with Allison: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/allisonsummerschicago/ Website: DisruptiveCEONation.com Twitter: @DisruptiveCEO  #digitalmarketing #branding #socialgood #Bcorp #CEO #startup #startupstory #founder #business #businesspodcast #podcast         Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

AI and Psychotherapy— Doomsday or Revolution? Featuring Drs. Jason Pyle and Matthew May Today we feature Jason Pyle, MD, PhD and our beloved Matthew May, MD on a controversial, exciting and possibly anxiety-provoking podcast on the future of AI in psychotherapy and mental health. Will AI shrinks replace humans in a doomsday scenario for shrinks? Or will AI serve shrinks and patients in a revolutionary way that sees the dawning of a new age of psychotherapy? You are all familiar with Matt, due to his frequent and highly praised appearances on our Ask David segments, but Jason Pyle, MD, PhD, will probably be new to you. Jason joined the Evolve Foundation as Managing Director in 2022 to focus his work on the mass mental health crisis and the rampant diseases of despair, which afflict tens of millions of Americans. The Evolve Foundation is a private foundation dedicated to the advancement of human consciousness. Evolve is active in philanthropy and venture investments in the mental health fields. Jason is an accomplished biotechnology executive with over twenty years of executive management and technology development experience. He is committed to developing healthcare technologies and bringing science-backed healing to the most important problems of our generation. Jason is a veteran who served as a US Ranger, and earned an Engineering degree from the University of Arizona. He received both his MD and PhD in Neurosciences from the Stanford University School of Medicine, where he met Matt May and they became close friends. At the start of today's podcast, Matt and Jason reflected on their long friendship, starting as classmates at the Stanford Medical School 20 years ago. The following questions were submitted by Jason, Matt, and David prior to the start of today's podcast. Jason's Questions: How important is the role of therapist rapport with patients? If it is important, how might AI accomplish or fail to accomplish this? Given the limitations of AI, what parts or pieces of the therapeutic process might it best serve? One of AI's potentially best features is that it can interact with a person anytime/anyplace, how could this be useful to augment the current therapeutic paradigm? We talk a lot about patients using AI, but how could therapists use it to better serve their needs? Matt's Questions about AI: What is AI? How does it work? If therapists strengths tend to be their weaknesses and vice-versa, what might we expect to be the strengths and weaknesses of an AI therapist? How do these expectations match up with what David is seeing in the data? Is AI safe? Can it be made to be safe? What would be the best case scenario for AI, in therapy? David's question about AI: Will AI replace human therapists? Jason kicked off the discussion with a brief description of AI and machine learning, and outlined four potential roles for AI in psychiatry and psychology: An AI therapist full replaces the human therapist An AI helper augments human therapist, acting as a 24 / 7 therapist helper in a myriad of ways involving ongoing support for patients between therapy sessions and support for patients during crises. AI helps the therapist with rudimentary tasks like record-keeping, recording, and summarizing sessions. AI can study transcripts of therapy sessions for research purposes, rating what procedures were done as well as degree of adherence to the therapeutic methods, and the skill of the therapist. The ensuing dialogue was illuminating and exciting. In fact, I got so engrossed that I stopped taking notes, so you'll have to give it a listen to find out. However, one thing that was interesting and unexpected was highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of AI. For example, a patient with social anxiety might benefit greatly from armchair work, focusing on ways to combat distorted negative thoughts, but will still have to interact strangers in social situations to conquer this type of fear. David and Matt nearly always go with the patient out into the world for interpersonal exposure exercises, and find that the presence and trust and “push” from the human therapist can be invaluable and necessary. It is not at all clear that an AI therapist working via a smart phone could have the same effect, but that might require an experiment to find out. Jumping to conclusions without data is rarely safe or accurate! Maybe an AI “helper” could be very helpful to individuals with social anxiety! Jason raised the question of whether AI could replicate the trust and warmth and rapport of a human therapist, and whether the warmth and rapport of the therapeutic relationship was necessary to a good therapeutic outcome. I (David) summarized some of the findings with our Feeling Good App showing that app users actually rated the “Digital David” in the app substantially higher on warmth and understanding that the people in their lives. And now that we are incorporating AI into the Feeling Good App, the quality of the empathy / rapport from our app may be even higher than in our prior beta tests. We have not done a direct comparison between the rapport of human therapists and the rapport experienced by our Feeling Good App users. Many people might jump to the conclusion that human shrinks have better rapport than would be possible from a cell phone app, but this might be the opposite of the truth! In my research (David), I've seen that most human shrinks believe their empathy and rapport skills are high, when in fact their patients do not agree! In my research on the causal effects of empathy on recovery from depression in hundreds of patients at my clinical in Philadelphia, and also in more than 1300 patients treated at the Feeling Good Institute in Mountain View, California, it did not appear that therapist empathy had substantial causal effects on changes in depression. The late and famous Karl Rogers believed that therapist empathy is the “necessary and sufficient” condition for personality change, but most subsequent research has failed to support this popular belief. I (David) believe that AI therapists are likely to outperform human shrinks in rapport, warmth, trust, and understanding, but it remains to be seen whether this will be sufficient to make much of a dent in the patient's symptoms of depression, anxiety, marital conflict, or habits and addictions. Other techniques are likely to be required. However, we may have new data on this question shortly, as we will be directly studying the effectiveness of AI empathy on the reduction in negative feelings. We might be surprised, as our research nearly always gives us some unexpected results! Rhonda gave a strong and appreciated pitch for the idea that there is something about a person to person interaction, like a hug, that will never be duplicated by an app. If this is true, or even believed to be true, then there will likely never be a complete replacement of human shrinks by AI apps. But once again, you can believe this on a religious, or a priori, basis, or you can take it as a hypothesis that can easily be tested in an experiment. We do have very sensitive and accurate tests of therapists' warmth and empathy, so “rapport” can now be measured with short, reliable scales, making head to head comparisons of apps and humans possible for the first time. At one time, it was thought that AI would never be able to beat human chess champions, but that belief turned out to be false. The podcast group also discussed some of the potential shortcomings of an AI shrink. For example, the AI does not yet have the insight of how to “see through” what patients are saying, and takes the patient's words at face value. But a human therapist might often be thinking on multiple levels, asking what's “really” going on with the patient, including things that the patient might be intentionally or unintentionally hiding, like feelings of anger, or antisocial behaviors. At the end, all four participants gave their vision, or dream, for what a positive impact of AI might have on the world of mental illness / mental health. Rhonda had tears in her eyes, I think, over the suggestion that an effective and totally automated AI therapist would be scalable and might have the potential to bring ultra low-cost relief of suffering to millions or even hundreds of millions of people around the world who do not currently have access to effective mental health care. And I would add the individuals who now have access to mental health care, often cannot find effective treatment due to severe limitations in therapists as well as all current schools of therapy. Jason described his vision for an AI shrink as the helper of human therapists, extending their impact and enhancing their effectiveness. Jason is super-smart and wise, and I found his vision very inspiring! I have trained over 50,000 therapists who have attended my training programs over the past 35 years, and one thing I have learned is that most shrinks, including David, have tons of room for improvement. And if a brilliant and compassionate AI helper can enhance our impact? Hey, I'm all for that! Thanks for listening today! Let us know what you thought about our show! Jason, Matt, Rhonda, and David

Bloomberg Radio host Barry Ritholtz speaks with Armen Panossian, managing director and head of performing credit at Oaktree Capital Management LP, which has $179 billion in assets under management. He oversees the firm's liquid and private credit strategies, and also serves as a portfolio manager within Oaktree's global private debt and global credit strategies. He previously worked for Pequot Capital Management, where he worked on distressed debt strategy. Panossian holds an MS degree in health services research from Stanford Medical School; a JD degree from Harvard Law School; and an MBA from Harvard Business School. He serves on the advisory board of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and is a member of the state bar of California.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Kambria Evans is an EMDR Consultant and Brainspotting Clinician, and in this episode she delves into the powerful realm of EMDR and its impact on mental health. With a background in psychotherapy and extensive EMDR expertise, Kambria not only helps Dr. Mindy navigate her personal journey but also empowers listeners to explore EMDR techniques for quick trauma resolution and cognitive rewiring. The episode offers a lifeline to women facing emotional challenges during menopause, emphasizing the importance of feeling heard, presenting actionable answers, and promising a valuable resource list for global support. Explore EMDR therapy, focusing on support for women in menopause, with Kambria Evans. In this episode, she discussed how EMDR works, its ability to neutralize disturbances, and the interplay between the menopausal brain and hormones. She also stresses the  importance of validation, choosing narratives, and finding skilled EMDR clinicians is emphasized. You will learn about techniques to interrupt looping thoughts and the power of creating our own mental curriculum. To view full show notes, more information on our guests, resources mentioned in the episode, discount codes, transcripts, and more, visit https://www.drmindypelz.com/ep197. With a Masters in Education from Vanderbilt, Kambria has been creating trainings and teaching adult learners for over 20 years. As the Director of Education and Quality Improvement at Stanford Medical School, she created ease in complex systems, thereby giving medical trainees successful learning experiences. Now, as a dedicated mom, therapist, and EMDR Consultant, Kambria knows what it means to do things efficiently, effectively, and in a learner-centered way. When she isn't podcasting or creating online courses, you can find Kambria playing with her twins on a beach in California.  Check out our fasting membership at resetacademy.drmindypelz.com. Please note our medical disclaimer.

Today on the podcast we are joined by two legends: Megan Roche, M.D. and Jacob Puzey. In this episode we discuss what marathoners can learn from ultra runners and what closely held beliefs in the marathon road running community aren't necessarily gospel in the ultra world. Here are some topics we discuss: Running on pavement versus various types of trail Lengths of long runs and/or weekend doubles  Embracing fun and exciting challenges Effort focused versus time/pace focused Nutrition on the run Megan Roche, M.D.: Megan was the 2016 USATF Trail Runner of the Year at the ultra and sub-ultra distances. She is a five-time national champion, a North American Mountain Running Champion, and a six-time member of Team USA. She graduated from Duke University with a degree in Neuroscience and received her M.D. from Stanford Medical School. Megan and her husband, David Roche, created the Some Work All Play Adventure Team where they coach some of the best athletes in the world and dedicated amateur runners. Jacob Puzey: Jacob coaches runners from all over the world of all ages and abilities — from newbies to national champions — and loves helping his athletes reach new heights in their running performance. Jacob is revered for his unique ability to understand family and work demands and address those challenges within a training cycle. Jacob is just as accomplished as a runner. As part of a marathon buildup in 2011, Jacob signed up for a trail 50K, accidentally won that race, and has since set numerous course records on both road and trail courses throughout North America. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Storytelling is the oldest medical technology — so claims our guests on this episode, Laurel Braitman, PhD, an acclaimed author and Writer-in-Residence at Stanford School of Medicine. Laurel offers a uniquely qualified perspective on the matter, having grown up in a medical family and now mentoring clinicians everywhere to help them fulfill their writing goals. She received her doctorate in History and Anthropology of Science from MIT, and her most recent work is a 2023 memoir titled What Looks Like Bravery: An Epic Journey Through Loss to Love. Over the course of our conversation, we explore the challenges Laurel has faced on her journey as an author, how creative writing can lead to better doctoring, and how we can find the courage to discover our own identities in the face of expectations others have of us.In this episode, you will hear about:What it means to be Writer-in-Residence at Stanford Medical School - 2:06Why physicians write and how storytelling can help clinicians - 6:42How Laurel's writing career began and her advice for how to break into the writing world - 14:43What it's like to be in the medical field as an “embedded outsider” - 23:15Laurel's most recent book What Looks Like Bravery: An Epic Journey Through Loss to Love, which details her experience of growing up with parents with high expectations and struggling through the grief of her father's death - 28:15The importance of carving out time to reflect on your journey and your ‘why' in the medical profession - 36:54Laurel's advice for healthcare professionals who want to take the first step towards writing - 44:55All are welcome to join Laurel's Writing Medicine workshops, a pay-what-you-can public resource for healthcare professionals. Visit www.LaurelBraitman.com or www.WritingMedicine.org for more details.Laurel Braitman is the author of several books, articles, and essays. You can find more at her website www.LaurelBraitman.comVisit our website www.TheDoctorsArt.com where you can find transcripts of all episodes.If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review our show, available for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you know of a doctor, patient, or anyone working in health care who would love to explore meaning in medicine with us on the show, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments or send an email to info@thedoctorsart.com.Copyright The Doctor's Art Podcast 2023

Prior to spring 2020, Jay Bhattacharya was a well-respected but little-known epidemiologist and Stanford Medical School professor. But when the COVID pandemic broke out that March, Dr. Bhattacharya was thrust into a leadership role as coauthor of the groundbreaking Santa Clara Study, one of the first comprehensive looks at how the disease spread and impacted populations, and as one of the principals behind the Great Barrington Declaration, one of the first public declarations questioning the lockdown policies then being instituted worldwide. His public interrogation of these policies made him a target of public health officials in the US and abroad—including Dr. Anthony Fauci of the CDC and Dr. Francis Collins at the National Institutes of Health in Washington, DC—and placed him in a media spotlight. In this interview, Dr. Bhattacharya reflects on those battles, what we learned, and how we might better manage future pandemics.