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Dr. Mike Varshavski: Most health shortcuts are marketing

Family physician audits Ozempic, supplements, and anti-aging biohacks: most wellness shortcuts are marketing, while basic lifestyle change still wins.

Steven BartletthostDr. Mike Varshavskiguest
May 30, 20241h 48mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 2:15

    Intro

    1. SB

      Your mission at the moment to myth-bust and call out disinformation as it relates to healthcare. Let's get into that.

    2. MV

      Okay. Dr. Mike Varshavski. He's the actively practicing medicine doctor with over 25,000,000 followers. Who's created one of the largest health education platforms in the world.

    3. SB

      Dr. Mike, what's the key to finding a diet that's gonna stick?

    4. MV

      There's two real things that you need to think about. One, calories in and calories out is true. Second, and this is important, you need to have ...

    5. NA

      (instrumental music)

    6. SB

      What about the prevailing narrative that if you wanna lose weight you gotta get on a running machine?

    7. MV

      Nutrition. That's where the majority of the change will come from.

    8. SB

      What's the medical advantage if I go to the gym every day?

    9. MV

      Literally everything else.

    10. SB

      Is vaping dangerous?

    11. MV

      Yes. And no one knows this. By the way, this is why I do what I do. But the more dangerous part of it is ...

    12. SB

      What's your POV on supplements?

    13. MV

      They will make you skip on doing things that are healthy for you and supplements have side effects. You have too many of them, we notice that they (censored) . But no one talks about that because you can't really sell them.

    14. SB

      And then considering you care so much about your health, why would a doctor choose boxing?

    15. MV

      'Cause I unfortunately lost my mom to cancer. To ask the doctors to stop doing chest compressions on your mom, that is not something that I wish on anyone. And I got into a very unhealthy mental state, so boxing chose me instead of me choosing boxing.

    16. SB

      In the circumstances that you lost your mother where she was given the all-clear-

    17. MV

      Yeah.

    18. SB

      ... did that experience change your perspective of the medical industry in any way? We've just hit six million subscribers on The Diary of a CEO, um, so me and my team would like to do something we've never done before as a little thank you and we're calling it the Diary of a CEO Subscriber Raffle and here is how it works. Every episode this month we're going to pick three current subscribers at random and we'll send one of you a 1,000-pound voucher, one of you tickets to come and watch The Diary of a CEO behind the scenes live with our team, and one of you will have a 10-minute phone call with me to discuss whatever you want to talk about. If you're a subscriber, you're in the raffle. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for allowing me to do something that me and my team love doing so much. It is the greatest honor of my lifetime and I hope it, I hope it continues, uh, off into the future. Let's get to the episode.

  2. 2:15 – 5:24

    Helping People Make Better Health Decisions

    1. SB

      (instrumental music) Dr. Mike, considering everything you do from your podcast to all of the content you produce across your channels, to the stuff you do in TV, everything, social media, all of it, how do you summarize the overarching mission that you're on at this, in this phase of your life?

    2. MV

      The mission is largely to make sure that in the sea of misinformation my patients, my viewers are getting the most honest, transparent, and engaging information so that hopefully they can make the best decisions healthcare-wise for themselves and their family members.

    3. SB

      Why do you care?

    4. MV

      When I was a medical student, I would go into rooms with patients and they would be being seen by some of the top doctors in the world. I mean experts upon experts, credentials, published work. And the second the doctor would walk out after presenting all this accurate evidence-based information, the patient would look at me as the med student and say, "What did he say?" Or, "What did she say?" And I realized that the message wasn't hitting home and I realized we need to do a better job as communicators in the healthcare space, and then I said, "Well, TV must be the answer. Media training must be the answer." And then as I became a practicing physician in my residency program, I started seeing people being influenced by those TV physicians in the wrong ways. They would be promising miracle solutions to any problem, they would be having snake oil being sold to them, they would think that they can skip out on taking their medications or going for treatments or making lifestyle changes because of a solution proposed to them for three easy payments of 19.99. And I said, "Oh, man. Not only are we not great communicators, but we're being out-edged by people who are trying to make a profit in the, in this healthcare space," and I viewed it as a mega problem. I remember in 2017 I wrote a blog post for the American Academy of Family Physicians and I said, "The lack of evidence-based physicians online is gonna create a world of a difference in our patients' lives." It's gonna allow misinformation to come in, especially in this section I call the gray zone where modern science doesn't yet have an answer to certain medical problems, to certain medical conditions, and they're gonna come in and promise you solutions and they're gonna be quite successful at it. What happened three years later? COVID-19 pandemic, misinformation pandemic, people confused not knowing who to seek out for information, and for some very strange reason, a doctor with only five years of experience, uh, after residency was the number one channel on YouTube being watched and giving the answers when people were not watching the CDC, they weren't listening to true experts. Instead they were falling for misinformation online and I had to be there to set the record straight. I couldn't believe that that happened.

  3. 5:24 – 10:08

    Why Have People Resonated With You And Your Approach To Spotting Disinformation

    1. MV

    2. SB

      For people that might not know who you're referring to when you cite that doc- doctor-

    3. MV

      (laughs)

    4. SB

      ... that is you, you reach a lot of people every month. You have 12,000,000 subscribers on YouTube now.

    5. MV

      Yeah.

    6. SB

      You have other channels with, you know, millions of people following you across the board and that's happened in quite a short space of time. What is it about you that you think has been so resonant with so many people as it relates to sort of medical information and spotting disinformation?

    7. MV

      I think it's not one thing. Much like in healthcare, this would be a multifactorial situation. I think when I first started the reason why I got popularity w- (laughs) was because I was an early adopter of Instagram and I would share my medical journey, uh, of being a med student mostly because I wanted to show people that you can have a life, a social life, a family life, a sports life and still go through medical school 'cause I felt like...... there existed this stigma you have to give up everything to study medicine. And while I was doing that, I got some followers on Instagram, and at that point having 10,000 followers was a huge win 'cause it was so new. And being a broke medical student to go to a club and say, "Oh my God, I have 10,000 followers. Let me in without paying the admission," that was a win. Then fast forward just a couple of years later, I'm in my residency program. BuzzFeed writes an article, and they didn't write an article about me being the youngest doctor in my hospital. They didn't write an article about the fact that I did some medical research. They didn't write about the fact that I was passionate about putting out accurate info. They, the title of the article was, "You Gotta Check Out This Sexy Doctor and His Awesome Dog."

    8. SB

      (laughs)

    9. MV

      And I'm like, "Oh, well that's silly. No one's gonna read this." I thought it was cute. I'd sent it to some friends, and then boom. That was the moment everyone was going viral, and it seemed like every outlet in the world was reaching out, and when I say in the world, I'm not exaggerating. Like, outlets from the UK, from Budapest, from Asia, from the U... Every possible outlet here in the United States was calling for an interview. And I very vividly remember all the talk show hosts were reaching out, and I had no idea about this world that there existed so much competition, where I remember The Ellen DeGeneres Show folks reached out and they said, "If you do our show, you can't do The Steve Harvey Show."

    10. SB

      (laughs)

    11. MV

      And Steve Harvey reached out and said, "You know, if you do our show, you can't do their show." And I talked to some friends, I'm like, "All right, I'll do The Ellen DeGeneres Show. I think that would be a cool opportunity." And they do the pre-interviews, I meet with the producers, I tell 'em about what I'm passionate about, and then the day before filming, they call and they say, "Hey, we have some news. Hillary Clinton is announcing her bid for the presidency of the United States, and she's doing our daytime talk show as the first talk show. And like the other guests were like Pink and Jimmy Kimmel, so you're the one getting kicked off." And I said, "No biggie, I'll go on Steve Harvey." So I call Steve Harvey's people back and they said, "Oh no, that was two weeks ago. We're not interested anymore." And it was such a wake-up call where the 15 minutes of fame statement was true. You were hot for a second, people were interested about this unique story, and then they move on. But I said, "No way. I, I still have to push this," because I viewed it as an opportunity to get people to care about the information, but drawing their attention to something else first. If you look at who's successful in media 20 years ago, uh, in the healthcare space, it would be, unfortunately, people who corrupted the health information for the viewership. And it feels like you oftentimes have to corrupt something to get views, and I felt that if I could corrupt and have people come for the scandal of sexy doctor, but when they come for that, I instead give them some accurate information or maybe have them come for some comedy and give them some health information, that was a way to get people interested. Because if we're being honest, healthcare information, textbooks, science, it can be boring if you're not passionate about it. But if you can present it in a way like some of the amazing teachers that I've had over the years, in a way where it's fun, it's engaging, they make it, um, almost like a journey that you're going on, suddenly you pay attention. You have a few takeaways, and then from those takeaways, you're better equipped to handle some of the things that can come up with... during life. And I really took that to heart in the beginning, and over the last five years have really studied what marketers have done so well for, in the commercial space, or what those snake oil salesmen have done so well in pitching their misinformation, and take those same principles but bring 'em to evidence-based medicine, allow people to have fun while

  4. 10:08 – 12:10

    How Do You Check The Evidence Of The Studies You Share?

    1. MV

      they're learning.

    2. SB

      There's a lot of information out there-

    3. MV

      Mm-hmm.

    4. SB

      ... as it relates to health. What is your sort of framework for deciding what you share and how you share it when there's so many... A lot of these studies as well, the, the methodology of the studies is often hard to trust because of the way that they're, you know, uh, certain studies where they look at kind of, they don't, uh, isolate one variable. So you look, you look at the study and it could be anything they say, you know, they, uh, you hear these studies about like veganism, for example-

    5. MV

      Yeah.

    6. SB

      ... where they say veganism is, is healthier but that doesn't remove out all the other factors in that person's lifestyle. Maybe, okay, maybe they're, they're eating less meat but it's processed meat that they're having with fries and hamburgers, et cetera.

    7. MV

      Yep.

    8. SB

      So how do you, what's your framework for deciding if something is true in a sp- in a sea of information?

    9. MV

      Every time I look at some new research, I treat it differently than most people would in the media space, and I also treat it differently than an individual would treat it. So if you're a news outlet and a breakthrough study comes out, they treat it like it's the answer to people's problems, like it's the new and best. I take that research and I apply it to the existing data and knowledge that I've gotten over the years through my medical education, and position it in where it belongs. So some research comes out, it might make me lean in saying, "We need to move closer to a plant-focused diet." It doesn't mean that everyone needs to be on it, doesn't mean we need to eliminate everything, because in medicine extremes are rarely right, even when we're talking about optimization. You'll hear oftentimes people say, "Oh, you can boost your immune system. You could hyper-optimize this." No, no, no. Hyper-optimization is extreme. Whenever you're going to those extremes you start creating problems, 'cause that's how the human body works. It works in homeostasis. It wants to be balanced, and the enemy of balance is bad but also perfect.

  5. 12:10 – 16:31

    The New Health Trends: Optimisation, Longevity, Anti-Ageing

    1. MV

    2. SB

      So what do you make of this optimization, longevity, anti-aging, live forever culture that's emerged in the last-

    3. MV

      Yeah.

    4. SB

      ... couple years?

    5. MV

      I understand where it's coming from. Uh, we've made a lot of scientific progress. We believe that we should have the answers....to the one problem that is facing all of us (laughs) . And that's that life is not forever. But I feel like the field has been corrupted, and it's actually the way that healthcare has been corrupted across the board. So when we talk about health insurance, the pharma industry, anti-aging industry, a lot of it has been corrupted with capitalism and I take... And I say that as someone who's actually pro-capitalism. But I believe healthcare is a commodity that cannot be Uber-ized. I love Uber. Uh, I love Lyft. I love the idea of being able to call something on demand. Doesn't quite work for healthcare. You demanding what you want for your body when you're not the expert doesn't always yield the best results. We've seen that time and time again. I see it with my patients when they come in and it's very clear that they have a viral illness, but they demand antibiotics, or they demand, uh, a medication that's gonna help them live longer. Doesn't exist. We don't have yet the evidence to sell these things to people, to explain them to people. But there will always be a person who will take some new information, some preliminary data, data from an animal model, from a Petri dish, and sell it as the next great thing. This happened with the Fountain of Youth (laughs) . This happened with literally snake oil hundreds of years ago, and now it's happening. But with the power of social media and the fact that this misinformation a lot of times is insidious, you don't realize that it's so bad and so problematic. Because what it's doing is it's actually tricking people into not understanding how science works. How when we put out a hypothesis, an idea of what we think could happen, we actually strive to disprove our hypothesis. So if I say this glass of water here will help you live longer, I will actually, as a scientist, wanna set out to prove that it doesn't. And I will think of every way, and I would bring on people to disagree with me and find ways that we could test that this doesn't work. But right now on social media, what you see is a lot of people just supporting what agrees with them.

    6. SB

      What are some of those ideas that have proliferated across social media that irritate you the most and you think are most harmful?

    7. MV

      I think the ones that create certainty in an uncertain world, and I think that could apply to pretty much any field. I talked about the gray zone earlier, and I think the gray zone has changed. 30 years ago, the gray zone was weight loss.

    8. SB

      Yeah.

    9. MV

      And if you put on any TV channel, especially late at night, there would be a fat burner or there'd be some grapefruit diet or some next great thing that someone came up with, but everyone forgets about all that. People used to sell you nonsense to try and help you lose weight and all of it didn't work. It was not healthy. Even if it made you lose weight, it was in an unhealthy way. It ended up creating and fueling this almost eating-disorder-like cycle for most folks and then came out some medications like Ozempic and people started actually losing weight with an FDA-approved medicine that had real results. Now you see less of those fat burner ads, but you see more of a new gray zone, anti-aging. Science doesn't have an answer to stop us from aging. We don't have the answers perfectly to our genetic code, but boy, there will be a genetic test for sale that will tell you exactly what you need to avoid. But the reality is we just don't know and it's not sexy to say, "I don't know." But I've been passionate about encouraging folks to celebrate those experts who come in and say, "Here's what we don't know, but here's how we're working to get to those answers." 'Cause that's what gets me excited. There's so many breakthroughs being made in medicine, and we don't talk about those honest breakthroughs 'cause they're not always exciting. But if we could pair it with something cultural, if we could pair it with some comedy, with some fun, I think we can get in front of a lot of

  6. 16:31 – 18:27

    The Online Health Advice You Hate The Most

    1. MV

      eyes.

    2. SB

      One of the first things you said there was, was about weight loss and Ozempic and it's a s- incredibly relevant and, um, widely discussed subject at the moment, Ozempic. I, I listened to the research on Ozempic and I am someone that typically has a bias towards not taking medications if I can and f- pursuing a natural route. And when we-

    3. MV

      And that is what we do too-

    4. SB

      Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

    5. MV

      ...which is understated in most, uh, circles.

    6. SB

      As doctors?

    7. MV

      Yeah.

    8. SB

      Yeah.

    9. MV

      So our training, for example, if you look at our... We have a reference called, let's say, Up To Date. It's a medical platform where we could go and get guidance on any medical condition and it could tell us what the epidemiology is, who gets sick with it, uh, what is the diagnosis that we should do to try and make it, like what laboratory testing, what imaging we should do, uh, what treatments work first line, second line, third line, et cetera. If we look at pretty much any chronic disease treatment, whether it's high blood pressure, um, sugar management from, like, diabetes, all of the first steps is lifestyle modifications. That's what we're taught.

    10. SB

      Is that because of the type of training you had-

    11. MV

      No.

    12. SB

      ...and the doctor you became? Or is that all medical doctors?

    13. MV

      That is all medical doctors. But what ends up happening is twofold. One, patients love a shortcut. They love having a medication potentially do the work that they may not be able to or don't want to. You know, it's difficult to generalize here because some patients truly have difficult lives. They have three jobs, they're a single parent, they're, uh, having a mental health crisis, so they may not be able to do those lifestyle changes. But then there's a portion of us who could do it, but prefer to take the shortcut, and that's pretty human of us. We, we would like to get the shortcut. We

  7. 18:27 – 20:24

    Lifestyle Changes Is The First Doctor's Advice

    1. MV

      would like to take the edge.

    2. SB

      Is there such a thing as a shortcut?

    3. MV

      In healthcare? No-And, and I heard you actually say it on your last podcast, uh, covering Ozempic, that there is no shortcut, there are side effects and trade-offs to everything and you're absolutely right in that. There is no such thing as just something that is all good. Hydration, you can't live without it. Over-drink, you'll throw off your electrolytes, you could damage your brain, you could lose your life. Carrots, healthy food I would say, eat enough, you'll turn orange. Same thing goes for medications, and that's why when people go and villainize treatments, medications, supplements, it just depends and there needs to be nuance. It's too hard to paint medicine with a broad brush, but social media makes that really tempting.

    4. SB

      That, that non-Ozempic path-

    5. MV

      Mm-hmm.

    6. SB

      ... if I'm not gonna take the, the new sort of fat burning magic pills-

    7. MV

      Yep.

    8. SB

      ... or the appetite, I guess, I could say suppress appetite, um, magic pills, that becomes another, a bit of, still is a bit of a gray area in many respects. Because we, on the drug side of things, people now have an option that's FDA approved, but if they don't wanna pursue that path, there's still all of this other information around, "Okay, I wanna lose weight." And there's lots of opportunity for a lot of people to present them with solutions. There's a, there's a roaring debate around calories, which seems to just be never-ending.

    9. MV

      Mm-hmm.

    10. SB

      And, um, I wanted to get your take on that. If, if someone was, you know, in your training when you've been advised to suggest lifestyle changes first and foremost, if I'm trying to lose a bit of weight, I'm, you know, at risk of being diabetic or something, what would you say to me as your patient?

    11. MV

      It would be hard to generalize it because it really depends on what preexisting conditions exist, what have you tried thus far, what works, what do you have time for, what do you have budget for?

    12. SB

      On that point of tried thus far-

    13. MV

      Mm-hmm.

    14. SB

      ... why is that, why does that matter

  8. 20:24 – 21:13

    Do Shortcuts Exist In Medicine?

    1. SB

      so much?

    2. MV

      (exhales loudly) If I have a patient who's tried dieting and failed and I don't ask that question and I recommend dieting, they may not take the advice. They may nod because they wanna be a "good patient" and leave and say, "Not doing it."

    3. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    4. MV

      But if I ask that question, they can say they tried and failed, then that gives me an opportunity to ask, "What exactly did, did they try? Did they try some really restrictive diet that's out there, carnivore, keto, what have you, and that set them up for failure, something that wasn't able to be sustainable?" Whereas now I can explain that, "Hey, the thing you tried actually set you up for failure and here's a more reasonable recommendation that we can try." And now I can actually be a doctor that

  9. 21:13 – 23:12

    What's Your Take On Calories In, Calories Out

    1. MV

      recommends a dietary modification that could help them.

    2. SB

      What's the key to finding a diet that is successful from your experience? What are the, like, the foundational factors of that diet that's gonna typically make it stick?

    3. MV

      There's two real things that you need to think about when it comes to dieting. One is its impact on your weight, because calories in and calories out, as non-sexy as it sounds, as clinical and cold and heartless as it sounds, is true. Second, you also need to think about the nutrients in your food. Because if we just take one of those parts and ignore the other, we can get into a really bad place. I can, uh, s- even see those grapefruit diets that people say, like, "Eat three grapefruits a day and you'll lose weight." Yeah, you will because you're under-consuming calories. But is that healthy from a nutrition side? Absolutely not. On the other side is you can get enough protein, enough nutrients, but if you're overeating calories, you can get into a metabolic problem where now you're carrying excess weight and increasing your risks of all sorts of conditions. So the goal is to get you in a place where it's balanced in both a caloric, weight management standpoint, but also and ideally a healthy nutritional balance as well. And what that means person to person is gonna vary. It's gonna vary based on the medical condition they have, some patients who are anemic may need certain nutrients that someone who's not anemic doesn't need. Someone who's prone to kidney stones may need a slightly different diet than someone who is IBS prone. So we need to always take into account that generalized advice isn't great when it comes to healthcare, especially when it's very easy to create buzzy statements from truth in healthcare. Like I said on a podcast not too long ago that exercise for weight loss almost doesn't matter. And that's a buzzy statement because on one hand it's true,

  10. 23:12 – 25:26

    How To Make A Diet Stick

    1. MV

      but you also need to pair it with some nuance and say, "Exercise has so many benefits outside of weight loss of why it's important to participate in exercise." And the idea of weight loss needs to come from nutrition. That's where the majority of the change will come from.

    2. SB

      Super interesting, 'cause I've sat here with so many people that have said that to me. Um, they've said that when you look at a lot of the studies, exercise as a, if you, if you give, prescribe someone exercise to lose weight, they probably won't lose weight. Um, but I would definitely say that in culture people see exercise as the, many would see, I, I reckon the primary way you lose weight, they think you have to go for a run to lose weight. And I, and I've, again, you've, you expressed the nuance there, but I've, even I struggled with understanding that because over here people say exercise isn't super useful for weight loss in the studies, but then the on- the prevailing narrative in society is that if you wanna lose weight, you've gotta get on a running machine.

    3. MV

      That's because they're equating in their minds health with a magazine cover, and health is not a magazine cover. They think that you need to have big muscles to be considered healthy, and while you can have big muscles and be healthy, you can have big muscles and be tremendously unhealthy.So just looking at someone's appearance doesn't give you the full picture, just like looking at someone's weight doesn't give you the full picture. You need to know more. And when it comes to exercise and weight loss, let's just take for a very simple example. I used to go to the movies when I was a kid, I loved it, I did it all the time. It is not unusual to eat a tub of popcorn, a little candy bar and a soda, well over 1,000 calories. Do you know how hard it is through exercise to burn off 1,000 extra calories? Most of us are not physically even equipped to burn 1,000 calories during an exercise session. So it's just about the science of not being able to out-exercise a bad diet.

    4. SB

      What if I just eat loads of salads? I think I've been in that mindset before where I thought-

    5. MV

      Yeah.

    6. SB

      ... well, I, it's just really, I could have...

  11. 25:26 – 29:06

    The Illusion Of A Good Body Equals Good Health

    1. SB

      Well, I've been in periods of my life where I've just eaten more and more and more good stuff, quote unquote good stuff-

    2. MV

      Yep.

    3. SB

      ... things that I thought were good, um, but I also didn't lose weight.

    4. MV

      You were, you're a really smart person. You're a person that wants to be as effective as you can in your podcast, in your communication style, and you're amazing at it. You wanna do the same thing with your diet. And the hacks and tricks that you use in your business mind, in your communication mind, don't work for healthcare. You cannot find the shortcut of the salad that's gonna fix everything that bothers you, of the probiotic miracle supplement. It's not gonna be there. That's why some of the minds that actually end up falling for the most simplest forms of misinformation are those who are really good at business-

    5. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    6. MV

      ... because the things that work very well in the business world and the communication space don't work in healthcare 'cause healthcare is not a commodity. Healthcare does not work well with extremes. You cannot do something so good all the time-

    7. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    8. MV

      ... without it having negative repercussions. You wanna be good, not perfect when it comes to healthcare. And the more you try and chase perfect, number one, you're gonna get the negative response, but also number two, you're gonna create anxieties, worries that are also toxic to your body.

    9. SB

      So perfect is good.

    10. MV

      So you have to be very careful. So perfect is not only just an illusion, it's a toxic illusion.

    11. SB

      I saw someone talking recently about the calories in, calories out thing. And the first comment was a lady who I think had a preexisting condition-

    12. MV

      Mm-hmm.

    13. SB

      ... basically saying, "Because my, because of my preexisting condition, the calories in, calories out thing does not work for me. I've tried it." And then the health influencer responded and said, "It works for everybody."

    14. MV

      Both statements are true.

    15. SB

      Okay.

    16. MV

      Dialectics are common in healthcare, where two opposing ideas can both be true. Someone can try and do calories in, calories out, which through science works, but the it- application of it can fail.

    17. SB

      Well, I'm thinking not about the application and, like, the science of it. Is it regardless of whether I have a preexisting condition?

    18. MV

      Not regardless. Preexisting conditions is part of the application.

    19. SB

      Okay.

    20. MV

      The individual is part of the application.

    21. SB

      I think she was making the case that because of that preexisting condition that the maths of it don't apply to her, like it doesn't actually work on her body-

    22. MV

      It shifts.

    23. SB

      ... versus the applicat... Okay.

    24. MV

      It absolutely shifts. And that's the truth for most medicine. Like, when I try and get my patients into a healthy blood pressure range, because we know that, uh, having a resting blood pressure above a certain number predisposes you to having risks of heart attack, stroke, all these cardiovascular conditions. When I treat them with a medication after lifestyle changes either didn't work or they weren't able to go down that route, we have this really unique knowledge. Public health wise, we know that controlling the blood pressure on a large scale will lower deaths significantly, will lower heart attacks significantly. But by me medicating this one patient, I have no idea if it's gonna help this individual exactly. But that's because all we're doing in medicine is doing our best with the limited information that we have on hand.

    25. SB

      Closing off on that point about exercise, so if, if we shouldn't be thinking

  12. 29:06 – 31:09

    Calories In And Calories Out Does Work

    1. SB

      about exercise as a way to lose weight, what are, what is the sort of medical advantage, the physiological advantage for me if I go to the gym every day and I'm, I'm active?

    2. MV

      Literally everything else. If I could bottle the effects (laughs) of, uh, exercise and sell it, richest person on earth. Happiness, mood, social connections, strength, ability to decrease cancer risk, decrease, uh, increase ability to fight off cancer, increase longevity. Literally everything else (laughs) is the benefit of exercise. And I say that as someone who's been very exercise focused, but over the last few months I've kind of fallen off. I've gained some weight. I haven't been exercising as much as I want because sometimes life gets hard, life gets in the way, things become problematic, mental health sometimes takes a struggle. And we need to be aware that that can happen. The idea that we need to make every person perfect, or if they're not perfect, they're a failure, that's such a dangerous rabbit hole to go into.

    3. SB

      How much exercise?

    4. MV

      Gonna vary person to person. General guidelines say 150 minutes of moderate intensity exercise per week, which isn't a lot, two and a half hours. Um, moderate intensity meaning that you shouldn't be able to speak full sentences, maybe one sentence at a time until you're out of breath is a simple way to put it.

    5. SB

      When you, you, um, have such a broad view on medicine-

    6. MV

      Yeah.

    7. SB

      ... when I noticed that in your content, I was like, "This guy really knows. He really has a real, much more broad view than the neuroscientist I spoke to yesterday who's really focused on, you know, maybe one part of the body." With that broad view, what are you concerned about in terms of macro social trends, the direction of travel that we're going in with our health? We talked about misinformation and disinformation but, but actual realities of the Western healthcare condition.

    8. MV

      First of all, I think it's important that we have both individuals

  13. 31:09 – 32:41

    The Benefits Of Exercising

    1. MV

      participating and having a seat at the table, the broad view primary care physician and the single point expert neuroscientist like you had on your podcast before me.

    2. SB

      (laughs)

    3. MV

      We need both. In fact, where I'm able to gather my information from is from all those researchers that are putting in those hours at the bench, making sure that they're checking their biases, showing the flaws of their own research. Without them, I am nothing, right? Like where did I get my knowledge from? From them. So we absolutely need to do this in a teamwork approach. I think the big problem that we face today is two things. One, the loss of trust in our healthcare world. That's huge. People don't trust healthcare advice, they don't trust our agencies. Frankly, the loss of trust of doctors has been rather shocking over the last decade. And then second is it's more of a philosophical issue that I raise because I don't know where it's gonna go, where we've created this world of processed foods, unhealthy foods, foods that cause us to eat more and more and more and feel n- not satiated, and then we've come up with a medication to solve that. We've created apps that pull our attention spans, that allow us to focus 10, 15 seconds at a time before we swipe to the next thing. Now a lot of people are requesting prescriptions for ADHD medications. There's people who wanna stay

  14. 32:41 – 35:11

    Where Is The Direction Of Travel With Our Health?

    1. MV

      out all night and party and still maintain their physical gains, they get on testosterone early when they don't need to. How hyper-medicated are we gonna get, as a society, to a point of actually harming us? And I don't know the answer to it. I'm not smart enough to know the answer to that, but I think it's a good philosophical question to ask ourselves.

    2. SB

      Are you scared about what would happen if we had a pandemic that is 10 times more deadly than the previous pandemic breakout now? Are you scared because of that loss of trust?

    3. MV

      The more deadly the pandemic, a lot of times, the less problematic it is. Isn't that weird?

    4. SB

      Oh, okay.

    5. MV

      So initial SARS virus was significantly more deadly than SARS-CoV-2, which is the virus that causes COVID-19. So initially, when the reports came out about the lethality rate of SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19, we said, "Oh, well, it's not as bad as SARS. We'll be okay." Because most people with SARS got really sick, they lost their lives. But because asymptomatic spread was a thing with COVID, meaning that you could feel fine or maybe just have the sniffles and spread it, it killed millions more people. And that's what that brings me back to that point of when I said insidious misinformation can be more problematic than true disinformation, because when something doesn't seem so bad, that can, we can allow it to go much further and cause much more harm.

    6. SB

      Complacency can foster-

    7. MV

      Complacency and, and feelings of safety. Like, "Oh, well, this one's not as lethal."

    8. SB

      "I had a-"

    9. MV

      "We're good. I- I feel fine. We're good." But when you look at it and you zoom out macro, oh my god, it's wrecking havoc across the world. And I've actually equated this to vaping. Vaping is not as harmful as cigarettes on paper, but because the odor is not as offensive, it's easier to hide, you could do it much quicker and get a bigger dose because it feels like it's not as harmful, many more people can get hooked on it.

    10. SB

      Is vaping dangerous?

    11. MV

      Yes.

    12. SB

      Why and how? So many of my friends vape. I think three, three out of my six best friends, they're just like...

    13. MV

      (laughs)

    14. SB

      They're like, th- they're just absolutely addicted and they never smoked, interestingly.

    15. MV

      That's the issue of it, that it gets people who

  15. 35:11 – 37:01

    What Would Happen If There Was A Deadlier Pandemic Than Covid

    1. MV

      maybe would've been turned off by smoking to try, and the chemicals found inside are really rewarding to the brain, nicotine being a, a prime example of it. And the more dangerous part of it is with kids who have a developing frontal lobe, meaning that the part of their brain that is responsible for complex decision-making is not yet fully formed, so they're incredibly susceptible to anything that can build a tolerance, a dependence, uh, an addiction to, and it could change the chemistry of their brain moving forward. So we don't wanna make it easier for them to start smoking. Vaping should be used as a tool, as a way of getting you off of cigarettes, not as a way of introducing you to cigarettes or nicotine at all.

    2. SB

      Is it dangerous for adults as well?

    3. MV

      If you're coming off cigarettes, no, it's a good choice.

    4. SB

      But if you were never... All my friends that vape never smoked.

    5. MV

      Yep. It's not, it's not something that carries value health-wise and can only potentially harm.

    6. SB

      Have they, have they done any s- I guess it's super difficult to do studies on these kinds of things, but have, is there any studies that have been done around vaping?

    7. MV

      Yeah, there's been vaping-related lung injury, where that's its own diagnosis code now. Um, there's been children that have been hospitalized with it. Um, there's been even technical problems of the devices blowing up (laughs) in people's faces.

    8. SB

      Mm.

    9. MV

      So it's not the fact that I'm trying to fearmonger here and say, "Vaping is the devil." I'm here trying to explain that...... vaping can be problematic because on the surface, it may not look as harmful by comparison.

    10. SB

      Everything is trade-offs.

    11. MV

      (laughs) Everything is trade-off, as you said. Yeah.

    12. SB

      It's so interesting. It's like when I see all my friends vaping, they're all in... We're all in Dubai a couple of... About, about a year ago, and I thought I'd pass it because they all have these little, like, disposable vape things now.

    13. MV

      Mm-hmm.

    14. SB

      So I said, "Let me try it." And I tried it, and it was really nice, and I thought, "Oh, I could get into this."

    15. MV

      Yeah.

    16. SB

      And if it's not

  16. 37:01 – 38:04

    Is Vaping Dangerous?

    1. SB

      unhealthy 'cause like we all know that smoking is unhealthy-

    2. MV

      Mm-hmm.

    3. SB

      ... I thought, you know, in your head you think, "Oh, what's, what's the harm?" I could have so easily got into it. Luckily, I just, I'm always skeptical when I don't know the side effect. I sh- I would rather accept the side effects. (laughs)

    4. MV

      Yep.

    5. SB

      And, and it be super clear than to someone say, say to me, "There's no side effects."

    6. MV

      Yeah.

    7. SB

      When someone says there's no side effects, I always...

    8. MV

      Well, that's like the whole nature fallacy when someone's like, "Oh, but this is natural." First of all, what does that mean?

    9. SB

      Hmm.

    10. MV

      Because (laughs) like-

    11. SB

      (laughs)

    12. MV

      ... they say vitamins are natural, but they're made in a lab. I don't know how that's considered natural. And also, just 'cause something natural doesn't mean it's safe. Arsenic, cyanide, natural but deadly.

    13. SB

      The ADHD point you mentioned.

    14. MV

      Yep.

    15. SB

      What are you seeing as a doctor? You know, over the last couple of years, the, the term ADHD neurodiversity has seems to have become more and more prevalent. Everywhere I look it feels like I'm hearing a conversation around ADHD. Now, is that because there's been a social sort of heightened awareness to the subject and now people are getting diagnosed more?

  17. 38:04 – 41:47

    The Studies Around Vaping Side Effects

    1. SB

      Are we creating more ADHD somehow or is it somewhere in between?

    2. MV

      Yeah, I, I, I, I assume it's something in between. I don't have a clear answer to it. Uh, I do know that neurodivergence needs to be talked about more. And that's not just from the ADHD perspective. It's also from, um, autism spectrum disorder, uh, situation as well, where it's folks are gonna be different and some people want treatment for a condition, others don't, and we have to respect people's autonomy. Even when we talk about something like vaping, if an adult wants to vape, as long as I can convey to them as their doctor the risks, everyone's free to make their own decisions. No one lives a life where they say, "I'm gonna take no risks." Everyone has a different risk tolerance level. Everyone is comfortable with a different level of care in life. Some people want more care, some people want less care. Even at the end of life, I have discussions with my patients for end of life care often, and a lot of times they're shocked by it. They're like, "Wait, do you think something's wrong with me? I'm 30 years old. Why are you talking..." This is the time to talk about it, when you're healthy, when you, you aren't facing a decision that you have to make right now. That's when you're gonna be able to spend some time and think about what kind of medical care you want. You know, I'm a doctor here that became a professional boxer a couple of years ago. That is not healthy. I do not recommend it. It increases all sorts of risks for head injury, chronic traumatic encephalopathy. All of that is true. It's a risk that I was willing to accept because I studied the risks, I accepted the risks, I don't doubt the risks, but it's something that I'm passionate about and, uh, I wanted to go down that route.

    3. SB

      Enjoying it?

    4. MV

      Very much so. (laughs) It's a great outlet for me.

    5. SB

      Why did you choose boxing despite the risks?

    6. MV

      Yeah, I would say that boxing probably chose me instead of, uh, me choosing boxing. I, uh, I did TaeKwonDo growing up, so I was in martial arts for eight, nine years. And then, um, when I was in medical school, I unfortunately lost my mom to cancer and that was a, a really strong wake-up call for me being in the medical field knowing what it's like to be in the room to ask the doctors to stop doing chest compressions on your mom. I mean, that is not something that I wish on anyone. That's, that's the worst thing you can experience, especially when my father was there, also a doctor, who was saying, "No, keep going." But I knew it was futile. I knew we were causing more harm and in going through that journey, I got into a very unhealthy mental state. I didn't leave my house except to go to class. I came home. I was socially isolated and after a period of three, four months where that was going on, I said, "I need to get out of this." I need to take the... My own advice that I give to people and take the advice that you need to have action before you get motivation. And the action that I took was to go on Guilt City. Do you remember that app? It's like a Groupon-esque app-

    7. SB

      Hmm.

    8. MV

      ... where you can get a coupon to a, a class. And I got a coupon for a boxing class, and I went and did this boxing session, and then I ended up boxing for 10 years after that session. (laughs) Fell in love with the sport, and then a couple years ago, I ended up fighting on Showtime pay-per-view (laughs) in front of an audience of 15,000 people.

    9. SB

      Jesus. Wow.

    10. MV

      And, uh, it's, (laughs) it's been a unique journey. So while it's easy to vilify boxing and say that it's problematic, for some people, if the trade-off is right, it might be something that, uh, they could participate in, and it could be very healthy for them.

    11. SB

      Losing

  18. 41:47 – 43:52

    The Real And Painful Reason Why I Started Boxing

    1. SB

      your mother for anybody I think is just something that is unimaginably, unimaginably painful, but in the circumstances that you lost your mother where from what I understood, she was given the all-clear at one point with her...

    2. MV

      Yeah. So, um, she had this unique form of cancer called CLL and this is usually a cancer of old age where you get diagnosed with it and you end up dying of something else other than that cancer, but she had a unique more aggressive form of CLL where they needed to really ramp up treatment, and her treatment took a toll on her body. Like she did not look the same post-treatment, she did not feel the same, but it was all in the hopes of curing this cancer. And I remember very vividly, I was, I was going to Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital to pick her up one day and she...... actually fell waiting for me at the waiting area. So the doctor came down and talked to me and said, "Maybe we should keep her, observation for a day or so. Um, but overall she's doing great, she's just very weak from the treatment." And he shook my hand in that moment and said, "She's cured. There's no more cancer in her body. Now we just gotta get her to recover from all these treatments." And that's the greatest news anyone can hear. Your hope's 10 outta 10. And just a few short days later, her weakness got so severe that she got, uh, a very unique type of bacteria called gram negative in her blood causing gram negative sepsis, spread throughout her body. She required the use of pressor medication to artificially raise her blood pressure to prevent her organs from dying, and it didn't work, and unfortunately she lost her life. And one of the hardest moments there was watching my father go through this who, with my mom, sacrificed their lives to bring us to the United States as immigrants, gave up their lives. He went to medical school for a second time in his life. She went to university after having a PhD

  19. 43:52 – 49:27

    Losing My Mum

    1. MV

      in Russia to learn English and be able to teach students math here in the States. It, it was, um, it was painful to watch my dad go through it. So I think for the first few months, my focus was more on him than it was even on myself.

    2. SB

      Did that experience change your perspective of medicine and the medical industry in any way? Because in that moment, a doctor t- a doctor turned to you and said, "Your mother is cured." And it wasn't the... It sounds like it wasn't the cancer itself that did the harm, it was the treatment for the cancer that did the harm.

    3. MV

      I never was mad at the doctor for saying that. I- it would've been easy to in a situation like that where you thought you were good but then it wasn't. It taught me a lesson about how life can be cruel and take things away from you very quickly after just receiving good news. I remember sharing a, a meme on my Instagram that it had, like, "You: 'I'm actually happy right now.'" And then, "Life: 'Hang on a second.'" (laughs) And that's kind of how life is. So it taught me to be able to bounce back from adversity and realize that you have to put one foot in front of the other while still being able to feel, because repressing emotions, in the short term, is a valuable tool. You know, if you're unable to function in terms of high stress in the moment, you could lose your life. You could make a really bad decision, you could harm others, you might not be able to s- successfully hold down a job. But if you do that for a really long period of time, even that as a acute coping strategy can become toxic. And I was getting into that point where it was becoming chronic and I was blocking my feelings of not mourning my mom, not having the proper process. And for everyone, that process will be different.

    4. SB

      You moved in with your father after that?

    5. MV

      Yep.

    6. SB

      If I was a, if I was a fly on the wall in that, in that household at that time, what would I have ob- observed?

    7. MV

      Two gentlemen trying to raise a dog very poorly. (laughs) That's probably not what you expected, but I, um... In trying to always find some kind of way to help, um, I thought by helping my dad redirect his feelings towards something else, um, I got a Siberian Husky for him-

    8. SB

      Mm.

    9. MV

      ... in that moment which we always wanted a dog. Even my mom wanted the dog. And, uh, he took some time to travel to mourn my mother's passing, and while he was doing that, I raised the dog a little bit for a few weeks, got her at least potty-trained. And then when he came home, she was there. He was typical Soviet father yelling at me and telling me why this is a bad idea, crying, which I never saw in my father before, obviously until the loss of my mom. And, um... Then he started being happy. He started saying, "What should we call her?" His focus shifted. His focus shifted to going for walks with her which allowed him to think about my mom, to not be locked into the house as so many people are when they're going through a rough time. So while I think it was chaotic (laughs) -

    10. SB

      Mm.

    11. MV

      ... of us trying to raise this puppy together, it gave us something to bond around in a moment of tough times.

    12. SB

      There will be a lot of people listening right now that are maybe in the throes of that grief or the throes of their own sadness or depression for whatever reason.

    13. MV

      Right.

    14. SB

      And it's, um... When you're in the midst of the storm, when it- it's, it's hard to see any way out. And y- you said something super interesting which is you said you realized that, like, action comes before motivation.

    15. MV

      Yep.

    16. SB

      If I, if I'm someone that's in that situation right now and I'm listening, what would you say to that person?

    17. MV

      Put on your shoes. They'll... You'll go somewhere. Doesn't matter where you'll go; gym, not gym, walk, dog park. You can go to a dog park without a dog. It's therapy. (laughs) The biggest therapy that I think I've ever had, and I've gone through traditional therapy, was going to a dog park with my dog after my mom passed away. It's such a weird thing, but animal therapy is real. And you know who actually gave me that advice, speaking of Dragon's Den? Um, Barbara Corcoran.

    18. SB

      Oh, really?

    19. MV

      She said that the way that she gets herself to exercise, 'cause she doesn't like to. She hates it. She's very vocal about it. But she says next to her bed are her shoes-

    20. SB

      (laughs)

    21. MV

      ... her athletic shoes, that if she puts them on, she's like, "All right, well, since I have them on, I may as well go exercise." And that one little step creates that cascade. Look, will it work for everybody? Is this the miracle solution? No, but it's one step. And even if you just do that one step and nothing else, the next time it'll be easier to put on the shoes and maybe try for the second one.

    22. SB

      Putting on the shoes is hard as well, when you're in that, in...

    23. MV

      Showering is hard.

    24. SB

      ... problem zone.

    25. MV

      Grooming is hard. The basics of all basics is hard. That's why when I hear advice, like, "Go make some friends online, uh, when you're feeling down," oh boy, that's tough advice. That's not easy. So the putting on the shoes thing is simple, in the sense of doesn't require others to be around you to judge you, doesn't have any steps after that, just to put on the shoes,

  20. 49:27 – 52:09

    What's The Best Way To Heal From Grief?

    1. MV

      and if you're at that point, seeking help from a medical professional is of utmost importance. Because we've put this stigma where if you go for mental health treatment you're somehow weak, but if you go for treatment for a broken bone you're not weak. That stigma doesn't exist for it and that's strange, because both things can have problems arise with it, especially from a mental health standpoint, especially with the society we find ourselves in. Currently, society is the most unnatural it's ever been for humans.

    2. SB

      How would you describe the journey you've been on with your own mental health?

    3. MV

      I don't know how I would describe the journey. I, I would say, just like most people, it's had ups and downs. I would say the, the thing that's really thrown me for a loop is the social media world of it all because of how unnatural that, that is. But I feel like a lot of people are working through that without even having a social media platform. 'Cause at the end of the day, these days, everyone's a content creator, right? Like when you make a video and it gets millions of views, you kind of know what to expect, being a content creator, you have experience. But Johnny, Rebecca, someone else putting out a video on their social media at 16 years old, that too can get a million views and they're not ready for what comes with a million views. In fact, so many people, even in the medical community, reach out and say, "How do I go viral?" I'm like, "Do you wanna go viral?" (laughs)

    4. SB

      That's thrown your, your mental health through a bit of a loop.

    5. MV

      Yeah. I was obsessed with it, checking it-

    6. SB

      Yeah.

    7. MV

      ... all the time and I wasn't obsessed for it for the reason most people think. I was obsessed with it from a place of growth. I was like, "Even if they're 99% BS, there's some kind of truth, there's a kernel of truth there that I could take away and make myself better." And, you know, there is truth to that. I did learn a lot of things, I did prevent some mistakes, I've improved my content as a result of listening to negative feedback and criticism. But I've had to, in working with my therapist, carve out moments where I'm not in a place where that's, uh, acceptable for me right now, where you just have to say, "This, I'm not in a healthy mindset to look."

    8. SB

      What was the symptom of the impact it was having on you?

    9. MV

      Um, tremendous anxiety, where you're just worried at all times and you're almost addicted to checking it because

  21. 52:09 – 56:25

    Your Journey With Mental Health & Social Media Bullying

    1. MV

      you wanna be ahead of it. You wanna be safe. You wanna be able to think of a response. And when you get to that point, you're never letting your mind rest. You're always in fight or flight and when you're in fight or flight, you're not resting, you're not repairing, you're not getting good quality sleep, even. So I know how important that is. I talk about it all the time, but as I said, you know, we're all not perfect. Doctors are probably the biggest hypocrites when it comes to their own health. I guarantee you, some of the people that have come on your podcast that talk about sleep or talk about this, they struggle with sleep. They don't do those things, just like how I, some advice that I give, I don't follow to the T. My job is just to present the evidence. So I know certain things that I should be doing better, but just 'cause I know doesn't mean that I'm gonna be 100% following it all the time.

    2. SB

      There's this interesting thing that I was just thinking about as you were saying that, that, um, on a, like a philosophical level, I think we're all kind of just passing our anxiety onto someone else.

    3. MV

      Hmm. Like, it's like energy cannot be destroyed-

    4. SB

      Yeah.

    5. MV

      ... and must be transferred? (laughs)

    6. SB

      I, I noticed this because on my podcast I have multiple guests that often disagree with each other.

    7. MV

      Mm-hmm.

    8. SB

      And if I was to do a map of how those people are feeling-

    9. MV

      Mm-hmm.

    10. SB

      ... they're all suffering.

    11. MV

      Well, that's just humanity as a whole.

    12. SB

      They're all, like, really suffering. And sometimes those people are suffering because of someone else who's suffering, and then because of someone else's suffering. It's almost like this l- this chain of suffering because of misunderstanding b- a variety of different reasons. But I think, a- as you said, it's, like, humanity as a whole. The person that's leaving those messages or, you know, attacking you is probably also suffering in their own way.

    13. MV

      Of course.

    14. SB

      It's a real shame, but I can't see any way outta that.

    15. MV

      It's a, it's a, like th- the circle of anxiety is an artistic way to put it, for sure.

    16. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    17. MV

      Um, but I think it, there's, there's some truth to it. You know, uh, even from trauma, the odds are that if you've experienced a traumatic childhood that you will also potentially cause trauma to others goes up. That risk does go up. And that's also pretty common sense, even if you're not looking at the medical research.

    18. SB

      Hmm.

    19. MV

      You could just say that if you've been hurt, odds are you can hurt people. Uh, what do they say? Hurt people hurt people too, right? Um, I think that that's, like, uh, that common sense logic that does get it right.

    20. SB

      What's the, um... Did your therapist give you any advice that's proven to be useful?

    21. MV

      Well, the advice that you put perfectly in, in place of logging off, not looking at certain things at certain times of the day. Like, literally, I had to completely shut off my phone at certain times of the day because otherwise what happens is I would get into this cycle of, okay, I just finished in the hospital, I just filmed my video for the day, now it's sleep time, and just before going into bed, let's check my phone one last time and search the social media sites, what people are saying. And it's like, "Why?"... that's ultimately what, I think, probably got me healthier. Like, not looking at it was very good in moments of despair because during those moments, I was just so fragile and it would not be a good time to look. But really where it got me is, what got me is, don't look unless there's something valuable you're getting from looking at it. So now, if I'm in a healthy place and I feel like I'm looking and I'm doing some kind of preventive task, I'm learning from it, I'm like, okay, I'm looking at it but I'm looking at it with some kind of intention. And that's actually true for all of social media. I think, um, he was on your show as well, Dr. Robert Waldinger, who ran the largest, uh, the longest running study at Harvard of happiness, talked about the different usages of social media. How if you use social media passively and you just look and consume, it can be rather disheartening and make you unhappy, but if you use it to form a community, to learn from it, to better yourself, suddenly the social media may not have as bad of a health impact and can actually have a positive mental health impact. So if I'm looking at the negative comments, I'd have to do that check-in with myself of, am I doing this because I'm actually benefiting from it or is it d- destructive in nature?

    22. SB

      Have you ever wondered if there's something about you that makes you more likely to look at that stuff or to care about that stuff? I've often wondered about that myself.

    23. MV

      Yeah. I- I- I feel like I have. I

  22. 56:25 – 58:15

    The Best Advice I Received From My Therapist

    1. MV

      think it's a, it's a pretty natural thing. I think most people look. (laughs)

    2. SB

      Yeah.

    3. MV

      Um, I think for me, I derive so much value in the work that I do on social media because this was never meant to be a financial venture. This was not some grand ideology that I had to make myself successful. This was solely because of my frustration as a practicing doctor which, the first question everyone, anyone ever asked me when I got into social media is like, "Now that you're doing so well, you must want to quit medicine, right? Like, you're probably outearning it." Yeah, but that's not why I do medicine. I work at a community health center. Most doctors that do really well on social media either leave medicine or maybe do concierge practice or, you know, celebrity practice or something. I work at a community health center where 50% of people don't have insurance. (laughs) So that's been my goal and social media's just a tool to help me with that goal. And when I see negative comments, I view it as a threat to that goal.

    4. SB

      Have you ever considered quitting social media? Seriously.

    5. MV

      I pondered what life would be like.

    6. SB

      (laughs)

    7. MV

      Um, but I just viewed it as a negative all around, not just for me. I just view, view, uh, social media as such an opportunity to help people. It's like me saying quitting medicine. I don't wanna quit medicine. I, I wanna be there for people, I wanna be valuable and useful. I, in fact, I think about myself as, like, a more practical, useful person and every strength that everyone has can also be their weakness, so sometimes I'm too practical and that impacts you as a friend, as a partner, as a family member. So sometimes being too practical is problematic but because of my practical nature, I wanna be useful to my patients.

    8. SB

      So let's continue with this, um,

  23. 58:15 – 59:32

    Are Certain People More Prone To Get Addicted To Social Media?

    1. SB

      this health related s- stuff. Supplements and vitamins. I wanted to get your take on that. There's a lot of, you've mentioned supplements in, a few times in this conversation. Is that part of the gray area? Is that snake oil? What's your POV on supplements?

    2. MV

      I wanna say, like, one sentence that is all-encompassing and answers all those questions but it's really hard because there's just so much nuance with it. Um, vitamins. We can't live without them. We need them. Supplements, supplemental vitamins are not necessary the huge majority of the time and are often sold by people who are preying on insecurities, promising shortcuts and h- honestly people trying to get wealthy. The evidence for almost all supplements, unless you have a very specific reason for needing to take them, is missing. And what I've learned at, through my ten years of being a physician and the hundreds of years of practice of medicine, unless we're certain of some benefit, introducing new things, distracting people from things that work

  24. 59:32 – 1:00:45

    Have You Considered Quitting Social Media??

    1. MV

      is not a good solution.

    2. SB

      Is the harm of supplements that they don't actually work... Again, we're- supplements is a broad word so-

    3. MV

      Of course.

    4. SB

      ... it'd probably have to be... Is it the harm that they don't work or is, are you saying that we should be getting all of the things that we're supplementing from our natural diet anyway? Or are you saying both?

    5. MV

      Yes and... You can get all of your nutrients, again, unless you have a specific medical condition, from foods. Two, they will make you skip out on doing things that are healthy for you because you think you can take a shortcut. Three, you're spending your limited healthcare budget, that many people have a very limited healthcare budget, on things that are very expensive, making a lot of promises. And the thing that I'm most worried about is when we enter the space of people saying, "You need supplements and not true medical treatments for conditions that bother them or that affect them."

    6. SB

      If I'm someone that maybe... I'm not talking about myself even. If I'm someone that has a very, very limited diet just because of my lifestyle choices, whatever, would you recommend that individual to take a multivitamin sup- supplement?

    7. MV

      I probably wouldn't but if they did, I wouldn't discourage them.

    8. SB

      Do they work? That's what I'm trying to figure out.

    9. MV

      Oh, and then the other point that I didn't

  25. 1:00:45 – 1:02:05

    Are Vitamin Supplements Good For Us?

    1. MV

      mention is that there's harm. Like you said, everything has trade-offs. There's no such thing as no side effects so supplements have side effects. They have interactions with medications, they can create health conditions. Uh, the term antioxidants. Antioxidants are generally healthy, uh-... you know, B vitamins are traditionally labeled as healthy. You have too many of them, we notice that they become pro-inflammatory. But no one talks about that because you can't really sell that. So, what instead gets talked about is the promise of what they could do, but there's harms that come from taking supplements, especially in our world where, you know, Consumer Labs and Consumer Reports goes and pulls supplements off the shelves to find out that they don't have the ingredients that are listed in them because they're not regulated by the Food and Drug Administration. They have some ingredients at 5 to 10x what's on the label, like vitamin A, which is a fat-soluble vitamin and can actually be really harmful. So, they're not regulated, they can cause potential harm. Their benefit, unless very clearly indicated, is in the air and not proven. Why recommend them? Why sell them? And I say this as someone who can make a fortune.

    2. SB

      (laughs)

    3. MV

      I mean,

  26. 1:02:05 – 1:05:56

    Can We Get All Our Nutrients And Vitamins From Foods?

    1. MV

      you said it yourself, 12 million subscribers. You know, I take a little boxing selfie, fit, and say, "The reason I'm this fit is 'cause I take whatever thing I bottled up in my house, put into those pills whatever powder I want." No one checks it, and I could sell it and become a multimillionaire.

    2. SB

      Is that true, that no one checks it?

    3. MV

      No one checks it.

    4. SB

      No one checks this-

    5. MV

      No one checks it.

    6. SB

      ... these supplements?

    7. MV

      No. Like right now, we could bottle up on the table our miracle formula.

    8. SB

      Yeah.

    9. MV

      We can call it a miracle formula-

    10. SB

      Yeah.

    11. MV

      ... as long as we don't make a claim that it treats a specific medical condition that requires the treatment of a medical doctor.

    12. SB

      Okay.

    13. MV

      And I just put buzzwords on it, so instead of saying, "This helps your depression," I just say, "Depression, immunity, support." Just buzzwords.

    14. SB

      Feel good.

    15. MV

      Feel good.

    16. SB

      Happy.

    17. MV

      Happy. Natural. Simple. From the earth. We could sell it.

    18. SB

      How much do you-

    19. MV

      We don't have to get anything, we don't have to get anything cleared by anybody.

    20. SB

      How much do you think we'd make?

    21. MV

      (laughs)

    22. SB

      (laughs)

    23. MV

      Too much money. And that's why it's like, man, I understand why people do it, and there is the notion that they could potentially work. There's always like a little bit of evidence coming out that something is there.

    24. SB

      We're just gonna cut to an outbreak for Miracle Mood, which is- (laughs)

    25. MV

      (laughs)

    26. SB

      ... endorsed by... (laughs)

    27. MV

      I, it's so tempting. I get it. And I get, there's also, I, I don't wanna label everyone with a broad brush and say they're evil and just trying to make money. Some people do believe that they work. They, they want the belief that this is what ails us as a society. And I wish that was true. I wish it was as simple as giving people some supplements or that eating eight almonds a day will extend your life by 10 years. I wish that was the case.

    28. SB

      Um, the subject around gut microbiome is something that I've talked about a lot on this podcast because I've just had a lot of experts talking to me about the subject and-

    29. MV

      Yeah.

    30. SB

      ... something that I didn't even know existed three years ago.

  27. 1:05:56 – 1:07:39

    Do Prebiotics And Probiotics Work?

    1. MV

      alcohol, smoking, all those things are unhealthy. Um, the, the, the thing that makes health advice so boring is that the things that grandma told us (laughs) still is what I say in my office. And it's not sexy and it puts people to sleep, but it's true. That's what we know works. We don't have a perfect answer as to why. And right now there's, like, tests on the market to check your microbiome, to know what food... Too preliminary to recommend. We don't know what to do with the information. The promises that they make don't hold up when we look at it long term. Genetic tests, potential is there for a lot of value. Most of them are very preliminary unless you're working with a geneticist on a very specific condition. So, I think the hype oftentimes speeds up the selling of the products before the evidence is there. It outpaces the evidence. And in some instances, medicine does that too, like traditional medicine, but it does that with some thought in mind. For example, if we create an emergency use authorization, or if we allow someone to have a treatment exemption for something that is not proven-...for a disease that's already lethal, that they're gonna lose their life anyway, or if we don't act now, we're gonna lose so many lives in the moment, then yeah, there might be instances where we can speed up the process of certain things. We can, uh, create some shortcuts because we're taking that trade-off that's thought about. But with a lot of these products, they come and go and there's just so much misinformation around them. You know, like one of the, uh, big individuals that does this in this space, and

  28. 1:07:39 – 1:10:35

    We Should Listen To The Health Advice Our Grandmothers Told Us

    1. MV

      hate to single out but it's just been such a, a, a voice in this community is Gary Brecka. You know, I, I talked about him on my show.

    2. SB

      Have you spoke to him?

    3. MV

      No. And seems like a really good person, seems very passionate about what he's talking about. But the, the promises that are being made are not proven and the intention may be good, and good intentions can have bad outcomes, but if the information is not accurate, no matter how passionate you are about the subject, long term it's gonna have negative outcomes.

    4. SB

      When you use the word proven there-

    5. MV

      Mm-hmm.

    6. SB

      ...do you mean that there's not a significant or a, a reliable sort of basis of research that's been done yet to validate the hypotheses or the statements or... You're not saying that it's been disproven, it just hasn't been proven?

    7. MV

      Yeah. So that's a good point to bring up. The things that I say that are inaccurate largely have not been disproven because if I say the juice inside this cup will help you live forever, would you say that's true or not?

    8. SB

      My theory would be that that's not true.

    9. MV

      Right. But can you disprove it?

    10. SB

      No.

    11. MV

      You would have to run a study to disprove it.

    12. SB

      Yeah.

    13. MV

      And that's how I function as a doctor. So I can't disprove what he's saying because then I would have to run my own study, but based on what we do know, based on... Remember how I said at the beginning when a new study comes out, I try and bring it to the already established information that we have? It doesn't vibe with what we know to be true. If you wanna go against public health standards from what we've established as science, you better have a good reason for doing it.

    14. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    15. MV

      And if you do, I'm all ears. I'm excited for that kind of stuff. If you have some breakthrough of why you disagree with the CDC, with the WHO, with, uh, Harvard Health, please tell me why you disagree. But if you disagree because you said so, that's where things get problematic. Like, I'll give you the simplest of examples. There's a very famous clip that I reacted to on my podcast where Gary Brecka says, "If you have headaches, it's because you're low on pink Himalayan sea salt." How many reasons do you think people get headaches?

    16. SB

      Many reasons.

    17. MV

      You're not even, you're not even a doctor, right?

    18. SB

      No, I know, 'cause my brother has... My brother has had chronic headaches since he was a, since he was a kid for-

    19. MV

      But just-

    20. SB

      ...yeah.

    21. MV

      ...you got a concussion.

    22. SB

      Yeah.

    23. MV

      You have stress, you have a hormone issue, you have a tumor.

    24. SB

      Yeah.

    25. MV

      There's so many. You have migraines, you have a neck cramp. What... The possibilities are endless, right? To have the confidence to say, "This is what you're missing," everything else almost doesn't matter. The

  29. 1:10:35 – 1:13:06

    Mentioning Experts That Are Wrong

    1. MV

      confidence is the misinformation.

    2. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    3. MV

      Like, notice every time you asked me a question today, it was either, "I don't know, it depends, nuance, for who." It's almost annoying (laughs) because I can never give a clear answer but that's what science is. And that's actually why people have lost trust in science, because we're not as confident as Gary Brecka when he talks about salt for headaches.

    4. SB

      Sometimes you've been wrong, right?

    5. MV

      Of course.

    6. SB

      Sometimes you've... I remember reading, um, something where you said, "I admit that I, I change."

    7. MV

      Of course.

    8. SB

      "I've changed my mindset when presented with new information and I've explained why."

    9. MV

      Yep.

    10. SB

      I think when we, we think about doctors, this is the part I think that some people struggle with, is if you look over the course of sort of 10, 20, 30, 40 years, some of the things we were told were healthy back then are no longer healthy and new information comes about. I'm well aware that this is a scientific model, but I'm, I'm trying to present a counter-

    11. MV

      No, no, this is great. This is great.

    12. SB

      ...trying to present a counterargument.

    13. MV

      Put yourself in that shoe. In that seat, yeah.

    14. SB

      How do we know who to trust when doctors say that they've been wrong and they've changed their mind on really critical things before? And even, you know, when we think about vaccine disinformation-

    15. MV

      Right.

    16. SB

      ...a lot of the arguments you'll get from the right are that you said this and now look what happened, so we'll never trust you again. How do we n- navigate and know who to believe, even doctors when doctors will say, "Information I gave you in the past was actually no longer true"?

    17. MV

      You have to take the hard route and do the work to find out why they said what they said then and why they're changing their mind now.

    18. SB

      So I'll give you an example.

    19. MV

      Yep.

    20. SB

      Actually, maybe this isn't a doctor, this is, um, studies. I remember having a guest on my podcast that talked about, I think there was a bit of a crisis with, um, depression drugs in the early years-

    21. MV

      Yeah.

    22. SB

      ...where they had... Because of the way that the tests had been done by the big pharmaceutical companies, the CEO of the pharmaceutical company knew that the depression drug did not work and had all of these side effects, but they pushed it through even though the vast majority of the studies had- hadn't shown that the drug worked. They found one study that had, they pushed it through, got to market, loads of kids used it, and then I think a decade later... Again, I'm paraphrasing here. I'll link what I'm talking about below. It was discovered that the CEO of that company knew it, it didn't work, but there was a study and research that got it to market and people started using it. And I think Johann Hari, who's been on my podcast before, he was the Ozempic episode we released-

    23. MV

      Mm-hmm.

    24. SB

      He was one of the, the people as a young man that started taking that depression drug only to find out that five, six years, seven, eight years later, it didn't work and the CEO knew that it wasn't really working. So that was the, that was

  30. 1:13:06 – 1:17:43

    People Are Losing Trust In Doctors Because Of This

    1. SB

      trust in the medical system. It, that was trust in research, that was trust in big pharma.... much of the counter-movement we're seeing now is we think big pharma is corrupt and we think they're meddling with doctors to get drugs into market that maybe don't work.

    2. MV

      There's a lot of drugs on the market. Agree?

    3. SB

      Yeah.

    4. MV

      If science is so problematic and we shouldn't trust for all those reasons, why is it the one example that we're stretching to find of the mistake that was happened or the fraud that happened with this one drug, we're talking about something that happened decades ago? It does happen. Fraud happens. It happens in healthcare, it happens with policing, it happens w- w- p- politicians. There is fraud. But pointing to that one episode and saying we should throw the whole field away is gonna cause a loss for us. And there are issues with pharma. There's huge issues with pharma. I frequently s- talk about even from, like, the pricing standpoint of pharma, how problematic they are. We've seen the issues with the opioid epidemic, how that was driven largely by pharma. But we're calling them out. The beauty of Western medicine, of what we do here, is that we are the best at calling ourselves out on our failures. But actually, the more we call ourselves out on our failures, the more trust we've lost. And in fact, when someone owes up to their failures and seeks to learn from them and seeks to make change, that's the person you wanna follow, the person who is not confident, who is open to be transparent, who explains why these things are happening without 100% confidence. That's the people that are giving you advice that's true. The same way that we said, uh, earlier that everything was all natural does not mean it's all good. Everything for profit is not necessarily evil. My YouTube channel is for profit. I make a very healthy living doing what I'm doing. Doesn't mean it's evil. So while it's easy to make shortcuts and over-generalize, we have to talk about specific instances and call balls and strikes as they are. Umpires make mistakes. Healthcare industry has made mistakes. There's been vaccine incidents in the past that have hurt people. We've learned from them. We called it out. We've studied it. We are con... There are doctors constantly studying where we need to do better. This is ongoing at all times. And the ironic part is most people have no idea that it's happening because we only find out about it on issues we're passionate about. I recently did a video or I was on a podcast where I was asked about birth control. I gave a very simple answer. It was non-motivated in any way. It was just kinda presenting the information as it was. There were a lot of very mean comments in that information about how birth control can potentially be harming people, that I don't believe the negative side effects that can come with it, all these statements that were being made. And I found them to not be true. I had to do, like, a little soul searching to see if they were true 'cause I do that with all the negative comments, and I said, "No, birth control can have side effects just like with any medication." The reason why birth control maybe is being brought up is because this is a topic people are very passionate about. This is a topic where doctors have discriminated in the past about, so it's a bit more triggering to the emotional part of our brains. But if we look at what's leading hospitalizations from a drug in the United States, Tylenol, you don't see anyone uproar making YouTube videos that Tylenol's problematic.

    5. SB

      What is Tylenol?

    6. MV

      Acetaminophen. Paracetamol for you.

    7. SB

      Oh, paracetamol. Yeah.

    8. MV

      The amount of hospitalizations for Tylenol-induced liver failure is sky-high. I've, I'm sure we could pop up the statistics on screen, but no one gets upset about Tylenol 'cause it's not emotionally triggering, and that is true for all of healthcare. There's side effects to taking medications. So it's easy to only focus on one part of that equation and say, "Well, doctors used to say this. What about this?" Why did doctors say it? W- what got them to say it there? And the idea of us getting it perfect, never gonna be true. We're always working with incomplete information. All of medicine is just our best guess.

  31. 1:17:43 – 1:20:48

    Ads

    1. MV

    2. SB

      How many of you started thinking about your long-term health when you hit 30? For me, this was a wake-up moment of me thinking to myself, "Okay, I probably need to start paying a little bit more attention now." I already felt a change in myself when I hit 30 with things like my metabolism, my energy levels, so this year is no different. Zoe, which is a company I've invested in but also a company that are a sponsor of this podcast, helps me to make smarter food choices all based on their world-leading science and my own test results. If I'm ordering food, I know how to make my takeaway so much smarter by adding things like a side of vegetables to eat first or choosing the option with the most fiber. Zoe helps me to make that choice. It guides me and coaches me. It's my personalized nutrition coach that I have on me 24/7. And to help you start your Zoe journey and start making smarter food choices, I'm giving you guys 10% off when you join Zoe now. All you've gotta do is use code CEO10 at the checkout when you sign up. Enjoy and let me know how you get on. What about these animal studies? A lot of the research-

    3. MV

      Okay.

    4. SB

      ... that's presented i- from experts is from animal studies, rats and things like that.

    5. MV

      Yeah, so that's where people like to skip steps. The amount... So pharma is out for money, right? That's fair to say?

    6. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    7. MV

      That's their job. They're trying to create a return for their stockholders. They try and pick research to do that hopefully will drive the best profits. 99% of the stuff that they start researching on from the initial promise of animal studies, 99% of it fails, and they're only picking the top.... then you go one step further, once it works in animal studies, in Petri dishes, and then it goes into human trials, another 99% of it fails. So the idea that something has mechanistic value, then works in an, in a Petri dish, then it works in an animal model, for it to make all those steps is so astronomically (laughs) rare that it ends up working for the general population, the fact is that we shouldn't jump to, from animal model to human, because 99% of that is gonna fail.

    8. SB

      So what are we saying then, do we have to, you know, go back to just living like our ancestors lived and... 'Cause w- you said earlier on that the world we live in has never been more unnatural.

    9. MV

      Hmm. Yeah.

    10. SB

      So is the, is the antidote for all of this stuff we're talking about, is it to go back to being human and l- like we always say our ancestors were?

    11. MV

      Well, I think what we need to look at is the evolution of humans and the anthropology aspect of it, because we can then better understand ourselves now and why we're having problems with this unnatural world, right? So if you look at why anxiety was a, a s- survival benefit to us back then versus how it could be very problematic to us now in a safer world, studying prehistoric cavemen, humans would be beneficial. But drawing conclusions from their diets and potentially what they ate, oh man, you're gonna get into so many fallacies and biases that the information is not gonna be great and not very applicable.

    12. SB

      If you, um, if you could redesign

  32. 1:20:48 – 1:27:29

    Look After Your Children, We Need This Out Of Schools

    1. SB

      society in such a way that it would be, in your mind, more healthier, m- more healthier for the, for the average human, you had to start from zero, so you're president of the United States, Trump doesn't get it, Biden doesn't get it, Dr. Mike gets it.

    2. MV

      (laughs)

    3. SB

      And you could really rewire society, what are the, some of the sort of macro, top line changes you would make? Okay, I f- I'm taking... No, I'm gonna keep everything on the table.

    4. MV

      The first thing that I would do, and this is, uh, echoing, uh, one of the authors and experts I, I really enjoy listening to, and he's actually coming on my podcast soon, Jonathan Haidt, I would get phones outta schools. I think that much in the same way that we r- uh, regulate addictive substances like cigarettes, like vaping, like, um, alcohol, to those of age, we need to start thinking about that for social media. And that's an unpopular thing to say, but I think if you really look at it, there's a lot of problems that can come from it. Very limited benefit for someone who's 13 to be looking at those images, so I think some major changes need to be made, uh, in schools.

    5. SB

      You were voted in 2015...

    6. MV

      (laughs)

    7. SB

      You know what I'm gonna say.

    8. MV

      That's a long time ago. (laughs)

    9. SB

      Yeah. (laughs)

    10. MV

      10 years ago.

    11. SB

      In 2015, you were named People Magazine's sexiest doctor alive. (laughs)

    12. MV

      I don't think I was voted, I think they just nominated me. Um...

    13. SB

      Well, it's, it is something, right?

    14. MV

      Yeah.

    15. SB

      It is what it is. Um, your relationships.

    16. MV

      Mm-hmm.

    17. SB

      What's your relationship status, if you're able to share?

    18. MV

      Relationships have been really tricky. Um, as a medical provider, you have to carry yourself with an air of professionalism, you have to make people feel comfortable in talking to you, uh, about very sensitive subjects. So I've been very careful to balance the world of showing my personal life to some degree and showing people and reminding them that I'm human, I too have relationships, I too play sports, I have a family, I have dogs, but also not do it so much that it actually can cause harm in my clinical interactions. So initially when I started social media, I was very open about my relationships, who I was dating, what my relationship status was. And I thought that, I was under the firm belief that there is no way this could be detrimental. And much in the same way that I thought that reading every negative comment could only be helpful, boy, was I proven wrong. Not only does it cause harm to potentially the clinical interactions, it can cause harm with my audience online. N- not dating patients, that's not what I mean.

    19. SB

      No, no. No, just the clinical interactions piece, I mean.

Episode duration: 1:48:21

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