Berner Phone - The Truth About GLP-1s, Peptides, and Fibermaxxing (Bonus Episode)

Episode Date: May 28, 2026

Surprise! It's a bonus episode! Dr. Elizabeth Kazarian joins Des to discuss GLP-1s, medical misinformation, and the overlap between politics and alternative health. Dr. Kazarian also shares insights on menopause and testosterone therapy, concerns about the peptide craze, and her hopes for expanded stem cell research.   FOLLOW DR. K: https://www.instagram.com/drkazarian/   Call [phone] to leave us a voicemail! International Dialers can leave us a voice memo on WhatsApp: [phone]   FOLLOW DES: Tickets: https://punchup.live/desbishop Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/desbishop Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/desbishop X: https://x.com/desbishop YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Desbishopcomedy TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@desbishop5   FOLLOW NICOLE: https://www.instagram.com/nicoleclyons/   Produced by Nicole Lyons Productions Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nicolelyonsproductions/ Website: www.nicolelyonsproductions.com

Hi, it's Hannah Burner and Des Bishop. Thanks for calling the burner phone. If you leave a message after the tone, we may have to make it into a podcast. Hello, my little dialers, and welcome to a special episode of Burner Phone. For two reasons. One, we've never had anybody qualified to talk about a topic on the podcast before. Well, everybody's been basically talking through their ass. And secondly, for only...

the second time, but this was a more serious one in the history of the podcast, the voice messaging system has been down for numerous days. So we don't have messages, which is very annoying, because I could see that people had been sending them. And then before I had a chance to download it, the system went down, and it's been down for two days. So I haven't been able to get people's messages for our special guest, Dr. Elizabeth Kazarian. Welcome to the show. Hey, thank you so much for having me. Yeah, so I wanted the dialers to be able to sort of throw their concerns or ask you issues that, you know, they wanted to either debunk or find out if it's misinformation.

And unfortunately, it didn't come through. But the good news is that you actually had, before we even, before I even put out the prompt, you had sent me such a detailed list of things you're comfortable talking about that. Which is great. Yeah, here's how we talk about that I know. Well, honestly, I, so my, one of my things is that there's so much misinformation out there. And honestly, even on this podcast, you know, things come up all the time. And like, of course you can Google them, but like, you know, sometimes you really want a bit more of thorough explanation. And also, you know, the internet, it really depends the way you phrase a question.

It could, it could throw you. So I had noticed on your Instagram that you're not afraid to tackle some of the internet. the big sort of health controversies of the day. So I thought you'd be a great guest. Yeah. Thank you for having me. Let me ask you, before we get going, what is the, what is the number one bit of, so sorry, let's establish, you're a family doctor, right? Your primary care physician? Yep. So you're getting a lot of people coming in with their, their ills. But what's the number one thing, what's the number one thing that people come into you with in terms of like misinformation or, you know, anything like that? It's going to be the weight loss, GOP ones is going to be the

biggest misinformation that I'm seeing in clinic. I'm also a double-border. Really? Yeah, yeah, for sure. It's such a powerful tool, but it's also can be misused for sure. And there's so much misinformation out there. I feel like I'm fighting for my life in clinic, like with every patient just because of really social media as well and just the culture around gLP ones um and then all of the stuff going on in the current government with vaccine schedules constantly have people asking me you know if vaccines are safe now which is you know doesn't really happen in other places of the world where they're like accepted um and then um and then a lot of menopause menopause is having a moment so a lot of that menopause is okay well let's get on the gLP ones first because all the three things that you just

mention I want to talk about in detail. So I took Manjaro for a short period of time. Oh, cool. I wasn't. After I piled on the pounds after I tore my ACL. And when I was sort of, I just, you know, Jim Gaffigan had mentioned that he was on Manjaro in his Hulu special. And he talked about not only that he lost weight, but that he found that his knee pain went away. Now, I had seen these, you know, claims about inflammation. Anyway, needless to say, I don't to talk too much because what do I know? But I took it and I lost a load of weight very fast. It was quite convenient. But everybody thought that I wasn't heavy enough to have done it. So when you say people are coming in with misinformation, are they coming in with both sides

of it, the negatives and perhaps looking for it when they don't need it? Oh yeah, absolutely. So that was a great example because you had a medical reason to potentially have put on weight. And so if that happens, then it's not out of question that we have a medical tool to help you get back into the weight that is healthy for you. So I actually think that that's a great use of the medication. Also, the anti-inflammation is something that we're seeing. We don't have studies just for the inflammation part, but we do know that taking the weight off of a joint, the weight that you have on a joint, your body weight is multiplied by four on that individual joint. If you were standing on one leg, for example. So helping alleviate the weight

probably helped you heal a lot too. I do want to point out that it was also motivated by vanity. I'm not going to try to pretend that that wasn't. Like, I'm also going to admit that I was motivated by the ease of losing weight. Like, and I know people, they do this sort of stereotyping of it's a lazy way. You know, you should lose weight the real way. But I do it. I did feel like I was cheating.

I did. Oh, yeah. No, we have, let's have a real conversation about that. So it can be, you know, when people say it's cheating. If all you're doing is taking the medication to limit your appetite and you're not taking care of yourself in regards to other things, then, you know, I hesitate using the word cheating, but that's not the best way to do it. I would say that when we're in a doctor's office and we're talking about the JLP ones, we're talking about your medical care. And it's more about lifespan and health span is what I'm talking about. But then the vanity, of course, is just an added bonus.

But people who come through my clinic, I really try to emphasize that no one is taking the easy way out. It really isn't cheating because everyone hears from me that they have to work out. Everyone has to lift weights on a gLP one. Yes. So then what about, I've noticed a lot of these scare posts on Instagram about osteoporosis, bone density stuff? Yep, yep. What about that? So when you lost a lot of weight and you've thought,

felt like that was cheating, you lost weight in every compartment of your body. You lost it in the muscle compartment and the fat compartment, the bone compartment. And so what we're concerned about is that people are losing all of their weight and they're thinning out their bones. With the studies that we have does not show any link directly with osteoporosis and the medication itself. It's more so that weight loss occurred at all that that osteoporosis risk happened. So no direct link to the GOPY medications, but there is definitely a fear and a link risk with people who are using it to just lower their overall body weight and who are not working out. That risk is so real. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah. But like the picture of like the sort of decrepit bone is in exaggeration.

Yeah, yeah. That's a little extreme. Like they take that like like, like that's probably like a bone after an autopsy of the worst osteoporosis case they've ever seen and they use that for like a picture for in social media post or something like scare everybody. I'm fucking scared the shit under me. I want everyone to take it seriously. I want people to be concerned, but I don't want anyone to be like,

oh, GOP1s caused osteoporosis. No, no, no. People who take GL1s and then lose a drastic amount of weight and are not working out and are not eating enough protein and fiber and all the things.

Like, yes, that person might be wasting away and that is very dangerous. So it's a powerful tool, but it comes with a lot of responsibility. And how do you deal with, like, people that you know, or even the advice of people that you know that are definitely doing it in a way that's just, they just want to stay

skinny. Yeah. It comes, it comes, you know, everybody, you want to motivate people to get to their healthiest version of themselves. And that's why when I, you know, have a patient who might not be doing things that we're talking about, like the counseling, you know, working out and all those things, it becomes a medical safety issue. It actually becomes.

Oh, really? Yeah. it becomes a conversation of like, you know, we've made really good progress. I am noticing that you've lost too much weight and we make the framework surrounding your care, which includes lifting weights, is not where it needs to be at this time. So we might have to go down on the medication. Right. Okay. Yeah. But now the thing is that, now, listen, I got it off a row. Okay. This is straight up, just my own life. Nothing to do with the fact that Roe may have, may not advertise in this podcast in the future, but I got it off a row because I actually, I, I actually, I, I,

I'm going to out myself here. I didn't want to face a doctor and a doctor tell me like, oh, you don't, you don't need it. You're just vain. And it is quite, now, I was honest with Roe, but I did send them the worst picture I've ever taken. Like I didn't, because you have to send a picture, right? So I sent them like the fat, like.

You didn't know that. You just think you have to prove. I didn't know. Sorry, actually, you know what? Let me. Are people editing their pictures that they're submitting to Roe? Roe? Let me state that I could be wrong here because when I was in Ireland, I was also, before I had got it off of Roe, I had pondered using an Irish, one that was in Ireland. So let me preface it by saying, I could be wrong, but I definitely sent a picture, but I'm pretty sure you have to send a picture to Roe, but I'm open to correction on that. But I did send them the worst picture of all time. And I didn't lie, I didn't lie about my weight.

Okay, that's good. I didn't have to, but the thing is that I hide it, right? Like, I don't. Yeah. I don't, I don't present fat. Yeah, like, more like it. Well, I'm not fat now. I meant like at the time, you know, at the time, I was hiding it.

But I was, I was 40 pounds heavier than I am sitting here right now. Nice. So you, so you're off of a GLP1 and you kept it off. I've kept it off, yeah. But I did, I did, I did take like over the sort of year and a half since I take every now and then, because I had a few left over. Now, you can tell me right now, by the way, if I'm being, if I'm being bold, all right? Because I'm really being overly, I'm being overly honest with you now. Yeah. Good. Okay. I had some leftovers. So every now and then, not lately, but every now and then, I took a little, a little small top up dose, like a 2.5 of Zepbound. I was taking. Zep bound. I just feel like Majara sounds cooler because it's the exact same drug, but they're like giving them two different names. Yeah. Yeah. It turns up. So I was, I was taking Zep bound. And then Zep bound comes in the vial so you have to turn into a fucking drugstore cowboy and

like inject yourself. It feels pretty cool. Yeah, yeah. So anyway, so every now and then, I hit a little, a little top or upper. But that's when I really felt like I was cheating, because that one I was like, oh, I'm going to stay at this weight now. Every time I, I get a getting a little loose, you know, I feel myself slipping back into old habits. I take a little pop and then, you know, I'm like, it's amazing how much it sort of resets your habits. That's the one thing I don't hear people talking about so much is that it really got me back in a good eating regime. Yeah. And I'm using it to treat addiction for lots of different things, by the way, because it literally goes to your brain. It's changing dopamine patterns in your brain.

Okay, so this is a great, this is a great topic. So, to my great surprise, somebody told me that their doctor had recommended a GLP1 for their eating disorder. Yeah. Which a lot of people think that people with anorexia were hitting the GLP1s because they're anorexic. But this person was told because they were bulimic that they were taking GLP1s. Is this good advice or is this bad advice? No, I don't think, I don't know if that's really good advice. I think.

Right. Okay. So that's interesting because I. And by the way, and by the way, I don't want to speak for this person or like this person's medical care or anything. And by the way, there are so many eating disorders, so many different kinds of eating disorders. And I would like to argue that obesity is an eating disorder because you're constantly thinking about food and you're having food wise. A chemical imbalance in your brain that is constantly making you hungry and constantly thinking about food. So that is also an eating disorder.

So if we're going to help people control their hunger, we can call that an eating disorder and help. We're using JLP wants to help somebody with their eating disorder because it's causing them to have obesity. But never do I think, or I'm not going to use the word never. I'm going to say be extremely cautious, hesitant with someone who has swings the other way to another kind of. Okay. Yeah. I was, I was a little surprised. I was a little surprised.

I'm a little surprised. Yeah. Okay. That's good to know. Yeah. Throw that out there just in case anyone. Yeah. So on the addiction front, so I hear a lot of people discussing this that people are finding alcohol use disorder.

you think drug addiction too? Oh yeah, I'm seeing in clinic. I'm seeing, I'm seeing tobacco and marijuana and just like general. I'm seeing, ooh, I saw sports betting. This guy was like, I don't want a sports bet as much. I thought that was. Really?

Yeah, gambling. I thought that was incredible. And I don't have like a trial or back, like large clinical trial to back back that up at all. But I do have one for alcohol. We studied over 100 people. It got published this year. And it was way better than the current treatments we do have, which is basically an L-Trexone. So there's a lot of promise with GLP-1s.

Okay. Yeah, it's really cool. I've been used to start for that. So that was largely positive. What's your only concern about GLP-1s? It has been taken by the celebrity culture and just, you know, media press and just been, we've totally focused on the wrong thing. We've totally focused on skinny culture and perpetuating toxic beauty standards.

I mean, looking at everyone like at the Met, looking at celebrities walking out of the red carpet, you just open up social media now. Everyone's so, everyone's, I don't, you know, people are saying the word toned, but I'm actually concerned that they're not toned at all. And people are getting really, really thin. And again, so I would like, if I had one wish, we could take that focus off of those people who are using it inappropriately and swing it back, which would take away stigma and shame and give it to the 40% of Americans who actually have obesity.

And we make it affordable, like lower the price. Give it to the right people who need it. It's not a luxury lifestyle medication in the way that it's being used right now. It's actually real. It's real medical care for people who can't afford it, which is so ironic. Yes. And it is quite expensive. It's so expensive.

$500 a month is just inappropriate for the average American. It's not okay. But it's getting a little bit easier to get on your insurance now, right? Yeah. For people that need it. Yeah. And in Canada, some of glutide, which is Ozumpic and Wigobi, went generic last week or this week, which means that. Oh, really?

Yeah. So we're thinking like generic, Olympic by next year or something. That would be incredible. But it is a thing where, like, you don't see as many fat people anymore. That's pretty wild. Whether this drug in the long term ends up being the greatest thing ever or we find out some problems with it, it is. It's got to be one of the more, like, consequential drugs of the last 15 years. Oh, no, yeah. No, it's just exploded. Like culture and medicine have never met like this.

It's right. Culture. That's a great piece. That's a right that for the New York Times. Yeah, seriously. If anybody wants to write that article, I'm down. So like we have never had culture and medicine clash like this because we have never been able to get to like a cultural piece of our identity, which is the way we look and how thin we are. We literally have a medication for this now. And America is obsessed with how they look. And we have such like, you know, we have a U.S. healthcare crisis with. accessibility and access and affordability, larger wealth gap with the people, the wealthiest people in America having accessibility to this drug. So it's such an interesting time to be alive. It's such an interesting time for me to be a doctor. All right. So mostly women listen to this podcast. Oh, cool. You mentioned you mentioned menopause making a comeback. Oh, yeah. We're talking about menopause. Yeah, well, it's interesting because I, my mother had breast cancer. And back then, oh, that's okay. She's, she's no longer with us. So that wasn't even the

thing that got her. So, but back then she got breast cancer. One of her friends got breast cancer. They all took HRT. And there was actually a scare about HRT and breast cancer. Now, I feel like we've moved on from that time. Where is that all at now? Yeah. So you're talking about the Women's Health Initiative, which is a study that came out in 2002. And it really over approximated the risk with being on hormone replacement therapy. It's kind of grouped everyone in their analysis from like 40 to 80 years old and combined the risk. And if we actually pieced people out, we realized that starting people within 10 years of

menopause on hormone replacement therapy is actually incredibly safe and women don't need to suffer. And that is one of the biggest things that I want people to know is like the second you had midlife doesn't mean that like medical assistance doesn't care about you anymore. We have the tools now. And it's totally safe and appropriate that the average woman has her whole. hormones given back to her while she's going through menopause. We need to normalize it. And to your point as, yes, you know, there is, whenever we take hormones, there is an accepted risk with there

being a hormonal cancer risk, but it is really, really incredibly low, like really, really low risk. And then now, for everyone listening who, you know, if you're in your 30s, like approaching paramedopause, we do estrogen patches. And now there's not even a risk for clotting anymore. So I don't even have to counsel about that. Right. Yeah. Because actually on the, on the Bishop Exchange, my other podcast, my podcast partner, John Bishop was talking about he had, he had taken testosterone. Coincidentally enough because his wife was at the, is it the endocrinologist that you go to see for that? Is that? Yeah. Well, you can go have a primary care doctor who knows why it like I do. Yeah. No, but I'm only asking that because I, he was, he was at the endocrinologist.

I wanted to get the right type of doctor. But they were there for her. But they were there for her, but then the doctor said when she had to go like take a test herself, the doctor said, uh, like, how are you or whatever? He started talking. And then the doctor was like, you should take a testosterone test. And he took a test. It was very low. And he took the patches. And it was amazing for him. And of course, my knee jerk reaction was surely that's like a cancer risk because I had to stick with cancer when I was 24. And like, you know, I just, I just automatically had a knee jerk reaction of that's bad. You know, I think. about steroids.

So like, where's it at for men? Yeah, yeah. I do want to emphasize that we're like, if you have hypogonidism, which is what that's called, when you have low tea as a man, and we are giving you back tea testosterone

to put you back into normal physiologic ranging, like what you were supposed to have. Basically, we're giving it to you. By the way, I haven't taken the test. I keep procrastinating. Yeah.

So basically, we're giving you back hormones to the level that is appropriate in your body. And so, yes, there's a risk there, but the risk is quite low. It's when you're taking too many hormones or what we call like a superphysiologic level of hormone dosing where your cancer risk goes up and like, yes, testosterone builds thicker muscle, but

your heart is also made of muscle. It makes the heart muscle get thicker as well. And so can make your cholesterol go up, your blood get thicker. So there's a lot of risks with taking too much testosterone. But it is more than appropriate to give back both men and women testosterone if they need it. And guess what? We don't even have a product for women in the U.S. for testosterone because we haven't studied testosterone and women. When I prescribe testosterone of women, I have to prescribe a men's product.

Really? I'm just happy to see it. So why do women, why do, why do women take testosterone? Sorry, why would you describe them? Yeah, so menopause is your ovaries dying. Your ovaries just died and your ovaries produce three hormones. It produced progesterone, estrogen, and testosterone. And so testosterone is like the forgotten female hormone. It's like we don't talk about testosterone in women at all, but it's actually totally normal. And women have a lot of testosterone. And so I've been doing a lot of testosterone for women because, you know, we just need to, we just need to fund the studies more. It's not that it's not true.

What is like, what are the effects of women having low testosterone? Oh, their sex drive, just like low libido, totally. Like, instead of having like spontaneous thoughts of sex or like, and their partner isn't the problem. That's usually where I start is like, is he the problem or is like the partner the problem. But no, they'll be like. like, no, he's perfectly fine. I've been married to him for 20 years and there's nothing wrong with him. And, you know, it's just when he touches me, I want to hit him. Like, I just,

I hate him. I don't want anything. I hate him. And what about when he breeds? What about what he breeds? Yeah, exactly. Literally, you can't. It's like, how dare you give me a kiss or something? You get angry. Why do I hate my husband? Um, you should have not just Irish Catholic. I don't know. Or sexual repression. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. And, um, and then you give women back. testosterone and they're just like, oh my God, I literally like, like you saved my marriage or like, like, like I get, I get the coolest comments. Really? Yeah.

And like, because women go from being just receptive because like, like, you know, you're like, oh, okay, you want to have sex. All right, I guess. You know, rather than like spontaneous thoughts of like, no, I want to. Like, I thought of it first. Like that's the difference. Like going from like receptive and passive to like actively wanting to be like, no, I'm going to go have sex with my husband. Right. Yeah.

And that comes, yeah, don't give them too much because then they'd be like, you know what? I think we need a war. Yeah, right? Women don't too much to sell around. What would that do to the world? If we gave all the world a lot of self-round?

I'll tell you what to do to the world. Exactly what men do to it. Yeah, exactly. Fucking disaster. Even more. What would women do? Even better even more, no. So here's something that

actually Nicole and I were discussing right before you came on, because this came up on a recent episode about back in the, the day, what seemed, what was normal back in the day that, uh, should be, or it feels illegal now. And one of them was the amount of milk that we gave children to drink. What are your thoughts on that? Okay. So, you know, when, when babies are babies, they don't need cows milk at all because they

need, um, human breast milk and formula. And then, you know, as kids get older, milk is great. Vitamin D 4.5 of vitamin D and iron and calcium in the U.S. I think it's like great. But I do think that we need to like pay attention to the American diet. And it starts in childhood. And I think that we can overdo it with anything. It's all about moderation.

And I don't, and you know, this like goes on the topic like milk. But like definitely like we've totally normalized sodas way too much. And juice and like sugar shouldn't be normalized to the extent that it is at all. But yeah. Yeah, because juice kind of. juice gets maybe too much of a good wrap, do you think? Yeah, for sure. The fiber from the fruit just got mashed up.

Like, you just, like, mashed all of that. And you're just straight, like, liquefied rather than, like, the, like, good fiber for your gut. And then it's a lot of, it has a lot of vitamins. It's not going to demonize fruit. We love fruit and we love juice. It's just thinking about kids' health and their teeth. I think there's a lot of juice drinking in the U.S. Right.

Yeah. Now, this is something I'm afraid to ask about. Just curious because I've been a big cereal. I've been a big cereal guy my whole life. Cereals really taken a hit on the publicity department from the- Oh, no, I know. Also, like, Kellogg brainwashed all of us in the 60s and put out TV advertisements. Like, the second American, every American family had a TV in their living room.

Kellogg pushed commercials across the United States to get everyone to buy their cereal. We got everyone hooked and addicted to, like, breakfast cereal. That was a marketing. Which still exists for me to. Today, by the way. By the way, I had. Like, best marketing scheme in the history of the US. I don't know.

It was cereal. But I really, I eat a lot of raisin brand because it helps my motion in the ocean. Okay. Yeah. That's good. That's fiber. That's good. That's more than that.

You know, also, let's not demonize carbs. We love carbs. Carbs are great energy. And every fiber is a carb too. So. But you're, you're happy that parents perhaps have moved away from over reliance on breakfast cereal for children? You think that's a positive development?

I think that's a totally positive development. because I think as a country, we're very carb-centric. And I would say, like, everyone's immediate food availability in the U.S. when it comes to both affordability and what they can just go quickly is going to be a processed carb. Yes. What kids eat quickly in the morning is going to be a processed carb. It's going to be the cereal from the box. And then they go to lunch at the public school and it's pizza for lunch.

You know, it's very processed, very carb-y. Do we have a stat on the increase in the amount of smashed avocado? that children are eating versus my childhood because I never heard the word avocado until the day. No, I know, right? Kids are eating much better than I eat growing up. Also, all the things that we're talking about right now

is what I eat growing up. I'm not going to, like, no superiority attitude here. I grew up, I grew up eating Captain Crunch, like. Yeah. As the roof of your mouth. Yeah. So, yeah, but like, so, okay, so here's a fun question. This is like, not to bring all the haters,

the parents coming at you. what would you say is something you're concerned about in terms of modern parenting and diet with children? Or, you know, because like people get fears about certain things and you wonder, are they based in fact or not? And by the way, I don't know what ones are. I'm actually asking. Oh, well, I'm terrified about all of the millennial parents in the U.S. being terrified about vaccines. Like, I'm terrified about that. Like, I need parents, any parents to not be terrified about vaccines.

Like, I need our government to stop terrifying our young parents to be like, Yes. Second guessing and double guessing the efficacy of vaccinations, which we've had for decades and is used in every other country we have a strong relationship with who has a great health care system, like across Europe and Canada. So, you know, parents are asking me about the hepatitis B vaccine. Parents are asking me about the HPV vaccine, which protects people from cervical cancer and head head neck cancer.

Australia is approaching a 98% vaccination rate for HPV. Australia is going to eliminate cervical cancer. cancer. We can't have nice things in the U.S. like that. And that makes me very sad. Well, I went to bat for the HPV vaccine in Ireland when the, you know, Ireland had a good take up of the HPV vaccine. And then there was an organization called Regret. And they led a very successful anti-vaccination campaign against the HPV vaccine. And listen, I don't know where their, I don't know where their funding came from. But I can assure you that they're linked up with all the, all the all the names that you know you know in the world you know that that sort of that sort of

dark money world of uh you know uh you know anti-vaccination and you know whatever i don't know i don't know what that general world should call itself but children's defense fund and all these people and uh i i got i tell you man they come at you they come at you And at you specifically personally? Me specifically at that time 100%. It's actually how I always explain, because I never understood when people said they had anxiety, I never actually understood like what anxiety was in terms of like a condition. And the most stressed I ever was in my life up until that point was around the time of the piece

that we did on Irish television around the anti-vaccination campaign around the HPV vaccine. Wow. And so much so that I had such an intense feeling in my legs during this stressful period that I googled, you know, the way that my legs were feeling. And the first thing that came up was anxiety disorder. I was like, oh, shit. I guess anxiety is an issue for me. Legs on fire falling off.

What is that? Yeah. Like what it, yeah. But by the way, it was common for me. It was a very familiar sensation, but I'd never actually looked it up. I never thought it was kind of weird. Needless to say, I was happy to a degree in Ireland. I forgot her name, but there was a woman who was suffering for dying.

She was dying from cervical cancer. And she made sort of a heartfelt plea to people to say, like, if there had been a way to prevent this for me, like, I would have been so grateful. And, you know, she's died since. But luckily, luckily she had the courage, but also that her message landed. And Ireland's take up rates, they've improved a lot. They haven't totally improved because, as you know, there's a very strong sort of international campaign of hesitancy around vaccines. And I've never, I actually don't understand the knee-jerk sort of, you know, and you've got

guys like Rogan. To them, it's just a fact now. They're just out there as a fact. And I just, even then, and still now, because obviously COVID put the whole thing on steroids, I just don't understand why there is this knee-jerk assumption that there's something nefarious going on. Because it doesn't make sense because there are ulterior motives. That's why it doesn't make sense. Yes.

That's why there are ulterior motives behind all of this. This isn't about vaccines. Like Ron DeSantis making a comment on ivermectin should be prescribed for ponta virus. first of all, Ron DeSantis doesn't know the first thing about ivermectin, he doesn't know the second thing about viruses at all, like either one of those. So this is just about disagreeing with the establishment, which is the traditional medicine, so that you can form mistrust in the establishment, let's say me, which will then rally your base and create further cultural political divide closer to you, closer to make that loyalty to you stronger. That's what they're doing. They're going after the way that we pushed out rapidly the COVID vaccine, which is a whole, we can criticize that and play devil's advocate, but the COVID vaccine has saved millions of lives and kept people out of the hospital. People are going after hepatitis B vaccine. Oh, why do we immediately vaccinate newborns? I could answer that. You know, they're going after all these different things. Oh, we should try, we should try an antiparic medication for a virus. Why are you even saying that? You didn't go to medical school. You're definitely not a PhD DNA like a science background. You're just taking one random thing and saying it belongs to the other because it's the opposite of what the establishment is saying. It's the opposite of what science and experts are saying. RFK literally said,

don't trust the experts. We don't even have experts in the government anymore. They all got fired. They're all on social media. They're all on social media with their own platforms. There are doctors online that have grown platforms upwards of over millions of followers because the public is so hungry for the truth and for evidence-based medicine. They're going to social media to find it in those doctors, not the doctors in our government because they got fired. Yeah. I mean, it's quite, it's, It's quite worrying. It's quite shocking actually how Ivermectin just became like this drug of choice to rally around. Like as if Ivermectin can solve everything. No, exactly. And so then why haven't we been doing that?

Yeah. And by the way, I don't want to go back into the COVID vaccine debates. But one of the great hypocrisies is always they say, well, these vaccine companies, they just want to make money. Right. So they don't want you to know that Ivermectin works. And it's fucking Merck. Merck makes Ivermectin one of the largest vaccine manufacturers in the world, who by the way, during the GLP1 crisis, they were like public enemy number one, Merck, these anti-vaxious. Suddenly Merck's drug is the savior.

I don't get it. No, exactly. It's just, it's all opportunistic, whatever makes sense of the moment for whatever political move they need. That's what it is. That's it. That's why, to me and you say here, it doesn't make sense because, like, we both have international roots.

Like, I'm from Sweden. Like, people in Sweden aren't even talking about this. Oh, you're from Sweden? No wonder. Fucking typical fucking social democrat. Yeah, exactly. Another fucking lefty spouting the... How dare I believe that I, you know, should be able to live in a country where

the person that I don't even know has affordable health care. How dare I believe that? Yeah. Okay, so, I mean, listen, I could really go on about that for age. But generally, I don't, you know what, no, but generally I don't talk about it because I don't like the drama. that was like a lot of drama. I love the drama.

Yeah, yeah. But, you know, the bigger you get on Instagram, you're going to see how stressful the drama. That was like total talk. I'm sorry, not good at that. Okay, so anyway, that's well established. I mean, the only bit of good news around all that is that, you know, people, the one thing about getting into power is that, like, you get found out, I feel. So the only, the horrible thing about them being in power is they're having like severe effects on like our health policy, right? The good news is that people are seeing how completely inept they are.

And not just because, not just because he got into like a hot tub in his jeans with Kid Rock. But, you know, just that they can clearly see that he doesn't really know what he's doing. And even even the government themselves are replacing some of these people with actual. doctors because it's been so bad. No, exactly. Casey Means didn't finish residency. Like she didn't even finish residency. Guys, like, she's never seen a patient without having to go check with an attending and be like,

what do you think? Like, that's what that means. So you've never independently practiced medicine. And she was nominated to be Surgeon General of the United States. And by the way, they always talk about these pharmaceutical companies, but they love hiding the fact that they're all like they're all making tons of money out of this like alternative health shit. Oh yeah.

You know, we don't have to, we don't have to go after all the. Oh, or we can. Or we can. I don't want to get myself in your law. We can go after the wellness. I'm here for that. What I need to, what I need to say about that is that you want to talk about the pharma industry, which is like like billions of dollars.

The wellness industry is in the trillions and the T's. It is times 10x. Really? The wellness industry, the economic. Do you think the wellness industry is making more money than the pharmaceutical industry? 100 million percent. Really? I will send you the stats after this episode.

Wow. Yeah. That's a bold claim. It is completely unregulated. You can promise anything you want and feed off of people's fears. And they can't see you because it's set on the bottle. They can't. And so there's, you know, people are not as risk-averse as someone like me who has an actual

medical license and I carry a lot of risk. when I make recommendations because you can sue me and I can lose my medical license, whereas people in the wellness industry can put a ton of money into really good marketing and make you really believe anything and you can't really do anything against it. Like if their supplement hurt you. Okay. So speaking, because people love, people love to be passionate about what they consider to be sort of like cutting edge alternative medicine and they like to be quite critical of the more traditional stuff. So that brings me to one of the favorite things that people like to say to me, particularly because I've had problems with my knee, is have you tried peptides? Have you tried

BPC 157? Obviously, Hannah has also alerted me to how much people are pushing peptides in terms of aging. What's your peptide regime, for example? So how much of this is, you know, something that you feel is promising and how much of this is just the latest in the sort of snake oil salesman stuff. Yeah. So peptide has been taken and is now equated with like the gray market or like things that are, you know, not regulated. But peptides are just amino acids. And we have actual medications that are FDA approved that are peptides as well, like the

JOP1 medications or insulin is a peptide, for example. So we're specifically talking about the peptides that people randomly, like synthetically created. and we've never had human trials on. Like, we've never formally studied it in a systematic way and, like, seeing what it actually does to people or what their risks are. So, you know, if you are injecting PPC 157, I don't know, how do you know that that's BPC 157,

like, where did you buy it from? It's all compounded. Could be international, bought here and then white labeled, re-white labeled here in the United States to be like an American product, have no idea. And then people are finding impurities in these compounded, peptides that they're injecting. And then we actually don't know what all these peptides do in your body.

So like, for example, you're injecting BBC or, you know, anyone who's injecting it into their knee, 157. Okay, did we think it was just going to stay in the knee? Because that's not what that does. It's a bioactive chemical compound that is now inside of your body everywhere and is also acting on all of your other organs or your brain or whatever. And we don't know what it's doing at all. Yeah.

Because I, by the way, I haven't done it. But like I've been tempted because, you know, you sit, you sit around. I'm not going to name any comedians, but I've sat around the table of comedians. And like, I'm not going to lie. I think this wouldn't be an exaggeration to say 70% of the time, if I'm in a group of people telling them about my knee, 70% of the time, one of them will say, have you tried PPC 157? That's incredible. Like, that's how sort of ubiquitous it is as advice normalizes a good word, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I just want not here to tell people like how to live their lives,

but I do hope that I can pull people back to midline when it comes to how they're considering risk, because I think that we're just making it very casual with how risky these things are. And medical doctors online who are evidence-based, and evidence-based means we care about your safety because we care about the clinical trials that we have. Medical doctors online are really just trying to emphasize that we don't know what we don't know, and we need to respect that. And when we inject things into our body that, you know, try to make us more well and we don't know anything about it, we could actually be making our lives shorter. You could actually be hurting yourself in a way that you're not aware.

But by the way, we still hold out some hope that some of these will be effective, right? Yeah, exactly. I think it would be amazing if we did human trials on these peptides that, you know, are showing promise. And showing promises, it means anecdotal promise, you know, people who are prescribing them for, you know, them to their patients and seeing anecdotal evidence and data that their patient is getting better. But until we have large-scale clinical trials, I can't, with a good conscience, sit in front of a patient and be like, this is safe for you. You should take this in your knee or you should inject this.

Isn't it amazing, though, how people are just, like, absolutely convinced of efficacy? Not just in that, just in general, things that people swear by. Yeah. And is it a self-love question? Like, I don't understand. Like, do you, like, I don't, like, how are you willing to inject? to be so confident, like inject something into yourself, it might hurt you. Like, I don't know like that.

Like, I'm like, I don't know. I could never do that to myself. I'm like, oh, I care about my health too much. Yeah. Well, but honestly, though, for me, I can understand it from the point of view of, you know, you're really like the, the desperation grows. And like more and more people tell you like, oh, my friend or I really had a result, you know. Like, even like a peer.

P.R.P. Injection, obviously, I know that there's been trials of PRPs, right? So I've had a PRP injection, and I was so hopeful, even though I could see that really the jury's pretty quickly going to be out of PRPs being not that effective, right? And I could see that. I still was like hoping to be on hope that, like, maybe I would be one of the people that seems to have a good effect. And I took it and it did focal. Yeah. Yeah. And you need to do it like continuously, too. Continuously. Yeah. By the way, I'm not saying I'm not saying the PRP doesn't work. But like, Basically, like, the early sort of promise of PRP, particularly around regenerative, it's regenerative qualities. Hasn't, hasn't shown. And now, stem cells are the next one. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I am holding out hope that that actually is effective.

I would love for there to be more stem cell research at the NIH. We need to fund that research. And there's, you know, history, like, this is beyond my scope of knowledge right now. But I do know that in the early 2000s, we shut down a lot of stem cell research in the United States. Christians. Like policy issues with playing, you know, like we don't want to play God. But, you know, if God created everything, then we should allow for the human mind to explore therapies that prolong human life, including stem cell therapy. That's my opinion.

Call them out. By the way, that the big, the immediate backlash on the HPV vaccine was from the Christian right. Yeah. Because they felt that it promoted promiscuity. So you're, you're vaccinating younger women before their. sexually active, right, with this assumption of sort of like there will be some sexual activity. So let's pretend that most of these girls aren't going to become sexual. Let's pretend that that's not going to happen.

And then leave them at risk of cervical cancer because, you know, some people will stray from their purity. Yeah, exactly. And also just to like assume that this isn't even just about little girls. It's also about little boys. Like how does everybody think that? Well, now that they vaccinate them too, thank God. Yeah.

Thank God. And I have sat in a clinic room many times offered the HPV vaccine and had a parent be like, dare you, you know, offer that to my child because they think that you're giving them permission to be sexually active when that's like, first from the truth. If anything, society needs to shift its focus away from sex around children completely. And we need to think about how actually your child's immune response has the best chance to mount antibodies to the vaccine at their age right now. That's all what that's about. Right. Yeah, that's what that's about. I'm like, no, no, no, we recommend the vaccine at 1112 because your child's immune system can actually mount the best

response. This isn't about, you know, giving permission to be sexually active at all. What about, you're very negative on the raw milk people. But I think most people realize that the raw milk thing is kind of bullshit, right? Yeah, yeah, no, we can't, we can't, like, you know, be surprised when we drink cow poop, we get sick. Like, why are people surprised? Or, you know, or like, or, you know, when people, you know, pretend that they're reinventing pasteurization, because they're like, oh, well, if you boil the raw milk a little bit, then it'll get better. I see that. Oh, that's something.

It's almost like, are you reinventing pasteurization? What is happening? Let me, oh, yeah. Okay, so you said in your email about gut health and nutrition. The gut health thing for me is very interesting because on one level, I know that we've had a lot of, like, knowledge and understanding about gut health. But I also feel like gut health is a great way for the bullshit artists to talk about, like, supplements and products. Yeah. They're their longevity protocol for your leaky gut.

Yes, leaky gut. Yeah, yeah. It's this crazy. So, of course, we have like absorption issues, like several types of GI issues, like including celiac disease. And you have, and absorption issues means you'll have problems, you know, with vitamins. and micronutrients and things, but like in, but a leaky gut and just is just basically equates to like a grifter for me because leaky gut is not like a medical term or a medical diagnosis or it really doesn't mean anything to me as a doctor.

Like what is it that you're actually talking about? And then you realize, oh, that person doesn't know what they're talking about. Right. So, so the leaky gut thing is kind of bullshit. It's a total bullshit term. Right. That's not a medical condition. What are you talking about?

Wow. We have hundreds of conditions and diseases that affect the absorbability of your gut, including autoimmune disease or infections or whatever, like IBS, the mind gut connection. You know, it's a vast, complex field gastroenterology. But if someone's using the word leaky gut, then they don't even know the beginning of it. Right. Yeah, because the gut, the whole gut. So what about the microbiome and all that stuff?

Oh, yeah. Because even on this podcast, we do advertise stuff where they talk about. healthy gut and microbiome. I love that. That's great. And to that, I tell you, everybody needs to max up fiber. Fiber maxing. Fiber maxing.

That's that's clavicular next thing. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. No, that should be society's next thing. That should be society's next thing. It's like, everyone's like protein maxing or whatever. We need to fiber max.

Society needs a fiber max for your microbiome. Charmin. Charmin will get behind that. No problem. Yeah. I feel, I feel a sponsorship deal coming on. You guys need to do. a Sharman brand deal and then do like a fiber maxing episode.

If you were married to my wife, you would know that we're very well equipped to get a fucking Charmin deal. But you know, Hannah, listen, I wish Hannah was here. Hannah's not here at the moment. She's in New York and doing her Sports Illustrated three-day extravagance. That's what their sports illustrated photos. They look, oh my God. She looks fire.

Oh, my God. So, but Hannah is like Hot Girls with IBS. She's all in that world. But like, so here's my thing. Here's my thing about, and I don't want to speak about Hannah's health, but like she really does, by the way, she's very open about those issues, but she really does have issues around that. But then she kind of never really takes the time to go to do an elimination diet and really find out like what are the triggers. Do you actually, do you have any advice for my currently absent wife? Yeah.

So it's probably, it's probably really annoying, but it's the FodMap diet. it's the things that are fermentable and create a lot of gas in our stomach that I would just like What's that? So what's that? Is that an acronym? Yeah, it's an acronym the FODMAP diet. It's like Anyone with IBS that comes to my clinic or you know, sees an evidence based doctor will hear about this. So it's it's an acronym FOD MAP and it's for the types of foods that are easily fermentable or like create gas in your stomach and that are uncomfortable. And it's very classic for people with IBS to not be able to tolerate those foods very well. So it will put, you know, it takes a little bit of effort, but I would just start writing things down like, oh, I just ate beans and that made me feel awful or like,

like stomachache or whatever, then, you know, that's just something that she might not be able to tolerate. But, but then, you know, this is like, IBS is like a syndrome or it's just like conglomerate of symptoms and we address them all differently. And so like, for example, IBS has everything to do with your mind and your gut and we have more serotonin receptors in our gut. What does that say about how strong of a connection that is? So it has everything to do with your emotional state and everything to do with your psychiatric health. And if your anxiety is going up, then you might be having an IBS flare as well. And if you actually just, you know, got sick or something, it might trigger your, like an IBS flare. So it's just, it's a very dynamic thing,

for sure. So we have more seroton, because this is, I've never heard that before. So we have no, no serotonin receptors in our stomach. Yeah, yeah, yeah, in our gut. It's like a saying, like we have more seroton receptors in our gut than our brain. So that's why. So that's why. And we're, no, more serotonin receptors in our I like when I get some bad news, like my, my stomach turns. Oh yeah. And that's probably also part of your autonomic system is when we get something that triggers us or makes us like scared. We go into fight or flight. And that is a whole body process as well. So yeah, it's like a whole, like your heart rate goes up. Your breathing goes. Are we like your body doesn't know like was that a bear in the woods or was this like a modern day email that made me feel that way.

I saw the best TikTok recently. I saw the best TikTok. It looked like somebody in the military actually. but maybe I'm wrong, but she was just in her car and it said something like about anxiety disorder or something. It was like my body not knowing the difference between heading off to war or heading to a new place where I'm not sure if there's going to be any parking. Yeah, exactly. No, exactly. Oh, my God.

I have parking anxiety. Like sometimes I would literally not go to like a new restaurant if like it turns out the parking might be like stressful. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And your body's basically like, oh, well, here's the same like freak out response, like no matter what. Oh, yeah. Well, but that, I mean, hands up, I know that I really struggle with that.

My mother struggled with that. I don't know if it's genetic or if she just passed it on to me with her odd parenting. But either way, I definitely have to. But I did not know that there were more serotonin receptors. Yeah, now we're going to have to have that. Yeah. Well, that's good to know. Well, we're going to have you back on because I have more questions.

Yeah. I don't want to. I don't want to get into the SSRI debate today. Oh, I would love to. It's coming to the four at the moment. Yeah. And here's my comment on that. It is so easy to criticize and tear things down, right? That's what they're doing.

It's so easy to be like, oh, we oversubscribed SSRIs and to limit access SSRIs, which is an incredibly insane thing to do in a country that has limited healthcare access for like millions of people. and we have a mental health crisis in the United States. We have a psychiatric, like, we don't have enough doctors in the U.S. would have enough primary care. We definitely don't have enough psychiatry at all. And the one thing that they want to go after is, like, the current tool that we do have,

which is the SSRIs. Instead of thinking, like, oh, we, how do we, like, help people or, like, fix the system, like, actually create tangible change. No, we're just going to, like, nitpick. We're going to make pregnant women terrified of Tylenol one morning. We just decided to do that. Oh, yeah. And another morning, we're going to wake up and we're going to say,

no, SSRIs are overly prescribed and, you know, harming people. We're just going to make people think that SSRIs are terrible. Like, that's just like another. Because it may be true, it may be true that too many people are on them for too long, but, but it, you know, that they just make these sweeping statements. But especially when they make it seem like it's, it's really bad for you. Plus, because obviously the anti-vaccination movement is part of just a broader sort of distrust of institutions. Yes.

So now you have like a really large percentage of the population that subscribe to this sort of way of thinking. So the minute, so now you throw, you throw another sort of medication into the pot of things we're supposed to mistrust. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And, and a broader theme of this is placing individual blame on Americans. Individual blame on people between it's my, it's my, it's, I'm the problem. I'm the doctor. I prescribed it. Or you're the problem.

You're the patient. You're taking a medication. we never this administration does not address the system how do we fix the system to make it better for all americans instead of nitpicking it americans being like no you're not doing the right thing for your obesity your health we're not even thinking big picture at all yeah but that that just comes down to sort of that great sort of public health debate because people get into this real individually liberty individual liberty thing versus the greater good and unfortunately in america we've never been further away from this concept of we're in this together, you know? And that part of being in this together is like there's an element of sacrifice, but there's certainly an element of I'll do things regardless of whether I truly need them or not for the greater good. That kind of mentality in America has gotten worse.

I totally agree. And it all, yeah. No, I was just going to say, and that the people that like to rant and rave about sort of personal responsibility versus regulation. Yeah. That really ties into that, I feel. Yeah. And I think America is starving for an administration that prioritizes the greater good

or talks about us collectively because we're not even talked about collectively. Yeah. Well, it's going to be a hard switch. I mean, we've really, I blame the internet. But again, I'm always blaming the internet. The dialers would be sick of me talking about how I feel like humanity is not going to survive the hyper-information age, but we won't get too, we won't get too dark today. We won't get too dark today because it was the internet that we found you.

It's always good to find a medical person who's not afraid to wade into the world of controversy. I follow a lot of these, you know, doctors that like to complain about the misinformation, but I mean, I see the comments and, you know, it's an uphill battle. I can tell you that. Yeah, but it fuels me. It does. Does it?

It does somehow. I'm like, wow. We gotta get some fucking SSRIs because it's gonna get hard. I know. This is a real indulgence for me. I avoid the fucking, I avoid the drama as much as possible. Anyway,

well, thank you so much. I'm sorry we didn't have the dialers, but I'll get you back on for what I wanted to do is for the dialers to message in with their, you know, their, their, the things that they need to know.

But Nicole, by the way, have you got any questions? You've just been listening away, nodding your head, Nicole. Any questions? I do have a question, but if you don't want to speak on it,

we can completely cut it out. Should we be scared of hauntavirus? Because I'm seeing so many insane posts of people. I feel like we're just traumatized from the pandemic, perhaps, but everybody's posting about this right now. Yeah. So the hauntavirus is not a new virus. It's a family of viruses. The virus that was on the ship was the Andy strain. That was one of the one strains of the hauntive virus that we actually know can be transmissed from human to human. That's why that people were concerned. And so at first, everyone's like, no, hauntat doesn't spread from human to human. We only really get that from rodents. And then it was the fact that it was the Andy strain. But when you're looking at the viral potential for the hauntivirus, it's not the same as

COVID. COVID will hang out in the air as droplets, you know, as like after someone sneezed. And then you walk by and then you can get COVID. That's not hauntavirus. Haunta virus needs to be very close in proximity. If anything, like very close like body fluids, or a very close proximity with rodent, fecal matter, things like that, like cleaning a barn or your house and there's dust and things like that. So the spreadability or the potential for that is much lower than COVID. People are not expecting a pandemic at all. But if you are sick with Hanta, then it's still a, it's a serious, you know,

condition to have for sure. Does that make sense? Does I answer the question? Yeah, totally. No, but I think you're right. I think you're right what you said, Nicole, which is because we're all, it's so, so recently COVID. Oh, yeah.

We have so much PTSD from COVID. We do. And we're worried about it. And you know what everyone, all the experts are saying is that if COVID happened again, we would not be able to handle that. Yeah, because we're so fucking misinformed after fucking three years of COVID in the internet.

We don't have the potential, like the ability to mobilize and take care of another like national pandemic right now. We don't. So, but I don't think that that's going to be haunted either. Great question. So we can go. We can leave this episode.

I don't know. Are we more worried or less worried after this episode? You're going to die of peptides before you die of haunted. I had to say it. Well, thank you very much, doctor. Yeah. When you became a doctor, did you feel like when people call you doctor, did you feel like automatically like more important as a person?

No. I actually felt it was a little bit more like, oh, like why are you calling me that? I'm a child. Like, I'm, oh, my God, I did do that. That means I'm an adult now for sure. No, yeah, no, when you first get called doctor, it's definitely, it's like, who are you talking to? And then it's kind of just like this time over here's like, oh, that feels cool. And then you go back to that.

That's not cool anymore. I'm Liz. Oh, Hannah, Hannah had that when she got married. She was like, I think, Mrs. Yeah, it's just like, like, it took her a long time to be comfortable being like my husband. Yeah. Yeah. But you're a proper adult now.

Well, thank you so much for being on the pod. Thank you for having me. To our listeners, thanks for a unique episode from us. We'll be back next week and we'll talk to you soon.