Realfoodology - Community Approach to Getting Your Health in Line | James Maskell

Episode Date: August 16, 2023

159: Join us on a transformative journey through the world of preventive medicine with James Maskell, author of The Community Cure. We cast light on the critical need for every individual to become proactive in maintaining their health and the role of community in reinforcing this shift. Leverage this episode to gain insights into the underpinnings of our bodies, how we respond to diseases and how to take control of our health from the root cause. We turn the spotlight on the societal challenge of chronic diseases and the power of communal support in combating this issue. Imagine a world where we all understand the workings of our body, where we are equipped to respond to infectious diseases and where we are not just reactive, but preventive. We'll discuss community-based healthcare approaches, the indispensability of fostering strong, health-focused connections and the transformational impact such communities can have on chronic illness. Topics Discussed: 0:00:33 - The Power of Community in Healthcare 0:07:13 - COVID's Potential Impact on Preventive Health 0:11:47 - The Importance of Community in Healthcare 0:18:01 - Alternative Care Models and Affordable Options 0:24:29 - Men's Emotional Growth and Health Support 0:38:03 - Engagement in Political and Healthcare Reform 0:42:02 - Understanding and Communicating Chronic Illnesses 0:46:07 - UK Healthcare 0:52:24 - The Power of Community Support Check Out James Maskell: Book: The Community Cure Online Instagram Sponsored By: BiOptimizers: Magnesium Breakthrough www.magbreakthrough.com/realfoodology Code REALFOODOLOGY gets you 10% off any order. Organifi www.organifi.com/realfoodology Code REALFOODOLOGY gets you 20% Off Better Help Get 10% off Your First Month of Therapy by visiting: www.betterhelp.com/realfoodology Check Out Courtney: Courtney's Instagram: @realfoodology www.realfoodology.com My Immune Supplement by 2x4 Air Dr Air Purifier AquaTru Water Filter EWG Tap Water Database

On today's episode of The Real Foodology Podcast. Is there a way that someone could be held, validated, understood, listened to, and go through a process of then building new muscles to do new healthy things? And could that whole process happen without a doctor's time? And the truth is, it absolutely can and is happening. Hi friends, welcome back to another episode of the Real Foodology Podcast. Today's guest, I started following back in 2020

on Instagram when, you know, the whole world kind of exploded and not a lot of people were talking about prevention and talking about our broken healthcare system and speaking out about the way that our public officials were dealing with everything. And I was very appreciative of people speaking out about this and criticizing the fact that we were not having a conversation with people about their health and about their immunity and giving them tips and tricks on how to take care of their health and boost their immune system. So I have been following him

ever since. I really love his work. He wrote a book called The Evolution of Medicine. And Dr. Mark Hyman was quoted saying this book might change the world, which I loved. And in this book, James gives a step-by-step guide for health professionals to build the practices of the future. And this model that he talks about in his book really helps to address a lot of the issues that we're seeing in our modern healthcare system, like the rise of chronic disease, physician shortages, escalating costs, care access and affordability, physician burnout. And it's a community-based model that has been compared to similarly to the way that AA operates. So it was a really fascinating conversation. We talk a lot about the importance of community and the role that it plays

in your overall health. And it was a really fascinating conversation. I am so grateful to have been connected with James Maskell and I just want to get to the episode. So I hope you guys love it and hope that you are inspired by it. If you are, please write me a message on Instagram, DM me, or if you want to post about it, tag at real foodology on Instagram. I always see all your posts and I really, really appreciate them a lot. So yeah. And as always, if you guys could leave a rating and review, it means so much to me and it really helps the show. So thanks a lot. I hope you guys enjoy the episode. Love you. Do you struggle with sleep like I do? Well, let me tell you about Bioptimizers because So thanks a lot. I hope you the founder of Bioptimizers on the podcast a couple months back. So if you guys want to look that up, he divulged some amazing tips for getting

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And this is why I'm super excited to bring better help on the podcast as a sponsor. Therapy changed my life. Many of you who have listened to my podcast for a while know that I went through a really traumatic event when I was eight years old. I lost my sister to a very tragic accident and therapy has helped me so immensely throughout the years that I want to tell everyone that I think therapy is so incredibly important for all of us. Life is hard. Life is really hard. And regardless if you have a clinical mental health issue like depression or anxiety or if you're just a human who lives in this world who's going through a hard time or maybe you've been through something traumatic like me therapy can give you the tools to approach your life in a very different way throughout the years it's helped me to really see my role that i play in my own suffering and it's helped me to get out of my own way. It's helped

me to see different things in a different light. And of course, it's helped me to process and deal with the trauma that I went through as a kid. But again, I really just want to reiterate that you don't even have to have any trauma in your past to have therapy help you. I honestly think everyone could benefit from being in therapy. I think it's an amazing thing that we have access to. And this is why I really love BetterHelp. Their mission is to make therapy more affordable and more accessible. And this is an important mission because finding a therapist can be really hard, especially when you're limited to the options in your area. So it's a platform that makes finding a therapist easier because it's online, it's remote. And by filling out a

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up. All you need to do is go to betterhelp.com slash realfoodology. That's better help as an H-E-L-P.com slash realfoodology. Clicking that link helps support this channel, and it also gives you 10% off your first month of BetterHelp so you can connect with a therapist and see if it helps you. I hope this helps you. James, I'm so excited to have you on the podcast today. It has been a long time coming. I actually, I don't know if I told you this, but I originally found you during 2020 because I was really inspired by what you were talking about. You were one of the only accounts that I found on Instagram that was talking about preventative medicine and root cause treatment. And you were trying to sound the alarm for people saying like, you know, what are we doing right now?

Why are we not telling people to take better care of their health and be conscious of the foods that they're eating and get outside and get sunlight? And, you know, there was really no public conversation about that. And I was really excited to find your account because you were very vocal about it during that time. Yeah, absolutely. It's interesting. I think there's been a lot of historians that have talked about there's a need for a sort of a transformational moment for a new concept to take hold. And I just recognized straight away that COVID could be that for the movement that you're involved with and that I'm involved with, which is, you know, preventive health. And it was interesting, you know, as soon as people, like, I can remember in April of

2020, being part of a webinar with, you know, some of the preeminent people in functional medicine. And even then, at that point, they knew, this is the kind of person that's going to have a really tough time with COVID. This is the kind of person that's going to have a pretty easy journey through it. And it was proven to be right. Now, how is that possible? Like there are some unique characteristics of COVID, but ultimately there is a vast understanding of, you know, how each of our own terrain, essentially, like the way that we, the function of our body, the whole of functional medicine is built around understanding how your body functions. And there were key parts of how the body functions that

would determine, you know, your pathway in that, in that, in that journey. And there's an opportunity for everyone at every time to move in the right direction. And so I just thought like, this is an amazing opportunity. This is a great, a great moment where we could move the sort of immovable middle towards health. And yeah, it didn't go that well. I know, I know. And I share your frustrations because I remember, so I got my master's in nutrition and a lot of what we studied was the immune system and the connection to the foods that you put in your body and how healthy you are is going to determine your outcome for many diseases. And it's going to determine how well your immune system works. And so when we first started learning about all this, I remember simultaneously I had two messages where I was like, okay, we obviously, this is a novel

thing. So we don't know, there's like some strange things happening with it. So we don't know everything, but we also do know we've been studying coronaviruses for a long time. And also I knew how the immune system worked and I was like like okay like we got to get this stuff in line and i at the time i was excited because i was like yes like there's going to be a large conversation about this so many people in our nation are really sick why don't we start talking about prevention and then it just went the total opposite and i was so frustrated i will say though like now in 2023 i do think that it helped open a lot of people's eyes up to realize one how corrupt our system is two how they're they're really not taking any sort of action in trying to

educate the general public on how we can get healthy and how we can prevent all these chronic diseases so i do think that there there was a bit of a turning point but there was a huge missed opportunity as well yeah i think i think there was definitely progress as far as the general public seeing it i think where there's again a frustrating lack of progress is in the development and delivery of healthcare which is what i spend my time working on and i think that's probably just been the same forever really if you think about it like you know supplements have taken off in the last 20 years, but you're still quite hard pressed to find a doctor who'd prescribe you a supplement, right? So, you know, it's happening in a sort of a consumer first evolution. And I think that's just because podcasts like this and the way that the word

has got out has happened in a, you know, in a one-to-many kind of conversation. I still find myself in the trenches shifting healthcare, and it's exciting to see what opportunities are popping up because they're finding their way to me, which is great. But in general, we've still got a ton of work to do. And, you know, I would say the theme of what I say to people when I speak to people is that ultimately, even when that system is created, right, where there's predictive, preventive, participatory medicine for everyone in the country, it's still going to be down to each individual to go on and activate that. Like if you really want a kind of medicine that will reverse chronic illness or prevent it before it starts, part of that paradigm shift is that it requires full participation from the person whose health it is. And so, you know, the empowering part about that is that you could, you know, you can start today. You can start today. You probably have started already, but that's an opportunity for everyone at any time. That's a great point that you brought up because often,

I think people have this mentality, not everyone, but a lot of people generally have this mentality that they go to the doctor and they're like, the doctor is going to fix me. Please fix me. How can you fix me? And the reality of the situation is ultimately no one can fix us if we're not willing to put in the effort ourselves. And this is what I really love about your message. And I want my audience to hear what your approach is as far as this, like this community approach to getting your health in line. I know recently, I listened to you on a podcast and you guys were talking about how if you are in a community of friends or even family who are overweight or really sick, you are way more likely to be overweight yourself. So what is that community basis for healthcare that really could help a lot of people? What is your approach?

I'd love to talk about that. Actually, just to go one step back to something you just said, the idea that the doctor can fix you is a reasonable way to think about things in 1950 or in 1930, right? Because the diseases of that day, if you look at like, you know, you're in an accident or you get an infection or you're dealing with some acute issue, it's reasonable that medicines came along that had an incredible effect, right? So that was a reasonable way of thinking. It didn't shift, that way of thinking didn't shift even though the types of diseases that affect people changed 180 degrees, right? So the biggest killers are all lifestyle-driven chronic illness and the doctor can't fix those. Patients can fix those. A doctor can manage those and manage the symptoms of those, but really it's up to the

patient to participate. So it's not that it's up to the patient to participate. So it's not that it's wrong to think in that way, it's just outdated based on what we're facing here today. Ultimately, I've been on an 18 year now journey to understand where chronic disease comes from, what's driving it, and is it reversible? And then the last question is, is it reversible at the scale that it exists? And then the last question is, is it reversible at

the scale that it exists? And so for the first 10 years, I would say in the last 18 years, I was really just trying to learn as much as I could, and particularly learn about what kind of doctors are doing things differently, how are they doing it differently, and then more recently trying to get other doctors to buy in you know some of those ideas and ultimately through that journey i learned that chronic disease is indeed reversible the the vast majority of chronic illnesses follow actually a very predictable path of um pathogenesis or moving towards disease and then there's a journey back and you know many of your listeners have probably been on some part of that journey you You know, many people who do what you do have come to it because they've

been on that journey, they've learned so much, and they want to share with other people. So, you know, that's really exciting. Along that journey, what I recognized is that chronic disease is extremely isolating. You know, most likely, if you're dealing with an autoimmune condition, or you have type 2 diabetes, or you are dealing with some other mental or physical health challenge, you're probably the only person that you know that is dealing with that. And that can become very tricky because one, no one knows what it's like to be you. And second, you can't participate in the kinds of things that most people participate in. If you look at the things that most people co-participate in, in America, those have become unhealthy

things. So, you know, the, you know, alcohol and drugs and even eating a fast food and all that kind of stuff that you've spoken about, most of those things are unhealthy. If you go back 50 years when it was church and community service and, you know, working with each other, most of those things were profoundly healthy. So, you know, in order to get healthy, you have to sort of like almost isolate yourself from those things. Because if you come to understand that those things made you unhealthy, you have to isolate yourself from that. And then you end up isolated. And loneliness is actually the biggest driver of all cause mortality, more than food, more than alcohol, more than smoking. And so, you know, that not only exacerbates the problem and makes it worse, but it makes it difficult to start your journey back to health. And so in 2019, I wrote a book called The Community Cure, really looking at how these new ways of doing medicine,

which we could call functional medicine, you know, we could call preventive health, we could call whole food nutrition, like there's a lot of things that go into it, there's different factors, when you can deploy that in a sort of a community environment, it's almost exponentially more effective. And so, you know, that's been about eight years of like, learning, research, trying to understand and then trying to create models that are scalable, affordable, accessible. And that's been sort of my work for the last four years, particularly. Yeah, it's amazing. Yeah, I mean, you and I both are on the same page. You know, we, well, many people agree that, you know,

the current allopathic model, it works really great for acute care, but our current healthcare model is not equipped to handle the astronomical rise of chronic disease that we're facing. And you're right, there needs to be this social shift where people realize, okay, I need to go to my doctor, you know, if I need a surgery or, you know, I was in an accident, but I need to be looking for different types of doctors that are specifically practicing preventative medicine because otherwise, like're not they're they're just not trained to help you in that way and you know this is one of our biggest hurdles right now and i'm so grateful for people like you that are really trying to tackle this problem is that there's this accessibility piece that people are really struggling with you know like everyone you know that wants to seek out

an integrative functional naturopathic doctor if you don't have a huge budget it's generally not covered by insurance and so this is a huge problem that we're facing. How do we fix this? And or are there other ways for people that are maybe, you know, really on a strong budget to approach their health in a different way if they're not able to find, you know, just an integrator or naturopathic doctor? Yeah, so there's a number of things I would say on that. So first of all, my work has been to try and introduce new models of care that can make that kind of care more affordable, to take certain elements of that and bring it into conventional care. The biggest barrier to that happening is time.

And one of the things that's common if you go to see one of those types of practitioners is that you spend a lot of time with them. And you have to eventually pay for that time one way or another. And that's the reason why it's not available on insurance is because insurance won't pay for you to spend that long with someone. But what I came to realize having like, you know, done the research and spent so much time in this area that, you know, the attention of a doctor's time is not the only thing that can provide time. And I came to really understand that, be held, validated, understood, listened to, and go through a process of then building new muscles to do new healthy things? And could that whole process happen without a doctor's time?

And the truth is, it absolutely can and is happening. And so, just to give you an example that would be resonant to your listeners, in 2014, I started something called the Functional Forum and it became the biggest functional medicine conference for doctors. And part of the reason it took off is that in the fourth ever episode, the first time the live streaming worked in May 2014, Dr. Mark Hyman came and announced that there was going to be the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine, right? So it was a huge moment in the industry because it was like a big, credible deployed it, we learn in the Journal of American Medicine that functional medicine outperforms conventional medicine and not just any conventional medicine like Cleveland Clinic level conventional medicine. And great moment, right? But again, like what's actually happening at the Cleveland Clinic at that moment, the demand is like this, the supply of doctors is like this. And they're looking to see the fact that like, they can't scale to meet the level of demand that's being created by the fact that now there's an institution doing this. So what do they do? They end up delivering this functional medicine in a group model.

And in this group, it's an extended period of time. I think theirs was 10 weeks. There's no doctors involved at all. It's being driven by health coaches who are typically people who have had an experience of chronic disease, have got over it themselves, feel energized to get into helping other people and end up in this sort of like half peer, half health professional role, right? But there's also dieticians and other providers involved who are really there for like the

nutrition piece, but also to make the whole thing insurance billable and make it so that, you know, people with conventional insurance can do it for free. And what do they learn from doing that? Well, one, that model of functional medicine with no doctor time involved is even better than one-on-one functional medicine so the outcomes are better and the cost is almost exponentially lower right because it's one one dietician or one health coach working with a group of people as opposed to a doctor spending a long time with one person. So when I heard that data, this was 2019, early 2019, I heard that at a conference, I was like, this is it, right?

As the health economist in me recognized that we could never solve the sort of resource allocation problem in medicine as long as everything was built on the foundation of the most expensive person spending the longest time with each person. And so I wrote a book called The Community Cure. And I wrote it in 2019. I brought it out January 2020. And then COVID happened and all group meds were destroyed. And that was really interesting too. And now what's interesting is even today, as I'm speaking to you, it's coming around again, where like this Monday, I am flying to South Carolina, or I am being flown to South Carolina by a $5 billion health system that serves one and a half million patients, where my book is

required reading, and I'm going to go tell them what to do. And this is incredible for so many reasons. One, I've never been to a hospital in the US, right? I've kept myself out of a hospital. I went once in the birth of my second daughter because the home birth went a little bit sideways and we needed a bit of support and it was all fine, but I was there for a few hours. That's the only time I've been in an American hospital.

And here I am coming to like talk about the community cure and talk about how they can deploy these new health measures in groups in an interesting way. And for the last three years, I've been involved in doing that same thing virtually. I have learned a lot about how you create cohesion and connection and community without the opportunity to sit in a room together. Yeah, that's really fascinating. And you know what I was thinking as you were talking about this is that I'm sure a lot of my audience is health coaches and practitioners, and maybe there's ways in which they can create these little communities in their own community with their clients where they can encourage them all to help each other out. Because yeah, I mean, it sounds

like this is something that's really missing in our current approach to health care. And you're the first person I've ever really heard talk about it in this way. Obviously, we hear community is really healthy for you. Loneliness can cause a lot of diseases. But I've never actually heard about a community of holding people accountable in this way from a health care approach. Yeah, it's really interesting. I mean, my viewpoint on it has been shifted even since I wrote the book. I mean, I've been part of a

men's group for the last four years. It's not a health group. Health is tangential to it. It's really like an emotional intelligence accountability structure for a group of emotionally mature men to be with each other and help each other in their goals and to have that space. I've seen incredible health outcomes in that group, in the other men, quitting smoking, losing weight, getting sober, all these things. I've seen that happen, but it's not even a medical group. Now, if you were to take that structure of trust and accountability and infuse it with new healthy behaviors and someone in there who understood what reversing chronic illness looked like, you now have something extremely powerful. And so, yeah, I think

that opportunity is really available to almost anyone. And the advice that I would give to people who this is resonant for is, you can use online tools to create in-person offline connections, right? There are tools today that can alert you to the existence of people who are like you. And I think that probably the healthiest thing that any person could do if they're struggling with a chronic illness

is to try and find a way to either join a local community of people that are struggling with a similar thing or to start something like that. And, you know, we've seen in the work that we've done, you know, that there is, if you do something healthy by yourself, that's great. If you do something healthy in community, it sort of supercharges it and creates ongoing support and accountability and friendship around it. One of the things that I'm certain of is that the stickiest force to really create long-term healthcare transformation is friendship. And, you know, you see it in, you know, there are examples all over of where, you know, where in the healthiest places that exist on the planet, there's a structure of community that really is, you know, that is,

you know, that is just woven in as part of society. And we've lost a lot of that. So rebuilding that, I think is critical to, you know, transforming chronic disease and health outcomes. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, I moved to the west side of LA a year ago. I used to live on the east side. And I found myself in this new community of friends that I had met through mutual friends. And I was immediately blown away by the fact that the majority of my friends in this group do not drink alcohol at all. And they're also really good about getting everyone together and creating different events. Like for example, you know, we get a crew together to go to the beach and do cold plunges once a

week and everyone brings their dinner and they eat. We eat dinner on the beach in the sunset after we've like done a cold plunge in the water. Or like whenever we get together, one of our friends does a Shabbat dinner like once a month. And I've always loved so much about this community that at this Shabbat dinner, there will literally be one bottle of wine and there's like 30 people there. So like maybe someone will have a glass, people have like a couple sips. But my point in this is that like if you desire a community of people that are healthier and are doing healthier things if you don't have that like you said you can create that and I've been so inspired by this group of friends of mine because like I said they're constantly like getting crews together to go hiking like what are

what are things that you really love to do in your life and how can you find people that share that similar interest and I found it personally for me as someone who, you know, I love to drink a glass of wine and I'm very influenced in that. Like if I'm around a bunch of people that are drinking wine, I'm going to have a couple of glasses of wine every night. But I love being in this community where when I go to Shabbat dinner, there's not even wine to be drank and I don't even miss it and I don't feel like I need it. And I just feel like that's a great point as far as like, if you really want to create a healthy community like that for yourself, you can make that happen for you. Yeah. I mean, I think you're going to find more concentrations of people who care about those kinds of things in certain areas, but I do think

there is, um, it is becoming a social movement and I think that there are more and more people who are interested in it. And I'm, yeah, i'm grateful to to hear that that's that's possible and happening and um yeah i i agree with that as well you know that's it's certainly changed my my experience i mean i grew up in england where drinking is just a part of everyday culture and it's so it's so um built into society that it's much more difficult to pull out and i know some of that definitely exists everywhere, but I do think that offline, online tools do exist to create those kinds of offline connections. And I think you'd be surprised

if you started something like that, how it would spread quickly, because I think people are really searching for that sort of community. I want to take a second to talk about some of my favorite Organifi products and why I love them. When I first started getting into health, I was an avid juicer. I was buying fresh veggies every couple of days and wearing out my juicer and also wearing out myself by trying to constantly juice vegetable juices

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listening are avoiding natural flavors. So they also have an unflavored one, which is my personal favorite. I love to put it with lemon, but if you want the flavored ones, they have a great variety of different flavors. And they have given me an awesome offer to share with you guys. So you guys can claim a free Element sample pack when you make a purchase through the link. The link is drinkelement.com slash realfoodology. And in the Element sample pack, you're going to get one packet of every flavor so that you can try all of them and see which one is your favorite. I hope you guys enjoy it as much as I do. Again, it's drink element.com slash real foodology. That's drink l m n t.com slash real foodology. So in regards to what you do as far as some healthcare approach,

how would someone go about finding if they want to find like a hospital or a doctor that is practicing this? Or do you have hospitals and doctors that are doing that in the US? Or is this one you just talked about in South Carolina, the first one doing that? No, so yeah, we, you know, so at the beginning of the pandemic,

I started a company called Heal Community, all one word. And it was to deliver virtual groups paid for by insurance in partnership with clinics and hospitals. You know, it's not a consumer business. So it's not like you can go on and sign up. I mean, we partner with hospitals. And then if you're seeing those doctors, you can sign up for it. So it's like a B2B effort. So I know it's disappointing and everyone kind of expects that anything that exists, they should be able to have access to

because we're very familiar with apps and so forth. I mean, there are certainly other things like this. I know there are consumer-facing group technologies, not exactly the same because they don't really have the sort of health focus. It's more just the community focus. But yeah, we're working on deploying this. Like the goal is within five years that every insurance would be, you know, that you would be able to, you know, you'd be able to have this on whatever insurance you had, Medicare and Medicaid. We have to be able to go out and prove out that if a group of people comes together and works together to improve healthy behaviors,

that their cost of care, their total cost of care goes down. And we're in the process of proving that right now. So that's the big prize, right? The big prize is transforming healthcare in such a way that major medical entities that are now incentivized to reduce the cost of care can do that, to facilitate that. And that's what I spend my day doing. And this is just me going on that trip is just an example of me being slightly ahead of the curve, seeing what needed to happen. And now hopefully health systems catching up to it and then executing it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, what you just described, I feel like is part of the, it's a very multifaceted issue that we're having right

now with our failing healthcare system. And what's cool is seeing all these different people from different angles trying to implement this new approach. I know you and I talked about this one-on-one recently, but I had Cali Means on my podcast. I love what he's doing with TrueMed where he's essentially getting these healthier foods, healthier tech devices, getting covered essentially by food stamps through his company and incentivizing people to go after these healthier foods and lifestyle choices. And it's so cool to just see all these different people trying to tackle this Goliath of a healthcare system that we're dealing with right now. I mean, what do you believe are the biggest problems that we're dealing with? What's at the root of our failing healthcare system right now? Well, the root of it all is chronic illness

because ultimately chronic illness is driving cost and is driving the overuse of the system. And the overuse of the system has all the sort of downstream effects. You know, if you have a society where a small fraction of the population are chronically ill, then there's like a small, you know,

a certain number of normal acute issues that have to be dealt with, that's what the system was built for. But you see the same sort of number of acute kinds of issues, but then you see this huge growth in chronic illness. And that means that there's just going to be way more pressure put onto the system in every part where that pressure can be deployed, right? So in primary care and your average doctor, they have to go faster to, you know, meet the demand, you know, hospitals, you know, everywhere. So that's really the root cause. But, you know, it just really depends on how you see it. I mean, I'm getting a little bit more engaged politically than I've ever been in the last few months. And I've been involved in some conversations

where like listening to the needs of voters in New Hampshire and South Carolina and Iowa. And for those people, it's a lot of access, rural hospitals, you know, the cost of medication, the cost of care, how do you fit insurance premiums, and are you even within an hour's drive of a hospital? There's meta things and bigger things that are happening at that level. Ultimately, it is a huge behemoth. I don't think it can change overnight. I think there's some really exciting things that are happening because so many people

are putting their, you know, their mind towards this. Even people that have done really incredible things historically are now starting to put their eyes towards healthcare. And, you know, I think that hopefully what you're going to see is a renaissance, right? A renaissance where at the same time, many people are coming to a real understanding of where health comes from, where disease comes from, that we have to go upstream, we have to go towards more preventive approaches. And it's exciting to just be in the mix of all of that because ultimately that's what needs to happen. And just picking spots. I mean, the problem is so pervasive and so huge that there's an unlimited number of places where

people could make an impact if they so desired and they could conjure up the capital expertise and assets to go after solving one little piece of it. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, thank God there's so many of us trying to tackle this. And I saw a post of yours on Instagram the other day that on one hand, I get really excited when you and I are having this conversation right now. And I talk to people like you, similar like minds that are really trying to tackle this issue, I get so much hope because I know there's a lot of people waking up and realizing this is not the way to do it. And then I see things like you posted about this on your Instagram, how the industry is

basically perpetuating these chronic diseases in the way that the science basically is corrupt now. And you posted this thing that basically said something like these scientists are attempting to build a healthy dietary pattern using processed foods. And your caption was spot on, basically calling out the current state of corruption in science and how basically what's happening is they're paying for these studies and then they're getting the desired outcomes that they want because they have invested interest in the outcome of these studies and they're completely funded by the industry. And so when I see stuff like this, I get so discouraged because I'm like, how, how are we going to change this? Like, how do we, how do we fix this? And how do we, how do we get rid of this corruption? Yeah, man. Wow. I mean, yeah, look, I mean, it is,

it is happening. I mean, I, I've been aware of this all the way through. When I was at university, there was suddenly a Burger King on campus, right? All of a sudden, from nowhere, from my second year to my third year, they had given a bunch of money to like the food sciences division of the university. And part of the benefit was now that there was a Burger King on campus. And so at that moment, I was sort of well aware of like, well, what you think science is, is not really necessarily what science is. And eventually, you know, yeah. So, I mean, I see that and you see it all the way through. Look, the best thing that you can do is to do your best to avoid interacting with the healthcare system almost altogether. I mean, I think there is value to understanding your labs and really understanding where your function is, right? Part of the re-education that I am in process of facilitating is really an understanding

that, you know, one of the things that's frustrating to people with chronic illnesses is in their mind and in the way that they communicate to the doctor, it's like healthy, healthy, healthy, healthy, healthy lupus. And that didn't go down like that. It just seemed like it did because only when your labs hit a certain number are you now classified for lupus. But there was a journey. If you could listen to the whispers internally and track some of those symptoms and look back, you could see how it was coming. And there were some signs. It's just that the doctor didn't know you well enough or wasn't attuned to you well enough, or you didn't have the right kind of information to see that it was happening. And so, you know, ultimately the journey for each one of us is to understand ourselves well enough to know when something's coming and then to get ahead of it

and do something about it. And unfortunately, that's not something that doctors are really taught to do. It's not part of the conventional medical education, but there are plenty of people out there talking about these types of things. And the good news is that over the last 10 years, in every tiny niche of health, there is now an abundance of information on any particular topic. So whatever thing that you're struggling with or you're starting to feel with, there's incredible books and podcasts and summits and all that information. So it's all there. But what's necessary is the implementation of that information, taking it from the podcast and that implementation. And my recommendation to everyone is that ultimately

what it's gonna take for long-term implementation is a community structure around it that reinforces that healthy behavior. So if you know, if you can go out, understand what you need to do, and then try and find a supportive group by which to at least weekly be in accountability with, if not daily. I've told this story a number

of times, but at one point about a decade ago, my mother-in-law lost 110 pounds through Overeaters Anonymous. And the only thing that was different is that she had to call her mentor, partner, or text them once a day to say what she'd eaten that day. That was it. That was the only homework. And even that like point of accountability where it would have been kind of embarrassing to say, I lost it and I went through McDonald's, you know, was powerful enough to facilitate a dramatic change in behavior. So that's just one example. And we took that actually into Heal Community and we call it a progress partner where you're paired up with someone else in the group and you're encouraged

to connect regularly about what's going on and build that friendship. And so, yeah, we're testing things out we think can really work at scale and we're learning how to make that work. But it's a journey and it's progress and you're really, you know, rebuilding something that used to be part of society, right? You know, you were, you were, you were almost, you were accountable to a lot more people in a much more connected physically and geographically connected society. And we've lost some of that through technology for sure. Oh yeah, for sure. I mean, what you just described is essentially why AA is so successful is because they have an accountability partner. You know, they have that, I'm blanking on what they call them right now. The sponsor. Yes, exactly. The sponsor who they have to be accountable to. And yeah, you're way

more likely to hold yourself accountable when you have to also share it with someone else. Yeah. I mean, I've found that too. When I used to have clients, I would have them text me once a day just to kind of check in and everything just to give them accountability and also get to give them reassurance or, you know, validation or even just like a simple like you can do this, you've got this. The reminder of like why of why you're actually doing this is also really helpful. You know, your why is what is going to get you through it. Absolutely. Yeah, for sure. So I'm curious, you know, because we hear all the time, like America really struggles with this and our nation's so sick and, you know, our healthcare is messed up. Do you guys struggle with this in the UK as well? Absolutely. UK is actually a breaking point, you know, and has been for the last few years, because you have, you have the NHS, which is the National Health Service started in the 50s, and it's free for everyone in the

country to use. And is, you know, if you go back to when I was getting my education, and I was doing health economics, like it was held up as an example in the world of best access, best affordability, you know,, because essentially you could go and use it for free at any moment. And that was where it was 20 years ago. But again, in the last 20 years, you have such a growth of chronic illness that all of the places where then you can access the care get plugged up. And so too much pressure on GPs, which are the primary care doctors, too much pressure on accident and emergency and hospitals, because there are just way more people coming in than ever came in because of the state of health. Add in stress,

add in all the other things that can contribute to it, and you have a big issue. So yes, that is true. And even though a lot of people think in America, well, if it was just paid for differently, if we had Medicare for all, it would solve all those problems. And the truth is, I think England is a great counterpoint to that, that it's not just the way that it's paid for. We have to have a way of keeping people healthy at scale, right? And facilitating health. And I want to give you an example of something in the UK that is sort of meta enough to give you an idea of what's possible. But there is a town in the UK called Froome, F-R-O-M-E.

And in Froome, two doctors who I've had on my podcast and I've spoken to and I've developed a lot of my thinking on this, they realized that they had a lot of lonely people in their community and they got a grant to try something else. So they hired five health coaches because there's five clinics serving about 110,000 people in these four towns, this sort of one area and they had those coaches spent half their time in the office like speaking to patients who were who were um who were lonely and then they sent them half the time to go and sit in what they called these talking cafes which were like coffee shops essentially like around the town and then they started to recruit regular people uh as well um who would participate and wear this like green lanyard.

And the goal was, could you take people who are lonely and put them into some sort of structure where they have a weekly connection on a whole range of topics? So they, in a year, they sourced 2000 clubs, sports stuff, social stuff, anything. Could be anything. As long as it was meeting regularly, they pared it down to 400 and they created a website. So there were 400 different groups, church, sports, everything. And essentially, the role of those coaches and the role of the people with the lanyards was to engage people who they saw in society and say, hey, how's it going for you? Hey, if you need this and push them towards the website, essentially onto one of the coaches or talking cafes. And ultimately, in a period of four years that they executed that, while the numbers on emergency

room visits and so forth went up everywhere else in the country and in a pretty exponential way in that area it went down the savings just for that city were like i think 20 or 30 million pounds and you know it's not that much in a in a bigger peer review but what it showed was that if you could you know the thing that i like about that story is that um everyone got involved in the town. It was optional. It wasn't forced on anyone. But what you saw is people come out of the woodwork to be of service to each other. And what you saw was that the way to solve it was actually in through the healthcare system, because lonely people end up in the healthcare system. And also, there's sort of budget assigned to help people in healthcare. And that's essentially

the thesis in my book, which is that we need to rebuild community through healthcare because ultimately lonely people will end up overusing and using healthcare services. But that ultimately, it's going to take other people to participate. It's not just the sick and the people in healthcare. Other people need to stand up and participate. And, you know, when I had the opportunity to connect with you, I just felt like you're the kind of person that I think that connects to kind of people through their podcast, that are those kind of people that are ready to make a difference in some way. And, you know, my hope is that through this conversation, you know, people feel inspired to want to participate in some ways. And maybe some of the ideas that have come up today will be the way and maybe it'll be something else that you see in your community that's needed.

But ultimately, the theme is healthy behaviors in the way that disease is either created or destroyed. And that's, you know, what you eat, how you sleep, how you deal with your stress, you know, how you move and how you deal with like environment and relationships. And then the community structure and the community can be as small as two and as many as, you know, tens of thousands. I mean, I got examples in my book of, you know, 10,000 lonely men eating a plant-based diet in Detroit to try and avoid heart disease. So there's all kinds of different examples. Sometimes it's free. The other thing I would say is one strong advantage, if you're looking at where to start, look at where community

already exists, where you could just add a little bit of a healthy curriculum on top, because then you're not trying to create both things from scratch, right? And so I think that there's examples in the book of churches and other community-style settings where it's been a lot easier, where people were already getting together. If we can just add some healthy behaviors and curriculum into it, the impact can be transformational. Yeah. Well, and I think part of what you touched on that's so important is that, you know, generally speaking, humans want to help other humans, you know, and when we get together in community like that and we see each other's struggles, our desire is to help the people around us, you know? And so when you're in community with people and maybe you're struggling

one time and then, you know, they're all there for you and then you get to be there for them when they're struggling, there's a real power in that. And you mentioned this earlier with your men's group that you have. My dad has been telling me about this my entire life is that he has had this men's group that he has met with for probably 30 plus years now. They've been through deaths. They've been through, you know, disease and like, you know, loss, like I said, like everything that they could possibly imagine, you know, quitting smoking, divorce. And they've been able to, I mean, my dad literally told me this maybe a month ago. He goes, you know, something along the lines of, I don't know that I would have like survived some of the stuff that I've been through without this community

of men that I had in my life. And similar to yours, this wasn't even like a healthcare based community. It was just general, it was just a, you know, a place for them to all be there for each other. And again, I just think that's a great reminder for all of us and for everyone listening that how incredibly important it is for us to be in community. Absolutely. Yeah, no, it's critical. And some of those things exist. And if you're listening to this, I mean, the group that I'm part of is called Mankind Project. There's chapters all over the country, all over the world, actually, and they have weekends and so forth. But I know these things exist for women. I've heard of other... I know

that there are those kinds of groups. So sometimes those groups can just happen. Sometimes those groups are built around particular disease state. So I talk about in the book, there's a group called Healing Strong, which has hundreds of chapters all over the world. And it's for people going through cancer who want to do healthy things alongside whatever treatment they're going through and a support group for people who are all committed to being as healthy as possible. So yeah, like I think you can either find it through a disease that you get to, or you can try and get ahead of it and try and avoid that altogether.

And I think, you know, no answers are wrong. It's all about progress and, you know, finding a group that resonates for you long term. Yeah, for sure. And just start seeking out different maybe activities or places that you will be exposed more to people that you would probably have something in common with. I mean, I think about there's this natural food store that I love and they have a little bulletin board and it just has all these like events and support groups and, you know, just all this different information on there. And I think that's a great way. I also think if you just go on Facebook and just search for groups in your area, you might find something, you know, something that you're into. Or I know when I first

moved to the West side, I started going to dog parks more and meeting people there. And then another great way is like, I mean, pickleball, everyone's freaking out about pickleball right now. And I know that there's little groups popping up everywhere. So I think there's so many different ways. And I just really wanted to give people some tangible examples because I think this is something that a lot of people really struggle with is finding their community.

Yeah. I mean, you mentioned pickleball. I played pickleball on Thursday nights with a bunch of guys too. And one of the things about it is that it's kind of so new that no one's that good at it. Or, you know, it's just like, it's easy to just kind of be part of and it's easy to pick up.

I think, you know, doing something like that can also, you know, help avoid the sort of sticky early parts of conversations when, you know, an introvert doesn't want to be with other people, when you're doing something that like you can concentrate on, whether that be hiking or pickle ball or whatever else it might be. So I think, you know, building something around existing healthy behaviors or existing social groups is where it's at. Yeah. There's a hiking club in LA that I love to go to. And I made a lot of my friends through that way as well, as well. Like every week we meet up and we hike. I actually haven't been in a couple months, but that was how I met a lot of my friends. Exactly. So you're based in California too, right? You're just in the

north. Yeah. I used to live in Venice too, actually. Now I live in Northern California. The healthiest thing that I ever did for my nervous system was to live in the countryside. So having lived in New York for nine years and lived in London for that and lived in LA, now I have two kids and I live in the countryside and my life is very different. But I get the excitement and exhilaration of being involved in, you know, my day-to-day work and then I can have the calm and, and, uh, of, of, uh, you know, hearing birds tweet and, uh, you know, having silence at night. Oh my God. I'm really honestly craving that. And I think it's so funny. I've been thinking about this a lot recently, how for the longest time it was vilified, like moving to the country and having land. And now all of a sudden there's this switch where everyone wants land and they want to move outside of the city and

have more space and more quiet. And it's just interesting to see the shift that's been happening. And now I've got Starlink so I can have good internet even though I live in the country. That's amazing. Elon Musk, he's doing a lot of cool things. So I want to ask you a personal question that I ask all my guests. What are your personal health non-negotiables? So these are things either that you do daily, weekly, both that are just non-negotiables for you and taking care of your health. So one is we have family dinner. So my own family every night and then the extended family we have once a month here at the house. So that's, you know, eating food that we've cooked ourselves and eating, you know, that generally. And then my men's group, you know, and a lot of other healthy

things flow from that, but it varies depending on what I'm focused on. But those two things are mission critical. I love that. You're the first guest that has answered that, that family dinners are non-negotiable. And that was a non-negotiable in my family growing up. And I think it was a really important part of my childhood that I think a lot of people,

I think it's really discounted now. So I'm so glad that you brought that up because I think it's really important when I have kids, that's going to be something where it's like a non-negotiable, like, sorry guys, like Monday through Thursday, dinner's at home. We've got to eat as a family. That's cool. Yeah, it's healthy. Yeah, it's very healthy. Well, please let everyone know where they can find you, where they can find your work, your book. Yeah. Actually, so I retained the rights to my book,

the community cure so that I could give it away on audio book for free. So you can get it on audible, but, um, and other places, but if you go to the community cure.com slash audio book, you can download the audio for free on an MP3 and you can listen to the smooth sounds of James Maskell whenever you want. And that's, you know, it's written for like my goal with that book was actually written for health professionals and actually health systems to adopt this type of care. But yeah, Instagram is Mr. James Maskell.

And I, you know, if you just, I'm jamesmaskell.com, you can see all the different things that I'm involved with. I've got quite a few different areas that I'm involved with, really, because it's not a single solution, right? There's not one single solution. And I like to keep myself a little bit involved in working with doctors who are delivering new models of care, because I learn a lot from that. And then I can take those learnings into when I'm talking to health systems. So I have quite a few different things going on. But yeah, you can find out all about it at changedmascle.com. Awesome. Thank you, James. This is a really fascinating conversation. I haven't really had

a conversation about community from this lens, and I think it's really important and will hopefully be super inspiring for people to hear this. So thank you for your time. I hope so too. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of the Real Foodology Podcast. If you liked the episode, please leave a review in your podcast app to let me know. This is a resonant media production produced by Drake Peterson and edited by Mike Fry. The theme song is called Heaven by the amazing singer Georgie. Georgie is spelled with a J. For more amazing podcasts produced by my team, go to resonantmediagroup.com. I love you guys so much.

See you next week. The content of this show is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not a substitute for individual medical and mental health advice and doesn't constitute a provider-patient relationship. I am a nutritionist, but I am not your nutritionist. As always, talk to your doctor or your health team first. Looking to build a more robust foundation in your health and wellbeing?

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