Does Sugar Cause Kidney Stones? | Dr. Neal Barnard Live Q&A

does sugar cause kidney stones well let's find out welcome to the exam room live brought to you by the Physicians committee hi I am the weight loss Champion Chuck Carroll thank you so very much for raising your health IQ with us coast to coast and around the world in more than 150 countries and making the exam room one of the most downloaded nutrition podcasts anywhere on the planet today here's the question we've got donuts we've got cakes we've got candy we've got sweets we've got treats and do they delicious as they may be come at a high cost that question is being raised after a new study finds that people who get 25 of their calories from foods that contain added sugar are at a high risk for painful kidney stones but still despite the study other questions remain and here to bring everything into Focus for us is Dr Neil Barnard he is the author of your body imbalance and if there is a question that you have for Dr Barnard drop it in the comments or in the chat we're going to get to as many as we Kim when we open up the doctor's mailbag and with that let's go ahead and talk kidney stones with the one and only Dr Neil Barnard thanks for being here great to be with you Chuck let's start by asking this question how common are kidney stones well they're very common about maybe one in ten people has them and the bad news is once you've got one you are set up to have another about maybe a third or a half of people who've had one end up having another and they can be recurrent and they hurt so very common um but not evenly distributed across the population some people higher risk than others is it more of a male problem or a female problem do we know if they've broken it down by gender white males in developed countries um I don't know we don't know why the race we don't know why the gender but we don't we do have a theory about why more developed countries have it probably diet probably diet so that brings us to the question of the day it comes to us from Carla who sent this in and then also a link to an article that she was reading that linked off to a study that was published in the journal Frontiers and nutrition and Carla's question Dr Barnard is whether sugar can in fact cause kidney stones yeah the the the study is a good study they had a very large group of people they had very good dietary assessment of them and what they found is that those people eating the most sugary Foods had about a 39 higher risk of getting a kidney stone compared to other people and it's significant and uh an important thing but here's the caution uh this was an association so you don't know is it a cause and effect here's why researchers have been looking at this for a while and sugar itself has effects in the body but sugar also comes along with other things that have an effect years ago researchers noticed that people who ate more sugar had a higher risk of diabetes but then other researchers kept looking at this and they discovered that it seemed that what was happening was that people were having their sugary soda along with their cheeseburger and along with their greasy fries and it wasn't actually the soda or the sugar that caused it it was in fact diet sodas had the same effect or the same association with diabetes as sugary sodas so the problem was it was the fast food meal not the soda that did it so when it comes to kidney stones we're thinking the thing same thing is the sugar just bystander or is it the problem in favor of it being a bystander media diets increase the risk salty foods increase risk and sodas go right along with those they're part of it on the other thing on the other hand though arguing for sugar being a problem is that a lot of Studies have shown the same thing this is not the first study to have shown that so my guess is that it's probably both that we haven't really sort of the mechanism by which sugar should do this but it may well have a contribution to it and all the things that go along with that soda the burger the fried wings all of those things are part of the problem too yeah you're painting a very similar picture to what Dr David Katz painted for us in the last episode where he and I were talking about the new view on protein and that we're so obsessed with this one nutrient that we can completely ignore everything that is coming with the protein and you have to look at the complete source and it's complete packaging so yeah you can get protein from that burger that you were just mentioning Dr Barnard but you're also getting all of the artery clogging cholesterol the fat the calories like none of the stuff that you actually want but you're ignoring that just to get to the protein and we're kind of what's that saying you're losing the force through the trees or something like that yeah yeah yeah I I think that's it and so that this goes back to where we started people in developed countries more likely to have the problem so if you're in a country that is impoverished which means you don't have McDonald's which means you don't have fast food you don't even really have a lot of meat anyway um it may well be that people are having sugar in their diet from the fruits and things that they can afford to have and you don't see a whole lot of kidney stones there the sugar doesn't seem to be the problem in that context in a developed country lots of sugary things going along with the meat and the fat and the other parts of the problem yeah and that's that's a really interesting question we had somebody already asking whether or not natural sugar something that you would find in Fruit were examined as part of this study and uh is that part of the culprit here that they're looking at or are we talking exclusively about added sugars it's the it seems to be the attitudes that are a problem uh people who eat abundant fruits and for that matter abundant vegetables tend to have fewer Stones not more all right to that end also you talk about vegetables eating those in high amounts well oxalates continue to be the talk of the nutrition town in some circles we have a question from Shan wondering whether or not it's true that eating too many of these oxalates can in fact contribute to kidney stones well the most there are several different types of kidney stones and the most common are if you take the stone and you send it to a lab they're going to dissect it and they will say you know it's a mixture of calcium and oxalate oxalate comes in in a number of vegetables and so we have assumed that if we reduce the amount of oxalate containing vegetables that we eat spinach is kind of the the granddaddy of all of them but some beans as well some other things like raspberries that ought to reduce the risk of stones however uh many people have said well if it's modest amounts of these things they don't seem to have much of any effect and in fact some diets that really emphasize vegetables and beans have reduced risk of kidney stones the other thing that has to get factored in is that most of the oxalate in your body doesn't come from the produce counter comes from your liver your liver actually makes it regardless of what you're eating so that's actually the number one source even so uh most uh kidney experts would say it is prudent if you have had a history of kidney stones to not go overboard with high oxalate Foods so have you have spinach have other green vegetables as part of your regular diet but you might not have an enormous serving of spinach at one meal all right Mike wants to dive a little bit deeper you mentioned spinach there and green vegetables in general what are some other oxalate containing foods that we might want to put on our radar uh well unfortunately they're all really healthy things um uh really spinach of course gets talked about a lot but within the bean category navy beans are one of them soybeans or another but people who eat more beans and particularly more soy have a lot fewer uh health problems and people who eat a plant Rich diet tend to have more have fewer kidney stones too raspberries are right on the list as well so that's kind of the big list nuts are also feature in this as well but I really do want to emphasize that the evidence for the any of these Foods really being a major contributor to kidney stones is rather modest I want to go back to what it was you were talking about a little bit ago about there being different kinds of kidney stones uh what type in particular were they looking at in this research did they specify no they didn't um they just looked at kidney stones in general but if they don't specify the the type that I mentioned earlier is going to be the one you're looking at especially calcium oxalate only because that's by far the most common type gotcha all right now here's a 201 or a 301 level question for you um since calcium and the urine in urine increases the risk of kidney stones should we then also be cautious about eating foods that have a high amount of calcium in them um surprisingly enough it's a paradoxical answer here when the calcium is in your food so I'm going to eat some broccoli which has got a lot of calcium in it that calcium is going down my digestive tract and it binds with the oxalates right in your digestive tract and it keeps them from being able to enter your blood and causing Stones so a high calcium intake is actually a good a good thing um one exception calcium supplements if you take them on an empty stomach they they there's no oxalate for them to bind with and that's going to increase the risk of stones all right let's also talk about about the risk of uh kidney stones in terms of being overweight we know about three quarters of the people in the United States are either overweight or in fact have obesity what does that do to a person's risk of developing a kidney stone unfortunately overweight people have much higher risk of kidney stones this just add this to the to the risks of carrying excess weight uh and an overweight woman has about double the risk compared to a woman who has a more healthy weight um that said you'll also see kidney stones sometimes with very rapid weight loss and with certain kinds of bariatric procedures you'll see a higher risk of kidney stones after the fact so what this makes a case for is following a healthy diet that helps you to really manage your weight and avoid the overweight and if a person has gotten into excess weight unwanted weight the best way typically to take it off is with a healthy low-fat plant-based diet because that gives you the best of all possible worlds all right so you're talking about a low-fat plant-based diet on the opposite end of things uh is the keto diet which has been touted for health benefits of a different kind debatable as to whether or not that is in fact a healthy option Tyron emailed in wondering whether a high protein meat diet such as keto could in fact be a trigger for kidney stones yeah we think so researchers have done this for years when when people have followed a ketogenic diet they'll collect urine samples from them send the urine to the lab and what you discover is they're peeing out calcium they're losing more calcium than before and so if you're not pretty well hydrated uh your risk of stones is going to be higher perfect segue to this question we have let me see if I can find it this one it honestly yeah comes from Don and Don is a huge fan of iced tea wondering whether iced tea can cause kidney stones he's been told by members of his family that in fact is the case I am going to Hazard a guess that the opposite is probably true because if you're hydrating well enough um keep in mind what causes a stone is when you've got the calcium and oxalate or other solutes in not enough water um so they coalesce they form that stone and then you have trouble getting rid of it if you have a lot of water running through you because you're drinking water and watery things like tea uh your risk of a stone is going to be less all right so all right let's break this down here we have a cup of coffee I'm good for about three of these bad boys a day just a splash of almond milk if not black and then here I have a reusable water cup that I fill up and I drink about three three and a half of these every single day so if I'm on a one-to-one ratio I think there's probably about twice as much water in this so maybe a two to one ratio of water to other beverages by and large if somebody's doing something similar like that do you think that they're going to be pretty safe in terms of kidney stone risk yep yep I I would give you a green light okay good to know all right enjoy that coffee my friends um Robin though has a question uh and this is one it sounds like she's maybe battling one right now what should I do if I have a kidney stone what is the course of treatment there what's the first thing okay well talk to your doctor first of all uh you're going to be miserable uh I mean there are many kidney stones that are so small you're not aware of them fair enough but if you know you've got it what that means is that you're hurting and it's got to pass and it will take some time for that to occur I mean there are some Stone blasting techniques that doctors will sometimes use but for the most part these stones are just pasts which which means your doctor is going to talk with you about pain control um between now and the time that that stone passes and then also about making sure it doesn't happen again so that's it and and you want to make sure that you're really well hydrated as well um there are also various medications that are used to try to prevent recurrent Stones their value is um debatable among clinicians so now is the time to get on a healthy plant-based diet and don't forget to hydrate and to that Antonio is wondering how much water should somebody be drinking if they have a kidney stone to try to pass it or flush it out of the system okay um here's sort of my rule of thumb is it's not necessarily a number of glasses you hear people saying eight glasses of water each day and each one should have eight ounces in it uh yes that's the amount of water your body really needs but you're getting water from Foods so let's say you make some oatmeal in the morning how did you prepare it one cup of oatmeal two cups of water went into it and so in other words you're getting water from the foods that you're eating you have an orange you have an apple you're getting water but but you could think of that as a picture of the amount of water that should go through you eight glasses of eight ounces eight ounces each but it doesn't have to be out of your tap it can be just from the foods that you're consuming but let me give you another way of judging it if you go into the bathroom and you pee in the toilet and you look at it and it is concentrated you are dehydrated you're not getting enough water so you want your your urine to look like more like water and not terribly concentrated and Robin has a follow-up here you talk about hydrating Foods um are those the ones that people should be turning to exclusively you've mentioned oranges I think watermelon pineapple things like that and then also is that a good time to maybe dial back those foods that contain oxalates the higher levels of them like spinach we were talking about earlier um well if you have a tendency towards Stones spinach is something you can have but I would keep them on the portions rather modest and the same with the other oxalate containing foods so keep them modest but you don't have to exclude any of them uh from your diet let's grab a few more here we talked about meat and the connection there Catherine though is wondering about milk and cheese that Dairy connection to kidney stones and whether there could be one actually probably not uh dairy products cause all kinds of other problems don't get me wrong they are not Health Foods they have a lot of fat especially bad fat the protein is not particularly healthful for you compared with with plant-based plant-derived Pro proteins I'm talking about the Harvard research that showed that Dairy protein is one of the ones that's linked to higher mortality compared to plant protein however the Saving Grace with regard to Stones is the dairy products do have calcium goes down your digestive tract and it binds with oxalates that are there and so you're you're it's not going to increase the risk of kidney stones all right now from time to time people will email in and they're like you always talk about the trustworthiness of particular studies and research and presentations I'm just pointing out to the exam room is that that was just a moment where you know that you can trust the information on this show because it would be so easy to just throw Dairy right under the bus for everything and that didn't happen you got an honest honest answer based off of the research that is talked about here on the show unbiased and you can take it to the bank for your health right here on the exam room appreciate your honesty Dr Barnard that was amazing thank you well there's plenty of other reasons oh don't get me I know there are I'm just saying bad things but this but no I'm not guilty when it comes to this all right fair enough uh here we go question from Sharon exercise if you are an avid exerciser could that play any sort of a role in preventing kidney stones and I got to tell you um I think you have to be cautious like it could be just the opposite now there are people who say if you've got a stone maybe movement we'll have you pass it faster maybe so but here's the problem here's where you can run into trouble uh you're out there you're exercising you're sweating like crazy you're losing fluid you're your urine is getting more and more concentrated and that happens in the kidney so you're going to be at higher risk if you're not carefully replacing the water no that's an easy thing to do you carry a water bottle with you and for a lot of Runners and really heavy exercises they end up being perfectly well hydrated and you can actually be more hydrated than you were when you were sedentary because you're paying so much attention to your um your water intake but no the exercise alone isn't going to stop the kidney stone but the hydration is something to be really careful of because if you let yourself get dehydrated Stones can form interesting question here from Alex to that and a lot of athletes Avid exercisers they turn to Gatorade Powerade those sports drinks to refuel after their workout uh Alex is wondering whether they though because of the sugar connection here that we were talking about could be a contributing factor well it's a great question because you've got two different things two different parts of the beverage working at Cross purposes the sugar is they're associated with Stones as we've seen although we haven't as I mentioned we haven't really figured out what the mechanism is why is it doing it is it really uh is it really the cause but contrary to it is you've got this massive hydrating function and of these two the hydration is going to win so overall these These are going to help you prevent stones aspartame has been in the news recently we've talked about added sugars we've talked about natural sugars we haven't talked yet about artificial sugars though and Marge is wondering whether they could perhaps be a contributing factor for kidney stones only if your diet soda comes with a burger [Laughter] more honesty boy you were dropping truth bombs left and right today Dr Barnard yeah but you know it's true when very often people get a diet soda because they're concerned about all the calories and everything else they're eating how many people have gotten a double bacon cheeseburger and the diet coke so keep be careful about the things that go along with it absolutely hey you know what uh with the time that we have left here today I know that we uh we're all getting ready for the International Conference on nutrition and Medicine we're going to talk about that in one minute here but uh there was another interesting story that crossed my news desk here this week and that was we've talked a lot recently about these weight loss drugs and Dr Barnard there is a woman in Louisiana who is suing the manufacturers of two of these popular I mean they've even been called Blockbuster weight loss drugs and she's claiming that they caused her severe injuries including what her lawyers have termed gastric paralysis so let me read this to you from an article that NBC published on this lawsuit it says quote in the suit the woman alleges that Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly failed to adequately warn patients about the possible risk of severe stomach problems associated with their drugs ozampic and Manjaro and they go on to say that this is the first lawsuit to allege that these drugs can cause severe gastrointestinal injuries the clinical definition that they threw out there was gastroparesis is what this woman was suffering from so before we get into anything else what is stomach paralysis slash gastroparesis that they're referring to okay well these may be the first lawsuits but they're not going to be the last because gastroparesis is something it may be part of how these drugs work normally your stomach it moves your stomach has a a neurological feature of being able to move food downward into the small intestine from there goes into the large intestine so you have a thin layer of muscles that make that happen and they are under the control of nerves and when you eat food naturally let's say you're not on will go virus epic when you eat foods naturally the food goes down once it gets into your small intestine your small intestine says wait a minute don't release more food yet let your body digest it a little bit let the stomach acid eat it up a little bit and so your Digi your intestinal tract releases glp1 which slows down the stomach uh emptying a little bit so that you could get proper digestion so ozepiken mcgovi are analogs of that which greatly multiply that effect it can it basically makes your stomach stop for some people or variants of that it'll slow it down a lot and where this is really a problem is if let's say a person has diabetes and they're taking ozympic for that reason it brings her blood sugar down it makes their appetite diminish but they they may have neurological gastroparesis also so because of the effects of the diabetes slowing their stomach emptying and they're not taking a drug that slows the hurt stomach emptying you can have the stomach just sit there what you ate for lunch on Monday is still there on Wednesday in some cases and where we're hearing about this Chuck is from anesthesiologists we told the patient to fast overnight before their surgical procedure but they came in and they vomited all this food despite the fact they haven't been eating anything it's because the stomach can't empty and how long does the normal digestive process take we typically are told don't eat after midnight if you're having a procedure in the morning so is that eight hour window typically enough to process everything oh yes um your stomach is empty within minutes um for typically um your body assuming you're eating healthful plant-based Foods your body takes a little time so that the stomach acid mixes with the food in the stomach and then it moves it along it doesn't sit on it for a terribly long time it's minutes it's not hours um however many people aren't eating healthy foods they're not eating high fiber foods things sit in their stomach for a longer period of time and on these drugs the effects are really quite varied and this doesn't happen to everybody to a noticeable degree but a lot of people do have the vomiting which is partly because their stomach is keeping all the foods that they've eaten um uh so so it does have happen and you'll see people three four or five hours after eating the food's still there or substantial portion of it is still there you're not painting a very pretty picture here because what I'm envisioning is kind of like a rush hour traffic jam around the Beltway here in the Washington DC area which is just notorious for Bumper to Bumper slowest molasses type of traffic that just takes forever to clear it sounds like this is kind of the same thing that's occurring because a person is taking these drugs would I be correct in that analogy it's a really great analogy Chuck I have to say and and the food instead of moving along is just sitting there and again different people have different results but this is a common thing and I heard of a complaint from a teacher who said because she had all this food in her stomach that wasn't leaving she was belching a lot and it as the food had just sat there hour after hour after the hour and and the students could smell the food that she was sort of belching up and it was just this kind of creepy uh image of a person whose digestion has just been shut off by these medications so this is not the the end of the litigation these drugs are relatively new and so the these side effects and how common they are is going to be something that's going to become clearer as the years go by and I'm quite certain there'll be many more lawsuits about this yeah it sounds like this woman who filed the lawsuit her attorneys are also very much expecting more to come uh this also from the NBC article says quote about 400 people have come forward to claim to have had gastrointestinal injuries caused by these diabetes medications that's what these weight loss drugs were originally brought to market for but the lawyers also state that they expect to see thousands of such cases so you have hundreds of reported cases this is the first lawsuit but this first lawsuit is the Domino the first Domino to topple and there are going to be many more to come and that raises another interesting point is you know what kind of data did we have before these drugs were brought to market in terms of long-term safety risks clearly the gold stamp that I've heard in speaking with other doctors is you want something like at least 10 to 20 years in terms of safety data and that should make you feel pretty comfortable with the results I can't imagine in this case that we had anything in that 10 to 20 year range Dr Barnard I have to tell you Chuck when I was a resident um I remember my one of my professors said don't prescribe any drug within the first year of its release on the market and he would said say let somebody else's patient um have the the untoward effects and I have to say that's that's you can understand that advice because when things are marketed they may have been on the Y on on the market they may have been in testing for a while but it's a limit to how how long the studies have gone on uh the efficacy studies on wagovi for about six to eight weeks so call it a year and and change now now the contrary uh argument is well ozempic was on which is the same drug at a lower dose has been on the market quite a lot of people have used it but the rub here is that we never had this massive media frenzy about drugs before we never had people racing off to CVS to get their prescriptions filled because obesity is much more common than diabetes so once they are approved once they've been approved for obesity and you're seeing huge number of people using them then something that was an uncommon side effect it could have been just chance now becomes common and people litigate about it so we're talking about gastroparesis of course we're talking about the Digestive problems but this is where gallbladder disease pancreatitis and thyroid cancer are on our radar there was a huge study in France that showed about a 58 increased risk of thyroid cancer so you don't see that very much if it's a thousand people in your study but when you've got millions of people on these drugs that's when you start to see them excuse interest can I have with a friend of mine over dinner this past weekend where she and I were talking about her friends who would go to these Med Spas where they uh were clearly not overweight but they would go to get injections of these drugs definitely within the normal BMI range totally doing this for what I assume would be vanity reasons what do you think that's going to do to somebody who doesn't have any of the issues that these drugs would ordinarily be prescribed to treat um it's troubling to hear that that kind of thing happens you can understand because when it when anything's a fad people race to it and try it but the the most benign thing you can say is that any benefit a person gets from it with regard to weight loss Will typically not meet their expectations if you were obese before you're still going to be obese you'll have lost some weight but not a huge amount so if you're mildly overweight you'll lose some weight but you you may not get to where you want to go the bad thing is when you stop taking it the weight that you have lost for the most part comes right back so you're just basically playing with your physiology and throwing yourself at risk along the way what I would I would love to see much more is a person using that money that 15 600 bucks that uh that's the typical price after discount for mcgovi for a year after a discount yeah yeah exactly yeah the the manufacturer has used these these promotional discounts about fifty thousand six hundred dollars a year for that kind of money you could visit you could have a doctor prescribe a plant-based diet you could have a meeting with a dietitian every week for a year you could get a couple hundred dollars worth of groceries an eighty dollar gym membership and probably 120 bucks a month for a vacation for the price of wagovi and with that kind of support let me tell you you're going to lose more weight more effectively than you would with these drugs you know it's funny you talk about that price tag and that is one of the main factors that uh researchers have found for people not staying on these drugs as a matter of fact uh multiple reports have stated that the average person who goes on these is on them for a year or less for a number of reasons uh it could be because they get sick like the woman who filed the lawsuit could be because fifteen thousand six hundred dollars a year is not sustainable for the majority of people out there but then when you go off of these drugs you just said that in most cases the weight comes pouring back is it a rapid weight regain that we're often seeing with that yes it's rapid now some people people will maintain a little bit of weight loss for others they don't maintain any and it occurs very rapidly upon discontinuation but the numbers the numbers are are troubling we there have been three big studies on this one in the U.S uh one in the UK and then one uh that pharmacists did to track usage and what we are seeing is maybe half of people stopped them within a year by two years the vast majority have stopped them and the latest data show that maybe two-thirds or three quarters are stopping them within the first year why because they got so much hype that these drugs are going to answer your problem and they don't um secondly uh the side effects were sort of minimized in in many press reports and the side effects for a lot of people are really bad so I think the majority of people are putting their prescriptions in the trash uh and then some people do stick with it for a longer period of time as long as they can Pony up the dough and let me straight shoot with you here for a second thinking back to the old me when I was struggling with my weight even if all of the side effects were reported and told to me I think that in that case I would still have been so desperate that I would have rolled the dice and said shoot me up shoot me up because I'm just so sick of being trapped in this body and I would have convinced myself that I had tried literally everything else and I felt that way with every fiber of my being but I guarantee you I never tried to eat a healthy plant-based diet that's for daggone sure so clearly not everything had been tried but it's just such a difficult thing to type in tap into the patient's psyche as well to really explain all of the options on the table because when something shows promise man it's like you make a beeline for that and consequences just don't matter they are totally irrelevant there and I think that both as patients who have made it on the other side as well as Physicians it would be wonderful if we could all get together and try to figure out how to crack this code to really lay out everything as thoroughly and as cleanly as possible in an understanding way that then could help move the needle so that people no longer have to fear being on this yo-yo diet because man I'm telling you there is a dread that comes with it you lose the weight and you're just biting your time you're counting down the days until it comes back and you just feel like you have drawn that genetic short straw man it is frustrating and I don't know really uh who you know is going going to be the one who's able to move that needle but I do hope Dr Barnard that what it is we do here on this show laying out the facts as we do is really going to help somebody who's wrestling and making these decisions for themselves you made such a such an important Point chuck and a couple things need to be said about sort of Truth and advertising we've talked about the side effects of these but it's also important to talk about what's the benefit that a person may hope to get a person who weighs 300 pounds and they're thinking you know my ideal body weight is 150. well what govi's not going to get you there um if you if you look at research participants who are really trying their best they're changing their diet to uh typically a portion control diet along with the drug given at a maximal uh dose a person who starts at 300 may end up at 270 260. something like that at that point the weight loss sort of just kind of plateaus and the person says well 260 is better than where I was but I'm still in the obese range what can I do now and the answer to it is to focus on the kind of diet that really does stop the weight gain and promotes the weight loss and that's to focus on the high fiber beans and vegetables and fruits and whole grains and get the animal products out keep the oils low and when a person eats those things that's your best chance of getting to an optimal diet weight now some an optimal body weight and so the the idea of hoping that a drug is going to get you there uh these drugs only do so much and they do so at quite a cost with regards to side effects and the financial cost and you know one more thing here before we wrap things up I think back also to my olden days and I think that one of the things that may have even as you know deeply as my heels would have been dug in to get this injection one of the things that may have slightly you know loosened up that grip a little bit would be if somebody were to have said well look historically the track record for weight loss medications is this some of them have been pulled for them from the market because of ineffectiveness some have had been pulled because of safety concerns and if I had that kind of data well then I would be able to glean what my expected result with this would have been so what is the track record by and large for weight loss drugs have we seen a lot of them pulled for ineffectiveness or safety concerns in the past yes most of them in fact um and and this goes back many many years back in the 30s uh researchers started using amphetamine and and speed amphetamine uh does dampen your appetite and does cause weight loss but it causes so many problems addictions and other things so now amphetamines do have a legitimate use uh in in pediatric Psychiatry um but they must be used with caution and as weight loss no they should not be prescribed for that purpose and then I guess the big headlines in the 1990s I guess it was fenfen which was a combination drug that was all the rage I mean every talk show was about this miracle weight loss drug until it started causing damage to the heart valves that in some cases was was fatal and since that time there have been many many drugs on the market most of them have have been withdrawn now that said uh the pharmaceutical industry has learned from these disasters uh that have occurred and so they're trying to be more cautious but they still make Big mistakes and they'll put things on the market with great hoopla that turned out to be not particularly effective and to have a whole lot of side effects so uh we're waiting to see I mean we're living out the the uh the experience of this new kind of marketing right now and my hope is that at some point we'll be able to to go back to what's more sensible and use the weight loss methods that are ingrained into our DNA which is to process healthy high fiber foods in a good and efficient way so that weight gain doesn't occur and that excess weight gets removed that's really the approach that we need to see it's just a fascinating conversation and it's something that we're going to be diving into quite deeply uh at the International Conference on nutrition and Medicine uh you and I we're going to be on a big panel Friday afternoon with Dr Jamie Kane who is just on the show Dr Jim Loomis our friend Dr Garth Davis uh hanukkali over Dr Hana kaliova Dr Steve flombe Dr Vanita Ramon all talking about uh weight loss drugs surgery the best approach to weight loss sustained weight loss I really think that you know for me for personal reasons this is kind of the the signature presentation for the entire conference a two-hour panel I just I can't wait to hear everybody's point of view and you know hopefully we can make a difference for the physicians in the room especially who then can take all of this information back to their patients it's going to be a very balanced discussion looking at the pros and cons of all these different approaches which is great but I have to say I think the presentation that I'm really excited about there was the one that Dr kaliova is going to describe where she herself did a study where she gave a single meal uh and looked at the glp-1 secretion that in the body itself following that meal and she found which meals cause natural glp-1 release versus which ones that fail she's going to present those data I think it's going to be very exciting and of course Chuck I can't wait to hear what you have to say because you're going to be talking about this as not only is a person who deals with the health issues here every day but also you've lived it and we can't wait to hear your perspective as well yeah I'm nervous you got me up there with all all you doctors and I'm expected to speak intelligently man the pressure's on Dr Barnard the pressure's on I can't wait it's gonna be great yeah I'm looking forward to it and uh if you are in the Washington DC area or just have a wild hair to join us look you can still get there it's August 10th through the 12th at the Grand Hyatt go to pcrm.org icnm we would love to see you there we're going to be doing all kinds of interviews for the podcast at the conference and then also we're going to be doing some live so we'll be around there but then it's just so much phenomenal information three days worth you've got Senator Corey Booker who's going to open up everything for us on Thursday morning uh Dr Michael Greger will be closing the show on Saturday afternoon in between we've got Dr Dean ornish Dr Christy Funk Dr Andrew Freeman my co-host from one healthy World Dr Gemma Newman will be there Brenda Davis Love Her such an amazing dietitian from Canada Dr David Katz who is just on the show and so many others once again it's an All-Star cast of Health that you have assembled here Dr Barnard and I can't thank anyone is going to walk away disappointed certainly uh Health IQs are going to be raised this weekend no doubt about it yeah we're really tackling the big issues that really need to be talked about we're talking about tackling diabetes talking about these weight issues that you and I have been discussing medications surgery the dietary approach what's really the best way we're going to talk about the totally new view of protein which blows all the discussions about this out of the water breast cancer prevention uh and that's when we get that's before we get to the food because the food is going to be incredible as it always is but it's now it's it's really highlighted because we're going to be presenting the foods from the New York health and hospital system the ones that are part of their amazing new vegan system the the uh the chef will be there with us and Dustin Harter will be there presenting the universal meals Foods so it's going to be an incredible experience yeah man I can't wait it is that okay I take back what I said about you know the highlight of the conference being that panel no uh the panel is second the food is first that's just the way it's going to be uh for every year that we do the conference no doubt about it uh and of course also looking ahead September 20th and Norfolk Virginia my hometown uh you and your band carbon Works a completely different event but nonetheless another great uh just great phenomenal event at the narrow the historic little Cinema house in uh in in the Ghent area of Norfolk so you and the band you're going to be there on September 20th show time there 7 15 pcrm.org events to get your tickets uh Dustin off the old guitar man I know that you got that new album out there are you excited yeah Vanishing Act is carbonworks new album it just came out and it's been a lot of fun and we did shows in New York here in DC One in Chicago and now we're coming coming down to Norfolk Virginia because a lot of the musicians are from there so what we're going to do is I am going to talk a little bit about health on the things you and I have discussed Chuck but then we're going to turn down the lights and we're going to watch the latest Harvard Works music videos we'll have a live performance from the harbor quartet which is going to play lots of food lots of drinks lots of time to rub elbows and talk so it's going to be a fun event good time we'll be had by all and look we can't wrap up today Dr Barnard without uh giving a big thank you to the Gregory J Ryder memorial fund for powering today's episode of the exam room live and you know the Gregory J Ryder memorial fund supports organizations just like the Physicians committee that carry on Greg's love for Animals by promoting plant-based health and working to end animal abuse while also emphasizing programs that promote systemic change and also benefit people and you can visit them online right now at gregoryriderfund.org that's Gregory writer art e i t e r fund dot org and I do hope that we get to see Allison Mahoney from the writer fund at the conference this weekend as well I just love her to death she is just the greatest absolutely you know Greg had such a wonderful heart for animals and it was such a kind person and Allison carries that forward so so beautifully and really pushing the cause that we share in such a great way yeah I want to catch up with her and see how the horses are doing on her Rescue Ranch up there so it'll be great to see her but check them out online gregoryriderfund.org and by the way Dr Barnard my friend uh thank you for being here looking forward to catching up with you at the conference I know the schedule is crazy leading up to it so greatly appreciate you making the time today my friend I wouldn't miss a Chuck thanks and to the crew behind the scenes thank you for making the magic happen my friends and to you exam roomies thank you for the wonderful questions and hanging out and raising your health IQs with us we've covered a lot of ground today from kidney stones to the latest on weight loss drugs and so much more so thank you guys so very much for being here and making the show what it is and on behalf of everyone at the Physicians committee I am the weight loss Champion Chuck Carroll thank you so very much for watching we'll talk to you very soon but until then keep it plant-based

Channel: Physicians Committee

Views: 9,351

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Id: G96U6gou8fk

Length: 43min 19sec (2599 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 10 2023