The 5 Top Health Lies & The Truth You Need to Feel Better Today

When I started this podcast a few years ago, I sat down and I made a list of dream

“guests that I would love to talk to and today I'm so excited because someone from that”

original list is finally here in our Boston studios. His name is Dr. Mike Varshavski. Now, you may have seen Dr. Mike on social media because he is the most followed medical doctor in the world online. Every day, he debunks medical misinformation, calls out lies,

and raises awareness on health issues to 30 million followers. But here's what I love about

Dr. Mike and why I wanted him on the show. As a medical expert, Dr. Mike has been in clinical practice for over a decade and to this day continues to practice in a community based family medical practice. All this scary, health, misinformation and lies that are being spread online, he is experiencing the devastating impact that it's having on people that come into his medical practice. He will tell you that some of the lies online will

result in children dying this year. They will result in you or your loved ones not taking your symptoms seriously or not consulting your primary care doctor and getting the support and the medical care that you deserve. Dr. Mike will tell you right at the beginning of our conversation today that the reason why it is so hard to do the things you know you need to do in order to feel better is because of all this misinformation. You're so flooded

with conflicting advice and lies. You don't know who to trust or what to do in a world

that's always selling you extremes, flat out misrepresenting medical facts or trying to sell

you solutions that just don't work? Well, Dr. Mike is here to bring you the truth. To tell you the health miss, the red flags, what works, what doesn't work, what's complete BS, what will help you and what won't. So whether you're just trying to get healthier, caring for everybody else and your own health has come last or you're at a point where just the basics feel really hard right now. This episode is going to be a lifeline and I can not

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when you use code mail plus there's a 30-day money-back guarantee. Here's to your health. Hey, it's your friend Mel and welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast. I am so fired up for the conversation today. I'm thrilled that you're here because it's always an honor to be together and spend time with you. If you're a new listener or you're here because somebody shared this with you and I know this is going to be one of those episodes that you share

with everyone that you care about. I just want to take a moment and personally welcome you to the Mel Robbins podcast family. I cannot wait for you to meet today's extraordinary guest his name, Dr. Mike Varshavsky. He is here to tell you the top 10 health lies and the truth

“you need to hear to feel better today. Dr. Mike is the most followed medical doctor online”

where every day he debunks medical misinformation lies and raises awareness on health issues to more than 30 million followers. But what I love about him as a medical expert is that Dr. Mike has been in clinical practice for over a decade and to this day continues to practice in a community-based family medical practice. And it's important because he sees patients of all ages who are experiencing the devastating impact of all this scary health misinformation

Mike in this year. Time magazine named Dr. Mike one of the top 100 most influential people

“in health. I am so excited for this conversation. I'm thrilled that you're here. So please help”

me welcome Dr. Mike to the Melbourne's podcast. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to be here for me and for the person who's with us and speaking of the person who is here with us. They are probably feeling a little overwhelmed and burnt out and tired maybe confused about what the best approach to take with their health is and what I'd love to have you speak directly to is how might my life change? If I take everything to heart

that you're about to share with us, the lies you're about to dispel, the truth you're about

to share and I apply it to my life. What might change? You'll get better control of your life.

These days our attention is pulled in so many different directions. People promising us miraculous results. Health care communities confusing us. The health care system screwing us. So my goal in presenting all this information and data that I've lived experienced, practiced, guided patients through is that you'll have better control to make the decisions based on what's important to you. As a doctor my goal is to not make decisions for my patients. It's to present the data in the

most transparent, relatable, honest way so they can take that data and make the decision for themselves that fits their goals and that could be a different decision that I would make and that's okay. So the goal is to give you the power today. I love you said that's okay. Why is it okay if somebody doesn't take the advice that you're giving them when you know that it could possibly make them healthier or feel better? Because as a doctor we actually screwed this up many times

over the last decades and probably even more so before my time where doctors felt like they were

“telling you what to do is a very paternalistic relationship, very parent like you have to lower your”

cholesterol. You have to do this. A patient doesn't have to do anything. In fact, everyone has their own risk tolerance that they're comfortable with. Everyone wants to live life in a slightly different way and that's totally okay. What I want to do is give my patients the choice with the best information that we have at hand on adulthood, honest, so that they can choose, do I want to participate in this activity? Do I want my child to do this activity? What are the risks of doing this activity?

And then they can make the best decision. That's truly the heart of good medicine and that's called informed consent. You know what I love about you and it just occurred to me that so many

people first meet you because you have the largest health and medical channel online on YouTube.

You are the most followed practicing medical doctor online but you also are a doctor in clinical practice who sees firsthand patients that come in probably with printouts, probably that have gone down rabbit holes, misinformation, things from influencers that, you know, they've been convinced to think and so as a practicing clinical physician, you're dealing with the misinformation in exam rooms every single day. I would even venture to say that my patients are dealing with the

misinformation. In fact, the reason why I started this whole social media platform was because I saw in my residency training, my patients falling victim to the same traps over and over again. The same fear mongering, miracle promising approaches and I hated the fact that they wanted the best for themselves. They wanted to live a healthy lifestyle but they were making bad choices because they were presented with inaccurate information or overhyped information because the people

who were best at selling these things were usually the ones with the biggest platforms. So the reason why I started out in making this content, trying to become the most followed doctor on social media was simply to compete with all these loud voices who were leading my patients a straight.

“Why Dr. Mike is taking care of your health feel harder than ever? I think because there's so”

much noise and it's not just healthcare noise, it's political noise, it's technological noise. I mean, you get a phone and two days later, there's an update for your phone. A month later, there's a better version of your phone. There's so many things fighting for your attention in this attention focused economy that it becomes very difficult to make decisions without feeling overwhelmed. So I understand what that feels like when you're trying to do the best for yourself,

for your loved ones, for your kids and you just not knowing what the right approach is because you hear three different options or promises and they're all directly opposed to one another.

especially with so much judgment out there as well. You know, I think it's one of the other reasons

“why I think a lot of us feel like when we really find somebody with the medical expertise or the”

research back to expertise on a topic related to health in particular, the recommendations send to be like, oh, yeah, that's right. I need to move my body. Oh, yeah, that's right. I need to tell the grandma was right a lot more than we give her credit for you know, but I wonder if the reminders are more important than ever because there's so much noise that's clouding what you really know are the true pillars of what we shouldn't shouldn't be doing. Yeah, the reminders to do

those basic activities, the tenants of health that we've practiced for generations of sleeping

while eating a plant-focused diet with fruits, vegetables, lean sources of protein, exercising,

social connections, all sleep, all these things are so important. But then we also need to not get distracted off of these pillars because it's easy to sell shortcuts. It's hard to sleep seven to nine hours a night, especially when you're anxious and then when you don't sleep well, you become more anxious and when you're more anxious, you eat on healthy and then your way changes and you have a chronic health condition and it's this spiral that you go down where it's like, how do I see the

light and usually that light is given by people who want to weaponize that or sell you something or

“sell you something and honestly, I think this is where we fail in health care. We have pushed patients”

away so far from believing that there is a light that we've lost that connection to our patients and the bad actors have capitalized on it. The grifters are partying, day in and day out because doctors have lost that alliance that we spent years building with our patients and partially it's the health care system to blame but also it's us. Well, I also, I'm just, I'm going to step in though and say it's also the fact that fear sells and that when you start to like cast doubt

on medical expertise, it builds distrust every time you go online. Yes. And this is not just for

patients. Doctors fall victim to this too because the first thing you organically want to do

when you feel a symptom or you get a diagnosis is open your phone and opening your phone these days and searching for a diagnosis or symptom is literally like shaking a magic cable. And right now, Dr. Mike, if you're listening to this conversation, has one of those games from childhood, the magic cable. If you're listening in a country or you didn't have it, it's just like a plastic pool ball and there's a window where you shake it, you get a different answer. And the internet is

a lot like this magic cable where no matter what question you ask, depending on which echo chamber you find yourself in, depending on who's digitally targeting the audience and demographic you're in, you're going to get a different answer. So it's even more nefarious than the traditional

“magic cable. I think this is more honest because at least this is a little triangle-shaped”

thing in here that has an equal chance at landing on both sides. But in real life, there's someone messing and pre-programming the magic cable in order to make themselves money. And that's where it gets really scary. It's such a great visual because you're right. It is almost like pulling a slot machine or shaking that magic cable, depending upon who's targeting you, you're going to get a different response. And then based on what you searched,

you're going to get served up more information likely from people that want to sell you something or have you signed up for something. Correct. And what's funny is it sounds like I'm coming down on people making money or being financially successful. I am not. I am only doing that when people are doing it in lieu of giving people true informed consent. If they start hiding that informed consent or giving partial information in order to make a profit, I want

revolutionaries to create new products, new surgeries, new medications, to cure conditions, but I don't want it to be recommended without informed consent. I want people to be making the choice on good information. There are so many symptomatic issues in terms of the healthcare system. But what do you see is the biggest problems and who do they hurt the most? People who are busy, people who have jobs, multiple jobs, multiple children,

under their care, multiple family members, under their care. That is why people sometimes ask me, what is the most proud moment of your career? And it's my day-to-day job taking care of patients on my community health center. The people who need the highest level of care are oftentimes the ones who are left behind by our system. In fact, most people in my position when they're

answer concierge care. They answer a high paying care system where they get paid huge sums of

“money to take care of patients. But what I'm most proud of is that we've created this very unique”

model where because of my success on social media, I'm able to deliver that high level of concierge care to people who are under-insured, are uninsured completely. And they can ask me questions directly. They can text me. They can reach out on the electronic health record. We're normally it's very difficult for the average doctor to do because they're facing all these pressures from the healthcare system where they have to see a specific number of patients.

They have to get the right number of RVUs that are relative value units that we sometimes get just. It's basically how doctors are judged on their productivity within a healthcare system. And some doctors have to perform a specific number of procedures. See a specific number of patients before they get their full salary. Where I don't have to do that. I can just focus on making sure my patients are getting the best level of care. I wish I could be there for more of patients.

“But the reality is, if you want to be a good doctor, a good primary character for your patients,”

you can't shortcut the time. Time is that most important variable that allows that alliance

that we've lost focus on to be formed, trust, to be earned information, to be adequately processed by both parties. Because while the patient is learning about the condition, I'm learning about the patient of what choices they want to make. So when I'm giving advice, I'm not giving advice based on what I want. I'm trying to give advice based on what I've learned and what's important to them. So that takes time. Well, and as you were just describing that person,

which I think is basically a normal person that has a tremendous amount of pressure on them. If you go see somebody that only has 10 minutes and your symptoms get dismissed or it's sort of like, well, you're just going to brush it off. Then yet again, you're getting the messaging that it doesn't matter anyway. And I got to just keep on pressing forward and living like this. And there's a way to actually reach people. There is. And there's a notion in the scientific

community where people feel their doctors are gaslighting them more. They're feeling that their complaints aren't being heard. They're being ignored. And I understand why they feel that way.

It's reasonable to feel that way. First of all, we have to validate that right at the outset.

But at the same time, I have to be honest. I don't think doctors in 2026 are suddenly

“gaslighting their patients more often because they don't care. I think our health care system is”

so broken and is set up in such a flawed way where doctors have no choice but to leave their patients sometimes feeling gaslit. And it's terrible. And that is what's also leading on the flip side of the equation. Doctors to feel more burned out, more upset about the field than ever before, retiring earlier than ever before because of this feeling where, oh my god, I want to do what's right by my patient. But the system doesn't allow me to do it at my best capacity.

What are some of the things that you've heard people say just for the person listening who may have felt funny after seeing a doc who was doing the best that they can in a broken system that is gaslighting? Is it like, denying symptoms? Like, what does that even look like? Yeah, sometimes it's easy. Because I will just say, I don't know that at least in recent years experienced it, maybe it's because of bossy as hell. But I can see how somebody could be run over

and feel like their symptoms are not being taken seriously. If you happen to be a more passive personality type, you don't have a caregiver by your side to advocate on your behalf. It's very easy for the health care system to leave you behind. I'm also a white woman. Yeah, also true. So I would imagine if you are a minority, if you are don't have a lot of money for paying for bills, that that's also increasing how that might happen. You also have to figure as a minority

you're living in a city where sometimes health care budgets are even more strained, hospitals are more busy because they're shutting down in a lot of these inner cities. And as a result, there's more pressure on the ER to see more patients. And how can you give accurate care standard care even to so many people where you don't have the resources to do it and you end up triaging in a way where people feel unseen, people feel hurt. So that makes a lot of sense and it

makes me really sad. Another thing that makes me very sad is the state of the cost of getting medical treatment and the reality of how many people face bankruptcy after a big diagnosis or just the fear that people have over their medical bills. I have a very close friend who has a scan that she

She is not getting it because she has reached that kind of minimum payment that you need to make for

it to be covered. And it feels like this weird just unnecessary waiting game. What do you say to somebody who just opened a medical bill? And they're panicked because they can't pay it.

“Whether or not they're panicked. Yeah. Whether or not it's a huge amount. Are you everything?”

Are you every bill? You will get reductions on your bill. You will find resources to help pay your bill. Financial aid to pay your bill. There are so many underutilized programs that just patients don't know because they get a bill and they assume they have to pay it. I'll give you a very specific example. There was a gentleman. I believe he was in Texas. He had a heart attack. Otherwise,

healthy, runner, teacher, good insurance gets taken to an out of network hospital. It's not

a choice. He's having a heart attack. But he's doing everything right. You have insurance. You have a job. You're taking care of your health. And you still have this unfortunate incident. Hundreds of thousands of dollars a bill to survive this heart attack. And what happens? He goes to the media. He tells his story. He explains how this predatory billing practices of this hospital system was taking advantage of him. The bill is reduced to $100. It's such a predatory system

“that you have to fight everything. And it's terrible that I have to put this on my already”

strained patients' backs that have to say in addition to dealing with your depression, your anxiety, your cholesterol, your blood pressure. But hey, also call the billing department a fight with them. But if I don't say that, they may pay it. And they may face bankruptcy. That's happening in our nation today. Dr. Mike, how do you fight a medical bill? All the billing office. And what do you say? I want an explanation why I need to pay this,

why my insurance isn't paying this, reach out to the medical office that did the service, sometimes about because I as a doctor and putting on medical reasons for why I'm ordering a certain test, they may not be the ones that the insurance company likes to be placed for that condition. And sometimes it's as simple as getting the doctor to say, oh, well, I also ordered it for this and put another code in boom, it's covered. Even worse, this is more aggravating. I order a basic

antibiotic for my patient when they have a sinus infection. And because I'm ordering an electronic health record, I very quickly click the antibiotic who is condemnizing. And I happen to order capsules. As a doctor, there's no difference between capsules and tablets in my mind. I get a denial. Patients insurance doesn't pay for capsules. But they'll pay for tablets. The patient went to the pharmacy, got denied, goes home. I have to call the, the insurance, find this out, call the pharmacy,

changes the tablets. Tell the patient, hey, you got to go back, what an ineffective terrible system. And every one of us has been in that situation. Correct. And here's the worst part. In any given moment of time, most people aren't sick. Most people aren't interacting with this

broken health care system. But the reality is, at one point, we all will. We will all get sick.

We will all have to deal with this crap system. Doctor or not, doctor. We will have to be part of it. So if we don't advocate for this change, if we don't shine a light on these problems,

“it's only going to get worse. What's so sad about the whole thing? Is it could be fixed?”

Which is why I look to people who want to make Americans healthy again and I say, please, focus on the real problems that are driving our health care disaster. Let's not focus on some random ingredient in Skittles, titanium dioxide. That's not where our problems are. Those are PR wins. Those aren't actual health care wins. So the people that support those in administration that are wanting to make change, I feel bad for them the most because they're

the ones that are being tricked right now. Because I want to be there for those patients. I want to help them get the best quality care for the doctor to have a discussion. We'll do want to take an approach that's a little bit less aggressive, less medication, focus more lifestyle for to give you back the time to make sure that pharmaceutical companies aren't playing games with pharmacy benefit managers to make sure your medications cost more. Let's address those inequities

where we'll get the best outcomes for our patients. Remains to be seen if that will happen. Well, if we were to put you in charge, we were the big things you would go after. Right away transparency. The number one thing is we need to attack transparency. What does that mean? There are so many companies that are now functioning in all of these worlds.

The pharmacy benefit manager space where they actually decide what medications are covered in which ones are no capsules versus tablets. Yes. In Eric's versus. And here's the wild part about all of that. The PBMs, these pharmacy

benefit managers, were created to save us money. And how they've become billion dollar entities

on their selves. Because they say, oh, well, if we save a patient $2, we can take a dollar for ourselves. And they're owned by their armors. They're owned by the pharmacies. They're owned by the health care insurers. And they're owning the entire system. So they're taking money out of one pocket, shifting it to another. And no one knows exactly how that's happening because it's not transparent. Very poor regulation because of lobbyists. And no one's really talking about it in a way that's

getting attention. And as a result, they're allowed to make a lot of profit at our expense. That's disgusting. Yeah. Well, with the hell do we do? Fight for transparency. Support those who are going to bat for patients in this way, where

it's patient first. It sounds like a racket, honestly. It sounds like it should be illegal for

a health care system to own a pharmacy and the pharmacy benefit management company at the same time.

“You should put you in charge. I don't want to be in charge of that. I like doing what I do.”

Because I feel like I'm doing what you're doing in a different way that I really want to try to distill down the information that we all deserve and shine a light on the renowned and respected experts in their fields and give them a global platform to be able to teach and to empower and to call out misinformation to give people options that really empower them to make better decisions for their lives. And so I'm not the expert. I feel like I'm the conduit for conversation and

information to flow to somebody else. I mean, it's a lot like family medicine. How so? I am not necessarily

the expert in all of these conditions. I'm the quarterback that translates the information from

these experts because of my doctorate being able to understand what they're saying and why they're making their certain recommendations and over my years becoming more expert in certain aspects of health care in order to distill that and be a conduit for my patients to allow them to function

“in this broken health care system. And that's why family medicine so fun. As you said,”

top to bottom head to toe. I mean, there are patients that I've had on my OBGYN service that I've delivered their baby. Their baby is now my patient for 10 years. Their grandparents are my patient. And you get to watch the impact when you guide them in a good direction, where you allow them to make choices at their proud of across the entire spectrum of their lives. It's truly beautiful. And it's sad because it's falling out of favor. Smith students aren't picking

primary care. The incentives aren't there for them to be paid more. And it's one of the lowest paying specialties. And as a result, we're losing the brightest minds to more procedure-based specialties. You know, it's interesting. If you're listening, you're not seeing this. But if you're on watching us on YouTube right now, maybe you caught it, you love what you do so much that you were smiling even as you talked about the fact that being in family medical practice is declining.

This is one of the lowest paid slices of the medical profession. But I can tell it brings you so much joy. It really strikes at the heart of how twisted our incentives are in this country instead

“of focusing on what matters, which is mental health, lifestyle modifications. That's psychiatry,”

pediatric, family medicine. That's not where our incentives are pointed at. Our incentives are pointed at who's putting the send in, who's performing the surgery. And as a result- much profit is the health care system. Exactly. Many patients don't have an established primary care doctor. They're relying on urgent cares, ERs, to function as their primary care doctors. But to be fair to those people that are seeing them as providers, they don't know them,

they don't know their history. I have patients that when they walk into my room, I can tell that something is going on with them, that they're not even vocalizing to me. I had a patient the other day. She came in for back pain, but in talking to her about how her life is going, just general conversation, started telling me about some weird symptom that she had in the middle of the night just a few days ago. I throw the back

pain conversation out the window and I see what folks are on your heart. I ask her to go see her cardiologist the next day. She goes to the cardiologist, meltshadow heart attack. It's a cardiologist. During that moment when she was denying her chest pain, she was writing off her own heart attack. She had severe stenosis in her blood vessels in her heart.

But you can't know that as an urgent care doctor when you're meeting someone for the first time.

It's so true. So you need that primary care. What I love about what you said about this is that we tend to blame the doctors, and yet if you take a step back, if you're only going to a minute-click or you're only seeing your doctor once every five years when you need the prescribed the Z-pack for your bronchitis that's comery or you're only going, or you don't even have a primary care. I'm sitting or going,

oh my god, my daughter at Los Angeles still does not have a primary care doctor, and she's been out there for three years. And I realize she's young and healthy, but still with some of the biggest

“lifestyle changes have the most important impact in that age. What do you mean?”

So for example, with heart disease, the foundational layer of plaque that can form in the blood

vessels in your heart start happening during your teenage years. They do. Yep. You're kidding. Yep. What are other? Atherosclerosis starts decades before you have the heart attack. Wow. So if we can have that conversation early on, if we can make some small tweaks or perhaps screen more often for certain conditions based on certain behaviors or lifestyles that you choose,

whether it's infection screening, STI screening, we can make certain changes that can keep you healthier even if you want to live not the most optimal lifestyle. And that's okay. We live in this hyper-optimized world where, especially in the podcast space, I don't know if you feel this smell. I see this a lot where doctors will come in and start going into this hyper-perfect

“optimized world of this is how many almonds you have to eat. This is how many minutes of your”

life you'll lose if you eat one hot dog at a baseball. I don't practice in that world. I don't live in that world. I think when we chase hyper-optimization, we actually get worse health outcomes because we feel health anxiety. And no one wants to be anxious about their health. They want just to be healthy and enjoy their life to how they want their life to turn out. And that's what a good primary care doctor does. They absorbed information about you. They explained to what

the risks of your current habits are. We try and mitigate those risks because we do have prevention strategies, but at the same time we need to not over-promise because there are products out there that try and say we can prevent X, Y, Z in a reality they're overselling you. They're potentially leading you to downstream more testing, more radiation, more medical errors. You want to stay away

“from health care at times just as much as you want to get health care at times. And that's a weird”

dichotomy to live in, but that's the reality. Well, you know, to answer your question, I feel as though there is a lot of chasing for virality, a lot of chasing for clicks, a lot of content that seems only relevant for somebody that doesn't have to work a full-time job isn't taking care of another human being. It has limited resources available to them to try to optimize their health. I've had the opposite thing almost happened to me on this podcast where the credentialed

practicing medical experts that come on, yes, there's always amazing new research or new insights,

but it always comes back to these foundational principles of the way that your lifestyle matches your health and the magnificent ability of the human body to adapt to change when you give it what it needs. I kind of feel like we're almost like a wilting plant in the corner and that if you move us into the sun and water us, we perk up and we grow in response to the things that we truly need. And to your original point, a lot of the super complicated, massively scientific hyper-optimized

do this. It's got to be perfect. Oh my god, it just makes you more overwhelmed so you do nothing. Yeah. Dr. Mike, I cannot thank you enough for making the time to be here. I have so many more questions and topics that we are going to get into, but I want to take a quick break so we can hear words from our sponsors and I want to give you a chance to share this episode with everybody that you care about. This is one of those episodes that could truly change someone's life

and change the way they think about their health and everything that they've been learning online. When we come back, Dr. Mike is going to break down how to tell what's real, what's not and what to do when you feel stuck. We'll be right back, stay with you. Welcome back at your friend Mel Robbins. Today you and I are here with Dr. Mike Varshovsky, board certified family medical doctor and today he is sharing top health lies and the

dig into. Dr. Mike, let's just jump right back in. The next thing I wanted to talk about was this.

Your parents have had a very profound impact on you personally and professionally, and I want to talk about both of them. Let's start with your dad. Speaking of good doctors, one of them was your dad who inspired you and I want to talk a little bit about your parents because they are very important to you and I understand that your dad inspired you to want to become a doctor and I'd love to hear the story. It's paradoxical in nature because he actually

“was someone who was saying that the health care system is quite broken and perhaps you should”

seek a different career path. But what was interesting in coming from Russia at age six, watching my parents adjust to a new language, a new culture, new lifestyle, I got to watch them adapt and I got to see how difficult life can be when you're facing limited resources to live on welfare, to live in welfare housing. That is something we all experience in my family living the four of us in a one bedroom. We want to add a doctor. So he was a physician in Russia

and living in that moment coming to America watching him very quickly learn the language and apply to medical school. Again, apply to residency after medical school. Again, in his 40s, in a new language, I saw how strong he was and how strong you needed to be to overcome challenges. And because I was nine, ten years old when he was going through his medical training, I was

“awake for it. I got to watch it. I got to watch his education process happen. He would bring me”

on his, bring your child to work day and I would see what it's like to be a resident, to sit in on call room and I fell in love with family medicine. I fell in love with the relationships that he was making with his patients, the ability to learn all of health care and be that quarterback. I really fell in love with the field and I said, there's so much value to this. So to me, family medicine was something I heart-headedly chose and fell in love with

because of my father and at the same time, in spite of my father, because he saw so many problems he foresaw a lot of the problems that we're experiencing today. Now your mom passed away

during your first year of medical school. How did that experience shape who you are today and how

you practice? You know, watching my parents come to a new country in their 40s, as I said, learning a new language, my mom was a PhD mathematics in Russia. Her mom was the provost of the department. So when she came here and she had to walk to miles to work, to save on bus fare, to sweep the floors, I knew how hard they were working in order to set a good life for me and my sister. And then just as my dad was getting on his feet, he finished residency. They struggled and now they

were about to have a little bit of success where they can own their own home and travel a bit more and enjoy the fruits of their labor that they worked so hard for to watch my mom get sick and progressively pass away from this cancer. It's a specific type of cancer called CLL. It was just heartbreaking to go through that. And being in medical school, I'm just starting to learn what it means to stop chess compressions. I'm learning what it means that we sometimes deliver too much care to people in

their final years of their life and how perhaps we're actually hurting them rather than helping them. And while I'm learning those things in school, I'm taking my mom to her appointments at Memorial

Sloan Kettering and I'm seeing her get more sick, more sick. But then there's always a array of hope

where just days before she died, I picked her up for Memorial Sloan and the doctor shook my hand. He said we cared her cancer. We just have to have her recover now because she has a stem cell transplant and now we just need her immune system to build back up and she will be okay. And just a few days later, she got a mean infection. Her body went into grab negative steps. It's a type of bacteria that creates an overwhelming response from the body blood pressure

drops. We're all in the hospital and she's getting chess compressions and we're the ones that are having to tell them to stop. And when you're doing that to a loved one so unexpectedly because you

“have so much optimism and hope, it really awakens you to how short life is, how difficult our”

healthcare system can be, how healthcare providers who were doing the best that they could save my mom also when they went back to their cubbies, they were laughing about their everyday lives because they're humans too and they're at their own struggles and I needed to be accepting of that. So there was so much learning that happened in that moment and I think it really highlights an important factor in that when you're a physician, we need to remind ourselves from this old

cry, no patient will judge you for that. In fact, it'll make you more human.

“Bring your experiences, your hobbies, your passions to the art of practicing medicine. So I think”

it's those moments, these moments with our families, our moments of loss that if we can bring them into the practice of healthcare in a meaningful way, we can be better. We can get better outcomes for everyone. You mentioned these moments of loss. If the person who's listening right now is in grief or experiencing deep sadness and things just feel very, very hard, what do you want to

say to them about just the first step to take even today? To take the first step requires some

bit of action. We're all seeking motivation, but the unfortunate truth is that action precedes motivation. We need to take some sort of action. So I try and think about what's the easiest action one can take. For some, that might be making their bed. For another, it may be taking a shower. For me, it was putting on my shoes. Putting on my shoes took me to the dog park. Putting on my shoes got me to take a boxing class. Putting on my shoes and taking a boxing

class 10 years later led me to fighting on short-time paper view as a professional fighter.

So you will never know where putting on your shoes may take you. But unless you take that first step

of putting on your shoes, making your bed, taking a shower, you just don't know where you'll go. So that's the simplest step. And I know it sounds easy to someone who's not in the depths of grief, who's not going through something. They say, oh, putting on shoes, that's not going to get you anymore. But when showering is hard, when combing your hair is hard, putting on your shoes is not the easiest task. But when you do, you never know where they'll take you. I want to stay right on this because

I really deeply appreciate you validating how hard it is to take a shower some days. How hard it is to brush your teeth. Oh, yeah. How hard it is to not just put on your shoes, but maybe walk out the door. Why do you think those little things feel so hard at times in life?

“Because to me, it's really important that we break this apart because I think this is actually”

everything. It probably strikes at the heart of the humanity of meaning. When you live every day with your family members surrounding you, you have one idea of what life is. But when tragedy strikes, and I get completely flipped 180, you panic. And in order to protect yourself, your brain shuts down and says minimal activity, much like when in boxing, you get hit with a liver shot to make a strange analogy. You go down because you're worried about circulation.

Same thing here. Your body's protecting you. But at the same time, you need to be able to be the judge of what's safe, what's acceptable. And sometimes it helps to have a team member. That's where doctors come in. Therapists come in. The most unique part of what I've learned in practicing health care for the last decade is that for mental health success, support system is crucial. So having family members friends so important. But then getting help from a medical specialist, a mental health specialist

is the second most important. But what's not so important is, are they social worker, are they

psychology? Are they a family medicine doctor? Are there someone from a religious background? As long as it's someone who's not taking advantage of you and wanting to tell you the truth, to help you get through this moment and shows you that you too are valuable, validated,

“and wants to help you overcome this tragedy. That's what gives you a good outcome.”

Dr. Mike, what would you say to somebody who is focused on caring for everyone, but not themselves? Well, Mel and front of us, we have a really good example and a clear example of how this can devolve very quickly into everyone losing. Okay. We have five glasses here and a picture of blue colored water. Okay. Just to show us an example of what happens in someone's everyday life as a caregiver. So the caregiver is the the picture of the water. No, this is effort.

Oh, this is effort. This is effort. This is energy. This is what's fueling the ability to do things. Okay. And each one of these cups will represent a different scenario in one's life. Okay. So for

Boom. Some of the blue water goes in there. But they also need to take care of their kids, right?

That's important. I've read about the problem situation that you experience and how stressful that energy should I pour more into that one? But look, feeling I need to save it for other things. Do you see how quickly we're losing the energy? Yes. But then your caregiver to your aging parents, you continue losing. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. Oh, wait. You have a spouse. Oh, wait. You want to maintain some sort of connection with your spouse. You want to love each other. You want to spend time.

You want to travel. You want to do something interesting. A hobby. Dr. Mike, that's the idea. Okay. Oh, my God. There's no energy. And I have to cook dinner, go to the grocery store,

put him in a house. We didn't even do laundry. How are you going to take care of yourself?

“When that's what you have left to deal with the health care system, joy, sleep,”

lowering your cholesterol. You've taken care of everyone and everything else except yourself. What the hell do I do? Because because when you look at this and the visual is stunning as you're listening, that picture is empty. So we're out of energy. Every four of the cups are full. We haven't even gotten the laundry grocery shopping, cleaning, all the other stuff that you need energy for. And the one cup on the end is like just a little tiny couple drops of blue in it that

is what you give to yourself. And I don't want to ruin your studio setup here. But if we were being honest, these four cups will also have cracks in them and be perpetually losing water and need refills because that's how life is. So even when you give everyone the adequate amount of attention and effort, there will always be problems that need refilling. And if your cup isn't being refilled, you're going to fail at helping your loved ones. So how do you recommend when

this is the reality of your life? How do we get our energy back if the blue water represents

“energy and we don't have any? There are steps that we can take to help refill our cup. What is it?”

First of all, I know we're being pretty critical that four cups are full of one is empty.

But it's nice to have happy family members and healthy family members. So we can look at positive things in our life and remind ourselves about those positive things. So one of the things I help my patients with is small things. Right three good things that happen at the end of a day. Remind yourself that there are positives here. Good night sleep. Making sure you're taking care of your own mind and body and one of those things is these little tasks that we can do like

the three positive things. And then most importantly, validating yourself that this situation does suck. We forget that we judge ourselves so much more harshly than we would judge someone else in the very same scenario, allow yourself to feel shitty in this situation. One of the things that we try to work on with patients and family medicine is explaining that therapy and type of presence. They're not meant to make you not feel sad or anxious. They're meant to give you a layer of

control to identify when you're feeling sad and in the rut and you could take some steps to snap out of it. But it's not to not make you feel. In fact, if a medication or a treatment that I'm giving to my patient makes them not feel, that's probably not a good treatment for them. So reminding patients about validating themselves is a really important tool. It's so helpful to see the visual because you feel it in your body that wow. And when you set it energy that I haven't heard

anybody talk about it in that way and it's way, it's way more hopeful because I do believe that the energy can be regenerated. When I see it as pieces of me versus energy that I can recoup through better sleep and taking a little bit better care of myself versus carving out time that I don't have, that feels like something I could do that would make a difference. I want to shift gears now and ask you another question. Dr Mike, you are known for cutting through just health misinformation

and bullshit online. What is it about your approach to spotting and calling out, especially the

“lies and misinformation that really makes you resonate with millions of millions of people every day?”

What I strive to do, which I hope people admire or appreciate is to be as authentic and transparent as possible why I'm making certain recommendations. Being someone who had to study really hard to

simplifications, I realized I can use that same simplification to teach millions of people across the world, these more complex subjects. And by being a family medicine doctor who's on the front lines and seeing what patients are experiencing, it really made me better to be on social media. At the same time, when I'm researching certain topics for social media, it makes me a better provider for my patients. So it's this unique symbiotic relationship between health care and social

media that never knew existed. And in fact, was discouraged from going down this path by some colleagues

by the medical community at large. And I think now they're waking up and realizing, oh my god, we've let this tool go underutilized. It was co-opted by bad actors. And now we're playing catch-up in some of the most difficult ways. I actually think people can cut through bullshit and that it's very clear if you spend any time listening to your story that there is a genuine and authentic mission tied to what you're doing. And that's why you resonate with people.

“I appreciate you saying that. I mean that. I think your heart truly comes through and that's why you're”

resonate. I would love to know what are the health trends and misinformation that you're seeing that drive you absolutely bananas. And since there's probably so many, what are the ones that drive you craziest or you think are doing the most damage right now? I think in social media, the trend surrounding longevity is one I've been fighting against for a really long time, which sounds strange. Why is a doctor arguing against longevity? But it feels like everyone is falling into

this anti-aging bracket. And my main problem is with it are twofold. One, people view aging as a disease and I don't feel like that necessarily needs to be the case. There's a way to practice healthy aging that we can discuss and not view it as a true pathology, as a true illness. And second is that a lot of times it takes information, research that is so preliminary that it should maybe give us hope for something on the horizon. And it gets blasted to the front pages, to the front headlines,

to the Shopify stores, where people are selling these things that don't hold up under scrutiny and therefore people are not getting good care. Whether you're getting false information. In fact,

“when a doctor says they're a longevity doctor, it kind of throws me because I think almost every”

doctor is a longevity doctor with one exception. I'm curious if you can guess what specialty is that exception? Yeah, hospice because they're focused on comfort, right? Not prolonging one's life. But every other doctor wants you to live longer. They want you to have a better quality of life. Why is this being stolen? I, you know, I'm curious, Dr. Mike, is aging a disease? I don't think so. I don't think it needs to be viewed that way. And in fact, the more we view it that way,

the more negative outcomes we get from aging. Well, this is going to be one of those

admissions that I kind of feel a little dumb saying. I've never heard that aging. When you said

aging is a disease, I'm like, that's not, it's just something we do. It's not a disease. Well, people feel that they break down over time. They get more tired. They can't accomplish all of their goals that they were setting for themselves in their 20s. They can't pull 18 hour days. But the reality is, you just told me, I think, before we started this conversation, that you're happier now than when you were earlier. Yes. So I'm way happier in my late 50s.

I'm way healthier. I think I feel better. Look better. I'm stronger. I can do more push-ups. Again, it comes back to the thing you keep saying, which is, we are designed to grow.

We are designed to respond to the lifestyle and health things that our grandparents have always

done. And your body loves it when you do it. And our minds evolve. Our neurochemistry evolves. How much we sleep evolves? We don't need as much sleep once we're older than when we were babies. So things change. But if we view it with the negative lens all the time, it will make it worse. So how do you know if somebody is selling you something is a grifter, is trying to market something to you? He's got a red flag. This is, you got to have one of these

in your minds. Okay. Okay. All the time. Dr. Mike has a red flag. Tell me how we know.

“Give us a few examples. Okay. Overconfidence. You have to be waving this in your head. And I'll”

give you a very specific example. If a patient comes in with a symptom, the odds that I can

presentation, my physical exam, the blood test, the scans, that it's pointing to a condition,

“a diagnosis. I still have a differential, which means I have other options of what it could be”

that are mimicking that same presentation because humans are not all exactly identical. So in

healthcare, good doctors, good nurses will always hedge. And when you're hedging, you don't look

super confident. Because when a doctor is not afraid to say, I don't know, that's when they're being honest. That's when they're being vulnerable to tell you from a humble standpoint that this is tough further investigation is necessary. A clear answer is not here. Most importantly, they're not interested in slimming your wallet. That's a good one. Yeah. Because it's true. When somebody says, I don't know, you tend to go red flag. You're not listening to me. And what they're basically saying

is I'm thinking about all the things and I don't have something definitive. We got to dig in. Because I could even think of bad actors that will make a short form piece of content on TikTok

on Instagram. And we'll say, do you have headaches? And if you have headaches, you're like, oh my god,

I have headaches. You're not consuming enough pink Himalayan sea salt. Well, this is content that exists online. I got surprised. Because one of the big ones that I see online right now is somebody going, they're in a grocery store. And I'm sure you've seen this even if you're listening flip it over. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then they go to Home Depot, or hardware store. And they're like, and this is in, I don't know what else. And I'm like,

this is basic chemistry. Yeah, they keep on phobia is real. The weather is cool. Chemophobia, where they're scared of all chemicals. And it's really strong. And they're really good at it. They scare people a lot. Because what's a chemical? I even had this is interesting. The director of the FDA was on my show. And he said that he encourages people to eat organic produce. And I said, interesting. Why? And he said, because traditional produce has pesticide residues on it.

And organic means they don't use pesticides. And I had to kindly remind that there is organic

“pesticides. And he said, well, no chemical pesticides. What is no chemical pesticides?”

This water is a chemical. The air read breathing is a chemical. And this chemical fear that we have needs to be validated because there's some companies who have destroyed our environments by throwing chemicals everywhere. We're dealing with these forever chemicals in our environment that we need to desperately investigate and put money into research to see how they're impacting our health. Yes. But at the same time, we don't want to be to the point where we're afraid of

all chemicals when they can, in fact, be beneficial to us. I want you to explain to the person listening what you meant when you said water is chemical because you were talking about it based on the chemical property chart that we learned about in chemistry class. But because there's so much misinformation, just you're talking about a specific definition of the word chemical that now everybody's like, wait, it's a chemical. Water is dihydrogen monoxide. But that sounds scary.

Water sounds a lot more palatable. But in reality, just a chemical formula.

“H2L. Yeah. H2L. Right. It's really simple. And they've even, I remember Pet and Teller did the”

skit where they would go to some conference and they would get people to sign a petition banning dihydrogen monoxide because they were telling people that, oh, someone can overdose on it. They can drown out their electrolytes with it. And people signed it because they were being taken advantage of. And they were highlighting it, perhaps in a bit of a predatory way, to show how easy it is to trick someone into believing that chemicals are bad. When in reality, we can't

live without water. You need water to sustain life. Dr. Mike, thank you for just cutting through the BS. There's so much of it out there. Thank you for being transparent about your opinions. And I really also love that you combine medical expertise with real humanity. You can really feel how much you care about people and how much it bothers you how this is impacting people's ability to make choices. I have so many more questions. I know as you've been listening to Dr. Mike,

there are people in your mind that are popping up. I want you to take a moment and share this with them, particularly if this episode is helping you. If you're feeling seen, if you feel

less alone, if you're thinking, oh my gosh, finally, somebody is saying what I've been thinking.

If this is helping you, it's going to help everybody that you care about. So send this conversation to people that you love. All right, don't go anywhere. Dr. Mike is back with so much more when we

Welcome back at your friend Mel Robbins. Thank you for being here. Thank you for sharing this

episode with people that you care about. Today you and I are here with Dr. Mike Varshavsky, board certified family medicine doctor, and he's sharing the top health laws and the truth. You and I need to hear today in order to feel better. All right, Dr. Mike, what do you do with somebody that you love goes down the misinformation rabbit hole, Dr. Mike? Validate,

“Validate, Validate. Why do we validate? Because we, you have to seek to understand first.”

How do they get there? What are they experiencing? Perhaps you have a misread of the situation.

Approaching you with that level of charitable thinking, foster healthy communication,

and healthy communication, the goal of any healthy communication should be truth seeking together. So perhaps you'd learn something about your loved one by having that conversation that might change your opinion. I think we all need to approach these conversations with open minds. You know, I surrounded myself with those who are vaccine hesitant on a show called Surrounded. That's like a Jubilee series that they do, and it was me versus 20 people who were vaccine hesitant.

One of the people said, there's nothing I could say that would change their mind. I said, why? I said because I actually read and study. I was bewildered because to me, when you approach a truth seeking conversation with that mindset, you are making yourself more immune to facts and new information, can you are to a disease? You're missing the opportunity to become immune to illness. So we have to be open-minded. We have to be skeptical for everyone. Be skeptical of

me. Be skeptical of your doctor. Be skeptical of new treatments. Not cynical, but skeptical. Like we should foster that trait in people a little bit more than we have over the last few years. The skepticism? The skepticism. Yeah, but I mean, the reason why I'm pushing back is I am shocked by the number of people that are trying to be healthy and end up going down some weird rabbit hole. And all of a sudden, they distrust doctors, they're anti-vaccine. They are suspicious of medical

“and scientific institutions. And I think the distrust is a real problem right now.”

It's a huge problem. Why is this? Why do you think this is happening? I think the pandemic hurt people's trust of the health care system and the government of how they overpromise certain things with presenting data with perhaps too much confidence. We lost in health care a bit of humility, perhaps in an understandable way during a moment that is unprecedented a new novel condition that was impacting the globe and we were scared. But we made a mistake.

We didn't communicate well. And then the second thing, we wrote off social media as a tool

that's beneath us. We thought we needed to be in our Ivy League institutions at medical conferences and research journals, but that's not where people are. And people want information faster than ever before. And when you pair the difficulty it is to see a doctor to get good quality access with the fact that we're not communicating well, with the fact that we're not present in the one place where people are searching for answers the most, that's an ingredient that are bound to

“explode. And that's what I think is happening with the distrust. I also believe some of the things”

that I've read from experts that I respect and trust that when you're anxious, when you are uncertain, you automatically look for ways to control and that the anxious and uncertain and upset brain is more likely to believe conspiracy theory than a brain that is calm and rational and strategic. That's just what I think that people reached for a lot of things that were unfounded as a basis to put blame during a situation that was unprecedented that most people were doing the best that

they could to try to navigate in real time whether it was the school system or the health care system or your local hospital, all of it. To me, that's understandable. We weren't there. We weren't saying our side of the conversation accurately or honestly. What do we expect? We created a vacuum that bad actors weaponize the system, the game against us. And as a result, people have this very scary or negative perception of what health care is, of what a doctor is, that when I go and do

say is, well, you're different. I'm not any different. I practice in a health care system with

“hundreds of doctors and they're all doing the best that they can and they all want the best for”

their patients. But when on social media, the viral pieces of content only show the fear mongering of the evil doctor. It doesn't care about you versus the flip side is what they care about. You they'll give you the natural remedy that will solve everything that allows you. I mean, the list of things that they claim some products work for is just that's a miracle potion, because at some point it's like, wait, this cure's mental health disorders, energy, this makes me

stronger, faster. Like, how can it do everything with no side effects? But when the health care system feels cynical, like they write off natural remedies, they write off lifestyle changes because they're so cynical that no one wants to make those changes. Suddenly, that person looks more reasonable than that evil doctor that you have painted in your head. So we need to be there. We need to use these tools and not just villainize them and saying, they're what's responsible

for misinformation. Well, yeah, we're not going to be there. They will be. You know, Dr. Mike,

you're making a very compelling case for the first step, which is validate. And whether it is

you being somebody that has gone down a rabbit hole and you think your family's crazy for still believing certain things, or you have loved ones that have gone down a rabbit hole, the first step is just validate. How did they get there? Was it fear? Was it control? Was it that they were getting dismissed by the traditional systems in the in medicine or whatever else? And once you validate, what's the next thing to do? Speak from your emotional side and don't be a boss. No one likes bosses. They want

“people who empathize. In fact, the worst thing you can do when you're trying to seek some sort of”

community eye to eye with someone is put a stone in between you. So explaining why someone is so important

to you, why you care about them, the reasons for why you're making these recommendations, a lot of times are more valuable than the recommendations themselves. And people want minds to be changed in the course of one conversation in the course of just one statement, and that is so far from reality. There are stages to grief, and there are stages to behavioral changes, especially when those ideological changes become part of one's identity. So do not expect

ones mind to be changed after one conversation. At best, you can take them one step in the direction of perhaps they're now in the pre contemplation stage of making a change. So it requires a lot of

“patients. Dr. Mike, there's so much misinformation about vaccines. What is your take on vaccines?”

Vaccines are one of these advancements in scientific progress that should be considered a miracle. We can protect ourselves from infectious diseases that cause death, disability harm without ever needing to experience this disease. Because with many vaccines, yes, you can have immunity from experiencing the natural illness. But how great without having to experience any of the risks of having the natural illness becoming immune or perhaps mitigating

the risks of having that condition. And when people try and throw shade or confuse people about vaccines, they're raising issues as if we haven't addressed those issues in healthcare research. They say statements like, when it comes to vaccines, we should leave no stone on turn. There's no doctor, there's no scientists who would disagree with that statement. And we've overturned every stone. We've looked at population studies to hundreds of thousands to make sure

at the highest level of scrutiny for vaccines. And why? Because vaccines, unlike pharmaceuticals, are given to otherwise healthy people. So we need to make sure that we're approaching them with a much higher level of scrutiny and a much higher level of surveillance than we do with pharmaceuticals because those are given to people who need something. They're sick already. So if there's some benefit to be had, we might be okay with more side effects. When you're giving something to someone

who's otherwise healthy, we're not okay with side effects. They need to be minimal to none for us to be accepting of that treatment. And vaccines are that. What are some of the most common

vaccines and scientific research? To be honest, there's not many clear claims that people make

“because a lot of times it's arbitrary. Oh, vaccines are a chemical that we introduced to children”

and people get scared of that because of that chemotherapy that we discussed before. They try and create lies about vaccines that they're not as tested as pharmaceuticals lie. It's the exact opposite.

The first vaccine, smallpox, 1700s. We've been doing this for centuries, protecting people

in order to prevent them getting illness. In fact, some of the community that is anti-vaccine, a lot of times criticizes our healthcare system for being too reactive and not proactive, not preventing illness. And I agree, we do need to do a better job there. But vaccines are an example of prevention. They talk about pharmaceutical companies making money off these medications. Well, when you get a vaccine, you don't need treatments because you won't get sick with those illnesses.

And the scariest and most sad part is the victims of this are going to be kids.

I have no doubt in my mind that this year, children will die unnecessarily from vaccine-provenable

“illnesses like measles. It's a guarantee. And why those children need to die?”

I don't have an answer for. These people who are proponents of anti-vaccine rhetoric, they used to say that it was thymarisol, a mercury component of vaccines that was driving the autism epidemic. Why autism rates were going up? That was a claim they made. We've eliminated them. They may result in childhood vaccines. Autism is still going up. All their claims that they made are untrue. But now they move the goalposts to another thing. Another thing. Where do you

fall on this, Dr. Mike? When it comes to all of the claims all over the internet and autism and vaccines that prevent children from dying and preventable diseases? Well, we need to be honest, autism rates are going up. We don't have a clear answer. This is where we had our red flag and we need to not wave it when the medical community says we don't know. We need to understand that we're seeking the answers. But Mel, the way we get answers in science is not by just saying,

"Oh, the experts said this, so we will agree with them." It's by testing different theories,

constantly being self-critical, constantly putting forth hypothesis and ruthlessly testing it

over and over again, trying to disprove our own theories. But in this day and age of social media, people want to put out a theory and find evidence to support their theory, which is not how good science is done. Good science tries to put out theories and adequately challenge them over and over again. And the more you fail in challenging your own theory, that's when you usually have a good theory. And we're losing sight of that. As a medical doctor in clinical practice and seeing the impact that

it has on the day-to-day life of your patients, how does this misinformation show up in your daily clinical practice just seeing folks as a family medical doctor? Patients are turning down vaccines for their children. They're turning down the hepatitis B vaccine and what's so wild to me is it's not like the research isn't there. And we have the health outcomes to prove that the recommendation works universally. And yes, there are isolated risks. Correct. I want to run through

some of the things that I know I'm seeing. I'm sure as you're listening or you're watching on YouTube. You have seen or heard about and I would love Dr. Mike to have you give us your medical take. So many parents are concerned about vaping. One of our kids recently admitted that we had no idea that there was a year or two long period in their life where they would literally wake up, reach for the bait, suck it in, had it in their pocket. I had no idea. Absolutely no idea.

Now what I'm seeing, I see those disgusting pouches in everybody's mouth now and people pretending

“as if it has no real impact on anything, which I think is the bigger issue. Let's get this out here.”

Boom. Pouches. Yep. Vapes. Smoking. So Dr. Mike has three big Mason jars. One is labeled smoke. The other is labeled vape and the other is labeled pouch. So these are the delivery mechanisms for the nicotine. Correct. And here we have some good old poker chips. Okay. That allows us to show the barriers,

Smoking. The most problematic behavior. The most cases of COPD, the most cases of cancer

“come from smoking. But society frowns upon smoking. So it makes it harder to smoke. Can't smoke”

indoors in most places. Gotta put a chip in there. Smoking. Stinks. Makes your clothes stink. People don't like it. Societal cost. Children of smokers, even when they don't smoke around their children, have higher allergy rates. So people who smoke want to not hurt their children. Cost. Smoking. Really expensive. Taxed up the wazoo in most states. Costs a lot of money. Well, there's a lot of things to smoking. Let's move on to vapes.

Well, also like there's the inconvenience you gotta go outside. Your partner may hate it. You can't stand the house. All of these. See all the barriers that you're talking about. So it makes it a little bit also harder to hide. Very hard because you smell like it. You smell like it. People know you're smoking. Very visible. And your car on your clothes. Fire alarms are going off. Well, God, what are you smoking? Well, but the smoke is there. So there is some carbon monoxide.

So then you have vapes. They don't smell that bad. They're easy to hide. They're expensive. So let's throw one in there. Can kids hide them? Well, yeah, I say some point. Do they need to make a big thing in order to use them? Maybe not as bad as smoking, but they still need to maybe get out of the classroom and go to the bathroom, but they can do it in the bathroom. I see a lot of people thinking they're very sneaky.

They do one of these things. Like you've seen this. They pull the hand up like they're about and then quickly down. And there are some limitations to where you can, babe. So let's give it another three. So we have five to three.

“Okay. Now we get to the pouch. Does anyone know you really have the pouch hidden in your cheek?”

Not really. There's no scent. You're not bothering anyone. There's no stigma attached to it. And all of a sudden, you have a very accessible, very easy, frictionless experience to get nicotine for teens in a way where parents don't know. They could be doing it any time anywhere. And therefore, to me, even though the pouch is not as problematic for health as smoking, because there's not a lot of chips in here, it can be more problematic.

What do you do if you're a parent? Like, what do you say to somebody, Dr. Mike, who is addicted to vaping or pouches or nicotine? And you don't know what to do.

First, we have to do some education to explain why nicotine is harmful for the teenage brain.

Why is nicotine harmful for the teenage brain? The teenage brain is still very much in a neuroplastic state, which means it's still developing. It's still learning to form new connections. It's trimming old connections. It's very adaptable. What happens when you allow your brain to be exposed to nicotine as a teenager? You're attention span changes. Your reaction time changes. Your tolerance builds up much quicker to nicotine than if you're an adult.

Your dependence, which means the likelihood that you'll experience with draw happens faster

“as a child as a teenager. So all of these things that are important to the developing mind,”

decision-making impulse control, attention, those will be impacted if your child's addicted to nicotine. That is not to fear-monger, that is simply to tell the truth. And the way that we

counsel our patients about this is first, we need to screen. A lot of doctors,

rightfully so ask patients, even teenagers, if they smoke. But we forget to ask the question to you vape, or do you use other nicotine products? So first we have to identify the problem. Then we have to understand that there is in fact a problem and the child is addicted. The teenager is addicted. Then we have to create a strategy, a mitigation strategy. How do we get them off without feeling the terrible impacts of withdrawal? Because nicotine withdrawal is real. It comes

in waves. It's very uncomfortable. And it's why so many get addicted long-term to nicotine. And a lot of times end up moving up this pathway instead of as how we'd like it to be down this pathway. So the goal is, if I have a smoker, it would be nice to get them to vape, and then from vape to get them to a pouch, then perhaps to a patch, and then often nicotine products all together. But if it's happening in the other direction, especially with teens, we can be creating

new vape users because they started with the pouch. And a lot of these vapes, a lot of these

pouches have such a potent dose of nicotine that people on their first use get nauseous from them,

them express the sense of wanting to not be using it, but not feeling as though they can stop using it.

That is part of the addiction definition. And what do you think the first step is after you've done the screening, but as a parent to open up the door to this conversation with your kid, if you keep throwing out the vape pens and you keep having the conversation and the car stinks now, even though it smells like cherry or whatever flavor.

“I think you need to loop in someone from the healthcare community. This isn't like getting off”

of soda. It's difficult. There's withdrawal symptoms to manage, and there are approaches to manage

these situations, whether it's wearing a patch and then using gum as a breakthrough for those cravings

when they do happen. In education from nicotine cessation program about how to handle those withdrawal symptoms, what to expect, because a lot of times, as I said, they come in waves. So sometimes, if you can, you'll get the wave. People say, well, what if I don't get, you'll get the wave. But if you can withstand the wave, perhaps you can overcome that wave. And each time someone tries to quit nicotine products can be in the fail. That could be an opportunity for learning

what are those triggers that led you to fail, that perhaps in the future you can address and be more successful. It really strikes me in having this in-depth conversation with you is how reasonable you are, that you are really trying to discern where people are coming from, and then bring us back to the facts. The person who's listening really were to just try to tune out the noise and focus on the kind of core pillars that matter to your overall health. What are

those things? None of them are novel, sleep, eat, moderation, healthy foods, colorful foods. That's going to be different for every person depending on genetics, choices, culture, medical conditions, family history, exercise. Now some people say, oh, this exercise is better than this exercise. If you're exercising, I'm happy. Given the state of the United States right now, how sedentary we all are, how much we're spending time in front of screens,

any exercise to me is a win. Now if someone's doing something that's potentially raising the risk of injury, which will stop them from being consistent, I'll raise that flag, or if there's a piece of exercise that could be doing, I'm thinking about women and resistance training and how beneficial it is to bone health. I'll recommend it. But if they want to just walk with weights, I'm for it. They're getting their cardiovascular exercise in. They're getting their endorphins from

“that. That's important. Human connection, utmost importance. And as digitally connected world,”

we live in the fact that we're more lonely than ever is confusing, but it's also extremely problematic to the quality of our lives, to our mental health. So finding ways to connect in person is more important now than ever and takes more effort now than ever. Dr. Mike, where do you're parting words? Some health care is better than none. More health care is not better than some, but find a primary character who can guide you on what some is appropriate for you.

You know, if the person who's listening does just that, that you reengage with your primary care doctor, you reengage with the pediatrician, that you really get back into a dialogue and you think not about sick care, but truly about your health care and working together with that medical expert, you're going to be in much better shape because you're not going to be alone in the sea of misinformation that we currently live in. I can't promise that they'll be in

better shape, but what I can promise is they will be more in control of what shape they choose to be

“and ultimately life is about making choices based on what's important to you and what a lot of”

these voices that are popular on social media, these days are doing is subliminally they're taking away your control. They're hijacking your control over your health, your relationship with your doctor, and if you want that control back, invest in a good primary care doctor, get individualized

care for what's right for you, learn about yourself, learn about science, and ultimately

Dr. Mike, I cannot thank you enough for coming to Boston for spending so much time with us,

“and more importantly, for doing the work that you're doing, not only in the community-based”

family medicine practice, but the way in which you're translating, all of this information, you are just unapologetically going after the misinformation, the nonsense, and helping us make sense of a very confusing and overwhelming moment, and I just on behalf of myself, this team, the person listening, and everybody that you inspire every day. Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity to be able to reach people with this message, because these days

it's hard to never in the attention economy where we live, so any opportunity to allow people to see

“that there's so much humility behind health care, and when we are fact-checking misinformation,”

what we're really highlighting is how much we don't know, as opposed to what we do know, and that there's so much more to be discovered, which is why I'm hoping that we stop canceling clinical trials that the NIH is funding, and we start putting funds back into researching, back into making innovations, so that our country can be the powerhouse that allows our loved one

to live 10 years, 20 years longer in a more meaningful way. And isn't that what we all want, Dr. Mike,

so thank you for helping us sort through the noise, so we can make better decisions for ourselves and the people that we love. And thank you for making the decision to listen to this or to watch us on YouTube. There's no doubt in my mind that everything that Dr. Mike shared with you can change your life or the life of your loved ones for the better, so I just deeply appreciate you being here, and I'm so excited for all the positive change that can come from this one episode,

and you sharing it with people that you care about. And in case no one else tells you today,

“as your friend, I wanted to be sure to tell you that I love you, and I believe in you,”

and I believe in your ability to create a better life. And one of the things that will make your life better is when you start prioritizing your health. You start taking better care of yourself, and Dr. Mike today, give you so many ways that you can do that. I truly hope you will follow his expertise and put his advice into action. Alrighty, I will be waiting for you in the very next episode, I'll welcome you in the moment you hit play.

Do you notice he's a professional. No, no, no, it's good. Sometimes I forgotten, and then it rings mid episode. You're killing it. Cool. We were doing the rehearsal for the tours yesterday we were talking about like your life changing in five years and I'm like, yeah, I'm going to be 63. That year, that's a big goddamn number. Well, if you're healthy, you're probably doing it just as much as you did when you were 40. Actually more, you are so good. So good.

Oh, and one more thing, and no, this is not a blooper. This is the legal language. You know, what the lawyers write and what I need to read to you. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. I'm just your friend. I am not a licensed therapist and this podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional. Got it? Good. I'll see you in the next episode.