Cutting Edge Medicine – Upsetting the Apple Cart – Curing vs Controlling
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| Jeff Harrison: | Welcome to living to 120 and beyond. I’m Jeff Harrison. I’m here with …
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| Dr. Chein: | Dr. Edmund Chein.
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| Jeff Harrison: | Dr. Chein, in many of our episodes we’ve been talking about what I would call cutting edge medicine. You’ve been doing it for a long time and I know you are always going to things, learning more and more in your craft. What we’ve been talking about in the last couple of episodes, we’ve been talking about arteriosclerosis and CVD, and really what are the causes? Who’s most likely to get it? What are the treatments? How do we prevent it?
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| Dr. Chein: | … Prevent it.
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| Jeff Harrison: | I know in all episodes we’ve talked about … You do telemedicine, and to go in and talk to your doctor. If the doctor’s not asking these … If you’re not asking your doctor these questions, and they’re resisting it, how do we get around that? I know it’s very uncomfortable, let’s face it, to walk in, and you’re the doctor. You’re the one with the plaque on the wall, and for me to question you because I saw a commercial on television, or I read an article, or I watched a video, and it pertained to me, and now I’m going to come in and question you.
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| That’s kind of an uncomfortable moment for us as the patient. How is it when someone comes to you and says, “Hey, you know what, I’ve been taking Lipitor and this is what it’s all about. You’re telling me to get off of that. Why?” I’m questioning your judgment. How do you as a physician take that?
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| Dr. Chein: | What I would recommend my patients do is … Thanks to Google. Thanks to internet technology. Let’s pick the small particle LDL, okay? Your doctor has been treating you for the last 30 years with Lipitor and didn’t fractionate your LDL, so all you have to do is go on to Google, small particle LDL, comma, and cholesterol levels. Hit the search, boom. You have probably 50 pages of references, and then you go down and look at the scientific references. Go down, look at scientific … Not the commercial, saying, “Please do this, do this, test … We test small particle LDL.” No, you skip that. Go to the scientific. Go to the government publications. Go to the medical school publications, and you look at that. There, look at the summary of the publication, and you’ll say that small particles are important, large particles are not important of LDL, and it’s helpful and cholesterol is important. In fact, for all our hormones we need cholesterol. Can’t bring that cholesterol down. When you have an article, print them, and then carry that to your doctor. This time you go to doctor showing that you’re educated or you’re interested patient.
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| Jeff Harrison: | It’s not just my opinion …
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| Dr. Chein: | No, it’s a publication that I read, and you just say, “Doc, I want you to comment on these. Just comment.” Don’t throw him into defensive.
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| Jeff Harrison: | Okay.
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| Dr. Chein: | Yet, you know? And then when he says … It’s a publication. It’s standard government journals or medical society journals. He can poo poo you, so then it comes to, “Doctor, do you think you can fractionate my LDL on this visit?” When he says no, then you can push.
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| Jeff Harrison: | Okay, because now it’s no longer the fact that, “Hey, I’ve just been watching a lot of commercials and there’s all this ‘Go ask your doctor this,'” you’re talking about …
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| Dr. Chein: | Evidence.
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| Jeff Harrison: | … These are scientific …
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| Dr. Chein: | Evidence.
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| Jeff Harrison: | Okay, very good. That makes me feel more comfortable now. If I have a question in our conversations or they’re watching your videos from the past and they’re saying, “Wow, that’s something I want to ask but I’m fearful. Let’s be honest, I’m fearful of coming in and challenging my doctor.”
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| Dr. Chein: | Don’t challenge.
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| Jeff Harrison: | He’s saving my life, I think, but now go to Google, look at the scientific data, print it out and walk it in and say, “What do you think about this?”
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| Dr. Chein: | With the evidence.
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| Jeff Harrison: | Got you. Boy, that makes me feel better. Thank you. I know we got off track here but I think that’s important because some of these things we’re talking about is we’re challenging the establishment. I’m going to dig something up just for a second, because when we first met quite some time ago you said there was a gap in change in the medical field. Can you kind of go through that again and [crosstalk 00:04:46] …
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| Dr. Chein: | Between when a new science comes out and all the doctors following that science is 17 years. Studies have been done over that. 17 years ago and 17 years before that 17 years, doctors said, “Oh, eggs have cholesterol. Don’t eat eggs.” It took them 17 years to get all the doctors to tell their patients, “Don’t eat your egg and lower your cholesterol as much as you can.” Dumb, dumb, dumb statement, because all cholesterol, all hormones are made from cholesterol. Your estrogen and testosterone. You’re low in cholesterol, you’re low in testosterone. You become impotent. You become not a man. You become a woman. Dumb statement to lower all your cholesterol all you can.
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| That’s 17 years. It took 17 years to get to all the doctors, to “No eggs, no butter, don’t touch butter. Take margarine instead.” Wasn’t it? 17 years ago. Then it took another group of scientists to find out, “Oh my God, the margarines are worse than … They are all LDL’s. Don’t touch margarine. Take butter. Butter is not an LDL, okay? Eggs? Eat as much as you want to eat. The cholesterol has nothing to do with the small particle LDL.” Eggs don’t have small particle LDL.
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| Jeff Harrison: | Ah, okay.
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| Dr. Chein: | Eat all you want. This message will take another 17 years for all the MD’s to realize and start advising their patients.
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| Jeff Harrison: | Let me [inaudible 00:06:34], so the LDL, the fractionalized LDL, the small particles, is how old? A couple years?
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| Dr. Chein: | No more than 3 or 4.
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| Jeff Harrison: | Let’s say we’re 4 years in. We still have 13 years to go before this is common, on the street knowledge.
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| Dr. Chein: | Unfortunately, yes.
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| Jeff Harrison: | I’m not sure if I were taking Lipitor or some kind of lowering cholesterol drug, I’m not sure I’d want to wait 13 or 14 years before all the doctors say, “Yep, it’s okay.”
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| Dr. Chein: | Unfortunately the Lipitor and all statins increase your risk of Alzheimer-like dementia.
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| Jeff Harrison: | Now we understand that’s why sometimes there’s a resistance, because we see … I’m not calling any particular pharmaceutical company out, but that’s why we see Big Pharma, probably … They’ve invested a lot of time and money and effort, that they’ll say, “Go see your doctor for this,” because they’re trying to accelerate that timeline. Would you agree?
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| Dr. Chein: | Yes.
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| Jeff Harrison: | For us, for you, you’re not accelerating a timeline, you’re educating them to say, “Hey, this is something that is cutting edge research medicine that you need to know about now.”
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| Dr. Chein: | Right, right.
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| Jeff Harrison: | Like the statins. Statins, you say they do what? Leads to Alzheimer’s?
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| Dr. Chein: | Yeah, leads to Alzheimer’s. Increase your risk of Alzheimer’s. And statins have a bunch of other side effects, so if I were given statin I go down to Google, I Google my name of my drug. Let’s say Lipitor, and I have a list. Is that acceptable to me? Is that acceptable to me? Is that acceptable to me? Is that acceptable to me? Each will know I took that sheet, which is a public record, to my doc, and say, “Doc, I am not going to take those risks. It’s not acceptable to me. Thank you for prescribing Lipitor to me, but I will not take the stated risk.” He can’t deny that, right? Look at my mouth. I will not accept those risks.
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| Jeff Harrison: | Got you.
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| Dr. Chein: | Is there a better way to reduce my cholesterol?
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| Jeff Harrison: | Got you.
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| Dr. Chein: | That’s the way to do it.
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| Jeff Harrison: | That makes total sense now, and that’s why some doctors, when you go in … I know they’re short on time and all of that, but they’re resistant to make that change because they’re in that 17 year cycle of new information that maybe it is cutting edge to us if we read about it or you know about it, but for them, again, credit to them, is they’re in that 17 year cycle of that new information.
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| Dr. Chein: | There’s another unethical motive behind it that they never talk about. The financial. All insurances, including Medicaid, Medicare, Obamacare, pays for the doctor. Once he puts you on the Lipitor, to monitor the side effects of Lipitor every six months.
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| Jeff Harrison: | Interesting.
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| Dr. Chein: | If I want to go into business, I say, Jeff, send me just 100 people in Lipitor. Let me prescribe that. I walk in my room every 6 months, that 100 people will come again, show up, and get paid for it.
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| Jeff Harrison: | That’s unfortunate, it really is, but it makes me now understand, what we need to do as a patient is probably be prepared when we walk in. Do our research before. Not my Aunt Maple’s opinion, but Google and the scientific data, and say, “Hey, this is what we’re doing. This is what I understand is to be truth, how are we going to proceed?” Now it’s not challenging you, it’s providing almost … “Hey, this is the same information I have, what do you think about that? Are you sure you want to go on Lipitor? Are you sure you want to put me on Lipitor?”
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| With that, let’s talk about … Again, I apologize, I got us way off track but I think it’s so important to understand how important this is when we talk about arteriosclerosis and also CVD.
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