🎙What is MedEvidence: Who You Are - A Guide to Informed Health Decisions Ep152

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Discover the power of personalized health information in our latest episode! Join us as we sit down with renowned medical researcher and cardiologist, Dr. Michael Koren, to uncover the secrets of making informed health decisions based on our unique circumstances. We'll follow up on episode 150 with the concept of risk versus benefit analysis and explore how our individual characteristics, from genetics to lifestyle choices, play a crucial role in determining the best path forward. From debunking health myths to exploring cutting-edge strategies for reducing lipoprotein-A, this episode is packed with valuable insights that will empower you to take control of your health. Don't miss out on our discussion about the MedEvidence website, an unbiased resource for finding evidence-based medical information. Tune in now and unlock the key to personalized health decisions!

In this eye-opening episode, we tackle the question of how to navigate the vast sea of health information and tailor it to our unique needs. With the guidance of Dr. Michael Koren, we explore the impact of family history, genetics, and lifestyle choices on our health. From diabetes type two to familial hypercholesterolemia, we delve into the importance of assessing health risks based on individual circumstances and family history. Be prepared to challenge your beliefs and broaden your perspective as we discuss the role of race in healthcare situations and unveil the true factors that should be considered. With the help of the MedEvidence website, a powerful tool for finding unbiased medical information, we empower you to make well-informed decisions about your health. Tune in and unlock the secrets to personalized health care that can transform your life.

Part 1: Risk Vs Benefits - Release November 1, 2023
Part 2. Who You Are - Release November 8, 2023
Part 3: Value and Convenience - Release November 15, 2023
Part 4: Dose, the Devil is in the Details - Release November 22,2023

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Music: Storyblocks - Corporate Inspired

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Episode Transcript

Narrator (00:01):
Welcome to MedEvidence , where we help you navigate the
truth behind medical researchwith unbiased, evidence-proven
facts, powered by ENCOREResearch Group and hosted by
cardiologist and top medicalresearcher, Dr.
Michael Koren.

Kevin Geddings (00:17):
And we're spending time with Dr.
Michael Koren today and we'retalking about how to get good
information about our healthcare status, all the health
information that's out there,all these medical studies, all
the research.
You know how do we go throughall that and make it work for
our lives and the lives of ourfriends and loved ones?
And so we're talking with Dr.
Koren about that.
There's a great resource outthere that Dr.

(00:37):
Koren and his team direct andare responsible for.
It's the MedEvidence website.
Go to MedEvidence.
com.
That's MedEvidence.
com, and before we get into thedetails of what we want to talk
about in this podcast, Dr.
Koren summarize really quicklywhat people are going to find
when they go to MedEvidence.
com.

Dr. Michael Koren (00:57):
So thanks for that great question, Kevin, and
MedEvidence is a platform wherepeople can find the truth
behind the data.
Unfortunately, when you ask Dr.
Google for some healthinformation, typically what you
get back is what somebody'strying to sell you.
Nothing wrong with selling youstuff, but you need to be
objective and you need to lookat information that's relevant

(01:19):
to you.
So in our first session, wetalked about not thinking about
things that are good versus bad.
Everything could be either goodor bad, and there's nothing
that's absolute.
You should be thinking aboutthe world as risk versus benefit
and, as part of that riskversus benefit analysis, who you
are is really, really important.

(01:41):
So there are characteristicsthat are just your
characteristics that willultimately be important in terms
of making good decisions aboutwhat health care claim you
should believe, what product youshould use, what service you
should use, et cetera.
So let's break that down alittle bit more, okay, so let me
use you as an example, Kevin,who you are.

(02:03):
So, as a radio entrepreneur, Iwould say that when you are
making a decision about whatantibiotic to use for, let's say
, urinary tract infection, youmay not want to use something
that has a side effect ofhearing loss.
That's true, right.
So that's nothing to do withyour race or your sex or gender,

(02:27):
but it has to do with what youdo for a living and what your
personal risk versus benefit is.
So we know that certainantibiotics called the
macrolides example that would bea Z-Pak or azithromycin or
vancomycin in particular thatyou get in the hospital.
One of the side effects of thatthat's unique to that
particular product is hearingproblems, hearing loss.

(02:50):
That would be a really bad riskfor you, Kevin.

Kevin Geddings (02:52):
Yes, it would be .

Dr. Michael Koren (02:54):
So if you look up Google Best Antibiotics
for a urinary tract infection,that element of your thinking is
not going to be there.
But we like to get that elementof thinking in the MedEvidence
podcast so that people canpersonalize things.
During the break, right beforethe session, our producer was

(03:15):
saying that she took glucosaminefor the last 20 years and that
it helped the arthritis pain inher knees.
And is that good or bad?
Well, how should I look at it?
Well, glucosamine as anutritional supplement isn't as
well tested as drugs.
Obviously, because of FDAmandates and government control

(03:36):
over the drug supply, thesethings have a lot of information
before they get on the market.
Glucosamine as a nutritionalsupplement isn't subject to all
those rules, but there areactually some studies with
glucosamine that showed it hassome benefits.
And then, of course, there isthe old trial and error
assessment, which is a bit of aclinical trial, where an
individual tries it, then takesherself off of it and tries it

(03:58):
again, and you sense whether ornot there is some benefit to
these things and over time youfigure out that this works for
you.
It doesn't work for you.
Well, our producer, or happenedto know is a pretty serious
athlete and she's running andbiking and using her knees all
the time.
So the who you are elements ofit is that she's extremely

(04:18):
active and needs some help forthe pain in her knees.
That will come with heractivities and her choices will
be taking ibuprofen or ananti-inflammatory like that that
could have gastrointestinalside effects, or maybe taking
something like glucosamine orsome combination thereof.
So for the who you are elementsof it it's her day to day

(04:39):
activities that are important,not her race or her gender,
necessarily.
We do know that women have morebone risk than men, but in this
case, it's more about your dayto day activity, and that's true
based on your occupation.
So, as a cardiologist, my dayto day occupation doesn't
necessarily put my knees at risk, but I happen to like playing

(05:00):
soccer, which has put my knees,ankles, hips and my head at risk
on many occasions, and so thethings that I choose will be
reflection of who I am and whatI like to do.
Now there's been a lot of focusin the media about race, for
example, and what I like to tellpeople is you know, race is a

(05:22):
consideration in terms of healthcare claims, but probably less
than a lot of other things.
So I like to remind people thatgenetically, we are 99.9%
identical between blacks andwhites, and Asians and whites,
et cetera, et cetera.
So, on average, things aregoing to be the same between
blacks and whites.
Women are men are fundamentallydifferent.

(05:44):
We have different chromosomes,so, although we're mostly the
same, there are differences thatcould impact our health.
But, having said that, in a lotof situations there's really no
difference between the way menand women are going to respond
to antibiotics or cholesteroldrugs or most things.
But there are some things wherethat would be a consideration,
particularly when you get intohormonal issues and things that

(06:07):
may affect us differently, ordisease predisposition.
So, for example, men tend todevelop coronary artery disease
and atherosclerosis 10 yearsearlier than women.
Doesn't mean that women don'tget benefits from the treatments
that will help men, such asStatins, but that their risk
profile may be different, andthis is again the interface

(06:28):
between who you are, riskprofile and what decisions you
make.
Family history may be the mostimportant thing, so is there
anything in your family, Kevin,that is of a particular concern
when you evaluate your health?

Kevin Geddings (06:41):
Well, history of diabetes type two diabetes on
both sides of my family, soobviously you have to be
somewhat conscious of that.

Dr. Michael Koren (06:49):
Yeah.
So something like diabetes isgoing to be more related to
situational things, so physicalactivity that's going to be
related to your diet and thingsof that nature.
So my guess is that if you stayfit and trim the way you are,
you'll be okay.
But maybe, because of yourfamily history, if you get a
little bit overweight, you thinkthis will go in the wrong

(07:09):
direction.
Big example of that.
Obviously we know there arecertain cancers that run in
families.
There are certain otherconditions.
One that I deal with a lot iscalled familial
hypercholesterolemia, where thefunction of your LDL receptors
these are the receptors thatclear cholesterol from your
circulation is impaired andthese people, genetically, have

(07:32):
extraordinarily high risk andthey have to be looked at
differently than other peoplethat may have high cholesterol
just based on eating too muchfried food, for example.
Another example that you and Ihave talked about this more than
once is lipoprotein-a, which isa type of lipid particle that
we couldn't do anything aboutuntil very recently, and now we

(07:53):
have strategies through clinicaltrials that expose people to
products that can lower theirlipoprotein-a by more than 90%.
So again, who you are has to dowith your genetics and family
history.
And, by the way, LP(a) affectsall races, all religions, it

(08:13):
affects all genders, so this issomething that crosses those
lines, and it's just about whatyour family tree looks like and
whether or not you inherited thegene that causes a high level
of this lipoprotein.

Kevin Geddings (08:26):
Well and clearly the takeaway right.
Whether we're considering riskversus benefits to some of the
health information we get, orwho we are, you know, in terms
of our genetic makeup or whereour socioeconomic status is, or
what have you, it makes itreally hard just to go to Dr.
Google and just start lookingat the results of you know, the
media talking about some recenthealth care study.
Right, because that informationis going to be so synthesized

(08:48):
it's not going to consider anyof those two issues.

Dr. Michael Koren (08:50):
No, exactly, exactly.
And then the other piece of whoyou are is your belief systems,
and I think we should spend afew moments looking at that.
So you know, there's certainpeople that have belief systems
that will favor, for example,exercise as their primary way of
treating things.
And you know, exercise iswonderful, exercise is

(09:13):
intimately associated withlongevity and prevents a lot of
problems.
But there are certainsituations where you can
exercise all you want and it'sstill not going to change your
health course.
And then you need to look atother things, and I brought up a
familial hypercholesterolemiabefore, and that's a great
example of it is that you canexercise 24 hours a day, if that
were possible, and you're stillgoing to have high cholesterol

(09:34):
because genetically you'repredisposed to it.
So belief systems are important.
You get into religious beliefsystems Jehovah's Witnesses, for
example that don't want to takeblood products.
That's always a challenge, andif that's the belief system and
that's the trade-off you want tomake, then that's fine.
We'll do the best we can withtreatments that don't involve

(09:55):
blood products.
But sometimes they're beliefsystems that are not internally
consistent, and I think it'sfair for our MedEvidence
platform to challenge thosebelief systems, or for me, as a
physician, to challenge thosebelief systems.
So an example of that is I'vehad people that have rejected
the messenger RNA vaccinesbecause they don't want genetic

(10:17):
material in their body.
So let's think about that for asecond.
Well, every time you eat asteak, genetic material from
something foreign gets into yourbody.
Think about that.
Or, if you're really fearful ofgenetic material in your body,
you should be super fearful ofviruses.
Because what are viruses tryingto do?

(10:38):
Viruses are trying to get RNAor DNA in your body.
Now, fortunately, we have waysof protecting ourselves against
that.
But the beauty of the messengerRNA is that you're just taking
a small little snippet ofgenetic material that's coding
for a protein.
You don't even get the wholeRNA or the whole DNA, it's just
a little snippet, and so that'sgoing to be intrinsically safer.

(10:59):
And by producing a proteinbased on that little email that
we get from the vaccine, you'reprotecting your body against
getting RNA and DNA in your bodyfrom viruses.
So when you think about it inthose terms, sure we love to
respect patients' belief systems, but let's at least make those
belief systems cohesive andinternally consistent.

Kevin Geddings (11:22):
It would seem to you that we have an issue with
you know, when people see fouror five items on a Facebook feed
or something and their cousinsays it, that's almost assigned
the same amount of weight assomething that comes from a
group of research scientistswho've been working on something
for 10 years.

Dr. Michael Koren (11:38):
Yeah, Well, again, sometimes the cousin may
be more right than researchscientists, and you know we all
make mistakes, but again, theevidence is what's important.
So, again, I don't hopefully Isound credible, but you should
trust me.
Not because I sound credible,but you should trust me because
I'm looking at the data and I'mtrying to help people understand

(12:00):
the data.
And, as we ended our lastsession, it's not about
absolutes, it's about looking atthe data and one determining
that we know the risk versusbenefit and we know how that
plays out based on who we are.
And with those first twoelements, I think people will
make much better decisions thanjust trusting their cousin on

(12:21):
Facebook saying you should takezinc because it's good for you,
and maybe we'll get into thatfor the next session.

Kevin Geddings (12:27):
In the meantime, check out the website
MEedvidence.
com.
That's MedEvidence.
com.

Narrator (12:32):
Thanks for joining the MedEvidence Podcast.
To learn more, head over tomedevidencecom or subscribe to
our podcast on your favoritepodcast platform.