The Weekly Show: 6/6/25

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, and welcome to the weekly show here at iHeartRadio
at ninety three to nine, LIGHTFM one All three five,
Kiss FM, and Rock ninety five to five. Today on
the show, we are chatting with doctor Claude Yancey, Chief
of Cardiology in the Department of Medicine, Northwestern University, talking
all about hypertension and high blood pressure. And we're also
chatting with doctor Song Paulblite, CEO of Food Allergy Research

(00:21):
and Education. We're talking all about life threatening food allergies.
Let's kick off the show.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
It's amazing to think about, but roughly one in ten
Americans are living with life threatening food allergies. Doctors call
it a silent public health epidemic. Tens of millions of
others live with food allergies I imagine, which are more of
a major inconvenience or annoyance than deadly. To bring in
an expert to discuss it, Doctor Sung publicly is CEO

(00:48):
of Food Allergy Research and Education. Doctor, I appreciate you
joining us, Thank you for having me. I know the
FDA just issued some new guidance on food allergies things
like that. I want to get to that in a moment,
but let me start off with this, explain who FAIR is,
Food Allergy Research and Education and what the organization does.

Speaker 3 (01:08):
Food Allergy Research and Education is the largest nonprofit organization
here in the United States, focusing on research, education, and advocacy.
In other words, we are curing food allergies for the
more than thirty three million Americans.

Speaker 2 (01:28):
I don't want to age myself, but when I was
growing up in the seventies and eighties, I don't think
I knew anybody who had a peanut allergy, or milk
or wheat allergy. Nobody had ever heard of gluten or
celliac disease, any of these things. How did all of
this become so prominent in our society?

Speaker 3 (01:46):
You know, it's really about eating early and eating often.
Our doctors had given some advice to parents stating that
you should avoid giving us certain foods until later in life,

(02:07):
and more than recently we've kind of reversed that and said, okay,
we should give certain food proteins now earlier, during four
to six months, and introduce these proteins early and often. So,
for instance, peanuts, if you introduce it during the ages

(02:31):
of four to six months, you will decrease the chance
that this infant will not develop peanut allergies. So yeah,
by eighty percent. So we've had these studies now showcasing
that if you introduced proteins early and often, you can

(02:56):
prevent these types of allergies. So we've sort of like
you know, told parents not to introduce them, kind of.

Speaker 2 (03:04):
Created the problem and now we're trying to figure out
how to solve.

Speaker 3 (03:07):
It, I know exactly. And of course there's also the
germ theory, right. You know, back when we were growing up,
we were making mud pies. Yeah, we were producing ourselves
lots of germs, and so our immune system, you know,
recognized germs and our immune system was able to fight that.

Speaker 2 (03:31):
I almost feel like that's what this is what happens
when we try to wrap our kids in bubble wrap
to protect them, we create these problems that we don't
necessarily anticipate.

Speaker 3 (03:41):
Absolutely. And so you know, when our immune system doesn't
recognize a food protein as a food protein, instead, it
sees it as a bid invader, and our immune system
just goes, hey, why and attack it as a foreign invader,

(04:03):
and you have this anaphylactic reaction. And that's what's going
on within our bodies and our immune systemty.

Speaker 2 (04:11):
Is there a difference between a food allergy and a
food intolerance or just sensitivities for example?

Speaker 3 (04:18):
Absolutely, because when you have an intolerance, you're not you know,
developing the worst case scenario, a anaphylaxis, because anaphylaxis can
kill you if you do not intervene with an epinephrin

(04:38):
and epinephrine. Now, thank goodness, doesn't only come in an injection.
There's also a nasal spray, and uh, thank you for
individuals that are afraid of needles like myself, I'm happy
to give an injection to anyone except for myself.

Speaker 2 (05:00):
I've known people who have had absolute nightmares and being
diagnosed with food allergies. They've gone to doctor after doctor
after doctor. Is that a big challenge diagnosing specific food allergies?
And why do some people seem to go undiagnosed for years?

Speaker 3 (05:17):
Well, I think that is a great question. There's more
than one hundred and sixty food proteins that can cause
life threatening food allergies. So that's one hundred and sixty
proteins that you have to be tested for. It's top
nine allersions and I think that's really easy. But if

(05:40):
it's something very very unique. It could be challenging because
you have to confirm it with an oral food challenge,
meaning you have to test for that exact protein food
protein and you have to have it meaning you have

(06:01):
to have an oral food challenge that leads to anaphylaxis.
The misconception is that food allergy is a diet, or
it's a preference, or it is a choice. But we
all know that food allergy is a disease. It's a

(06:21):
disease of the immune system.

Speaker 2 (06:24):
We're speaking doctor, some publicly CEO of Food Allergy Research
and Education. You have food allergies.

Speaker 3 (06:31):
I am. I do have food allergies. I developed food
allergy as an adult. But you know I have what
we call the typical atopic march. When I was born,
I was born with eggzema, so that is the you know,
skinien and then I developed asthma, and I thought, wow,

(06:58):
at least I don't have food allergies. And then as
a young adult I developed food allergies. And you know,
when you talk about a triple threat like Jennifer Lopez,
sure you know you think about threat not you know
a topic march. So unlucky me I suffer from this

(07:21):
A topic March of egma, allergies, you know, food allergies
and asthma.

Speaker 2 (07:28):
I don't imagine that most people would associate those three
things kind of going hand in hand. Exema a skin condition,
asthma a longer breathing issue, and then food allergies. Are
they connected?

Speaker 3 (07:44):
Yes, they are. They are definitely connected. And uh, you
know you'll see that individuals with egma or asthma or
food allergies, they will have you know, uh, two out
of three.

Speaker 2 (08:00):
Wow. Talk to me a little bit about the difficulty
because obviously, if you're a sufferer, you know about food labeling,
and I'm sure you're probably thinking about what you can
and can eat and whether those foods are even in
your direct vicinity, don't you.

Speaker 3 (08:16):
You know, every single bite that I take, I have
to be very very vigilant about what goes in my mouth.
Every food. I have to check the label, and even
brands that I'm familiar with, I have to make certain

(08:39):
that they didn't change any of the ingredients. And I
learned that's the hard way, I mean, how embarrassing. I'm
the CEO of Food Allergy Research and Education, and recently,
as recent as a week ago, a very very trusted
brand that I've eaten for over ten years. They switched

(09:01):
ingredients and it wasn't really clear. They didn't make any announcements,
and they added trenuts and I am defly a trinus
and so all of a sudden, I take a bite
of one of my favorite favorite cookies and my throat
is itching, my tongue is flowing up, and I'm like,

(09:24):
oh my god, what is going on. I give, you know,
give myself a nasal spray, a penephyrine, and then I'm
reading the label quickly and I see there's trinuts now
at it, And you know it's a rookie mistake, obviously,
but I'm like, oh my god.

Speaker 2 (09:44):
I imagine that's got to be a challenge if you
go out to eat, if you're traveling things like that.

Speaker 3 (09:50):
It's very very challenging. But you know, there are few
restaurants that I know are very very safe eat Like
a chipotlet is one of the favorite places. A burger
king is another. And you know, when I go to restaurants,
I call ahead and I make certain that I give

(10:13):
them my list of allergens. And you know, people are
getting to really realize that there are a lot of
us and thinking about the fact that there are more
than thirty three million Americans with food allergies. They're realizing
that we're a huge consumer group group. And it's not
just thirty three million, right, Like one person at a

(10:37):
food allergy, the entire group of people have a food
allergy at the table. So we're a very powerful consumer group.
I mean, if I have a food allergy, my entire
family has a food allergy. If I can't go to
that restaurant, my friends can't go to the restaurant with me. Restaurants,

(11:01):
so I think restaurants are kept saying on that we've
got a lot of power, and they're becoming more accommodating.

Speaker 2 (11:11):
We always hear about peanut allergies, and now you see
a lot of gluten free options in restaurants and stuff
like that. There's a whole lot of other allergies though.
I mean people I know, people with adult on send seafood,
you know, seafood allergies and things like that. So it's
much broader than just people think about the peanuts or
the soy or things like that.

Speaker 3 (11:33):
That's correct, That is absolutely correct. I mean, you know,
we talk about top nine allergen. But you know, the
other tense allergen that is really you know, increasing especially
on the East Coast, is AlphaGo, where individuals are becoming

(11:56):
allergic to mammalian meat, and it's a really unusual vector
transmission through a loan or tick bites.

Speaker 2 (12:08):
Well, let me let me ask you that because it
brings me to a conversation about our food here in
the United States, ultra processed foods and things like that.
Do you find in your research that that there are
people just as many people rather in other countries Canada,
the European Union, or what have you, that have similar
food allergies than we do here, or is it it's

(12:30):
much more widespread here than anywhere else.

Speaker 3 (12:35):
You know, food allergies exist in other countries, but for instance,
in Israel, there aren't as many children with peanut allergies.
And it's for one reason. They have these soft ways

(12:57):
for a type of I want to say they're like cheetos,
but they're called bomba and they are a date of peanuts.
And so when they're infants, when they're like you know,
three to four months, they are given these bomba treats

(13:18):
to kids, and so kids are eating these often and early,
so there's no peanut allergies, so it's a diet and
the choices of how these kids are introduced to certain foods.
So I think that's the variation of the types of

(13:39):
food allergies that you see across the world.

Speaker 2 (13:44):
And last thing, what are the two or three rules
of thumb you would give people as advice if they
believe they're developing a food allergy or sensitivity.

Speaker 3 (13:52):
Please come to our website for the latest education and
we have all the group rates clinical network sites on
our website. Please go and see one of our food
allergy specialized doctors. They need to be properly diagnosed. And

(14:15):
make certain that you are ready to act with epinephrine
because you want to be prepared. You want to make
certain you have epinephrin at all times because if you
have an anaphylactic reaction, you're going to want to have
the one drug that can save your life. And the

(14:37):
website is food allergy dot org.

Speaker 2 (14:40):
Foodalergy dot org, foodalergy dot org. Doctor sung Publicy, CEO
of Food Allergy Research and Education Fair, thank you very
much for the time the wonderful information. I appreciate it.

Speaker 3 (14:53):
Thank you so much.

Speaker 2 (14:55):
One in three adults in the United States has hypertension
high blood pressure. We know what causes it, how to
treat it, more importantly, how to prevent it. Well, may
happens to be National High blood Pressure Education Month, So
let's discuss all of those things as we bring in
doctor Clyde Yancey. He's chief of Cardiology in the Department
of Medicine at Northwestern University. Doctor Yancey, thanks so much

(15:19):
for the time.

Speaker 4 (15:20):
I am delighted to be here. This is such an
important conversation and I think we should expand all of
the questions he just presented.

Speaker 2 (15:28):
Yeah, well, I look forward to speaking to you about them.
What does it mean to have high blood pressure? How
about we begin there?

Speaker 4 (15:34):
So let's start at the very beginning. Part of what
the heart does so beautifully for us is to distribute
blood throughout the body. The heart is an organ, it's
actually a muscle. In addition to its other functions, that
muscle pumps blood through the body. So our lay assessment

(15:55):
of what the heart does is exactly correct. Correct That
blood that is pumped through the body comes out with force,
so that force is something that is measurable. We measure
it as pressure. There is a normal amount of force,
but there's also an elevated amount of force, and when
that force is elevated, it has consequences. Imagine the flow

(16:19):
of water through a garden hose. If there are those
who still do those count of things right. If the
flow is ginger and gentle, it just waters along without
any problem. But if it's forceful, the water is flowing, yes,
but that forceful flow of water, just like a fire hydrant,
it has consequences, can actually cause harm. Same thing in

(16:39):
our vascular system.

Speaker 2 (16:42):
How is a high blood pressure what we're talking about hypertension,
different than for example, me, a middle aged guy sprinting
forty yards, and how my blood pressure will rise in
that context.

Speaker 4 (16:57):
So that's a brilliant question because it's the heart's ability
to adapt to all the different things we do in life.
Whether we're resting and lying still, whether we're digesting a meal,
or whether we're exercising, it is appropriate for your heart
function to increase. So that force that we talked about
will increase, the blood pressure will increase, but we call

(17:19):
that very carefully. We call that a physiologic meaning that's
a normal increase. But imagine what happens if your pressure.
Your force increases because you're exercising, but you're not exercising,
you're just living with that increased force. That's high blood pressure.

Speaker 2 (17:36):
What contributes to high blood pressure, to high pertension.

Speaker 4 (17:40):
We understand that what contributes to it, and that is
the right word, because we're still trying to understand what
causes high blood pressure. But we know that what contributes
to it is one part your family, one part perhaps
your ancestry, a big part your living circumstances, your life
and living conditions, a big part your diet. So those

(18:02):
persons that take in salt and are sensitive to salt
may have a higher blood pressure. Those people that end
up being heavier will almost surely have high blood pressure.
Those persons who live in certain neighborhoods because of their
choices their lifestyle, may also have high blood pressure. And
guess what if you know that your parents and your

(18:24):
grandparents at high blood pressure, you should be especially attuned
to the likelihood that you'll develop high blood pressure. But
let me just tell you one other thing that's incredibly important.
There are three inevitabilities in life, death, taxes, and high
blood pressure. What I mean by that, ninety percent of
all of us that alive right now, ninety percent will

(18:46):
eventually develop high blood pressure. So we can basically check
the default button and say we all need to be aware.

Speaker 2 (18:53):
Am I doctor? My primary care physician has spoken to
me about that repeatedly, says, the older we get, just naturally,
our pressure will increase. Is that right?

Speaker 4 (19:02):
And the natural part of this is that the older
we get. What's not natural, but what happens, almost without fail,
is that our blood blood vessels get more stiff. And
that stiffening of our blood vessels again comes from all
the things which we're exposed, does come from aging, does
come from being heavier. It's so important to recognize this

(19:24):
interrelatedness of being heavier, of becoming older, of maybe having
a tendency towards diabetes, these sorts of things all come together,
so it is inevitable. Your doctor is exactly right. But
what's natural is not for your blood vessels to get
more stiff. It's how we live that makes our blood
vessels get more stiff. And thus nine out of ten

(19:46):
of us will end up having high blood pressure.

Speaker 2 (19:48):
That number that I started off with. One in three
adults in the United States has high pertension. High blood
pressure it feels like I've been hearing those numbers for decades.
Have they were the main consistent? Have we made any
improvement on the number of Americans who have blood pressure?

Speaker 4 (20:07):
So where improvement has come is in the number of
Americans who know they have high blood pressure. For quite
some time, we've always known that about one third of
the population in our country at any one moment has
high blood pressure. But now a greater percentage of them
actually know that they have it. And I'll tell you

(20:28):
why that's so important. You don't need to immediately go
to drug therapy because you have high blood pressure. There
are many lifestyle changes that can actually help normalize the
blood pressure, but you don't know to make those changes
unless you are aware that your blood pressure is elevated.
So the awareness and detection programs that so many organizations

(20:49):
have promulgated are working, and people know that their blood
pressure is elevated. Now, one other number you talked about
the importance of this number. We can't overlook that one
in three number is across the board. That's correct. But
here is some more compelling number. One in four young
adults under the age of forty has high blood pressure.

(21:10):
One in four young adults. So that tells you that
beginning at age twenty five or even younger, in some groups,
we need to be very conscious of our blood pressure.
Just like we know our cell phone numbers, we need
to know our blood pressure.

Speaker 2 (21:24):
A few more minutes here with doctor Clyde Yancey's chief
of cardiology in the Department of Medicine at Northwestern University,
want to unpack a little.

Speaker 4 (21:33):
Bit of that.

Speaker 2 (21:34):
Very easy to treat these days with medication, very inexpensive
medication quite often, but I wonder if people try to
if people turn to that first as opposed to making
changes in their lifestyle, then might be able to control
their blood pressure.

Speaker 4 (21:50):
I can absolutely promise you that if someone is seen
in my office, the conversation goes like this, we've identified
that you have blood pressure almost invariably is based on
home blood pressures and not the blood pressure in the office.
And I will tell them the first step is not
using drugs. The first step is lifestyle. And I will
go through all of the necessary motions, and I'll tell

(22:12):
you very quickly, for every kilogram of weight loss two pounds,
your blood pressure goes down by a point. That means
if you can get to ten kilograms of weight loss
about twenty pounds a little bit more. Your blood pressure
will come down substantially. Increase your physical activity, cuts your
alcohol content in half, don't smoke. Increase your consumption not
only of fruits and vegetables, You've heard that so many times,

(22:35):
but increase your consumption of potassium, and decrease your consumption
of sodium. Those are the non drug strategies that will
effectively treat your blood pressure, but particularly weight loss.

Speaker 2 (22:47):
What is it about salt that contributes to high blood pressure?
Because let's face it, a steak ain't the same without salt.

Speaker 4 (22:56):
We can talk about eating a steak at another time.

Speaker 2 (22:59):
Yeah, yeah, and that contributes to it a bit as well,
But just the salt portion of it, because I remember,
you know the Dash diet and now there's like low salt,
salt and things like that.

Speaker 4 (23:10):
But just not the same, is it, And some people
not everyone. Salt causes fluid retention, and is the fluid
retention that expands the blood vessels and goes back to
the opening conversation and keeps that force elevated. But what
makes this fascinating is that in population health, where we've
been able to replace sodium chloride with potassium chloride. That

(23:35):
step alone, without changing the palatability of food, that is
the taste of food, lowers blood pressure. And so the
idea of switching from salt as you know it as
I know it to potassium instead of sodium and the
right individual has some benefit.

Speaker 2 (23:51):
What is potassium chloride? Can I buy that at the
grocery store and put it on my steak?

Speaker 4 (23:57):
You know what? You can do one step better than that.
You can walk down the spice out and you can
look for no salt inn o salt, look at the
label and almost invariably that is your potassium chloride. That's it.

Speaker 2 (24:10):
Fascinating. We kind of referred to this a little bit earlier.
Early detection really is the key in determining all of
these things. And unless somebody is going to get regular
checkups on a yearly basis or more often than that,
chances are you're probably not going to know that you
have high blood pressure just from living your life. So
how does somebody determine they have it without going to

(24:33):
see their doctor or can they?

Speaker 4 (24:35):
So many young adults have had pre participatory physical examinations
for sports, whether it's club sports, high school sports, college sports.
There's your blood pressure. So many women, of course for pregnancy,
must have their blood pressure determined. So there's another way
you know this. But guess what. You can walk into
virtually any commercial drug store, look along the perimeter and

(24:57):
you'll find a free on made it blood pressure cough.
Point being that there's no way you can avoid access
to getting in blood pressure measured, even if you duck
into a fire station. There is a way to get
your blood pressure. Know. But the key point is the
one you've already made. You have to be aware and
so yes, blood pressure is ubiquitous, so many people have it,

(25:19):
But the knowledge is what we need to make you
biquitous to know that everybody is likely to develop high
blood pressure sometimes. So one of the things we talk
about all the time, over and over and over again.
Know your numbers, know your blood pressure, no your cholesterol,
know your weight. These are the things that will help
you live along in healthy life.

Speaker 2 (25:39):
Stress, sleep quality, mental health. All of those things, how
do they potentially influence our blood pressure.

Speaker 4 (25:47):
It's pretty clear that sleeping less than six hours a
night is definitely associated with an increase in blood pressure
and an increase in the more difficult patterns of blood pressure.
That's another conversation. It's also fairly clear that stress in
the global context, whether it's worry that is, whether it's

(26:07):
mental stress, but also stress in life, anxiety about a job,
anxiety about an interpersonal relationship, all of that stress becomes
manifest as something biological. We think that the biology there
is that it's inflammation. Think of getting a mosquito bite
and look at how your skin gets rid. Stress does
that to our body. It causes our body to become inflamed,

(26:30):
and that leads to high blood pressure. So you are correct,
lack of sleep being stress, those things increase our blood pressure,
just like alcohol does.

Speaker 2 (26:40):
How much of those numbers, and again will refer to
them one in three adults, you said, I think one
in four of adults under the age of just say
twenty five have high blood.

Speaker 4 (26:51):
Under the age of forty twenty five one and four adults.

Speaker 2 (26:54):
One in four adults under the age of forty have it.
How much of that is associated with the culture in
our country, the diet compared to other countries.

Speaker 4 (27:06):
I want to be very clear about this. We think
most of it is in fact related to our lifestyle. Now,
lifestyle is a little different from diet. It's one part died, yes, sure,
but lifestyle of physical inactivity, a lifestyle that predisposes our
young adults towards being heavier, a lifestyle that very much
gratuitously enjoys alcohol, and still tobacco. When you put all

(27:30):
of that together, alcohol, tobacco, being heavier, having a very
convenient lifestyle meaning using fast food products, not being physically active,
all of that relates to this burden of high blood
pressure and young adults. And again, know your family history.
Take some time and say, mom, pop, what runs in
our family? You should be aware.

Speaker 2 (27:51):
Two final questions for you. One third, maybe we can't
control genetic if our parents, our grandparents have had it.
Two thirds of this we can control what does hypertension,
high blood pressure potentially lead to.

Speaker 4 (28:08):
So we always think about this phenomenon of what happens
to the organs that face all of that extra force
that we talked about, the three organs we really were about.
The brain. High blood pressure definitely leads the strokes, the heart.
High blood pressure is associated with heart attacks, associated with
heart failure, and the kidneys. For certain high blood pressures

(28:30):
associated with having weaker kidneys, and maybe even kidney failure.
But the most important message here is that it's so
eminently treatable. We have inexpensive drugs. Lifestyle is a benefit.
And what's most exciting is that for the first time
in over a decade, we have brand new therapies and
we have procedures that can help us really finesse control

(28:53):
of blood pressure. No one needs to suffer from high
blood pressure in our future. Our technology is just that.

Speaker 2 (28:59):
Good detection is the key. And there's a reason it's
called preventive medicine exactly is doctor Clyde Yancey, Chief of
Cardiology and the Department of Medicine at Northwestern University, truly
appreciate it for the time and the information. Thanks so
much for joining us.

Speaker 4 (29:15):
Thanks so much, and let's not forget to know your numbers.

Speaker 1 (29:18):
Thank you so much, and thank you so much for
tuning into the weekly show right here on iHeartRadio ninety
three nine one three five Kids FM and Rock ninety
five to five. We place this show at all previous
episodes up on our free iHeartRadio app. Just simply search
for the Weekly Show. Thank you so much. Stay safe, Chicago.
We'll talk to you again next weekend.