April 30, 2025 • 9 mins
Dr. Jim Keany, Chief Medical Officer at Dignity Health St. Mary Medical Center in Long Beach, joins The Bill Handel Show for 'Medical News'! Dr. Keany talks with Bill about the 17 ways to cut your risk of depression, dementia, and stroke, how Parkinsons disease may soon outpace dementia, and smart insoles could diagnose health problems.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's Wednesday, which means it's time for our discussion with
doctor Jim Keeney. Jim who is the chief medical officer
for Dignity Saint Mary Medical Center in Long Beach and Jim,
good morning, Good morning, Bill. Sorry, I'm just coughing. What
do you think it is?
Speaker 2 (00:20):
By?
Speaker 1 (00:21):
What do you think it is? If you had to guess, Okay, yeah,
I kicked well said yes, with some respiratory disease, I'm
gonna die all right. Just reminded me of a Paul
Simon song. You know, fifty ways to leave your lover,
seventeen ways to cut your risk of depression, dementia, and
(00:42):
stroke all at once. So you put all these ways
in a blender and turn it on and there you go,
no more dementia or depression or stroke.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Kind of neat.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Yeah, probably not that simple, is it.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Well, I mean it's really in a way, it's not
that simple. But another way, it's like kind of what
your mother's been telling it your whole life, you know
what I mean. It's just the basics of healthy living
is what we're talking about here. So when we look
at those diseases, the protective factors are things like and
they overlap a little bit right, low alcohol and take
(01:17):
the risk factor is the opposite high alcohol intake. And
by low alcohol intake, they're talking about less than one
drink a day, so not even a drink a day.
And then cognitive stimulation so you know, reading, learning new skills,
things like that, puzzling, all those type of things would
help healthy exercise. So basically Mediterranean diet is the easiest
(01:40):
way to say that. You know, fruits, vegetables, those kind
of things, nuts, leg umes, and then a moderate or
vigorous physical activity you need to get out move your body.
A strong social network is key, and I've seen this
in a lot of older people. I mean a friend
of mine's grandmother moved into an assistance not an assistant
living facility, but a retirement apartment complex where they all
(02:03):
come down for breakfast, lunch, and dinners, but they all
also have their own apartments. And I got to say,
she has blossomed. She was falling apart. I really didn't
think she was going to live too much longer, and
now she has a reason to get out of her apartment,
get down there every day, socialize and it's a very
social group. So I mean it's amazing. What a strong
(02:24):
social connection I'll do, and then some sense of purpose
of life. Right, But the risk factors are all the
ones you would expect high blood pressure, high body mass index,
or overweight, blood sugar, cholesterol, depression, those type of things, right,
and then you know in sleep, let's do one more
(02:45):
thing is sleep, because sleep is super important, and you know,
getting at least eight hours of sleep every day is great.
All right.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
So the question I've always looked at is you've got
all of those factors, and assuming you're following that fairly rigorously,
you know, you know, you take pretty good care of yourself.
Although we've gone to dinner, obviously you get try to
get up, and you were falling down drunk gym. You
could barely crawl out the front door. So sometimes on
the alcohol side, maybe not so much.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
But the study, you're going to give up my true
secrets of eating the entire bread basket.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
Oh that's the other thing I was gonna get that
while you're drinking, you know, yeah, wine and bread. There's
some religious connotation there, But in terms of living healthier longer,
how much of it? If there are any studies that
say genetics play x percent for the most part versus
(03:43):
a healthy living style, and obviously both are going to
be important. But if you've got good genes, is the
rest of it that important?
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Yeah? I mean, so the rest of it can be
a huge influence, right, I mean we'd regularly see smokers
getting lung cancer and other cancers, right, heavy drinkers getting
kidney disease, liver disease, and all kinds of other problems
at higher risk for cancers. So the thing is, your
genetics is something you absolutely can't control, at least at
(04:15):
this stage of the game. There are some treatments coming
out that are small pieces of RNA. I think we
might have done this on the show already that can
use DNA to mask certain proteins and stop them from
being produced rather than producing them. So you know, right now,
you can't control your genetics and all these other things
(04:36):
you can control. So if you're going to live a
short life but you want it to be high quality,
these are the things you should follow.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
Okay, fair enough, all right, Parkinson's may soon outpace dementia.
And I thought dementia was hitting as hard hard as
the disease of the future, So I had no idea
that Parkinson's is growing like that.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Yeah, so Parkinson's is on the rise as opposed to dementia,
which is starting to show a decline in prevalence. So
that's what people are saying, Well, is it possible that
in the future Parkinson's could actually outpace dementia? And you know,
people get this confused sometimes, right, Dementia just means as
(05:20):
we get older, and people sometimes call it sinility where
you start forgetting things right, that's dementia. But Parkinson's is
a very specific disease. It's this accumulation of proteins in
your brain that reduce the function mostly a movement right,
so it's primarily a movement disorder, but it also comes
with with loss of memory, cognition problems, energy problems, mood problems,
(05:43):
so a little bit different. And then there's variations of
Parkinson's like Louis Body dementia that are much heavier in
the dementia side of things. But there's been some significant breakthroughs,
so hopefully, you know, the future looks good for people
that could be coming down with parkinson And number one
is there's this this kind of experimental at this stage
(06:04):
they are using it clinically, but pretty not not commonly.
There's a test called rch quick that can detect the
Parkinson's protein with about ninety five percent accuracy. Now the
most accurate test you need to get a spinal tap
for that and get spinal fluid to test it. But
they're working on a more broad based test for blood.
They've got, you know, they've used for years adaptive deep
(06:26):
brain stimulators that can reduce the effects.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
What is that? Adaptive de brain stimulators.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Deep deep brain, right brain?
Speaker 1 (06:38):
Okay, no, no, I said, so what is that? Is
that like an electroshock therapy.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
It's a it's an implant kind of like a pacemaker,
but it goes into the brain and in real time
it changes the brain signals to the reduced kind of
the tremor and some of the side effects. And literally
people you turn it on and their tremor stops. Wow,
and you can you.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
Oh no, I'm sorry. I'm just going to say, is
it fair to say that if you are a slide
of hand magician and you get Parkinson's, that's problematic? Yeah, okay,
it's a medical segment, right, So.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
Good thoughts.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
So, in terms of Parkinson's UH and UH dementia and specifically, uh,
the diagnosed dementia, which I think you can. Can you
diagnose Alzheimer's today without doing an autopsy to absolutely determine
if that's the case.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
Uh, yeah, Alzheimer's as well. You can you can diagnose
through different some new tests that are going on, but
also you know, scans and things like that.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
So which, uh, which disease is being better attacked right
now in more success is a Parkinson's or dementia? Since
we're we're comparing the.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Two, you know, with both of them going on, I
think you know that there's a lot of research really
pushing both. I really don't have a way to quantify
if one is getting more attention than the other. That's
an interesting question. Maybe look at how many dollars are
being spent on each, but both are being have you know,
significant improvements and significant you know advancements going on. So
(08:24):
it's just an exciting time and ICID with what you know,
AI assistant and a lot of the things that have
been done previously coming all to fruition. At the same time,
it's we really got a lot of good things in
the pipeline.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
Do you see cancer being beaten? I know there are
a lot of different cancers, But do you see the
magic bullet coming in the next ten, fifteen, twenty years.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Well, I mean I really thought all of those what
do you call the monoclonal antibodies were going to be
something really powerful and might have been the magic bullet,
and some of them are very good. I mean, you
see all the commercials for Treveda and all those other ones.
You know, there's tons of the monal that you see
on commercials. So I do think that we're making progress
(09:09):
in that area and that the monoclinal antibodies will be
a big part of that.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
Okay, Jim, thank you. We'll talk again next Wednesday. Anytime
I have a good one, kill some people, Okay,
It's Wednesday, which means it's time for our discussion with
doctor Jim Keeney. Jim who is the chief medical officer
for Dignity Saint Mary Medical Center in Long Beach and Jim,
good morning, Good morning, Bill. Sorry, I'm just coughing. What
do you think it is?
Speaker 2 (00:20):
By?
Speaker 1 (00:21):
What do you think it is? If you had to guess, Okay, yeah,
I kicked well said yes, with some respiratory disease, I'm
gonna die all right. Just reminded me of a Paul
Simon song. You know, fifty ways to leave your lover,
seventeen ways to cut your risk of depression, dementia, and
(00:42):
stroke all at once. So you put all these ways
in a blender and turn it on and there you go,
no more dementia or depression or stroke.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Kind of neat.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Yeah, probably not that simple, is it.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Well, I mean it's really in a way, it's not
that simple. But another way, it's like kind of what
your mother's been telling it your whole life, you know
what I mean. It's just the basics of healthy living
is what we're talking about here. So when we look
at those diseases, the protective factors are things like and
they overlap a little bit right, low alcohol and take
(01:17):
the risk factor is the opposite high alcohol intake. And
by low alcohol intake, they're talking about less than one
drink a day, so not even a drink a day.
And then cognitive stimulation so you know, reading, learning new skills,
things like that, puzzling, all those type of things would
help healthy exercise. So basically Mediterranean diet is the easiest
(01:40):
way to say that. You know, fruits, vegetables, those kind
of things, nuts, leg umes, and then a moderate or
vigorous physical activity you need to get out move your body.
A strong social network is key, and I've seen this
in a lot of older people. I mean a friend
of mine's grandmother moved into an assistance not an assistant
living facility, but a retirement apartment complex where they all
(02:03):
come down for breakfast, lunch, and dinners, but they all
also have their own apartments. And I got to say,
she has blossomed. She was falling apart. I really didn't
think she was going to live too much longer, and
now she has a reason to get out of her apartment,
get down there every day, socialize and it's a very
social group. So I mean it's amazing. What a strong
(02:24):
social connection I'll do, and then some sense of purpose
of life. Right, But the risk factors are all the
ones you would expect high blood pressure, high body mass index,
or overweight, blood sugar, cholesterol, depression, those type of things, right,
and then you know in sleep, let's do one more
(02:45):
thing is sleep, because sleep is super important, and you know,
getting at least eight hours of sleep every day is great.
All right.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
So the question I've always looked at is you've got
all of those factors, and assuming you're following that fairly rigorously,
you know, you know, you take pretty good care of yourself.
Although we've gone to dinner, obviously you get try to
get up, and you were falling down drunk gym. You
could barely crawl out the front door. So sometimes on
the alcohol side, maybe not so much.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
But the study, you're going to give up my true
secrets of eating the entire bread basket.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
Oh that's the other thing I was gonna get that
while you're drinking, you know, yeah, wine and bread. There's
some religious connotation there, But in terms of living healthier longer,
how much of it? If there are any studies that
say genetics play x percent for the most part versus
(03:43):
a healthy living style, and obviously both are going to
be important. But if you've got good genes, is the
rest of it that important?
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Yeah? I mean, so the rest of it can be
a huge influence, right, I mean we'd regularly see smokers
getting lung cancer and other cancers, right, heavy drinkers getting
kidney disease, liver disease, and all kinds of other problems
at higher risk for cancers. So the thing is, your
genetics is something you absolutely can't control, at least at
(04:15):
this stage of the game. There are some treatments coming
out that are small pieces of RNA. I think we
might have done this on the show already that can
use DNA to mask certain proteins and stop them from
being produced rather than producing them. So you know, right now,
you can't control your genetics and all these other things
(04:36):
you can control. So if you're going to live a
short life but you want it to be high quality,
these are the things you should follow.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
Okay, fair enough, all right, Parkinson's may soon outpace dementia.
And I thought dementia was hitting as hard hard as
the disease of the future, So I had no idea
that Parkinson's is growing like that.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Yeah, so Parkinson's is on the rise as opposed to dementia,
which is starting to show a decline in prevalence. So
that's what people are saying, Well, is it possible that
in the future Parkinson's could actually outpace dementia? And you know,
people get this confused sometimes, right, Dementia just means as
(05:20):
we get older, and people sometimes call it sinility where
you start forgetting things right, that's dementia. But Parkinson's is
a very specific disease. It's this accumulation of proteins in
your brain that reduce the function mostly a movement right,
so it's primarily a movement disorder, but it also comes
with with loss of memory, cognition problems, energy problems, mood problems,
(05:43):
so a little bit different. And then there's variations of
Parkinson's like Louis Body dementia that are much heavier in
the dementia side of things. But there's been some significant breakthroughs,
so hopefully, you know, the future looks good for people
that could be coming down with parkinson And number one
is there's this this kind of experimental at this stage
(06:04):
they are using it clinically, but pretty not not commonly.
There's a test called rch quick that can detect the
Parkinson's protein with about ninety five percent accuracy. Now the
most accurate test you need to get a spinal tap
for that and get spinal fluid to test it. But
they're working on a more broad based test for blood.
They've got, you know, they've used for years adaptive deep
(06:26):
brain stimulators that can reduce the effects.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
What is that? Adaptive de brain stimulators.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Deep deep brain, right brain?
Speaker 1 (06:38):
Okay, no, no, I said, so what is that? Is
that like an electroshock therapy.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
It's a it's an implant kind of like a pacemaker,
but it goes into the brain and in real time
it changes the brain signals to the reduced kind of
the tremor and some of the side effects. And literally
people you turn it on and their tremor stops. Wow,
and you can you.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
Oh no, I'm sorry. I'm just going to say, is
it fair to say that if you are a slide
of hand magician and you get Parkinson's, that's problematic? Yeah, okay,
it's a medical segment, right, So.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
Good thoughts.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
So, in terms of Parkinson's UH and UH dementia and specifically, uh,
the diagnosed dementia, which I think you can. Can you
diagnose Alzheimer's today without doing an autopsy to absolutely determine
if that's the case.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
Uh, yeah, Alzheimer's as well. You can you can diagnose
through different some new tests that are going on, but
also you know, scans and things like that.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
So which, uh, which disease is being better attacked right
now in more success is a Parkinson's or dementia? Since
we're we're comparing the.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Two, you know, with both of them going on, I
think you know that there's a lot of research really
pushing both. I really don't have a way to quantify
if one is getting more attention than the other. That's
an interesting question. Maybe look at how many dollars are
being spent on each, but both are being have you know,
significant improvements and significant you know advancements going on. So
(08:24):
it's just an exciting time and ICID with what you know,
AI assistant and a lot of the things that have
been done previously coming all to fruition. At the same time,
it's we really got a lot of good things in
the pipeline.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
Do you see cancer being beaten? I know there are
a lot of different cancers, But do you see the
magic bullet coming in the next ten, fifteen, twenty years.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Well, I mean I really thought all of those what
do you call the monoclonal antibodies were going to be
something really powerful and might have been the magic bullet,
and some of them are very good. I mean, you
see all the commercials for Treveda and all those other ones.
You know, there's tons of the monal that you see
on commercials. So I do think that we're making progress
(09:09):
in that area and that the monoclinal antibodies will be
a big part of that.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
Okay, Jim, thank you. We'll talk again next Wednesday. Anytime
I have a good one, kill some people, Okay,
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Special Summer Offer: Exclusively on Apple Podcasts, try our Dateline Premium subscription completely free for one month! With Dateline Premium, you get every episode ad-free plus exclusive bonus content.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!