October 22, 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 Doctors telling patients ‘cool it on the supplements,’ peanut allergies plummeting in children, RFK Jr advocating for MORE saturated fats, Nitrous Oxide use surging in CA among young people, and can Marijuana really help you sleep?
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Doctor Jim Keeney is the Chief Medical Officers for Dignity
a chief medical officer for Dignity Saint Mary Medical Center
in Long Beach. Jim, good morning, It's Wednesday morning. Bill.
All right, I'm sorry, Happy Wednesday to you.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
I want to get right into this with Robert Kennedy,
Robert RFK Junior, because he's one of my favorite cabinet secretaries,
and he is advocating for more saturated fats, not fewer
faturated saturated fats. But I thought saturated fats were not healthy.
(00:37):
And is he going to say, don't weigh one hundred
and eighty pounds, weigh two hundred and eighty pounds because
that's good for you.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Right? Yeah, I mean so again, I love how crazy.
The more time you give this guy, the more crazy
it sounds. So and he confuses things, right, he puts
things together that don't belong together, Like we should replace
simple carbohydrates with saturated fats. You know, that's not it
(01:05):
doesn't even make any sense. That's not what you replace
them with. There's plenty of randomized controlled studies, really good
quality studies that show when you replace saturated fat with
unsaturated fat, you know, polyontaturated monounsaturated you actually improve every
marker for heart disease and stroke and everything else very significantly.
(01:29):
And there's good studies that show that high diets and
saturated fat increase your risk for cardiovascular disease, so that
this makes no sense at all.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Yeah, it's kind of crazy. For example, the vaccine connected
to autism based on one study by this doctor Wakefield
who was later had his license taken away and his
what he was basing his study on was just false.
(01:59):
I mean literally it was just straight out false. But
it's still there, right, that's what RFK is looking at.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Yeah, I mean he's got a pattern going where he
seems to put things together right. So it's almost like
there was a movie playing and he was falling asleep
intermittently through the movie and then he tells you the
plot and it's all wrong because he's missing big chunks.
So you know, it's a good idea to reduce these
ultra processed foods and to reduce simple carbohydrates and the
(02:26):
kids diet. That makes sense. He had something going there,
and then he took a left turn with yeah, we're
going to replace it with saturated fats. So you know.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Yeah, have you ever you know, as a doctor, I'm
sure you've seen pregnant women. If you ever said, do
not take tile at all, your kid's going to be autistic?
Speaker 2 (02:43):
No, I tell him take that.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
Well, I got okay, got it?
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Just kidding, all right, all right.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
Something you have talked about, and that's peanut allergies, and
that did lots of pretty serious stuff. You've seen kids
with peanut or people with peanut allergies come in and
you could die. And so you also explained how it's
being reduced, and we have more information on that. So
tell us in children particularly what's going.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
On with that. Yeah, So we're seeing a big drop
in this in peanut allergies specifically and overall in early
childhood food allergies, but specifically in peanut allergies because some
guidance came out I think it was twenty seventeen. Some
guidance came out that we talked about where you're supposed
to introduce peanuts early in life, and it was an
(03:36):
eighty percent reduction if you were able to introduce peanuts,
you know, in the first four to six months of life.
So we're not talking about actual peanuts because kids that
age canny peanuts, they'll choke on them. You don't want
to give peanut butter, it's too thick and they can
actually choke on that as well. But when you take,
you know, a tea spoon or two of peanut butter
and mix it in with formula at that age, it
(03:58):
significantly reduces the rest. So it's something you want to
talk about to your pediatric about because it depends on
your level of risk. Like a kid with severe eggzema,
you probably want to do that kid in the office
for the first time he eats peanuts so that you
can be observed. But for mild ezema or no risk factors,
definitely at home it's safe to introduce peanut into the diet.
(04:22):
And they say about two grams of peanut protein, which
is about two tea spoons that you would put in
and mix it in with formula and thin it out
a little bit.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
Okay, So you don't take the peanut butter and rub
it on the gums like you do with your dog
just to enjoy looking at your dog dealing with it.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Yeah, no, And actually I'm glad you brought that up.
With skin exposure, like when you're exposed for the first
time through skin to any of these allergens that actually
amps up. So if you did rub peanut butter on
the eggzema, for example, I don't know who would do that.
That would actually ramp up your peanut allergy and make
it worse. So it's the important part is ingesting it.
(05:03):
You have to ingest it and not just have skin contact.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
All right, And a story about nitrous oxide surging among
young people here in California. Now, I must tell you
that nitrous oxide is the one one thing I have
not ingested in my history of ingesting stuff like this,
and I don't know, Yeah, I don't know how I
(05:28):
miss that because I've done everything else. But nitrous has
been around for a long long time and all of
a sudden it's coming back. So tell us about that one.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Yeah, So nitrous oxide is a cast that that kids inhale.
You can either do it by you know, they buy
the whipped cream and inhale a little bit of it
by inhaling without tipping the can over and then you
can get the nitrous oxide off the can. Or they're
just buying actual canisters of a metrosoctide like what you
(06:03):
use in cooking when you can, you have a device
that you can plug that canister in to create whipped
cream and things like that. And then they even have
large like two to three liters tanks that you can
buy for food use, and kids are doing all of those.
So you know, when you see kids with these little
canisters or with balloons, because they'll fill a balloon with
it to inhale later, you know, you should be asking
(06:25):
questions because that's not They're not going to clown school.
They are are actually probably huffing, is what it's called.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
Yeah, so what are the questions? Hey, how does that
feel like? Is it better than, for example, a high
with something else? Is it good stuff? Are those the questions?
Speaker 2 (06:43):
I mean essentially, yeah, no, that's not the questions. But
you know, I think a lot of parents are oblivious
to this, Like a lot of parents don't know about
this at all. And it's true that even doctors. It's
not something that's routinely asked in a doctor's office. We
might ask if you smoke or if you drink, but
we don't ask if you huff, you know, And and
so it's a it's a good question to add to
(07:03):
the list because it is going up significantly in number,
and it has bad effects. And when you do it chronically,
you know what happens is it actually and activates vitamin
B twelve and also another chemical called methyl melonic acid.
And what that does is the covering of your nerves
(07:25):
are maintained by these by VITAM twelve.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
You end up.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Demiliinating your nerves and having serious, chronic, lifelong nerve problems.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
Wow, it's no small deal, okay. And then lastly, marijuana.
That's one of the products that I have ingested many, many,
many many times. No longer, by the way, It's been
a bunch of years since I've done that. And the
question is can marijuana, which of course is now legal,
can marijuana really help you sleep? I thought listening to
(07:56):
this show really help you sleep, but I guess not.
So let's talk about marw Wanna and sleep.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
Yeah, so marijuana. A lot of people believe that marijuana
helps them sleep. There's even marijuana company sponsor studies that
show that marijuana helps you sleep. But the way they
do the study is they just ask the person, you know,
they give them some marijuana, they let them sleep, and
they had you sleep and they wake up and they say,
I slept great, But when you do the actual studies
where you observe their sleep patterns, you look at those
(08:24):
stages of sleep, and you look at it over time
you realize that marijuana is a massive sleep disruptor. So
it may make you feel like you're sleeping better, but
if you did that more than a few days in
a row, you would not feel rested because you're not
actually getting the rest stage of sleep. It completely trashes
REM sleep. So and REM sleep is that rapid eye
(08:44):
movement sleep when you're dreaming, but it's also when your
brain clears out all the toxins and when it kind
of recuperates. That's the recuperative part of sleep. And you're
eliminating that part of sleep.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
Wow, that sounds like fun. All right, Jim, thank you always,
great news. We will catch you next Wednesday. You have
a good win and as always, go kill somebody today please, Okay,
take care
Doctor Jim Keeney is the Chief Medical Officers for Dignity
a chief medical officer for Dignity Saint Mary Medical Center
in Long Beach. Jim, good morning, It's Wednesday morning. Bill.
All right, I'm sorry, Happy Wednesday to you.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
I want to get right into this with Robert Kennedy,
Robert RFK Junior, because he's one of my favorite cabinet secretaries,
and he is advocating for more saturated fats, not fewer
faturated saturated fats. But I thought saturated fats were not healthy.
(00:37):
And is he going to say, don't weigh one hundred
and eighty pounds, weigh two hundred and eighty pounds because
that's good for you.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Right? Yeah, I mean so again, I love how crazy.
The more time you give this guy, the more crazy
it sounds. So and he confuses things, right, he puts
things together that don't belong together, Like we should replace
simple carbohydrates with saturated fats. You know, that's not it
(01:05):
doesn't even make any sense. That's not what you replace
them with. There's plenty of randomized controlled studies, really good
quality studies that show when you replace saturated fat with
unsaturated fat, you know, polyontaturated monounsaturated you actually improve every
marker for heart disease and stroke and everything else very significantly.
(01:29):
And there's good studies that show that high diets and
saturated fat increase your risk for cardiovascular disease, so that
this makes no sense at all.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Yeah, it's kind of crazy. For example, the vaccine connected
to autism based on one study by this doctor Wakefield
who was later had his license taken away and his
what he was basing his study on was just false.
(01:59):
I mean literally it was just straight out false. But
it's still there, right, that's what RFK is looking at.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Yeah, I mean he's got a pattern going where he
seems to put things together right. So it's almost like
there was a movie playing and he was falling asleep
intermittently through the movie and then he tells you the
plot and it's all wrong because he's missing big chunks.
So you know, it's a good idea to reduce these
ultra processed foods and to reduce simple carbohydrates and the
(02:26):
kids diet. That makes sense. He had something going there,
and then he took a left turn with yeah, we're
going to replace it with saturated fats. So you know.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Yeah, have you ever you know, as a doctor, I'm
sure you've seen pregnant women. If you ever said, do
not take tile at all, your kid's going to be autistic?
Speaker 2 (02:43):
No, I tell him take that.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
Well, I got okay, got it?
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Just kidding, all right, all right.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
Something you have talked about, and that's peanut allergies, and
that did lots of pretty serious stuff. You've seen kids
with peanut or people with peanut allergies come in and
you could die. And so you also explained how it's
being reduced, and we have more information on that. So
tell us in children particularly what's going.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
On with that. Yeah, So we're seeing a big drop
in this in peanut allergies specifically and overall in early
childhood food allergies, but specifically in peanut allergies because some
guidance came out I think it was twenty seventeen. Some
guidance came out that we talked about where you're supposed
to introduce peanuts early in life, and it was an
(03:36):
eighty percent reduction if you were able to introduce peanuts,
you know, in the first four to six months of life.
So we're not talking about actual peanuts because kids that
age canny peanuts, they'll choke on them. You don't want
to give peanut butter, it's too thick and they can
actually choke on that as well. But when you take,
you know, a tea spoon or two of peanut butter
and mix it in with formula at that age, it
(03:58):
significantly reduces the rest. So it's something you want to
talk about to your pediatric about because it depends on
your level of risk. Like a kid with severe eggzema,
you probably want to do that kid in the office
for the first time he eats peanuts so that you
can be observed. But for mild ezema or no risk factors,
definitely at home it's safe to introduce peanut into the diet.
(04:22):
And they say about two grams of peanut protein, which
is about two tea spoons that you would put in
and mix it in with formula and thin it out
a little bit.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
Okay, So you don't take the peanut butter and rub
it on the gums like you do with your dog
just to enjoy looking at your dog dealing with it.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Yeah, no, And actually I'm glad you brought that up.
With skin exposure, like when you're exposed for the first
time through skin to any of these allergens that actually
amps up. So if you did rub peanut butter on
the eggzema, for example, I don't know who would do that.
That would actually ramp up your peanut allergy and make
it worse. So it's the important part is ingesting it.
(05:03):
You have to ingest it and not just have skin contact.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
All right, And a story about nitrous oxide surging among
young people here in California. Now, I must tell you
that nitrous oxide is the one one thing I have
not ingested in my history of ingesting stuff like this,
and I don't know, Yeah, I don't know how I
(05:28):
miss that because I've done everything else. But nitrous has
been around for a long long time and all of
a sudden it's coming back. So tell us about that one.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Yeah, So nitrous oxide is a cast that that kids inhale.
You can either do it by you know, they buy
the whipped cream and inhale a little bit of it
by inhaling without tipping the can over and then you
can get the nitrous oxide off the can. Or they're
just buying actual canisters of a metrosoctide like what you
(06:03):
use in cooking when you can, you have a device
that you can plug that canister in to create whipped
cream and things like that. And then they even have
large like two to three liters tanks that you can
buy for food use, and kids are doing all of those.
So you know, when you see kids with these little
canisters or with balloons, because they'll fill a balloon with
it to inhale later, you know, you should be asking
(06:25):
questions because that's not They're not going to clown school.
They are are actually probably huffing, is what it's called.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
Yeah, so what are the questions? Hey, how does that
feel like? Is it better than, for example, a high
with something else? Is it good stuff? Are those the questions?
Speaker 2 (06:43):
I mean essentially, yeah, no, that's not the questions. But
you know, I think a lot of parents are oblivious
to this, Like a lot of parents don't know about
this at all. And it's true that even doctors. It's
not something that's routinely asked in a doctor's office. We
might ask if you smoke or if you drink, but
we don't ask if you huff, you know, And and
so it's a it's a good question to add to
(07:03):
the list because it is going up significantly in number,
and it has bad effects. And when you do it chronically,
you know what happens is it actually and activates vitamin
B twelve and also another chemical called methyl melonic acid.
And what that does is the covering of your nerves
(07:25):
are maintained by these by VITAM twelve.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
You end up.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Demiliinating your nerves and having serious, chronic, lifelong nerve problems.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
Wow, it's no small deal, okay. And then lastly, marijuana.
That's one of the products that I have ingested many, many,
many many times. No longer, by the way, It's been
a bunch of years since I've done that. And the
question is can marijuana, which of course is now legal,
can marijuana really help you sleep? I thought listening to
(07:56):
this show really help you sleep, but I guess not.
So let's talk about marw Wanna and sleep.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
Yeah, so marijuana. A lot of people believe that marijuana
helps them sleep. There's even marijuana company sponsor studies that
show that marijuana helps you sleep. But the way they
do the study is they just ask the person, you know,
they give them some marijuana, they let them sleep, and
they had you sleep and they wake up and they say,
I slept great, But when you do the actual studies
where you observe their sleep patterns, you look at those
(08:24):
stages of sleep, and you look at it over time
you realize that marijuana is a massive sleep disruptor. So
it may make you feel like you're sleeping better, but
if you did that more than a few days in
a row, you would not feel rested because you're not
actually getting the rest stage of sleep. It completely trashes
REM sleep. So and REM sleep is that rapid eye
(08:44):
movement sleep when you're dreaming, but it's also when your
brain clears out all the toxins and when it kind
of recuperates. That's the recuperative part of sleep. And you're
eliminating that part of sleep.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
Wow, that sounds like fun. All right, Jim, thank you always,
great news. We will catch you next Wednesday. You have
a good win and as always, go kill somebody today please, Okay,
take care
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