December 3, 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 tattoo ink moving through the body, killing immune cells and weakening vaccine response, and men with ‘beer bellies’ may face serious heart damage even if they aren’t overweight.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Time for doctor Jim Keeney, chief medical officer for Dignity
Saint Mary Medical Center in Long Beach, and Jim, good morning.
Oh he just dropped out. Okay, we'll call back, but
I want to give a little backstory before he joins us.
It was very important for me to have my daughters
not get tattoos. Matter of fact, that was part of
(00:21):
my trust, my trust that literally said you will not
get tattoos. If you get a tattoo, you are disinherited.
And so they didn't get tattoos almost. No, they didn't
until a couple of years ago where Barbera said, can
I get one little tiny tattoo? I said, okay, the
(00:45):
damn broke open. Now she is tatted up all over
the place. Now I feel differently because Lindsey when I
met her and even now is pretty tatted up. Neil
is fairly tatted Okay, So, Jim, I don't know if
(01:05):
you've heard about everybody I know, while everybody Neil and
my daughter Barbara pretty tatted up. But there is a
story out there about tattoo ink and that is not
good news. What's going on?
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Yeah, the tattoo inc Moves, it doesn't stay put. And
I'm actually surprised to how common mice. You know, how
consistent mice lymphatic systems are two ours. Because we knew this.
I mean, when you dissect bodies in medical school, if
they had tattoos, a lot of times you'll find tattoo
ink in the actual lymph node. So you know, we
(01:44):
knew this about humans, and so they did this in mice.
It turns out that the ink also moves in mice.
And so what they looked at in this study was
what impact does it have on immune response, especially to vaccinations.
So the headline was that it read use the vaccinations.
That's actually wrong for the study. It does not. It
(02:05):
reduces the response to some vaccines and increases the response
to others. So you know what happens is they inject
They used covid vaccine and they also used flu vaccine
in the cod In the flu vaccine, we're injecting the
actual you know, the virus itself. So if your immune
systems all ramped up from tattoo ink, then it actually
(02:28):
responds better and improves the response. In the covid vaccine,
we're injecting RNA that makes a spike protein of the
virus that you're trying to prevent, and then your body
of a response to that, and in that case it
reduced the efficacy of the of the vaccine itself. But
I mean, in this study they mentioned it. And in
(02:49):
the past we've also known that that tattoos increased your
risk of lymphoma. You know, we don't know why exactly,
but they seem to be associated with that.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Confused, either vaccines are good for you or they're bad.
I mean, tattoos are either good for you or they're
bad for you. And is it both simultaneously.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Well, I mean, so yeah, I wouldn't recommend getting a
tattoo just so that your blue vaccine has a better
response rate. Now, but it is a mixed study here,
I mean, it doesn't show that it's you know that
it across the board reduces the response to vaccines. It
just reduces the response to COVID vaccine. So of course
(03:30):
you should try to avoid trying to get a vaccination,
especially soon after you've had a tattoo. You want to,
you know, you'd want to try and get your vaccine
first if you're going to get a COVID vaccine. Otherwise, yeah,
there's you know, the tattoos in general, you know, and
it brings up a lot of these issues about the lymphoma,
about the skin cancer, about the risk of tattooing. I mean,
(03:51):
it's not regulated, it's well, it is as a cosmetic
just like what we measure how we put things on
your skin. If you don't have a skin action to
it when it's put on your skin. The FDA approves
these materials, so they don't actually approve anything for injection into.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
All Right, two questions. Do you do you have any tattoos?
Speaker 2 (04:13):
No, I don't have any.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
Okay, would you be concerned about getting a tattoo?
Speaker 2 (04:22):
I guess you know. You weigh the risk increased versus
the benefit, and I probably would never get a massive tattoo,
but I here the tattoo, the higher the risk. Right,
So I wanted to put somebody's initials on my body
or something like that, I can't imagine that either. But
if I did, I probably would still do it a
tiny little tattoo, but anything big I'd be more concerned about.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
Yeah, I'm considering a tattoo on my arm, and it
would say this is not a tattoo. That would just
be Neil Neil is so tattooed that I'm not overly tattooed,
but yes, I do have some. I have seen Neil naked.
Let me tell you tattoos are well, then you're gonna
(05:05):
go into that with Neil's and my daughters at the
tattoos hands. Yeah. Well, you know you thought, here's the
problem is you ran out of space because you were putting.
I come from Tuscaloosa, Alabama, across you know where, and
it just didn't work. Okay, we're gonna come back, Jim.
Topic number two. Men with beer bellies can face pretty
(05:29):
serious heart damage. I don't want to mention any names Neil,
but even if they aren't overweight, and Neil is both
no question about it and doesn't drink beer, which is
fascinating much not much. Yeah, So, first of all, Jim,
I want to talk about how big is a beer
belly before it gets dangerous. I know it's kind of
(05:51):
you know, you can't be specific, but are we talking
about those big beer bellies or even a little one.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Yeah, we're talking about forty and t waste. You know,
that's that's kind of the cutoff where people start getting
into the risk zone. That's just a general overall big
not very specific. This study though, is looking at the
waste to hip ratio. Right, So you know, if you
measure your hips at the absolute widest part and then
(06:19):
you measure your gut, the gut should be about ninety
percent of the hip size, right, so about ten percent
less than your hips. For a lot of people that
gut hangs over right, and the gut is bigger than hips.
That's a problem and that that results in serious heart issues.
So and this is we missed this with BMI and weight. Remember,
(06:41):
weight is kind of the crudest you can just get
on a scale and get your weight. BMI is a calculation.
It's a little more accurate as to whether you have
too much weight on your body. But where the weight
is really matters. And having it around your organs, you know,
centrally located inside your gut, around your organs that's metabolically active,
that is, it produces inflammatory cyto kinds they call them,
(07:05):
inflammatory things that come out into your body and and
put stress on your body and your heart and then
just the pumping through there. For some reason, it puts
a strain on the heart. And you can get what
happens is the heart gets the muscle gets thickened, the
chambers get smaller, and we call that cardiomyopathy or hypertrophic cardiomiopathy.
(07:25):
It's usually associated with high blood pressure. But what we're
saying here is, look, when you have a patient with
the big gut to waste ratio, you need to look
into maybe that's the problem and they need to start
losing some of that that gut fat.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
Yeah. Is that also known is Gunlop's disease. That's when
you're that's when your stomach gun lop over your belt.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Yeah, yeah, so it's I mean, and this is the
thing is when we get an ultrasound of the heart,
you know, you can we look at ejection fraction, at
how good your heart's functioning. That's it squeezes out blood,
and we look at how much of the blood it
ejects out of the heart. And this actually shows preserved
ejection fractionres it's cardiomyopathy with preserved ejection fracture hypertrophic.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
Anyway, when when you see those guys with big beer bellies,
as you noticed it is it, I mean, are you
looking as someone that is in real trouble relative to
the heart disease?
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Yes, yeah, this is a it's a real problem and
they probably are going to suffer from heart failure if
they live long enough. And uh, and so it's something
that needs to be corrected.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
And there are a lot of people that have low
level of heart failure that aren't even aware of it.
They just think that they have decreased exercise tolerance. So
if you're getting winded easily when you're when you're exercising
or working out, or you go up one flight of
stairs and you're winded, you probably should see your doctor
and look into what you can do to fix that.
That's not normal.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
All right, Jim, we'll talking in next week as we
always do. Uh, take care and uh all right, take care.
Time for doctor Jim Keeney, chief medical officer for Dignity
Saint Mary Medical Center in Long Beach, and Jim, good morning.
Oh he just dropped out. Okay, we'll call back, but
I want to give a little backstory before he joins us.
It was very important for me to have my daughters
not get tattoos. Matter of fact, that was part of
(00:21):
my trust, my trust that literally said you will not
get tattoos. If you get a tattoo, you are disinherited.
And so they didn't get tattoos almost. No, they didn't
until a couple of years ago where Barbera said, can
I get one little tiny tattoo? I said, okay, the
(00:45):
damn broke open. Now she is tatted up all over
the place. Now I feel differently because Lindsey when I
met her and even now is pretty tatted up. Neil
is fairly tatted Okay, So, Jim, I don't know if
(01:05):
you've heard about everybody I know, while everybody Neil and
my daughter Barbara pretty tatted up. But there is a
story out there about tattoo ink and that is not
good news. What's going on?
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Yeah, the tattoo inc Moves, it doesn't stay put. And
I'm actually surprised to how common mice. You know, how
consistent mice lymphatic systems are two ours. Because we knew this.
I mean, when you dissect bodies in medical school, if
they had tattoos, a lot of times you'll find tattoo
ink in the actual lymph node. So you know, we
(01:44):
knew this about humans, and so they did this in mice.
It turns out that the ink also moves in mice.
And so what they looked at in this study was
what impact does it have on immune response, especially to vaccinations.
So the headline was that it read use the vaccinations.
That's actually wrong for the study. It does not. It
(02:05):
reduces the response to some vaccines and increases the response
to others. So you know what happens is they inject
They used covid vaccine and they also used flu vaccine
in the cod In the flu vaccine, we're injecting the
actual you know, the virus itself. So if your immune
systems all ramped up from tattoo ink, then it actually
(02:28):
responds better and improves the response. In the covid vaccine,
we're injecting RNA that makes a spike protein of the
virus that you're trying to prevent, and then your body
of a response to that, and in that case it
reduced the efficacy of the of the vaccine itself. But
I mean, in this study they mentioned it. And in
(02:49):
the past we've also known that that tattoos increased your
risk of lymphoma. You know, we don't know why exactly,
but they seem to be associated with that.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Confused, either vaccines are good for you or they're bad.
I mean, tattoos are either good for you or they're
bad for you. And is it both simultaneously.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Well, I mean, so yeah, I wouldn't recommend getting a
tattoo just so that your blue vaccine has a better
response rate. Now, but it is a mixed study here,
I mean, it doesn't show that it's you know that
it across the board reduces the response to vaccines. It
just reduces the response to COVID vaccine. So of course
(03:30):
you should try to avoid trying to get a vaccination,
especially soon after you've had a tattoo. You want to,
you know, you'd want to try and get your vaccine
first if you're going to get a COVID vaccine. Otherwise, yeah,
there's you know, the tattoos in general, you know, and
it brings up a lot of these issues about the lymphoma,
about the skin cancer, about the risk of tattooing. I mean,
(03:51):
it's not regulated, it's well, it is as a cosmetic
just like what we measure how we put things on
your skin. If you don't have a skin action to
it when it's put on your skin. The FDA approves
these materials, so they don't actually approve anything for injection into.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
All Right, two questions. Do you do you have any tattoos?
Speaker 2 (04:13):
No, I don't have any.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
Okay, would you be concerned about getting a tattoo?
Speaker 2 (04:22):
I guess you know. You weigh the risk increased versus
the benefit, and I probably would never get a massive tattoo,
but I here the tattoo, the higher the risk. Right,
So I wanted to put somebody's initials on my body
or something like that, I can't imagine that either. But
if I did, I probably would still do it a
tiny little tattoo, but anything big I'd be more concerned about.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
Yeah, I'm considering a tattoo on my arm, and it
would say this is not a tattoo. That would just
be Neil Neil is so tattooed that I'm not overly tattooed,
but yes, I do have some. I have seen Neil naked.
Let me tell you tattoos are well, then you're gonna
(05:05):
go into that with Neil's and my daughters at the
tattoos hands. Yeah. Well, you know you thought, here's the
problem is you ran out of space because you were putting.
I come from Tuscaloosa, Alabama, across you know where, and
it just didn't work. Okay, we're gonna come back, Jim.
Topic number two. Men with beer bellies can face pretty
(05:29):
serious heart damage. I don't want to mention any names Neil,
but even if they aren't overweight, and Neil is both
no question about it and doesn't drink beer, which is
fascinating much not much. Yeah, So, first of all, Jim,
I want to talk about how big is a beer
belly before it gets dangerous. I know it's kind of
(05:51):
you know, you can't be specific, but are we talking
about those big beer bellies or even a little one.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Yeah, we're talking about forty and t waste. You know,
that's that's kind of the cutoff where people start getting
into the risk zone. That's just a general overall big
not very specific. This study though, is looking at the
waste to hip ratio. Right, So you know, if you
measure your hips at the absolute widest part and then
(06:19):
you measure your gut, the gut should be about ninety
percent of the hip size, right, so about ten percent
less than your hips. For a lot of people that
gut hangs over right, and the gut is bigger than hips.
That's a problem and that that results in serious heart issues.
So and this is we missed this with BMI and weight. Remember,
(06:41):
weight is kind of the crudest you can just get
on a scale and get your weight. BMI is a calculation.
It's a little more accurate as to whether you have
too much weight on your body. But where the weight
is really matters. And having it around your organs, you know,
centrally located inside your gut, around your organs that's metabolically active,
that is, it produces inflammatory cyto kinds they call them,
(07:05):
inflammatory things that come out into your body and and
put stress on your body and your heart and then
just the pumping through there. For some reason, it puts
a strain on the heart. And you can get what
happens is the heart gets the muscle gets thickened, the
chambers get smaller, and we call that cardiomyopathy or hypertrophic cardiomiopathy.
(07:25):
It's usually associated with high blood pressure. But what we're
saying here is, look, when you have a patient with
the big gut to waste ratio, you need to look
into maybe that's the problem and they need to start
losing some of that that gut fat.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
Yeah. Is that also known is Gunlop's disease. That's when
you're that's when your stomach gun lop over your belt.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Yeah, yeah, so it's I mean, and this is the
thing is when we get an ultrasound of the heart,
you know, you can we look at ejection fraction, at
how good your heart's functioning. That's it squeezes out blood,
and we look at how much of the blood it
ejects out of the heart. And this actually shows preserved
ejection fractionres it's cardiomyopathy with preserved ejection fracture hypertrophic.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
Anyway, when when you see those guys with big beer bellies,
as you noticed it is it, I mean, are you
looking as someone that is in real trouble relative to
the heart disease?
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Yes, yeah, this is a it's a real problem and
they probably are going to suffer from heart failure if
they live long enough. And uh, and so it's something
that needs to be corrected.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
And there are a lot of people that have low
level of heart failure that aren't even aware of it.
They just think that they have decreased exercise tolerance. So
if you're getting winded easily when you're when you're exercising
or working out, or you go up one flight of
stairs and you're winded, you probably should see your doctor
and look into what you can do to fix that.
That's not normal.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
All right, Jim, we'll talking in next week as we
always do. Uh, take care and uh all right, take care.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Are You A Charlotte?
In 1997, actress Kristin Davis’ life was forever changed when she took on the role of Charlotte York in Sex and the City. As we watched Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte navigate relationships in NYC, the show helped push once unacceptable conversation topics out of the shadows and altered the narrative around women and sex. We all saw ourselves in them as they searched for fulfillment in life, sex and friendships. Now, Kristin Davis wants to connect with you, the fans, and share untold stories and all the behind the scenes. Together, with Kristin and special guests, what will begin with Sex and the City will evolve into talks about themes that are still so relevant today. "Are you a Charlotte?" is much more than just rewatching this beloved show, it brings the past and the present together as we talk with heart, humor and of course some optimism.
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.