December 17, 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 poor sleep triggering a vicious cycle your brain can’t break, Psilocybin breaking depressive cycles by rewiring the brain, and a weight loss strategy that is 5x more effective than Ozempic.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Okay, as we always do say mornings, it's a medical
news segment with doctor Jim Kinney, chief medical officer for
Dignity Saint Mary Medical Center in Long Beach, and a
board certified.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Er doc who has wonderful stories to talk about in
the er.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
Morning Jim, Morning Bill.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
Okay, let's get right to it because we have a
lot to talk about. Poor sleep con trigger a vicious
cycle that your brain simply can't break. Most of us
do have poor sleep in the sense we wake up,
wake up in the morning. During the night, I always
wake up to pee, and most people do once in
a great while. I'll sleep through the night, and then
(00:44):
of course I'll notice that I have very wet sheets
because I have wet the bed.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
What happens and what is poor sleep? Right?
Speaker 3 (00:52):
So, I mean lots of people wake up through the night.
That's not normal to go through cycles in our sleep
deep sleep and then light or sleep the later and
they eat. In the sleep cycles, we get rem sleep,
and that's when your your brain actually gets to kind
of clean out the toxins and everything else. So you know,
it's it's not unusual to wake up, but when you
(01:14):
wake up unrested and sleepy and tired. That's your best
indicator that you got poor sleep. And what this really
shows is there's a link between mental health. You know,
how you feel, how you're doing, and sleep. Uh And
and it's been well documented right that that lack of
sleep or poor sleep results in mental health issues and
(01:37):
vice versa. Mental health issues seem to be associated with
poor sleep. So we don't know, you know, chicken in
the egg, probably both are impacting each other. But sleep
is that important that you know you need to get
that to maintain good mental health. The problem is that
not everybody does that. There's a lot of issues that
feed into sleep, like whether you're getting you know, bright
(01:59):
lights in your eyes before at bedtime when you're trying
to go to sleep, a lot of people are scrolling
on their phone checking things, really amping up their anxiety
and not producing melatonin. This shuts off your pineal gland
when you see bright light, and that's the gland in
your brain that produces melatonin.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
When you talk about poor sleep, are you supposed to
wake up refreshed and ready to go and bounding out
of bed Because I know very few people that do that.
I mean every morning I wake up sometimes your alarm
goes off. Usually I wake up before the alarm and
it takes me about an hour to kick in and
(02:38):
be normal.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
That has to be what happens to most people. Yeah,
it is.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
That's about right. You know, you wake up and your
cortisol level and you're in the temperature kind of what
tends to wake you up. So if you can control
your environment, ideally you go to bed with the room
cooler and darker, and then in the morning when you
wake up, you should be getting sunlight in the room
or light, and then you also get a warmer temperature,
(03:07):
and those two together will trigger all the natural kind
of things in your body to wake you up. And
then our brains are set to see that morning lighting.
You know that low in the horizon, the wavelengths of
light that come across on the low horizon, early morning light,
those are actually set to wake you up. So if
you can get outside and see some of that, this
(03:29):
will help you wake up, and then your cortisol level
starts to rise, and that's what and you want that
early morning high elevation of cortisol so that you wake
up in the morning and then all day long that
tends to drop off. And you want it to be
low at night. And then again, that's why behaviors that
spike your cortisol at night are not good, because then
(03:50):
you're not gonna be able to go to sleep.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
So people will work on night shifts, and those of
us here in this show who have no chance of
waking up to light other than artificial light, we are,
I won't say in trouble, but.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Part of this vicious cycle. Is that fair to say?
Speaker 3 (04:11):
Yeah? Absolutely, shift workers and I was one for many,
many years. You know, it definitely attacts your health. It
affects your mental health, your physical health, risk factors for
cardiovascular disease and everything else. But you can mitigate it
by doing certain things. And if you're going to adjust
your timing of when you sleep, you can do that
again by getting artificial lights that simulate that morning light
(04:37):
and then avoiding light in your eyes in the evening.
A lot of people wear those blue blocker lights and
things like that. If you're going to have to be
up and about when it's when it's bright light or
sunny just before you go to bed, wearing those kind
of devices will help reduce those those wavelength of light
that stop the production of melatonin and then don't allow
(04:57):
you to go to sleep. So it takes real intention.
And if you're going to try and alter your sleep
cycle away from the normal daily variations of light and
sun and everybody else being awake and asleep, you're going
to have to do it very intentionally.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Got it, Jim. Over the years, and we've been talking
for decades. Now we're talking about the magic bullet for
weight loss, and it looks like we're pretty close. If not,
we're there with the GP GLP one drugs. Now. I'm
reading what you have written as a topic. There is
(05:32):
a strategy that is five times more effective than just
simply taking the drug.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
And a lot of people want to know about that one.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
Yeah, so okay, I don't know that that's not exactly
what it is. So here's the deal. Glts have a place.
They are very effective in helping people lose weight. And
in a study environment, you know, people are losing like
twenty percent of their body weight, but then in real
life they seem to be losing closer to five or
(06:02):
six percent of their body weight. And that's because it's
you know, you're not getting all the support of a study.
And over time, either people stop taking it or you know,
it plateaus and it stops working for them. So it
is an effective strategy, but long term it doesn't seem
to be as effective as at the weight loss surgery itself.
(06:24):
So either the gastric sleeve or the gastric bypass surgery,
those are lifelong commitment. So now as you know, because
you've done this, it changes your body forever, so there's
no option to go back and overall, and again this
study was was presented at a bariatric surgery conference, so
(06:45):
definitely this is more there's some bias here potentially, but
what they showed was long term loss from gas bypass
surgery is about twenty five percent of your body weight
and GLPS it's about five percent. Where they're getting the
five times more effective. But the real answer is there's
probably a strategy in between where maybe you use the
(07:07):
GLPS at first, see how they do, and if you're
able to maintain that weight loss, then you keep going
with GLPS. If not, then you need to go potentially
to weight loss surgery and re law surgery. By the way,
is it's still not you know, it should be at
this point considered kind of a standard treatment for obesity,
and it still really is just kind of a boutique service.
(07:29):
You know that it shouldn't be that. It just like
the GLPS, where we recognize obesity as a serious health
problem and we address it using all the tools that
we have.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Well, what do you call it?
Speaker 1 (07:42):
Weight loss surgery? And I had the ruin why? And
I weighed I was.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
Three hundred and ten pounds.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
And for those people that want to see what I
looked like at three hundred and ten pounds, that was
when I had the worst television show in the history
of mankind. And you can go to YouTube and look
it up Bill Handle judge for yourself, and you'll see
a couple of photos where I just I'm unrecognizable, but
(08:08):
I had the ruin why. I had the the most
I won't say I guess it's fair to say the
most effective, but certainly the most invasive part of the
weight loss surgery.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
And it worked.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
I mean I went down and I've kept the weight
off for all those years. And to your point, and
we only have a second If it is this effective
and long term, it's going to save the insurance company
buckets of money. With diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Why is
it not now simply part of normal treatment that the
(08:44):
insurance companies pick up.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
Yeah, they do pick it up, so it is covered.
And that's what I'm saying is it is still looked
at as an extreme, you know, extreme intervention. And that's
the problem is the surgeries have gotten better, Like you said,
we do less invasive surgeries and it's not as extreme,
and it shouldn't be looked at as the last resort.
It should be looked at as an effective treatment for
obesity that hasn't resolved with diet and exercise.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
All right, all right, Jim, we'll talk again next week
as we always do on a Wednesday.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
You have a good win. Take care, all right, Take
care
Okay, as we always do say mornings, it's a medical
news segment with doctor Jim Kinney, chief medical officer for
Dignity Saint Mary Medical Center in Long Beach, and a
board certified.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Er doc who has wonderful stories to talk about in
the er.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
Morning Jim, Morning Bill.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
Okay, let's get right to it because we have a
lot to talk about. Poor sleep con trigger a vicious
cycle that your brain simply can't break. Most of us
do have poor sleep in the sense we wake up,
wake up in the morning. During the night, I always
wake up to pee, and most people do once in
a great while. I'll sleep through the night, and then
(00:44):
of course I'll notice that I have very wet sheets
because I have wet the bed.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
What happens and what is poor sleep? Right?
Speaker 3 (00:52):
So, I mean lots of people wake up through the night.
That's not normal to go through cycles in our sleep
deep sleep and then light or sleep the later and
they eat. In the sleep cycles, we get rem sleep,
and that's when your your brain actually gets to kind
of clean out the toxins and everything else. So you know,
it's it's not unusual to wake up, but when you
(01:14):
wake up unrested and sleepy and tired. That's your best
indicator that you got poor sleep. And what this really
shows is there's a link between mental health. You know,
how you feel, how you're doing, and sleep. Uh And
and it's been well documented right that that lack of
sleep or poor sleep results in mental health issues and
(01:37):
vice versa. Mental health issues seem to be associated with
poor sleep. So we don't know, you know, chicken in
the egg, probably both are impacting each other. But sleep
is that important that you know you need to get
that to maintain good mental health. The problem is that
not everybody does that. There's a lot of issues that
feed into sleep, like whether you're getting you know, bright
(01:59):
lights in your eyes before at bedtime when you're trying
to go to sleep, a lot of people are scrolling
on their phone checking things, really amping up their anxiety
and not producing melatonin. This shuts off your pineal gland
when you see bright light, and that's the gland in
your brain that produces melatonin.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
When you talk about poor sleep, are you supposed to
wake up refreshed and ready to go and bounding out
of bed Because I know very few people that do that.
I mean every morning I wake up sometimes your alarm
goes off. Usually I wake up before the alarm and
it takes me about an hour to kick in and
(02:38):
be normal.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
That has to be what happens to most people. Yeah,
it is.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
That's about right. You know, you wake up and your
cortisol level and you're in the temperature kind of what
tends to wake you up. So if you can control
your environment, ideally you go to bed with the room
cooler and darker, and then in the morning when you
wake up, you should be getting sunlight in the room
or light, and then you also get a warmer temperature,
(03:07):
and those two together will trigger all the natural kind
of things in your body to wake you up. And
then our brains are set to see that morning lighting.
You know that low in the horizon, the wavelengths of
light that come across on the low horizon, early morning light,
those are actually set to wake you up. So if
you can get outside and see some of that, this
(03:29):
will help you wake up, and then your cortisol level
starts to rise, and that's what and you want that
early morning high elevation of cortisol so that you wake
up in the morning and then all day long that
tends to drop off. And you want it to be
low at night. And then again, that's why behaviors that
spike your cortisol at night are not good, because then
(03:50):
you're not gonna be able to go to sleep.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
So people will work on night shifts, and those of
us here in this show who have no chance of
waking up to light other than artificial light, we are,
I won't say in trouble, but.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Part of this vicious cycle. Is that fair to say?
Speaker 3 (04:11):
Yeah? Absolutely, shift workers and I was one for many,
many years. You know, it definitely attacts your health. It
affects your mental health, your physical health, risk factors for
cardiovascular disease and everything else. But you can mitigate it
by doing certain things. And if you're going to adjust
your timing of when you sleep, you can do that
again by getting artificial lights that simulate that morning light
(04:37):
and then avoiding light in your eyes in the evening.
A lot of people wear those blue blocker lights and
things like that. If you're going to have to be
up and about when it's when it's bright light or
sunny just before you go to bed, wearing those kind
of devices will help reduce those those wavelength of light
that stop the production of melatonin and then don't allow
(04:57):
you to go to sleep. So it takes real intention.
And if you're going to try and alter your sleep
cycle away from the normal daily variations of light and
sun and everybody else being awake and asleep, you're going
to have to do it very intentionally.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Got it, Jim. Over the years, and we've been talking
for decades. Now we're talking about the magic bullet for
weight loss, and it looks like we're pretty close. If not,
we're there with the GP GLP one drugs. Now. I'm
reading what you have written as a topic. There is
(05:32):
a strategy that is five times more effective than just
simply taking the drug.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
And a lot of people want to know about that one.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
Yeah, so okay, I don't know that that's not exactly
what it is. So here's the deal. Glts have a place.
They are very effective in helping people lose weight. And
in a study environment, you know, people are losing like
twenty percent of their body weight, but then in real
life they seem to be losing closer to five or
(06:02):
six percent of their body weight. And that's because it's
you know, you're not getting all the support of a study.
And over time, either people stop taking it or you know,
it plateaus and it stops working for them. So it
is an effective strategy, but long term it doesn't seem
to be as effective as at the weight loss surgery itself.
(06:24):
So either the gastric sleeve or the gastric bypass surgery,
those are lifelong commitment. So now as you know, because
you've done this, it changes your body forever, so there's
no option to go back and overall, and again this
study was was presented at a bariatric surgery conference, so
(06:45):
definitely this is more there's some bias here potentially, but
what they showed was long term loss from gas bypass
surgery is about twenty five percent of your body weight
and GLPS it's about five percent. Where they're getting the
five times more effective. But the real answer is there's
probably a strategy in between where maybe you use the
(07:07):
GLPS at first, see how they do, and if you're
able to maintain that weight loss, then you keep going
with GLPS. If not, then you need to go potentially
to weight loss surgery and re law surgery. By the way,
is it's still not you know, it should be at
this point considered kind of a standard treatment for obesity,
and it still really is just kind of a boutique service.
(07:29):
You know that it shouldn't be that. It just like
the GLPS, where we recognize obesity as a serious health
problem and we address it using all the tools that
we have.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Well, what do you call it?
Speaker 1 (07:42):
Weight loss surgery? And I had the ruin why? And
I weighed I was.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
Three hundred and ten pounds.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
And for those people that want to see what I
looked like at three hundred and ten pounds, that was
when I had the worst television show in the history
of mankind. And you can go to YouTube and look
it up Bill Handle judge for yourself, and you'll see
a couple of photos where I just I'm unrecognizable, but
(08:08):
I had the ruin why. I had the the most
I won't say I guess it's fair to say the
most effective, but certainly the most invasive part of the
weight loss surgery.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
And it worked.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
I mean I went down and I've kept the weight
off for all those years. And to your point, and
we only have a second If it is this effective
and long term, it's going to save the insurance company
buckets of money. With diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Why is
it not now simply part of normal treatment that the
(08:44):
insurance companies pick up.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
Yeah, they do pick it up, so it is covered.
And that's what I'm saying is it is still looked
at as an extreme, you know, extreme intervention. And that's
the problem is the surgeries have gotten better, Like you said,
we do less invasive surgeries and it's not as extreme,
and it shouldn't be looked at as the last resort.
It should be looked at as an effective treatment for
obesity that hasn't resolved with diet and exercise.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
All right, all right, Jim, we'll talk again next week
as we always do on a Wednesday.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
You have a good win. Take care, all right, Take
care
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