Fixing the Health Care System with Diet & Lifestyle!

welcome to the plant free MD podcast with Dr Anthony chafee where we discuss diet and nutrition and how this affects health and chronic disease and show you how you can use this to optimize your health and happiness both mentally and physically all right hello everyone it's Dr Anthony Chaffey vegan here with another episode of the plan for you MD and today I have a very special guest my good friend Olivia kwaja who is one of the board members of the Public Health commission in the UK where I will be speaking at their annual conference over in Sheffield later on in the month Olivia thank you so much for coming on thank you for having me yeah you're very welcome so uh could you tell us a bit about yourself and and what you do for people who don't know you yeah absolutely so um my background is very much outside of the nutritional World um I started my career in the business world I was there for over 20 years worked for a couple of big recognizable brands in the UK and very much enjoyed it loved all the challenge and the stimulation but I did get to the point where I felt like I was I was getting pretty burned out by it and it was a few years after having looked after my parents for about a decade and they were both unfortunately passed away from from a couple of diseases Alzheimer's and type 2 diabetes between them so it got to the point where I felt like I needed to take some time out of work um for personal reasons and to get some perspective and and one of the things I thought I would do while I was off was to look into these diseases that I felt I had yeah I was inevitably gonna get because they're hereditary but I thought maybe I'd find some something that would de-risk my chances of getting them and um and thought I would you know find out what that was and maybe have a few more blueberries a week or maybe I'll go plant-based or who knows but I was pretty open-minded about it and very I've always already was healthy or what should I say ate real food for the most part but there was a lot of mixed mixture of different macronutrients in there um so I was really surprised when I started uh investigating and researching and going onto YouTube really looking not for weight loss necessarily but just for um you know how to prevent myself getting Alzheimer's I think was what I Googled to find out fairly quickly that there was quite a school of thought that none of that had to be inevitable and and that you can pretty much eliminate the risk not just reduce it by changing the way that you eat and so I remember doing a run I used to run every single day for seven miles um and that's when I did a lot of my research I remember Sprint finishing on my run one day and hearing um Dr Eric Berg say the sentence uh good luck burning fat if you've got sugar in your blood and and it really hit me like a ton of bricks because I suddenly realized I totally misunderstood the concept of of fat burning and how it worked I thought it was all about you know how much you eat in the day and there's someone calculating it sitting somewhere and then and then you either lose weight you don't um and you know I thought well I've just had a massive smoothie before my run of oats and bananas and is that why you know I don't need to wait so this is all kind of coming together and this realization of of how the body worked and and so I decided to move on to um onto a low-carb ketogenic diet I was very successful on that for a couple of years and then over the last year I moved over to carnivore and had even even more success with that which has been which has been really great um but yeah it really hit me hard to know that these diseases that I I guess you know in a way I trusted that the right experts in the right places and the right authorities will have done the right research to have the confidence to tell people what the right way is to eat and I trusted in that system and it really you know it really did frustrate me that that I had to go through a period of my own research to actually find out that all of it was totally wrong and coming from a you know a corporate background I couldn't really reconcile that because you know in the corporate world you have you know very strict standards that you have to stick to you know there's things that you know you also get away with but you when you've got responsibilities and you have to communicate things to the consumer you you have to communicate them and there's no there's no cutting Corners um you know whether it's terms and conditions or whatever it might be you have to do what you have to do um and so you know it it just felt like such a disparity of standards that you know on the one hand we're held up to such high standards in a kind of a corporate environment and yet in the environment where the government's responsible for giving us dietary advice that that was you know so lacking in in any real evidence any real um annual science so so it felt like maybe I could use my skills which always in strategy and marketing as my background towards this area of nutrition which feels like it does need some um some help in trying to get these messages out and you know it's not unfortunately not happening by um by anyone putting a huge amount of money into it right now but luckily we've been able to have organizations that are going to help move that um move that forward so uh so yeah I've decided to get involved in a charity that can help with that and um and so I'm involved with the public health collaboration um which is a great charity in the UK it's helping people to understand more about about diet and the right way to eat so yeah so that's what brought me to this point hey guys just want to take a second to thank our sponsor at carnivore bar I don't promote many products because honestly all you need to be healthy is to just eat meat for those times that you're out hiking road tripping or stuck at work and you want nutritious snack that is just meat fat and salt if you want it the carnival bar is a great option so I like this product not because it's just pure meat but also because I want the carnivore Market to thrive as well and the more we support meat only products the more meat only products that will be available in the mainstream so if this sounds like something you'd like to get behind check it out using my discount code Anthony to get 10 off which also applies to subscriptions giving you 25 off total all right thanks guys okay I think that's the Public Health commission didn't I the public health collaboration if I misspoke I apologize um okay so can you can you tell us a bit about um phc and what what uh your guys Mission there is and what how we were trying to affect these changes yeah absolutely irrigation is it just really exists to help people understand the significance of the importance of their own metabolic health and for them to be able to grasp these um you know the and be empowered with the right tools and information to actually make the changes themselves and to feel empowered to take control of their own health and it really comes from a message of eating real food and maintaining um maintaining uh you know a diet where where you are eradicating seed oils and and synthetic substances of any kind processed foods uh and and understanding that that is your key to unlocking you know the the kind of the worry of all of these diseases out there that you think are hereditary and you think are unrelated and could all stem from different parts of your body that are you know not not speaking to each other but actually it's not the case and in a way it's a really good message because it's a really simple concept to understand that your metabolic health is what underpins so many different diseases that you probably are worried about and that you've seen people suffer from so you know it it becomes more feasible to actually to have some control over you know de-risking yourself if if there's just one solution to fixing that um so so yeah the public health collaboration are very much about helping people to to understand that message and to have the right tools and the right information to actually make those changes and we very much interface with both the public but also um and certainly more so in the past we interface a lot with the Healthcare Community and we're made up of a number of doctors and scientists who set the organization up about six years seven years ago and who have spent a lot of time working with within the Healthcare Community to make to make those changes so you might know Dr Unwin um who's uh he's reversed about I think 130 people's type 2 diabetes now in his own little GP practice in the north of England and um and Jen Unwin his his wife is a clinical psychologist who's pioneering the recognition of food addiction um being recognized by the World Health Organization so that people can get the right support when they struggle to to to to eat better because a lot of people try low carbon they say oh it wasn't for me because I needed to have whatever it is that I normally eat and it was too difficult and you know a lot of the time that's a food addiction that needs dealing with and people don't quite see it as an addiction so they don't really know how to get the right support and recognize it so yes the public health collaboration are doing a lot in that space as well um we have a lot of ongoing projects so we have a project called the lifestyle club which is a service we offer to our National Health Service which allows GPS to refer those who are pre-diabetic or diabetic onto a program where they get full coaching and support over a number of weeks to help bring their diabetes back into remission and that's a service that we that we are now scaling up we've been piloting it so that's a really great um a great part of PhD as well and the main event that we have each year is our our annual conference uh which we can talk about in a minute if you want but that's that's kind of roughly what the phc is is all about in a nutshell which is helping people with their metabolic health and helping them understand and take control of it yeah well that's great and so that's so primarily like a Grassroots sort of movement trying to get people educated and and have them affect their own changes on their own life but also working with with care providers to have them work with their patients and then educate their patients uh outwardly like that is that right absolutely yeah and most of the people who know about us right now are the Healthcare Community because so many the people involved in the phc as I said are dogs and scientists so they've kind of reached out to their networks and then more and more of their own Healthcare uh kind of colleagues have come along and spread the word that way through the Healthcare Community so whenever we do have events it does tend to be a lot of Healthcare Community supporters that we have attend and if you look on our social media it's again a lot of Healthcare Community um practitioners that are on there following us so that's and that's really really great um because we really believe that the education is going to come by combining both the Healthcare Community and the public because the public are really great at educating the Healthcare Community as well um sometimes they don't want to be educated but sometimes it's easier to hear it from the public and I don't know if you've ever heard um Dr unwin's story but the way that he came about realizing he'd been treating diabetes incorrectly was when a patient sat down and and told them that she was unimpressed with the way that he'd recommended she goes about treating diabetes and she was going to make a complaint about him and so he got really worried about that and he decided to sit up and pay attention so sometimes that's the way it has to go and that's the way around it goes so we think we have to tackle both both of those those audiences and they will in turn tackle each other um when they interact so so yes that's that's kind of where we've been but I think where we're heading is much more towards directly speaking to the public um and that's why we are going to kind of use our conference as a platform for that but but also know that we have to use things like social media and talk to people um directly and help them understand some of the messages that are coming through you know from from these these kind of Leading Edge doctors and scientists that is not making into the mainstream right now and and I really think about it as someone from a a marketing consumer marketing background there's been a um you know you know try and sometimes estimate how long it's going to take to get this message out because we have we have a slight well we have a huge disadvantage that we are not going to be funded we're not going to be we don't make any profit and we're not going to be gaining any contributions from any industry because we're not helping anyone make a profit in anything um so the way that we have to spread the messages through all the free channels that are at our disposal and um I compare it sometimes to my previous role where I had I was working for an energy company and we had to get to every single adult in the UK and we had to get them to understand a message take it on board change what they were doing um accept someone coming to the home to change a meter and then change the behavior to reduce their energy consumption and that was something we had to do for the whole every single adult the whole country and we are only just about getting there and it's been about 15 years and probably hundreds of millions Jesus of marketing spend like we'd spend about at least coming up to maybe 80 to 100 a year across the industry each supplier a central campaign body and that's with that and we had a deadline so we just had to throw throw money at it so you know if I think about that you know that the challenge of how many people were trying to reach is no different here it's and it's maybe it's a bit more because you've got kids as well um and we're asking them to do the same things we're asking people to take on a message and change what they they do in their lives maybe we've got a slight advantages that maybe people a bit more interested in nutrition than they are and you know their energy Supply maybe that's that's good but still you know you've also got addictive Foods pulling them in the other direction so so I don't know if that actually Nets out as a as a benefit necessarily but it still took and it still would take I would see it as a problem that would cost a hundreds hundreds of millions of pounds to to grasp and at least 10 to 15 years and if that's the benchmark then we are we are very much in a space where we've got quite the challenge to reach the public um and not least also because we'll they will be getting information in the opposite direction from the industries that will be trying to pull them into all kinds of um more exciting and you know um exhilarating um products that will will feed their addictions so I you know I can't quite underestimate uh how how large a challenge this is and and it's something that we'll have to to take effect but I think what's what's really positive about it is that is that there are so many experts out there and what you're hearing by the internet these days is so different to any other period in history where you could get access to this kind of information and there's a real power in that because unlike marketing marketing is always it comes across as a sales message and so people tend to ignore it whereas when you're listening to someone that you believe in and when you listen to someone that is telling you you know it doesn't have an interest in in profiting from what what they tell you then that message cuts through much more easily to people they take it on they believe it and they can make change as well so that's definitely I'd say in the favor of everyone in the space that's trying to to raise this message but you know as I said you can't overestimate The Challenge and the uphill struggle that it's going to be to to get to everyone but I'm really hopeful and the quicker that we can get up the Curve you know the more people will help sooner and the less suffering there will be but um yeah I kind of think of it as an adoption curve where you have I don't know if you know the kind of innovators early adopters early majority late majority and the lagards is what you call them at the end and the curve normally have the innovators you know there at the start and I sometimes think of them in this context as you know those that have the worst health issues that I've had to come to some had to come to some solution to try and they're trying anything and everything so that they can they can actually solve their health problem and they've ended up probably becoming the biggest Advocates of proponents early on because they've they've had this huge change in their life and they're so excited about it and they want to tell everyone about it and so they're the kind of the beginning of the curve and and then you've got those that are kind of the early early um majority who are um or early adopters who will be probably those who are I don't know interested in not necessarily needing to do the diet but interested in fitness and health and performance um a bit like maybe yourself Sean Baker others who have come to it for that reason um I certainly did as well and and they'll be kind of these early adopters but then the more we can get the quicker we can get through those chunks of the curve the quicker you'll get into that early majority and so um so yeah it's it's it's going to be a case of how quickly can we stop that curve because you don't want the curve to be long and flat you want to be as quick as possible otherwise you're dragging the whole thing out you know your whole group of suffering more people are paying Healthcare that doesn't need to happen so so yeah that's kind of how I look at the problem and I think it is a challenge that not just PhD but all of us face um which is a it's a big it's a big ass but I'm still really hopeful we can get there yeah and you know when you put it like that you know that you're trying we have to reach absolutely everyone and the energy companies spend hundreds of millions of pounds uh trying to do that it's still not quite there it's that it's a very daunting task and not only are we trying to get everyone in England we're trying to get everyone in the world so it's even it's even bigger um thankfully you know the message sort of sells itself you know when people start doing it and they see the results people you know want to emulate those results a lot of the time and they you know see their friends and their family doing this they they're getting better and then other loved ones are getting better and so they decide they can try it and so thankfully that has been in our favor and you know I'm hoping that we can just start getting a little more uh public awareness and uh and and you know if we can get into sort of mainstream media sort of circles even even people trying to to tear us down and and and uh try to take us on so they can debate us and thrash us or at least it gives us an opportunity to defend the case and uh and and at least it has to be out there it has to be discussed so yeah sorry go on said no public stays bad publicity yeah exactly so um and you are you guys trying to Target politicians and and bureaucrats and things like that to try to change like from a top-down policy sort of uh approach as well definitely you know and it's great to do that that um certainly attempted to do that over various phases in the past David Unwin has met with um the the health Secretary of the UK and shown him his results uh but it hasn't really resulted in any any real change and you know ask ourselves the question about you know why that is because you know when you're handing it to especially a you know a public healthcare system which should be interested in bringing its cost down which isn't trying to turn a profit necessarily um you would think that they would be looking to grab onto any opportunities to to bring the cost down um David London worked out that just if every GP practice in the whole of the UK was to subscribe prescribe drugs as he does we would reduce costs by 217 million pounds and and that's really quite a conservative number and you know if you also look at the numbers for the total numbers like the NHS spends 10 billion pounds a year on type 2 diabetes it's by far the large chunk of of the budget about seven billion on on um on cardiovascular disease five billion on cancer so all of these costs Mount up and the taxpayers payer is paying for them every single month so you would think that you know even if the government wasn't thinking that it would stimulate the economy to bring these costs down at least they would have some other priority that they're probably needing to direct the money on although there would be some reason why they would you know jump at the chance but we have you know we have definitely made this information publicly available and you know at the moment no one is is is really using it in any in any concerted way and we really believe that you know we've we've done as much as we can pushing upwards and well we'll still do as much as we can but we think that the only way to to get the top to topple is is to get the bottom to create that upward pressure because until they have a reason to do it until someone is you know harassing them and saying we've got to bring this you know until it's there's some kind of pressure on them they won't they won't necessarily make a change uh so you know we also see that the policy makers are actually pushing back policy changes that were due to come into play this year which was going to change the labeling on processed food to make it more obvious which were the the least healthy that's all been pushed back because of the cost of living crisis because they don't want to put people off the cheapest food available which is obviously you know a really a really short-sighted way of looking at the problem because people are just going to continue to eat the worst food and and and it will cost us more to to treat them when they when they get to the point of sickness so uh so we're we think the change has to come from the bottom we're not we don't have faith in the top doing its own job um all by itself so we we're now redirecting should I say all our energy and efforts to to the Grassroots movement okay yeah I think that's you're probably the only way to go you have to you know politicians really don't pay attention unless um you know it's gonna cost them if they don't and uh either in in uh you know support money and and funding for their next campaign or just in their constituency being pretty upset with them so I guess that's what we we have to focus on um so speaking of which um the conference that you we have going on next month that's the annual conference that you guys put on every year how many have you had so far and what do you guys try to achieve with these conferences yeah so we've had seven so far we've been in operation seven years and we've had seven conferences some of them are virtual uh but uh yeah what we try and Achieve is you know very much in line with the the overall objectives we have which is to help people understand this concept of metabolic Health um we've generally been very focused on type 2 diabetes because we've had Dr Monroe unwant being part of the organization and so we always cover that topic um but this year we are we are covering topics that we haven't covered before which is really exciting we've never covered cancer um we've never covered Alzheimer's and they're links to uh to metabolism so we're really excited to introduce those topics um we're covering food addiction and we are also starting to look at some of the um some of the related areas I say um so the the effect on the environment of eating of eating beef um which will be an interesting panel discussion on the second day and and also the discussion about whether you know what role plants play in the diet which obviously you're going to be involved in we're very excited to welcome you along for that okay so so quite a range of of topics but very much you know under the theme of this is how we fix the NHS because we really believe all these numbers that I mentioned earlier that we're all paying for at the moment people don't quite recognize that those numbers don't have to exist and we don't have to be paying for all of that and 80 of what the NHS treats are preventable illnesses so rather than having a conversation as we do all the time in this country about how we're going to support the NHS how we're going to fix the NHS how you know which political party that's coming up for election is going to put more money into the NHS um you know these are the conversations that we're we're having and also when are people going to start paying for the NHS that's that's definitely becoming becoming a more um current topic as well so it's all going in that direction and no one is having the conversation about well do we need to pay all those costs for the NHS is there not more we can do to bring those costs down and who's looking at that and what is the strategy for that and so we're trying to use the conference this year and the theme of it is this is how we fix the NHS so that we can tie into this public discourse that's happening right now about the NHS to say well look here we've found all these numbers and all these different opportunities which are all connected to people doing pretty much one thing and and we'll start to bring these these costs down but you have to change the way that you you approach your medicine and you have to start to look at it as a preventative lifestyle approach um and a lot of the time it's not necessary that anyone that has to do it apart from the public so if the public start doing this themselves you know we don't have to have um authorities telling them to do it they can take a hold of it and they can run with it and they can be empowered and they can make these changes so again it all comes back to if we can get to Grassroots everything else just unlocks itself um so that's that's very much what we're aiming to to do at the conference this year is to make that message really clear for everyone coming along and everyone who is going to be able to watch online so we're going to be launching live stream tickets tomorrow and um and and yeah we're very excited about people joining us from all over the world yeah great well I'm I'm definitely looking forward to it I think it'll be uh very interesting there's a lot of great people there that I'm really interested in in meeting and seeing and and sharing their talks like doctor on one uh you know Sean Baker uh Diet Doctor Who also be on the panel with us and um Dr uh Sophia Clemens uh from the her Institute in the in Hungary I forget the Paleo medicina and uh and Professor Ben bickman and things like that many many more um yeah I've I've long thought about that side of the equation um of how much money we're spending it's not you know everyone says well we need this system or that system in America it's very topical for the last few decades about well maybe we should go to an NHS type of system to help pay for these sorts of things but I think that's I think that's missing what what the problem is you know if you if you sort of focus on the wrong problem you're not going to get a workable solution and you know the NHS has its problems the US has its problems all systems have their problems um there's no perfect system but the growing problem the concern that has that has been you know rearing its head in the recent decades is the fact that that costs are going up and up and up and up and up and up and up extraordinarily fast and so one of those major problems is well you can do things more efficiently and certainly they're you know things about waste and all that sort of stuff but I think a major problem is exactly what you're saying these preventable diseases that aren't diseases they're just they're just toxicities we're poisoning ourselves with the things that we're eating and we're getting the results of that but in just in America nine percent of of adults are um are diabetic and that accounts for 75 of the Medicare costs in America and 40 of Americans are pre-diabetic meaning that ostensibly if they don't change what they're doing and you know if we don't get this out there uh you know to enough people then there's no reason to suspect they will within a decade or or so we might have as many as 50 of Americans being diabetic what's that going to do the health care costs so I think that's you know a major a major problem there then you look at the fact that we uh the sugar industry makes about 1.3 trillion dollars a year and but we spend about 2.4 trillion dollars a year treating the medical effect of the medical um ramifications of sugar consumption not even all the rest of it but just sugar consumption so that's you know call it four billion dollars uh close to four billion dollars or four trillion dollars I'm sorry uh that you you are just having there there's just locked away that's not being used and utilized and and in more useful ways as being wasted you know people talk about defense budgets and things like that but 2.4 trillion dollars is triple the United States Federal defense budget so that's massive and and so that's the real Health Care crisis that's what's really plaguing our system and crashing any system you care to make it will destroy it because you know it's just untenable you you're just we're spending too much money on these things that don't need to exist now you have this problem there are medications that help I think yes you know it's great to use those medications if you need them while you need them however if you can do something that's been clinically proven to remove your need for the medication and get you healthy without medication uh why why wouldn't we do that and type 2 diabetes has been clinically proven by uh Professor Finney and others to be reversible you just go on a ketogenic diet and so you know that's that's a massive massive massive benefit you're talking about bringing back trillions of dollars hey you're not going to be eating as much sugar we're not going to be consuming over 150 pounds of sugar per person per year which is the average right now and you're not going to be uh you know needing all the health care medications hospitalizations food amputations uh you know vascular surgery and stents and all the other things for heart disease and stroke and cancer and all these other things that come along with it for the ride so you know this is something that we can absolutely uh overhaul and just change overnight seemingly you know if if enough people know about it I also a bit horrified to learn the other day that the 10 billion pounds I mentioned that are spent on type 2 diabetes in the UK 8 billion of it is because I thought most of that was probably probably drugs but eight billion of it is on surgeries and that's depressing you know that's I mean it includes eye surgeries and cataracts that kind of thing but it also will include amputations so we are just in the wrong you know we've got the balance totally skewed in the wrong in the wrong way and even um Professor Ben bickman was saying last night that the metformin drug that's given out as one of the first drugs for type 2 diabetes and is seen as one of the better drugs in general has just this he's been reading some studies about how it totally disrupts in mitochondria and and undoes any benefit related to exercise um and it's some new study that's about that he thinks is really interesting and he was mentioning too so even the the best drugs that we're giving out are not we're never going to be doing anything that's a net positive I don't think um there'll always be some some cost to it and I think the way that the NHS approach reducing costs is it's just so um it's very kind of lost in in the weeds um you know we I was hearing about how you know when we talk to the right people in NHS and say well what are you doing to bring costs down the way they look at it is well you know we have so many amputations to do a year we're going to go and find out how we can reduce the cost of all the the instruments that you need to do amputations and and therefore you know get a better deal with the in the supply chain and negotiate a bit that's how they look at Cost reduction not get rid of the problem just bring the cost down of of the problem so it's it really does take people um a back when you when you we say some of this stuff because no one's just no one's thought about it and so you know but I guess that that lends itself to there being a huge opportunity here we just have to get this message through yeah I I totally agree um great well thank you very much I think that um the conference is going to be I think very educational for people hopefully uh people like it um is it is it something that um people have to see in person or is it going to be put up on the Internet or if people be able to join virtually or anything like that yep yeah I was saying so um you can um absolutely if you're in the UK please come along it's the best way to support us and it's into Sheffield on the 19th and 20th of May um and we have a fantastic lineup which you can see at phcuk.org forward slash conference I'm sure you put it in the notes and um and if you can't make it along we are also going to be offering a a live streaming option so I know that you know many people will be going to be interested in seeing the plants discussion and there's certainly a lot of discussion about that discussion online um many people from the US for example will be wanting to to to virtually stream in so we're going to be offering that option and it launches tomorrow and so um so that's exciting and so hopefully we'll get lots of people tuning in to to watch your debate Anthony um and and and yeah so and then after that uh in in a little while we'll then release all the talks onto YouTube and if anyone looks at our YouTube channel now they'll see all the talks from all the previous conferences that we have done and some great people on there Jason Fung many many others um talking about all of this so check us out and please subscribe to our YouTube channel because there's great content coming up all the time there now right sounds good all right well definitely put all of that in the show notes and everyone who is able to attend please do I'd love to uh see all you uh lovely people there and if not then hopefully you can catch the replay or the live cast online uh and then on YouTube so great well Olivia thank you very much great to see you as always and I will see you in Sheffield see you then okay see ya hey guys thank you very much for taking the time out to listen to what I had to say if you like it then please like And subscribe to my YouTube channel and podcasts and if you're on YouTube then please hit that little bell and subscribe and that'll let you know anytime I have a new video out which should be every week if not more and if you could share this with your friends that would help me get the word out and let me know that you like what I'm doing thanks again guys [Music]