The Power of Personal Change & Reforming Medicine

Intro:

Welcome to Dr. Ruscio radio providing practical and science-based solutions to feeling your best. To stay up-to-date on the latest topics as well as all of our prior episodes, please make sure to subscribe in your podcast player. For weekly updates, DrRuscio.com. The following discussion is for educational purposes only and is not intended to diagnose or treat any disease. Please do not apply any of this information without first speaking to your doctor. Now let’s head to the show.

DrMichaelRuscio:

Hi everyone. Welcome back to another episode of dr. Ruscio radio. This is Dr. Ruscio and today I’m here with Eric Adams from the Brooklyn borough in New York. He is actually the president of the Brooklyn borough, and he is about to release a book, a two-year labor of love. We are going to explore a multitude of topics in health. It is just a real honor to have you here Eric and expand on your story and all the good work that you’ve been up to. Welcome to the show.

EricAdams:

Thank you. Thank you so much. I appreciate you taking the time out. I think this is a moment when people talk about COVID-19 and pandemics, how we’re going to have to look at healthcare differently, and really find ways of being more proactive than just reactive. So I appreciate this conversation with you.

DrMR:

I absolutely agree with your perspective. Hopefully, our conversation here will help some people be more proactive because absolutely that is one of the lessons. I feel like there have been a few different silver linings with COVID. One is maybe cajoling people a little bit. Saying, Hey, you know, if you’re not exercising, if you’re not minding your diet or your sleep, now would be a good time to make sure that you have those boxes checked.

EA:

That is so true. What’s fascinating in my own health journey as we go through it. I was amazed at when I did a reflection of my life around health, how much time and energy I put into my fancy BMW, my car, clothing, my house, making sure I used the right paint, making sure that I did everything that was right externally and how little I put into probably the most important thing that would impact my quality of life and that is my body. I think many of us turn over our healthcare to medical professionals without realizing that we are part of that team also. This is really an opportunity to start understanding that, yes, my internist and my endocrinologist are very important, but the most important team member was me. That’s what I think Americans are going to have to start looking inward to say, what is their daily role in having a good healthy life.

Background on Eric Adams

DrMR:

Yeah, absolutely. Couldn’t agree more. Why don’t we give people some of the background on you, and your health story? Then we can use that as maybe a jump-off point to embed some lessons.

EA:

Several years ago, when I left the police department, I was a New York City police officer, and retired as a captain, and I had the standard American diet throughout those 22 years. Eventually, I became a New York State Senator and then I was elected as the Brooklyn borough president. During my first term in 2016, I was out of the country actually, and I was experiencing some discomfort in my stomach. I was sure that it was colon cancer because I just lost a good friend at 50 to colon cancer. It wasn’t gas. It wasn’t moving. I decided that once I returned to the country, I would go to my internist. When I got there, he had me have my colon and stomach checked. When I came from under sedation, he looked at my blood work and he says, Eric, your colon is fine.

EA:

You have an ulcer, but the real problem you have is that you have Type 2 Diabetes. I didn’t even realize I was diabetic. He said, my A1C was at a dangerous, coma level and he had to put me on insulin and two other medications right away. I lost my vision in my left eye and I was losing it in my right. The doctor said I was legally blind, I had to turn in my driver’s license, I could no longer drive a car. I had high blood pressure, high cholesterol and permanent nerve damage in my hands and feet. They were tingling all the time. The doctor basically told me, Eric, you’re going to be on medicine the rest of your life. This is something that you’re going to have to start preparing your body for.

DrMR:

Wow. So that must’ve been a fairly sobering bit of news to receive.

EA:

Yes, it was. It was fascinating that, for a moment, when the doctor told me that I was diabetic, I said to myself, well, you knew it was coming, your mother’s diabetic, your brothers and sisters are either diabetic or pre-diabetic. It wasn’t until they said that diabetes was the leading cause of blindness and non-traumatic limb amputation that I said, wait a minute, I didn’t sign up for this. In the African American community, we sort of sweeten the diagnosis of diabetes. We say, “auntie has a little sugar”. We don’t give it the real emphasis or attention we should. So I went home that day and I went to five other doctors and they all gave me the same diagnosis, five of the best doctors in the city.

Turning Things Around

EA:

I went home after those visits and I was sitting at my computer with all of these pamphlets that said “living with diabetes” and I did one thing differently, I didn’t type in “living with diabetes”, I typed in “reversing diabetes”. All of this information came up that I wouldn’t have gained access to if I hadn’t changed the question. A series of doctors came up and I started reading their reports. One of them I went to visit was Dr. Esselstyn, who treated former President Bill Clinton for his heart disease. He told me to change my diet. He said I needed to go on what people considered a whole food, plant-based diet. I had never heard that before. Three weeks after returning to the city and going “whole food”, three weeks later, my vision came back. Three months later, my nerve damage went away. My diabetes went into remission. My cholesterol normalized, my blood pressure normalized and the ulcer that sent me to the doctor in the first place went away and, you know, I didn’t need any medicine to do so.

DrMR:

It’s so incredible how powerful diet is. Especially if someone hasn’t been paying any attention to their diet and then they improve it. There’s so much low hanging fruit there and potential for improvement. It’s just fantastic to hear yet another example of how powerful minding your diet can be. Did your conventional doctors, did they give you any advice on diet or was it kind of a platitudinous “well eat healthier, but…” and then onto the medication bit? What did you feel that aspect was like?

EA:

And that’s such a great question because I really love my internist. We have a personal relationship as well as a medical relationship. He is a good, conscientious doctor. But no, I did not receive anything other than “try not to eat too much rice”, but there was no real direction. Even the pamphlets that I was given gave me foods to eat that aggravated my diabetes until I was able to dig deep and start exploring the connection between diet and chronic diseases. I was really surprised when I learned that one of the enemies of diabetes or diabetic patients is saturated fat. I had no idea. Some of the pamphlets that I was receiving told me basically to eat foods that were filled with saturated fat. I went back to some of my doctors, particularly my endocrinologist, who was really amazing.

EA:

I gave her some of the books that were given to me and she changed her whole practice after reading some of those books because she said that she needed to start focusing on really empowering people to reverse their chronic disease. So I think that the fact that our medical schools don’t teach a nutrition-based education is really a disservice to our medical professionals who really want to and are committed to healing. We need to start giving people the right information. That is what we’re trying to do here in the borough of Brooklyn.

DrMR:

I couldn’t agree with you more there. Let me offer my perspective on this. It’s not to say this is the right perspective, but I try to think through the challenges that the conventional medical system faces because I don’t lay, and I’m assuming that you don’t either, I don’t lay all the culpability at the feet of the conventional doctor. In fact, I think they’re more a byproduct of a system where the incentives are malaligned. So they end up doing, I think, an excellent job. This is a remark that has been echoed for probably a decade or more now. I think they do an excellent job with acute care, emergency care, disease detection, and direct disease management. But this model doesn’t seem to lend enough time, resources, or incentive for prevention, proactiveness, disease reversal, addressing the underlying causes of chronic and degenerative conditions like Type 2 Diabetes.

DrMR:

So the recommendation I’ve made for people is to have one doctor on each side of the fence, so to speak. One conventional and then one integrative, natural or alternative, however you describe it. Then you have someone who’s really focusing on more of the disease model, which you do want and is important and also you have someone who’s not going to be paying attention to those things and they’re going to be focused on the dietary, lifestyle and preventative measures. Together that seems to be really the optimal pairing. Would you modify that at all? How does that strike you?

EA:

No, I think you are dead on. I believe there are certain layers we must do because we’re clearly on an ocean liner that is sailing in the wrong direction on what I like to call the sea of health and we need to slowly turn it around. I think one of the starting places is to really go into our medical schools. We have a medical school here in Brooklyn called Downstate Hospital. We need to go into our medical schools and really start giving these amazing healthcare professionals, the men and women I know in your field, this is something they wanted to do their entire life and we need to give them real information on both ends of the spread spectrum. One, how do we deal with acute chronic illness. We are the best on the globe when you’re dealing with chronic and acute injury and illness. What we don’t do is empower our medical professionals on how, after we stabilize a patient, how do we now show people how to reverse those underlying reasons that they have these chronic diseases in the first place?

EA:

When you look at some of the writings of Dr. Esselstyn and how he talks about reversing and preventing heart disease, the number one killer in America. Dr. Barnard talking about diabetes and even the professionals who are now looking at how to treat dementia and Alzheimer’s. We need to empower, I believe, these great medical professionals with the information so that they can, of course, deal with the acute diseases and all of those things that come with it. At the same time, now that we have that patient in front of us, how do we incentivize the system to deal with underlining reasons, giving doctors the amount of time they need to do so, and really be supportive of how do we deal with the chronic diseases we’re facing? One thing for sure, Dr. Ruscio, our healthcare system is not sustainable. When you have 30 million Americans who are diabetic, 84 million are pre-diabetic. We’re spending 80 cents on the dollar on chronic diseases. It is just not sustainable. We’re losing too many of our family members. My mother is one of those. She was diabetic for 15 years, seven years on insulin. Mom joined me on a plant-based diet at 80 years old, two months on a plant-based diet, she was cycled off of the insulin because she was supported by her new doctor who gave her the support she needed to slowly get off the insulin.

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The Path to Change

DrMR:

You know, you bring such a unique perspective to this conversation, being experienced in politics. I’m wondering, as you have given this challenge some thought, what do you feel to be the best path forward? As you touched on, there are issues of retribution, time, incentives. I think we’re both in agreement that it’s not that the doctors don’t want to offer this to their patients. It’s that they have medical school loans they are trying to pay back. They have overhead, they have shrinking reimbursements, they have increasing challenges with insurance, denials, and resubmissions. They have all this that they’re trying to manage, which is just eating away at their time and at their mental bandwidth and ability to have the free time to either do this with patients and/or educate themselves on this. So there is a challenge there and I’m wondering, do you have any proposals for how we can start rectifying that?

EA:

Yes. They are real challenges. I remember when I was a police officer, I policed in this city during high crime times. We were having 2000 homicides a year in the city, many felonious assaults and robberies. We didn’t believe the city was safe. I would go to a community where there was a horrific crime that took place and the people ask me “are we going to be safe”? I would say yes, when in fact, I knew they were not going to be safe, that eventually I was going to come back and their family members may have been the victim of another crime. That played on me. When I retired from the police department, I experienced a level of PTSD from reliving that trauma over and over again.

EA:

When I think about my health care professionals, there is no way they’re not experiencing levels of PTSD when they have patients that come to them and they start them out on Metformin for diabetes, insulin, and then eventually they cycle them into more drugs. Then they go to kidney failure, dialysis, blindness, amputation, heart disease, that weighs on a person. After 20, 30 years of a medical profession, you are going to experience and relive the trauma of the people who’s lives you watched slowly erode. So I think it’s imperative that we save our healthcare system from the “sick care model” that we have of just sustaining sickness. I have an amazing program at Bellevue hospital, the first of its kind in New York City, if not America. A lifestyle medicine program where we’re seeing that not only must we give people good medical advice, but we have to interject behavioral scientists into the medical profession.

EA:

So we can really start understanding how people are self-medicating with bad food, bad habits. We have to change behaviors so we can start changing health outcomes. We have the advocate to our congressional and senate delegation that our laws have to change on a congressional level. Only 25% of our medical schools teach one course on nutrition, which is just astonishing. If we don’t start looking at reimbursement rates, incentivizing doctors who are coming up with good results, lifestyle changes, allowing things like prescription dollars that allow you to go and get healthy food instead of just medicine. We have to think differently about our health care system, because right now, as I stated, it’s not healthcare, it is sick care. We’re hurting not only the patients, I believe, but we are also hurting those medical professionals who would like to see their patients heal.

DrMR:

Yeah. I have no doubt. I’m assuming endocrinologist probably see the brunt of this, where people come in, smoking, drinking soda, eating terrible food, being highly sedentary. How do you use medicines to manage that in any meaningful way? I mean, if someone has, let’s say hypothyroidism, they’re living a generally healthy life yet there’s this autoimmune damage to their gland and they just can’t produce thyroid hormone. That would seem to be much more of an impactful change, if that person had a healthier diet and a healthier lifestyle. But when you’re looking at the downslope of someone who is years into a chronic degenerative condition, fueled by poor diet and lifestyle, medicines are just kinda managing their decline and you’re trying to maintain some degree of lesser disease presence. But yes, to me, it would seem to be very demoralizing. PTSD actually may be an apt description. I’m sure going into that scenario, any clinician has very high hopes. Then after a while, it must just be like waves on a beach, eventually eroding the seashore. Wave after wave of people coming in and you’re just trying to dig them out of the death sentence they’re eating their way into. So yeah, I don’t refute that must be very demoralizing.

EA:

So true. When you look at what we’re doing, even in our schools. Think about it. Here in the city of New York, I was able to get our schools to embrace a meatless Monday process so people can start to learn about eating in a more healthy way. We spend millions of dollars in our Department of Health and Mental Hygiene with the goal of fighting childhood obesity, diabetes, and asthma. At the same time, in New York City, we feed our children 960,000 meals a day that cause childhood obesity, diabetes, and asthma. Governments should not feed the crisis. What you put on your grill in your backyard or in your oven at home, you have the right to do so. That’s the beauty of living in America, you can make your choices. When you start looking at all of our governmental agencies across the country and see the food we’re feeding people, not only during the COVID crisis, but daily. When you go to a hospital and a patient leaves surgery for colon cancer or for chronic disease, heart disease and then they go back to their hospital room and are fed the same food that gave them the chronic disease in the first place, we have to do better. That is part of the conversation we’re having here in New York, particularly in our school system, our correctional facilities, our hospitals. We must play an active role with taxpayers’ dollars to make sure that we’re not feeding the crisis. That we are not in conflict with what the science is telling us now about how to eat toward a more healthy lifestyle and how to play a more active role in your health.

Time and Money

DrMR:

You know, when I look at this problem, it seems that there are two primary variables that need to be adjusted to try to solve this problem effectively. I’m not saying these are the only two, but time and money. You can do a lot with those two things in place, so not to discount them. I try to think through how can we align the time and money piece so as to be most directed at the solving of this problem. You said something a moment ago that I thought was really a brilliant idea, which is essentially giving people a financial incentive to be healthier. I think this is a fairly well-established criticism, that right now some of the most unhealthy food is the least expensive. People get more medical coverage as they get more and more overt diseases, but there’s not really the incentive for keeping yourself out of the doctor’s office.

DrMR:

I know some programs have been rolled out. I think Safeway was one of the first that really incentivized their employees. I think they had lesser of an insurance deductible or premium if they were a member of a gym. I think they had some way of subsidizing food. I really liked the idea that you put out there of dollars that could be used for prescription med costs can now be used toward healthy foods. So that to me seems like a really smart angle, because now you put the onus on the individual. It’s not a top-down mandate, like you’re saying, which would potentially violate some freedoms if we put mandates in place, barring people from eating what they wanted to eat. However, if we could incentivize people financially, I can see that really moving the needle. Can you speak more about what you’ve seen there, any other ideas you have? Also maybe provide some tips for individuals or healthcare providers regarding how they may be able to write to their Senator or share certain information with patients about petitions to lobby for XYZ change, because I think that could be a very fruitful avenue to pursue. Just curious to hear your thoughts on that.

EA:

Yes. There is no profession that is as powerful and as strong as the profession of a physician. You know, let’s be honest, parents don’t tell their children to grow up to marry a borough president. They hope they marry a doctor. So I believe our doctors are not using their lobbying power as much as they could be. Probably because we all bought into the concept that once you get a chronic disease, it’s a life sentence, and it’s there, and you just sort of managing it. I believe our medical professional organizations should all be a member of Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, which is a great organization. Look into the things that the American College of Lifestyle Medicine is doing. I think this is a moment where, if physicians across the country start becoming aware of what the science is now saying about chronic diseases and reversing, properly treating, and minimizing medicine use which comes with many side effects.

EA:

I think that they will start adding their voice to lobbying Congress and their local government, because there are things you can do locally, in your own state and in your own city, to give those healthcare professionals the time and support that they need. So they can properly look at those patients. I think patients fall into three categories. You have Patient A, once you give them the information that they need, they’re going to immediately switch into gear and they’re going to carry it out. They will go through the necessary returns and checkups, but they’re just going to follow it to the letter. Patient B is going to fall off from time to time and they just need constant encouragement and information. They are going to have good days and bad days, but for the most part, if we give them the right support, they can stay the course and we can really have a major impact.

EA:

Those are really, I think, the overwhelming number of patients. Then Patients C, unfortunately, is going to say, I’m not going to live forever so just give me the medicine. They’re going to walk into the endocrinologist’s office eating a donut or smoking a cigarette or drinking a Coca-Cola. No matter what you say, they are just going to embrace that. I think that we start looking at that Patient B, we can really start moving the needle on healthcare in this country. We can get that patient B to be the Patient A that we’re looking for and make a major impact. That is what we’re focusing on here in the borough of Brooklyn and throughout the entire state.

DrMR:

I agree with you. The Patient B group, as you’re tacitly implying, is likely a large group. There might also be a lot of people who may currently be operating as Patient type C, but with the right incentives, materials and supports, they could fairly easily be converted over to Patient type B. What a huge, I’m assuming, savings and unburdening of our healthcare system that would lead to.

EA:

That is so true. We won’t give up on any American, any patient. The hope is to C to move to B, and B to move to A. Hopefully we all can get there. At one point or another, we all have a wake-up call. I saw the light when I couldn’t see and didn’t have sight. Remember, I had the Standard American Diet. There’s a reason the acronym is SAD. Throughout my life, if someone would have told me, I would become this person that enjoyed cooking his meals, putting out a book Healthy at Last, I would have said “are you out of your mind?” So there’s room for all of us to evolve. That’s the beauty of life. If you’re able to live long enough, you always have the opportunity to evolve into who you want to be. I think, Dr. Ruscio, that we all have this person inside us. Sometimes we believe that person is gone because the years have moved forward. I’m 60 years old and 35 pounds lighter, I feel better than when I was 21 years old. People need to realize that you always have tomorrow, as long as you decide to reach forward and step into it with the same level of excitement you had when you were a child.

DrMR:

Yeah. This is something that we see in the clinic, and it’s always remarkable for me to hear, especially because I’ve had a pretty good diet and lifestyle since I was probably 16 or 17, so I didn’t have that epiphany. That moment where someone who is 45 says “I feel better than I did when I was 21”. This goes to show you that your biological age is probably more powerful than your chronological age. You’re a great example of that.

The Book: Healthy at Last

DrMR:

Do you want to tell people a little bit more about your book, the name, when it’s available and some of the focus of the book?

EA:

Healthy at Last is the book. It’s not a medical book. It is not a book of talking down to people. It is almost like you’re sitting in your local cafe and just having a conversation with someone that was in a dark place. I just made the decision that dark place was not going to be a burial, it was going to be a planting. The book is the fruit of my harvest, and I’m hoping other people are able to eat from it so that they can be healthy in their lives. It is called Healthy at Last. It is a spinoff of Dr. King’s words, “Free at Last”, and a popular R & B song “At Last” where a woman found the love of her life. My goal was just to have a real conversation. What can one do in their everyday life to turn around a health crisis? Everything from meditation to how do you build exercise in your life without having to have that expensive gym pass, to how do you go to your local store, no matter whether it is a fancy store, and find the healthy food that you need. How do you just really take slow baby steps to a healthy lifestyle? The book is my personal journey, showing people how an every-day retired cop, that happened to go into politics, went from a devastating chronic disease to turning his life around and embracing a healthy life.

DrMR:

Yeah, well, it’s a fantastic story and such a good, representation of how we have a lot more power over our health than some people realize. For our audience that is something they understand because that’s what we kind of harp on every day in the show. How can you overcome your brain fog, your weight issue, your fatigue, your insomnia? But it is always great to see and hear another success story. Especially someone who has come as far as you have. I am hopeful people will check out the book. It sounds like it could be something nice to give to a friend who maybe is kind of floundering and needs maybe a motivational story ensconced with some tips and tricks. I think it is just fantastic that you’ve taken the time to put this together.

DrRuscioResources:

Hi everyone. This is Dr. Ruscio. In case you need help, I wanted to quickly make you aware of what resources are available to you. If you go to drruscio.com/Resources, you will see a few links you can click through for more. Firstly, there is the clinic, which I’m immensely proud of. The fact that we deliver, cost-effective, simple, but highly efficacious, functional medicine. There’s also my book, Healthy Gut, Healthy You, which has been proven to allow those who’ve been unable to improve their health, even after seeing numerous doctors, be able to help them finally feel better. There’s also our store where there’s a number of products like our Elemental Heal line, our probiotic line, and other gut supportive and health supportive supplements. We now offer health coaching. So if you’ve read the book or listened to a podcast like this one, or are reading about a product and you need some help with how or when to use, or how to integrate with diet, we now offer health coaching to help you along your way. And then finally, if you are a clinician, there is our clinician’s newsletter, the Future of Functional Medicine Review. I’m very proud to say, we’ve now had doctors who’ve read that newsletter, find challenging cases in their practices, apply what we teach in the newsletter and be able to help these patients who were otherwise considered challenging cases. Everything for these resources can be accessed through drruscio.com/Resources. Alrighty, back to the show.

DrMR:

I’m also wondering if you have any recommendations for the healthcare providers. You mentioned a few things before, but are there any things that you’d like healthcare providers to do or think about doing to help to continue to reform health care?

EA:

Yes. That is a great question because just as my body went through an evolution, I know that some health care providers who have been practicing for many years have fallen into the mental obesity of “there’s nothing that could be done”. I want to encourage them to reintroduce themselves to the profession that they love. To learn about alternative medicines, redefine their practice. If you are a cardiologist, learn about what Dr. Kim Williams is doing around reversing heart disease. If you are an endocrinologist and you deal with diabetes, learn about the reversal of diabetes and high blood pressure. Go on a new path. How exciting it is to spend so many years in a particular profession and realize that you can actually redefine your profession. You will become a different person as well. Then, lean into all your local elected officials, as I indicated. Have them move towards a different place around medicine. Medicine should be about wellness, about healing, not about watching people go through the slow decline of not having the right information to turn their lives around. No one could do it better than our medical professionals. It is a noble, well-respected career and we need them to lead what we do with healthcare in our country.

Episode Wrap-Up:

Very well said. Eric, this has been a great conversation. Congratulations on your new-found health and this new passion that you have for helping people and educating people. I’m assuming it’s kind of given you a lot of refreshing wind in your sails of motivation. Just love that you took something that on the face may have looked like a negative and you really spun it not only into a positive for you, but also a positive for hopefully, the community at large and for more of a broader societal change. So I think you’ve really taken lemons and made a nice glass of lemonade with just a little bit of sugar, but not too much.

EA:

You know my mom said “you know, baby, if you are fortunate to live long enough, you’re going to be misfortunate to experience pain and you have to ask yourself, how are you going to turn pain into purpose?” I found my purpose and I’m hoping that I can give other families purpose as well. The book, Healthy at Last. You can go to HealthyAtLastBK on any social media sites to find out more about the book and hopefully they can find the help that they’re looking for as well.

DrMR:

Fantastic. Love it, Eric. Thank you so much for the conversation today. It has been a real pleasure.

EA:

Thank you. Take care.

Outro:

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