Dr. Jen Ashton with Dave Asprey – #830
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Health Anxiety, Vaccines and Making Sense of Medical News – Dr. Jen Ashton with Dave Asprey – #830 Announcer: Bulletproof Radio, a state of high performance. Dave Asprey: You're listening to Bulletproof Radio with Dave Asprey. Today's going to be a fun conversation that ought to be able to stay up on iTunes. We're talking about The New Normal with ABC News chief medical correspondent, Jennifer Ashton, MD, or as she's commonly known as Jen. Dr. Ashton, welcome to the show. Dr. Jennifer Ashton: Thank you, Dave. It's so good to be with you. Dave: This is a cool episode because we've got about 50 people from the Upgrade Collective in our live audience, and I'm going to ask them for questions during the show. At the end, I'll bring some of them on live. If you're listening to this, going, "What the heck is Upgrade Collective?" this is my mentorship and membership group, which you just pay a monthly fee. But I have a whole team of people answer all of your questions about biohacking and all of that. I participate as well with weekly calls, and it's been a huge amount of fun. So that means I get to actually look at all the people in the audience and they get early access like this. So if you want to be a part of the community, ourupgradecollective.com. Now let's get into it because, Jen, your book, The New Normal, came out in February and we're recording this, oh, about three, four months later. What has changed from when your book first hit the market and now? Because things are moving so rapidly. Is there anything that you're saying, "I wish I would've said that"? Jen: No. So that's actually one of the fun things. The story behind the story, if you will, is for those of your listeners who don't know me, I'm the chief medical correspondent for ABC News, which is the number one news network in the country. My medical specialty is women's health. I also have a degree in nutrition, which is why I'm a big fan of yours and really admire the work you've done in your books. But from the start of this pandemic, my job as chief medical correspondent was to interpret and analyze and decipher the news headlines of this pandemic and then report it on live television in seconds or a couple of minutes to millions and millions of people. And so, I've been living, breathing, eating, sleeping, dreaming, unfortunately, all things COVID for about a year and a half. When my publisher came to me and asked me to write The New Normal, it's my sixth book, and you and I were chatting before we went on, writing a book is, for all the women listening, like having a baby, being pregnant and then having a baby. It sounds good and then you get into it and you get really into it. Then at the end, you're a little sick of it. Then you have to raise it like a child. The reason that I loved actually the work of writing this book is because I found that in covering this pandemic, it really was more about communication, or as much about communication, and how to Disclaimer: Bulletproof Radio transcripts are prepared by a transcription service. Refer to full audio for exact wording. explain medical and scientific concepts to the world and to the country so that people can really use that information, rather than just reiterate a fact that when the book was written was true and now is not true. So every single thing I put in the book is, for the most part, timeless for exactly the reason that I knew the book was coming out in February. I finished writing it in September. I didn't want the content to be dated. And I knew that we were still going to be living with this virus and that it wasn't going to magically disappear. So really everything that I explain in the book, obviously there are multiple levels to it, but I really designed so that anyone reading it could glean these lessons of, as I call, how to think like a doctor, which is what we're taught in medical school, but you don't need an MD after your name to learn those concepts. Then anyone who reads it will be able to take the latest headline, because it is still evolving, and incorporate that for themselves. Dave: One of the things that I appreciate about you is that you're actually a practicing doctor, even though you have a pretty hard work on GMA3. You wake up in the middle of the night, as far as I can tell, to do all the reporting that you do, but you still see patients. Do you think that changes your perspective in your reporting to be able to say, "Yeah, this morning I saw someone with COVID and I saw this," or is there a line, like a firewall, between the two? Jen: No. I'm so glad you brought that up and thank you for mentioning that and for being aware of that. I do have a medical practice that I started 15 years ago, and I had many, many patients who had COVID over the last year and a half. I have many patients who tragically lost both their parents to COVID. So this wasn't just ... As I like to say, I'm not "just a doctor on TV". I take care of real patients. In my medical specialty, I have to deal with everything from anxiety, depression, skin problems, weight problems, hormonal problems. I just diagnosed two patients with cancer in the last two weeks, fertility issues, you name it. That's what the field of women's health involves. I absolutely feel that what I do for ABC News and GMA3 makes me a better practicing physician, and having real patients and being a real doctor in practice makes me better on the air. There's no question. To bring it to the pandemic example, I think that there were a lot of really smart doctors and public health officials who I think missed the mark on communicating a lot of the information in the pandemic because they don't take care of real patients anymore. I think that when someone does interact with a real person, it changes their approach as communicators of medical information, because it becomes very real. This is not abstract. I'm not just talking to a camera. I'm talking to real people, just as I do in my office. I definitely feel that that helped me and it helped us at ABC News a lot. Dave: When I dig deep on your book, The New Normal, it's really a book about resilience. It's kind of like, "Oh, you have to be tough enough to handle what life brings your way. Here are the things you should do for it." How do you balance being resilient, I'm going to use a charged word here, with hiding? The idea is you're supposed to stay home for two weeks so that we don't overwhelm the ER, and somehow that morphs into never leave your home until some vaccine or until something happens, where some people were home for six months and never saw someone, which isn't what I thought Disclaimer: Bulletproof Radio transcripts are prepared by a transcription service. Refer to full audio for exact wording. lockdowns did. So how do you have that conversation with a patient or with millions of people on your show, to be like there's risk, but there's also reward? How do you bring people out of the fear mindset? Jen: Well, you hit the nail right on the head, and I have a whole chapter about this in the book, which is I go through how to stratify risk. My job as a doctor, as a healthcare provider is to interpret and analyze information and discuss it with a patient. Then actually do something that is almost unheard of today, which is respect their decision and a principle called patient autonomy, even if it goes against what I would do personally. Dave: What? Jen: Yeah, I know, a really novel concept. Dave: Patient autonomy. Is that legal? Jen: I know, I know. It's crazy. So I think that that doesn't happen a lot today. Let's say you gave the example of a parent with a child who's thinking of vaccinating that child. Look, I'm a parent and I have vaccinated my children. But I hear from a lot of people, well, the risk of death is so low for kids. My answer to that is, what you said, which is there are worse things than death in medicine. And so, that shouldn't be the litmus test for every decision we make, is whether or not something could kill us. It's quality of life. It's what are the risks of long-term damage with this virus or with a treatment or a test? Those are the things that have to be discussed. It's not just life or death. Dave: Tell me more about patient autonomy and how that is when you have this politically correct medical decisions. We have standard of care that's forced by insurance companies sometimes.