Dustin Rudolph is another amazing bloke who I met and got to know at the McDougall Advanced Study weekend recently. I learned so much from hearing him speak and had a great time hanging out with him over the weekend. Dustin we very generous to sit down with me for this eye opening, mind bending conversation about the power of plants in treating various diseases and the power of the pharmaceutical industry.

 

With over fifteen years of experience in the field of pharmacy, Dustin Rudolph, PharmD, BCPS is a board certified clinical pharmacist currently practicing in an acute care community hospital setting. He graduated with a Doctor of Pharmacy degree in 2002 from North Dakota State University in Fargo, ND. His professional experience covers a multitude of patient populations including neonatal, pediatric, cardiac, orthopedic, oncology, diabetic, intensive care, and geriatric patients, just to name a few.

 

In 2009, Dr. Rudolph adopted a vegetarian diet, and then a whole foods, plant-based (vegan) diet a year later. He founded this website at that time with a goal of providing reliable, high-quality, evidence-based health and wellness information to improve the knowledge of both patients and medical professionals alike.He continued his education in the field of healthcare in 2010 by earning a certificate in Plant-Based Nutrition through the T. Colin Campbell Foundation and eCornell University.

 

In 2016, Dr. Rudolph successfully passed the pharmacotherapy certification exam administered by the Board of Pharmacy Specialties®. He is now a Board Certified Pharmacotherapy Specialist who works alongside physicians in a hospital setting to optimize patient’s medication therapy regimens.Dr. Rudolph has become an expert in nutrition and lifestyle medicine. He uses his expertise as an educator, speaker, and writer to help others learn how to prevent and reverse chronic disease by adopting a whole foods, plant-based lifestyle. I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did.

 

Spud Up!

Andrew

 

Stuff we talked about

 

• Dustin Rudolph – Plant Based Pharmacist
• TheChina Study by T. Colin Campbell
• Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease by Caldwell Esselstyn
• Whole: Rethinking The Science of Nutrition by T. Colin Campbell
• Dr Michael Greger’s website Nutrition Facts
• Dr Ben Goldaker
• Potatoes not Prozac – by Kathleen DesMaisons
• Dr John McDougall
• Dr Joel Furhman
• Dr Neal Barnard
• Pubmed
• Jeff Novick – fast food burgers and fries

 

CONTENTS:

• WHO IS DUSTIN RUDOLPH?…..(00:04:25)
• CHANGING TO PLANT-BASED DIET…..(00:22:40) 
• THE DARK SIDE OF PHARMACEUTICAL DRUGS…..(00:28:24)
• THE ABSOLUTE AND RELATIVE RISK REDUCTIONS…..(00:45:13)
• ON TREATING DIABETES…..(00:52:23)
• ON TREATING HEART DISEASE:…..(00:59:03)
• ON CHOLESTEROL LOWERING DRUGS…..(01:03:05)
• ON DEPRESSION AND PSYCHOTROPIC DRUGS…..(01:07:40)
• FUTURE PLANS AND CONCLUSION…..(1:13:40)

 

Dustin Rudolph – Plant Based Pharmacist

This podcast has been automatically transcribed by a software and went for a minor editing. If you notice any mistakes or wrong word entry please help us fix them by leaving a comment. We made sure to be the most accurate as we can. Enjoy!

 

Andrew: G’day everyone. Welcome to this Bud podcast. I’m your host Andrew Taylor and uh, today’s podcast is brought to you by me. I don’t have any advertise on here other than me. So the D.I.Y. Spud Fit Academy is my book subtitle a how-to guide to doing your own Spud Fit Academy. It’s a little book that me and my wife wrote. My beautiful amazing wife Mandy Shannon, uh, it’s all about. The hows and whys and Watson ways of doing your own Spud Fit Academy  your own potato only diet challenge. Uh, I ate only potatoes for all of last year all of 2016 nothing but potatoes and uh, and I a lot of people ask me for advice. So I put together this short book to help people do it if that’s what they choose to do. You can find that at my website www.spudfit.com. If you like what I’m doing with this podcast or anything else I’m doing then the best thing you can do for me is to share it with your friends, like subscribe go to iTunes leave a review preferably 5 Stars. That’s uh, that helps.

Anyway, today we are talking to Dustin Rudolph. Dustin’s another guy that I met at the McDougal Advanced study we can last month and I had the pleasure of hanging out with him for a couple of days and we went out for dinner and had lots of good chats and um, including this one you’re about to listen to so I’m a big fan of Dustin and I’m really happy to be able to share him and his story with you guys on the podcast today. He has a book. That you can also get uh called The Empty Medicine Cabinet. I’ll put a link to that in the show notes on my website. Uh, it’s the pharmacist guide to the hidden danger of drugs and the healing powers of food. And that’s really uh a good introduction to what today’s conversation is about Dustin is the plant-based pharmacist.

Here’s a qualified and has practiced Pharmacy for a long time. And uh, He changed his ways. He, he went from the believing that drugs were the be-all and end-all basically the you know, I figured any problem and then it’s best treated and fixed with with drugs and now he’s uh, changed his ways and he now advocates for a whole food plant-based diet most of the time. He thinks that drugs should basically be a last resort and I like that attitude. It’s another person that I’ve talked to with a really refreshing attitude in that, uh, they are actively campaigning against the things that they make money from and he has one of them is his someone who is a pharmacist who’s hoping to pharmacists out of business. So, uh, it’s really refreshing to talk to these kind of people and I had a great conversation. He’s a Dustin’s a genuine, lovely guy. Beautiful person and uh and really full of a lot of helpful advice and some really interesting insights as well into the pharmaceutical industry and uh, and the science that goes into producing positive news for different drugs.

Uh, this is a really eye-opening conversation for me. And uh, I hope you enjoy it too. Oh and before where I go, uh, Mandy my wife made the uh made the Spud Fit jingle you’re about to listen to so thanks to Mandy Vans and go to Mandy Vans and if you’re interested in finding out more about Andy. All right. Hope you enjoy this. Spud up.

 

WHO IS DUSTIN RUDOLPH? 

 

Andrew: All right. We’re here with Dustin Rudolph another of my series of podcasts from the McDougal Advanced study weekend. Uh, I actually got the had the pleasure and privilege of going out for dinner with Dustin last night, too. So, uh, this has been cool. Anyway, Dustin welcome.

Dustin: Thank you for having me. Mr. Potato from Spud Fit.

Andrew: No worries. Thank you for joining us. Can we start with the obvious question? Who is Dustin?

Dustin: Well Dustin, I am I uh, I’m the plant-based pharmacist. I’m known as a plant-based pharmacist. I am actually a real pharmacist a licensed pharmacist. I’m licensed in four states in the United States. In Missouri, Florida, Texas and Arizona practice in any of those states. I currently reside in the Tampa Bay Florida region, and I’ve been there since 2004 and I have worked in both retail pharmacy and in Hospital Pharmacy, and I’m currently in Hospital Pharmacy. I’ve been working in Hospital Pharmacy for about 10 and 1/2 or 11 years. I’ve been out of school since 2002 got good 15 years under my belt. Yeah and uh just uh trucking along right here.

Andrew: Yeah. All right, let’s uh, I really enjoyed your speech which is obviously why I wanted to uh to sit down and have this chat with you. But before we get to the the finer details of your talk, Why did you become a pharmacist?

Dustin: You know, so it’s kind of funny Andrew. I was I was in fourth grade and I told people I wanted to become a pharmacist and you know, when people ask-

Andrew: So It’s not your typical dream that a fourth grader.

Dustin: No, not at all. It was it was funny because. You know the fourth a little tiny squirts in fourth grade you asking. What do you want to do when you grow up and you know most fourth graders if they’re if they’re a boy there and be like, I’m gonna play baseball. I’m gonna play football.

Andrew: I was gonna play football when I was four in fourth grade. I was definitely gonna be a professional footballer.

Dustin: Yeah, I mean that. That for some reason that would just wasn’t on my radar. I didn’t want to be a race car driver, astronaut or you know, any of that is just you know, I told people I was going to be a pharmacist. Actually I didn’t tell him I was gonna be a pharmacist. So what I did is, I told them, I’m gonna grow up and I’m gonna be like Todd. because I’m from a very small town in Montana called Baker Montana. Baker Montana is actually like nine miles from the uh border of North Dakota. So it’s a very small town. There’s only like 16-1800 people there when I was growing up. We had one stoplight and it was just a red blinking stoplight. It didn’t even have a yellow or a green so um, no chain stores. No McDonalds, no none of that. Yeah. No Walmart, so we had one physician in the whole town. Yeah, and he was obviously our family physician and then we had two pharmacies owned by two separate pharmacists in the whole town. Yeah. And Todd was my family’s pharmacist. Yeah. Okay, so I just always looked up to Todd and I said, you know, I’m gonna be like Todd, he’s friendly and nice and that’s what I said.

Andrew: Todd sounds like a good bloke.

Dustin: He is I mean to this day like if I go back to uh, Montana, he’s always asking me. Hey you want to buy Pharmacy because he’s getting close to retirement. You know? Yeah, I’m just like no. No, that’s okay.

Andrew: You could turn it into a grocery store.

Dustin: Yeah I could turn into like a farm. F-a-r-m.

Andrew: it’s nice that you got someone uh, so influential in your life that made you want to be like them. I love that story. So, uh what when you first became a pharmacist, did you have a goal in why you wanted to do that while you’re hoping to achieve?

Dustin: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean I wanted to be a pharmacist because I wanted to help people and I wanted to help sick people get healthy. And so that was really on my whole goal.

Andrew: You’ve obviously seen Todd doing that growing up. Todd was helping people in town to get healthy and you wanted to do that too. That’s cool.

Dustin: Exactly. Exactly.

Andrew: All right. So, uh, So there’s a obviously there’s going to be some sort of assume some sort of difference between what you wanted to achieve and what you’re actually did achieve as a pharmacist. Now how did that go down for you?

Dustin: So I actually I actually knew. Nothing about health until like eight years into my career. Yeah, I know that sounds just crazy, but I went all the way through college and pharmacy school. And you know, I spent $60,000 going through college, which is a bargain at these days. Yeah, but um went through pharmacy school. I learned a lot about disease. I learned a lot about sickness. I learned a lot about medication. But I really learned absolutely nothing about health. Yeah, which seems kind of counterintuitive if you’re going to kind of a medical education system.

Andrew: I have had this sort of stories from doctors before but I’ve never really thought about Pharmacy is you know, as what a pharmacist might study.

Dustin: To give you some details they it’s very rigorous the pharmacy program. They actually. Put us through all the different modalities like cardiovascular and cancer and oncology and um, you know immunology and all these different Specialties with the body and these different sciences and these different classes and disease States and stuff. So we actually have separate classes for all of them and we learn how the doctor diagnoses. He diagnoses their patient. Yeah, um the abbreviated version obviously don’t get the the long version like the Physicians do and then we get a very longer version of how to manage I say manage because it’s how to treat them but it’s really how to manage them because they’re just managing their chronic disease. You’re not really making them go from heart disease to no heart disease. You’re just making them go from heart disease to taking a bunch of pills and managing their heart disease.

Andrew: Yeah, trying to uh, stop them getting sick out rather than, make them better.

Dustin: Yeah, exactly. It’s basically you’re trying to help them avoid death, I guess.

Andrew: Prolonging the misery.

Dustin: Yeah, exactly. You know, I’ve always said that the longer a patient’s prescription list and medication list the more miserable and sick and I’ve never seen anything other than that in mycareer. Uh, so I got out. I got out of pharmacy school and you know went in and practiced Retail Pharmacy. So I was the the pharmacist behind the counter passing out the pills. Like Todd, that’s just I fulfilled my dream, you know, and I was proud of like when somebody would come to me and say oh I’ve got this wrong with me or I’ve got this wrong. All right, you know, I can’t poop or I you know, I’ve got this rash on me and what can you do? and I’ve always been very proud to say, Well I have a pill for that. We have a cream for that or whatever and I was so proud of that and I didn’t realize that. That that was just a band-aid on the problem. Yeah, and um, it wasn’t until like eight years into my career that uh, this is kind of a funny story, but I went to my podiatrist. Because I had you know, I was on my feet for so many years and then a little bit of nerve pain that was developing in my foot and I went to my podiatrist for him to help me with my foot and it was in 2009. Actually it was exactly eight years ago this month, February of 2009. I showed up in his office. And that was the the time in the USA where we had the health care debate like the Obamacare Affordable Care Act not passed yet. It was still being debated and argued and stuff. So, there was this Time magazine article in the waiting room and it had a big segment in it that was on the health care debate the pros and cons of both sides.

So I was reading it and I wasn’t done when they called me back into the exam room. So I took it with me and I continued to read it in the exam room and uh, Dr. Salvatore Delellis, he’s my podiatrist. He’s a good friend now. Yeah, everybody calls him. Dr. Sal. Dr. Sal walked into the room and he’s like, uh, “What’s you reading there Dustin?” and I said, “Oh, it’s just this Time magazine article on the healthcare debate, you know, pros and cons of both sides.” So both of us being medical guys and in the health care profession, he started talking about it. Yeah chatting about it nice little discussion about. You know to 35 minutes into our conversation, he stopped and he’s like, “Well, you know Dustin it doesn’t matter what they legislate in Congress. It’s not going to fix the health care crisis.” And I’m just got the most puzzled look on my face and I’m like, “What are you talkin about? Like that’s the whole point of this. Yeah to fix the problems that we have in our Health Care system.’ and he goes “No. It doesn’t matter what law they pass or who’s gonna pay for what we’re not going to fix the health care crisis unless we have a nation full of healthy people.”

Andrew: That’s a really interesting insight.

Dustin: And right there, the light bulb went off just like wow. This is a different way to look at this. Yeah, and I’m like, “Well, what exactly do you mean by that?” and he goes, “Well, hold on for a second. I’m gonna go to my office. I’ll be right back.” He leaves the exam room, he goes to his office. He comes back about a minute later and he comes in he has a piece of paper in his hand and he hands me that piece of paper and he goes, “This is my reading list, you know, I give it to my patients all my patients and he goes you should read the books and get the books on this list and read them.” And So I responded to him I was like, okay. Now I’m a slow reader. So, takes me a while because I like to take everything in. Yeah, and sometimes I have to read things over twice.

Andrew: I was about to say that’s what I do. I read through things and go, What was that? I don’t get it. I’ll go back and read again.

Dustin: Yeah, because you’re kinda like daydreaming. Okay, I gotta read this, like it was in my brain. So I told him if I were to pick one of these four books to read which one should I pick? And he goes, Pick The China Study by Dr. T. Colin Campbell. That should be a mandatory meeting for all medical students before they’re allowed to graduate medical school. And I was like, wow if he’s saying that I must be one important book. You know, so then I from from then on I went home and I picked up a copy of The China Study at the Barnes and Noble and read it and I was hooked. Yeah, I was hooked.

Andrew: Pretty amazing book. I remember the first time I saw that book I didn’t read it. I thought I’m not interested in science. Leave that alone. Well, I was interested in science, but I wasn’t interested in the science of nutrition at all and I left it alone.

Dustin: That’s interesting because weren’t you a personal trainer too?

Andrew: I had the qualification but I never did it. Okay. I’ve got a degree in sports science.

Dustin: Because most people that kind of go down that route are usually very interested in not only the exercise part to put the nutrition part.

Andrew: Yeah. Well, I was very interested in the exercise part but didn’t really care about the nutrition part. I just thought yeah, just ate whatever who cares. It’s just Fuel and it doesn’t really matter what kind of fuel you put in, just put the field in and then you can then you can go and train but uh, yeah, so I saw that book years and years ago and someone recommend it, “Nah, boring. I don’t want to read about nutrition science.” and then uh, I didn’t I didn’t end up reading it until I was researching to do my potato thing and uh, yeah, my mind was blown.

Dustin: What do you think about it?

Andrew: It was amazing. Yeah. It was uh it was. Yeah, just an incredible story. If nothing else just of this guy that grew up on a dairy farm and tried to prove I tried to do research on how he could help get animal protein to poor people and how he just totally turned around his ideas from uh, from what he started off thinking to what he thought of the end and I just it was a really impressive book.

Dustin: Yeah, I was I was so impressed because it’s so evidence based in American medicine as a pharmacist and a doctor and a nurse and like all of us medical professionals were taught to, we’re taught with evidence-based medicine like they drill that into her head in school. So that was all evidence-based hooked.

Andrew: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely and I’ve seen Serenity’s other books, too.

Dustin: Oh, Whole?

Andrew: Yeah great book. Oh, yeah. So that’s that that kick-started you then that book kick-started the change for you.

Dustin: Absolutely, that started me and then another one of the second books on Dr. Sal’s list was Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn in Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease.

Andrew: Read that one too.

Dustin: And so then I read that one after that and I can’t remember what the other two books were but I definitely picked up those and then you know, and then I went on to like, you know McDougal and Dr. Fuhrman and

Andrew: You’ve probably read the rest of the list now,

Dustin: Dr.Barnard and like all those ,all the thought leaders all of our plant-based Heroes, You and I look up to. Read all their books and then I started looking up the studies. Like I look in their in their notes section on the back of the book and look at the actual studies and look them up in PubMed. And um, and I just went to town.

Andrew: Yeah similar sort of reading journey to what I did I guess. I’ve read the uh, mine started with a YouTube video, but then I went and found all the studies that were that were in the YouTube video and then I went and found all the books and stuff as well. And yeah it was a mind-blowing experience.

Dustin: Because obviously if you’re going to eat potatoes and that’s it for a whole year. You want to make sure that something bad’s not going to happen.

Andrew: Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, but mine was like I was probably only six weeks that I was doing my research for I guess but I yeah, it was hours every day. Yeah. It was a big deal. Anyway, enough about me. This is all about you. So that was your, I guess that experience with Dr. Sal was the beginning of your journey to becoming plant-based, a plant-based eater yourself.

Dustin: Absolutely. Yeah. I actually I tell people all the time that you know, I went into my podiatrist to get my foot fixed and he ended up saving my life.

Andrew: Yeah, that’s amazing. Um, what was the transition like for you then?

Dustin: So I, so that was in February of 2009. And as soon as I read The China Study I was like, okay, um, you know, I don’t want to eat meat like red meat and chicken and turkey anymore. I’m gonna I’m gonna get rid of that, but I kept eating fish for a while. You know because I thought that fish was a healthy food, of course many people think that and you know, it’s been proven that it’s not the best source of protein and Omega threes, but then I also you know, I slowly transition. I got rid of my cows milk and I I tried the rice milk and almond milk and soy milk um, all those kind of milks and I you know, settled on almond milk. I like unsweetened original almond milk, and then I, you know got rid of uh eating. I used to Yogurt all the time and I kind of switched over to like a soy-based yogurt and I tried, I think um brown rice yogurt and that kind of stuff.

Andrew: I’ve never heard of brown rice yogurt.

Dustin: Yeah, and um, I think they make yogurt out of almond milk as well. So all different varieties.

Andrew: I’m not a yogurt guy. But I knew there was soy, I’ve heard of coco. Sorry, coconut yogurt too.

Dustin: Yeah, out of coconut milk. And so I tried it all those and you know now I don’t eat yogurt at all. But when you when you have something that you eat for years and years and years and then you’re like, okay, that’s probably not the healthiest thing to eat. What do I do now? It’s nice to have some kind of replacement to kind of get you over the hump. Yeah, so that’s kind of what I did and then it was probably mid year in February mid year in 2009. I’m not sure exactly when but I ended up giving up fish because I started reading more about that and uh the high fat content and fish and that it’s not the best for you. And then it was January of 2010 and I had friends from Minnesota my old college buddies. My old college friends that were down in Florida, of course, it’s winter in Minnesota. It’s freezing out there. They’re visiting Florida. They were down about three four hours south of me and Naples Florida at a condo and said hey come and visit us, you know, and they knew that I had switched how I ate and so I went down there and in January, it’s NFL football season and footballs huge in America.

Yeah, so it’s playoff time and it’s Sunday Sunday NFL playoff time and and they’re like “Dustin. Do you still eat pizza?” And like “oh, yeah, I still eat pizza, but it has to be just cheese pizza. I won’t eat any meat on my pizza.” Yeah, and they’re like, “okay. Well we’re gonna order pizza. Is that okay?” I’m like sure so it was a domino cheese pizza. It was the last Animal product I have and after that I didn’t I gave up cheese and that was it no more animal products.

Andrew: Was there some sort of event that happened eating that pizza that made you think I’m not going to do this anymore.

Dustin: Not really. I just um, At that point I was about a year into it and I was just like, you know, I’ve read enough. I’ve looked at enough and I know that you know meat, dairy and eggs are not healthy for you. And it’s all evidence based in the scientific literature and it’s just time, it’s just time to make that transition.

Andrew: Fair enoug and you can still have pizza anyway, you just don’t put cheese in it. Vegetable pizza, they’re great. I’ve had a couple of them this year.

Dustin: Yeah, I have to it’s it’s one of my treats that I that I have.

Andrew: Yeah, and it’s a pretty good treat. If you’re just having a home made pizza just put veggies on top then.

Dustin: Exactly, some tomato sauce and just pile on the veggie.

 

CHANGING TO PLANT-BASED DIET 

 

Andrew: Yeah. So this uh, this change that you went through going from eating a standard sort of diet to a whole food plant-based diet is a change. Obviously. It’s a big change in the way you eat. But also from a lot of people causes a big change in the way you think and the way that you see the world. So did you I’m guessing you went through that sort of.

Dustin: Oh my goodness. Yeah, completely changed how I viewed him perceived the world because I was I was like many people in in Western cultures. It’s like you you see what’s advertised and thrown at you on the TV and the radio and and the uh magazines and stuff in your kind of have the your blinders on because of all that and it’s not just with food. It’s like with everything. So at that point I was like, it completely made me think differently to always question. I think that’s what I got from it. Like I always need to question everything that I see. I don’t know if it did that for you.

Andrew: Yeah. That’s a pretty common thing. Definitely. Definitely I was. It’s a bit weird for me though. I was always I there were there were areas in life that I always questioned and that I always thought critical about but food wasn’t one of them and there were other things too. But yeah this change in the way I ate uh, just basically made me instead of just questioning of like a politically. Um, I guess is what I’m talkin about. Oh i would always question motivations of politicians and um, you know, the the uh, The influence of big business on politics and things like that. That was an area that I was um, very skeptical on and very uh very much into questioning the motivations behind all the political decisions that happen. But uh, yeah, then uh, yeah this change in the way I ate and everything it just sort of made me question all areas of life instead of just you know, there’s narrow focus of a few things that I was a skeptic on.

Dustin: Yeah, absolutely. And that’s a good point. Like I. I had known that politics was, you know could be kind of shady but you know, I didn’t really give it too much thought or look into it and then you know, I’m sure as you know, you start looking at who’s supporting the politicians and why our systems are the way they are and and you’re just like blown away once you start digging.

Andrew: Yeah, and you have this realization that all this everything. I thought I knew about food and what we should eat and what’s a healthy diet. That’s just been totally blown out the water. What else have I been misled on? So that obviously then had an effect on your practice as a pharmacist. So how did that happen? How did that-

Dustin: Well at this point like it was about 4 and 1/2 or 5 years into my career. So at that point I had no idea about health and nutrition. Um, I switched from retail to hospital. So I was already in the hospital sector of the industry working as a hospital pharmacist, and it’s a completely different world. So you’re dealing with uh, you’re more directly dealing with physicians and nurses instead of patients. In the hospital setting and you’re dealing with the the acute crisis as somebody comes in the emergency room with a heart attack or stroke or you know with a life-threatening pneumonia or from a car accident or whatever you’re dealing with that.

So I was feeling a little bit better about my career because I actually felt like I’m saving somebody from imminent death. At that moment in their life, um, but when when I found out about this nutrition stuff it, um, it really put in perspective like what my whole career as a pharmacist was and it and I’m basically I’m just a big Band-Aid to a problem. Still even even working in a hospital. I can do a little bit of good but um, I’m a big Band-Aid to my patients. So it was it’s uh, it’s not really Pharmacy is not really in an environment where you can practice plant-based nutrition with patients and stuff. And I mean I do share it with my colleagues, the ones that I work closely with every day. They know all about this because I never stop talkin about it. They probably get tired of me talking about it. But um, I’m actually got uh, I know one colleague in particular another pharmacist that completely switched over to being plant-based because you know, she saw the evidence to yeah.

Andrew: All right. Well, that’s cool. So you probably may as well, are a who that that joke about “How do you know if someone’s vegan. Don’t worry they’ll tell you.”

Dustin: What, what is it? No, I haven’t heard about it.

Andrew: That’s it. How do you know if someone’s vegan? Don’t worry. They’ll tell you.

Dustin: Oh, yeah, that’s true. That’s absolutely true.

Andrew: So anyway when you find something so exciting and so life changing and so good for you. Of course, you want to tell people about it.

Dustin: Yeah. Absolutely. Cause you want to help them.

Andrew: Yeah, definitely. Well, anyone who want to help improve the planet and improve the other thing. Yes. So anyway, it’s a human nature. Um, so why is it the, do you have I’m guessing you do have thoughts on why it is that so many people take so many drugs, but drugs this time talking about pharmaceutical prescription drugs for whatever array of illnesses people have.

 

THE DARK SIDE OF PHARMACEUTICAL DRUGS

 

Dustin: well in the western world where we’re brainwashed. That’s what it comes down to like there’s so much advertising and marketing going on not only to the public but to healthcare professionals. Yeah, and it completely distorts the truth of the matter and what we actually need to do to get people healthy and what we are doing to quote, get people healthy. The Big Industry of big Pharma and big agriculture, uh, the meat, and the dairy, and the big pharmaceutical companies. They have so much money and they-

Andrew: We’re probably talkin about trillion dollar industry. I’m guessing of combining all the all the big Pharma companies and-

Dustin: We spend nearly four trillion dollars in the US every single year on Healthcare. It’s insane.

Andrew: Wow. I would have been, thought it was a big number if you said one trillion. Oh, yeah. That’s why I said probably trillion-dollar industry the first started I didn’t had no idea it was that big.

Dustin: And that’s not just the drug companies that I mean, that’s Healthcare overall. But um, but that’s insane. I mean and it’s just skyrocketing. It’s just continues to go up and like if we’re gonna keep spending more and more and more money. Why are people continuing to be sick and miserable? Yeah, and because we’re not getting any healthier. So it doesn’t make any sense like you would you take your car to the mechanic and continue spend more and more money and your car gets worse? And sit there and think like why am I taking my car to this mechanic who’s not fixing it? And I’m spending all this money. Yeah, but we don’t think that way. You know and it’s, and it’s disturbing actually.

Andrew: It is yeah, that mechanic analogy is a really good one. Yeah. It’s uh, it’s crazy how much uh how much time and effort and money we put into it trying to just, prolonging the misery.

Dustin: Yeah, the typical patient will go to their doctor and they’ll have a medical problem maybe heart disease, or but, you know high cholesterol, blood pressure, high blood sugar, whatever it is. Yeah, and you know, they have all the faith in the world and their doctor and you know doctors are looked at as you know, kind of Godlike figures that they went to all this schooling and training and good, good meaning on their part to really help people.

Andrew: Yeah, of course, none of these people get into it to try to do the wrong thing, like, people become doctors and nurses and Pharmacists and scientists and all of these related professions because they want that. Well one, they enjoy it but also to they want to try to help people who make a difference no one’s known get sets out to try to do things that cause harm. I’m sure of that.

Dustin: exactly, like just like I talked about earlier like the whole reason I got into health care and want to be a pharmacist because I wanted to help people. Yeah, and so, you know, you have these patients who come with all these medical problems to their doctor and their farm system whatnot. And the only thing that they’re offered is pills procedures and surgeries. And it’s like not even questioned by the patient because. We’re brainwashed and we don’t think that you can ask different questions. And um, it’s all the doctor and the pharmacist know because that’s what we’ve been taught in school.

Andrew: Yeah, you know, It just reminded me of an experience. I had a few years ago now which I haven’t thought about for a long time, but I went to see a doctor, uh, when I was living in Holland, actually I had an earache and uh, and I went to the doctor, said I’ve got this earache and she looked in my ear she got these tweezers and pulled out this big clump of stuff that was pretty gross. Maybe it was like earwax or something that had built up on the inside of me. So when you clean your ear, you don’t get the stuff that’s right on the inside.

Dustin: I’m sure it’s not something you wanted to save and put them on the counter there.

Andrew: But it was it was pretty gross and it was white bigger than I thought something could be to fit in your ear. But anyway, there’s a point to this story that um, That fixed it I was gone. And and um, I just remember when I was leaving I thanked her because I suddenly I felt great and she thanked me because she’s like, “you know, I don’t as a doctor. I don’t normally get to see myself fixing people”. Yeah, “People coming in and I give them pills and they come back later and they’re still sick. I’ve actually fixed someone today.”

Dustin: So this is so I can tell you like a healthcare practitioners standpoint like the most fulfilling the most fulfilling thing in the world is not to get your paycheck every two weeks. It’s to see somebody else’s life change in a positive manner and and them going from sick to healthy and getting their life back. That’s the best feeling ever. And rarely ever happens in conventional medicine. I mean that’s a, it doesn’t, we need, we have accidents and we have you know the crisis at hand because people don’t eat right and they get the heart attack, but you know, so we are able to help people. To uh small extent but for the most part, you know, uh, we don’t get that on a daily basis and it’s not a fun experience for the physician or the pharmacist or the nurse or any other health care practitioner either.

Andrew:Yeah, and I can relate to that feeling of helping people now because because I’ve had. Quite a few people tell me that they’ve been helped by eating on the potatoes and following my example so, I can definitely relate to that, how amazing-

Dustin: It’s like the best feeling isn’t it?

Andrew: Just an amazing feeling. Yeah. Absolutely. Um, but you mention you touched on drug advertising before and this is something that’s been mind-blowing these last few days that I’ve been in the US is I don’t watch much TV, but I have I don’t actually own a TV at home. Uh having a TV in my hotel room is sort of a novelty. I turn the TV on and see what’s going on. And uh, seeing the drug advertising has been a mind-blowing and scary experience for me because in Australia, prescription drugs are not allowed to be advertised in any form. Well, they probably allowed to be advertising doctors magazines and things like that, I guess but the general public never sees advertising of prescription drugs. So, to turn on the TV and see these big long ads for prescription drugs where they’re trying to actively sell it to people. So you go to your doctor and ask for this prescription, is quite scary and especially to see the like I’ve saw and had I can’t remember what it was for but like the whole second half of the ad was the guy reading a list of the possible side effects. Like obviously people are buying it because they’re advertising it and I wouldn’t have the money to advertise if people weren’t buying it and it just blows my mind that someone can sit there and listen to this massive list that takes up half of the commercial break of things that might go wrong with you. Yeah, and I still go and buy it. Yeah, what do you think of this drug advertising thing like how? I just it’s totally insane to me.

Dustin: Well first of all, Andrew. I’m totally jealous because I wish I lived in a country that didn’t allow direct-to-consumer advertising on prescription drugs. Because it it’s just a bunch of nonsense, what’s going on?

Andrew: I mean. You can, they do advertise. Like if you’ve, if you’ve got it like a sniffle or something. They advertise like these nasal sprays.

Dustin: Something over the counter.

Andrew: Yes. Yeah these things that can you know help you with a sore throat and those sorts of things unlike, you know mild pain relievers like Panadol and things, they do advertise those things. But the attitude is that if you’re going to take prescription drugs, it should be taken them because your doctor said it was a good idea not because you saw it on TV, and I’m going to ask for it like.

Dustin: I mean, what’s that is we’re basically we’re advertising prescription drugs in the US and I think in New Zealand they can do this too. But like you said like in Australia and a lot of other countries even in the western world, they’re not that it’s illegal to advertise prescription drugs to the direct public, but we’re basically taking and advertising these prescription powerful medications to patients and the lay public. Like their sneakers or cars or you know, like doodads or something to buy for the home and it’s like, you know, you’re dealing with people’s lives here.

You know just the uh advertise that they can go to their doctor and ask for how many, umpteen million different meds that they need for every little thing that’s wrong with them. That’s the other thing they go, you know, “Do you feel tired? Are you overweight?’ Like of course, like most people feel like that on a daily basis. So they get people thinking like, “Oh not. Well, I have something some kind of major problem medical problem with myself. Now I have to go to the doctor and ask for this medication to fix my problem.” But then like you said there side effects and you notice how they like. Talk about the side effects and they say really fast. Like in kind of lower voice and and then they rattled off like it’s an auction or something.But they have this, they start out the the the drug commercial with like, Uh, soothing music or fun music and they like say, you know, this pill can reduce your risk of heart attacks or whatever by 30 or 40 or 50 percent and they make it all sound glamorous. And then in really fast language, they said or it can cause like bleeding and death and kidney failure and all this stuff.

Dustin: And you know, they have to say those things because those things actually happen to people in trials.

Andrew: Yeah, I like what a read. Uh, what T. Colin Campbell said about the side effects. He has this same at their there’s no such thing as side effects only effects. Just that there are some effects that you want and some that you don’t but they’re all just effects.

Dustin: That’s exactly true. You’re putting a chemical into your body and it’s going to do something good or bad to your body.

Andrew: Yeah, this is mind-blowing. What do we what do we do about it then?

Dustin: Well, it starts with you and me. No, I mean we are the ones that are out there that have done our homework and done the digging and found the evidence and the truth and we just need to educate people because it’s not going to start from the top of the big Pharma companies and trickle down. It’s not going to start from the politicians and trickle down because they get paid off in lobbying and special interest money from the pharmaceutical companies. So it’s really going to have to start from the ground up don’t have to start from um patients and people learning how to eat different and going to their doctor and going. Not going, Hey, I want this pill because on TV, I saw this thing that and I think I have this problem. So can I have this pill? But going to the doctor and say hey. You know, I understand. You know, my blood pressure cholesterol is High teach me how to eat and live my life so I can make this go away. That’s how it starts.

Andrew: Yeah, I think if you look through history every every uh, big societal change is come from the population not from the people in power.

Dustin: Exactly. So every kind of Revolution. We need a plant-based Revolution right now.

Andrew: Yeah, we do we do. We’re on the cusp, I think. All right. So we’re talkin about a little bit about big Pharma these huge mind-blowingly big Industries. Uh, and I obviously have an influence on society through the way they advertise and the drugs they push in all of that. How do you think they influenced the science because there’s no doubt that they they do influence the science, but how does that happen?

Dustin:Well, there’s. You know all these drugs and surgeries or procedures or whatever. They all have to get approved at least in the US. I don’t know how Australia works, but we have a governing body called the FDA and they have to, these drugs have to be approved by the FDA in deemed quote safe and-

Andrew: FDA is Food and Drug Administration?

Dustin: Food and Drug Administration, and they have to be deemed quote safe and effective whatever that means I guess .You can see what’s going on, but safe and effective before they’re allowed on the market to be sold to the general public. So these drug companies will initially start off and they’ll usually fund their own trials. Yeah, and do their own trials on their own drug to see how, quote safe and effective it is.

Dustin: So that’s a problem in itself funding their own trials and doing their own conflict of interest. Yeah right there. So I mean they’re they’re paying for something to go to a governing body to get approved and they’re paying for it with their own money and if it gets approved then they can turn around and sell it for millions and billions of dollars. So I have absolutely at the conflict of interest. So it’s not to say that their trials are completely worthless because they’re not, they do tell us things. But I always take it with a grain of salt knowing that if it’s funded by the drug company, they’re probably going to maybe design the studys o it’s a little bit more favorable for your drug or. Sometimes and this has been shown by uh release of public records. I mean, Dr. Michael Greger has done this. He’s requested legally to have published trials released and data released from the drug companies that they literally just shove underneath the rug and they hide because it was a negative result. So there’s a lot of unpublished data from the drug companies are just shoved aside.

Andrew: I haven’t thought of that. I just, I guess I just assumed that every study that gets done, gets published.

Dustin: No No, in fact a few. Dr. Ben Goldacre is a is a doctor over and um, I think the UK or Europe somewhere and if you look up his name Google his name and look up drugs studies, He goes in depth on this subject how the drug companies are hiding a lot of the data that’s negative. They don’t want their drug to look negative. So they just kind of hide it and then they they they put out the positive results to make themselves look good.

Andrew: That’s actually terrifying. Yeah. That’s uh, I don’t know why I haven’t thought of that before or heard of that, but that’s that is genuinely terrifying that they’re keeping important information from us.

Dustin: Yeah, because we should be able to know everything like all the studies and like how the whole picture looks. Yeah, and so there are studies out there that they’re not funded by the drug companies and maybe they’re fine funded by you know, the government but the research and scientific part of the government and IH in the US. Or maybe they’re funded by a private organization that is not a drug company doesn’t have anything to do with the drug. And those are, those I take those a little bit more seriously because obviously there’s not that conflict of interest. And you can see if there’s different results or maybe it’s the same results as other drug company and maybe that is really the truth on how these drugs work.

Andrew: Yeah. Well there has to be well not there has to be there is there are drugs that are useful and important and uh, and there are drugs that we do need to to use for various reasons. So, of course, we’re not here to just say drugs are just bad blanket ban on drugs, but. Yeah, we just need a little bit of perspective here. Maybe we don’t get that and yeah, I was already feeling negative about the pharmaceutical industry before you started talking, but now even more so.

Dustin: Well there is just to let you and your followers know there’s in the US. We dispense on average 13 pills a little bit over 13 pills for every man woman and child in the US per year. And I don’t take any prescription drugs on regular basis. So I mean somebody else’s got mine.

Andrew: Yeah. So yeah, people are taking handfuls of drugs. Wow, what a depressing stat. Um, so another thing another thing I found really interesting, uh from your talk the other day was you talked about how. In science how they play with the numbers and I can’t remember the exact term. It was absolute, uh the absolute and relative risk reductions. Yeah. So can you talk us through that?

 

THE ABSOLUTE AND RELATIVE RISK REDUCTIONS

 

Dustin: Absolutely. So this is a really really really important topic and people need to understand this and you know, sometimes Healthcare professionals don’t even understand it or they’ve, you know, forgot how to look through this and calculate this stuff but it’s very important. It has to do with how the statistics are reported in the medical literature. And what is reported like in the US on advertisements on TV and in the radio and in the magazine articles, so let’s say for example. That um, I’m Dustin. I’m going to make this drug and I’m gonna make this drug to help heart disease. And so let’s call it drug X. Okay. So what I need to do as uh, my own company making this drug is I need to do trials to submit to the FDA like we talked about and to prove that its safe and effective. So what I’m gonna do is I’m going to recruit people to be in my trial and be guinea pigs basically and let’s say I take 200 people. And I’m gonna split them up into two groups and then I’m going to give you know, a group of 100 people drug X, the one I invented and the other group of 100. I’m going to give just a placebo pil, sugar pill. It doesn’t do anything and then I’m gonna follow these people with heart disease for you know, three four or five years, whatever it is, a year.and I’m going to see you know, hopefully my end goal is. To help people avoid death from heart disease. Yeah. I mean that should be the end goal.

Andrew: And for a lot of people like I said earlier for a lot of people probably a lot of the scientists involved. That is the end goal.

Dustin: Yeah. I mean if I’m a patient I don’t want to die and I don’t want to have some kind of major problem like a stroke and then I can’t talk for the rest of my life. You know, that’s if I’m gonna take a pill I want to make sure I’m taking the pill so that helps me avoid that.

Andrew: Yeah, and and no doubt. There are people in the industry that that’s also what they want. It’s not just an industry totally full of people that are just trying to take your money, right? But they’re obviously there is that element.

Dustin: And I know that probably most people that work for the pharmaceutical companies on the you know, uh on their end of the deal. They’re probably really feel like they are helping people. So one thing that we do get kind of sidetracked is instead of with these trials how they set them up instead of looking at maybe who avoids death by taking the medication they look at, How many points can we lower your blood pressure? Yeah, you know what I say, who cares? Yeah, who cares if we lower your blood pressure by five points and you still die of heart disease. Yeah. Yeah, you know what I care about really good point not dying from heart disease. Yeah, and I think that’s a patient’s care about.

So back to our example. So if I have a hundred people in each group, and then I’m going to give them the drug and then the other group I’m gonna give the placebo and then follow them. So say like five years and then we’ll see who dies in each group from heart disease and let’s say in the drug group only two out of the hundred people die from heart disease and in the placebo group, the sugar pill group. Four people out of 100 die from heart disease. So I always ask this question in my presentations. Did the drug work? Yes, it did work because less people in the drug group died from heart disease. So obviously the drug worked now, here’s how the statistics are reported, on TV in America at least. That’ll be reported as a 50% reduction in heart in heart disease death.Now, how did they get that 50%?

Andrew: Yeah, obviously a weird number.

Dustin: Is 2 half of 4? Yeah, 2 is half, that’s simple algebra, you know simple, you know Division and multiplication that’s easy to is 1/2 of 4. Yeah, and so that’s a 50% reduction in heart disease death. But was there more than six people in the study? Of course, there was, there was 200 people in the study. So if you just forget about the other 194 people there was really only, there was really a 50% reduction heart disease death.

Andrew: So if it wasn’t so scary, it would be funny.

Dustin: It would, it would. So let me explain this to you in a different terms. Yeah, so that’s called relative risk reduction. Yeah, that’s uh wildly outrageous number that is it is wrongfully inflated. So absolute risk reduction is a different term. This takes into account all 200 people in this study who either took the drug or the placebo and that’s what I want to know. Like if you have 200 people in the study and everybody gets a pill, one that’s a drug and one that’s not, then how did everybody fare? And to look at that. In our drug group, it was 2 out of 100 that died of heart disease. So that’s two percent of the people, right? In our placebo group, It was for out of 100 that died from heart disease. So that’s four percent. So really if you take everybody in the study, you really only went from four percent of people dying to 2% of people dying, in the study. So you really only reduce the amount of deaths overall by 2% by taking this drug.

See how much of a difference that is? You can either you have the same study. Yeah, and you could go and you could tell a patient or a doctor or people on TV that this drug reduced heart disease death by 50%. Or you could tell people that it reduced heart disease death by 2% and it’s the same study.

Andrew: And both are technically the truth.

Dustin: Both are technically the truth depending on how you-

Andrew: I shouldn’t say technically but, could be argued that it’s the truth.

Dustin: It’s the truth, depending on how you you know, finagled the number.

Andrew: And for a layperson such as me who knew none of this before I heard you talk. It’s uh, how can you be expected to know that if no one’s told you, how can you be expected to know that this is not-

Dustin: Well you’re not gonna know that. I mean people in the general public are not gonna know that.

Andrew: So we’re being tricked basically.

Dustin: We’re being tricked. I call it at best., I call it distorting the truth. But worse that’s called lying. We’re being lied to. You know, I don’t think that does appropriate to go over relative risk reduction in a TV commercial when we should be talking about absolute risk reduction.

Andrew: Yeah, absolutely. So let’s go, let’s move on a bit and talk about uh, some specific diseases then so you know, we obviously a big one in Australia as well as in America is diabetes. There’s a lot of people with diabetes and there’s a lot of people taking a lot of drugs for diabetes. Uh, so. What should we do? Are we on the right track at all with medication or?

ON TREATING DIABETES 

Dustin: When we talk about diabetes, I like to break it up because type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease and that is a disease that absolutely requires insulin for those patients because what happens in those patients is somewhere in their youth, their body has attacked their pancreas the cells and their the beta cells in their pancreas that are responsible for producing insulin naturally in the body and they’ve completely destroyed them permanently. So those people cannot produce insulin and you have to have insulin in your body. To live and in the process glucose.

Andrew: Yeah. So the purpose of this discussion when we say diabetes, we’re referring to type 2 diabetes

Dustin. Right. So type 2 diabetes is is comes later in life. And that’s due to what you eat.And that’s a dietary disease. It’s 100% dietary disease. Yeah and people get that because they eat uh, Rich western diet of animal foods and processed foods and oils and all those fats and a lot of people think that, oh, well sugar causes diabetes. All about blood sugar. No, that’s not the truth. So there’s three things that go along with the cause of type 2 diabetes in one is insulin resistance, which we’re really good at talking about in in the public.

Andrew: And most people I reckon maybe it’s just because I’m in that sort of world now, but I feel like most people would have at least heard of the term.

Dustin: Yeah, so just basically insulin-resistant means that your body’s cells don’t respond to insulin like they should so that’s not able to process the carbohydrates that are broken down into simple glucose molecules. So, you know the glucose molecule stay high in your bloodstream and then you have high blood sugar levels and your quote, you know diabetes, you have type 2 diabetes. So that’s that’s one aspect that most people know but the conversation stops there. And even in the medical education system the conversation stops there and it shouldn’t because the cause the root cause of insulin, insulin resistance is these increased little particles of fat that are inside the muscle cells. And those are everybody has them. They’re normal. They’re called intramyocellular lipids. There’s little pieces of particles of fat that are stored in your muscle cells. And the reason they’re stored there is because you don’t eat 24/7. Yeah, so in between meals and when you’re fasting you’re going to need some sort of energy.So they’re kind of reserves.

Andrew: already at the muscle is easy for your body to just get it put in your muscle and use it.

Dustin: Right I mean we store fat in fat cells and then we sort of little bit of fat in our muscles. And as these these little bit of fat that’s in our muscle cells is normal for people like you and I that are healthy, but for people with type 2 diabetes, they have a whole excess of these intramyocellular lipids. All this extra fat in their muscle cells that’s clogging up the system. And basically what that does to the body. Is it prohibits insulin from acting on the muscle cell to let the glucose from the blood into the muscle cell so that that glucose can be used to make fuel. And so if you can’t get the glucose from the blood into the muscle cell it stays in the blood and your blood sugar rises.

Andrew: Yeah. Okay, that makes sense. And so what did the drugs do then?

Dustin: So the drugs will try to make the pancreas make more insulin. That’s not the problem. It’s the fat in the muscle cells. The drugs will try to maybe increase the sensitivity of the insulin attaching to the receptor on the muscle cell. It can help a little bit, but there’s still all this fat clogging up the system. It’s not going to fix the problem.

Andrew: If you can’t open the door to the cell for the glucose to get in, if you can’t open the door with a key, Let’s go and get a sledgehammer. That’s what we’re trying to do.

Dustin: Yeah. Well, yeah, I mean we’re trying to work away around it. But obviously the drugs don’t work very well because the people stay diabetic. And one thing that I talked about my talk is you know, one of the new classes of drugs that just helps your kidneys filter out glucose so you can pee it out. So we have all this extra glucose in your blood. So let’s just give them a drug to pee it out. Well the problem with that is, first of all, the absolute risk reduction number on those drugs is like 1, 1 and 1/2 percent. People are gonna avoid some kind of complication or death from diabetes. So pretty low. So you get very little benefit from it and then to glucose should never ever ever ever be in your urine. So the the bodies’ kidneys and the body is very brilliant and we don’t want to waste a fuel just like when you put fuel in your gas tank in your car. You don’t put fuel in your gas tank and then have a leak out the side. And just like we don’t want to put glucose which is fuel for our body into our pee and just pee it out. So the bodies kidneys for normal healthy people will reabsorb all that glucose back into the blood stream gets filtered out in the kidneys in the initial state in the initial part of filtering blood and it wants to keep that to make energy.

Well these drugs make it so our kidneys. Don’t do that bery good. So this keeps the glucose being filtered. So we just pee it out .

Andrew: So you just might even think right when you said that the drugs make our kidneys stopped doing that very well. Well, so, effectively we are taking a drug that makes our body work worse.

Dustin: That makes our body work opposite of how it was designed to work.

Andrew: Yeah, then the drug is designed to impair our kidney function.

Dustin: But we get a 1% benefit of avoiding death but diabetes so, you know. So then the other thing with has drugs always come with side effects. Yeah and the side effects of these drugs that make your kidneys do that and make you pee out glucose is that now you have an environment in your bladder and your, and your ureters that are warm, wet, and has glucose which is food. And guess what likes warm, wet, and lots of food? Bacteria, fungi, UTIs, urinary tract infections, fungal infections. Up to up to 18% of people get that.

Andrew: Yeah, right. That’s I’m learning. I’m always learning. Hey, this is great. All right heart disease. What about heart disease? heart disease is a, will it take all sorts of drugs for heart disease? Its our biggest killer.

 

ON TREATING HEART DISEASE

 

Dustin: Coronary heart disease, which is the plaques that end up clogging up our coronary arteries are on our heart. That’s a dietary disease, just like diabetes is the dietary disease except for like one and I think 500 people truly have a genetic defect and can’t process and get rid of excess cholesterol like their body should because they have a mutation on their DNA. But for the most part for the other 499 out of 500 people. It’s what you eat. And um, so we eat all these rich Western Foods these meat Dairy eggs processed foods oils all this stuff that clogs up and puts fat and cholesterol into our arteries and then they clog up and we get a heart attack or we get chest pain or we get some kind of Crisis that happens and causes heart problems. And if you have a heart attack, it can kill part of your and cause death in part of your muscle in your heart.

And then that part of the heart doesn’t pump as well and eventually if you have these over time especially multiple ones your heart just gets tired and you develop congestive heart failure. Yeah, and um, you can develop arrhythmia, as well. So, you know, if we just eat correctly if we just eat the plant based the low-fat, plant-based, healthy whole fruits vegetables whole grains legumes. We eat those Foods. We don’t clog up the system in the first place. We have nice and clean arteries and we don’t have any problems.

Andrew: So I’ve read also about reversing heart disease. So yes, and that same diet does the same thing?

Dustin: Dr. Esselstyn and Dr. Dean Ornish proved that. That we can take this diet with this whole foods plant based, uh, you know nutrition and feed that to people. Not only halt and prevent heart disease, but actually see a reversal of all these plaques in their coronary arteries and they’ve seen it on coronary angiograms. Where they put the dye into the patient’s veins and arteries and they they look at it with you know, in a angiogram, and they can see the vessels opening up after people eat this way after just literally a matter of weeks or months.

Andrew; Yes. So much better than drugs

Dustin: It is, because the drugs, I’ll mention the drugs like statins. Yeah, um, everybody’s probably heard of statins because they have lower cholesterol and you would think that that would be good because less cholestero,l less clogged arteries. Well, the absolute risk reduction number on statins, is anywhere from about half to one and half percent. Avoiding death and avoiding future heart attacks and strokes.

Andrew: Wow. Okay. I thought that was actually one of the one of the drugs that are. You know, one of the better ones.

Dustin: It’s definitely marketed like that and use like that but you get about 1/2 to 1 and 1/2 percent chance of avoiding some kind of crisis or death with those and in addition to that you like all all drugs have a facts as you call them. So you get a 2% chance of developing diabetes from taking Statin. And you get a 10% chance of having some kind of muscle pain, muscle weakness, some kind of muscle damage to your body by taking statins. So the risks are actually more than the benefit. So if you just eat well, you don’t need them.

 

ON CHOLESTEROL LOWERING DRUGS

 

Andrew: All right. So, uh cholesterol, is a lot of people on cholesterol-lowering drugs.Yes. I know what happened to my cholesterol, uh over the last year when I when I started eating only potatoes and my cholesterol wasn’t, wasn’t terrible to begin with it wasn’t good either. What are your thoughts on cholesterol drugs and how to improve that?

Dustin: Well we talked about the statins and then you know, there’s other drugs like zedia, which is a ezetimibe. And that’s a drug that basically tells your your gut not to absorb the cholesterol from the food that you eat. But then the side effects with that our GI related so you get some, you know, nausea and upset stomach and or maybe some diarrhea and those kind of problems. But if you didn’t put the cholesterol there in the first place, then you wouldn’t have to worry about absorbing it into your bloodstream. And there’s I want to point this out to people plant foods contain no measurable amount of cholesterol. Animal Foods all have cholesterol. So if you’re just eating healthy whole plant Foods. You’re not even getting any cholesterol. So that’s a bonus right there.

Andrew: I had an email from I won’t say her name but a very prominent, uh, low-carb person in Australia and she was telling me that I it’s dangerous to have no cholesterol as I did with my potato thing because uh, I cholesterol I can’t remember exactly what you said, but she’s talkin about how important it is and how it’s the building blocks of all these different parts of our body and I think she was talkin about how it’s great for brain function and all of this and um, yeah, she was uh trying to scare me, I think anyway, so what would you say to those sorts of arguments?

Dustin: I would say first of all, um, You’re obviously dead and in a coffin right? Because you’re standing right in front of me, talking to me. Yeah, obviously that didn’t work for you.

Andrew: That’s funny, she said all you can do that for a short period of time but in the long term, it’s gonna be really bad and I was like, it’s been a year. How long have to go before you say this is long enough? Anyway.

Dustin: So to her and her credit actually cholesterol is important in the body and it is used, you know to make hormones and help with body functions. It’s part of, uh, you know, it helps to make steroid hormones, normal produced hormones in the body that we need but the body makes all the cholesterol on its own naturally to fulfill all those human requirements on a regular basis. So you don’t need to put cholesterol from food into your body. Um, you know, when we do that then we turn around we take pills that try to take cholesterol out of our bloodstreams. Yes, like that doesn’t even make sense that we’re putting it in there in the first place.

Andrew: And again you taking something that’s designed to impair your function of your body in some way. Which is something I never thought about until you um until this conversation right now. I’ve always thought these drugs are designed to enhance the way our body functions some way but most of the time it seems like. Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems like they designed in some way to impair some sort of body function and stop your body from doing what it’s supposed to do, and somehow that’s supposed to make us better.

Dustin: Exactly. We’re putting a chemical into our body to alter the way that our body naturally functions because we have abused our body. With he wrong kinds of foods. So now we’re trying to make up for it and put this chemical in our body to make our body do things It doesn’t normally do and it just doesn’t really make any sense to me.

Andrew: And if you’re impaired on purpose you the function of your body, of course its not going to just be impaired and only one very small specific way.

Dustin: That’s why you have side effects. So even if there’s some magic pill that eventually comes out to treat 10 different diseases at once someday, there’s always going to be side effects.

Andrew: Yeah, right. I’m struggling to take all this in now. Oh, yeah. Anyway, we could talk about lots of different diseases. So maybe I’ll, I’ve got a list here, but I’ll just cut to one. That’s very important for me. In my history with depression and you know, we do treat depression with drugs that there’s a lot of different drugs for treating depression. Um, yeah, what are your thoughts on that?

 

ON DEPRESSION AND PSYCHOTROPIC DRUGS

Dustin: So you’re talkin about the psychotropic drugs the antidepressants,the anti-anxiety agents, the um, you know, those type of drugs. Those are called the psychotropic drugs and they include like the SSRIs, zoloft, paxil, prozacs, you know.

Andrew: SSRIs are the serotonin reuptake inhibitors? That’s the only one I’ve ever heard of because I was prescribed that.

Dustin: And then there’s um, you know, there’s other drugs like benzodiazepines are anti-anxiety and um, there’s other antidepressants that work on norepinephrine and dopamine in the system, wellbutrin and there’s uh, uh, Stuff like boost bar which is an anti-anxiety agent. There’s um effexor are which is an antidepressant. And so there’s all these different drugs that we use to Target different chemicals in our brain and honestly, I think it’s the most dangerous class of medications on the market. Because um, this is actually specifically what Dr. Ben Goldacre talks about how the drug companies had made these drugs and they’ve hidden a lot of the studies because they keep them unpublished. And a lot of these studies that’s been really has been shown that there is no benefit to taking these drugs to getting started on them for most people that have some kind of depression or anxiety disorder.

And if you were to just go, and your look at studies that compare drugs to cognitive behavior therapy, which is, you know form of counseling from a psychologist or something. Or a mental health counselor. That they are equally just as well as each other. Now, I’ve never heard of somebody getting permanent ticks which can happen on psychotropic drugs. Or having suicidal thoughts which can be caused by psychotropic drugs. When they go to their counselor and they have a session and they come out. It goes kind of side effects just don’t happen. It’s always positive thing, you know, so while maybe they’re shown in studies at least the published ones because there’s a lot of unpublished ones that they’re equal in efficacy to they just regular counseling. You have all the side effects to deal with too, and then these drugs actually when you get on them and you’re on them for an extended period of time. Even though they’re not supposed to be addictive they cause dependency. Even though they’re not like a hardcore morphine or something that you would think typically would cause addiction and dependency and that when you go off of that you’re going to have all these withdrawal symptoms. People get withdrawal symptoms on the psychotropic medication when they try to go off their antidepressants. They just go off them cold turkey. They’re gonna go crazy. They’re gonna be anxious and stressed and irritable and depressed and they’re going to have uh suicidal thoughts and all these things can happen. And it’s a withdrawal period and it’s very devastating to patients who go through this.

So it’s not something that if you’re on these you don’t stop them without working with your doctor and trying to I would say get some counseling. Um, there’s also some other things that can help people. There’s like electroconvulsive therapy that helps mostly just short-term where your kind of inducing many little seizures on on the body, but then you know, Um, it’s certainly not as safe as counseling. Just going to a psychologist and getting counseling.

Andrew: Yeah, but are there any kind of antidepressant drugs that there must be situations where you probably should be on.

Dustin: So I’ve seen situations a couple times in my career where maybe you have a schizophrenic. I’ve seen the schizophrenic that has been putting on the psychotropic drugs, antipsychotics and antidepressants. And when they’re on these medications they can function and they can you know, hold down a job and be social and interact appropriately in public and with their with their family and friends and life is somewhat normal for them. And that’s a good thing and there’s going to be people that are going to be so far gone, as far as needing that help. That maybe this is the last thing that would work for them. I would always encourage people to get. Um, just the easy way. The counseling, go exercise, go eat well. If you do go find a support group or be involved in a church and develop a loving support group around or some other if you have a f if you’re into basketball or baseball or softball and you get in on a team and you have that camaraderie, and then you do the counseling, the exercise, and eat well a lot of times that will just fix everything. For most people but there are some people or some. Like with bipolar severe severe bipolar disease. I’ve seen patients that they literally can’t function unless you know, they could do all those things but they still have problems and maybe the last line resort that they do need to try out the medication. We’re not saying never use them but it should always be last line therapy.

Andrew: Yeah. Okay. That’s a good point. Um, and it’s good to know that you. You’re not like on this 100% Crusade against all sort of pharmaceuticals, you know, it seems like a very balanced view that you have to me that uh, you know, drugs have their place but let’s not make them the first protocol.

Dustin: It should be, you know, third, fourth, fifth, down the line instead of first.

 

FUTURE PLANS AND CONCLUSION

 

Andrew: Yeah. I’ve uh, a lot of people naturally have. I don’t wonder if you’ve heard of this book called, Potatoes not Prozac.

Dustin: No, I haven’t heard of that.

Andrew: Okay, a lot of people have sent me links to that book since for obvious reasons.

Dustin: Have you read it?

Andrew: No, I’ve got it but I haven’t I’ve just so busy. I just haven’t had a chance to read it. But I was hoping you would have read it so that you could tell me about it.

Dustin: No i’ve never heard of it, but it actually sounds fast fascinating. You know, I’m just I’d really be interested in what that what that has to say. Take a look at it and pick up a copy myself.

Andrew: Yeah. I can’t remember the uh, the author’s name at the moment, but I’ve read the blurb and it’s, probably dont need to read the blurb to know what it’s about.

Dustin: Tell you where I’m pretty sure that there’s probably a lot less side effects than problems with potatoes than there is while taking Prozac.

Andrew: There are a lot of side effects actually, but they’re all good ones.

Dustin: Good bowel movements, Good moods.

Andrew: So anyway, we can a lot of we can uh, we can change a lot about the way our brain works by changing the way we eat, right?

Dustin: Absolutely. Absolutely. We change the way we eat. We move our body, we and you know at this conference one thing that really stuck out to me, is that a couple of the different speakers spoke so highly recommended, so highly how important love and support is in relationships and that’s almost like on the on the blue zones on Dan Buettner’s pyramid. That was the foundation of his pyramid was loving and supporting relationships with other human beings. And then it was the food. Yeah, and then it was moving your body and so forth.

Andrew: So that was a common thing to I came here thinking that this was going to be a um, just to all about nutrition and what to eat and all that sort of thing but obviously it was, it was a lot about nutrition but there was also this big emphasis like he said on on just general lifestyle change. So how you move, how you relate to others spirituality, all this sort of personally.

Dustin: I’ve taken that more seriously in the past probably 3/4 of a year because I was for many years, I’ve just been on this. I’m going to work work work work work work work. And um, you know, I, in May after I get done with my board certification exams and pass those I was like, you know, I’m working myself to death. And I need to take some time to actually enjoy life. Connect with my family connect with my friends develop, uh, some kind of a community and social relationships with people and have that love and support.And it just makes all the difference in the world.

Andrew: Yeah. Absolutely. It’s huge. I’ve realized that it’s good to love and be loved.

Dustin: Yeah, that’s the meaning of life really, is to love.

Andrew: Yeah, so, all right. Well, let’s wrap this up. Uh, let’s let’s finish with uh, let’s talk a little bit about what having talked about your thoughts on drugs and that let’s talk a little bit about what you personally do. How do you eat, how do you move, how do you live your life to keep healthy.

Dustin: And so, um, you know nutrition is a focal point of my own personal life and I stick to the fruits and vegetables and whole grains and legumes, which is beans, peas, and lentils. And then nuts and seeds.

Andrew: Yeah, let’s go through a day then what would you have for breakfast on the typical?

Dustin: So like today for breakfast I had oatmeal with some golden raisins in them and some cinnamon on top and then add fresh cut fruit. So watermelon, honeydew pineapple, um, and uh and cantaloupe, and it was delicious.

Andrew: Sounds like a pretty good breakfast to me.

Dustin: Yeah, like for supper last night, was a perfect example when we went out to eat. We went to a Mexican restaurant called Tsukasa here in Santa Rosa. And I love the fact that they have a McDougal section on their recipes. It’s great.

Andrew: That’s great. And I think all menus should have that they have that, but maybe just be that in title. But anyway.

Dustin: That’s be great. That’s because I felt safe, you know. It’s hard to feel safe when you go out to eat. So I ordered a burrito like a bean burrito. And have broccoli in it. And I think uh beans and rice and stuff like that and it was fantastic. With enchilada sauce. No oil. So I love Mexican food. Um, I I like to make uh, I, you know, honestly, I don’t think I could live. And I probably won’t be able to survive without brown rice. Like I know your thing is potatoe – I have brown rice all the time. So brown rice with vegetables on top and then tomatoes and seasonings and yeah and salsa to season things up so i have that a lot for dinner.

Andrew: Yeah, um, what about what would you take to work? What would you?

Dustin: So what I do is I batch cook because I work 7 Days on 7 days off. I do like my 80 hours in one week. So I don’t have time to cook and stuff. So I make big pots of food on my week off like, you know, I made uh, Mary Mcdougall’s Tex-Mex. Couscous salad the other day. And it was couscous and bell peppers red and green bell peppers and onions and uh, there was black and pinto beans in it and a green onions and um, all kinds of you know, cilantro and all kinds of good stuff and then I’ll just put it in tupperware dishes freeze it. And when I go to work, grab a container go and I can do it like that.

Andrew: Yeah, that’s not that hot if you’re making if you making one meal for dinner, it’s not that hard to make 10 meals instead of just one.

Dustin: Yeah you just eat a little bit and you, put the rest in. I like burgers too, like bean burgers. So Jeff Nova has some great bean burger recipes. Make a whole batch of those up in then you can freeze them in the freezer and then just take them out and and cook them when you need them.

Andrew: Sounds good. I love a burger too, but I haven’t actually got around to trying to make my own Whole Food plant-based Burgers, but that’s something to try.

Dustin: They’re really simple you make them in like 15 minutes or less. Like Jeff Novak’s fast food Burgers and Fries. He has a DVD and it shows you exactly how to do it all. Simple and quick and easy.

Andrew: I’ll do some show notes and try to go through this and uh and try to put links on my website to all the interesting stuff we’ve talked about. Yeah, if people want to find that then go to the website and look up the episode page and hopefully it will all be there if I’m good at my job.

Dustin: Oh you are.

Andrew: All right, last question. Uh, But what now for the future do you have some goals or plans of where you want to take this plant-based physician thing even any personal goals?

Dustin: I want to, I just want to continue on my book that was published about a um, it was about to two years ago as a September of 2014. It’s called The Empty Medicine Cabinet. The pharmacist guide to the hidden dangers of drugs and the healing powers of food.

Andrew: I’m looking forward to getting my hands on that.

Dustin: Absolutely. So I want to. I want to continue to help people with my book, um to get out there and speak like at conferences like McDougal and then locally back and Florida and do podcast shows like this. I’m a monthly guest usually on the Doctor Don Radio show. He’s out at Bullhead City, Arizona. Just a normal radio show and he’s actually on both AM and FM stations and he’s out to the public, and he talks about this whole message so I try to do radio show appearances, podcast show appearances, get out there and speak and the more that we can get out there and help people the better off and I try to keep my website up to date with writing articles on different disease states and how the food versus the medicine works and, people can find that at plantbasedpharmacist.com. And I just uh want to keep it rolling. I see myself doing this for 20, 30, 40 years from now on.

Andrew: Yeah, great. Yeah just do what you can to talk to anyone who will listen, basically.

Dustin: Absolutely Connect with wonderful leaders like you in this field and it’s just great.

Andrew: Yeah. Well good luck to you. I love what you’re doing as a I don’t know if of said on this podcast yet, but as I’ve said many times it’s so nice to see someone in pharmacy who is basically against pharmacy, you know. It’s an unusual thing and it’s uh, you know this podcast for me is all about talking to uh, people who are outside the square thinkers, um, and people who do cool things basically my whole. At the core of my whole Spud Fit Academy was me trying to improve myself as a person and I did that by doing something that’s unusual and outside the square and I love having the opportunity to talk to other people who have also done things that are unusual and outside the square and improve themselves as a result and hopefully some of what the people that I talked to have learned and done, can rub off on me and help me to keep improving and you certainly fit the bill. It’s uh, it’s been a privilege and an honor to sit with you and talk, and and hang out over the last couple of days. So thank you.

Dustin: Thank you Andrew. It’s been such a pleasure and it’s such an honor and privilege to be on the podcast with you.

 

Andrew: Spud up!

 

Isn’t He Lovely? Isn’t he great? I’m I think I’m Dustin Rudolph’s number one fan now. Uh, thanks again, uh Dustin for being on the on the show and thanks to everyone for listening. I hope you learned a lot as I did. I hope you uh, maybe changed your way of thinking about certain, uh, drugs and certain, uh, certain diseases and ways that you can treat certain things.

 

I hope you have enjoyed it and maybe uh come up with. Come up with a plan to tackle your health issues differently in the future again. If you’re interested in finding out more about Dustin, you can look him up on the plant is the plant-based pharmacist so you can look him up online as a plant-based pharmacist and you can search for Dustin Rudolph the empty medicine cabinet.

 

That’s his book. The Empty Medicine Cabinet: The Pharmacist Guide to the hidden danger of drugs and the healing powers of food, uh, again all the links to find Dustin and his uh, his online website Social Media stuff. I’ll put it in in the show notes on my website.

That’s that enjoy again. If you like what I’m doing, please share it with your friends go to iTunes and hit subscribe and and leave me a five-star review and uh and check out my book to the DIY but Fit Academy a how-to guide to doing your own Spud Fit Academy. All right next week. It’s uh an exciting one for me.

We have Alan goldhamer on the podcast next week. So tune in next week and uh continue to have your mind expanded. All right. Enjoy your week everyone. Thanks for listening, Spud up.

 

 

Thanks to my wife Mandy van Zanen for the theme music.

 

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