How Big Pharma & Food Industries Are Failing Our Health | EXPOSING The Lies with Dr. Marty Makary

When it comes to the health of the population, healthcare has been a 50-year failure. We said opioids were not addictive for 22 years, igniting the opioid crisis. We said the food pyramid was the way to eat, ignoring all the poisons in the food supply and ultra-processed foods. We said that kids should avoid peanut butter till they turn 3, igniting the peanut allergy epidemic. We said antibiotics probably won't hurt you, just take them anyway, altering the microbiomes of a generation of people now associated with obesity and learning disabilities. What are we doing? This is largest business in the United States now. And when medicine gets fixated on something, look out.

Hey everyone, welcome to Dr. Josh Axe Show. I'm your host, Dr. Axe, and each and every week on this show, we dive deep in the science and principles behind how to grow in body, mind, spirit, and take your health and your life to the next level. Today we'll be talking about how you've been lied to. I have one of the world's leading medical experts, Dr. Marty Makary. He is a surgeon, he's a researcher. He's a professor at the Johns Hopkins University, one of the most prestigious universities in the country. We'll be talking about how there are so many medical conditions that are on the rise today and how to treat those, everything from autoimmune disease to obesity to cancer to childhood illness. And I've got some questions for him because he recently sat in Washington, DC at a Senate hearing and testified with people like Jordan Peterson, Fani Hari, Jason Karp, Casey Means, and others, and talked about how we need to make America healthy again and get to the root causes of disease today and take on the pharmaceutical companies, the food companies that are actually damaging our health, especially our kids' health. So we're going to get again to that, how to reverse disease, and a whole lot more on the show today. Dr. Marty, welcome to the show.

Good to be with you, Josh.

Thanks. Well, I had you on probably 5 years ago. This is a long time ago on, on the show, and then I followed you ever since. I followed you on social media. I've seen you on Fox News as one of their main medical correspondents for years, and now you got a new book out called Blind Spots. And I wanna say, I love the title of the book, "Blind Spots," because there are so many of these, I think, when you look at our just lay people today. You know, like for instance, I know that I recently went to Kellogg's with some of the people you were there with.

Yeah, that's awesome.

And we talked about how like most parents don't realize there are food dyes and BHT and all these other chemicals in the food supply and that they're actually banned in Europe and Israel and Australia and Canada and Germany, and they're not banned in the United States. And you did a very similar thing when you went to that Senate hearing, as you were trying to help uncover these blind spots that, you know, the FDA and other pharmaceutical companies have kind of pulled the wool over people's eyes. So talk to me about how that was initiated and what you spoke about at that Senate hearing.

Well, I was excited. I was privileged to be a part of it. It was exciting to be there. I mean, so many great people and advocates for Health. There's an amazing body of literature on all of these topics— everything in our blind spots, the root causes of chronic diseases, our poison food supply— but we don't talk about it in medicine. It's like the groupthink is so powerful, there's like a herd mentality. And what becomes a herd mentality turns into a mob mentality sometimes if you talk about anything else. And I've seen this culture in medicine. I've seen it at the highest levels of academia. I've seen it in conversations in the hospital, and we're not talking about health. We're so derailed into playing whack-a-mole with medicating and operating in the late stages. And we've got this system now where we're so busy billing and coding, and just we're measured by our throughput, we're not stopping to put our head up and look around and say, what's going on here? All of these diseases are increasing right in front of our eyes in our generation. This is a modern phenomenon. What's happening right now? Early onset Alzheimer's has tripled, like, in the last decade. Diabetes, prediabetes, it's like half of our nation.

It's crazy, right? Yeah.

So you get all these things on the rise and nobody wants to talk about the root causes, only the medications. So, uh, we have huge blind spots in modern medicine. There's a psychology to it. It's what I've been focused on my entire career, are the big things we're not talking about that we need to be talking about.

One of the topics I wanted to make sort of the theme of this is that these blind spots and also we've been lied to. What do you think when you think about the biggest ways we've been lied to by the food industry, pharmaceutical industry, medical industry? What are some of those, maybe your top 3 or top 5 or however many you want, the top lies you think we've been told as a country when it comes to our health and healthcare?

I mean, it's a long list and I have to be a little careful because I don't want people to be cynical towards health professionals. But when it comes to— look, if you're in an emergency, do whatever the doctor tells you. But when it comes to chronic diseases, when it comes to the health of the population, healthcare has been a 50-year failure. We said opioids were not addictive for 22 years, igniting the opioid crisis. We said the food pyramid was the way to eat, ignoring all the poisons in the food supply and ultra-processed foods. We said that parent, uh, kids should avoid peanut butter till they turn 3, igniting the peanut allergy epidemic. We said antibiotics probably won't hurt you, just take them anyway, altering the microbiomes of a generation of people now associated with obesity and learning disabilities. There are so many things.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, that's, that's a list right there.

The worst thing you can do, um, the most dangerous thing you can do in in the health field is to put a recommendation out there with such absolutism when it's just a hunch, it's just an opinion, and suggest that it's scientific-based when it's not. That's the worst thing you can do. And we've done that over and over again, be it the demonization of cholesterol or natural saturated fats, or, um, we saw it during COVID We saw so many— so much of that absolutism And the reality is a lot of times everyday practitioners are using their brains, but a small group of doctors at the top are telling everybody what to say and what to believe. And when they are not using science, it is a very dangerous business.

Can I— I want to say something, and I actually think you agree with me, but I kind of want to challenge the last statement you had. Is I don't think a lot of doctors are using their brains, and I could, I could even point to everyone from MDs to some chiropractors to nutritionists to physical therapists. So I think most people most doctors listen to the people at the top and they kind of just move forward as a practitioner without actually truly thinking, reading the medical literature, trying to think for themselves. And so I think that actually happens in most cases. And, and I know you were being kind there and you were being, you know, maybe, maybe graceful, but I actually think that's part of the problem is, is that most people create— like, I believe that for most people we should be creating a person, something very personal for them. Every patient that comes in is different. When you look at ancient forms of medicine, especially Chinese medicine, Ayurveda, Middle Eastern medicine, these forms of medicine were very tailored toward individuals and what they had going on. Most of the time when I look at our medical system today, it's like one size fits all. And you kind of reference this— everyone gets an antibiotic, everybody gets a thyroid medication, everybody gets put on an antidepressant, and you go down the list. There you go.

Every single person. But you may be right, I try to see the best in people, but you're describing something that's key, and that is the power of groupthink is huge, and it can deceive people who are otherwise bright and intelligent, but they surrender their independent thinking to just show allegiance to the broader establishment authority. Yeah, you see that, and it's become political too. You see that now. So look, I'll meet pediatricians And one pediatrician will say, you know, Marty, that's interesting, and I saw a study, and they'll think creatively. Then I'll meet another pediatrician who's reciting whatever comes out of the Academy of Pediatrics like it's a catechism.

Yeah.

And it's like, you can think for yourself, you know. Yeah. There are studies, and not all studies are correct, and you can weigh the value of those studies and use your own observational wisdom. So I think we need more civil discourse in medicine. Yeah. And less kind of— I mean, for example, classic case, you cannot in my field of traditional Western medicine and academia, and I'm a researcher primarily, you cannot question the belief system of the 72-vaccine dosing schedule. You are not allowed.

That's right.

You question one of those, not even the necessity, just the timing of it. You are anti this religion. It's a belief system. It's the groupthink. And we, we have lost the ability to independently appraise information.

That's so good. I want to dig into that. But I also do want to say to your— I think it's gotten better. I think to where doctors used to follow the system more. COVID did something.

It did something.

What did it do? What do you think?

I think people saw an authority that was lying to them. Over and over again. I mean, as a guy who is deep in the research world, um, I felt like I was watching a horror movie by force, and I was not allowed to close my eyes. I mean, not just making bad decisions on the— on a whim, in an emergency, digging into flawed positions, citing intensely flawed research or no research just an authority figure. And I couldn't believe what I was seeing. I mean, we did a lot of research on natural immunity. We spoke out about the prolonged school closures, COVID vaccine boosters for young, healthy kids. The most dangerous thing a government can do is fire their two top experts at the FDA in order to ream through a vaccine for young, healthy kids, which is what they did with the booster.

Yeah, COVID.

Force it on kids and then censor any doctor that dissents.

It's crazy. Can I, can I tell you, so I think the last time I had you on was 2019. That was about 5, about 5 years ago. And first off, I always liked you, but my respect for you went up. You were one of the first people that were speaking out. I remember watching on Fox News. I remember I saw a lot of your posts on X, formerly Twitter, and you did such a great job of, of, of sharing the truth where— and you were the 1%. I mean, 99% of doctors I felt like were lying or going along with the, you know, with the groupthink and the lie, and you were out there actually telling the truth. And so I remember even telling my wife, I said, sharing some posts with her and sharing with others. And again, I, uh, it's— again, it takes courage, it takes, uh, wisdom in order to do that. So just know I'm grateful. Thank you for being one of those people kind of, you know, on the front line of being out there. And, um, and so anyways, you know, I, I think COVID did— I mean, COVID changed a lot. I actually think it backfired on a lot of these people that were sort of the totalitarian or the people trying to maintain control. I think more people woke up. I think about Joe Rogan and Russell Brand and even a Jordan Peterson and others who were known to be truth seekers. And, and it totally pushed them over the edge of like, okay, Elon Musk is another one. I mean, a lot of these people— do you remember seeing a clip with Sanjay Gupta? Yes, on Joe Rogan.

Yes.

And Joe Rogan just went after him And what did you think of that?

I loved it because I remember he said, are you worried about COVID for yourself? You've been vaccinated. And he said, no, I'm not worried. And then he went through the numbers and said, well, you know, a child who's healthy and unvaccinated has a lower risk than you as an adult vaccinated. Are you worried? You know, are you worried about the children? And it was this— he got him right.

Oh, he backed him into it. He didn't know it was a trap and he didn't know he caught up.

Yeah, but it was— it exposes the illogical and irrational, fear-based sort of establishment thinking.

Well, it also exposed the media. I mean, the other thing is he showed a clip of the way CNN covered him and it was like, I mean, and we— when they showed the clip, they like made him more pale, like even the skull. I mean, everything you could do to sort of, you know, alter the truth and take the clips out. He showed it in context versus not. You just, you, you know, he tried to get Sanjay Gupta to say, you know, sort of, uh, you know, admit that CNN was lying. And then, you know, he got so uncomfortable. I felt bad, actually felt a little bad for him. But also I'm like, this needs to happen.

Yeah, I remember now specifically he asked Sanjay, he goes, can you see how a parent is not worried about their kid if you were not worried? And now that you're vaccinated, and it was just a There were so many ironies, hypocrisies. I think the greatest irony is that it was all avoidable.

That's right.

20, 28 million people, however many people died, I don't know. The greatest industrial accident in the history of mankind. It was avoidable. And nobody wants to talk about it. Only like the intellectually curious want to talk about it. The open-minded want to talk about it. And because it was just embarrassing, that the United States government and Fauci was funding that lab. I'm not saying those dollars went to the test.

Sure.

Yeah. But it was just embarrassing. We were funding the lab. It was like, well, we have to cover for him. We have to silence and censor anyone who talks about this. And that's a great irony. There's a film— I didn't mention this to you before we were chatting. There's a film coming out called Thank You, Dr. Fauci, and it's an incredible documentary about The story of COVID Origins. I sat in an interview for it. It's coming out right around now and it's, it's amazing. I think it's—

I'm excited to watch it.

Yeah.

I mean, can I tell you, in a way, I actually truly am grateful from the standpoint of there were things that I and other people were able to see that, you know, there was this pastor I know and he had— I was chatting with him about something and I, and I was a little bit discouraged. This is the very beginning of COVID because I came out with some podcasts. I actually had a Christian magazine write about me saying Josh Axe is anti-scientific. 'Antiscientific,' because on a podcast I said, 'Listen, I think what most people should be doing is taking vitamin D, zinc, doing ginger and galanga herbal tea, doing nattokinase.' You know, I went through all the stuff. Stay healthy, active outside, all the stuff. And they're like, 'He's antiscientific, he's questioning the science.' And I'm like, 'Really?' And I just said, 'I'm really just disappointed.' He said, 'You know what, Josh?' He said, 'You should be encouraged from the standpoint of this is when leaders rise up.' He said, 'When you go through hard things in life, more things will be revealed, more truth more. If you just sort of— you'll— he said you'll grow from this more than anything else. He said because easy times, you're not pushed to grow, you're not pushed to dig into for the truth as much. So in a way, I'm sort of grateful for being able to learn so much from that. And, um, and I think there's another thing, like, I think I was able to tell more who my real friends were and also the people I respected. I think it's this idea around crisis reveals character. And this is, again, again, you know, you know, just about you. I really felt like we were in the midst of a crisis. A lot of people were lying. You were out there telling the truth, which just allowed me to just, you know, continue to see, you know, more and more about your character and have more respect for you, which is again why we wanted to have you on the show here. When you think about what we went through with COVID what were your biggest lessons, or what are the biggest lessons that you think other people need to take away from that in order to be prepared in the future and be healthier themselves?

Well, first of all, I saw the same distinction at the hospital. Some doctors came up to me and they said, you know, Marty, everything you're saying makes sense scientifically. I, I'm still trying to digest it, but keep, keep up the good work. Then there were doctors that stopped talking to each other at the hospital. And so you really started to see the true character of people who were open-minded versus those who just had a blind political allegiance. Yeah. Um, it was a sad time. It still really divided the medical profession in a very tragic way. Mistrust, as you may have seen from that recent JAMA study, is, uh, way down, right? Trust in doctors and hospitals went from 71% down to 40% in 4 years. People don't trust us. A 31-point drop. People don't even trust us. Yeah. Now, some of that I think was deserved, right? I mean, they were the greatest propagator of misinformation during the pandemic was the United States government. Yeah, cloth masks on toddlers for 3 years won't have any downsides. Prolonged school closures ignoring natural immunity. You know, 5 vaccine doses in a young, healthy 12-year-old girl. So, um, gosh, it's, uh, it's hard to even think about this whole era because it was so recent.

But I think that— keep, keep going.

The number one thing, you know, what you asked me, what did it teach me? The number one thing that makes you a good person and a good healthcare practitioner, in my opinion, and this is what I teach every one of my medical students and residents, is humility. That's right. Evolving your position, listening to those you disagree with. The team of rivals concept that Obama paraded around when he first ran for office, that he wanted a team of rivals who disagreed with him in an open, healthy discourse Um, the purpose of science is to challenge deeply held assumptions. And when you're out there talking to patients, you have got to say, I don't know, and that's the right answer. And if you're wrong, if you're honest and forthcoming quickly, people can be incredibly forgiving if you're honest. But we did not see that, and people are hungry for honesty right now.

Absolutely. Yeah, I think it does start with humility. And I think when I think about Dr. Fauci, he would not admit he was wrong ever. I never saw— I mean, it was just— so I saw the polar opposite with him in terms of what I, what, you know, in terms of my respect for him and, and who he is.

Uh, I don't think he's gonna send me a Christmas card this year.

No, I don't think so either. I don't think so either. My favorite book on history is Team of Rivals, and it's, uh, it's a book about Abraham Lincoln and his cabinet and what he did. And I think, I think Doris Kearns is the, is the, is the author. So good. I mean, if you have not listened to the audiobook or read the book, I think it's one of the single, if not one of the top 5, 10 books on history of any president.

And second best book to Blind Spots ever written, in my opinion.

It's— you have Blind Spots. We'll talk about that more in a minute. So when you think about what Obama did with his cabinet versus what Trump is trying to do now with RFK Jr. Tulsi Gabbard, Elon Musk, some of these people, most of them. What's funny about all four of those people were generally— 5, 4 years, 8 years ago, 10 years ago, were Democrats. But I'm curious at your thoughts on what— who do you think was truly building more of a team of rivals?

Well, we're seeing that with the, um, this new administration taking hold, with traditional Democrats, lifelong Democrats, RFK Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, coming together saying, here's one thing we can agree on. They're saying we have differences in policy, This is literally the words of RFK Jr. We have differences of opinion on policies, but here's one thing we can all agree on. Can we love our nation's children more than we hate each other?

It's so good.

It's so important. So good. So I'm so excited about this momentum that's been building around Make America Healthy Again. I mean, just for the first time we're talking about it. This was historically a kind of liberal Democrat issue, and people who are just intellectually honest have been very interested in it. Yeah, I don't know why any topic in America takes part of the minds, right? If I say, hey, I can take out the tail of the pancreas by preserving the spleen, it somehow becomes like a Dem— a Republican position, or a Democrat has— insane. It's insane, right? It's like antibodies and natural immunity, like somehow the antibodies are now Democrats and the B cells are Republicans.

You know, when we went to this thing at Kellogg's, uh, You know, it became a political thing. I'm like, listen, I had HD as a kid. I did food colorings. I got off of them. I helped patients get off of them, and ADHD got better, food allergies got better, GI issues got better. But that's somehow— it's— it has all become so political. You know, RFK, I had an opportunity to be a keynote speaker with him at, uh, it was called the Autism One conference. It's something Jenny McCarthy would put on every year. This is probably about maybe 5, 6 years ago. Had a chance to really connect with him there, and I was just blown away with him in terms of like, he— one thing that impressed me so much about him is he actually really cares. And I can't say that about most people. I mean, listen, I think a lot of doctors care. I think some people in government care. But to me, he cared more about helping kids with autism than any politician I'd ever heard.

He cares and he doesn't have to care.

That's right.

And he cares.

It's amazing.

He's really the quintessential environmental attorney of our era. I mean, no one was talking about many of these chemicals and pollutants. With the vigor and the platform that he has been.

Yeah. And here's the thing, you know, like, like he would have gone Democratic or Republican. Like, he just wanted to help kids get healthy. And I just have a tremendous amount of respect for, for him for that. Have you had any chance to sort of correspond or, or speak with him or work with him?

Yeah, I've enjoyed my conversations with Bobby. I think he's perfectly aligned with everything we're trying to do to address school lunch programs. Chronic diseases and talk about the medical establishment's sort of groupthink to ignore all of these issues, ignore the root causes of all the conditions we treat and medicate.

It's unbelievable.

Yeah. And we're going to watch all these diseases skyrocket right in front of our eyes in our lifetime. Diseases that were rare, that are still rare in parts of the world. Exploding right in front of our eyes, and no one has been brave enough to talk about these root causes until we've gotten this new enthusiasm.

I mean, I'm excited. I, I think now— and, you know, it's so funny, I was having a conversation with someone about, someone about this. When I first got into practice, this is '07, um, I would do lectures and almost nobody had heard of what an omega-3 fat was. So think about that. That, that wasn't even that long ago, really.

Yeah.

And then all of a sudden, 5 years later, everybody knew what an omega-3 fat was and that they should get it for inflammation and whatnot. And, and just to think about how far we've come today in terms of how many more— I mean, it was rare. I mean, almost nobody. I mean, maybe Andrew Weil and a few others. I mean, almost no MDs were doing anything with nutrition. Now there's a lot. I mean, now there's probably 10%, maybe 20%. I mean, there's a lot more now than there were. So I'm encouraged just looking at the trends from where we were to where we are now in terms of uh, doctors really embracing these sort of natural therapies and natural ways to heal. However, there's still— when you look at some of the data and research, like, like one I know that you talk about in your book, you've spoken about this before, the amount of antibiotics still prescribed by doctors for viral infections is crazy. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's insane to me. And I had so many patients that would come in, especially— I was mostly families, and I still see see families today virtually, but I would have them come in. And the amount of kids today with autism, the amount of kids with ADHD, the amount of kids with gastrointestinal issues, food allergies, sensitivities— I mean, you name it— so many of them started in the gut. And yet doctors are still— and a lot of times it would happen a few months, 1 year, 2 years after they got put on rounds of antibiotics. I mean, what, what, you know, how, how often are these drugs overprescribed today, antibiotics? And what are you know, is there a good solution? How do we start to fix these issues?

Well, this is like the key issue in healthcare today because we're, we're told about these shiny objects like, oh, Medicare can now negotiate the price of 10 generic drugs. Whoa, whoa, wait a minute. The best way to lower drug costs in America is to stop taking drugs we don't need. I mean, I was on a drug I didn't need. You probably were on a drug you didn't need from here.

When I was a kid, sure. Yeah.

60% of antibiotics in all the studies are unnecessary. I think it's 80%, honestly. What are these antibiotics doing? They're carpet bombing the microbiome, the equilibrium of millions of different bacteria that are living in a balance. Each has their role in digestion, absorption, training the immune system, producing serotonin. Most of our serotonin comes from our gut. So there's a connection to mood and mental health. Um, it regulates estrogen, produces GLP-1, produces like a little tiny Ozempic naturally. And what are we doing? We're carpet bombing the microbiome with the dogma that antibiotics won't hurt you. Now, antibiotics save lives. I've seen it.

Yeah, you and I. Yeah, of course.

Yeah, but the vast majority are unnecessary, and that's one insult to the microbiome. How about in pesticides? If they're killing insects, what are they doing to the microbiome?

Yeah, fluoride in drinking water—

if it's killing bacteria reducing cavities in the mouth. What's it doing to the rest of the GI tract? Yeah, no one has— you mentioned like things we were not taught in med school, man. I have a list that is so long we couldn't even go through it in this podcast. That I was given like an hour of nutrition education and it was all misinformation. It's been better if it were zero, right? And just the long list of the incredible conflicts of interest in the industry, the complete ignoring of ultra-processed foods, ignoring of what we're taking into our mouth, no conversations, the microbiome, a lip service to what inflammation is. And it was basically just explained as the body's reaction. If you get injured, you send inflammatory cells. Well, no, no. Inflammation is the center of so many chronic diseases. And cancer. It's a— yeah, what causes cancer? Why do you think we're seeing the GI cancers go up? Why is it that the cancers that line the GI tract that are proximate to the microbiome are the ones increasing in young people, like colon cancer? No conversation to this. But we get conversations about the chemo for colon cancer. Yeah, about the operations that we can do to create a colostomy and take it down 6 months later. And so we get this myopic tunnel vision in medicine. And the good news is that in the old days, you'd have to go to a library and look up articles in some Dewey Decimal System, and it was very hard. You didn't even know what was in your blind spots. Now, a young medical student, a nurse, a non-health professional can listen to podcasts and read books and hear the other side of all this Uh, yeah, that's right, right. They can educate themselves on this massive body of scientific and medical literature that is directly applicable to our health. And so that's why I appreciate what you're doing and so many others— Casey Means, Mark Hyman, Peter Attia. I mean, there's a movement now and it's exciting.

Yeah, yeah. And one thing that's so interesting about the microbiome, I don't think a lot of people realize— I think most people understand that it helps absorb nutrients, but I don't think a lot of people realize it actually creates nutrients. I mean, you're— you're— the bacteria in your gut, they create, as you mentioned, GLP-1, they create certain B vitamins, they create butyric acid, they create all kinds of things that our body needs. And so it's so critical. You know, one of the, uh, I, I, I want to mention that, um, I did an episode recently on the amount of studies that are absolutely inaccurate. Most. Yeah, it was 51.6% at least. At least. And, and it's because either the sample size is too small or there's a bias or they were cherry-picking data. I mean, there's all that. It's so crazy.

And this is— this has paralyzed our movement to address food as medicine and address our poisoned food supply. Because industry will put out some flawed study or some study that's rigged, and then there'll be another study that's independent that shows the harms of all these food ingredients. And then they'll surrender and say, oh, well, there's conflicting evidence, so, you know, we're not going to do anything. And then no one talks about these studies. Journals don't want to talk about it. The academia— academics don't talk about it. Think the NIH is interested in this? Nah. You think pharma is going to fund research? No way. They have a hammerlock on the research enterprise. So if you look in totality, 83% of studies that are done independent have found tremendous harms of so many of these food ingredients, processed foods that are chemically added. 92% of the studies funded by the food industry show no harm.

Wow. That's— I mean, that tells you something right there. That's, that's, that's mind-boggling.

Yeah.

Wow. Before recording, you had mentioned, um, there's a drug right now, and, and there are people that have done a study, but they don't want to publish the study because they're, they're worried about what's going to happen when the results get out there. Talk about, talk about the drug. Talk about what's going on there.

Well, it's— I almost can't remember which of the many examples it is because there's so many out there, but I I was referring to the story of atrazine, which is a weed killer, and it's used ubiquitously. I mean, it— the chemical shows up in a kernel of corn, shows up in soybean, which of course shows up in all our processed food. So atrazine is a hormone disruptor. And the guy who found this out, who was doing a lot of the research on this, was actually hired by the company that produces atrazine, and they told him he can't publish it. He actually found the famous atrazine frog study. Oh yeah, have you heard of this? Yeah, yeah, like converted the gender.

Yeah, they changed the gender. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And so how do we as health professionals ignore that body of research, watch infertility rates skyrocket watch the age of puberty go down every year by a week and a half. It's now years sooner than it was half a century ago. Watch sperm counts go down by 50% over the last 5 decades and not be intellectually curious about this poison that is known to have hormone-disrupting properties. And I got like another 10 on— in addition to Atrazine, Atrazine is one example. There are others out there. This is what we should be studying and talking about in academic medicine. That's right. Not how to find a bat coronavirus in a cave in China and bring it to a lab. And what are we—

that is crazy.

That's what we were funding. That's what the NIH was focused on. And we only found out about it because of the COVID pandemic. What are these people doing, right? How about studying school lunch programs instead of putting every young kid on Ozempic? That's right. Right. How about studying the environmental exposures that cause cancer instead of the chemo to treat it? I mean, we have got to start talking about general body inflammation, food is medicine, and the root causes of so many of these chronic diseases.

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You had asked me one, one thing, I just real quick. Yeah, the harm of antibiotics on the microbiome. One of my favorite studies I cited in the book was a Mayo Clinic study that compared kids who took an antibiotic in the first few years of life versus kids who didn't. Kids who took an antibiotic were 20% more likely to be obese, something farmers have noticed for a long time, right? That's why they give antibiotics to animals. Yeah. And the rate of attention deficit disorder was 32% higher.

Wow.

So we altered the microbiome and we're seeing it manifest as chronic diseases. So blaming kids for their chronic diseases is is not right. It's not fair. It's not right. It's not scientifically, um, supported. We have— adults have done this to children. That's right. We have done this to children. We've engineered highly addictive food chemicals, put it in their food. Most of their diet is ultra-processed. We put them in a food coma after lunch in school. They can't pay attention. What do we do? We then medicate them. That's right. Right. So somebody has got to say stop. What are we doing? And can we talk about the root causes?

That's so good. Well, I know you're doing that. I know you're doing your new book, Blind Spots. I want to mention Dr. Marty here wrote this book. It's called Blind Spots. It says, when medicine gets it wrong and what it means for our own health. And going through— and listen, it's so important to know your blind spots and where you've been lied to. And as I mentioned earlier, there are a lot of things in our food supply, a lot medications. There are a lot of things that the government, the pharmaceutical company, the food industry are doing that we don't even know about. And one of the things you do in this book— by the way, this book, uh, was on the New York Times bestseller list for, for 4 weeks in a row already. It sold out in the first week. And I think a big reason is people want to know where they've been lied to. I mean, we all need to know our blind spots. That's how we grow. That's how we get better. That's how we defend ourselves. And so this is something I know that it's a reason why a lot of a lot of people listen to podcasts. That's why a lot of my audience are very educated people that read and listen to audiobooks, is because we want to know how to fend for ourselves, for our family. We want to be those leaders in our community, uh, that are teaching other people. That's, that's one thing that I, I aim for with this, with this show, is I want people to be equipped to be able to go out and make a change in their own health, in their families, in their communities. And of course, knowing our blind spots is such an important part You know, as you were writing this book, what were a few of the things that shocked you the most? Because, you know, anytime— and I know for this for myself— anytime I write a book, I do a lot of research, poring through medical journals, interviewing people. What are some things as you were writing this that were the biggest surprises that you had as you were, you know, as you, as you were writing it?

Gosh, there were so many. Seed oils are pro-inflammatory.

Didn't—

I mean, I specialize in the gastrointestinal system. I was at a fellowship training at Johns Hopkins, a subspecialty focus in gastrointestinal surgery. Never once— I didn't even know what a seed oil was. I mean, how broken is our healthcare system? I'm specializing in this. At one point I held an endowed chair in gastrointestinal surgery at Johns Hopkins. I didn't even know what a seed oil was. I mean, this is like the greatest ironies in the world, right? So, um, in the book I was blown away that the cholesterol we tiptoe around in our diet based on the dogma that cholesterol is bad for you. It's not even absorbed by your body, goes right through your GI tract. 90-plus percent of it goes through your system. It's esterified, so it's bound to a bulky side chain, so it just doesn't get absorbed. Yeah, yeah. 99% of cholesterol is made by your body. Most of it's genetic, and there's some factors, but the biggest factor that drives your heart disease risk is inflammation from refined carbohydrates ultra-processed foods, and all these chemicals that the body's reacting to when it goes down your GI. That reaction is not a, an acute inflammatory storm like you see with an injury. It's a slow, constant, nagging inflammation that permeates the whole body, and it drives all sorts of other conditions and diseases. Um, you add to that insulin resistance from pancreas getting stimulated like crazy. Yeah, it's the first time in human history the pancreas is working this hard, constantly producing insulin at spiking levels never seen before in human history, all the time, every day in the life of a child. Uh, this is— these are the root causes. These are like the number 1 and 2 issues in medicine. We never talk about them. I was, um, pleasantly surprised about hormone replacement therapy in perimenopausal women. Now, it's known in general for its alleviating short—

the, the menopausal symptoms, hot flashes, some of those other issues that are so common.

Yes, weight gain. And, and, you know, people can— I know there's a focus on staying healthy and exercising. I was really interested in the long term benefits of it reducing Alzheimer's risk, reducing the risk of heart disease because estrogen increases nitric oxide levels that keep the blood vessel wall softer and more dilated and healthier. Yeah. And the bones are stronger. Like, a lot of women die from hip fractures and bone fractures, and your bones are stronger. And in the investigative journalism world the piece I'm most interested in, the stuff that I worked on from an investigative journalism standpoint. I found out that one doctor from the NIH told the world that hormone therapy causes breast cancer when his own data did not support it. And so I interviewed him and got him to basically admit to me on the record, a video— I've recorded the Zoom call— that his own study did not show a statistically significant increase and breast cancer. So 50 million women have been scared or not offered hormone replacement therapy because of this dogma that it causes breast cancer, when he himself acknowledged to me it was not statistically significant. Uh, my mom was one of those women who never got hormone therapy because this came— announcement was made in 2002. She was going through perimenopause around that time. Now, if you don't start it within 10 years of the onset of menopause, you don't get the long-term benefits. You get— actually, it's counterproductive. So that's why nobody recommends starting it after 10 years from the onset of menopause. But she fell and broke her hand, and the whole cascade of immobility, and then it leads to other health problems, right?

So common.

Yeah. So that was a big thing for me to learn about, this sort of hoodwinking of the public and the medical establishment alike by one NIH doctor.

Isn't it crazy how you could have somebody or one study and it could be false, and then, you know, that affects the entire population for sometimes 5, 10, 20, 30, 50 years? Yeah, it's wild. Yeah, it's crazy. I mean, I think about red meat, you know, there's an example, or some of the stuff around, you know, fat in our diet. I mean, you know, butter. I mean, there's, there's all kinds of examples there.

Well, then the saturated fat causes heart disease hypothesis really was started by this guy Ancel Keys in the 1960s after Eisenhower had his heart attack, and the world wanted to know, like, what caused the heart attack. Yeah. And the right answer was, we don't know.

Yeah.

But because this guy was a, you know, political jockey and he was, you know, had his hypothesis based on his flawed research, heavily, deeply flawed graph that he constructed of 7 countries and their heart disease risk. I mean, it's unbelievable. This is the basis of the modern-day 70-year dogma that saturated fat causes heart disease. I was having breakfast this morning again, uh, at a cafe I've been to before. Low-fat this egg white only school lunches, low-fat milk. We take out the one healthy thing, saturated fat, we add added sugar to milk. It's like it really began with this one guy who decided in his, you know, own wisdom that the problem with chronic diseases was people were eating too much saturated fat.

It's crazy.

And another guy, John Yudkin, said, no, it's sugar, it's refined carbohydrates. His whole career was based on research supporting it, and he was censored, sidelined, railroaded. His lab was taken away from him. He's a prominent, prominent physiologist. And you realize that, listen, we still live in an era of medical dogma. If people think like, oh, we're enlightened now, we don't believe in you know, leeching people. And no, we live in an era of medical dogma. It's epidemic today.

I, I truly think we're going to look back in 100 years and people are— it's going to be like leeching. Like, like the fact that, you know, we talked about the antibiotics that these kids go in and 1% of them have a viral infection, 1 to 2, and yet 50% of them get on antibiotics. I think we're gonna look back and say that was crazy. I think the antibiotics or the depressants prescribed, the birth control. You know, one of the things that I, I think a blind spot a lot of people don't have is that— or a lot of people have— is, is that when you look at medications today, they say the certain side effects could happen in the future on the label. One thing that's not listed is there's not a single medication I've ever researched that doesn't cause a nutritional deficiency. For instance, contraceptive drugs deplete your body of B1, B2, B3, B6, B9, B12, magnesium, and of good bacteria. I mean, I mean, that's just, that's just contraceptive drugs. I mean, there's hardly a drug we know— metformin, right? B12. I mean, there's so many examples of that that are out there today, and people, most people don't realize that, that are taking medications.

I can tell you as a doctor who's gone through the traditional pathway that we may or may not memorize that briefly regurgitated on an exam and it's gone. Like, nobody thinks about it. No one talks about it. It is just— you have to ingest the names of 1,000 different medications, and then people start walking in the door and it's like, ah yeah, that disease matches this medication. Here you go. Yeah, here you go. Here you go. No one's even thinking about these side effects, and every drug has a side effect.

So we were talking about gut health and how our gut, our bacteria in our gut create nutrients. One of them is GLP-1, right? Now, today people are turning to Ozempic, which I am not a fan of, but I'd like to hear your thoughts on that and what the research actually says about Ozempic in terms of the side— we're talking about side effects, right? What are the potential side effects of Ozempic? Do we even know what they're going to be? Is there enough research for that? But also, are there any blind spots around, around that drug?

So if you just look at the list of side effects— pancreatitis, nausea, vomiting— and those, you know what, every drug is going to have some list of side effects. And yes, it's going to be higher with GLP-1, but we're not talking about long-term dependence. We're not talking about the moral hazard of having a drug that removes excess body fat. The moral hazard means Now that you can reduce your excess body fat, why not go to Krispy Kreme for breakfast, lunch, and dinner? And so people see their figure as their health when it's, it's their physiology that defines health. Yeah. And so why not? If you can stay thin, doesn't matter if you're emaciated or malnourished, um, you're gonna— there's— it creates a moral hazard. People need to be eating whole foods that come from good soil and clean meats and, you know, spend time chewing. And there's so many important principles. All that goes out the window. And with the calories in, calories out dogma, that has done tremendous damage. Didn't matter how you get them, didn't matter if you eat plastic and cardboard, right? It's just, uh, it's enabled an ultra-processed food diet to take over because you're just meant to count calories. Yeah. So with Ozempic, I've yet to hear— and I'd be interested in your opinion I personally have yet to hear of a single person who went on a GLP-1 drug as sort of bridging therapy to get their weight down as they transition to a high protein diet and exercise and are able to keep the excess body fat off, off of Ozempic long term.

Well, one, of course, I've never heard of that. You know, the other thing, the thing that I'm most concerned with it is, is that You know, the studies show— at least there's, I think, believe, 2 studies show you lose muscle mass. So you lose more muscle than fat. Typically when somebody goes on a diet, uh, and loses weight, they lose about 25% muscle mass, 75% fat. Well, on this they lose closer to 40% or more muscle mass. And I don't think people realize just how extreme that is, that when you're on this, you're losing for the amount of muscle mass you're losing. We talked about— I mean, we talked about bone health for elderly women and and, you know, and, and what that does if you break a bone. Well, this is going to do a very— muscle is a— it's a, it's a part— it's a longevity organ. I mean, it's really important for— I mean, there are indicators on longevity around muscle mass loss, and it's the number one predictor of longevity. Exactly. So, so losing— so people that are taking Ozempic are actually aging themselves. Every time you take it, you're actually making yourself older. And there's something known in Chinese medicine, and this is not you know, necessarily— I haven't seen this in the, in the, in the medical research, but one of the side effects is gastroparesis. And in Chinese medicine, it knows if you have that slowness of the digestive system, you typically aren't absorbing nutrients as well, and you'll start to see people sort of gaunt in the face, and that's a sign of malnutrition. And so that's another thing that worries me. I mean, I don't know if you've seen some of the posts online. People will post Ozempic— there's two things, it's Ozempic face and Ozempic butt. Your butt is where you carry your largest amount of muscle. So they're actually showing people that have actually lost their glutes due to this because it's where you have the— it's the largest muscle group. And then your face kind of having that, you know, the, the gauntness there.

So it's— you were losing— I mean, people are losing the structural integrity of their face because the muscles of the face enable the complexion that people have. Yeah. And we may be celebrating and high-fiving, hey, this person lost 25 pounds, but we may be accelerating frailty. And frailty may be one of the indicators of how long you live. Yeah. So are we lowering short-term complications of obesity but then shortening lifespan by accelerating frailty? That's a question nobody is asking right now.

That's good.

And I personally am interested I mean, not that I want to become a champion of these medications, but there are a couple new medications right now in design that are— one of them is through Phase 1 clinical trials— that are supposedly going to block that receptor on the muscle and only work to reduce excess body fat. Now, I worry about a society where 90% of the— of, of people are on a drug for life And that's where we're going. Don't be fooled by these people that are saying, hey, it's a bridging therapy.

Yeah, it never is. They said that— well, they said that about antidepressants. Look at— I mean, look at us now.

The more antidepressants we prescribe, the more depression there is. The more pain meds we prescribe, the more pain there is. The more diabetes meds we prescribe, right, more diabetes there is. The more ADHD meds we prescribe, the more ADHD. I'm not suggesting that meds are causative, but we're missing the boat. We're not talking about these root drivers of all of these conditions. And how can you do— how can you be intellectually honest and ignore that area? I mean, I don't know how we have gotten to a point where we take smart, creative people when they go into medicine, we beat the creativity out of them, we do this memorize, regurgitate culture, we create these robots. In many cases, they come out with this— in this culture of obedience where you are— have a survival instinct to just do what you're told It turns into memorize and regurgitate, and then billing and coding and see patients in short visits and don't address any of the root causes. And then you're like, what are we doing? This is the largest business in the United States now. As of just a number of years ago, it became the largest business.

I mean, you know, the way I think about this is like my daughter, she's 4 years old, she wants to eat dessert every night. Okay, we give her a little piece of chocolate or we give her a little something if she eats all of all her protein and all her vegetables, essentially. Okay, and for a lot of people, we're telling them, no, listen, you can just eat the cookie and we'll give you medication. Like, you don't have to eat the protein, you don't need the vegetables, you don't need the exercise. All you— you can eat as many cookies as you want. And we think that somehow that's— it just— it's bad psychology, it's bad ethics, it's bad medicine.

We can't see the forest from the trees. Yeah, that's right. My, um, The favorite— my favorite story that I discovered in writing the book Blind Spots was that of the Pima Indians in New Mexico and Arizona. And so what happened is a terrible injustice happened to the Pima Indians. Their land was diverted and their soil went— it became unfarmable. And so a famine came across the Pima Indians and the American government, seeing the injustice, decided— because it was settlers and ranchers that diverted the water— the U.S. government decided to feed the Pima Indians for free. So they sent food to feed the Indians. Well, they didn't send organic kale and other stuff. They sent processed food and ultra-processed food and Spam and, you know, junk food. Well, guess what happened? An explosion of chronic diseases. The obesity-diabetes rate went from 1% in that population to 90%. Oh my goodness. So what does the US government do with their geniuses at the National Institutes of Health, the NIH? They dispatch their genetic researchers to go down and draw the blood of the Indians to look for an obesity gene.

That's insane.

No, this is a real story.

This is crazy.

This is actually— this, it typifies, it, it perfectly captures the sort of hubris of the medical establishment and these giant blind spots.

You mentioned something earlier, um, and you were talking about some of the biggest, uh, surprises, mistakes people make, and you mentioned peanuts. I think this is an interesting one. We went, we brought our daughter to the first day of school, and then we had this whole list of like foods we couldn't, um, bring in. It was a, you know, a lot of stuff, a lot, a lot of stuff, and And, and one thing we did with our daughters, both now, is we introduced peanuts, dairy, all kinds of things in to their diet in microdoses, sort of natural immunization very early on. And our, our kids don't seem to be allergic to anything. I, I am curious your thoughts around, um, how this happened with this so many kids being allergic to peanuts and numerous other foods.

Well, first of all, what you're doing is the best thing you can do, and that is what every parent should be doing. Well, almost every parent. There's cases, yeah. But, um, that research has caught up with this field and has basically found that you want to introduce a little bit of peanut butter and other foods as early as a kid can eat. Not in, in lieu of breastfeeding, but introduce a little bit, like you said, microdosing. And it is sort of a natural immunization Well, back in the 1990s, peanut allergies, which were rare and almost always mild, um, were ever so slightly increasing, probably because of messing up the microbiome.

Yeah.

And the media ran with a couple stories of kids who had, uh, you know, a peanut allergy that affected their lives. Well, then it created a lot of fear, and parents wanted to know What do we do to prevent peanut allergies? Now, a lot of people were doing what you were saying, but the geniuses over at the American Academy of Pediatrics decided that they were going to tell everybody how to prevent a peanut allergy, even though they had no idea. And so they made, they made up a recommendation, literally made it up. I interviewed them in the book Blind Spots, literally made it up, like pulled it out of their butt. Parents should avoid peanut butter until a kid turns 3. That's what they said. I mean, this fits with all the other dogma. Drink 3 glasses of cow's milk every day your entire life. I mean, all of it, it's all in the same bucket— medical dogma. But because it's a respected medical authority in the largest association of pediatricians in America, it became the marching orders of every pediatrician out there, almost every pediatrician, and it became broadcast. And when medicine gets fixated on something look out.

That's right.

Yeah, look out. And so this became— you can't bring your baby in for your first visit with the doctor, and what are you hearing? Number one thing, like, okay, we gotta vaccinate the kids and then avoid peanut butter until the kids turn 3. Well, they forgot about a basic principle in immunology called immune tolerance, or the old dirt theory. That is, when you're exposed to something, you're less likely to be allergic to it later in childhood. And so what they did was they created a generation of children that were sensitized to peanut products, and peanut allergy rates skyrocketed in the years after that recommendation in the year 2000. Skyrocketed. I graph it in the book. And then, so what did the medical establishment geniuses do? They decided, oh, you know what, we have anti-science parents out there that are not listening. We have to increase compliance and double down and get total peanut abstinence in the first 3 years of life. And so they drilled it in. Now, a bunch of doctors who were smart, they had immunology experience, they had common sense, and they're like, this is insane, this— we're not doing this, this is wrong. One of those doctors I interviewed in the book has never had a kid with a peanut allergy in his practice because he teaches the right thing. So for most of the last 25 years, the American Academy of Pediatrics has pounding this into pediatricians and the public. And so what happened was we started seeing a new kind of peanut allergy, which is the extreme anaphylactic reaction. That is, a kid can have trouble breathing just being near a peanut. That's a real thing. We mock it sometimes, people mock it. I don't mock it. They shouldn't mock it. That is a real thing. And so it is— this epidemic was ignited by the medical dogma to avoid Peanut abstinence until age 3. They don't have peanut allergies in Africa. Doesn't exist. I got doctors there who in my research team, they've never heard of one in their entire country. It doesn't exist in parts of Europe and Asia. And so finally the study got done. They should have done the study before they just made this up. Finally, the study got published 9 years ago and they showed they had it perfectly backwards.

Can I tell you, I think what it comes down to this, and this is a part of what I've taken away from, from this conversation, it is, it's the difference between hubris and humility.

Yes.

I mean, that's the difference, because what you're sharing, and I saw this with Dr. Fauci, I see this with a lot of the people you're, you're talking about that you're calling geniuses, which is making me just, you know, it's very funny, uh, but they're trying to play God versus walking in humility, having a respect for God, and not trying to alter God's design. God designed us to, in kids, to eat dirt, to eat these foods early on, to get exposures, and to practice natural immunization via the things that they're exposed to on a regular basis. I wrote a book on this called Eat Dirt. Basically was going through all of the— a lot of all these things you're talking about and, and all the research there. And so again, if anyone who's listening to this or watching this, here's one thing you need to know: if you're going to pick a doctor, make sure they're humble. And that they don't have hubris. Because most of these doctors today are trying to play God. They're trying to go against God's design, the way he created you. And it's so important that you stand with your convictions and that you do things, uh, that are in line with God's design. And focusing on nutrition, focusing on lifestyle, and supporting your kids in that way, and not feeling pressured to do something— because doctors are wrong all the time. And, and, and, you know, one thing I found, Marty, is typically if you want to find somebody who's right, you typically need to follow the top 1% of, of, of, of— and it's not the top 1% that's typically going with the crowd, it's the top 1% that's getting the best results with people. You mentioned the doctor who— he's never had a kid with a peanut allergy. Listen to that doc. Yes. You know, so you have to not just follow the crowd, you've got to listen and watch and be spiritually and emotionally and mentally aware aware of what's going on around you. And I would encourage you, one of the things that you can do is grab Marty's book, uh, because Dr. Marty here has written an amazing book called Blind Spots where he helps point out and show us where we might have blind spots so we can be more aware. I really believe here that Dr. Makary is one of the top 1% who knows what's going on. He was one of the docs that stood up during the pandemic. He's one of the docs that went to the Senate hearing who was fighting for our kids and their health. And he wrote a great book here called Blind Spots, um, and it's called When Medicine Gets It Wrong and What It Means for Our Health. So you can find out, hey, where have we been lied to? Hey, here's some things we can adjust, do for ourselves, for our kids' health, for our community, and in the future. So, Dr. Marty, want to say thanks so much. Um, man, again, it's been such a joy watching you over the years. Again, I watch you on Fox, I follow you on, on X and Twitter, and you've got so many great posts out there. Let us know, where's the best people for place for people to buy the book, and where can people follow you online?

Uh, well, first of all, awesome talking with you, Josh. The book's available wherever books are sold, wherever people like to get their books. And I'm on, uh, Twitter and LinkedIn and a bunch of places. Marty Makary.

Awesome. Well, everybody, hey, thanks so much for listening to the Dr. Josh Axe Show. Remember, every week we're diving deep into the science and principles behind how to heal your body physically, mentally, and spiritually. And Hey, make sure to subscribe and share this. Listen, there are so many people out there that have blind spots, and if we can share this episode with them, we're going to help wake people up. We're going to help families and others get healthy. So thank you for all of you who are sharing this via text message, on social media, and for also who are subscribed to the show. By the way, every time you subscribe, I can bring on more high-profile guests like Dr. Dr. Makary here to make the show even better in the future. And again, thanks so much, Dr. Marty, for coming on. And it was a pleasure. And everybody, I'll see you on the next episode.