Ask Jay & Jim: Back to Simplicity: How to Nip Metabolic Syndrome in the Bud w/Dr. Merrill Matschke

Even though it’s very apparent that humanity is under a tremendous threat to our health, there's no action plan for solving this problem or urgency in studies. Why is the sick care model failing us? What are the latest studies telling us? What are some food choices and unhealthy behaviors that are putting us at great risk of metabolic syndrome? On this episode, Dr. Merrill Matschke is back to share his thoughts on these issues.

 

Once you're in the funnel, you’re trapped unless you take hard measures to get out and change your life-- and that’s on you. -Jim Brown

 

Takeaways

• It’s important to look for those early inflammatory markers so people can be treated before they present symptoms.
• If someone is obese, has metabolic syndrome, and/or has a vascular disease, they are also going to have issues with fertility and testicular function.
• Low calorie nutritive sweetener is going to drive you to diabetes. It’s 300 times sweeter than sugar. Our genes can’t handle a synthetic sweetener made in a lab
• How we live our lives can turn certain genes on and off. If you know this ahead of time, you can avoid certain medications and change your diet so that you don’t activate that genetic pathway.

 

At the start of the show, Dr. Merrill shares on transitioning to a new city and practice. Next, we talked about how much time the average doctor has to put towards research when they are so busy treating a revolving door of patients. We also discussed epigenetics, the problems with low-calorie sweetener, and why it’s so important to eat whole food over the processed stuff.

We also discussed:

• Why it’s important to track early markers of metabolic syndrome
• The importance of estrogen
• The connection between male birth control and low testosterone

 

A lot of doctors are missing the opportunities to improve the health of men, and this is something we can fix. We can’t underestimate the interconnectedness of a lot of health issues. A person with low sperm count is 12 times more likely to have low Testosterone. If a patient has low Testosterone, they’re twice as likely to have metabolic syndrome. If you have metabolic syndrome you’re 5 times more likely to have diabetes which puts you at risk of heart attack or stroke. A lot of clinicians have no experience to help them understand these effects, so it’s up to you to educate yourself and be mindful of the causes.