Dr. Wittering on Executive Order Impact

Okay, we've got some big news. So today's February 14th. And as you know, RFK Jr. was sworn in as head of HHS and the health secretary yesterday. And Trump has just dropped an executive order yesterday. And it is 4.30am in the morning. And it's like Christmas has come early for me, because I looked at this thing and I couldn't go back to bed. So we're going to be reacting to it now. For those of you who don't know me, I'm Dr. Yosef Wittering, a board-certified psychiatrist. And I think what makes me a little bit more interesting here is in my practice, I help people come off psychiatric meds. So I'm very aware of the overuse of psychiatric medications. And I also used to work at the FDA and for the pharmaceutical industry in various roles. And so today I'm going to be reacting to this executive order on the Make America Healthy Again Commission. So... let's go ahead and check it out. Okay, so it starts off by talking about life expectancy lagging over other developed nations. And this is true. Our life expectancy in this country is dropping. And a lot of people are saying that there's, you know, something's going on in America. Why is this happening? People are pointing to the way food is being produced here, pesticides in the food. The fact that I think You know, I've heard statistics like 60% of the diet is now comprised of processed food, and that could be leading to poor health. I think that's quite likely. But I also think that we have a problem in the United States where we don't really treat root causes with things. We just kind of paper over them and medicate them. You know, think about, you know, people with like obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes. Gosh, even autoimmune diseases that can be triggered by foods. We're just kind of papering over these things with like statins and antihypertensives and different immune modulating drugs to treat them, which all have side effects, right? Rather than encouraging people to be healthy, maybe stop with the food, get a bit more exercise and really treat it at the root causes. And that's very much the same with mental illness as well. In this country, we treat people in 20-minute visits. I'm oftentimes not really understanding where their mental illnesses are coming from, whether they could be genuine life stresses, it could be a reaction to terrible food, which I see some times as well. I know this sounds crazy to you, but what you eat actually impacts your mental health. And instead of really digging into those things, um, We usually just say, well, you know, you might have a mental health condition and it's probably biological and don't worry, we'll give you this medication. So there's a lot of things going on at the moment, which are not great. Six in 10 Americans have at least one chronic disease and four in 10 have two or more chronic diseases. This is a very sick country. And one in five adults in the United States live with a mental illness. And that's, you know, And people are going to see this and say, well, one in five, well, maybe there's just wider recognition of mental illnesses now and there's not actually things making people sick. And maybe there's some argument to this because, I mean, after all, I mean, you go on Twitter these days and we've kind of made and we're kind of in a weird place at the moment where there's been so much pro mental health advocacy going on over the last decade that. you know, there's really no like stigma around it, I guess is what people will say. I mean, you turn on TikTok, people are like showing you the pills that they're taking these days, you know, I'm taking this antidepressant and this antipsychotic and all of that. And that may be because, you know, we're so open about mental health conditions now that more people are coming forward and they're getting treatment. And maybe this is even a good thing. I would say kind of hold your horses there because I actually think there's a lot more going on. I really do think the rise in mental health problems is probably linked. to the foods that we're eating. And this is what's going to make me sound crazy compared to everyone else. I actually think the drugs are making people sicker. I think long-term psychiatric medications does make some people more unwell in the long run. I think it's something that we're not talking about. And I also think once you start getting on some of these medications, you start to have side effects and often they are missed. And what starts as something very benign can become something much bigger. Anyway, so let's keep on going into this. Okay, United States has the highest age-adjusted incidence of cancer. That's not great. Asthma is twice as common in the United States than most of the other countries. Yeah, I mean, asthma, I mean, we're really thinking at... like food issues here when it comes to asthma. I mean, what is in our food that is revving up our immune system so that asthma is more common in the United States? I think we definitely need to have a look at that. And autism spectrum disorder has the highest prevalence in high income countries, including the United States. I'm not sure about what's going on there, but it is definitely worth having a look at. And yes, our autoimmune diseases are are more common in our developed nations. It goes on to say that 30 million children have at least one health condition at the moment, like allergies, asthma, or autoimmune diseases. Again, this is food stuff here, or maybe even toxin related. We have autism spectrum disorder now affecting one in 36 children in the United States, a staggering increase from the rates of one to four out of 10,000 children who identified with the condition. In 1980, again, I know some people are going to say, well, you know, the diagnostic boundaries of this have changed now, but we really should be looking underneath that and saying, you know, are there things that we are being exposed to at the moment that are actually damaging to the mental health of our kids? Or maybe are there things that the adults are exposed to that are damaging the quality of the sperm or the quality of the eggs? And there is something about that that is leading to a high incidence of kids being born with neurological problems. Definitely worth a look. Along with this, these health burdens have led to an increase in the prescription of medications. For example, in the case of ADHD, 3.4 million children are now on medication for the disorder, up from 3.2 million. And so now we have to think about, you know, why do we have 3 million kids in this? country who need to be on stimulant medications to pay attention. Could it be that, you know, your overall physical health could be impacting your ability to concentrate? Yes, I think that could be the case. I mean, there could be some things making people mentally, making children mentally unable to focus. And we should definitely pay attention to that. Because I mean, look, we have increases in things like asthma and other signs that kids are less healthy these days. And so to the extent that that health goes... to you know leads to things like brain fog and inattention yeah we're going to see a bump in adhd medications um in adhd medication use but the other thing that i think is interesting with the mental health crisis is that it's so entwined in the way that we deliver care for instance a lot of times adhd medications are encouraged by schools or by parents and they'll say, you know, they'll go to the doctors and they'll say, my kid has ADHD medication. He needs to keep up with the other kids. Can you prescribe it? And a lot of docs are really happy to comply with this. Essentially, just based off the reports of the parents, it's easy. The parents seem to be happy. It works well in the short term and makes the kid, you know, more docile and focused. But it really isn't fixing the problem at the root cause. And that is a big problem. It goes down to say that this, you know, this health crisis is posing a threat to our military, where it says 77% of young adults do not qualify for the military based in a large part on health scores. That is frightening. And then it says 90% of the nation's $4.5 trillion healthcare budget is for people with chronic and mental health conditions. In short, Americans of all ages are becoming sicker, beset by illness that our medical system is not addressing effectively. And gosh, this couldn't be more obvious. I mean, have you walked around a shopping mall or have you been in an airport lately? When you look at the people, the people are sick. Just look at their faces. Look at their bodies. People are overweight. They are huffing and puffing. We do not look like a country that is healthy. We look like a country that is massively sick. It's right in front of our faces. You see it absolutely everywhere. And gosh, it's high tide that someone actually called this out and identified it to say, we are failing as a country in making people healthy. That much is clear. It goes on to say, we need to redirect our national focus towards understanding and drastically lowering chronic disease rates, ending childhood chronic illness. And this includes fresh thinking on nutrition, physical activity, health, lifestyle, over a reliance on medications and drug treatments. and looking at the effects of new technological habits, environmental impacts and food and drug quality and safety. Okay, that is like a mouthful. But let's unpack the first part of this. We need a fresh look on nutrition, physical activity and healthy lifestyle. How about this for an intervention? When you go to your PCP, instead of it just being a nurse and a doctor, there's actually like a health coach there or someone who the doctor could send the person to and just say, you know what, I know we've got this statin and this antihypertensive or maybe even this antidepressant. Before we go there, I'd like you to see our health coach and we'd like you to meet with him. If you are open to it, if you are open to learning about dietary and health interventions. You know, we do groups here at this practice three days a week, just like a gym, where you can come and we can teach you about food, or we can teach you about exercise, or, you know, we can look at your diet and help you. And I want you to do that for, you know, six months before we get this prescription pad out. I'm just like a prescription, I'm going to prescribe you a course on nutrition, physical activity and healthy lifestyle. Maybe they even teach people about some, you know, about the effect of exercise on things like mental health. oh, you know, turns out you just kind of sit at home and you have a sedentary lifestyle and you don't really move your body. Hey, that's not great for anxiety. Before I go ahead and put you on Lexapro, here's what we're going to do. We're going to find a way for you to move your body 30 minutes every day, and we're going to see how you feel. And so, yes, I think a fresh look at treating root causes of physical activity, nutrition, and lifestyle is really needed. And then also, we need to definitely look, the second part of that was to look at environmental impacts. And gosh, really what it's doing to our food quality, we need to look at that. We need to look at the fact that why is 60% of what we're eating processed food these days, our natural food made in a factory? I mean, there's got to be something really wrong about that. How can we even stand for that as a country? How can we even be okay with that? And so I think we really need to have... leadership coming from the top down that that is not okay. If we're going to be a strong, prosperous, economically healthy country, we need to have healthy people and we can't do it with 60% of the country sustaining themselves on processed food. So section two, policy. It should be the policy of the federal government to aggressively combat these critical health challenges, including the rising rates of mental health disorders, obesity, diabetes, and chronic disease. To do so, executive departments and agencies must focus on reversing chronic diseases. And so it goes on to say that under this policy, that federally funded research should be transparent and open source. It's almost crazy that you need to say this because you would assume it would be transparent and open source. But science and politics has become so entwined recently that there have been instances where people... want to skew the presentation of federally funded health research, whether it's, you know, in order to promote a certain position, whether it's on vaccines or whether it's on something else, let the science speak for itself. You know, let's not kind of keep it behind closed doors. I mean, everyone should see the data and they should be able to make up their own mind. That's almost a crazy thing that we don't have that already. NIH should actually focus on research onto the root causes of why americans are getting sick this is like a pet peeve of mine the nimh so the national institutes of mental health their research right now is some of the worst research ever it's it's so technical and biological and just like focused on the brain and um really like little kind of like nuances in there and it's really not translating to any improvements in the mental health they're completely in the weeds And I don't know why they're not looking at the impact of things like diet on mental health and other variables that would create a much bigger impact on mental health, things like physical activity and such, and encouraging that. And so, yes, we need to really carefully look at where we're spending our money. Agents who should also work with farmers to ensure that the United States food is the healthiest and most abundant and affordable in the world. Absolutely. And we need to make sure that... people are covered with good health insurance. And then he goes on to say that they're putting together a commission to look into this and they're going to provide several recommendations within I think 100 days and 180 days. It goes on to list several people from the president's administration and the initial mission shall focus on childhood chronic disease. That's lovely. I do think we should focus on the kids first. And so they're going to look at this commission is going to be looking at the scope of childhood chronic diseases and any potential contributing causes like the American diet, absorption of toxic materials, medical treatments, lifestyle and environmental factors. And sorry, I love this bit here where they talk about looking at the influence of. corporations or cronyism. And as someone that used to work at the FDA and then also in the pharmaceutical industry, gosh, there is so much bad corporate influence in the health of Americans these days. I mean, let's just talk about pharmaceutical advertising. I mean, we advertise direct to people these days about psychiatric medications. um you know they're colorful ads it shows people you know before they're really like struggling and they're having a hard time and then the drug arrives and then afterwards it's like they you know they're working and they're in a satisfying relationship and at the end of it it says well if you're suffering from these things go and talk to your doctor and so i mean the pharmaceutical industry is pouring billions into these ads because it knows that people then turn up at the doctor's office And they say, well, can I try this new drug? I saw it on TV and the doctor has 15 minutes. So they go, yeah, sure. Why not? You know, FDA approved. And they write that script. And so that's one way we've got this corporate influence, again, kind of pushing people towards getting on drugs and not treating root causes. I think another issue is definitely the insurance system at the moment that is putting incentives out there to make doctors see people in 15 minute visits. You make more money seeing four people in an hour than you would seeing one person in an hour, nearly double actually. And so the way we deliver care, the fact that doctors are kind of incentivized to see more people in less time, they're not incentivized to keep people healthy. I think that might be a better incentive for doctors. So there's not that conflict there. I think looking into things like that would be really helpful. And finally, we need to look at how... The pharmaceutical industry really influences the education of doctors. Now, these organizations, and like I said, I've been in these places before, their whole marketing mandate is to make doctors see these drugs in the best possible light ever. And this is probably one of the sneakiest ways in which it's perverting our healthcare industry because, for instance, you have things like Like, you know, drug companies will never publish anything negative about their drug. You know, I used to be a drug safety officer there. And my team would say things like, oh, we've really learned a lot about this side effect. We want to put something out so other doctors can learn about it too. But then someone else from the company would come down and say, well, we don't want to make a bigger deal out of this than it already is. And so they would kill the paper. And so they only will ever publish things that are positive because In their mind, they're thinking, well, you know, if we publish this paper about the negative effects of this drug, one of our competitors is going to get it. They're going to give it to the sales force. The sales force is going to take this thing and they're going to put it in front of other doctors and say, well, look at this complicated side effect. You don't want to use that drug. You want to use our drug. And so these commercial incentives really skew how doctors see these drugs. And they end up thinking they are much safer and much less risky than they are. And this is happening all over the country. I mean, we've got pharmaceutical reps turning up at doctor's offices, presenting these really one sided views of these drugs. And it's not to help Americans be healthy. I mean, it really is to sell drugs. And right now, we've created a system in this country that really just benefits corporate medicine. And, you know, whether that's billing insurance a lot because you just turn through four people in an hour or selling drugs. You know, the health of the American public is not at the center of this. So I'm really, really excited that they're going to look at more of these corporate influences and how it's just making people sick. Okay, so moving on now. Within 100 days, the commission shall submit to the president an assessment which will look at which will identify and describe all childhood chronic diseases in America compared to other countries. Assess the threat that potential over-utilization of medications and certain food ingredients pose risk to kids with chronic inflammation or other established mechanisms of diseases. That sounds great. Assess the prevalence and threat posed by the prescription of SSRIs, antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, stimulants, and weight loss drugs. Yeah, I mean, this is right up my alley. All of these things are essentially drugs that sort of soothe the anxious mind or the dysfunctioning mind. And they can just be the worst side of, you know, just papering over underlying problems, whether it's, you know, anxiety and depression and brain fog caused by like medical problems, or even in its worst, you know, when we're covering up things like abuse and unhappiness or life stresses with these things. These drugs are not great long term solutions for people. I mean, when is putting someone on a drug that. papers over the symptoms of unhappiness a good long-term solution. They need to be treated at the root. And we don't even give people an opportunity right now to, you know, say fix their diet, engage in exercise, or even support them through their life stresses. I mean, in that 15-minute visit, you're going straight to those medications. And the last thing that I want to say here is one of the scariest things that I have ever seen is the amount of medications that we put kids on in foster homes. I used to work in the emergency rooms and when we'd have the foster kids come in, I mean, we'd have like, you know, 10, 11, 12 year olds on massive doses of mood stabilizers and antipsychotics. Someone needs to be looking at the rate of prescription drug use in these foster home kids. I mean, what kind of country does that to children? I mean, they're unhappy, they get put in new homes. And instead of making sure that they have the resources to help these kids who are coming from these broken families, we end up absolutely nuking them with antipsychotics and mood stabilizers. And so I hope that this assessment looks at that as well. And obviously globally at just how much we're using these medications in this country. So they're going to, moving on, they're going to identify and report on best practices for preventing childhood health issues, including proper nutrition and lifestyle. Great. Okay, and moving on. And then how about here? Restore the integrity of science, including and eliminating undue industry influence, releasing findings of underlying data to the maximum extent permitted under applicable law and increasing methodological rigor. Yeah. And so many people are not aware the pharmaceutical industry will, for a long time, they just don't publish negative research. And so if your drug is in a study and it's looking at effectiveness. and the drug fails that study they just they just kind of used to file it away in a drawer somewhere and and they wouldn't publish it um and the drug companies would say well you know it's trade secrets you know there was something in the design of that study that we didn't like and so we're going to redesign the study they want to regain the system to see if they can get a positive result and so essentially that that's that's rubbish you know um i mean this is like maybe like a trade secret if you're like some kind of tech company but can you really have these types of trade secrets when the drugs you're producing you know people are taking them as medicine and if there's something negative about them people should know because it's actually their health it's like the most important thing that people care about and so the fact that there's so much like protection over research that has to do with like the effectiveness on medicines these days is just insane and so Yes, we need to have full access to this research and we shouldn't be saying, oh, no, no, no, trade secrets. You know, we need to protect the pharmaceutical industry. We need to make sure we are the best country in the world for pharma to work in. I mean, we need to throw that in the trash and actually look after the health of our people. And so moving on. And so the chair, this is RFK Jr., can hold some public meetings and roundtables to receive input from leaders in public health and government accountability. That's great. They should be talking to leaders on this. And they're going to take all that information and they're going to give it to President Trump to rule on. Okay. And so essentially my summary on this is, gosh, this is long overdue. I can't believe it has taken this long for the federal government to actually put front and center the health of people instead of protecting special interests. It is long overdue. So there you have it. That is my reaction to the new. Maha executive order? Tell me what you think about it in the comments below this video.

And it is 4.30am in the morning. And it's like Christmas has come early for me, because I looked at this thing and I couldn't go back to bed. So we're going to be reacting to it now. For those of you who don't know me, I'm Dr. Yosef Wittering, a board-certified psychiatrist. And I think what makes me a little bit more interesting here is in my practice, I help people come off psychiatric meds.

So I'm very aware of the overuse of psychiatric medications. And I also used to work at the FDA and for the pharmaceutical industry in various roles. And so today I'm going to be reacting to this executive order on the Make America Healthy Again Commission. So...

let's go ahead and check it out. Okay, so it starts off by talking about life expectancy lagging over other developed nations. And this is true. Our life expectancy in this country is dropping.

And a lot of people are saying that there's, you know, something's going on in America. Why is this happening? People are pointing to the way food is being produced here, pesticides in the food. The fact that I think You know, I've heard statistics like 60% of the diet is now comprised of processed food, and that could be leading to poor health.

I think that's quite likely. But I also think that we have a problem in the United States where we don't really treat root causes with things. We just kind of paper over them and medicate them. You know, think about, you know, people with like obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes.

Gosh, even autoimmune diseases that can be triggered by foods. We're just kind of papering over these things with like statins and antihypertensives and different immune modulating drugs to treat them, which all have side effects, right? Rather than encouraging people to be healthy, maybe stop with the food, get a bit more exercise and really treat it at the root causes.

And that's very much the same with mental illness as well. In this country, we treat people in 20-minute visits. I'm oftentimes not really understanding where their mental illnesses are coming from, whether they could be genuine life stresses, it could be a reaction to terrible food, which I see some times as well. I know this sounds crazy to you, but what you eat actually impacts your mental health.

And instead of really digging into those things, um, We usually just say, well, you know, you might have a mental health condition and it's probably biological and don't worry, we'll give you this medication. So there's a lot of things going on at the moment, which are not great. Six in 10 Americans have at least one chronic disease and four in 10 have two or more chronic diseases.

This is a very sick country. And one in five adults in the United States live with a mental illness. And that's, you know, And people are going to see this and say, well, one in five, well, maybe there's just wider recognition of mental illnesses now and there's not actually things making people sick.

And maybe there's some argument to this because, I mean, after all, I mean, you go on Twitter these days and we've kind of made and we're kind of in a weird place at the moment where there's been so much pro mental health advocacy going on over the last decade that. you know, there's really no like stigma around it, I guess is what people will say. I mean, you turn on TikTok, people are like showing you the pills that they're taking these days, you know, I'm taking this antidepressant and this antipsychotic and all of that. And that may be because, you know, we're so open about mental health conditions now that more people are coming forward and they're getting treatment. And maybe this is even a good thing.

I would say kind of hold your horses there because I actually think there's a lot more going on. I really do think the rise in mental health problems is probably linked. to the foods that we're eating.

And this is what's going to make me sound crazy compared to everyone else. I actually think the drugs are making people sicker. I think long-term psychiatric medications does make some people more unwell in the long run.

I think it's something that we're not talking about. And I also think once you start getting on some of these medications, you start to have side effects and often they are missed. And what starts as something very benign can become something much bigger. Anyway, so let's keep on going into this. Okay, United States has the highest age-adjusted incidence of cancer.

That's not great. Asthma is twice as common in the United States than most of the other countries. Yeah, I mean, asthma, I mean, we're really thinking at... like food issues here when it comes to asthma. I mean, what is in our food that is revving up our immune system so that asthma is more common in the United States?

I think we definitely need to have a look at that. And autism spectrum disorder has the highest prevalence in high income countries, including the United States. I'm not sure about what's going on there, but it is definitely worth having a look at. And yes, our autoimmune diseases are are more common in our developed nations.

It goes on to say that 30 million children have at least one health condition at the moment, like allergies, asthma, or autoimmune diseases. Again, this is food stuff here, or maybe even toxin related. We have autism spectrum disorder now affecting one in 36 children in the United States, a staggering increase from the rates of one to four out of 10,000 children who identified with the condition. In 1980, again, I know some people are going to say, well, you know, the diagnostic boundaries of this have changed now, but we really should be looking underneath that and saying, you know, are there things that we are being exposed to at the moment that are actually damaging to the mental health of our kids? Or maybe are there things that the adults are exposed to that are damaging the quality of the sperm or the quality of the eggs?

And there is something about that that is leading to a high incidence of kids being born with neurological problems. Definitely worth a look. Along with this, these health burdens have led to an increase in the prescription of medications. For example, in the case of ADHD, 3.4 million children are now on medication for the disorder, up from 3.2 million. And so now we have to think about, you know, why do we have 3 million kids in this?

country who need to be on stimulant medications to pay attention. Could it be that, you know, your overall physical health could be impacting your ability to concentrate? Yes, I think that could be the case. I mean, there could be some things making people mentally, making children mentally unable to focus. And we should definitely pay attention to that.

Because I mean, look, we have increases in things like asthma and other signs that kids are less healthy these days. And so to the extent that that health goes... to you know leads to things like brain fog and inattention yeah we're going to see a bump in adhd medications um in adhd medication use but the other thing that i think is interesting with the mental health crisis is that it's so entwined in the way that we deliver care for instance a lot of times adhd medications are encouraged by schools or by parents and they'll say, you know, they'll go to the doctors and they'll say, my kid has ADHD medication.

He needs to keep up with the other kids. Can you prescribe it? And a lot of docs are really happy to comply with this.

Essentially, just based off the reports of the parents, it's easy. The parents seem to be happy. It works well in the short term and makes the kid, you know, more docile and focused. But it really isn't fixing the problem at the root cause. And that is a big problem.

It goes down to say that this, you know, this health crisis is posing a threat to our military, where it says 77% of young adults do not qualify for the military based in a large part on health scores. That is frightening. And then it says 90% of the nation's $4.5 trillion healthcare budget is for people with chronic and mental health conditions. In short, Americans of all ages are becoming sicker, beset by illness that our medical system is not addressing effectively.

And gosh, this couldn't be more obvious. I mean, have you walked around a shopping mall or have you been in an airport lately? When you look at the people, the people are sick.

Just look at their faces. Look at their bodies. People are overweight.

They are huffing and puffing. We do not look like a country that is healthy. We look like a country that is massively sick.

It's right in front of our faces. You see it absolutely everywhere. And gosh, it's high tide that someone actually called this out and identified it to say, we are failing as a country in making people healthy.

That much is clear. It goes on to say, we need to redirect our national focus towards understanding and drastically lowering chronic disease rates, ending childhood chronic illness. And this includes fresh thinking on nutrition, physical activity, health, lifestyle, over a reliance on medications and drug treatments. and looking at the effects of new technological habits, environmental impacts and food and drug quality and safety.

Okay, that is like a mouthful. But let's unpack the first part of this. We need a fresh look on nutrition, physical activity and healthy lifestyle.

How about this for an intervention? When you go to your PCP, instead of it just being a nurse and a doctor, there's actually like a health coach there or someone who the doctor could send the person to and just say, you know what, I know we've got this statin and this antihypertensive or maybe even this antidepressant. Before we go there, I'd like you to see our health coach and we'd like you to meet with him. If you are open to it, if you are open to learning about dietary and health interventions.

You know, we do groups here at this practice three days a week, just like a gym, where you can come and we can teach you about food, or we can teach you about exercise, or, you know, we can look at your diet and help you. And I want you to do that for, you know, six months before we get this prescription pad out. I'm just like a prescription, I'm going to prescribe you a course on nutrition, physical activity and healthy lifestyle. Maybe they even teach people about some, you know, about the effect of exercise on things like mental health. oh, you know, turns out you just kind of sit at home and you have a sedentary lifestyle and you don't really move your body.

Hey, that's not great for anxiety. Before I go ahead and put you on Lexapro, here's what we're going to do. We're going to find a way for you to move your body 30 minutes every day, and we're going to see how you feel.

And so, yes, I think a fresh look at treating root causes of physical activity, nutrition, and lifestyle is really needed. And then also, we need to definitely look, the second part of that was to look at environmental impacts. And gosh, really what it's doing to our food quality, we need to look at that.

We need to look at the fact that why is 60% of what we're eating processed food these days, our natural food made in a factory? I mean, there's got to be something really wrong about that. How can we even stand for that as a country?

How can we even be okay with that? And so I think we really need to have... leadership coming from the top down that that is not okay. If we're going to be a strong, prosperous, economically healthy country, we need to have healthy people and we can't do it with 60% of the country sustaining themselves on processed food. So section two, policy.

It should be the policy of the federal government to aggressively combat these critical health challenges, including the rising rates of mental health disorders, obesity, diabetes, and chronic disease. To do so, executive departments and agencies must focus on reversing chronic diseases. And so it goes on to say that under this policy, that federally funded research should be transparent and open source.

It's almost crazy that you need to say this because you would assume it would be transparent and open source. But science and politics has become so entwined recently that there have been instances where people... want to skew the presentation of federally funded health research, whether it's, you know, in order to promote a certain position, whether it's on vaccines or whether it's on something else, let the science speak for itself. You know, let's not kind of keep it behind closed doors.

I mean, everyone should see the data and they should be able to make up their own mind. That's almost a crazy thing that we don't have that already. NIH should actually focus on research onto the root causes of why americans are getting sick this is like a pet peeve of mine the nimh so the national institutes of mental health their research right now is some of the worst research ever it's it's so technical and biological and just like focused on the brain and um really like little kind of like nuances in there and it's really not translating to any improvements in the mental health they're completely in the weeds And I don't know why they're not looking at the impact of things like diet on mental health and other variables that would create a much bigger impact on mental health, things like physical activity and such, and encouraging that.

And so, yes, we need to really carefully look at where we're spending our money. Agents who should also work with farmers to ensure that the United States food is the healthiest and most abundant and affordable in the world. Absolutely.

And we need to make sure that... people are covered with good health insurance. And then he goes on to say that they're putting together a commission to look into this and they're going to provide several recommendations within I think 100 days and 180 days.

It goes on to list several people from the president's administration and the initial mission shall focus on childhood chronic disease. That's lovely. I do think we should focus on the kids first. And so they're going to look at this commission is going to be looking at the scope of childhood chronic diseases and any potential contributing causes like the American diet, absorption of toxic materials, medical treatments, lifestyle and environmental factors. And sorry, I love this bit here where they talk about looking at the influence of.

corporations or cronyism. And as someone that used to work at the FDA and then also in the pharmaceutical industry, gosh, there is so much bad corporate influence in the health of Americans these days. I mean, let's just talk about pharmaceutical advertising. I mean, we advertise direct to people these days about psychiatric medications.

um you know they're colorful ads it shows people you know before they're really like struggling and they're having a hard time and then the drug arrives and then afterwards it's like they you know they're working and they're in a satisfying relationship and at the end of it it says well if you're suffering from these things go and talk to your doctor and so i mean the pharmaceutical industry is pouring billions into these ads because it knows that people then turn up at the doctor's office And they say, well, can I try this new drug? I saw it on TV and the doctor has 15 minutes. So they go, yeah, sure. Why not? You know, FDA approved.

And they write that script. And so that's one way we've got this corporate influence, again, kind of pushing people towards getting on drugs and not treating root causes. I think another issue is definitely the insurance system at the moment that is putting incentives out there to make doctors see people in 15 minute visits. You make more money seeing four people in an hour than you would seeing one person in an hour, nearly double actually.

And so the way we deliver care, the fact that doctors are kind of incentivized to see more people in less time, they're not incentivized to keep people healthy. I think that might be a better incentive for doctors. So there's not that conflict there. I think looking into things like that would be really helpful.

And finally, we need to look at how... The pharmaceutical industry really influences the education of doctors. Now, these organizations, and like I said, I've been in these places before, their whole marketing mandate is to make doctors see these drugs in the best possible light ever.

And this is probably one of the sneakiest ways in which it's perverting our healthcare industry because, for instance, you have things like Like, you know, drug companies will never publish anything negative about their drug. You know, I used to be a drug safety officer there. And my team would say things like, oh, we've really learned a lot about this side effect. We want to put something out so other doctors can learn about it too.

But then someone else from the company would come down and say, well, we don't want to make a bigger deal out of this than it already is. And so they would kill the paper. And so they only will ever publish things that are positive because In their mind, they're thinking, well, you know, if we publish this paper about the negative effects of this drug, one of our competitors is going to get it.

They're going to give it to the sales force. The sales force is going to take this thing and they're going to put it in front of other doctors and say, well, look at this complicated side effect. You don't want to use that drug. You want to use our drug. And so these commercial incentives really skew how doctors see these drugs.

And they end up thinking they are much safer and much less risky than they are. And this is happening all over the country. I mean, we've got pharmaceutical reps turning up at doctor's offices, presenting these really one sided views of these drugs. And it's not to help Americans be healthy.

I mean, it really is to sell drugs. And right now, we've created a system in this country that really just benefits corporate medicine. And, you know, whether that's billing insurance a lot because you just turn through four people in an hour or selling drugs.

You know, the health of the American public is not at the center of this. So I'm really, really excited that they're going to look at more of these corporate influences and how it's just making people sick. Okay, so moving on now.

Within 100 days, the commission shall submit to the president an assessment which will look at which will identify and describe all childhood chronic diseases in America compared to other countries. Assess the threat that potential over-utilization of medications and certain food ingredients pose risk to kids with chronic inflammation or other established mechanisms of diseases. That sounds great. Assess the prevalence and threat posed by the prescription of SSRIs, antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, stimulants, and weight loss drugs. Yeah, I mean, this is right up my alley.

All of these things are essentially drugs that sort of soothe the anxious mind or the dysfunctioning mind. And they can just be the worst side of, you know, just papering over underlying problems, whether it's, you know, anxiety and depression and brain fog caused by like medical problems, or even in its worst, you know, when we're covering up things like abuse and unhappiness or life stresses with these things. These drugs are not great long term solutions for people. I mean, when is putting someone on a drug that. papers over the symptoms of unhappiness a good long-term solution.

They need to be treated at the root. And we don't even give people an opportunity right now to, you know, say fix their diet, engage in exercise, or even support them through their life stresses. I mean, in that 15-minute visit, you're going straight to those medications. And the last thing that I want to say here is one of the scariest things that I have ever seen is the amount of medications that we put kids on in foster homes.

I used to work in the emergency rooms and when we'd have the foster kids come in, I mean, we'd have like, you know, 10, 11, 12 year olds on massive doses of mood stabilizers and antipsychotics. Someone needs to be looking at the rate of prescription drug use in these foster home kids. I mean, what kind of country does that to children? I mean, they're unhappy, they get put in new homes. And instead of making sure that they have the resources to help these kids who are coming from these broken families, we end up absolutely nuking them with antipsychotics and mood stabilizers.

And so I hope that this assessment looks at that as well. And obviously globally at just how much we're using these medications in this country. So they're going to, moving on, they're going to identify and report on best practices for preventing childhood health issues, including proper nutrition and lifestyle.

Great. Okay, and moving on. And then how about here? Restore the integrity of science, including and eliminating undue industry influence, releasing findings of underlying data to the maximum extent permitted under applicable law and increasing methodological rigor. Yeah.

And so many people are not aware the pharmaceutical industry will, for a long time, they just don't publish negative research. And so if your drug is in a study and it's looking at effectiveness. and the drug fails that study they just they just kind of used to file it away in a drawer somewhere and and they wouldn't publish it um and the drug companies would say well you know it's trade secrets you know there was something in the design of that study that we didn't like and so we're going to redesign the study they want to regain the system to see if they can get a positive result and so essentially that that's that's rubbish you know um i mean this is like maybe like a trade secret if you're like some kind of tech company but can you really have these types of trade secrets when the drugs you're producing you know people are taking them as medicine and if there's something negative about them people should know because it's actually their health it's like the most important thing that people care about and so the fact that there's so much like protection over research that has to do with like the effectiveness on medicines these days is just insane and so Yes, we need to have full access to this research and we shouldn't be saying, oh, no, no, no, trade secrets. You know, we need to protect the pharmaceutical industry. We need to make sure we are the best country in the world for pharma to work in.

I mean, we need to throw that in the trash and actually look after the health of our people. And so moving on. And so the chair, this is RFK Jr., can hold some public meetings and roundtables to receive input from leaders in public health and government accountability.

That's great. They should be talking to leaders on this. And they're going to take all that information and they're going to give it to President Trump to rule on. Okay.

And so essentially my summary on this is, gosh, this is long overdue. I can't believe it has taken this long for the federal government to actually put front and center the health of people instead of protecting special interests. It is long overdue. So there you have it.

That is my reaction to the new. Maha executive order? Tell me what you think about it in the comments below this video.

Transcript for:Dr. Wittering on Executive Order Impact

Transcript for:
Dr. Wittering on Executive Order Impact