Dorothy: [00:00:00] Today, Dr. Dixie Melillo, co-founder of The Rose and medical director, and Dr. Beata Lerman, creator of Sinless Treats, talk about the role of sugar in cancer and how it really impacts, perhaps starts, and needs to be eliminated if we ever want to win this battle against cancer. Dr. Melillo has made it her mission in life to find a way to stop breast cancer from happening, and Dr. Lerman has made it her mission in life to change the way that the world views desserts. She offers a healthier alternative to candy and actually has a way for us to enjoy chocolate. This is a lively and thought provoking episode that will explore some of our misconceptions about cancer and why what we eat matters.
And just a reminder, Our discussion today is not medical advice, and we encourage you to see your doctor before making any changes in your diet. When you subscribe to our show, you help us grow. [00:01:00] Someone you know may need to hear this story, so please, share with your family and friends. And consider supporting our mission. Your donation can help save the life of an uninsured woman.
Let’s Talk About Your Breast. A different kind of podcast presented to you by The Rose. The Breast Center of Excellence and a Texas treasure. You’re going to hear frank discussions about tough topics. And you’re going to learn why knowing about your breast could save your life.
Dr. Dixie, you want to start by saying, you’ve been on this campaign for a long time.
Dr. Dixie: Long time. A long time. And I think we’ve known for a while the thing that really sets cancer off is our food. Our food. You know, I think that it’s well established that, um, Cancer is a metabolic disease, and when we feed it a lot of sugar, it [00:02:00] grows faster, and sugar hurts the immune system, and it just destroys this beautiful balance that the body has.
Everybody makes cancer cells, because mitochondria die. Mitochondria die from old age. Mitochondria die from fructose. Mitochondria die from radiation, from roundup that they put on your food. And usually, you know, You, you have this beautiful dance going on, you, you know, you make a cancer cell and then the immune cell comes along and eats him.
You make one, he eats him, you make one, he eats him, you make, and it’s okay. But like during the pandemic, particularly when we were isolated. People really started eating a lot of processed fast food into which they had added sugar, added sugar, added And, uh, and you, and you can tell by the weight of America, I mean, everybody gained weight.
All of these metabolic diseases just bloomed. And we are seeing so much cancer. I have never seen I mean, like, two weeks, the last two weeks, we’ve had four kiddos in their thirties with breast cancer. [00:03:00] Yesterday, I had three people walk in, you know, one of them just was a, had been a screener that got a call back, three people with cancer, two of them in their 40s and one at 50.
So, you know, we, we, what we’re seeing now is, is mind boggling. And I, you know, for the last 20 years, I’ve been saying, cancer’s increasing, cancer’s increasing, but now I’m just like, it’s a scary increase. You know. And so I am, I’ve made these little pamphlets, I’ll let you see them, about sugar and cancer, and I give them to all of my patients.
And I even made them in Spanish for my little, you know, my restaurant workers, my cleaning ladies who can’t speak English. And, um, I, I begged him, please read this, share it with your friends and family. And it tells a lot about, it’s, it’s very simple. Basically, it says, don’t eat sugar. It doesn’t get complicated at all. It just says, you know, cut the processed foods and the sugars out. And I pray that it makes some difference.
Dr. Lerman: You know, I think, uh, it would definitely help if you, [00:04:00] you know, sometimes they say cut sugar and they’re like, we don’t really eat sugar, but it’s like, but do you eat bread? Do you eat pasta?
Dr. Dixie: Oh, I explained it to him.
Dr. Lerman: Yeah. So you really have to. Like. Do you eat cereal in the morning? Do you, do you drink juice? You know, I can, I can tell you a funny story. Um, I’ve been married to my husband for 11 years and my husband is a plumber, but because he lives with me, but just by osmosis he absorbs, you know, every, every new trend or not so new trend as you were talking about.
And so, um, He goes to many people’s houses and he likes to talk to people and people sometimes like share with him and we try to live healthier life. And he tells, he asked them, what do you eat in the morning? And they’re like, we eat the oatmeal and we chase it with the glass of orange juice. And he’s like, congratulations. You just like created [00:05:00] yourself a very inflammatory. And I said, can you imagine what kind of, uh, plumber would come to your house and start educating you on how to eat right?
Dr. Dixie: I think it’s wonderful. I think, I think it’s awesome.
Dr. Lerman: But I think, very much in support of your point, MD Anderson Cancer Center had a town hall in October, and I think it was, uh, by, uh, Professor Zhu.
I, I will connect you, I, I know the person. And they actually said the quiet part out loud, the fact that cancer does drive, uh— sugar does drive cancer mutations, and there is an initiative right now to eliminate all the sugar from MD Anderson campuses.
Dr. Dixie: Great. Wonderful.
Dr. Lerman: So if you haven’t heard about that, I will, um, share that, uh, town hall notes, uh, with you and I can, uh, at least introduce you to the person because I think that’s a definitely great stride in the right direction.
Dr. Dixie: It’s just [00:06:00] wonderful that they’re catching up with it. Very.
Dorothy: So Dr. Lerman, you, you had lymphoma. And you insisted on having immunotherapy. This was one of the fields you were very much involved in, in your, uh, scientific work. And so At that point, was that when you really decided to live a sugarless life?
Dr. Lerman: Yes, because, um, you know, as I said, it all comes down to the building blocks. Sugar is the only thing that can feed cancer cells. Uh, every other cell in the body, including our brain, can feed on alternative fuels, can feed on fats, on ketones, uh, the only thing that can’t use the alternative fuel for growth is cancer cells because they are primed to just very simple metabolic state and only utilize sugar.
Sugar and fructose, really. Fructose, um, lowers the [00:07:00] defense, uh, it doesn’t really go feed the cells, it just kind of kills our, our livers. So it lowers the body’s defenses to fight cancer cells and the sugar goes straight to, um, to the cancer cell.
Dr. Dixie: Yeah, and like I tell my patients, you know, a PET scan, when they do a PET scan, you know, to outline the cancer so beautifully, what do they inject you with?
And they go, I don’t know. Um, radioactive sugar.
Dr. Lerman: Exactly.
Dr. Dixie: Because the sugar takes up so many times— the cancer takes up so many more amount of sugar than, than, and yet breast cancer cells have like six times more insulin receptors than a normal breast cell. It’s like a setup.
Dr. Lerman: Yeah.
Dr. Dixie: You know. And— And people like you say people don’t realize they think juicing is just wonderful. Fruit is a wonderful thing. But once you juice it, you’ve separated it from the fiber and the sugar goes [00:08:00] straight into the liver. So you don’t want anything.
Dr. Lerman: Yes.
Dr. Dixie: You know And I tell my patients one slice of whole wheat bread— healthy whole wheat bread— Will raise your sugar your blood sugar more than a snickers bar. If I’m going to cheat, I’m going to eat a Snickers bar, you know? And, and the public doesn’t know it. The public doesn’t know it and, and I’m afraid that they’re just, We have got to really push this, you know?
Dr. Lerman: And I am willing to talk to anybody who would listen. We actually do a lot of education at Sinless Treats. We talk about how sugar acts and what are some real great sugar alternatives. Natural, plant based. Metabolically beneficial, something that would feed gut microbiome and be more protective to health, something that would detoxify liver, um, once again, um, and something that would, um, [00:09:00] support brain and healthy heart. Those things exist, nature has already made them, uh, and you know, uh, to your point about fruit, you know, I actually don’t eat too many fruits. I may allow myself like a quarter of a pear. a week. And I, I love, uh, fruits, but it’s just too high in sugar for me to take that risk.
Dr. Dixie: Basically, all I eat is blueberries and, you know, blueberries are strawberries.
Dr. Lerman: Those are different.
Dr. Dixie: But yeah, I don’t, you know, I just do them because they say it’s, it’s a little blue bomb that fights cancer. I go, okay, I can use it.
Dr. Lerman: Well, you know, um, so you’re talking about polyphenols, antioxidants.
Dr. Dixie: I love my polyphenols.
Dr. Lerman: Well, you know, the, the, the. Best polyphenols are actually in the chocolate. Chocolate is a medicinal thing.
Dr. Dixie: Yes, ma’am. I know that’s why I’m so excited about this because I love chocolate, but I’m so afraid [00:10:00] of it because most people are. The chocolate is really a very poor quality and, you know, that’s why I was so excited. I listened to your first podcast and I went, Wow, I want to talk to her.
Dr. Lerman: Not all chocolates are made the same.
Dr. Dixie: No, they’re not.
Dr. Lerman: So, you know, one thing that we pride ourselves on is that we don’t process our cacao beans. So we actually start from the cacao beans, not from the powder. So we have all of the antioxidants, we have a lot of theobromine, a lot of everything. But we also have 11 grams of fiber per serving. Chocolate is a really great, fermented, fiber rich food. This, it does not require to take fiber away for shelf life stability. Chocolate is very stable, yet they do it anyway.
Dr. Dixie: I didn’t, I didn’t know that. I didn’t, I never thought of it as having fiber. But that’s, that’s awesome.
Dr. Lerman: 11 grams per serving.
Dr. Dixie: Yeah.
Dr. Lerman: It’s amazing. That’s entirely possible. [00:11:00]
Dorothy: So why do you think the general public are, why don’t we know more about this?
Dr. Lerman: My honest opinion, and that’s solely mine, is, um, medical professionals, specifically doctors, have very little education about biochemistry and nutrition. As a PhD graduate, we used to tutor medical school, uh, students in mainly three disciplines: biochemistry, genetics, and immunology. Doctors hate those. They want to pass them and forget them like a bad dream. But biochemistry is a fundamental of life. You cannot treat anything without understanding how every molecule interacts and what is it linked to and what does it fall apart to become and what those fall apart things do. And I think, uh, [00:12:00] because the, um, the doctors are just so overwhelmed, and they are pushed to be so specialized, and there’s so much information, there is no time to really learn the fundamental of medicine, specifically preventative medicine.
We find ourselves in a mess that we are right now. And specifically, I wanted to highlight that this clinical trial about breast cancer that came out the other week. It was done on 41 women. It was about the toxic load that cosmetics and lotions and you know, those things that typically were never associated as a disease causing things create on women.
So it was an interventional trial, meaning that the women were, um, um, taking their, um, breast cancer, uh, g— genetic markers were measured at the beginning of the, um, trial using the cosmetic products that they use. And then they were [00:13:00] suggested to switch to different cosmetics that would lack three categories of chemicals, uh, phthalates, parabens, and endocrine disruptors. For 28 days, they were offered the alternative that didn’t have any of those molecules and then the, uh, gene expression for breast cancer was measured again and it was drastically lower. So, uh, people always ask me, are you using any creams? Like, what do you use for, you know, your lotions? I said, nothing.
I would never put anything on my skin that I would not eat. If I will not eat it, I will not put it on me. Like if I won’t eat soap, I will not wash my face with soap. Uh, I will not do it to my child. Water is very sufficient. So it’s, it’s, it’s managing those, like, you have to think about molecules in one of three ways.
Every molecule [00:14:00] that comes in your body interacts with your own molecules in either positive, neutral, or negative way. And I understand that’s a lot of information, but this is where doctors can really, um, I think, take more responsibility and learn to really educate the public otherwise public are left to fend for themselves.
Dorothy: And of course Dixie you maintain that we have such marketing to contact.
Dr. Dixie: I have a pain— I’m very old and I say what I think. And 80 percent of medical school is paid for by the pharmaceutical industry Okay?
Dorothy: Sure.
Dr. Dixie: Do you think the fox is not gonna, he’s gonna guard the hen house? I mean, come on. And, and, and the only thing, and, I mean, I went through medical school, and I know people. In fact, I’d quiz some of my patients that, you know, they’re doctors. They just finished medical school last year. They, they get no education on [00:15:00] nutrition. This is a symptom, and this is the medicine you give. And that’s the symptom, and that’s the medicine. So they don’t teach them about the most important thing that I would think a doctor is there to learn is the human body.
Dr. Lerman: Yeah, and the root cause.
Dr. Dixie: And now, and I’m sorry, but medicine has become a business.
Dr. Lerman: Yes.
Dr. Dixie: I mean, there’s no solo practitioners. I’m probably the only solo practitioner you’re going to find anymore in this area. You know, um, they’re in business associations, and they get 12 minutes to see a patient, they get salaries, and if they don’t see enough patients, and they don’t produce enough income, their salary gets reduced. Now, Excuse me, since when did medicine become a business? My God, it’s supposed to be a compassionate, caring, healing art.
We’re supposed to protect our patients. [00:16:00] We’re not supposed to treat their symptoms, you know, and I, for the life of me, I don’t understand it, and I’m not sure I ever will.
Dr. Lerman: It drags me up the wall as well.
Dr. Dixie: Well, you know, in the processed food industry, when, you know, and Robert Lustig has a beautiful book called Metabolical. Have you read that?
Dr. Lerman: Yes. Actually, I am, um. I know Robert personally. We’ve communicated, he invited me to UCSF last year, I was presenting in the future of food conference at South by Southwest, I couldn’t make it. But, um, I actually just reached out to him because, um, it came up with the company that he’s co founding right now, BioLumen. They are trying to sequester sugar out of already ultra processed food.
Dr. Dixie: Yeah.
Dr. Lerman: I have very mixed feelings about that. I feel like he’s selling out his, uh, [00:17:00] his, his, uh, mission and his dream. Because his mission is originally was to expose that the calorie was not a calorie that a calorie off, uh, palm oil, uh, hydrogenated palm oil, which is poison, has the same value, energetical value as you know, a gram of fish oil.
But one is gonna insulate your nerves and protect your heart and do good overall. And the one and the other one will literally kill you. And with the biotech company that he’s getting involved in, I feel like that gel, that binding sugar or the enzyme combination that turns fructose into inulin inside the gut, even though we already have inulin. Made by plants like chicory.
Dr. Dixie: I haven’t heard of that. I know he, there was a company in Saudi Arabia that he was trying to help them, you know, turn processed food into [00:18:00] more. Is that kind of what they’re—
Dr. Lerman: No, that’s, that’s something else. What he said is that we still need to understand if our technology works exactly how we designed it to do. He is a scientist to be respected. He is very honest and I have endless respect for him. I think where, uh, the more money interest is pushing him is where he will be selling out his mission. And that’s what I’m concerned about. I mean, he was the one who inspired me to know that creating a sugar substitute that can be protective of liver and feeding gut microbiome and supportive of brain is possible.
He said it and I created it. That’s, that’s how you know, my thought process of being an inventor in biotech space was, but it was because my, I consider him my mentor. I consider him, you know, somebody that I [00:19:00] want to follow. But, um, sometimes actions can be questionable.
Dr. Dixie: Obviously you’re familiar with Perlmutter’s work, David Perlmutter. Yeah. I got interested in him when both of my parents got dementia about 20 years ago. I was going, excuse me, here’s two brilliant people that have traveled the world. All of a sudden they can’t remember their name. And then, you know, I mean, they lived with me the last three and a half years of their life.
They died in my bed. They, they couldn’t remember anything. Then they couldn’t walk and then they become incontinent. And, and I couldn’t figure out why. So I really started researching some of this nutrition. This is how I got started with the nutrition thing. And, uh, when you look on it though, they were potatoes, corn, bluebell ice cream, constantly cookies.
My mother had so many Butterfinger wrappers in her pockets that, you know, before I washed her clothes, I had to make sure and look. And now they are admitting that most of, you know, most of dementia, Alzheimer’s is just insulin resistance of the brain.
Dr. Lerman: Type [00:20:00] 3 diabetes.
Dr. Dixie: But nobody knows that. Still nobody knows that.
Dr. Lerman: Because doctors—
Dr. Dixie: They’re chasing amyloid plaques and, and tau tangles and, you know, it’s just, it’s nuts, girl. I don’t know how, how are we going to get the message out to the world? Uh Now you’re, you’re doing it better than I am, but—
Dr. Lerman: This is why I said I feel I would do a lot more more benefit through chocolate than I ever did with my science because I can show and people can taste it and put in their mouth and then go to their continuous glucose monitor or, you know, an insulin test and see that their blood sugar went down. Not up, not elevate, not even a couple of points. It went down and it’s possible. And if they start to understand that it’s possible, they’re gonna start demanding that other food manufacturers would go that way.
Dr. Dixie: Yeah, yeah, because I know, I mean getting people to give up sweets is just, it’s [00:21:00] nearly, I have one patient, I tell my patients, I said, if you have a sweet tooth, pull it. And one lady, she says, well, If I did, next year I’d come back with dentures. And I went, oh, okay, you know, because—
Dr. Lerman: I don’t think it’s sustainable. I mean, people report they would really lose on quality of life if they don’t have sweets in their life. I can say as a recovered sugar addict that it is not easy. Detoxing from sugar is painful.
Dr. Dixie: You are so right.
Dr. Lerman: It is a full, outright, um, withdrawal syndrome. Getting clean as if it was a substance abuse. Sugar is an addictive substance.
Dr. Dixie: It’s eight times more addictive than heroin. It hits the center in the, the opioid center in the brain. These big companies The big companies, they have CAT scanners that they put people in and they feed them— These processed foods and whatever lights up the [00:22:00] opioid center the most is what they push.
Dr. Lerman: Exactly.
Dr. Dixie: I mean, excuse me. We’re creating addicts so we can kill them. I mean we have the best medical system in the world. And we have the sickest people. I mean, what. The healthcare system is costing us bazillions of dollars through preventable diseases. And, and I cannot, you know, for the life of me, I can’t just understand why everybody is not out screaming on the corners.
Hey guys, cut it out. Or, you know. And like Lustig has a good point. He said there were things that we, years ago, like um, tobacco, you know. We had to legislate that you can’t smoke in public, and we had to do a few things. Seatbelts, you know. And he says condoms in restrooms. I don’t know about that. Uh, but, but, he said, you know, and, It becomes habit, it becomes custom, you know, uh, and these subsidies, we, [00:23:00] we’re doing like 800 billion dollars of subsidies to subsidize corn to make high fructose corn syrup to kill our children. Right now, leading cause of cirrhosis is sugar. It’s not alcohol. We have children on the liver transplant list because of cirrhosis. Children, 300 pound children with cirrhosis? Come on. America, they ought to just revolt.
Dr. Lerman: It is, it is, it starts with kids. I have a six year old. But, you know, uh, most parents think that kids are too young to understand medical information.
I say B. S. I say kids are Curious. They ask a lot of question. My six year old when she was three used to be able to explain covid a lot better than most doctors could. Um, but you know, we don’t give my child processed foods. She doesn’t have sugar. She has every Great metabolically beneficial [00:24:00] alternative and, you know, it’s my child so I can observe how they behave, but my daughter can eat 5, 6, 7 pieces of chocolate before bedtime and go straight to bed and be asleep in 20 minutes. Try to do that with a regular chocolate. They’ll be bouncing off the walls and you’ll be catching them.
Dr. Dixie: And what they feed them in schools is, oh, that’s another whole topic. It’s crazy.
Dr. Lerman: Yeah. Um.
Dr. Dixie: You know.
Dr. Lerman: And I, I cook every meal that she takes with her. But, you know, I think kids talking to each other, there was this really great situation in, um, my daughter’s school because she takes all of her snacks. It’s prepared from Whole Foods. And a little girl asked the teachers, like, why, Dora, Dora is her name, like Dora the Explorer. Uh, why does she never eat snacks out of the package? And the teacher said because, uh, she wants [00:25:00] to be healthy and because in her culture, Home cooked meals are the priority and because it’s better for you. And I thought that was brilliant. I, I think the impressionable kids, if you don’t give them, if you don’t start them on addiction, they will eventually be the ones who will demand change.
Dr. Dixie: Exactly. Just like kids will yell at you now, if you don’t put your seatbelt on, you know, but we, no, it’s just, I don’t know. We’re going down a road that we’re not going to like when we get there.
Dorothy: Yeah, but I think what both of you are trying to do is going to change that. I mean, I think you’re absolutely right, Dr. Lerman. Once the public understands this, they’re going to start demanding a difference. And once it’s not, you know, I always go back to many of our uninsured people, really wholesome foods is out of their budget. It is, they, they have to learn how to use what monies they have. It is. Because a [00:26:00] McDonald’s hamburger is a lot, you know, cheaper.
Dr. Dixie: No, I beg to differ with you. Okay? I beg to differ with you. A hamburger, french fries, and a Coke cost a fortune. You can go where I go, to Walmart. You can get, you can get a box of organic salad greens, mixed salad greens, for three or four dollars.
It’ll do you all week long. You can get a cucumber, you know, and use just a little bit of it each day. And put a boiled egg on there, and chop it up, put some olive oil, and some vinegar, and it’s one tenth the cost of a McDonald’s hamburger, or, uh, Whataburger, or whatever.
Dorothy: So that’s just another one of the things we’ve been told.
Dr. Lerman: Yeah.
Dorothy: That’s another part of the—
Dr. Lerman: There is a lot of misconception, but you see, there is another side of this debate, when I think it was told that, uh, United States, [00:27:00] um, is mandating to use a food stamps, uh, to like, uh, actually encourages to use food stamps to buy sodas. And—
Dr. Dixie: Yes.
Dr. Lerman: And, and, uh, it’s like something like—
Dorothy: Say that again.
Dr. Lerman: So you, in other countries, you cannot buy. You know, diabetes, sugar, water with, um, uh, with food stamps. In the United States, uh, you can. And it was said like a billion dollars is being transferred from, you know, uh, federal government directly to Coca Cola through the subsidies through food stamps.
Dr. Dixie: They don’t want to lose it.
Dr. Lerman: Exactly. I mean, why would they?
Dr. Dixie: You’ve been listening to Calley Means, huh?
Dr. Lerman: Yes.
Dr. Dixie: He used to work for Coca Cola.
Dr. Lerman: Yeah.
Dr. Dixie: He blew the whistle on them. And they spent billions on NAACP and LULAC and tell them that children of color were being discriminated against because they couldn’t get foods— coke.
Dr. Lerman: Why can’t we make the same statement that children [00:28:00] and adults of color are being discriminated against when they have shorter life expectancy. Higher, um, you know, preventable, uh, progressive, progressive disease burden. It’s not just diabetes. It’s fibromyalgia. It’s IBD. It’s autoimmune. It’s everything that is costing them not only money, but the quality of their life. The fact that they’re coming home and they’re tired and they’re exhausted and all they want to do is lay down and watch TV and eat more chips. What if they could use that time to actually be happy?
Be, be in their community, you know, do something, get out, get out in front of the computer, have the energy to do it and enjoy, you know, the minorities and not only being robbed of opportunity to live. And that is the biggest travesty that, you know, the ultra processed food is committing [00:29:00] against all humanity, but specifically minorities.
Dr. Dixie: Amen.
Dorothy: Wow.
Dr. Dixie: Gosh, she’s a mini me. I like her.
Dorothy: Yeah, she is. Yes.
Dr. Lerman: I—
Dr. Dixie: Well, at least she’s young enough to do something about it.
Dr. Lerman: I process data. I make sure that data is Uh, trustworthy and clean. That means that the positive control and the negative control has to be there and they have to do exactly what is expected.
And then, uh, the data analysis have to be not doctored. So I’m training in clinical trials. I am inventor. I, um, I invented many, um, products, but also many, um, assays, many processes and protocols in, uh, Biomedical field. So, you know, I look at data and I really see that the trajectory of human health is It doesn’t give me hope, and I [00:30:00] wanted, I want to change it.
Dr. Dixie: Good. I want you to. All I do is, I just take care of my little people, and I try to tell them one person at a time, but you never know when that one person will make a difference.
Dorothy: So how do we, how do we general public discern the truth?
Dr. Lerman: Keep telling it. Reaching more people, connecting with more platforms who are not afraid to take us as an opinions, but also show the plethora of evidence to make it facts.
Dr. Dixie: And tell your congressmen and your senators to quit subsidizing corn and stuff like that, that is not used in anything good. They need to subsidize the organic growth of vegetables and fruits and things like that.
Dr. Lerman: Yeah.
Dr. Dixie: They’ve got to quit subsidizing this stuff that’s killing us.
Dr. Lerman: And I think we need to go to schools and I’m happy to do it if school districts will invite me. I can, um, come and [00:31:00] do like a play with your food class, uh, where I can take different things and like, like take a, uh, Glass of coca cola and like a mouse tooth and submerge it and see and show kids how it will dissolve Within the matter of class I think that will show them very definitively that that’s what’s gonna be happening with their teeth And I think that would be a powerful message.
I really think I really think that kids are the future and we need to teach them the truth. Because in the world of AI, I have huge concerns that they will never know. They will never know what real biology is, what, what real history is. But you know, I’m, I’m not a historian. I don’t want to go there, but as far as the biology and functioning of our bodies, I want people to believe their eyes.
And I’m not saying it lightly, I invented sugar free chocolate, and nobody believes it really can do what it [00:32:00] can, and I am happy to give it away for free to people to try so they can believe their eyes and their senses because only that way they can know that this is true.
Dr. Dixie: Yeah, and the schools. I mean I go to my school for you know Have teacher’s breakfast or career day and i’m appalled at what they’re serving for lunch and i’ve talked to the The people at the school I said you cannot feed the children this. They said we have no choice. We have to take what the government tells us to do. So, I mean, you— We’ve got to—
Dr. Lerman: I can give you a very, a very fun experience that actually happened to me last year. I have customers who are huge donors to American Diabetes Association and they became very huge fans of my chocolate and they’re like, you need to talk to American Diabetes Association. They gave me the names. I reached out to them. There was no response. They were ignoring me until those two [00:33:00] gentlemen said, um, you will talk to her or else.
They finally did talk to me, but I got the feeling that, and, and the premise for the, the donors, they said, every time we have a gala, every time we have this fundraising events, the food that you serving us, American Diabetes Association, is not diabetic friendly and they wanted to potentially have a diabetic friendly chocolate on the menu because, you know, at least, uh, practice what you preach, but they have no interest.
So I, Figured that maybe going directly to people who support, who are in charge of solving the problem is not, it’s counterproductive. We have to find a different way.
Dorothy: We have to find the individual and keep at it. And, all right, we have just a few minutes. So one last thing, Dixie, you want to tell our listeners?
Dr. Dixie: Um, what I always tell my [00:34:00] patients is, that this food is killing you. And if you really want to die, cut somebody off on the road, they’ll shoot you, and it’s much quicker and far less painful than dying a slow, long, horrible, frustrating death weighing 300 pounds, being on a walker, where you can’t remember where you’re going and your children have to take off every time you need to go to the doctor. And, I think I would rather cut somebody off in traffic.
Dorothy: Wow. Can you top that Dr. Lerman?
Dr. Lerman: I, um, I can’t, but what I would like to say is people have the power to make choices and they have to weigh, um, the pros and cons. But to me, the pros [00:35:00] would be, not just lifespan, but health span. The addition of a productive, uh, years that you can experience, you can really live.
And, you know, uh, in the United States, we work all the time. We work for 40 years. We wait for that retirement. You are good for nothing at retirement if you continue on the trajectory of, um, pro inflammatory disease causing foods. So, think about what your why would be. Is it being on your granddaughter’s wedding?
Or, you know, holding your great grandbaby? Or, you know, going to, uh, a tennis tournament when you’re past 65 years old? Or Another why, but there has to be something that would encourage you to make better choices. It’s actually a medical fact that generation of [00:36:00] our children, so I’m a millennial, the millennial kids would have a shorter lifespan. They will live shorter than their parents. The millennials are the last generation with expected life, uh, with life expectancy into their eighties. Now, burying your children is something that should keep every parents up at night. When you put that plate in front of your child, you have to count how many years you’re shaving off in every meal and that would be a horrible reality.
It makes me so scared. Um, I, I, I make a very strict choices for my daughter, but I actually love all the kids and I care about all the kids and I don’t ever want that, that medical fact to become reality.
Dr. Dixie: Oh, that’s powerful. That is really powerful. That is a, that is something that really needs to get it [00:37:00] right. Because you are killing your children, you know, you would not give your children tobacco. You would not sit there and say, Oh, have a beer.
Dr. Lerman: Yeah.
Dr. Dixie: You know, smoke this cigarette because you know that that’s not good for your children.
Dr. Lerman: You can look it up. It is a medical fact that, uh,
Dr. Dixie: Oh yeah. I mean, you see it all the time.
Dr. Lerman: The generation of kids of the millennials—
Dr. Dixie: and they’re saying children should take Ozempic.
Dr. Lerman: Oh, oh dear God, don’t even get me started.
Dr. Dixie: Oh my gosh, why didn’t, ah, I mean, what is wrong with these people?
Dr. Lerman: You have to, um, give kids the information in the age appropriate manner and you have to educate the parents because this will happen and I don’t, I, I really honestly don’t want to live in a world where that happens.
Dr. Dixie: And it’s so true though, kids will do whatever you tell them to do. It’s not like you, you know? They can’t go to the store and buy their own stuff. They can’t buy tobacco and alcohol. So they should not be able to buy this crappy food. And they can’t go. [00:38:00] You buy it and you give it to them. So you’re setting them up.
Dr. Lerman: Yep.
Dr. Dixie: I mean, what I tell them, this is important. I tell them, you know, I’m 77. I don’t take a medicine in the world. I don’t hurt anywhere. I work nine hours a day. I bought my first Harley Davidson at 65. I mean, I ride motorcycles, well we don’t ride, after the pandemic we kind of gave up on the motorcycles because they’ll run you off the road and shoot you, but I mean don’t you, I tell these kids don’t you want to be me when you’re elderly? Come on man.
Dr. Lerman: I want to be, I want to be you when I’m older.
Dr. Dixie: I mean look a little funny, but man I’m having a ball.
Dr. Lerman: You know when, when I’m 70 plus, I want to go scuba dive every day with my camera, take breathtaking pictures and win photo competitions. We’ve been there and done that.
Dorothy: All right. We’re going to stop here. And I know we’re going to have you both back because you just had so much. It was packed with information and great, great advice. Thank you both for really. letting us know what we can do to [00:39:00] stay healthy.
Dr. Lerman: Thank you for having us.
Post-Credits: Thank you for joining us today on Let’s Talk About Your Breasts. This podcast is produced by Speak Podcasting and brought to you by The Rose. Visit therose.org to learn more about our organization. Subscribe to our podcast, share episodes with friends, and join the conversation on social media using #Let’sTalkAboutYourBreasts. We welcome your feedback and suggestions. Consider supporting The Rose. Your gift can make the difference to a person in need. And remember, self care is not selfish. It’s essential.
