This month’s CrossFit Health Education webinar features Dr. Robert Lustig. Dr. Lustig will be exploring the lacuna that has emerged between medical research and public policy, specifically as they pertain to nutrition and metabolic disease. In preparation for the webinar Dr. Lustig sat down with cardiologist Dr. Aseem Malhotra.
Over the course of this interview, Drs. Lustig and Malhotra discuss the ways our failure to properly address the causes of chronic disease has crippled our ability to provide effective health care. Dr. Malhotra notes patients with excess body fat, Type 2 diabetes, and poor metabolic health are most vulnerable to developing infections and having worse disease outcomes, as has been the case with the recent COVID-19 pandemic. He also comments that those who lower their sugar intake improve their cholesterol markers, fasting glucose, insulin, and blood pressure in as few as nine days and asks, “Why is this not part of the mainstream discussion in the U.S. [and] the U.K.? What have we not done to make sure every doctor is armed with this information when they’re managing their patients?” Dr. Lustig analyzes how these shortcomings in the health-care system originated and how they are perpetuated. Together, he and Dr. Malhotra conclude with a brief discussion of potential paths forward.
CrossFit Health Education will be hosting a live webinar with Dr. Lustig this Friday, July 3, at 9 a.m. PT. The webinar has been accredited with 1 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™.
Webinar participants will have the opportunity to interact with Dr. Lustig through a live online presentation and Q&A.
Friday, July 3, at 9 a.m. PT
About Dr. Robert Lustig
Dr. Robert Lustig, MD, is an endocrinologist and professor of pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology at the University of California, San Francisco. His areas of expertise include neuroendocrinology and childhood obesity. He is also director of UCSF’s WATCH program (Weight Assessment for Teen and Child Health), and he is the president and co-founder of the Institute for Responsible Nutrition, a nonprofit that seeks to “shape the way food is produced, marketed and distributed so we can end food-related illness and promote good health.”
Lustig is the editor for Obesity Before Birth: Maternal and Prenatal Influences on the Offspring (2010) and the author of Fat Chance: Beating the Odds Against Sugar, Processed Food, Obesity, and Disease (2013).
Lustig’s 2009 lecture for University of California Television, “Sugar: The Bitter Truth,” has accumulated more than 10.2 million views on YouTube and was hailed by the Financial Times as “sugar’s ‘tobacco’ moment.”
About Dr. Aseem Malhotra
Dr. Aseem Malhotra is a best-selling author, researcher, and one of the most well-known cardiologists in the U.K. His views on cholesterol and sugar, controversial primarily among those who choose to promote special interests at the expense of public health, have landed him in numerous front-page news articles and on primetime television shows.
Comments on Dr. Robert Lustig and Dr. Aseem Malhotra
I am totally on board with everything that was said until he went to, "There is pressure to reopen was for personal liberty." No, no, no, no, no. I'm willing to bet it's been a while since you've been in need of money, Doctor. There is pressure to reopen because small businesses are crumbling. I am unaware of the exact numbers, and can only speak somewhat anecdotally, but please imagine your large doctor bank account having only 2-3 digits in it and you're lying awake at night trying to scheme what you can sell to get your next months bills because you've taken a 96% pay cut for the year. That is largely where the pressure came from, my business has been shut down since March I'm 31, have minimal savings, a new baby, a mortgage, and my small investments & 401k which were already paltry, is in the shitter. So please doctor, the idea of "take the risk, suffer the consequence" is coming largely from desperation, and if you can't take a second to try to walk a mile in the shoes of someone less fortunate than yourself, don't speak so condescendingly to us.
This is very well done on so many levels.
As a primary care physician, I have interacted with over 2,000 patients since April 1, 2020. Although I have only interacted with one patient who was diagnosed with Covid 19 after experiencing mild symptoms, I have had almost 2,000 conversations regarding fear, stress and confusion with patients who are at risk for a bad outcome if they get Covid 19 (or Covid 20, 21, 22....) because they are part of the 88% of our population who is metabolically unfit.
Thanks to CrossFit Health and those who are dedicated to sharing these truths, I have had the resources to redirect my patients’ fear, stress and confusion by providing them a solution. A solution that involves eating meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch and NO sugar, and engaging in constantly varied, functional movements at high intensity. I believe this combined solution (of exercise and nutrition) positively influences ALL eight of the subcellular disease processes Dr. Lustig mentioned.
I appreciate the call for policy change at the highest levels which usually requires an extraordinary amount of dedicated time, money and political will power. I am grateful for, and supportive of those fighting this battle at these levels.
I am most impressed, however, at the immediate and enormous potential and power of one of the most sacred, influential relationships that exists between a trusted physician and his/her patient. Even more powerful and better positioned to influence such immediate and measurable metabolic and behavioral change is the CrossFit Physician.
Thank you for those who are committed and dedicated to CrossFit Health, who are eloquently and succinctly presenting the truth to those of us in the trenches of daily practice, who have the immediate opportunity to influence metabolic behavioral change through the sacred relationship between physician and patient in our private offices.
After 28 years in medical practice, I have found nothing that surpasses the vision, focus and collective work of CrossFit and CrossFit Health, nor is better positioned to influence the metabolic changes discussed in this talk with Drs. Lustig and Malhotra. Through the efforts of the collective team at HQ, the very well educated medical experts associated with CrossFit Health and those most fertile agents of change.....the CrossFit Physicians, a metabolically unfit patient can hear the truth from his/her private physician in the office, be influenced to change their behavior by joining a local CrossFit community, where they can interact three to five days per week with other like minded people who are living and making healthy metabolic choices.
I do not believe there is better positioned or resourced infrastructure to truly LEAD patients to become metabolically healthy and fit than CrossFit Health.
The enormous potential to influence healthy and fit metabolic change through CrossFit Health, to the eager and ripe CrossFit Physician, to the patient in the office, who then becomes engaged and accountable to their CrossFit community is relational, immediate, measurable, enduring and produces the desired results of a healthy and fit community!
This is great information!
Interview With Dr. Robert Lustig and Dr. Aseem Malhotra
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