#176: Dr. Zachary Burns - Moving Medicine Forward with the Plant-Based Physicians of Tomorrow
Dr. Zach Burns with Dr. Klaper and Steve Kehoe
We’re thrilled to share this special bonus episode with you as we head into the New Year and give us all something to look forward to…The Future of Medicine.
Dr. Zach Burns is a 2nd-year family medicine resident who also works with Dr. Michael Klaper’s Initiative, “Moving Medicine Forward,” where they speak to schools and medical students across the globe about whole food, plant-based nutrition.
Dr. Burns is a bright spot in the medical community and his knowledge, tenacity, social consciousness, and passion for “food as medicine” brings us hope –which is why we want to share it with you on the eve of this new year.
See it as proof that the needle is moving in the right direction. Medicine is moving forward with people like Zach, Dr. Klaper, and all of the pioneers we feature on the PLANTSTRONG podcast.
The future is bright, my friends, and we’ll continue to shine that light on those who are paving the way.
Episode Resources
Moving Medicine Forward Website - https://www.doctorklaper.com/moving-medicine-forward
Dr. Zach Burns’s Website - www.herbivores.life
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Full YouTube Transcript
Rip Esselstyn:
Hey, everyone. I need to let you know about a couple things that have transpired with our food line over the last week, and they're both super exciting. First, we just got a fresh batch of our dessert-inspired guilt-free granolas into our warehouse, and I want you to know that they are better than ever, and I mean it. We've updated our flavors to include an all new dark chocolate that is going to win over your hearts just like it has mine. And all four of our flavors will crush your cravings while fueling you up with whole grains and of course, no added sugars. The second thing I want to let you know about is we just announced the launch of our brand new product line. It's our PLANTSTRONG teas. You might be wondering, what in the world are you doing making teas? Well, listen up. It's been a year in the making, but what we've done is we've taken our whole food plant-based philosophy around food, and now we've applied it to teas.
All of our teas contain 100% unrefined, hand pluck teas with specially selected herbs, fruits and spices, and we never use extracts or flavorings, which almost 99.9% of the teas on the shelf use. Now what we've done is we've also taken our evidence-based health-promoting ingredients, and all these are deliciously blended and artfully crafted by these industry-leading tea masters that we've found in Sri Lanka. I'm telling you, it is the best tea on the planet. Our hot teas include our PLANTSTRONG breakfast tea. We have a black cumin vanilla chai, a golden chamomile that's got turmeric and ginger, and just a touch of black pepper.
And lastly is a nod to our friend Dr. Michael Gregor, we've got a Gooseberry Green and this tea includes amla, which according to Dr. Michael Gregor and others, this amla, or it's better known as Indian Gooseberry, is the number one most antioxidant packed whole food on the planet. And I want you guys to try all these new teas. Let me know what you think and check out our family iced teas as well. And keep in mind, if you're in a hurry, we have a select number of PLANTSTRONG tea tumblers available as part of our special hot tea tin bundle. Say that five times fast. It will be a great gift to kick off your new year. Just visit plantstrongfoods.com to see all of our product offerings.
Dr. Zach Burns:
I see it the same way as nutrition. You can help somebody right there in the office and get to the root of their issues without necessarily prescribing medications with side effects or sending them to orthopedics for surgery. And so I think it's part of my whole medical philosophy is when we can do these non-invasive techniques, whether it's osteopathic manipulation, plant-based nutrition, or anything else, let's absolutely do these first, okay? And the vast majority of patients can recover this way.
Rip Esselstyn:
I'm Rip Esselstyn and welcome to the PLANTSTRONG Podcast. The mission at PLANTSTRONG is to further the advancement of all things within the plant-based movement. We advocate for the scientifically proven benefits of plant-based living and envision a world that universally understands, promotes, and prescribes plants as a solution to empowering your health, enhancing your performance, restoring the environment, and becoming better guardians to the animals we share this planet with. We welcome you wherever you are on your PLANTSTRONG journey. And I hope that you enjoy the show.
PLANTSTRONG family, you're pretty well aware by now that I'm a pretty optimistic guy that tends to look at the bright side of life. And this is why I want to share this special bonus episode with you as we head into 2023 to give us all something to look forward to, which is the future of medicine. My guest today is a young, scrappy, second year family medicine resident. His name is Dr. Zach Burns. He also works with Dr. Michael Klaper's initiative Moving Medicine Forward, which is where they go around the globe and speak to medical school students about the importance of whole food plant-based nutrition to get to the root causation of chronic western diseases. I actually met Zach for the first time at a party that was being thrown in Austin, Texas, a welcoming party of sorts for Dr. Michael Klaper and his wife Alese, who have just moved to Austin, Texas.
But I was struck at his tenacity, his knowledge and his social consciousness and his passion for food is medicine for such a young guy, which is why I want to share this with all of you on the eve of this new year. Let's look at this as proof that the needle is moving in the right direction. Medicine is moving forward with people like Zach, Dr. Michael Klaper, and all of the pioneers that we feature on the PLANTSTRONG podcast. The future is bright and will continue to shine that light on those who are paving the way on the PLANTSTRONG Podcast. Zach, welcome to the PLANTSTRONG Podcast. It's really great to have you on the show.
Dr. Zach Burns:
So nice to be here.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. So now tell me, Zach, so we met a couple months ago at a party for Dr. Michael Klaper. And you are currently in residency for medicine. At what point do we start calling you an MD or a doctor?
Dr. Zach Burns:
If you wanted to, you could start now. So residents are doctors. Once you graduate med school, you have your doctorate, and in residency you just have a partial license. So the work you do falls under an attending physician who's graduated residency also. But we're doctors in training, you could say. And actually I think you've had some other osteopathic physicians on the show. So my degree is a DO actually, not a MD, and we're licensed to do the same things. There's just a slightly different philosophy of training. And then the tangible difference is we're educated in osteopathic manipulation, which is a hands-on technique for a variety of medical conditions.
Rip Esselstyn:
Did you specifically choose going in into becoming a DO instead of an MD because of certain things that it allowed you to do?
Dr. Zach Burns:
Exactly. So I find osteopathic manipulation to be a similar modality to plant-based nutrition, and I'll explain. So imagine for those unfamiliar, this is a hands-on manipulation technique, it looks sort of like a blend of physical therapy and chiropractor and massage, but it has its own perspective through our medical training. And it's non-invasive is the key. So I see it the same way as nutrition. You can help somebody right there in the office and get to the root of their issues without necessarily prescribing medications with side effects or sending them to orthopedics for surgery. And so I think it's part of my whole medical philosophy is when we can do these non-invasive techniques, whether it's osteopathic manipulation, plant-based nutrition, or anything else, let's absolutely do these first. And the vast majority of patients can recover this way.
Rip Esselstyn:
That sounds pretty good. And so tell me, as a DO, are there just as many specialties that you can get into as an MD?
Dr. Zach Burns:
Yes. So you're eligible to subspecialize in all the same fellowships. So if you go the internal medicine route, then you can subspecialize in the ologies, cardiology, pulmonology, rheumatology. I'm personally in a family medicine program, and so we don't subspecialize in those fields. We have our own subspecialties. They're often based around patient populations. So you can do obstetrics, you can do geriatrics, you can do integrative medicine or lifestyle medicine. So obesity, medicine, there are so many options within family med.
Rip Esselstyn:
So have you decided within family practice what subspecialty you're going into?
Dr. Zach Burns:
So whether or not I'll do a fellowship, I may not. I think that this program will equip me really well to take care of patients the way so I can practice in a sincere way that'll help people heal. If I did a fellowship, it would either be in lifestyle medicine or obesity medicine.
Rip Esselstyn:
At what point in your life did you decide that you wanted to go into medicine?
Dr. Zach Burns:
It was somewhere around sophomore biology class. There was some moment of revelation. So we had to submit a little note card to the teacher indicating whether we'd like to be placed in honors chemistry next year or not. And then with a explanation as to why. So I wrote honors chem, and without having consciously considered this, I wrote because I want to go to medical school. And when it came out of my pencil, I realized that maybe there's something there. So that was the first moment. I was just fascinated by the human body and all of its intricacies.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah, isn't that interesting sometimes how when something comes to us just like in a flash like that, and maybe we've been thinking about it, but we don't even know that we have. So that's pretty cool. And so my understanding is that you grew up in a family that did not eat red meat. Is that correct?
Dr. Zach Burns:
That is correct.
Rip Esselstyn:
And why did your family not eat red meat?
Dr. Zach Burns:
My mom and dad had both been vegetarian at times. When they had kids, it was the convention of their era or community. They thought you needed some meat or some animal products to raise healthy kids so they kind of relapsed into partial vegetarianism. They continued to keep away red meat, mostly for health and environmental reasons. They knew that red meat production was very resource intensive, and that it had been linked to cardiovascular disease and overweight. And so I grew up without red meat and I had that foundation that admittedly made it easier to get rid of the other animal products.
Rip Esselstyn:
And I think your family also is very socially conscious. So what's behind that?
Dr. Zach Burns:
My mom was the original nutrition geek, and I learned from her and took it up a notch. And now I bother my parents about being more exclusively plant-based. They've come a long way. So many of my family and friends have become largely plant-based and it's really exciting. It keeps me going, and makes me feel like I could have the same influence on many patients, colleagues, and their patients. So what was behind that? I think they were both particularly concerned about the environment growing up in the '60s and '70s and seeing the degradation of our land and water. And they were active, not professional activists, but in different areas of life they advocated for social change. So I got the bug from them. And I think climate change was my aunt in college. It's how I became politically active, and I discovered the connection between climate and food politics and factory farming, and went from there.
Rip Esselstyn:
So how old are you?
Dr. Zach Burns:
I'm 30.
Rip Esselstyn:
So you're 30. Wow. So you went to college, you got out, you did what, four years of medical school?
Dr. Zach Burns:
I had a few years between college graduation and med school where I was working in community health and political organizing.
Rip Esselstyn:
Oh, you were? Well, that's really neat. So did you know in that time period that you were going to be going to medical school?
Dr. Zach Burns:
I did. That was always the goal. I just wanted some time to explore the world, put the notebook and the textbooks down for a minute and work, get some experience.
Rip Esselstyn:
When did you start to hear and when did it start to resonate with you that we got to do something because planet earth is heating up and it's in trouble?
Dr. Zach Burns:
I think pretty quickly after I landed on campus. I went to a pretty socially active college and found it's energizing to be part of these environmental initiatives. There were several groups. My big thing actually in college was composting so I became the coordinator of the compost committee and we would collect the spoils from every different dining halls and in dorms, and mix and churn all the material on the campus farm. And it was a nice way to get out of the lecture hall and work with my hands, get dirty, and know I was doing something decent for our local environment. And then we were involved in state and national climate issues. So when you're at those rallies, you know the feeling, it's very energizing because you see that other people care a great deal about this, and that we can actually influence policy when we get on the street and use our voice.
Rip Esselstyn:
So this was back in what? Was this 11 years ago when you started college? 12 years ago?
Dr. Zach Burns:
Yeah, I guess I started in-
Rip Esselstyn:
You were 18?
Dr. Zach Burns:
... 2010.
Rip Esselstyn:
2010.
Dr. Zach Burns:
When I was a freshman in college. Yep.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yep. I have been well aware of the connection between animal agriculture and climate change and how they produce more greenhouse gas emissions than anything else. But probably for, I would say now, a good decade and maybe a little bit more than that. But it is phenomenal to me when I think about how there wasn't anything in any of the newspapers. It wasn't part of the conversation really collectively until like 2015, '16 when it made its way under the radar. And now it's like can't go a day without hearing about it 50 times.
Dr. Zach Burns:
Yeah. I remember talking to a good friend in college who was in politics, he was studying politics, and we were talking about weather climate change would ever become a mainstream political issue. So this was somewhere around 2011 or '12, he said, "Nah, no way." And fortunately it is central and even in the debates, maybe more on one side than the other, but it's right there prominently. And I'm encouraged that factory farming and our food system might have the same trajectory. It might become a mainstream political issue.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah, no, very much so. I know that the Clinton Global Initiative is going on right now, and I think this is going to be a major topic as well. So speaking of plant-based, so you grew up kind of without red meat because of your parents were socially conscious, but what got you from being a vegetarian to going all in for the plant-based lifestyle?
Dr. Zach Burns:
Yeah. Well, so I was eating a lot of birds and fish and dairy products and eggs, to be honest, until I got to college and I had this freshman seminar called American Food and sort of the name speaks for itself. I lost the taste for meat a few weeks into the course, so that was easy for me. I don't remember that being challenging at all to give up the birds and fish. But I was still eating the dairy and eggs for several years. And then I was a philosophy major alongside pre-med, and my advisor was the type of philosopher who looks at ethics and really critically considers right and wrong and different moral philosophies and how we can justify certain actions.
And within that realm, she looked at animal ethics and I took this course with her called Humans, Animals in Nature, where I pretty quickly discovered that the way we were procuring animal products was completely unjustifiable. And if I wanted to be a decent person or whoever I wanted to be, I just couldn't keep eating animal products. And yet my favorite foods were pizza and ice cream. And it took me a couple of years to let them go.
Rip Esselstyn:
And you've let them go.
Dr. Zach Burns:
I've let them go complete. Yes. And I wish I did this much earlier.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Well congratulations. And so now you've been knee deep in the plant-based lifestyle for how long?
Dr. Zach Burns:
So I've been vegan since 2014. It's been eight or nine years.
Rip Esselstyn:
And one of the things that you, you're doing now is you're helping Dr. Klaper with his initiative Moving Medicine Forward, which is really, really cool. Tell me, and I want you to talk to me about and let everybody know what Moving Medicine forward is, but before you do, so everybody that's listening, Dr. Klaper has been a regular on the PLANTSTRONG Podcast. I believe I've had them on three different times. We'll put in the show notes all the different episodes and the number. But he is really just a absolute gem of a human being and you somehow saw him or saw him in some documentaries and was really enamored with I think, his whole ethos. So will you talk to me about how you came to know Dr. Klaper and what inspired you to reach out to him?
Dr. Zach Burns:
Enamored is the right word. I watched Cowspiracy. I saw his scene where he talks about baby calf growth fluid as cow's milk, and I was totally enamored. I thought he was charming, hilarious, and communicated really well with a lightness, but a strength of conviction. And among all the plantricians, his style resonated with me. I mean, he was a hero. If you asked me before we met, who are a couple public figures you'd like to meet more than anybody else in the world, he'd be right up there. And so I'm still starstruck. I got to not only host him to speak to my med student group, but then I've been working with him and actively assisting his initiative called Moving Medicine Forward.
Rip Esselstyn:
And let everybody know what is Moving Medicine Forward and what do they do.
Dr. Zach Burns:
So this is an organization with a mission to build a generation of physicians who are finally equipped to tackle the chronic illnesses that are plaguing our society, whether it's obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, hypertension, all of these autoimmune processes that were triggered by lifestyle. So Dr. Klaper has been doing this for decades, but he wanted to, after he retired from clinical work largely, he'd wanted to influence the next generation. So that's where Moving Medicine Forward comes in.
Rip Esselstyn:
And who do they speak to?
Dr. Zach Burns:
Our target audience is medical students. So they're somewhere between college and residency. They'll be fully licensed doctors within five years and they really need this information. So that's our target because while they're learning the ins and outs of human physiology and anatomy, we need to introduce these concepts of lifestyle medicine and the power of nutrition to prevent and often reverse disease. Because otherwise, as Dr. Klaper likes to say, pharmacosclerosis will set in, because pharmacology is probably the biggest piece of the med school curriculum.
It's certainly the most complicated, requires the most time studying. So that's our model right now, med students learn about drugs. But I like to say I didn't pursue med school. It's really, it's a lot of work, not to mention the tuition. I didn't do all this to become a glorified drug dealer. I actually wanted to help people out, which is the same with my colleagues. So we need to find ways in addition to and primary to pharmacology to help people prevent and reverse disease.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, so Dr. Klaper has been doing the moving medicine forward for, I think it's like three or four years, maybe even a little bit more. At what point did you get involved?
Dr. Zach Burns:
I was lucky to be there right at the beginning. So I had started a group on campus called Plant-Based Healthcare, and we asked Dr. Klaper to speak. We had no budget. It was a long shot. I submitted something through his website and miraculously he said, "Yeah, I'll speak and don't worry about the cost." So he spoke. There were hundreds of people there. We had not only medical students and faculty, but we had people from all over South Florida. I was at Nova Southeastern and I think there were 400 people there. It was this incredible event.
Afterwards we had this meeting outside with some of his volunteers, and we were talking shop about how can we make this more impactful across the country. So these were some of the initial conversations. And when I asked him if I could participate in his movement, assist him in any way, he said, "Actually, yeah, we're launching this Moving Medicine Forward, and I need a med student who understands how this is going in 2022," or whatever year it was, "so that we can communicate with other med student leaders and create some infrastructure for change."
Rip Esselstyn:
So have you seen him present to a whole bunch of medical students before?
Dr. Zach Burns:
Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. And so I'm curious, so what is the reaction when these medical students hear this kind of old man that my nickname for him is Gandalf, but they hear this white bearded Gandalf espouse about the power of a whole food plant-based diet and how it's the most powerful tool in their toolboxes as potential MDs. Are they open to hearing his message or do they think that he's a bit of a quack?
Dr. Zach Burns:
No, they're very receptive overall. I think people are really captivated when he speaks. It's partly his talents in communication and largely the content as well. I think people are hungry for this information, especially if they're students or residents who've started their clinical rotations in the hospitals, they realize that eight out of 10 people on the floors were there because of what they've been eating. And it's frustrating, and they see that run of the mill medicine is failing us and just prescribing and then increasing the dosage and running some tests and doing surgery ultimately, it's not satisfying. And there's just so much cost in human suffering. So people are really fascinated by what Dr. Klaper has to say. People have different foundations, right? There might be someone who's hip to lifestyle medicine and just needed this push, and some people are starting from scratch, but I think he appeals to most everybody.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, that's really great to hear. That's what I imagined. But it's always great to hear that. So are you still in residency right now? Are you done?
Dr. Zach Burns:
Yep, I'm a second year out of three.
Rip Esselstyn:
Oh, okay. Second year out of three. And then after residency, what do you have?
Dr. Zach Burns:
So then I'm a free agent. It's time to get a job and pay off some loans and see if we can expand the movement in lifestyle medicine.
Rip Esselstyn:
So as your second year in residency, talk to me about some of the ups that you've seen and some of the downs.
Dr. Zach Burns:
It's been overall really encouraging. I find that patients and my classmates, my co-residents are so receptive. They love learning about lifestyle medicine. Same thing, they have different starting points, but people are, on the whole, incredibly receptive. The faculty, so my teachers, they've been practicing for however many years. They are also usually really receptive. Sometimes there's a little pushback because they didn't get this education in med school either, and they might not be comfortable talking about deprescribing or talking about a sort of radical nutrition program for somebody instead of starting meds. So it's a balance. I still have so much to learn from them and I need to be humble about it, right? I don't have those years of experience so we need to keep everything really safe.
But at the same time, I've been lucky to help facilitate Dr. Kay's masterclass. And I've delved pretty deep into the physiology of food and the literature around nutrition so that I'm comfortable working with people on lifestyle on a pretty deep level and educating my classmates around that. I mean, I'd say some ups have included starting a dining hall task force at my hospital where we've already implemented changes to the patient menu, the cafeteria for staff. We've introduced a ton of plant-based options so that's, I think, makes a difference. And they already have excluded red meat from the cardiac menu, makes sense. And so right now we're advocating for them to also exclude red meat in the diabetic menu because people with diabetes, the most likely cause of death is cardiovascular disease. So we want to keep things consistent. We have a plant-based healthcare group of residents and nurses and some attendings in the community. Attendings, the fully licensed docs. So we share local events and literature and recipes. And so we've launched a small movement so that people can feel like they're not alone in promoting plants.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah, that's really important. What was the size of your medical school class and how many people are going through residency with you?
Dr. Zach Burns:
Yeah, it's a stark difference. My residency class was relatively enormous. We had about 220 people who ultimately got graduated. And then here in residency it's 16 per class. So it's really a promotion, especially when you're working with the administrator. There's such a smaller ratio, there's more attention on you and cultivating you as a doctor. And so it's been a really nice change and there's more responsibility. And now as a second year, I get to teach the interns, the first years, so getting to impart some wisdom on them.
Rip Esselstyn:
Do you think that one of the reasons why Dr. Klaper's lecture is so well received is because you guys are DOs and maybe there's a little bit different mentality? I'm wondering, have you seen him deliver his lectures at and medical students that are getting their MD, not their DO?
Dr. Zach Burns:
Oh yeah. And when I answered before I was including the MD students he speaks to. He speaks at schools all over the world and they're mostly MDs. So yeah, overall everybody is very receptive. Do DOS have a special appreciation for this? Maybe. Overall, I think most dos practice similarly despite the small variation in our philosophy and training. But DOs on the whole are just as susceptible to falling into mainstream medicine as anyone else.
Rip Esselstyn:
So when did you read the book Overdosed America? Because I heard it had a fairly large impact on you.
Dr. Zach Burns:
It did. That was just this year. It's maybe late winter, and it was very profound for me. So coming out of this work, I'm talking about it with climate change and political organizing, I knew about corruption in our society. Companies want to earn profits and they sort of influence policy. I'm pretty aware of the nastiness going on in Washington DC. But this book finally provided some examples of pharmaceutical corruption and just how the pharmaceutical industry, the device industry hospitals, they've totally infiltrated medical education. So that when I'm in my didactics and we're learning the guidelines for the treatment of hypertension or cardiovascular disease or diabetes, sometimes the lectures are just a regurgitation of pharmaceutical propaganda.
And it's really scary actually, because if you don't look into that and realize then you're just indoctrinated into the status quo mainstream medicine that has largely been written by the companies that stand to profit from their products being sold a billion times over. So Overdose America is by a doctor, John Abramson, was written in 2004. He's a family doctor so his clinical experiences resonated, and he went really deep into the literature and identified the big pharma tactics and how they designed studies that favor the outcomes that they want. They devise these really elaborate marketing campaigns to sometimes create a medical condition so that they can sell a drug for it. Other times they decide that, okay, this drug has worked for cardiovascular disease. Let's see if we can create a new indication in diabetes and make twice as much. And it inspired me to do a deeper dive and look at... So here, here's one example. Can I share one?
Rip Esselstyn:
You know, I was just going to say, I going to say I would love to hear an example of one. Yeah.
Dr. Zach Burns:
Okay. And by the way, I'm not anti-pharmaceutical. Sometimes people really need medicine and obviously medical technology, including meds, have transformed our healthcare system sometimes in really important ways. But I think for chronic diseases, we've gone way overboard. So for example, there's a class of diabetes medication called SGLT2 inhibitors. So they basically make you pee out your sugar. So they're employed in the treatment of diabetes. They started becoming mainstream in the last few years, and there was so much hype about SGLT2 inhibitors that after reading this book, Overdosed America, I decided to look into it, where's this hype coming from? And I found that the major studies that led to these clinical guidelines of when and how much of an SGLT2 inhibitor to use, those studies were funded by the manufacturers of the same medications.
So there's just this inherent conflict of interest that makes you really wonder where our guidelines are coming from. And recently I presented an overview of these of statins. So people are usually familiar with statins. They lower cholesterol and supposedly prevent cardiovascular disease. Now they seem to have some good results in people with existing cardiovascular disease. But this literature review was about whether you should start somebody on a statin just to prevent heart disease in the first place. And when you look into it, and they say this in the review, 23 out of 26 of the randomized trials that they include and glean the insights from, they're funded by the statin industry. And so it makes me skeptical and I want my colleagues to have the same level of concern, not necessarily to boycott these medications, but just to be thoughtful and use lifestyle primarily.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. No, I think that some of the stats that I've heard is that with statins, yes, it can be helpful with somebody that's had a previous cardiovascular event in preventing another one, but I think I've read up to 30%. But if you haven't, a hundred people have to be taking a statin medication for five years for one person to get some sort of a benefit from it. So it's almost the same as a, if not, well, you'd be better off probably taking a placebo is my understanding based upon those numbers.
Dr. Zach Burns:
And one of the tactics that they use is they compare a statin to a placebo and that's where they get the results. But they never compare a statin to reducing red meat by 25% or taking a walk three times a week. Because I believe that they're afraid if they publish those results, it would not look good for statins. Just these basic lifestyle changes often way out-compete the chronic disease meds that we regularly prescribe.
Rip Esselstyn:
No, a hundred percent. And not only do I think do they outperform statin drugs, but you also don't have any side effects. And the side effects that you do have are very positive.
Dr. Zach Burns:
Indeed.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. And spill over into many places in our lives. So what are some of the lectures that you've been delivering to med students?
Dr. Zach Burns:
So I've been zooming out into public health land. One of them is called plant-based Nutrition for social justice. And I've delivered this presentation several times now to med students and community organizations, and it's really well received, and I'm glad to give it. It's a heavy presentation, so we talk about the effect of food, our food system, on the environment, disproportionate chronic disease among low income and non-white Americans, global poverty deforestation. And then we talk about other social justice movements, whether it is for racial equality or gender equality. And we make some comparisons because if I can be honest, I think we'll look back on factory farming like other forms of human slavery and genocide.
And so I make some pretty clear comparisons to help the audience make connections between what's going on and what we've seen historically. So it's this kind of big picture analysis of our food system that's been exciting to be able to provide for people. Then there's one more. So the food environment in [inaudible 00:40:14] disease is the other main one I've been giving recently. So that looks at following many plantricians. We're trying to help people make that connection between our food system and the infections that are coming from livestock production or poaching and bush meat production trade coming out of Covid-19 because all evidence suggests that Covid 19 originated from the wet market in Wuhan China where these different species come from around the world to be dismembered and sold.
And it's a perfect breeding ground for a novel pathogen like SARS-Cov-2. And yet there are only a few people discussing that. And if we don't get the message out, we're projected to have these novel pathogens coming from factory farms like avian influenza that could be way more transmissible and severe than COVID-19. So it's pretty frightening, and I want to show med students that there are bigger public health issues to consider here.
Rip Esselstyn:
I would say that it's very frightening, to say the least. I mean, if we could have another zoonotic disease that is more severe than COVID-19 and is more easily spread, that just might be the undoing of us. I mean, it's not pretty. And if it can be prevented just by simply us severely eradicating and ratcheting back our animal consumption.
Dr. Zach Burns:
That's why I think for me, if I want to maximize the impact in my career, it's going to be talking about plant-based nutrition because it touches so many social problems. And so I just admire what you do and what our whole lifestyle medicine community is doing, because I think it has this outsized impact where to the extent we can transform our food system to one with plants more central. We can tackle so many disparate issues, including, I think importantly, the ethical issues around animal exploitation.
Rip Esselstyn:
So are you hopeful about what the future of medicine might look like here, going out 10 years?
Dr. Zach Burns:
I am hopeful, because I've seen patients recover already. I've only been a resident 13 or 14 months, and with basic nutrition coaching toward unprocessed plant-based eating pattern. But some of these patients don't even go all the way, and they've had dramatic recoveries just in my limited experience as a doctor. And so I'm really encouraged that more people discover how they can reclaim their vitality through nutrition. It'll spread in this social movement. Although we have a long way to go because there are a lot of residency programs where, as I said, their didactics are lectures where they just kind of regurgitate those guidelines that have been really influenced by the drug companies. And so we've a lot of education to do, but I think we'll get there. I think I'm encouraged by what's happening nationally. We're recognizing the incredible cost burden and time out of work burden, all these stemming from chronic disease. So we're going to have to tackle it, and I think now is the time.
Rip Esselstyn:
So you, you've used the word didactics twice in the last 40 minutes. What does didactics mean for those that don't know what that word is?
Dr. Zach Burns:
Sorry about that. That's our teaching because we're still doctors in training. We have a half day every week designated for teaching. And we go through lectures, we do simulations, and that's what didactics is, just the classroom portion of my life.
Rip Esselstyn:
Thank you. And you mentioned you had some stories of people that maybe you've worked with or somebody that you know has worked with, and they've had some really nice turnarounds. Can you give me some examples?
Dr. Zach Burns:
Yeah. So I'm thinking of one fellow. He's a middle-aged African American man with all the issues. So diabetes, hypertension, that was intractable. There were several medications for his blood pressure and they just weren't doing it. He was morbidly obese. He had gout where his big toe frequently, at least once a month, he'd have a gout flare where just incredible pain in his feet. And the problem with severe obesity, there are a few problems, but your risk of complications, heart attack, stroke, everything, they're actually way higher than regular obesity. And what we've seen over the last 10, 15 years is not only the enlargement of the average human, but an increase in severe obesity itself with all of its inherent risks.
So anyway, there's this fellow, he's such a nice guy, so appreciative, and he was sick of being sick so we got him on a plant-based diet. And one thing he also discovered green tea, and he really loved his green tea. He put a little apple cider vinegar in it. And just within months he stopped having his gout flares, his blood pressure became much more controlled, and almost most importantly, he just felt better. And he said, "I have energy. I'm sleeping. I have a more positive outlook on life." And I was checking in on him on the phone and he said something that I'll never forget. He said, "Zach, the notion of getting meat out of my life was the best thing you could have told me. No one's ever told me that." And so that's all it takes. We just need more clinicians educating patients. They're not very resistant in most cases. They just need that vegecation. So he's one.
I had somebody who I met in the hospital. I was on my medicine rotation and he had a pulmonary embolism. Turned out that he was predisposed to the thicker blood in the pulmonary embolism because he had prostate cancer. So we got him on a plant-based diet and he lost 30, 40 pounds. He feels really good. He's in remission from prostate cancer. And the evidence is pretty clear with prostate cancer. If you want to give yourself the best chance of preventing a recurrence of that prostate cancer, you need an anti-inflammatory food that's going to optimize your immune system so that it can identify those cancer cells, bring down the inflammation and keep you cancer-free. And he's one, and just, there are more, but just one more example.
He came into the hospital with hepatic cirrhosis. He'd been a drinker, so his liver was sufficiently injured that he was accumulating fluid in his belly. It was really scary stuff. He was scared about that, and it was a pivotal time for him. He stopped drinking. And not only that, but he went plant-based more exclusively than the other two guys I mentioned. He lost an incredible amount of weight beyond the fluid weight that he peed out from his cirrhosis. He lost fat and adipose tissue and he looks incredible. He's got this summer tan, and he's slim and he feels like a completely different guy. And he's in his 60s and he feels better than he did when he was in his 40s. So it comes down to having those conversations with people.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Nice. So what do you do to unwind and de-stress as a resident? Are your hours pretty tough?
Dr. Zach Burns:
I can't complain. They're tough, but it's like I am pretty... I'm fueled by plants and so I enjoy working. It's just really gratifying work. So they're long days, especially when you're on hospital rotations. But there are other residency programs. For example, if you're a surgery resident or an OB-GYN resident, those hours are worse. So overall, I can't complain. It's more than a full-time job.
Rip Esselstyn:
So what do you do to unwind?
Dr. Zach Burns:
I'd say key for me is exercise. Nothing as crazy as you but I am a daily runner, so I'll run two to five miles. And that helps me sit straight the next day and focus and just be calm. So that's been really central for my mental health. And then I also play music. And so when you improvise, it's kind of like for visual artists, it's like sketching. So you can release whatever you're feeling from the day. Because there's some really miserable situations in medicine. There's a lot of tragedy, but you can kind of release what you're feeling through the keyboard.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah, yeah. I hear you on the tragedy. It's nice to figure out a place to take that tragedy. I saw a fair amount in the fire department. What are some of the thoughts of your fellow residents and the doctors that you're working with when they find out that you're plant-based? Are they supportive or do they call you names? Do they sneer at you? What's that like?
Dr. Zach Burns:
Yeah, mostly they're supportive and really interested. I'd say overall, let's say in my class of 16, about half of them have made significant changes in their own lives coming from our conversations about nutrition. So that's really encouraging because then they start to educate their patients. So they're into it and they come to our meetings and they participate in these different local initiatives that have set up. I'm really grateful for that. We have a good tight-knit residency community and they're fantastic. They make this a lot of fun. I'm psyched because as I mentioned, they didn't necessarily learn this in med school. They don't practice nutrition with that kind of emphasis, but they realize that there's a ton of interest among the residents and that if they want to keep up, they need to understand what this is about and catch up with the literature on this.
So two of them, for example, are going down for a lifestyle medicine conference in the context of family medicine. Someone else brought to my attention the lifestyle medicine in residency curriculum. And this is something that we bothered the administration about last year. And they said, "Oh, I'm not sure if there's enough interest. It's kind of expensive," but now they're coming to me with it. This is someone who wasn't part of that early conversation, so it's great. At the same time, sometimes they're a little bit nervous when I want to utilize lifestyle over medications because it's not... So when anything deviates from the standard of care, you're liable. So they're protecting the institution and me from liability.
But that said, sometimes it might be a slight overreaction because when you look at it, it's not necessarily deviating from the standard of care. And when you talk to people, the patient, and make a shared decision to give them the evidence and the options, the pros and cons of a decision point, when you have a mutual agreement, then you document that and it's fine. But I think they're worried about some of the... Sometimes they worry about my counseling on dairy because even if they're personally vegetarian, they feel like, well, dairy's healthy. It's on my plate. The USDA recommends it. And so there's just a little catching up to do. And sometimes, often I'm challenged on the concept of well what about lower income patients? Can they really do this? So I get that a lot.
But of course, yes, they just need education to find the cheapest plant-based options because... So this is part of one of my lectures, over 90% of Americans have ready access to a grocery store. There is abject poverty and food swamps and deserts, but that that's a minority of the population, small minority. We need to absolutely address those structural problems, but that can't be our excuse not to discuss groceries with the majority of our patients. And so it's about educating them on, well actually the plant-based staples are really cheap. So we're talking about potatoes and brown rice, carrots, it's celery and apples. This stuff keeps people going and it's just so cheap. So that's my long-winded response rep.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah, big time. So where do you eat? Do you cook your own meals? Are you eating at the dining hall because of what you've done with the task force there? Where do you eat the bulk of your meals?
Dr. Zach Burns:
Mostly at home. But yes, increasingly I can eat at the hospital because there are vegan options, so that's great. Now they're not necessarily whole food, so even though I can get stuff for free with my doctor card, I try to limit what I eat in the hospital because it's going to have oil and salt. It's a little bit of a challenge when you've been there for 14 hours and you're like, it'd be pretty convenient to swipe my card and get one of these things. So I often succumb to that. But when I'm behaving, it's homemade food.
Rip Esselstyn:
That's a nice little perk, getting free food. Especially when it's healthy food. So do you have a favorite food documentary that you've seen in the last decade or so?
Dr. Zach Burns:
Yeah. Oh, there's so many good ones. I really loved Game Changers, of course. I think many listening will be familiar and I recommend it, especially to all my athletic patients, especially the macho dudes who think plants are for non-macho people. So because you watch that and you realize these people are performing, these are elite athletes doing better than they've ever done on a completely plant-based diet. So that's one I often recommend. And I also, I think the last one I watched was Seaspiracy. Man, it was really upsetting. I know a lot of people who have cut out other animal products and they've continued to eat seafood under the facade that it's healthy.
It may have been healthy 200 years ago to get some omega-3 fatty acids when they were scarce in other foods at that time in that place. But in 2022, there's no reason to eat any seafood. And in fact, it's the same fatty tissue where we celebrate the omega-3 fatty acids. That's the same tissue in the fish where the heavy metals and the plastics and the carcinogenic compounds accumulate. And so it's just not to mention if we keep going at this rate, our kids and grandkids won't have fish in the ocean. So I'm really alarmed by that. My hero, Dr. Klaper, was in the movie so Seaspiracy is another one I'd recommend.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah, we need the oceans to be alive for us to continue to survive as a species. We are really doing our best to take ourselves down and we really got to turn this big old freighter around. And one of the things that really, you used the word, and it's one of my favorite words, is that young physicians like yourself are going to help to transform the way that medicine looks over the course of the next decade. And that's really, really cool because what 80% of America's current $4 trillion healthcare bill is attributable to five, count them, five lifestyle related diseases that can be prevented with the spoon, the fork, and the knife. And that is powerful.
Dr. Zach Burns:
Indeed. Yes, there's so much opportunity here.
Rip Esselstyn:
All right. Well, Zach Burns, any last words you want to say while you're on the PLANTSTRONG Podcast and you have a bunch of ears that are listening to you?
Dr. Zach Burns:
I just want to say thank you. This movement, right, it's important. It is my professional interest, but it also makes me really happy. I'm so inspired by what you're doing, Rip, and all the plantricians who came before me, and showed me that this is a way I can practice medicine in a sincere way. Where I'm not just copying the status quo and going about it in a way that's kind of disappointing and where it doesn't actually heal people. So I just want to express my gratitude at everything you're doing, and this burgeoning movement that's going to include so many more people in my generation soon.
Rip Esselstyn:
You used the word plantrician. Is that a big fancy term for a plant-based physician?
Dr. Zach Burns:
I guess so. Yeah, it's just a silly term. Someone who's hip to the power of plant-based nutrition to prevent and reverse disease.
Rip Esselstyn:
All right. Well, Zach, hit me up, man. Give me a little PLANTSTRONG fist.
Dr. Zach Burns:
There you go.
Rip Esselstyn:
All the best to you and everything you're doing. And I hope to see you in Austin soon.
Dr. Zach Burns:
Would love to. Thank you, Rip.
Rip Esselstyn:
If you want to learn more about Moving Medicine Forward, visit drklaper.com, and I'll be sure to link that in some of Dr. Burn's resources in the show notes. Let me wish you a Happy New Year from all of us from PLANTSTRONG. I can't tell you how much we appreciate the support, the follows, the likes, and the reviews, and I can't wait to see what 2023 brings for all of us. See you next year.
Thank you for listening to the PLANTSTRONG Podcast. You can support the show by taking a quick minute to follow us wherever you listen to your favorite podcast. Leaving us a positive review and sharing the show with your network is another great way to help us reach as many people as possible with the exciting news about plants. Thank you in advance for your support. It means everything. The PLANTSTRONG Podcast team includes Carrie Barrett, Lori Kortowich, Ami Mackie, Patrick Gavin, and Wade Clark. This season is dedicated to all of those courageous true seekers who weren't afraid to look through the lens with clear vision and hold firm to a higher truth. Most notably my parents, Dr. Caldwell B. Esselstyn Jr., and Crile Esselstyn. Thanks for listening.
