GI PROBLEMS AND DONT FORGET YOUR LIVER

Introduction to GI Health and Rising Young-Onset Disease 0:00

Good health and welcome to today's edition of the Wellness Watch. I'm your host, Dr. Mike Lenore. We're pleased to have as of our guest today Dr Ralph Peterson. He's a gastroenterologist. Very timely subject now. A lot of young people getting gastric intestinal problems, including cancer. And we want to know about that. Want to understand how diet impacts disease and what we should be doing and when he can do if there's problem. Dr Peterson, welcome Let's start by discussing the issue of why so many young people are having trouble with gastrointestinal disease.

You know, we've been following this for some time, and it was at one time at 50 years of age and up. We started doing colonoscopy, screening colonoscope. It was reduced to 45. But in my practice, I've seen younger people develop cancers. And when you follow the literature, they can be 20, as young as 20 years of age. And the question is, why is that? Could it be stress? Or could it dietary changes? We know genes always play a factor. Family history is very important. We got that. But even those at 40 and 5 years with no family history, we find cancer in them as well.

So I believe that stress the kind of foods that we eat with these processed food that have no control over. Fructose is a big problem as well. I'm gonna throw it out because it also causes fatty liver. Fatty liver is contributing factors to colon cancer aswell. So diet, stress are high on the list. The question is, how do I screen myself so that I can catch cancer early? Because any time you catch your cancer earlier, you can actually get cured because you caught it early. ask you, why, how can a young person, what would be the symptoms that a younger person needed to get more engaged in the diagnosis of the problems that they were having?

Okay, I'm going to be very aggressive with this, Mike, since I've been in practice for almost 50 years from what I have seen. When you get symptoms, that's almost too late. You don't want to get any symptoms. If you don' t want have symptoms of losing weight, bleeding, change in bowel habits, okay, pain, those are symptoms but you want catch stuff early before you actually have something because generally when you symptoms that means you probably already have cancer.

Early Screening and Warning Signs of Colon Cancer 2:12

And so what you want to do is get screened at an early age so that you can beat symptoms and really catch cancer early. Because if you catch it early, it doesn't have a chance to grow down to a certain depth and then escape the cold and go other places, which we call metastasis. So you wanna beat metasases. You wanna be symptom, so you don't wanna catch early Well, you know, we noticed we know without question that that older people scream for cancer with a colonoscopy on a rather routine basis.

What about young people? I mean, if they were getting it younger, certainly the star of Black Panther was in his 30s, I believe. So should they be getting colonoscomies in their 20s and 30? Here's how I should be done. I know how it should done, first of all, you should get a colonoscopy at 45 years of age, no symptoms. You should a get colonocopy 45 of years age. And then after you have the colonostomy, they say we find nothing on you. That means every year on your birthday month in my office, we call save your butt because you want to live another year.

And every time your birth, they come, you wanna live. Another year, You should have a fecal, a chemical test called a fit test. What that test does look for blood in your stool, blood that you cannot see. And if we do find blood in your suit that you cannot see, that means you're going to have a follow-up colonoscopy to make sure that we didn't miss anything or to screen you for colon cancer because only so many things bleed in you colon and you just want to be sure it's not cancer. Now, having said that, you should have fit test at 20. That's what I recommend to all my patients that come into the office that they have kids 20 years of age.

It's to order a fit test on the up. Now, your insurance won't pay for that. We got that you can go online. You can. Go online and order fit tests through Pinnacle P I N N A C L A. you should take that down. I don't have any stock in the company. pinnacle fit test, buy it online. You get two for about $40, that's $20 a piece, and do your own fit tests at home. If it's positive, take it to your doctor. Your doctor's obligated to follow up with that. And if they find that you do have blood in your soup, then they won't be obligate to find out why the colonoscopy will be asked to be performed on you at 21 years of age.

That's very important. All right, let's get down to the nitty gritty. Let me ask you, what is your diet like and why? What's my dad like? Oh, that's very interesting. I try to avoid as much processed food as I can. Try to board fructose in particular. That's just want to make sure everybody heard that word frugtose. Trying to eat as fiber as in soluble fibers soluable fiber. And we talk about 35 grams or more, more per day. Most people eat way less than that, maybe 18, 20, maybe even 10 milligrams of fiber a day.

And the reason you want to eat five because you wanna feed those species that's in your colon, that in small intestine, we call it the microbiome. Once you feed them, they're happy. The bacteria that live with you, they're happy. In fact, it can help eliminate colon cancer.

Diet, Processed Foods, and Healthy Eating Habits 5:49

cabbage, greens, those kind of things. Not much meat. I do eat meat, but not much me. Do eat my mega threes so that I get my fish that eat the algae. And that's where you get your mega three from. Those are very healthy for you. That's the kind diet I have. A lot of fruits and vegetables. You mentioned a couple of terms that people hear a lot that they're not sure. Processed foods. What does that mean? Like you go to the store, you can buy salami. So you buy the bolognese that's already pre-packaged.

Ketchup has, it's all ready processed, has fructose in it. It's high corn served fructose. We just got a whole of trans fat now. you know, companies are not supposed to be having trans fat in the food. You know trans-fat makes the shelf life of a food in a store live longer, but trans that your body cannot process and it can lead to cancer. So no trans, fat no high fructose corn syrup, no fruptose if you can avoid it. Minimize sugar if can. All those things are very helpful for you and eat more fruits and vegetables.

Let's get a little more specific. What are trans fats and where do you find them? Well, let's take olive oil. A lot of us like olive. Got it. But if you cook olive, it has a double bond, one double. We call it monosaturated. It has one that will bond. And when you heat that, too much, that will become trans fat. And that trans-fat, if you eat it, has a problem, your body has problem dealing with it. Like I said, trans has been pretty much eliminated now in America because there's been a lot of complaints and people know trans back created all kinds of problems for the human body which cannot process transfat.

So that's what I mean by trans fats. So you can go in, let's say you look at bread. If you see the word trans fat, you don't want to buy it. You see a word, if you say the words high fructose corn syrup, minimize your consumption of such. Let me play this for you. Talking about. I bet you've forgotten about Cod Liver Oil. It's the awful stuff grandma used to give you whenever you had any kind of illness. Its packed with vitamins A and D and Omega 3 fatty acid helps with heart L, helps fight inflammation, reduce lipids and even strengthen your bones.

And guess what? You can find it in capsules, liquids and skin care products. So maybe it's time to bring back old habits from the past. Just check how much you need and how often to take it and then give your grandma some credit. Okay, so these are the kinds of things that I see every day. You know, every time I am reviewing the literature, it's another thing about diet. I mean, certainly the two big enemies of the nutritionist are coffee and alcohol. But I think that when we see things like this, what would you recommend to the individual trying to evaluate all the conflicting information they hear about diets?

But there's no conflict in information. It's about knowledge. Omega-3s are good for you. Less omega-6, because it has arachidonic acid in it. And aracidotic acid is the precursor for inflammation substances being made, like the leukotrients and so forth. So you want to minimize the omega 6, maximize the Omega 3s. Now, the omega-3s have three components to it. But the one that you really want is omega 3s that come from the fish. And the fishes would eat the algae. It's the allergy that makes the kind of omega threes that want to consume.

So the cod liver oil that we just showed and displayed, that's a good choice. Is omega three. Monounsaturated fats, not bad for you. Polyunsaturate fats could be bad to your body. You start looking at those things. One of the things I definitely want to mention is get as much fruits and vegetables in as often as you can, because that way you get all your vitamins that you need to get for your body. Do you feel that if you look at the, we have the rate diets, that the Mediterranean diet would be at top and the soul food diet will be the bottom?

The Mediterranean diet would definitely be at the top. There's no question about that. Soul food diet will be the bottom because how it's prepared, maybe the kind of oil that is being used, creating trans fat.

Omega-3s, Mediterranean Diet, and Moderation 10:21

French fries, well, it is partially trans-fat because you know it was heated. So those kinds of things are harmful to your body. Now remember, everything in moderation. When you consistently consume something over a period of time, that's when you have more problems. than if you eat it every now and then. I mean, I have my French fries, but that might be once every two months and once, every three months. It's not an everyday kind of thing. Let me ask you if he would agree with this. good basic diets.

There are a lot of good diets out there, so it's hard to choose, but by now I think I have a pretty good idea of what makes a good, basic diet. So here's my diet manifesto for people without diabetes who aren't overweight. Plenty of fruits and vegetables. A lot fish, especially for older individuals. Drinking at least 45 ounces of water a day. Anything more than that feels like a chore. Wine in moderation. This alcohol rule is a bit extreme. No more then two glasses two or three times a week. Makes sense.

Some principles to go along with your diet. You gotta stick with it. Eat regular meals and atleast three hours before bedtime. Don't worry too much about what you eat when you're dining out. After all, you are paying for it! Just slow down for the next couple of days. I like that slide, Michael. That was a good one. All right, yeah, so you agree with that? I agree that with 100%, absolutely. I just wanted to show you that, you know, we're not just messing around over here. You can see how much fruits and vegetables that was being displayed.

Very good, and you saw less meat products, fat products that were being display, very good. And I'm very impressed with it. Yeah. Well, talk to us about colon cancer. Uh, colon cancer is something that is curable. You just got to catch it early. That's the main thing. If I had to leave any mess for anybody to be, catch early, uh, get a fit test done at 20 years of age and, just save your butt. I mean, every year you repeat that same test. Some of us say that if you do a fifth test every you're on your birthday for 10 years, that's like doing a colonoscopy.

It's just like going one colonocopy when you get 45 years old, you want to get screened for colon and cancer. Now, what causes colon cancer? Changing bowel habits, some of the symptoms, bleeding, stress, high corn syrup fructose, keep coming back to that. A lot of red meats can create cancer. Family history, I got that, but you want to get screened. That's the most important thing I can tell you. Get screen for colon and cancer and you can be ahead of the curve because if we discover it and I have discovered a lot of colon cancer but we caught it early such that it's removed by the surgeon or it can be moved by an endoscope and therefore you don't have to have any major surgery and you're cured of cancer.

It didn't go to your liver, it did not go your lungs, didn t go into your brains, did do a lotta damage to you. You caught early. Let's go an organ system that gastroenterologists get involved in. It's not talked about. You know, we talk about the heart and the lungs and colon, the skin. We never talk the liver. How important is liver? Tell us a little bit about what you see and what we ought to be doing about that liver that we're not. The liver, it's the largest organ in the body. So if it is the large organ of the In fact, the pancreas and the liver, they talk to each other.

Colon Cancer Screening and Why Early Detection Matters 14:02

They directly talk each to other, really. The liver is good for storing glycogen, so when you run out of sugar, that glycan that was stored by the livers, three to six hours you have, uh, liver will actually produce the sugar. for your body to use for energy, because you need sugar for the energy through the mitochondria. So, liver is very important. It breaks down substances that you consume that are deadly to the body. Breakdown Tylenol, breaksdown alcohol, so it eliminates harmful stuff to your bodies.

And in turn, it also makes bowel, bowel salts that help digest the fat. You need fat because fat is a way of doubling how much sugar that you don't have to have as much if you have fat, because fats can burn energy also. You get more calories from fat than you would from proteins or from glucose. And so fat as regulated by the liver. Additionally, cholesterol. Cholesterol is made in a liver, very low density like a protein made and deliver LDL. made in liver, triglyceride stored in made-in liver.

So liver is very important. You do not want to hurt your liver so you do want a drink in moderation because that's where it's broken down in the liver very importantly. I just want say one other thing about the limit that the new disease that on the rise is fatty liver Well, that is what I am going to ask you about. Yeah I mean I know that you have a tremendous interest in issue of fatty livers. Now I got enough things to worry about I'm glad I didn't know nothing about deliver because I wasn't worried about it.

But now you come to the table with some information that makes me some good concern about what delivery is like. Well, you know, Mike, two years ago, we had ultrasound done on patients who had hepatic steleptosis of fat in the liver, and we did not worry about it as much. And I started saying, let me just start reading about this and come to find out that any range between 30 to 45% of Americans have fatty liver. Almost 30% of the world have fatty liver. And it's come from these processed foods and too much sugar, frankly, too sugar.

So because of that, what is fatty living doing to it? Fatty liver may be causing you to have cholesterol problems, diabetes, being overweight, having hypertension, hypothyroidism, all caused by fatty livers. Additionally, cancer, it cancels the pancreas, cancelling the stomach, canceling the colon, renal failure, fatty liver. So it's a sign of disease. It doesn't give you any warning. You may have malaise, you may some weakness, some pain in the right upper quadrant. Generally, most people have nothing.

And I say, oh, my God, are people going to be left behind on this?

The Liver, Fatty Liver Disease, and FibroScan Testing 16:58

So how do we get out there and tell people you need to know your numbers about your liver? And since it is not going talk to you, the only way you can know is to have an ultrasound. If you have an ultrasound and have fatty liver, you ought to be concerned. One additional point I want to make. The number one cause for a liver transplant in women is because of fatty livers. Not alcohol, not hepatitis B, and hepatites C. It's fatty living. And it has been estimated about 20, 30 is going to the number 1 cause of liver transplants in men as well.

Do we have to have biopsies to define how much fatty we've got? Everybody can't go around Like I ain't, I'm not gonna have no biopsy. I mean, what are the ways in which we can get identified? How to live with this difference? you know me and uh you chose me as your GI doctor. So, you come to me, and I would not let anybody do a biopsy on you. I wouldn't let them do that on. You wouldn' encourage it. Is that is that because I'm too old? No, not because you're too. Oh, Michael and II know people who do excellent biopsies as indicated.

If you had a a mass in your liver and we didn't think it was a carcinoma with some other kind of cancer, I recommend you get a liver biob. But in this case, for fatty liver, better than a fiber scan and tell you how much fats in your liver and we don't we Don't want anything above five percent and I'll tell how stiff your live reels. We call it a Fiber score So yes, you will get information from me Without a liver biopsy Well, this is just the beginning of that Peterson so much that we can talk about with the GI tract and i wanted to introduce you to our audience and because of your tremendous experience and the knowledge that you have.

We'll have several more conversations about issues around gastrointestinal health and gastric intestinal disease. I want to thank you for taking the time today just to introduce the audience to the concept. And thank