Dr. Ted Barnett Works to Improve Our Pale Blue Dot

Dr. Ted Barnett, president and board chair of the Rochester Lifestyle Medicine Institute, has been a pivotal figure in promoting a vegan lifestyle and the evolution of lifestyle medicine. His journey to veganism began in 1991, influenced by environmental and animal rights concerns, as well as the health benefits he discovered along the way.

Growing up in an environmentally aware household, Dr. Barnett was always passionate about nature. This deep-seated environmentalism, combined with his wife's interest in animal rights, led them to explore a plant-based diet. They decided to perform an experiment on their young children, raising them vegan to see if it was feasible and healthy. As Dr. Barnett delved deeper into the research, he found that a plant-based diet was not only safe but significantly healthier than the standard American diet.

In a conversation with Glen Merzer on The Glen Merzer Show, Dr. Barnett discussed the growing momentum of lifestyle medicine and the increasing number of healthcare professionals embracing plant-based diets. He highlighted the importance of nutrition in lifestyle medicine and the challenges of incorporating it into medical practice. Dr. Barnett, also known as "Dr. Veggie," emphasized the role of diet in heart health, citing Dr. Dean Ornish's work on reversing heart disease through diet and lifestyle changes.

During the podcast, Glen Merzer asked Dr. Barnett about the "Pale Blue Dot" community. Dr. Barnett explained the concept, drawing from Carl Sagan's famous imagery and text about the Earth as a tiny, fragile speck in the vastness of space. This perspective underscores the importance of taking care of our planet and each other, as it is the only home we have. Dr. Barnett read Sagan's poignant words, emphasizing the folly of human conflicts and the need to cherish our shared home.

Dr. Barnett's professional journey is impressive. He became one of the first physicians board-certified in vascular and interventional radiology in 1995 and in lifestyle medicine in 2017. His work at the Rochester Lifestyle Medicine Institute includes programs like the Complete Health Improvement Program (CHIP) and the 15-day Whole Food Plant-Based Jumpstart, designed to help people transition to healthier lifestyles.

The conversation also touched on the broader impact of a whole food, plant-based diet on health and the environment. Dr. Barnett emphasized the need to focus on reducing processed foods and increasing the percentage of calories from plant products. He shared insights into the challenges of conducting studies on behavior change and the importance of grassroots movements in promoting a plant-based lifestyle.

As more healthcare professionals recognize the benefits of lifestyle medicine, Dr. Barnett remains optimistic about the future. The American College of Lifestyle Medicine has grown exponentially, reflecting a shift in the medical community towards embracing plant-based nutrition. Dr. Barnett's work continues to inspire and educate, helping individuals and healthcare providers alike to understand the profound impact of diet on health and the planet.

For those interested in learning more, tune in to The Glen Merzer Show, where Dr. Barnett's insights and passion for a healthier, more sustainable world are showcased.

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DISCLAIMER: Please understand that the transcript below was provided by a transcription service. It is undoubtedly full of the errors that invariably take place in voice transcriptions. To understand the interview more completely and accurately, please watch it here: Dr. Ted Barnett Works to Improve Our Pale Blue Dot

Glen Merzer: Welcome to the Glen Merzer show. You could find us across all your favorite podcast platforms. You could find us on YouTube. Please remember to subscribe. We've just passed the threshold of a thousand subscribers on YouTube. So we're bumping up against the next milestone, one million. Help us get there, please. And you could find us at RealMenEatPlants .com. My special guest today coming from his gazebo. In Rochester, New York is Dr. Ted Barnett, also known as Dr. Veggie. He's the president and board chair of Rochester Lifestyle Medicine Institute, which he founded in 2015. He received his undergraduate degree in 1976 from Yale and his medical degree in 1980 from Tufts, where he also completed his diagnostic imaging residency and became board certified. in 1984. Eleven years later, in 1995, he became one of the first physicians board certified in vascular and interventional radiology after passing the inaugural examination given by the American Board of Radiology. And then 22 years later, in 2017, he became one of the first 204 physicians board certified in lifestyle medicine after passing the inaugural examination of the American Board of Lifestyle Medicine. Dr. Ted Barnett, welcome to the show. 

Dr. Ted Barnett: Thank you. It's great to be here. I appreciate the invitation.

Glen Merzer: That is a beautiful setting you've got there. Do you practice medicine from your gazebo? 

Dr. Ted Barnett: I wish I could.  This is my home office. It's right, it's not too far from our house. It's 30 feet from the house. And the good thing about it is it has a great Wi -Fi connection. So that's all I need. 

Glen Merzer: very good.

Dr. Ted Barnett:  I spend about three or three fourths of my time out here when I can when the weather is OK. So it's glassed in. So I can only be out here in the morning right now because it's going to get hot today. But I'm out here in the winter, got a little heater. And so, yeah, it's great.

Glen Merzer:  Yeah, we've got a heat wave going on across the country. Yeah. Partially because people eat too much meat. 

Dr. Ted Barnett: Exactly. Exactly. Glen, where are you located? I'm sorry. Sorry. 

Glen Merzer: I am located in the Midwest. 

Dr. Ted Barnett: OK. 

Glen Merzer: OK. that's right. So you're getting the same heat. 

Dr. Ted Barnett: You're getting the same heat wave. 

Glen Merzer: Getting the same heat wave. Mm hmm. So you became vegan in was it 1991? 

Dr. Ted Barnett: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. 

Glen Merzer: I became vegan in 1992. 

Dr. Ted Barnett: OK. Maybe we're related.

Glen Merzer: I had heard that there was a doctor in Rochester who went vegan and I said, that's good enough for me. I'm joining the team. So tell us what motivated you back in 1991 to make that big change. 

Dr. Ted Barnett: Well, interesting question. So I've been an environmentalist all my life. I grew up in a very environmentally aware household. My parents took me outdoors all the time. We were always out on Long Island Sound and I lived in Connecticut, you know, boating, back then we've, I was, I used to fish a lot before I became more enlightened, and clamming and crabbing and oyster and all that stuff that you could do. And I, you know, but basically living off the land outdoors. So I became very, I very much felt like I was part of, the natural world. We had a big garden, and, you know, we used to go up into, and it's in the summers, we go to, a family farm in New Hampshire. And I spent a lot of time hiking and I became a member of the Sierra Club probably when I was 18 years old and have always been a member. But I always thought, you know, I'm an environmentalist. And my wife and I got married in 1986 and we moved to Rush, New York, which is a little town south of Rochester, which is where I am right now. And, you know, we started to raise a family with two little girls. And then she became interested in becoming vegan or vegetarian for animal rights reasons. She got a mailing from PETA that showed a down cow and was very sort of motivated by that. And we began discussing and I said, well, the more I read about it, it seems like, well, if you're going to be an environmentalist, you got to give up eating animal products because clearly that's the… one of the major drivers behind climate change. And even then it was pretty obvious we were headed for a disaster with climate change. And so I thought, well, you know, let's give it a try. You know, like any good parents, let's perform an experiment on our children. Let's. 

Glen Merzer: Right. Parents should do that. 

Dr. Ted Barnett: Exactly. 

Glen Merzer: Now, how old were your children at the time? 

Dr. Ted Barnett: So we had two little girls who were toddlers. I think they were maybe, let's say, We became one was born in 87 and one was born in 89. So one was two and one was almost five. No, and one was four. So two and four. And Nathaniel hadn't been born yet. He wasn't born until 1992. So I said, let's perform an experiment on our children. Let's become vegan. And maybe some days this will be important because people will say, well, you know, is it even possible to raise kids on a vegan diet? And I said, well, let's find out.At the time, I was quite convinced it was safe because the more studying I did about what we knew about veganism and living on a plant based diet, the more I realized that this is not only safe, but it's way healthier than what people have been eating. And, you know, I set the bar really low. I said, OK, it just has to be as safe as a diet reading now. So that was pretty easy to convince myself. And even back then, there were what I...I would consider pioneers like Dr. Michael Klaper, who had already published books on raising children. And my wife was aware of those. And we got the books from a hero. McDougall, who's probably been doing this from a health standpoint longer than anybody. He had several bestsellers at that point. And then, of course, John Robbins died for New America, which I believe came out in the 80s. 80s, you know, Dr. Neil Barnard had founded the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, I believe in 86, somewhere around then. So it seemed to us that there were already pioneers who were kind of demonstrated that this was safe. And then I think the thing that finally pushed me over was reading Reversing Heart Disease by Dean Ornish, which he published in 1990. And in there, he makes the statement that, how it's extremely difficult to get funding for anything to do with lifestyle medicine, because there's no money in it. If you demonstrate that a lifestyle medicine intervention is bet is the best treatment of all, no one's going to benefit. There's no money involved with that. So that's what I call it. I say I had my sloping forehead moment. I went, aha, I get it. I get it. So not only did it feel like this was a really healthy thing for us to do for ourselves, for the planet, but also it felt like it was an act of defiance. Right here, we're going to say, OK, the system doesn't want me to do this, but we're going to do it anyway. And it wasn't that hard for me because in a way, I make my living in medicine through the high tech stuff. So I call myself the high tech doctor with low tech solutions. So I had an income stream. It kind of felt like being Robin Hood. I can take money out of the system, and then I can use that. to spend to help put the system out of business, which of course hasn't happened. But anyway, that's kind of the background. 

Glen Merzer: So it's interesting that though you're a medical doctor, the the original impetus was from your wife on moral grounds about the animals. And then the second one was the environment. 

Dr. Ted Barnett: Right. 

Glen Merzer: And then you came to the to the medical reason in third place. Is that right? 

Dr. Ted Barnett: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. But then of course, you know, we realized that, well, to get people's attention, you need to kind of focus on the health and the medical aspects of it. That's what people are most interested in. Right. 

Glen Merzer: And once you looked into the medical side of it, did you did it take long before you said, not only is this safe, this is better. 

Dr. Ted Barnett: No, it was that happened all at the same time. 

Glen Merzer: Yeah.

Dr. Ted Barnett:  You know, before we made that decision in 1991. I think a lot of that had to do with reading Dean Ornish's materials. You know, the fact that there was a randomized control trial showing that you can actually open up arteries. And now I'm an interventional radiologist, so I actually do angiograms and I do angioplasties. And it never occurred to me that plaques could actually open up based on, you know, lifestyle and diet changes. But he demonstrated that in a randomized control trial.

Glen Merzer: Well, speaking of Dr. Dean Ornish, let me try to ask a question very delicately. I don't know the man. I'm guessing you do. And he has definitely been a great pioneer in our movement to get people to eat more plants and to, you know, to move away from the meat based diet. He has saved countless lives with his research and his advocacy for a plant based diet. But there's one thing that I've always had in the back of my mind, never quite got in his program. He allows for, I believe, some non nonfat milk, something like that, tiny bits of animal based foods and egg whites, egg whites. 

Glen Merzer: Yeah. And I've always wondered. And let me know if you can share any insight on this. I've always wondered, does Dr. Ornish really believe that the egg whites and the non -dairy milk are good for you, or does he just have to do that in order to get Medicare funding, get approved, get his program approved? Do you have any insight into that? 

Dr. Ted Barnett: Well, first of all, that was the way the original study was done back in the late 80s with a very low fat diet. So it was basically 10 % calories from fat. And if you're using nonfat dairy, there's basically zero fat in that. And if you're using egg whites, there's no fat in that. So if you're focusing on the fat and also getting in lots of plants, then it kind of makes sense. Now that was how we did it back then. He's, I believe, very much come around so that that's not part of what he recommends anymore.

Glen Merzer:  Aha. Very good. Okay. 

Dr. Ted Barnett: Yeah. And he's absolutely understands the environmental implications. And I don't think it took him that long to… switch over. And as all of us, anybody who's sort of thinking about this realizes that, you know, we got to get away from animal products. And he's certainly in that camp. 

Glen Merzer: So you were really one of the pioneers because it was back in the early nineties before there were a lot of plant based physicians. How would you describe the evolution of your colleagues? Are more and more coming along? Do you sense that this is a movement with growing momentum? Tell us about that. 

Dr. Ted Barnett: Wow, that's a great question. The answer is yes. Colleagues are moving in the right direction. The American College of Lifestyle Medicine, which got its start in the early 2000s, 2004, 2005, somewhere around there, I joined it in 2010 actually at the a recommendation of my friend Michael Greger, who I've known for, you know, for a long, long time, since the early nineties, and, or the mid nineties. Anyway, he, said, you know, you tell you should join the American college of lifestyle medicine. When I joined, around 2010, we had 130 members. there's now about 11 ,000 members. So it's doing one of these things. 

Glen Merzer: Good. 

Dr. Ted Barnett: And many, many doctors, and other healthcare professionals have.begun to recognize the importance of lifestyle medicine and plant -based diet. Because I would say that of the six official pillars of lifestyle medicine, nutrition is probably the most important. It's the one that's least controversial. I'm sorry, most controversial. Right? You know, everybody agrees we need to get more sleep. Everyone agrees we need to get our stress under control and that we shouldn't smoke or drink. You know, everybody agrees we need to have lots of more friends and we should exercise. But what's the perfect diet? Wow. Is it keto? Is it, you know, paleo? Is it whole food plant -based? We think we know the only one that's been demonstrated in randomized controlled trials to, you know, reverse the number one killer of, of, of Americans, you know, namely heart disease is the whole food plant -based diet. But as far as other doctors coming around, I've definitely seen it from the beginning. You know, early in my career, I was the head of radiology at a small hospital in the Finger Lakes called F .F. Thompson Hospital in Canandaigua. And back then, radiologists, you know, before everything was on computer, you know, before everything was on the PAC systems, we had films, we had actual x -rays, you remember those? And they were up on a view box. And there was only one copy in the hospital. You know, you couldn't like go to, you know, the nursing station to pull up the x -ray. You actually go to the radiologist's office and look at it. So there would be radiology rounds in the morning, in quotes. People would come to my office and they'd want to go over films on their patients. And of course, then they would look at my lunchbox. Really? Right. And they say, what is it today, Ted? Because, you know, what crazy what crazy food has your wife sent you in with today? And it would be, you know, 

Glen Merzer: so did you develop a reputation as the quirky doctor on this weird diet? 

Dr. Ted Barnett: Absolutely. Absolutely. And in fact, just to jump forward to our new our our. medical director for Rochester Lifestyle Medicine Institute, who just recently, we've been friends for a long time, but she just recently got the official title as medical director is Dr. Carrie Graff, who up until about a year ago was working as a family practice doc for Rochester Regional Health System in Rochester. And, but back in the summer around, I don't know, 2000, 2005, something like that. She actually was a newly minted family practice doctor. And, she, the way she tells the story is, you know, she ran it out. Dr. Barnett was this crazy tree hugging guy. You know, I, you know, I thought he was nuts. I didn't believe any of this stuff. And then she developed her own medical conditions, you know, insulin resistance, pre -diabetes. she was overweight. She had a bed, had multiple surgeries for, and I can talk about this cause she talks about it too, multiple operations for, endometriosis. And then she decided. Forget what year it was, 2014, something like that. She finally said, you know, I'm going to try this. And all of her symptoms and conditions resolved. So she's, you know, a physician has been through this herself. And now it was, you know, a true believer, not because it's a belief system, but because it's evidence -based. Right. 

Glen Merzer: Yeah. 

Dr. Ted Barnett: And, you know, she, you know, there's no, there's no better way to do it, to run a test than on yourself. Right. And we do it all the time. You know, people always talk. So anyway, she's a really good example of someone who made that change. and, and, I also ran them. I also ran the grand rounds at that hospital. So every week we'd have like, I forget, I think it was Monday morning at 7 a We would have grand rounds, in our little conference room. And I got to choose the speaker. So, and frequently that speaker was me. And, so I actually gave the first talk ever on pre -ons, you know, the, the cause of, right. You know, BSE, both. bovine spondiform is cephalopathy. And I predicted Stanley Prusiner, I think, is the guy who discovered pre -ins. I predicted that he would get a Nobel Prize. And then he did. 

Glen Merzer: He did. 

Dr. Ted Barnett: Yeah. Because his idea was really crazy. What? You know, folded proteins, 

misfolded proteins. 

Glen Merzer: How is that going to cause a disease? Right. And how is it going to be infectious? So but it turned out to be so anyway, you know, things in medicine have really evolved. Now, the problem is, it's still there's still. financially, that's not where the money is. So if you if your kid goes into medicine and you want them to have a comfortable life, you're probably not going to recommend that they go into lifestyle medicine because it's just really hard to make a living with that, even though it's the most powerful thing we can do for people. If your kid says, you know that I'm thinking about becoming a bariatric surgeon. Or maybe I'll become a lifestyle medicine doctor. What do you think? And you say, well, do you want to be able to afford a house in a car or not?

Dr. Ted Barnett:  Let me challenge you, challenge you a little bit on that. If you're a general internist, yes. And you make a decent salary as a general internist. Yeah. Whether you're working at Kaiser or in some private practice. Yeah. Can't you practice? lifestyle medicine as a general internist and make a pretty good upper middle class salary?

Glen Merzer:  I think you can if you have the right help in your office. And there are definitely doctors around the country who are doing that. You know, they who have worked out ways of having health coaches on their team and, you know, nursing staff and especially trained staff who can work with patients and involves really using what's called health coaching. cause the problem is if you really want to do it yourself, you've got to spend an hour with the patient. Well, that's not how you keep your office running, right? Cause you're not going to make enough money to keep the lights on if you do that. Now there is a way to do that through what's called, shared medical appointments or SMAs, where, interestingly enough, The payers don't care how many people are in your office or in your, right, when you're examining room, when you're talking to them. So you can bill if you have 10 people in your room for an hour, you can bill for all of them. And then it becomes financially feasible. And, you know, you can't. So that's what that's the way to do. I was going to say, you know, you can't blame people for being cautious about this because they got kids they want to put through college. Right. And you know, and you can always the human brain is a rationalizing organ. Right. We can always rationalize. Well, I'm doing this because, you know, it is helping somebody to do bariatric surgery or put somebody on ozempic. Right. But it's not in the long run. It's not the best for our individual patients or for the society at large. 

Glen Merzer: Right. 

Dr. Ted Barnett: Yeah. 

Glen Merzer: Well, you know, my first career was as a playwright. 

Dr. Ted Barnett: really? I didn't know that. 

Glen Merzer: Yeah. So it gets hard for me to feel that economic sympathy for for doctors who are practicing lifestyle medicine, because that's far better for your pocketbook than being a playwright. 

Dr. Ted Barnett: I'm sure. Well, unless you hit it big, right? 

Glen Merzer: Yeah. Well, there's an old saying, you can't make a living as a playwright. You could only make a killing. 

Dr. Ted Barnett: OK, very good. 

Glen Merzer: You can't get a play done. But if you get Hamilton done on Broadway. 

Dr. Ted Barnett: Yeah, yeah. Sure. Sure. 

Glen Merzer: And buy a rocket ship.So you are an interventional radiologist. I get that right? 

Dr. Ted Barnett: That's correct.

Glen Merzer: That was a field I wasn't even familiar with because I always thought of radiologists as people who do and read scans, but interventional means that you not only do and read the scans, you then take action upon them. And that was a fairly new field when you went into it. Is that right?

Dr. Ted Barnett: Well, the field kind of had existed for a while and the angiography has existed and there are people doing interventional things with, basically interventional radiology is image guided procedures. So, you know, you want to get a catheter into an artery, you use the, the fluoroscopy room in your, in your radiology department, the guide, the catheter and get it to where you want to go. So that's the, the radiology part of it is using the image guided. It didn't really become a form of specialty until the boards were created in 1995, which is when I took, and I took the first boards in that it was an inaugural boards. And it was, it was an interesting exam. I had, I took my first radiology boards in 1984, right as I was finishing my residency at Tufts in Boston. And, and then I actually spent a couple of years traveling. I, decided to do what's called locum tenons, which is like Kelly girls for radiology. I've covered practices all over the country and actually even I even spent a month working at Hadassah hospital in Israel. And I supported my travel habits. So I worked half time and I traveled around the world a couple of times. So the original boards were 1984, came to Rochester in 1986 when we got married and started practicing interventional radiology here just as kind of a sideline. I mean, I was running a couple of little radiology departments in the Finger Lakes Plus, also working at a big major teaching hospital in Rochester, New York at the time. I'm part of a very large group that we used to have seven hospitals. We've since become all outpatient, which is because we all got older and couldn't take call anymore. So interventional radiology is basically doing things with image guidance. And we're not the only ones who do things with image guidance. interventional cardiologists obviously use the same equipment. And there's even interventional nephrologists who poke kidneys under ultrasound or whatever, but it's mostly sort of developed in the radiology world. So now I do procedures under, most of my procedures now are done with ultrasound guidance, where I actually do a lot of biopsies and a few drainages now and then. But Yeah, the big and then under CT scanning as well. All those tech, all those technologies have evolved. I mean, I remember it used to be CT scanning was incredibly slow and you kind of had to advance your needle kind of on faith. and then, you know, then have them take a film, a picture, and then check the picture. But now there's real time CT where you can actually be watching on the screen as you're doing things. So it's exciting. I love the technology. But. Being fascinated by the technology doesn't mean that it's the best thing you can do for people's health. Right. 

Glen Merzer: Right. Well, let me ask you this from a patient's point of view. So let's say there's a patient who has been advised to get an angioplasty. 

Dr. Ted Barnett: Yes.

Glen Merzer:Now we know they'd probably be far, far better off going on a whole foods, low fat, plant based diet than getting an angioplasty. But maybe in a certain circumstance, the angioplasty is necessary or they're refusing to go on a healthy diet. So. They might have a choice of going to an interventional cardiologist or an interventional radiologist. Would there be any difference? 

Dr. Ted Barnett: yeah, there definitely would be. So the hearts have pretty basically all gone to the cardiologists. So I don't know. OK, there's really no interventional radiologist that I know of who are doing hearts now. 

Glen Merzer:But you used to do that, right?

Dr. Ted Barnett: Well, I never did hearts.

Glen Merzer:Okay. 

Dr. Ted Barnett: there, the original angioplasties of the heart were actually developed by radiologists, but this is a long time ago, maybe in the eighties really, or nine in the nineties, maybe it's probably, but, but it's so specialized and you know, that the cardiologists have gotten really, really good at that. And I would definitely defer to them for that kind of a procedure. Now there are other parts of the body, like the brain that is really conventional radiology. So there's neuro radiologists and interventional neuro radiologists who, who do brains, but, and you know, carotid arteries in the neck. But yeah, so it would be mainly cardiologists. 

Glen Merzer: Are there some procedures that the consumer has a choice between going to an interventional radiologist or brain surgeon or some, you know, do they sometimes have to make a choice? 

Dr. Ted Barnett: what an interesting question. You know, I don't think the patient ever really is aware of that choice.Cause it's going to be kind of traditional. So the hospital, if you are at a hospital and you need to have your brain aneurysm fixed, you're not going to, they're just going to send you to the, the place in the hospital where the specialist does that. And you're not going to even know whether they're an interventional radiologist or a neurosurgeon or whoever is doing that particular procedure in that hospital. So I don't think you're going to, I mean, if you're doing things as an outpatient, you know, like getting your, veins, if you have varicose veins and you're getting them fixed, that could be a vascular surgeon. That could be a radiologist. so, or you, you're, you know, you're having a, you have an ischemic foot. then you, and that might be a choice between an interventional radiologist or a vascular surgeon where they're going to re -vascularize your leg. But you know, It was interesting. You asked earlier about whether you should go, you know, the diet versus, whether you should have the angioplasty. And that's a really tough question. First of all, it's not really just an angioplasty anymore. It almost always includes a stent. So you have the angioplasty and they leave a little metal stent behind. We're just kind of like the, the riprap that holds up, you know, a stream from, basically re getting blocked again. But, When people ask me that question, I basically recommend that they talk to a cardiologist who I know is very, very sympathetic to the plant -based plant -based treatment. Right. You know, because they'll, I think they're the ones who are most aware of what the, the, the best choices in those situations. Most cardiologists are not, I don't think are not proponents of a plant -based diet in my experience. 

Glen Merzer: Right. So, and we all know that there are some drawbacks to stents. 

Dr. Ted Barnett: There are, there's some,There's some great things about stents, which is like you feel better pretty much right away. Which, right? I mean, because, you know, you get that instant, the arteries now open. Now the drawbacks to the stents are they fill in again, they get clogged. So I think that's a, you know, you got to take that one, one, one case at a time. 

Glen Merzer: Yeah. Now you have partners in your practice. Have they moved along towards the whole food plant based diet?

Dr. Ted Barnett: Yeah, they have actually. Not as many as I would like, but we hold our professional PC meetings usually once every month or two. And the very last one we had, which was just three or four days ago on Monday, was I got to order the food.

Glen Merzer:  -huh. 

Dr. Ted Barnett: Well, actually I didn't order the food. I got to recommend the source of the food, the caterer. So I didn't actually make the choices, but we ordered from Sweet Pea Plant Based, which is a local Rochester, local organization that provided healthy low -fat vegan food. And it was, we got, I got mixed reviews. And initially the reviews were really negative from the one person who, who had actually ordered them said, Ted, don't get used to this. Okay. But then as other people walked in and said, this is great. I love this. The person who initially was negative is going, really? Everybody likes this. So, so how would that, that felt really good. That felt really good. And, you know, look, doctors get sick too, right? You know, so they need to eat a healthy diet and, you know, one by one, they come to me and say, you know, what can I do? And so it's great. So we're definitely, I would say my radiology group is probably moving relatively slow compared to the other doctors I work with and have influence, but we're getting there for sure. 

Glen Merzer: Well, you were smart enough to go vegan when you were a young man. So probably you didn't feel any health changes, but let me ask, did you? 

Dr. Ted Barnett: Well, people ask me that. It's a really interesting question. I didn't really feel much different as you, as you would guess. I was in pretty good shape at the time. I still run every morning or every day anyway. And, you know, I can run an eight minute mile or less. So, and I, you know, I do that occasionally just to prove to myself, I used to go out and run eight and a halfs or nines. but I, and I run a five, basically I run a five K every day. and, well, I've been running three miles a day for years. And then I realized that, if I actually run 3 .1 miles, my Apple watch says, congratulations, you just ran a 5K. So I thought, you know what, for the extra 10th of a mile, I can get this extra bonus encouragement from my watch. 

Glen Merzer: It's always good to be on good terms with your watch. 

Dr. Ted Barnett: Exactly. I know. Yeah, you don't want to be on bad terms with your watch. 

Glen Merzer: So you run every day. Wow. 

Dr. Ted Barnett: I run every day. I've got the aerobic exercise thing down. to a science. I do. But I'm still working. I'm still working on the resistance training. I find that harder to get into my my routine, but I do that at least twice a week. So. OK. 

Glen Merzer: Now, has has your diet evolved much since you became a vegan? In my case, first I became a vegan about a year after you. And then I was eating a lot of vegan fake meats, things like that. And I used to cook in olive oil and over time, gee, it must have taken me, I don't know, 15 years of being a vegan or more before I gave up the oil and gave up more and more of the processed foods. How about you? Did your vegan diet evolve over time?

Dr. Ted Barnett:  It did. Before I answer that, can I interview you? 

Glen Merzer: Sure.OK, well, so welcome to the Ted Barnett show, ladies and gentlemen. Here we go. Your guest today is me. 

Dr. Ted Barnett: So what what motivated you and where were your sources of recipes and how did you, you know, where did you find out how to eat? 

Glen Merzer: Yeah, what motivated me was that when I was 16, two of my uncles died. My mother's two brothers died of heart attacks. One was 49. One was mid fifties. My mother, who was maybe only 10 pounds overweight, she got angina, had trouble walking up a short flight of stairs without chest pain. I never knew my grandparents. They were dead of mostly of heart attacks, one case cancer before I was born. So there was so much heart disease in my family that I figured I'll be middle aged at 25. So I had to do something. And I heard Dick Gregory talking about being a vegetarian, and I decided to go vegetarian at the age of 17. And then in my early to mid 30s, I started getting chest pains. Now I was eating cheese. I was eating cheese because I had an obese aunt and uncle who were so alarmed. When I went vegetarian at age 17, they said, where will you get your protein? And I said, I guess from cheese. So I would eat cream cheese. I would eat cheddar cheese. I would eat pizza with mozzarella. And when I was about 34 or so, I started getting these weird chest pains. I've never had them explained to me. Let's see if you, doctor, can explain them. But it felt like an electric shock. I would just be maybe walking. I noticed a few times it happened when I was sipping alcohol, sipping wine. I would feel like an electric shock in my heart and I would almost drop to the ground. Happened about a dozen times and a normal person would go to a cardiologist, but that's not me. So I said to myself, let's see. It's so unfair. I'm a vegetarian and I'm still, I'm getting these heart pains. I'm not eating meat. I'm not getting that saturated fat and cholesterol. yeah. That pizza, that mozzarella. What is it? That saturated fat and cholesterol. I'm getting liquid meat. So I gave up the cheese, went vegan when I was about 35, 36 and I never had that experience in my heart again. No problem since then. So if there's one thing I regret, it's eating cheese for after becoming a vegetarian. I should have gone vegan. 

Dr. Ted Barnett: Yeah. 

Glen Merzer: But so you know, that was what motivated me was health. Right. So you never had a stress test or an image study. 

Dr. Ted Barnett: So we don't know that the chest pain was caused by coronary artery, but you got better.

Glen Merzer:  So but I got better. And let me tell you this. And this is you know, not easy to say to someone who earns his living doing tests, but I don't like tests. I don't like to do them. And right now, well, I'll go back a little bit in the story. A year and a half ago, I sneezed my way into a hernia, a right side. Am I pronouncing it right? Inguinal hernia. 

Dr. Ted Barnett: Yep. 

Glen Merzer: So the whole food plant -based diet protects you from a lot of things, does not protect you from sneezing your way into a hernia. It's of no use for that at all. So I had to prove to the surgeon that my heart was okay before the surgery. had an EKG and they found that my, I don't know, they called it a bundle block thing. Yeah. So, so I had to then have an ultrasound of the heart and I, I wanted the hernia surgery, so I reluctantly did it. I didn't want to do it. And the reason I didn't want to do it was what if they tell me, you've got a valve that's a little bit leaky. Don't worry. You don't have to have heart surgery. You just have to come in every six months and we have to look at it. And I didn't want to live with that stress. I don't want to know if there's anything wrong. I actually spoke at the time to a retired cardiologist in my town and he said to me, and I almost killed him, Ted. I was scared. I killed him. Because he said to me, Glen, if you have heart disease, don't you want to know about it? And I said, of course not. And he said, and I thought I'd killed him. -huh. But that's the way I feel. I feel that I'm on a whole food, low fat, oil free, plant based diet. That's the best I could do. If I have any problems, I don't want to know about it. But I reluctantly did the ultrasound and the guy said my heart is fantastic. I got an A plus. I went to the best hernias surgeon in America who I'm going to interview next week. OK. And he did a great job. I never had any pain. Would you think that's possible? I never had to take an aspirin. That's great. They were, you know, they they warned me, you're going to have open surgery. It's going to be painful. Never had to take an aspirin, maybe because there's low inflammation in my body. Anyway. Yeah. Now. 

Dr. Ted Barnett: Yeah.

Glen Merzer: I must have coughed my way into a left side in Guido Hernia. So now I'm thinking of doing it again, but they first have to prove it's there. And I did an ultrasound and they couldn't detect it. It's called an occult hernia. They couldn't detect it. So they asked me to do a CAT scan. I said, no, I'm not doing a CAT scan because they're going to tell me they found something.

Dr. Ted Barnett: huh. 

Glen Merzer: You know, you get a CAT scan, they say, they found a little dark spot over here. I don't want to know. So tell me, what do you think of a patient who doesn't want to know if there's anything wrong? 

Dr. Ted Barnett: I just want you to know, Glen, that we already know about you because you are on a list of patients who refuse to have tests. All the you know, it's available to all radiology groups. So we know we already know about you. OK. Well, it depends how symptomatic you're.

Glen Merzer: That's it. I mean, I'm not it's not like I'm not having any pain. I don't have a problem. Visually, I can see that I have a left side inguinal hernia. And what else could it be? Well, if it's a if it's a swollen lymph gland, it would have to be a reducible one. It's reducible. 

Dr. Ted Barnett: So so you you you can see this hernia. Yeah. That's how I know I have it. I don't feel it. Then the ultrasound is wrong. And have you been examined by that same surgeon who did your original? 

Glen Merzer: No, but a different surgeon. He said that he thought it was a hernia, but he feels for what he calls the hole, the hole from the abdominal wall. He said he couldn't feel it, so get an ultrasound. Got the ultrasound, they said we couldn't detect anything. And apparently there are hernias that aren't detected by ultrasound. 

Dr. Ted Barnett: When you had your ultrasound, were you lying down or did they have you stand up?

Glen Merzer: I think I was, I think I was sitting down. 

Dr. Ted Barnett: No, it wouldn't have been sitting. It would have been lying down. 

Glen Merzer: So maybe it was lying down. 

Dr. Ted Barnett: Yeah. Cause what you want to do is you want to, you want the ultrasound technologist to be looking at you while you're standing up. 

Glen Merzer: really? I don't think I was standing up. 

Dr. Ted Barnett: Cause it sounds like if it's like, if you can see the thing and you, and you use the term reducible, what you can push it back in. Right. 

Glen Merzer: Well, just when I go to sleep at night, I get up in the morning, it's not there.  And then I'm minutes later it's there. Ladies and gentlemen, you're learning more than you ever wanted to know about my left side in Guernol Hernia. We're making podcast history today.

Dr. Ted Barnett: So I think we could go further and make even more podcast history. Why don't you take off your clothes and put them in and we'll examine you right now.

Glen Merzer: So we can do a telemed visit, right? 

Dr. Ted Barnett: Exactly. Right. Exactly. So anyway, well, going the reason we switched to interviewing you is you asked me if my diet had changed since 1991. And the truth is, it obviously has changed. We all have. But, you know, my forget, you remember, my reason for making the switch was because I read the work of Dr. Dean Ornish. 

Glen Merzer: Right. 

Dr. Ted Barnett: Right. So and that was a 10 percent calories from that diet. So very much was about having low fat. Now, I have to admit at the time, there were, you know, there, I was most interested in the fat content of things. Now we were also vegan for ethical reasons and environmental reasons, which are the same basically. So we were avoiding, we weren't using egg whites or nonfat dairy, but you know, I don't think we were too afraid of processed food, right? So, you know, the veggie burgers and things like that, and the not dogs. So we. we weren't using oil because, right, because oil is pure fat. Right. 

Glen Merzer: But if it was usually the processed foods have some canola oil or something in there. 

Dr. Ted Barnett: They do. But if you're only looking at percentages, then even a little, you can have oil in food. So what about the percentages? So for the, you know, the processed food, if it's a low percentage of calories and fat, you know, like snack well cookies, right? Right. Which is basically pure junk, but they just, they meet the letter of the law. by being very low in fat. Right. So, but not healthy, which is why early on there were a lot of cardiologists said, no, this is not a healthy diet because I had patients going on this 10 % calories from fat diet and they're, yeah, their cholesterol is coming down, but there's triglycerides are going through the roof and the triglycerides are going up because they're eating all this processed, carbohydrate. So, so I would say that our diet has improved over the years because we're, we're more, more in, less interested in being very low fat, although we are low fat, very interested in being very, very low fat and more interested in, the ratio of processed to unprocessed. So I think the, you know, people always ask about like, you know, what percentage of calories should I get from protein, carbohydrate and fat? And, you know, we used to say, you know, we, you know, you come up with these numbers like, you know, 60, 20, 20. 10, 10, 80, whatever you want. And you come up with your numbers. But truthfully, I don't think those numbers matter nearly as much as the percentage of your calories that come from animal products versus plant products. And the answer there is it should be basically zero animal products. Right. And all plant products. And also then the ratio of processed versus unprocessed. And I think, you know, we all eat a little processed food. It's pretty, pretty hard not to because, you know, condiments are processed. Right. Well, we, you know, condiments are fine. So. you know, then that's the ratio of processed to unprocessed. If you're getting almost all of your calories from unprocessed whole plant foods, then you know, you're on the best diet there is. Right. I'd say we've moved more in that direction. Absolutely. Yeah. 

Glen Merzer: So tell us about the Rochester Lifestyle Medicine organization that you founded, right? 

Dr. Ted Barnett: Yeah. Yeah. So Rochester Lifestyle Medicine Institute, we started it back in 2015. I was...You know, I'm still working as a radiologist. I was working as a radiologist then, but I decided that, you know, in my spare time, even though we had three kids, all I guess the kids are kind of out of the house by then. 

Glen Merzer: And the kids all stayed vegan, right? 

Dr. Ted Barnett: That's right. Exactly. And our youngest, our son, Nate, who is a professional semi -professional musician, also a real estate agent. He has a Grammy. 

Glen Merzer: So how did he get a Grammy? Was it for the real estate or the music? 

Dr. Ted Barnett: Well, good question. It comes in really handy though when you're advertising as a real estate agent. Say, Nate Barnett, Grammy Award winning real estate agent. Anyway, he is part of a professional choir in Philadelphia called The Crossing. Their last album got a Grammy. So he has one 24th of a Grammy, I guess. 

Glen Merzer: It's more than I have. 

Dr. Ted Barnett: Yeah, exactly. And he runs a nonprofit called the Uncommon Music Festival that puts on a music festival in Sitka, Alaska every summer. 

Glen Merzer: And I often go to Alaska for music festival. 

Dr. Ted Barnett: Exactly. Exactly. So, yeah, the kids and our, you know, and our oldest is now 37, Rebecca and Elizabeth. They're all they're all vegan. So we're really proud of that. They've all done really, really well. But we started Rochester Life. All Medicine Institute to run a program called CHIP, the Complete Health Improvement Program, which was started by a man called Hans Diehl from Loma Linda. I don't know if you've heard of him. 

Glen Merzer: Yes, I knew Hans. Great Hans Diehl. 

Dr. Ted Barnett: Yeah, exactly. So we got, you know, he and I got to be relatively close. We were one of the biggest CHIP providers in the country. We had more CHIP kits, I think, than anybody we had in our, that we had to store for quite a while. But anyway, So we started running CHIP programs in our office in Rochester. We actually started a medical practice so that we could document how people were doing. I said, look, if we're going to do this, we got to get data. And the best way to get data is to have them actually be our patients. So we would do finger sticks on our patients before and after they would do our programs. And I'll kind of shorten this a little bit. But in 2018, we decided to start what we call the 15 -day Whole Food Plant -based Jumpstart which we basically created ourselves. We used a lot of what we had learned by running CHIP programs. The problem with CHIP is that it's a minimum of six weeks, but it's usually more like 10 to 12 or even 18 weeks, depending on how often you do it every week, how often you meet. I tell people that CHIP is like getting a kid into a bathtub. You can't get them in, but then you can't get them out. They love it when they do it, but it's very hard to get people to sign up for a program that's that long. And we've had great luck with our 15 day whole food plant based jumpstart, which we tell people, look, you're a grownup. You can do anything for two weeks. Just try this and we'll get your finger stick lab results on day one. And then we'll get your finger step lab results on day 15. And we'll show you like how amazing it is, how much your body wants to heal because you know, you'll see these results. dramatic results very quickly. And most doctors are not aware of how quickly these lab labs can change. I certainly wasn't. And the first time we did it, I thought, gosh, I hope this works because we've just got all these, you know, we just brought 25 people into our office, you know, and then we started to see just, you know, falling off out of our chairs, you know, people whose cholesterol dropped 150 points in two weeks from 299 to 149. You know, one of our, one of our very first patients who came to us in 2018 when we started doing it, the two week program, the jumpstart. He was a newly diagnosed man with diabetes and his hemoglobin A1c was 13 .6, which means his average blood sugar for the last 90 days was 350. He had just been newly diagnosed. His doctors were all screaming, you got to go on medication. He came to us and said, well, I don't want to go on medication. What do you think? I said, well, you know, you've been, your blood sugar has been 350 for three months now. Probably could, if this doesn't work, Another two weeks is probably not going to kill you. So let's give it a shot. Right. So he does the 15 day hopeful, hopeful plant based jumpstart. his blood sugar normalizes basically immediately. And within three months, his hemoglobin A would see was down to 6 .0. So, but from labor day to Christmas, it goes from 13 .6 to 6 .0. A few months later, it was down to 5 .5. It's now completely normal. If he goes to the doctor now, they, you know, they would never diagnose diabetes in him because he doesn't have it anymore. So that really gave us confidence to continue with this mission, which of course doesn't make any money. So my wife and I are full -time volunteers. We do have very generous donors. And if there's anybody out there who wants to be another generous donor, we're happy to have you join the cause. I don't make any money off of it. I'm really clear when I ask for donations that it's not coming to me at all. But we do have a staff and we do have a significant budget. That we've now, when the pandemic hit in 2020, We said, we can't bring 24 people into our office every month now as a new cohort because it's, it's not safe. Everyone there's COVID going around. So we did a very quick pivot. We said, let's see if we can do this remotely. So we switched to zoom. We switched to, the Google classroom to, for our, to basically for our forum away from, Facebook groups, because at that time about a third of people wouldn't do Facebook and now it's more than half won't do Facebook anyway. So we switched over to online video, online storage of our information. And then, and now we actually use a whole nother learning management system, which is built into our new community website, which is called paleblue .community. I don't know if you're familiar with that. And I'll talk more about that in a minute if I could. But when we switched, The only thing that we couldn't do is we couldn't get people's finger sticks. You can't do finger sticks over video. So we had to count on people to go to get their doctors to order the test before they started and order it again afterwards. So it's a little more challenging to actually do scientific studies because we don't have the control over the patients we used to. But we've seen a lot more people. We've now reached almost 2 ,500 people. in 44 states and nine countries. We're actually international now, which, you know, at the time we were doing this locally in Rochester, we were talking about figuring out how are we going to get this to other doctors around the country? You know, we've proved that it works, but boy, it's going to be really challenging to get this out there. If we really want to move the needle on the system, you need something really scalable. So in that way, the pandemic was a silver lining for us because we've built this totally scalable system. Doctors are about 300 doctors around the country who have now referred patients to us at one time or another. We are building that up now by reaching out to doctors everywhere. And really for us now it's about marketing. We've built a system and we find that a certain percentage of people who hear about us sign up for the program and a certain percentage of doctors who hear about us refer us patients. So we just got to reach more people, which is why I do podcasts like this.

Glen Merzer: Is it possible to do a study when you have patients? going to their own doctors to get their lab tests and then sending in the results? 

Dr. Ted Barnett:  Yeah, absolutely. The problem is compliance, right? So a lot of patients, you know, we send them, we send them, excuse me. That was a reminder that I'm supposed to do pushups now. I forgot to turn that off. 

Glen Merzer:Can you do pushups and answer my questions at the same time? 

Dr. Ted Barnett: I think we'll, I'll do it later. Anyway, but maybe. What was the question? It was, about study. Yes. Yeah. it's much more challenging, because of compliance and getting people to fill out their surveys and send in their lab results. The way to do it is to actually get people to sign up at the beginning saying, yes, I agree that I will be part of a study and I agree that I will do, right. Do all these things. Of course that adds a little bit of bias. But, because you're going to be selecting for patients who we know are going to be more compliant. But you know, the thing is, it's all about compliance anyway, and it's all about it. And the thing to remember, we're always being held to a higher standard. It's really strange. People say, well, this lifestyle medicine program you have, what's your ROI? What's your return on investment? What's your compliance rate? How are people doing a year later? Well, do people ask that question about medication for high blood pressure? Do they ask that for, you know, statins? No, they don't. You know, the original studies were done and we showed that if people actually took the pills that yes, their cholesterol would come down and the risk of heart disease would be reduced. But we don't do that anymore. Now, just doctors here take these pills and you know, there's a significant percentage of people who stop taking their medication. I don't know what that number is, but it's a significant number. So we know that this that the going on a whole food plant based diet has all these really positive side effects. And you don't get that with medication. 

Glen Merzer: So so am I right in saying that broccoli has better side effects than statins? 

Dr. Ted Barnett: Exactly. So yeah, we actually have a poster. I wish I had it here. I'll send it to you. Maybe you can put it in the program notes. It's a it's a big part. We actually have a big banner when we go to the conferences. It says. Ask your doctor if eating a whole food plant based diet is right for you. And it's a little broccoli guy with a smile. Okay. And then it says, caution side effects may include reduced risk of heart disease, reduced risk of stroke, improved sexual function, you know, less arthritis, all these other things, you know, we, and we hear this all the time. We have people coming to us who say they, they joined us cause they want to get the cholesterol down and they want to lose weight. You know, on day five, when we have our first check in, they say, gosh, I didn't realize that my joints were bothering me because now, but I realize now I used to take me for everybody got out of bed in the morning. Now I jump out of bed, my joints feel fine. I didn't expect arthritis resolution to be a part of this. I didn't expect that my heartburn getting better would be part of this. And they're finding all these positive side effects. Yeah.

Glen Merzer: I mean, you know, it's just amazing and it's a little hard to believe almost that cholesterol we've all seen it in your case in patients, in my case in friends and people I've given my amateur medical advice to, the cholesterol plummets. I mean, in two, three weeks, it goes from 300 to, like you said, 150. And the A1C and people lose weight. It's just so obvious that it works. And yet, The overwhelming majority of conventional doctors and cardiologists don't even consider it. It's astonishing to me. 

Glen Merzer: Yeah, yeah, it is astonishing. And when you consider that, you know, we're now up to four point five trillion dollars in health care costs, that's as of 2022. And the CDC even says that 90 percent of health care costs can be attributable to chronic disease and mental health issues. And actually about 85 % of it is just chronic disease, so diabetes, heart disease. And almost all of that is avoidable and reversible with a whole food plant -based diet. 

Dr. Ted Barnett: And speaking of the CDC and the pandemic, there was a study in BMJ that what they called a plant -based diet, whatever that is. 

Glen Merzer: Right.

Dr. Ted Barnett: Not as good probably as the diet you and I practice. A plant -based diet reduced severe COVID by 72%. And the only side effects would be reduced chance of heart attacks and weight loss and so forth. And I never heard Rochelle Walensky at the CDC or Surgeon General Murtha or Anthony Fauci talk about that study recommend a whole food, low fat, plant -based diet. How can that be? How do they live with themselves if they don't even say the obvious, that that was a pandemic that targeted the obese, it targeted people with type two diabetes, it targeted people eating the standard Western diet, and they had an opportunity there to say, there's a pandemic, let's tell everybody to stay home for a couple of weeks and eat right. But nobody said it.

Glen Merzer:  Yeah. Well, if we're going to get into a political conversation here, let's have at it. Well, without mentioning any political parties, but let's let's just talk about did they not have an opportunity to say, sure, change your diet?

Dr. Ted Barnett:  It would have been a great opportunity. I mean, but there was, of course, so much there was so much misinformation being peddled back then anyway. It's hard to know, like, where that where you would have started. But if you just look at the You know, look at the farm bill, for example, and you understand how difficult it is for people in government to actually get away with saying the right thing. So, for example, you know, I come from, I live in New York state. We have, you know, Senator Chuck Schumer is our senator. He's also, you know, the 

Glen Merzer:  Senate Majority League. 

Dr. Ted Barnett: Senate Majority League, thank you. And,I'm sure he knows about this diet. I'm sure he knows about it. Right. He's got relatives who are sure telling him that they got they got cured by going on a hopeful plant based diet. But do you think Senator Schumer is going to come out against dairy? This is a dairy state. Yeah, he's got he's got to get reelected. Right. Right. It's it's not it's natural. 

Glen Merzer: He can't even vote against the farm subsidies, which go overwhelmingly to animal agriculture.

Dr. Ted Barnett: Which is why I really believe this has to be a grassroots movement. This has to come from the bottom up. I'm sure you've heard of the Overton window. You're familiar with that? Yes. We are the ones who have to move the Overton window to make it politically acceptable for politicians to be able to advocate for certain things. It's our job. And that's why, you know, people always say to me, well, have you been to the insurance companies? Have you been to the big healthcare systems? Blah, blah, blah. And I say, yeah. And I'm not giving up on them But if I really want to move the needle, it's got to be individual physicians who ask their patients to do these things. And it's got to be individual citizens who are asking to do this themselves and are pushing their doctors in that direction. It's not going to come from the big systems. It can't. They can't. They're not capable of it. 

Glen Merzer: All right. Let me throw out an idea here. All right. How about if...If some organization, say Rochester Lifestyle Medicine, were to announce, we're going to do the study of studies. We're going to do the all -time great medical study. We're going to start it January 1st, 2025. We're going to enroll as many people as we can. And we're going to get your blood work done in the first three weeks of January. We're gonna put you on this diet for three weeks and then we're gonna do your blood work again and we're gonna try to enroll as many people as we can if we could get a hundred thousand people great and and Then and you get all the publicity that you're going to do this Mm -hmm. You get as many people as you can enrolled, okay, and and so you've now Now the public is watching because they know this is going to happen. They've announced this. People are signing up and then when the results come out, it's headlines. 

Dr. Ted Barnett: Yeah. Glen, you're a dreamer, Glen. 

Glen Merzer: I'm a dreamer. You're a dreamer. 

Dr. Ted Barnett: And I'm all ears. All right. 

Glen Merzer:  That's my plan. Let's when we're done with this podcast, let's figure it out.

Dr. Ted Barnett: Okay. Because you're absolutely right. That's the way to do it. Yeah. And you know, look, physicians committee for responsible medicine, one of my favorite organizations, they, they organize and they do things like that. In fact, they just started a little program for diabetes, where they're asking for people to join a study, right? But people have to pay for it, which is interesting. I actually do think you need to, you can't do it for free. People need to pay a little bit. So they have some skin in the game. Otherwise they sign up and then they don't do it. but yeah, I'm. very happy to brainstorm with you about this. I mean, I've got the staff to who we can make it work. For one thing, Memer, I mentioned to you earlier, we started this community platform called PaleBlue Dotcommunity. Right. 

Glen Merzer: Tell us about the Pale Blue Dot community. 

Dr. Ted Barnett: OK. So first of all, are you familiar with the Pale Blue Dot of Carl Sagan? 

Glen Merzer: yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. So the Earth is the PaleBlue Dot

Dr. Ted Barnett: Earth is a pale blue dot. Cause you know, he was on the imaging team for the Voyager project and the Voyager one. And I think it was around 1990 or 1994. Voyager was way out, like six billion kilometers at that point. I'd have to, I'd have to look it up exactly, but you know, out by past Saturn for sure. So Uranus, Neptune, one of those, it was out there and it was getting really far away and. We just got all these incredibly dramatic images of the outer planets. And Sagan said, can we just turn it around before we lose touch with this spacecraft? And let's just turn it around and take a picture of Earth. And Earth is less than one pixel. It's this little blue, pale blue dot. And he wrote this beautiful book called The Pale Blue Dot. And there's this incredible quote in there that makes me cry every time I read it. You know, it's just about, you know, everyone you know has...or you've ever heard of lives here. And why is it that, you know, you know, we can't all get along. You know, if you don't mind, I'll actually read the quote. 

Glen Merzer: Please do. you happen to have it with you.

Dr. Ted Barnett:  Well, I got to hang on a second. I got to go to the Web site and I got to go to to. Let's see. So here actually, here's the image. It's this is we actually have an app called petal .com. There is the image. I don't know if the little dot is showing up there, but it says everyone, you know, lives here. Can you do that? Yeah. And here's the quote he published in 1994. The picture was taken in around 1990, I guess he says, look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. Honored everyone you love everyone, you know, everyone you've ever heard of. Every human being class, whoever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forger, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self -importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great, enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to visit, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character -building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we have ever known.

Glen Merzer: Well, that that is a beautiful sentiment. 

Dr. Ted Barnett: And so it's our only home. It's the only place we're ever going to get. People can talk about moving to Mars. It's not going to happen, right? Not in our lifetimes. We got to get this done. 

Glen Merzer: Yeah, I don't feel so important now. Now that you read that. 

Dr. Ted Barnett: Well, you're important to me. So I believe in good hearts. Yeah.my. 

Glen Merzer: How did you do that? 

Dr. Ted Barnett: It's a little it's a little Zoom secret I have. that's remarkable. So. You know, you're. This brings us back to the fact that you came to this diet because you're an environmentalist first. 

Glen Merzer: Right. 

Dr. Ted Barnett: And and, you know, and I the book you held up there, Food is Climate. This is to me. Thank you. This is to me, you know. We know, of course, that this is the optimal human diet for health. But for the planet, I mean, how can we play games with the planet? We can't. The idea of chopping down a rainforest, grow soybeans to feed to cattle or to graze the cattle on what used to be a rainforest. You know, this is just the greatest crime you could do against the planet imaginable. And that's the rainforest. And I'm of course thinking of the Amazon, but forests all over the world, including in the United States, have been chopped down so that people could eat hamburgers, so that people could get heart attacks. And the stupidity of that is just mind boggling to me. I just can't. understand why anybody would want to be part of it. 

Glen Merzer: I hear you. This is an all hands on deck moment. We need to get the hands on deck.  Now, you did the important work of raising three children vegan and at a time when there were less vegans. Right. So they must have faced some challenges at school with their friends. Did they? How was it for them to go through life as a five year old, seven year old, 10 year old and say, no, we don't eat animals. We think that's wrong. We don't think that's healthy. Tell us about their experience of being children who were vegans at a time when there were less children who were vegans and there aren't many now. 

Dr. Ted Barnett: Right. Well, that's a great question. I look back very fondly at, of course, when they were little, they were so cute. We started going to vegetarian summer fast, I think in 1994. And You're probably, I'm sure you're familiar. I think you've spoken there, haven't you? Or have you not been to VeggieJourney Summerfest? You haven't? Okay. Anyway, it to me is the sort of the origin story of the modern lifestyle medicine movement, believe it or not. So that's where we all met each other. That's where I met T .Kong Campbell. It's where I met Neil Barnard. It's where I met Michael Clapper. It's where I got to know Michael Greger, who by the way is… I went to Tufts Medical School and I knew him when he was a medical student. I mean, I went to Tufts Medical School as well, but I had graduated many years earlier. Although now he's a grownup. I think he just turned 50. What the heck? So anyway, so our kids kind of grew up at Summerfest and every summer we would go there for these five magical days.And they would run around with these other little kids and go to the kids center and they got and Michael Greger would go there and he'd allow the kids to paint him. He won't talk about that anymore, but they would they would paint him with watercolors and stick feathers and leaves and things on him. And he got to be this. It was great anyway. But that was only five days a year. And we referred to the time in, you know, but the rest of the time is the sort of in between times when we weren't at Summerfest when because at Summerfest you feel like you're normal. Everybody around you is. I'll come back to that in a minute, but you're asking about, well, how did the kids, you know, how were they treated by the other kids? I think we're really fortunate. We live in a small town, which is part of a school district, which has got a bigger town attached to it. It's called Rush Henrietta. And so we had these, you know, this big high school, these really big elementary schools. And the, our kids were kind of regarded as part of diversity. They were just another ethnic group. And, you know, it was a time when, and because we come from a woke enough school district, that in a good way, they were, they were treated really, really well with interest, I would say. And so, you know, there would be these school parties or birthday parties or little, you know, kids are supposed to bring in snacks and they, you know, kids would bring in snacks that they knew were okay for our kids. So, you know, just like someone, one of their friends had diabetes and they, and the friends knew that while she had to have certain food, our kids had to have certain food and birthday parties in the neighborhood were similar. We'd have vegan birthday cakes. you know, we didn't worry so much about putting them on an ornish diet because they don't need to, they're little kids, right? They, you know, they eat healthy most of the time and, and they never had animal products. So at least, right. So it was, I think it was delightful. I think it actually gave them, a lot of perspective about, you know, how to treat others because they knew what it was like to actually be misunderstood at times. 

Glen Merzer: Right. Right. 

Dr. Ted Barnett: And, you know, I think, you know, you think about the great sort of, you know, the great artists in the world. They didn't they didn't have like really easy childhoods or really easy lives. They wouldn't have anything to write about or paint about. 

Glen Merzer: That's right. It builds character. It builds character. You know, when.When I became a vegetarian at 17 and it wasn't something that I liked to talk about and it wasn't, I was just, I didn't want to have a heart attack, you know, as a young man. but I made up my mind to do it. And then if everybody was sharing a pepperoni pizza, I didn't join in and it was no big deal. And I don't remember that anybody made fun of me very much for being a vegetarian, but if they did, I wouldn't have cared. I mean, I didn't get the gene for caring what other people think. 

Dr. Ted Barnett: Okay. 

Glen Merzer: And, and I think that when you do something that sets you apart that way, it's to the good. It's, it's, it's good to, to not feel compelled. to do things just because everyone else is doing. And so I never regretted my decision to go vegetarian except that I regret that I didn't go vegan when I went vegetarian. That's the thing I regret. I would have stood out more. Yeah, right. 

Dr. Ted Barnett: Did you have social? I mean, you feel like you were deprived socially because of like not being invited to parties or?

Glen Merzer: No, I, you know, looking back at my youth, I don't think anybody didn't invite me to a party because I was a vegetarian. They might have not invited me because they didn't like me, but I don't think anybody did invite me because I was a vegetarian. I don't think it was ever held against me that I was vegetarian, but I'll tell you this as an adult man now and apparently a senior citizen, which I have trouble accepting now living in a neighborhood in the Midwest, my wife and I don't get invited to dinner parties because vegans. So now it actually affects us, or it didn't affect me in my youth. It becomes...

necessary to develop friends who are vegans so you can socialize. And I have nothing against non -vegans except for the fact that they're screwing up the planet. And it's not that I have some moral judgment that because most of my friends are non -vegans. But It isn't that I judge people on that. It's just that I feel that we have only one planet and everybody needs to realize that it's so easy to just eat human food and thereby we could continue to have a planet. And you know, I see. I still meet, I mean, look, Al Gore is still out there saying that it's just fossil fuels. How can he be so blind as to not count the methane that's coming from all the cows, the nitrous oxide that comes from the manure and the fertilizer used to grow plants, to grow grain for cows? The forests knocked down to create grazing land for cows. Why can't any of them say it?

Dr. Ted Barnett: Wow, that's a great question. I mean, I think there's got to be a, there has to be an explanation and we have to look, we have to look at that. It's not because they're bad people, right? No, we have to, we, and we do have to figure out like, what is that button we can push? Where's like, how is it we can get Chuck Schumer to talk about what we know he knows? 

Glen Merzer: Well, with Chuck Schumer, it's obvious he wants to get reelected. So I, I, I, I agree with your point and I wholeheartedly. wholeheartedly make the same point that the revolution has to come from the grassroots. Right. As you just can't expect politicians. And after all, there some of them are good people and they're trying to do good things in the world. And therefore they want to get reelected to do the good things, not just you could be cynical and say they just want the power of the glory. Well, maybe. But they also if they're good people, they want to help other people. And so they don't want to lose the election on a symbolic cause that their vote won't change anything. But for Al Gore, I don't think he's running for office. 

Glen Merzer: Well, that's true. 

Dr. Ted Barnett: That's a good question. Why can't he say the truth that animal agriculture is the leading cause of climate change? Fossil fuels is a factor, but not as much as animal agriculture. They don't chop down whole forests to drill for oil or something. The amount of land use that has been changed because of animal agriculture dwarfs the amount of land use that has been changed because of fossil fuels. And I'm not carrying water for the oil industry. But the other thing is that right now, if it's 115 in Phoenix, people need air conditioning. And we don't yet have solar powered air conditioners. So there's a social good to some of the use of fossil fuels. It keeps us comfortable in our homes. enables transportation and manufacturing. So there is no social good to eating hamburger. It's just heart disease and cancer and lost forests and dirty water and all kinds of health issues. So there's no social good to it. So it makes no sense. So that's why I think we have to do the study of studies.

Glen Merzer: OK, that will be the biggest study in human history and will show all the effects within two or three weeks. 

Dr. Ted Barnett: I would love it. Well, you know, it's interesting. We. I always said when I started the Lytolysis Medicine Institute back in 2015 that we have to have something that's very scalable. Yeah, because this is a huge problem. You know, we've reached several thousand people, but we need to reach hundreds of millions of people. Yeah. Well, now we couldn't scale up that quickly, but we do have a system. We have built a platform now that is very scalable and we have enough trained facilitators and trained physicians that we could go for. We could, you know, we do 50, 60 people a month now. That's how many people we could go to. We could easily get to a thousand a month. We could manage that pretty easily. I mean, and certainly if we had it in its, You know, the way I would do the study is I wouldn't have it start all at once. I would tell people I would say we're rolling study. Right. I would say, look, we've got we're going to start enrolling people on January 1st. And as they start to tell their friends, you know, we run this every month and we can we've sometimes you run to a month and we can do that. We can absolutely do that. And I would love to talk to you offline. Yeah. 

Glen Merzer: Yeah. Let's talk about this podcast. Interview will make history.

Dr. Ted Barnett: Exactly. 

Glen Merzer: First of all, let's not forget there was the discussion of my hernia. Exactly. And now we're talking about the study of studies that will that will make medical history. Right. 

Dr. Ted Barnett: Actually, go ahead. Finish. 

Glen Merzer: No, go you go ahead. 

Dr. Ted Barnett: So this this study is really not about demonstrating that the that the diet works. That's been done. Right. The studies that need to be done are the ones that actually are how to get people to change their behavior. That's really the issue. When you ask these questions, how can these people know that? And they're not doing it. Well, it's, it's something about human behavior. So, you know, I can't, the one word I just, if I have to hear the word pilot one more time, my head will explode because we're always being told by the insurance companies or the, the self -insured. corporations, well, let's run a pilot study. And I'm saying, what do you want to do a pilot study? Just to show where they're going on a whole food plant based diet works. We know it works. Right. The part, you know, what you want to do is figure out how to get everybody to do it. Well, part of what you're talking about is that is how you would get everybody to do it because you could have this massive study and then it would make it would get in the news and everyone. I see. So that's a reason to do a study. Right. You want the publicity that it creates.

Glen Merzer:  Right.

Dr. Ted Barnett: And that's, you know, the thing is we don't have the money. The dairy industry has the money. The beef industry has the money, right? The corn and soybean industries, they have the money. We have to figure out how to fight that. And I think that's a great idea. I love it. 

Glen Merzer: All right. So we will continue that discussion and make this happen. Yeah. And I know that the audience will be wanting to hear a follow -up, so I'll have you back again Ted. Okay, sounds great. And also the audience, you know, wants to know about my hernia. So, you know, there's... That's true. We're on the edge of our seats. Yeah. So there's going to be a lot of interest there. And next time I'll have to have the ultrasound done properly. 

Dr. Ted Barnett: Exactly. Standing up. 

Glen Merzer: With the technologists who's done many of them. Okay. It's not... I may have to come to Rochester for this. You may have to do this yourself, Ted.

Dr. Ted Barnett: I'm sorry to tell you. 

Glen Merzer: All right. 

Dr. Ted Barnett: Well, it's not it's not it's not an obvious test. It's not an easy test. OK. To get right. 

Glen Merzer: All right. So well, Ted, it's been a pleasure speaking with you. 

Dr. Ted Barnett: Absolutely. 

Glen Merzer: Tell us where people can go to support the Rochester Lifestyle Institute.

Dr. Ted Barnett:  So Rochester Lifestyle Medicine Institute, if you just Google that, you'll come up with our our organization is Rochester Lifestyle Medicine dot org. And then our community website is called Pale Blue dot community. The dot is not spelled out, it's a pun. So it's pale blue dot community. Because you know now there's all these new URLs that can end and things so you community is the thing it ends with. And yeah, come and check out our start with RochesterLicestallMedicine .org. You can learn all about the programs we run. We run multiple programs. The 15 Day Hopeful Plant -Based Jumpstart we've talked about. We run something called the Lift Project, which is a 10 week program that meets once a week. And both of those are certified by the American College of Lifestyle Medicine. The jumpstart is very intense. That's seven sessions over 18 days. We also run Lifestyle as Medicine lectures. So I believe you were one of our lecturers. 

Glen Merzer: Yes, I enjoyed doing that. Right, right. 

Dr. Ted Barnett: That was the Lifestyle as Medicine for the Planet or our LAMP series. And we also run something that's unique, which is the Lifestyle Medicine Grand Rounds, which is actually accredited for CME for healthcare professionals. And we do that every month where we have an expert panel discusses a case that is presented to them by another physician or healthcare professional. And we always invite a guest panelist to help with that discussion. So guest panelists we've had include Dr. John McDougall, Dr. Neil Barnard. We just had Kaushik Reddy, who you probably haven't heard of, but he's a well -known cardiologist in the VA. Who else have we had that's well -known? Michael Klaper. I'm probably forgetting some people, but we've done this over 20 times now, and we've built a library of videos that is unique. So healthcare professionals from around the world can log on to our website. They can get access to these videos. They're also available on YouTube, I believe. And they can watch these after the fact. because there's no real library out there of like, okay, I'm interested in, I'm a lifestyle medicine practitioner. What do I do in this particular situation? I know I should just tell them to eat a whole food plant based diet, but it's always a little more complicated than that. Cause you know, they got a mother -in -law that doesn't, you know, that's not on board. They've got two kids that are crazy that are driving them nuts. They got a dog, they're, you know, they're overweight. They can't exercise all these things, you know. And so we talk, have actual practitioners talking about how they manage a particular patient. And there's bound to be one in there that will help you with a particular patient, because we've talked about quite a few of them at this point. All right. Yeah. 

Glen Merzer: Well, thank you so much for joining us in this history making podcast to the to the viewers out there. I say please like and subscribe and comment and and tell your friends about this interview, because we're making. plant -based history today and also a little bit of hernia history. So, thank you again, Ted, and we'll be talking.

Dr. Ted Barnett:  I look forward to that. Thank you.