Announcer:
0:00
Welcome to the MedEvidence! Monday Minute Radio Show hosted by Kevin Geddings of WSOS St Augustine Radio and powered by ENCORE Research Group. Each Monday morning, Dr. Michael Koren calls in to bring you the latest medical updates with insightful discussions. MedEvidence! is where we help you navigate the real truth behind medical research, with both a clinical and research perspective. So sit back, relax and get ready to learn about the truth behind the data in medicine and healthcare. This is MedEvidence!
Kevin Geddings:
0:30
Dr. Michael Koren, as promised, joining us live on the studio line, of course. He's a medical doctor, cardiologist, research scientist and heads up the show at ENCORE Research Group , and they have an office right here in St Augustine in the Whetstone Building near UF Flagler Hospital, where you can go and participate in some leading edge medical research and get some of the best health care you've ever received, along with compensation for your time.
Kevin Geddings:
0:53
And today we thought we would talk a little bit about something that's been kicked around the notion of. Does alcohol, you know, cause various health problems, including maybe cancer? And should alcohol have warning labels on the bottles, right, D r. Koren?
Dr. Michael Koren:
1:07
Yeah, good morning, Kevin, and thank you for the introduction. So you usually ask me questions, so this morning I have a question for you, which is you said there was an 80% chance of rain in St John's County, and when I walked out of my house in St. County my hair got wet. So what's the percentage of rain for me?
Kevin Geddings:
1:25
It's about 100% right.
Dr. Michael Koren:
1:30
So I bring that up, just because statistics can be misleading.
Dr. Michael Koren:
1:34
The old Mark Twain line that there are three types of mendacities: lies, damn lies and statistics. So we live in this world and that's an example of how you can interpret things and get fooled by statistics perhaps. But getting back to your original question, yeah, it's a big controversy right now, really fascinating. Right before the end of the Biden administration, the Surgeon General under Biden submitted a recommendation to Congress to put warning labels on all alcohol. So just like cigarettes have warning labels, he wanted alcohol to have warning labels and the reason for that is there are some data, there are surveys and other type of epidemiological data which show that people who use alcohol have a higher risk of GI cancers, like cancer of the esophagus and cancer of the colon and breast cancer, interestingly. So the concern about this higher risk of breast cancer led the Surgeon General to make the recommendation for Congress to put warning labels on all alcohol. So if you bought a can of beer or you bought some spirits, they would have a warning label.
Dr. Michael Koren:
2:46
But the problem with this is that for many years, many of us in the cardiology community felt that moderate or less use of alcohol actually had a slight beneficial effect on heart disease. So we know that alcohol raises HDL cholesterol, which is a good cholesterol, and there's studies that show that people that use a little bit of alcohol actually have fewer heart attacks and perhaps less heart failure over time. So this gets into a little bit of a debate, but also a tension between the effects of alcohol, which is a drug in and of itself, its effects on cancer versus heart disease, and many of us would argue that, hey, maybe we should study this in a very comprehensive way before we start telling people that there is health dangers about using alcohol. And, interestingly, sometimes this breaks down based on what individual physicians believe personally.
Dr. Michael Koren:
3:46
So physicians who like to have a glass of wine with dinner are going to be more likely to say, hey, let's not put warning labels on alcohol, that's getting way ahead of ourselves. Let's study this, whereas other teetotalers may want to support their view of the world, which is that people should not use alcohol. So it's an interesting dilemma that we have and actually one that we're starting to address by creating a study that looks at this issue. And, more broadly, we're looking at this issue informally in the studies that we're doing. So, for example, if you get involved in one of our weight loss studies, or one of our diabetes studies that are using a GLP-1 agonist. We're looking at whether or not that affects alcohol use to determine whether or not these type of drugs have this unintended consequence of maybe helping people with impulse control and other things that are really really interesting that really need to be studied very critically.
Kevin Geddings:
4:38
Very interesting. So how do you see this playing out over time? I mean, how does this get resolved Ultimately? We know we have warning labels on cigarettes, so we got there at some point. How do we either get to that point with alcohol or we make the decision not to do it?
Dr. Michael Koren:
4:52
Yeah, the data on alcohol, actually the data on cigarettes, are very clear. Cigarettes are bad for you. When you burn tobacco you release 3,000 carcinogens. There's no safe dose of smoking and there's no debate that using a little bit of nicotine or using a little bit of tobacco, in particular, nicotine is a little bit of a different animal. There's a subtlety there that I can get into, but certainly burning tobacco doesn't have any positive health benefits. So that's pretty clear-cut and the data for that were overwhelming and there's a very, very strong consensus on that. But alcohol is a little bit of a different chemical and the consensus is just not there.
Dr. Michael Koren:
5:32
So to suggest that there should be warning labels is going to be tricky.
Dr. Michael Koren:
5:36
Now some people would argue well, just let people know the fact that in certain cases there could be an increased risk of cancer and let them decide on their own.
Dr. Michael Koren:
5:45
But the problem there is that people will then perhaps change helpful patterns that are helping them from the standpoint of coronary artery disease and the end result could be less good public health outcomes. So you have to really think about these things carefully and I would argue the best way of figuring it out is by doing comprehensive clinical trials where you start from the beginning. You randomize patients, either put patients into an arm of a study where they get warning labels, for example, or they get information that goes through all the risks. The other one will just say well, talk to your doctor about the use of alcohol rather than giving any particular warning. And see A does that influence behavior and B does that affect health outcomes. Unfortunately, that very logical way of going about solving this problem is something that is more difficult to get people to buy into versus just paying lobbyists a bunch of money to argue their point in Congress.
Kevin Geddings:
6:42
But we'll see what happens. Yeah, interesting. That's Dr. Michael Koren Once again. You can learn more, too, about participating in the clinical research that he referenced by going to EncoreDocscom. Encoredocs. com and this issue, along with all these other health issues, you know, obviously you can go on TikTok or some other social media platform and find all sorts of information that says, you know, drinking alcohol causes cancer it does or it doesn't but MedEvidence! tries to deal with all that sort of bad information that's out there, doesn't it, doctor?
Dr. Michael Koren:
7:11
It does. In fact, we have a podcast available for people to look at right now where I'm talking with one of my colleagues, a tremendous researcher, Bharat Misra, and we're talking about this whole debate and ways of understanding this debate and ways of solving it and also the ways that people need to make good decisions for themselves and their families. So I'd encourage everybody to look at that. And the other thing I would say is that if you're an advertiser, you may want to advertise on MedEvidence!, and the reason for that is that the only advertisement that will take on MedEvidence! is advertisement that we feel has a net positive health benefit. So if you're trying to sell your vaping device, you will not have a home in MedEvidence!, but if you try to sell your gym membership or your healthy food selection, you have a great home. So that's another way we're trying to help the consumers make good decisions.
Kevin Geddings:
8:06
Absolutely Well. Once again, that website is MedEvidencecom. The truth behind all the data which I know for many of us seems like it's just swirling around us all the time, whether it's social media or the regular media.
Kevin Geddings:
8:17
Check out medevidence. com and help us get the word out about that website, if you could share it with people who are you know, maybe online right now or have been over the last few days looking up information about various healthcare topics, say, hey, you know, why don't you check out medevidence. com, where you can actually trust the what you find on that website? If you're interested in participating in clinical trials, you want to learn more about what options are out there. There's so many of them going on, we really can't list them all. Go to EncoreDocs. com, encoredocs. com or call them here locally in St. John's County and St Augustine at 904-730-0166. Dr. Michael Koren, any closing thoughts before we let you go on this dreary, rainy Monday?
Dr. Michael Koren:
8:59
Yeah, well, you mentioned a myriad of clinical trials that we're doing, and, yes, we probably have something for virtually everyone, but one I'm particularly excited about is one that's starting up showing that a pill that acts as a vaccine against COVID could be just as effective as a shot. So for those of you that are interested in the whole COVID debate, there may be another solution, rather than getting an mRNA vaccine, which is to actually take a pill that serves the way the polio pill protected people against polio.
Kevin Geddings:
9:31
Wow.
Dr. Michael Koren:
9:32
Give us a call and check it out. We'll give you the details.
Kevin Geddings:
9:35
That could be a game changer. I've got you.
Kevin Geddings:
9:42
I know you're busy, but will we ever get to a point where we could take a pill for our flu shot?
Dr. Michael Koren:
9:46
It could be around the corner. We're not doing that research at the moment, but as the technology becomes more and more sophisticated those things become possible
Kevin Geddings:
9:54
Amazing stuff.
Kevin Geddings:
9:55
That's why we always enjoy our time with Dr. Michael Koren each and every Monday morning. You can learn more, once again, by going to EncoreDocs. com.
Dr. Michael Koren:
10:07
Thank you very much and we'll talk with you again next week. My pleasure. Have a great week
Announcer:
10:12
Thanks for joining the MedEvidence! podcast. To learn more, head over to MedEvidence. com or subscribe to our podcast on your favorite podcast platform.
