Adam Torres and Emily Gold Mears discuss Emily’s book.
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Show Notes:
New book alert! In this episode, Adam Torres and Emily Gold Mears, Author, Health Care Advocate at Optimizing Your Health, explore Emily’s book, Optimizing Your Health: An Approachable Guide to Reducing Your Risk of Chronic Disease.
About Emily Gold Mears
Emily Gold Mears is a citizen scientist, research analyst, biohacker and author. A former attorney, Gold Mears shifted her advocacy efforts to seek information on optimizing one’s health through extensive research analysis in science and medicine. Her research focuses on the intersection of functional and allopathic medicine, and the critical requirements for individuals to become their own health advocates. She is actively involved in several nonprofit organizations, most of which are focused on health-related research.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to missionmatters. com and click on Be Our Guest to Apply. All right, so today’s guest is Emily Gold Mears. She’s an author and healthcare advocate over at Optimizing Your Health.
Emily, welcome to the show. Well, thank you so much for having me, Adam. All right, Emily. for my long term listeners, they know this. I love promoting authors. I love promoting books. I’m a huge fan and advocate of getting your word out there and sharing your message through books. So I guess just to get us kicked off what inspired this book?
Well, I was inspired to write this book when my father became ill, my father, Had an ultimately died from vascular dementia, and I watched how the health care system, the conventional health care system handled his disease. And I was kind of horrified. I mean, there was no emphasis on. Actionable areas of his health, like sleep and exercise and nutrition.
Instead, they just kept applying him full of pharmaceutical after pharmaceutical, none of which did any good, many, which caused other symptoms. And I began researching to see if there was something I could find that might slow the progression of his disease. And what I found was. Kind of grim that despite billions of dollars allocated to research for these neurodegenerative diseases that are increasing in numbers, and many brilliant scientists who have devoted their lives trying to find cures, there has been almost no meaningful progress.
So what I did was I expanded my research because I was looking for something hopeful, something optimistic, something that we could sink our teeth into and what I found, in fact, was quite optimistic, and that is that most of these chronic diseases have a very small genetic component, maybe 5 to 10%, despite what a lot of articles say, and that means that 90 to 95 percent of these chronic diseases are due to environment and lifestyle.
And the reason why that’s great news is because we have some control over our environment. And we have a lot of control over our lifestyle choices. And when I say chronic diseases, I’m including cancer, autoimmune disease, cardiovascular disease, neurodegenerative disease, and metabolic disorder. And that’s pretty much what plagues our country.
But there are things that can be done, and that people need to know that there are many things that they can do to, at the very least, Postpone the onset of these diseases. Now, were you in health care originally, or was this kind of a transition over into health care altogether? Not just this book, but just this you know, this passion.
Total transition. I was a lawyer, a practicing lawyer. I did not love the practice of law. So you used those research skills that you developed as a lawyer, you used for this. Am I off? This is interesting. Exactly. I did not like the practice of law, but I gained great research skills and one needs to do research because so much of the information out there is misinformation and one has to be able to sift through the bad information and get to the, to the truth.
Evidence based information, particularly with social media, and there are these influencers who are putting out stuff that’s just not accurate and it’s confusing to the layperson. And so I found that I was able to go to the information. I have 200 footnotes in my book to make sure that it’s evidence based, and I can go to the clinical studies and the research and kind of synthesize it down.
So that the everyday health consumer can access it more easily. That’s interesting. And so as you’re going through this this research process, and I’m sure there were many moments, but like, is there anything that surprised you? Like, as you started going down the, I call it the proverbial rabbit hole, but whatever, whatever we want to put in that, in the, in the, in the place of my words like, is there anything that surprised you as you started digging into this process?
That’s a great question because yes, in fact, there was I actually have an entire chapter in my book about clinical studies and I had to sanitize the chapter quite a bit because of my publishing company. But now, since the book, that’s a good word, Emily, very specific. Good. Go ahead. It was a shock to me because.
Everyone has relied on these clinical studies, the randomized placebo, double blind studies as the gold standard. And in fact, we don’t really have anything better, but one has to be very careful. And what I learned about these studies, Is you can’t take them at face value because it depends upon who’s sponsoring the study.
Who are the participants in a study? Oftentimes, the participants in these studies, they’re not representative of the public and the people who sponsor them. , they have a specific outcome in mind and we’re now finding in the last year, there have been so many of these studies retracted from high level scientific journals because it has been found that the studies have been manipulated and doctored.
I mean, found that the head of Stanford Medical School lost his job for manipulating the data. In one of his experience, and this is across the board, it’s becoming more and more prevalent, which is rather shocking, at least it was to me. Yeah, it’s like at the end of the day, I mean, the individuals that are participating in doing this, that every, you know, our people have interests, right for whatever reason.
And to think that, you know, at some point, somebody’s self interest can’t alter something. I mean, we’re still human, right? So why people make the choices they make not beyond the context of our little podcast interview, right, Emily, but, but this is good. Cause this lets , our listeners know what, you know, some reasons why they should go pick up a copy of that book, because that’s, that’s Super interesting to see as you were, I don’t know if I call it are you, you correct me?
This is a little investigative work over here, right? To a degree there is, for instance, just last week There was a study that was released that got a ton of attention That intermittent fasting is now associated with higher cardiovascular disease risk everyone went crazy because a lot of people trying to improve their metabolic health.
They Do intermittent fasting which is also known as Time restricted eating. You just eat your meals in a particular time window rather than eating all day and all night and the study came out and was alarming to many people. But in fact, if you dug a little deeper, you found it was a terrible study and for so many reasons, it should be discredited.
And probably the news will come out that the people were left to self report, which is inherently unreliable nutrition studies, which is why we’re constantly hearing. Eggs are good for you. Eggs are bad for you. Coffee is good for you. We hear all this information and it leaves the consumer confused. And part of it is because these nutritional studies are not conducted in a laboratory setting.
They’re done by handing the people questionnaires to fill out. And we know that maybe it’s not ill intended, but people, they don’t report accurately. Because it’s just not laboratory controlled. And so we get all this conflicting nutrition information. Hmm. Well, speaking of information and optimizing your health.
we talked a little bit about, you know, some of the challenges, some of the problems up to this point, like, what are some of the solutions or the things that you propose in the book so we can give our our listeners some things to consider. Well, there are so many solutions, which excites me, because once you take control of your health.
You can really, you know, we used to think that aging and disease and all of that was it was going to happen without our control, but it isn’t true at all. I have 19 chapters. So it’s hard for me to pick anyone. But if I’m pressed to pick the top 3. I would say the top three things that people should do are optimize your sleep.
Sleep is so critical and there’s so many people who get inadequate sleep in this country. And there are ways that you can do it that are free, and that don’t have any bad side effects. You can optimize your sleep. And that’s very important. Sleep is when we heal. It’s when we regenerate. That’s one. The second one, Is your gut recently, there has been so much discovered about the gut microbiome.
And 1 of the main things is that the gut microbiome is connected to everything. It’s connected to our brain to our vagus nerve, and it impacts everything. And if you are walking around with some gut dysbiosis, which simply means an imbalance of good versus bad bacteria. Then you’re going to have a hard time optimizing anything else.
And so there are things that you can do to alter your gut dysbiosis or improve it. And the third thing, it’s hard for me to pick a third thing. Oh, toxins, I would say. I would say toxins are my third thing because I’m convinced that that is a component of every disease. We’re reading now that cancer is on the rise for young people.
And part of that, I have to believe, is the toxin exposure. Our food supply is so heavily tainted with pesticides and fungicides and herbicides and our soil is tainted. We are This confronted our products that we use in our home, our personal care products, our cleaning products, our cookware. There are so many non toxic alternatives available today that while we cannot eliminate all of our toxin exposure, we can definitely make it better.
I mean, I’ve always had these conversations that, by the way, I have zero medical background. I’ve done no research on this, Emily, but I always, I just, these are just my my fantasies in my head. And I’m like, and when I’m talking to friends and otherwise, and I’m like, you know, my grandparents lived to be, you know, in their 90s.
Like like pretty much all of them, at least on my mom’s side. and they lived pretty old. And I was like, man, but they had, you know, they, they lived a solid life. Like 30 years minimum, maybe 40 years with like real food and like, not with the, of their life, especially in the developmental years.
Right. And so when you think about all the things that you just described now, imagine, you know, being a kid growing up in that. Right. And then it’s so hard for people to. Like to be consumers for a lot of things honestly like in all reality, especially with amazon and otherwise where your where your products are coming What’s the actual manufacturing?
Is there an actual control? System on that particular piece of cookware that you’re using, right? Like all these different things that are coming i’m like, wow, it’s a lot it’s a lot to take in right? It is it is but I try to break it down. So, and I encourage people not to become overwhelmed and do everything, but to take one or two steps at a time.
Every incremental improvement that one makes, , they will have a positive impact. And then hopefully they’ll be incentivized to continue and take more steps. I know one of the things that you’re known for is encouraging others to become their own healthcare advocates. What do you mean by that?
Well, gone is the day, unfortunately, where you can outsource your entire healthcare to your doctor. It’s just a different world. The healthcare system is in very bad shape, and pretty much everyone will agree with that. The doctors are pressed by the insurance companies. They can only allocate a very short amount of time to every patient.
And the reality is, You know, your body better than anybody else. You are an expert in you. And while the doctor may give you some guidance, you have to at least collaborate with the doctor and say, you know, I’m not sure I want to do that because I don’t feel good when I do that. They’re very, very, very Quick to prescribe pharmaceuticals and without question.
There are instances where pharmaceuticals are life saving, but not always not always. And so really encourage people to not be fearful to ask questions of your health care provider. And on occasion, when it feels right to go against their advice. Hmm. Yeah. And one of the things I think sometimes people hear this and I just want to be clear, so you’re not saying no medical is, you know, it’s just saying that you should be advocating for yourself.
Like, that’s the thing you have to take responsibility. You can’t like, and maybe we should have never left it all to the doctors or anything else. Cause that’s what also got us into this play in this mess. Right? We would have been, if we had a culture of advocacy, healthcare advocacy for ourselves, maybe we’d be in a different place.
Right? Okay. Absolutely. And I am the first one to say, if you get in a car accident, or you break a leg or a bone, or if you have what they call an acute infection, you want to go straight to your conventionally trained doctor. That is what they are trained to help you with, and they do a brilliant job at it.
But these other diseases, the chronic diseases, they’re multifactorial, and most of them cannot be reversed by a pharmaceutical. So I want to give the audience a little bit of a flavor for the content in the book, so we don’t have to do many spoilers here, but either a story from the book, a clinical study, a discovery, something for the book, just to kind of whet the appetite of the listener.
Well, my first chapter about the oral microbiome, which doesn’t get nearly enough attention. Optimal health, in my opinion, literally begins in your mouth. There’s a clear two way relationship between oral wellness and systemic wellness. And they have recently found that there is a link between periodontal disease.
In particular, there is a bacterial called P. gingivalis and Alzheimer’s disease. They have found in people who die with Alzheimer’s that they had this bacteria which starts in your gums. P. gingivalis, they found it in the brain. And so I encourage people to also begin with their oral health. Make sure that you walk out your products, the toothpaste that we’re all, that we see the most marketing for, that we’re most familiar with, they have some bad chemicals in them.
And I would suggest switching those out. the other thing is don’t use an alcohol based mouthwash. What that does is it kills all the good bacteria on your tongue, along with the bad bacteria and that good bacteria is responsible for producing nitric oxide, which is really an important component of our health.
So. that’s sort of an easy start to swap out your toothpaste, get rid of the alcohol based mouthwash. Oh man, I’m writing that one down. Get, I don’t know if mine is alcohol based or not. I never looked at the, I never looked at the, but I love this though because that’s a smart move. It’s, you know, a significant tip, but it’s something that does not take a lot of work.
You know, like can make that choice and you can buy a new brand, you can make sure it’s not alcohol based. And love that. And I love that example because I’m guessing, correct me if I’m wrong, like the, like the book is peppered with tips that you can, you know, start implementing like right away, like that one that you just gave, which is get rid of the alcohol based mouthwash.
Right. Every chapter has action steps at the end. every chapter has a personal story to illustrate the concept and then action steps at the end. Yeah, this is good. This is good, Emily. And I know my book’s in the mail, so I’m going to be going through there. And for my audience I’m going to be creating some videos around the book as well.
So definitely follow AskAdamTours and you’ll see on all platforms and you’re going to see some videos come out about optimizing your health. The book as well. That being said, Emily, it has been great having you on the show today, getting to know more about you, your background, of course, the book Optimizing Your Health, An Approachable Guide to Reducing Your Risk of Chronic Disease.
That being said, Emily, if somebody’s listening to this and they want to follow up, grab a copy of the book, learn more, do they do those things? Well, the book is available on Amazon and all online book sellers, and I have a website, emily gold mirrors.com and my social media, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook business are all Emily Gold mirrors.
Hmm, fantastic. And, and for everybody listening, we’ll put all that in the show notes so you can just click on the links and head right on over. And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with Mission Matters and you haven’t hit. That subscribe button yet? Well, Hey, now is your chance hit that subscribe button because we have many more mission based entrepreneurs, executives, and experts coming up on the line, and we don’t want you to miss a thing, Emily, it has been such a pleasure.
Thanks again so much for coming on the show. Well, thank you for the opportunity, Adam. I enjoyed speaking with you.
