We Get One Body

[Upbeat Guitar Music]

Mike: Welcome everybody. This is Avoiding the Addiction Affliction, brought to you by Westwords Consulting, the Kenosha County Substance Use Disorder Coalition, and by a grant from the state of Wisconsin's Dose of Reality. Real talks reminding you that opioids are powerful drugs, and that one pill can kill as usual. I'm Mike McGowan.

Mike: Substances like alcohol, nicotine, caffeine and THC affect the body in so many ways. While most folks are aware of the sought after effects of those substances, most people are less knowledgeable about what they really do to the body as a whole. We're gonna talk about what we put into our bodies and how it affects the systems.

Mike: With our guest today, Andrew Lokuta. Andrew is an instructor in human physiology.

Mike: Welcome, Drew.

Andrew: Hello, and thank you for having me today. I always enjoy talking with you.

Mike: Well, thanks. Andrew, and I have done a couple of presentations together. It's always delightful. Drew, I wanted to start this way.

Mike: You've taught human physiology for how long?

Andrew: My goodness. I just realized it's been 26 years.

Mike: Wow.

Andrew: Have been full-time teaching human physiology.

Mike: Holy moly. Well, the reason I ask that is we know a lot more now than we knew when we first started this. Right?

Andrew: You know that, (sigh) what a great perspective. Yes. The answer is yes. There are notable blanks in our knowledge of human physiology that I have been fortunate to witness the filling in. Certainly there are more blanks to go, but it's really fun to look back and see the development in so many aspects of human physiology, from the neuronal, to the muscle, to the cardiovascular, even the gastrointestinal physiology.

Andrew: These things have gained ground over the past 26 years.

Mike: Research and science is good, huh?

Andrew: Yeah, it is.

Mike: (laughs) Well, let's start with the common. We ignore the cautions about what substances that aren't good for us do. Because we seek the desired effects. Let's start with alcohol. The most commonly used, abused, addictive drug. We desire perhaps the feelings alcohol gives us, but the effects, it affects all of the body systems, doesn't it?

Andrew: Yes, that is absolutely correct. And in fact, let's say a little bit more about the desired effect of alcohol. The feel good high that it gives us. I sincerely hope that every single person listening to this conversation has a moment of happiness today. A moment where they just feel good. The important thing to note about that is the feeling is not permanent. It has an inherent time limitation. And that's because up in our brains, the amount of a neurochemical called dopamine briefly rises, and we feel good. The dopamine goes away, the happy feeling declines. Let's think about what happens in the presence of alcohol. Now the amount of dopamine rises dramatically a lot!

Andrew: It's a really high amount and it stays around for longer. Thus you feel that dopamine effect more strongly for longer. That is exactly what we seek when we are drinking. Let's acknowledge that alcohol has many negative side effects on the body. In fact, we have several mechanisms in our body that are present to help break down the alcohol and excrete it from our body.

Andrew: This tells us that alcohol is in fact a poison. Yes, it has this effective dopamine, but it's a poison, and our body wants to get rid of it because it damages so many systems, so many parts of the body. We can say safely all physiological systems are negatively impacted by the presence of repeated and excessive alcohol consumption.

Mike: Okay. Do repeated and regular consumption. What do you mean by that?

Andrew: It is so easy for us to lose track. Today, I have a hard day. I go home instead of just one drink, I have three. Well, tomorrow I forget that I did that. And so I get home and I had another hard day and well, let's have three.

Andrew: And that's the repeated nature of it. And the excessive is more than one. And it's just so easy us for us to forget that. Oh my goodness, it's five days later and we're still having three. Now we're up to maybe four drinks per day, and that's just so easily happens in our society and our culture.

Mike: Well, and we're not talking now about people who become seriously addicted. But you know, we've been told forever about these studies that there's a certain amount of alcohol that's safe for the body, right?

Mike: Used to be what, two drinks for a male and one for a female. Well, they've sort of debunked that, have they not?

Andrew: This is a fabulous point for us to talk about. You're correct. In fact, now the data is showing that alcohol consumption increases the likelihood of cancer occurring in the body.

Andrew: This is new in the past year or two. And again, the more you drink daily, weekly, excessively, the more dramatically your cancer risk rises. I find this to be so remarkable, given that I remember very well the years past when we were told exactly what you're referring to. That daily glass of red wine actually might contribute to a more healthy cardiovascular condition.

Andrew: It might help improve your blood lipid levels. This was called the French Paradox. We now appreciate that that message was not correct, and in fact it is the opposite for all of our physiology. Alcohol consumption does not improve anything. It makes everything worse and it increases our risk of cancer.

Andrew: There's just so many at the time. I don't wanna be so disparaging of earlier years, but there was just a lack of appreciation of the confounding factors. The idea that there were behaviorals and cultural norms and regional dependency that factored into this French Paradox, which have now they've teased apart and realized.

Andrew: Yeah, that's the idea of that glass of red wine really is not beneficial to your health.

Mike: You know it, oh God, I could do two hours on this alone. The whole thing about, we should send that statement you just made to every news organization in the country, because I still hear news reports, especially local ones around St. Patrick's Day and New Year's Eve, talking about (air quotes) "the beneficial effects of alcohol on the heart."

Andrew: It's false, and in fact I would share with you a perspective that I think could very easily be fleshed out. Let's say the French paradox is true. What's actually true about it is the fact that yes, the French have a very high fat diet and they have less cardiovascular disease.

Andrew: The thing we do not appreciate is what else goes along with it? For example, if you were to look at a French dinner plate compared to a American dinner plate. What you're gonna find is that French dinner plate is just replete with vegetables and fruits, all the antioxidants, which oppose the native effect of the wine.

Andrew: While as that American plate, what do you got? You got a big piece of meat and you've got all these. You know things, potatoes and things that are not vegetables and fruit, and so you can very easily see how there are confounding factors that are existing that people did not fully appreciate at the time that the French Paradox was cited.

Andrew: And I just wish there was more appreciation of that.

Mike: Yeah, we were talking before we started to record this about a study that just showed up on the New York Times that for guys like me and you, we were told forever, right? Two drinks a day. Women one drink a day. And now what we know is that if you and I have one drink a day, the chances of dying from alcohol or having, yeah, dying of, from something, from alcohol, cancer, liver is one in a thousand.

Mike: But if it's two drinks a day, which they tell us was safe, it goes from one in a thousand to one in 25.

Andrew: That's amazing.

Mike: That's a pretty big jump. (laughs)

Andrew: I think it just so well exemplifies our need to get messaging out to the public.

Mike: Yeah.

Andrew: In a manner such as what we're doing right here.

Mike: Yeah, I agree. Now they're talking about alcohol substitutes and there are a ton of alcohol substitutes and I want you to speak to one of them if you don't mind.

Mike: 'Cause there's a substance called Feel Free and it's sold right. And it has Kratom and Kava, psychoactives. What do psychoactives do to the body?

Andrew: In particular let's focus on the brain. You have this chemical, this psychoactive, which you put into the brain, and then you're going to have an altered mental state in the presence of it.

Andrew: And from that, you're going to try to conclude healthy benefits of something that is not in any way natural or healthy to you. It's such a red herring to say that, well, yeah, let's put this psychoactive thing in and then we're gonna suddenly have a magical benefit effect. No, that's just not gonna happen. (laughs)

Andrew: That is a non sequitur. It does not follow.

Mike: And the reason it's come to light is there's all these people now publishing on social media how they've gotten into trouble with that substance where it became almost, well, it became more addictive than the alcohol that they were on.

Andrew: Amen. Yeah, exactly.

Mike: Let's click to the second drug. When you and I were younger I bet you had a smoking area outside your high school somewhere. And cigarettes were easily the number two on the list. And then we did a really good job with cigarettes Drew. The youth today hardly ever smoke, but then we rested a little and along come vape e-cigarettes, and now nicotine pouches.

Mike: Talk about nicotine in the body.

Andrew: Yeah, I got a lot to say about this one because in particular it's not uncommon for me to be told by high school teenagers. Yeah, I hear all the time nicotine is a highly addictive substance, so?

Mike: So. Yeah.

Andrew: It just doesn't register with them. So I think it is such a great thing to see the substantial decline of cigarette use.

Andrew: People have finally realized that Big Tobacco was lying. They were intentionally hiding information. They were making huge profits on the declining health and death of people in the world. But you gotta know those in huge industry people said, we can't lose our profits. We can't lose our multi-billion dollar industry.

Andrew: So what new markets can we exploit? How can we get more people addicted to nicotine sooner? In their lives and thus ensure the maintenance of our wealth in our industrial machine. Along comes the e-cigarettes and the vapes. The dose of nicotine in those products is so much higher than it ever was or could be in cigarettes.

Andrew: This higher dose in the e-cigarettes, the vapes, it ensures addiction sooner and a more powerful addiction. Then they realized, you know what? If we add flavors to those vapes, we can really market and attract the teens even more. This really ensures an addiction in a larger market. They don't just care about our health and welfare in the face of this wealthy bottom line.

Andrew: They are willing to endanger our youth for the purposes of keeping the industry going. And then it gets even worse. Big tobacco figured out that since nicotine is very irritating to our mucus membranes, there was a limit to how much they could put into products like cigarettes. They paid lots of money to chemists who then figured out that if the nicotine was chemically modified into what's called assault, you know, it doesn't irritate the mucus membranes near as much.

Andrew: Thus you have the birth of the nicotine pouches that you mentioned. Look, these pouches are not possible without the chemical advances, which from a chemistry point of view are amazing, but from a health point of view are devastating. We as parents really have to be concerned about these nicotine pouches.

Andrew: Our kids are now regularly exposing themselves to unimaginable unbelievably high doses of nicotine that are in these oral pouches. That of course is gonna come along with a high price to pay in the coming years. You can't regularly consume that much nicotine and really think it's not gonna do anything to you.

Andrew: It's just not reasonable. And yet, this is the situation we find ourselves in.

Mike: I've talked about it before, but I've heard athletes this summer talk about how it helps their focus and performance. Because nicotine is somewhat of a stimulant. It doesn't up your performance.

Andrew: Yes. And simply said, and well said something at a recent event that we attended, I was just so impressed with this idea.

Andrew: Imagine we have the young athlete, it's a training day, and you know they're feeling less than optimal. So they take that nicotine pouch, the crutch, it allows them to train. It allows them to perform and succeed that day. So they say to themselves, wow, well that was good. So I'm gonna do that tomorrow. And they do that over and over again.

Andrew: But then what happens on day of competition? You don't have the crutch and you take the crutch away. Look, you gotta know everything is gonna crumble. You can't, as an athlete, expect that training in the presence of nicotine will allow you to have the highest competitive performance in a competition where you don't have the crutch because you've trained in the presence of the crutch, and now you're taking it away.

Andrew: Of course, you're not gonna do as well. You can't train in the presence of nicotine and expect to perform in the absence of nicotine. I think that was such a wonderful, concise and pithy statement.

Mike: We did such a good job with cigarettes. I'm optimistic, are you? That we can get behind the same message with the other stuff because there's the upside to the, there's a limited upside.

Andrew: Agreed. And yes, I am inherently optimistic. The problem is it's gonna take time. So it took time for people to really understand the consequences of smoking and all of the cancer and all the terrible death. And it took time for everyone to realize, you know, yeah, chewing tobacco and the between the cheek and the gum was really bad for you.

Andrew: It's happened, but it took time. And I think one thing we have to our advantage right now is that you and I are doing this event and we have a way to get to more people, more effectively. To get the message out there that, look, the vaping products and the nicotine pouches are in fact even just as damaging, possibly more damaging than the cigarettes because of the high dose of nicotine, which becomes possible and has such negative impacts on our body.

Mike: Yeah, drew and I both live in Wisconsin and we just passed, as of September 1st, a more restrictive vaping law. However, to go to Drew's point, the products that seem exempt from the law are those from big tobacco. So the smaller dealers of the nicotine and the flavored vapes are good. Not that I'm advocating for them, but they're suffering while Juul and the rest of them march on.

Mike: Talk about caffeine a little bit and what that does to the body, Drew.

Andrew: Okay. Let's first establish that caffeine is a nervous system stimulant. And as such, it's going to affect every physiological system in the body.

Andrew: It's gonna increase your alertness, it's gonna have an impact on your cardiovascular system, your digestive system, your hormonal or endocrine functions. Now, specifically, many people are so aware that when you consume a product with caffeine, it's gonna reduce your drowsiness. Yes, it is. Part of the way it's doing that is it's triggering your fight or flight stress response, which if you repeatedly do, you gotta know it's not a good thing. (laughs)

Andrew: It can't be in a permanent state of stress, okay. It is going to boost your reaction time, it's going to boost your concentration, your focus. These are things that people seek, and yes, it does that. But the problem is people don't realize in repeatedly seeking that effect, you become addictive. And it's remarkable to me how many people wanna make the case that caffeine is fine.

Andrew: Caffeine is not a problem. Folks, caffeine, it's an addictive substance. It's got the two hallmarks of addiction. Talk to anyone that consumes caffeine regularly. They have a tolerance buildup.

Mike: Yeah.

Andrew: Of course it's addictive! They have withdrawal symptoms if you take it away. This is an addictive substance and by nature, anything that's addictive to us is probably not in our best interest.

Andrew: Let's explore that a little more. In terms of your cardiovascular system, it's going to increase your heart rate and your blood pressure. You gotta know both in the short term and the long term, that's problematic.

Andrew: If you have higher blood pressure and higher heart rate, you are setting yourself up for arrhythmias. You are setting yourself up for a heart attack. You are setting yourself up for stroke. You gotta know you're doing that, particularly with large doses repeatedly for a long time. Many people are well aware it affects your stomach. When you consume a lot of caffeinated products, you make more acid, you make more stomach acid that splashes up into your esophagus, you have more heartburn.

Andrew: You gotta know heartburn is an indicator. You got acid in your esophagus. That's not a good thing! You gotta know this. You gotta realize this. Now one thing people look to is the fact that it acts as a laxative. Many morning people know that they have their cup of coffee. Within 30 or 20 minutes, they're gonna have their first bowel movement of the day.

Andrew: They know that it's a laxative. The problem is, again, when the dose gets too high, that laxative effect produces a substantial amount of diarrhea, which promotes dehydration, which promotes electrolyte imbalance. These things are not good for you. Finally, it's a diuretic. It makes you urinate more. Everyone knows that.

Andrew: Again, the issue here is large amounts, large amounts of increased urination. You're looking at dehydration problems. You're looking at electrolyte imbalance. These things are not good for you. Couple things I wanted to add that have been recently coming up in the better review studies. Not everyone realizes that the caffeine actually does in fact impact their insulin sensitivity.

Andrew: Think a worsening of a diabetic condition. Caffeine does not let your cells take up glucose. It does not allow insulin to do its job. So you are worsening a diabetic condition or you're simulating a diabetic condition. People don't realize that. People don't realize that there's been some recent really good evidence that it alters hormone levels, and in particular, the sex steroids, the estrogen, the progesterone, the testosterone.

Andrew: This can have an important long-term effect on anyone of any identity of birth, whether it's male or female. This can impact you. And yes, the effects there can. Vary based on genetics and the source of caffeine, but the fact is you're playing with fire if you're messing with the sex steroids. Finally, I wanna remind everyone, yes, when you have a large amount of a highly caffeinated substance, your skeletal muscles don't work as well.

Andrew: You know you get the tremors. That's a sign that something is not good. If your skeletal muscles are causing you to tremor, that's overstimulation. That's not a good thing. Finally, it affects calcium absorption, and in particular what we have to focus on here is that your bones must regularly absorb calcium from our diet so they don't get weak, so you don't get osteoporosis.

Andrew: Caffeine promotes osteoporosis. It blocks the uptake of calcium into our bones, so they get weak and we get more cases, more incidents of osteoporosis. That's just a very brief, cursory overview. There's even more to say, but I think we've made our point. It has to be careful.

Mike: I hear the same thing about caffeine and coffee that we talked about before with alcohol that there's positive benefits, but there's so many beverages now that are, you mentioned a couple times highly caffeinated.

Mike: We're not talking about just a cup of Dunkin' Donuts coffee here, right?

Andrew: Yes. I have students all the time appropriately don't say anything out loud to create the learning space as a welcoming environment. Sometimes you see these people walking in with these big cans of these energy drinks and you think... (sigh) (laughs)

Andrew: Do you understand what you're doing? Yes, but I'm tired! I need to wake up! Okay, all right. Yes, you know, you could wake up by just doing some jumping jacks. You could just run around the building a few times and that would be a natural way of waking up. You don't necessarily need this ridiculously caffeinated beverage.

Andrew: But again, those are things I try not to, I don't want to offend anyone, and I don't want to put anyone off, but everyone listening consider alternatives. If you need a boost, if you need to wake up, move! Physical activity is a great way to wake up.

Mike: I heard you talk when we were together during a presentation about the amount of caffeine that's still tracing through your system when you're trying to sleep.

Mike: So talk about hard waking up. Talk about hard going to sleep.

Andrew: There was one person that spoke about that, that I just literally was like, oh my goodness. You're right. The idea was if you have that energy drink that has the equivalence of two cups of coffee, say late afternoon. The time it takes for that caffeine to clear the body.

Andrew: When you get to 10 o'clock at night, you still have a cup of coffee worth of caffeine still in you and you need to go to sleep, but you can't, that you are exactly right.

Mike: Yeah. You know, again, we're not criticizing people's choices, we're just saying make informed choices. Right?

Andrew: Yes.

Mike: And that's my lead into the next one because anytime I mention the next substance we get emails, THC. Marijuana is now legalized. Cannabis is legalized in a number of different states, not where we live yet. Although we have the lookalike, the Delta nine and gummies. Just because it's legal as nicotine and alcohol doesn't mean that it's good for the body. How does THC cannabis affect the body systems?

Andrew: Great point. And again, I will do my best not to go on for an hour.

Mike: Go ahead. (laughs)

Andrew: But in a reader's digest way, it is very safe to say that marijuana, cannabis, THC in any of those named forms, Delta eight, Delta nine, look, it adversely affects our body systems and our physiology. In fact, just today I was sent by a coalition member this article in which they looked at data from 4 million people.

Andrew: That's not some small amount, it's 4 million people! They discovered that the risk of becoming a diabetic is quadrupled with marijuana use, quadrupled folks. That's not a 20%, 30% increase. That's quadrupled! Come on! You can't ignore this. So the amount of a negative impact by THC, by marijuana, by any of these things, it is gonna vary depending on the frequency of use, the potency of what's being consumed, whether it's the old time marijuana plants, or the new genetically bred plants or the vaping product.

Andrew: There are individual factors as well, but we can say. For many physiological systems, whether you wanna talk acute, which are temporary or long-term adverse outcomes, things are well documented. We just stated four times more likely to become a diabetic. Let's identify some of the more serious and potentially permanent problems.

Andrew: It is remarkable to me the amount of people that sell THC products that will tell people, you know, it doesn't really impair the brain. It doesn't really have an effect on the brain function. Like memory. No, your memory is fine. They are lying. They are after your money. They don't give a care at all about your health. When you consume marijuana, THC you are going to impair your cognitive function. You're going to impair your ability to make memory. Yes, you are. And we have the data to show it. You're going to impair your ability to learn. You're impairing your attention faculty. These things are all awful to have reduced in the adult, but think about the teens developing brain in which their ability to become an adult and have an attention span, to have memory, to have learning.

Andrew: These things are all impaired negatively as that brain's developing in the presence of the THC. This is not a good thing. Furthermore, in both adults and developing teens. It is clear that regular THC consumption increases the likelihood of depression, anxiety, and especially in those predisposed, psychosis and schizophrenia.

Andrew: The sellers don't want you to know about that, but the numbers are unrefutable. The increased incidence of the psychosis, the schizophrenia goes way up. THC it just makes those things occur a lot more frequently. Your coordination, your perception is gonna be impaired. So this actually happened.

Andrew: I know of a law enforcement person who pulled over a car that was driving erratically. Poor coordination, poor perception. The driver had consumed a great deal of THC. And said to the officer, no, no, everything's good. Yeah, see my friends over here in the car, see, they're consuming alcohol, so they weren't safe to drive, so I took over for them and I'm the designated driver. (laughs)

Andrew: What, what? Oh my goodness. Let's talk about cardiovascular system. Again, people don't realize you take the THC regularly, you are putting a regular strain on your heart. This is gonna increase your heart rate, your blood pressure. This extra strain is gonna put you at increased risk of cardiovascular events like stroke, heart attack, palpitations, arrhythmia.

Andrew: This goes way up and all you have to do is look at the emergency room records of those states where they've legalized it to see this effect. It's so easy to do, and yet we're gonna deny that, we're just gonna put that off to the side. No, let's bring that up to the surface and say, oh my goodness.

Andrew: Yeah, when you legalize it, okay, there are socioeconomic reasons why it's legalized, but let's pay attention to the health problems that it's causing like we've enumerated. Finally, in terms of the respiratory system. Absolutely the fact that you're not necessarily smoking a cigarette, that is the marijuana plant.

Andrew: You're using the vape product, you are still gonna have all the negative effects of that vape product. There's heavy metals in that. You are going to impair your respiratory system just by the very apparatus that you're using to consume that THC. So you don't get away from the respiratory problems. They are still present.

Andrew: You can lead to chronic bronchitis, chronic coughing, wheezing. In some cases, this can even promote the incidence of cancer in those regions of the body in which you would think, well, I'm not smoking a cigarette, so I should be reducing respiratory cancer. Actually, no you're not. It's actually the same, maybe even higher.

Andrew: And again, people don't recognize that. Two last things about THC that I wanted to be sure to mention. I've been asked this, is it true that when you smoke marijuana or consume marijuana product, you get the munchies, you tend to consume high calorie, high fat snacks. The answer is it seems to be true.

Andrew: This seems to be not a wives tale. It actually happens, and the reason for it is not totally agreed upon. There's not a universal acceptance of why this happened. But I've been asked this and I've looked into it, and I think one of the most interesting hypotheses is that what the marijuana does, it alters your sense of smell.

Andrew: And so now, rather than becoming, you know how french fries smell really good when you're hungry?

Mike: Yes, they do

Andrew: Or potato chips smell really good. After a while when you're full they don't smell as good to you. They're not as desirable, and part of that is your sense of smell. And what THC does is ensures you don't get tired of smelling it.

Andrew: You keep on wanting it, which is a wonderful curious hypothesis. What I'm getting at is, yes, when you consume marijuana, you are increasing your consumption of nutrients that are empty and not beneficial to you, and that can lead to metabolic issues. The very last thing I did want to mention there is some increasing evidence that there are reproductive issues.

Andrew: The use of THC and marijuana regularly does impact a person's fertility, whether it's a genotype male or genotype female. This does impact fertility. It does pose a risk for pregnancy and the maintenance of pregnancy. Again, these are things that are coming out in epidemiological studies that I think we all need to be aware of.

Andrew: So I need to say one more thing.

Andrew: We need to be careful about the association of (air quotes) "benefits" with THC. I wanna be very clear on my position on this because I'm thinking about the medical use of marijuana. For example, I have a close friend that was treated for cancer with chemotherapy and they suffered significant nausea, significant vomiting from the chemotherapy.

Andrew: In that case, that medical use of marijuana. The THC was able to significantly reduce their symptoms. It allowed for a modicum of relief. What I want to be very clear on how I view marijuana medically. If that marijuana is in my healthcare provider's toolbox as something to use for things like excessive nausea and vomiting from chemotherapy, I'm okay with that because here I have a person who is very carefully thinking about the dose, the administration, when, where, how, and why I'm consuming it.

Andrew: I think that kind of precision is very useful and very medically can be warranted. Look, that is very different from a person just using whatever, whenever, however, those are two very different things and I wanna be very clear about my position on that. So I hope I am.

Mike: Yeah, you were, and you cited a ton of research.

Mike: Now I gotta ask you, 'cause I get it all the time, the minute this comes up and I always save it till last. Right. When you talk about all of the information you've done and you've studied, you've taught it, this is your career, how do you react and what do you say when your information is challenged?

Mike: Oh, that's a lie. That's just bunk. You're just saying that, that's not true. You know, blah, blah, blah. I'm sure it's happened to you. It's happened to me all the time.

Andrew: Yes. I have been aggressively, and I use that word lightly, aggressively challenged by the public, by parents, people at events, presentations.

Andrew: Teenagers, oohh, the teenagers. They can get very riled up, very agitated when you talk to them. And actually, I kind of like it when they do because that means they're paying attention. So I like that.

Mike: Yes.

Andrew: (sigh) These topics that we're talking about here, they include cultural history, cultural norms, accepted norms of growth, accepted norms of behavior, and here you and I are challenging that.

Andrew: We should expect agitation and frustration. We should embrace that when it happens, because again, it means they're paying attention that yeah, we have a conversation to have. So to answer your question, I have learned that it's very important to acknowledge their viewpoint, to honor their experience, to honor their cultural norm.

Andrew: Let them know I grew up in it. I understand what you're saying. What I want to do today, tomorrow, tonight, whenever, I wanna suggest alternative viewpoints, and I'm very intentional about that. Alternative viewpoints, because I'm looking at data, I'm looking at measurables. I'm not looking at nuance and suggestions.

Andrew: I'm looking at measurable observations. And what I'm suggesting to them whenever they challenge me and they are aggressive about it, I say, all right, look. Let's just for a moment, consider an alternative viewpoint that allows you to reconsider, perhaps recalibrate your thinking. I don't want you to feel defensive.

Andrew: I don't want you to be feeling like I am tearing apart your world. No. What I'd like you to do is just consider a different viewpoint based on these things, and then be proactive. If you feel like, yes, you know what, actually, that's something I do need to consider. Let's be proactive about it. That's what I'm doing, and when I approach it in that way, I think I've been able to diffuse most of the violence in the moment, if you will.

Mike: That's great. So I think that's a great place to end it. You're not challenging their being, you're just saying be open to other alternatives.

Andrew: Yes. And again, what's so important is to recognize we are challenging cultural norms.

Mike: Yeah.

Andrew: We're challenging what people grew up in and that's not comfortable.

Andrew: That's not what you wanna hear. So let's be sure about why I'm challenging it and here's my viewpoint. Maybe you would like to know about this. And a lot of cases, it's true, I think the best I can hope for is when they walk away saying, yeah, yeah, I'll think about it. Yeah.

Andrew: I think that's the best I can hope for.

Mike: (laughs) Maybe I should title this podcast. "Yeah. Yeah. I'll think about it." That would be a great title for it.

Andrew: Yes! Yes!

Mike: Drew, I know we're gonna have great feedback on this podcast. I 'll see what the feedback says. I'll invite you back.

Mike: I really love listening to you. I love talking to you. Thanks so much for sharing your expertise, your wisdom and your experience with this.

Mike: For those of you who are listening. We hope that you are healthy, well, and we thank you always for listening, and we want you to be safe and just be open.

Mike: Just walk away thinking, ah, maybe just maybe.