Jana has an appointment with one of the most famous doctors of all time, the legendary Dr. Drew!
Dr. Drew shares the realities of sex addiction when Jana opens up about the challenges she faced in her previous marriage.
We discuss the effect social media has on our mental health, and how to protect our children from the negative aspects of being online.
Plus, Dr. Drew has some anti-aging tips you NEED to hear!
Wind Down with Janet Kramer and I'm Heeart Radio podcast. This interview is brought to you by the Wellness Company and today's show, we're going to have Doctor Drew, like the Doctor Drew, the celebrity Doctor Drew, Board certified physician. He is incredible. He's a host, he's an author, he's a public speaker. He has treated tens of thousands of patients in his forty years as a physician. So let's get him on. So excited to have you on the show. I've watched you for many years now. First of all, what is the number one question that you get asked in the health space?
The number one question I got asked is one I hate answering, which is what's the craziest call you ever heard? On love line? And so that's.
Usually where it isn't even going to go there.
I know that, but I wanted to make sure we put that one out there as we can avoid it. In terms of health. Usually people are more curious about addiction, and they'll they'll, but I'm not sure there's one specific question that always comes through, and maybe I'll think of it as we go along here, but usually it's along the lines of you know, is this a disease? How do you get somebody to stop? Just sort of general questions tend to come through. And what do I do with my fill in the blank, but with my son, my daughter or whatever? You know?
Sure? Sure? And what because this part I'm sorry that I missed. But where Why did you specialize an addiction?
I am? I mean there's a long story. Everything with me is accident and serendipity and takes a minute to describe what actually happened.
I always say, my life is a long story short.
Yeah, I know, well yours is you? Yeah? I mean, you're young enough that you can still tell and I've got long stories to tell it. Ith I was, I'm in internis by training. I ended up being a chief resident internal medicine, teaching internal medicine. But as I was doing all that training, I ended up moonlighting in a psychiatric hospital, and I very quickly moved into the position of being there direct the chief of service for medicine, and I got very skilled in the care medical care of psychiatric patients. I was always interested in the brain and interested in psychiatry, and I guess where all the medical problems were a lot of the times, I mean all of them, but certainly every night when I was on call, there'd always be something on the drug unit. And when I got there, I was very sort of intrigued to discover that there was a physician in charge of the program at the time. This is not nineteen eighty five who had made a clinical discipline out of drug withdrawal. And I was working at County hospitals at that time seeing tons of alcoholics and heroin addicts, and what we did to get them off the drugs was very haphazard and random, frankly and wrong most of the time. And so I got very good at detoxing people, and so I was getting lots of requests come down to help with the detox and withdrawals and stuff. They're the very medical when you get people off some of these drugs, and I got very good at that, and was being asked to see lots of addicts and still didn't know anything about the disease. And I was sort of of arrogant about the fact that I was really helping these people and what's this goofy twelve step stuff going on in the rooms there. But I always liked the drug unit. I liked the staff. I liked the culture, and I just would I've spending a lot of time down there. And finally I saw a few patients all the way through their treatment and they went these are young, otherwise healthy people that went from dying to amazing, and I was like, oh my god, what is that. I want to understand what just happened here? Because usually in general medicine, you'd go from really seriously ill to chronically ill. That's sort of the best you could do, and here was really ill to better than you ever knew. And so I got more and more and more involved in it, and then over the course of years was asked to be an assistant director. And then once I was an assistant director of that program, the director quit, which is something I didn't expect, and I moved in the position of directorship. And at that time, this is now early nineteen ninety ninety one, to have an internist be in that position was almost unheard of. So I clung to it pretty hard because I thought, boy, I'm never going to have an opportunity like this again, and this is so fascinating. And then I really focused on my training and expertise in that area. I'm still doing general medicine all alongside. I was a bad, bad, bad workaholic. I would get up in the five in the morning and I would struggle to get home by ten at night for years.
But I mean, look how many people you've helped, you know.
Helped, And really, now what has happened is I've had this extraordinary experience of the human experience with the human experience that people are just not getting today. Nobody gets medicine and psychiatry at the depth and breadth that I had it, And now I just kind of want to give that back. I wanted to share what I've learned as a result of that, because it's not being No one gets to see that anymore, and it's a shame, it's a mess. It's not good necessarily right.
And when it comes to addiction, I feel like, so I haven't personally dealt with addiction, but I had an ex that had a sex addiction, and it was so many times when I it was really hard for me to understand. And a lot of people would say, well, it's just like an alcohol or drug addiction, But it seems as if when I would speak to my ex husband about this, you know, and trying to kind of make sense of it, and you know, it's it seems like alcoholism and drug addiction is a more accept like people can understand that more as than sex addiction. Right, so people can go okay, but I'm like, but I always tried to defend my ex husband and still to this day, I'm like, no, I still think it's an addiction. I think it's maybe not a people just.
Well let's talk about it. Let's I know, I know what you're struggling with.
Yeah, okay, there you go. And I'm one of the ones that actually like do like think it is an addiction, but I think it's hard for people that.
Here's here's let's specify. It is not a ds M four d s M five diagnostic category is a way of conceptualizing a phenomenon that is becoming increasingly common and affecting people's lives profoundly, and as such, conceptualized as such, there are people who have used that construct to really help the couples and the people struggling with this condition. It is a it is a discipline, it's an approach. I'm sure is he in recovery? Now? Is he? Is he doing his thing?
He I believe he is, but again, you know, I kind of separated from that while he's max husband. That makes sense.
Did he take it very seriously and get involved in the treatment process, do you know?
I mean he went to rehab, but the problem was that there was lots of relapses afterwards, and then I was like piecing out.
But that that was your experience with it, which which.
Is just my experience. But I have seen many people not relapse, you know, right.
So and so you know, for the partner, he or she has to decide what can I tolerate? What can I hang in with? And that's all over the place. What do I need to know? Do I need a disclosure and all this stuff? And then what am I willing to tolerate if I do hang out? And you have to be very clear about that, and if he is unable to get over just like with the alcohol, I'm addiction, right, same thing, Like you're not helping them by sticking around. Many times, loss is the one thing that they get them to the place where they're able to actually do the work. And so you may have helped him, That's what I'm wondering, if it really did help him, might have.
I mean, I don't know, and I hopefully he's on the other side of it now, you know, I don't Again, we just try to coparents.
And there are meetings that there's various programs in this region. So let's kind of get into a little further because it is it's funny you bring it up, because it's something that's been on my mind lately. Is becoming increasingly important for people for many different reasons. Pornography has obviously had a huge impact on sex addiction, but I think we've come through a period where there's been so much childhood trauma. There's been so much confusion about our sexuality and about intimacy. There's been so many attachment problems because again of the you know, put two parents out of the home, and you know, so many so much failure in marriage. There's so much that's going on in our family systems that this kind of thing is what comes from it. And there are people that are quite well trained in helping to manage it, but oftentimes typically at the core is a twelve step program, mostly because it requires daily work and there aren't there's enough resources to really do it with professionals the way it should be done, and the twelve step works very very well in getting people to the point where they're seeing the condition as it is and finding a program of recovery, and the twelve step program really yields some great results with that. And the other thing to know about it is there's many, many different programs. There's you know, women kind of come to sex addiction through love addiction. Men come to sort of love compulsions if they get there at all, through sex and and then again, as I said, pornography is in the middle of all this. And gay men have a different problem sometimes than straight men. So there's different programs. There's A there's a there's s l A A, there's l A and and people because this is such an intimate and protein sort of thing, people kind of have to find the version the manifestations that speaks speaks to their particular syndrome, and it is a syndrome, not a diagnosis.
Do you think it's on the same line though, because I feel.
Like there's addiction. Yeah, oh yeah, absolutely, it's the same.
But I just feel like one's more acceptable, not acceptable, but one's more like oh then like the other one's like, uh, well.
Say that again. I know I can say, but it's clear one's one's what's well, because that's I.
Mean, that's like how because one's like oh okay, like yeah, there's you know, it's almost like not that it's ever okay to be, but it's like it's okay that it's more I guess acceptable.
I guess people have come to understand what chemicals can do to people. They have not yet come to understand what screens and other kinds of trauma can do to their interpersonal lives. They don't, they don't know it. They don't know it. They will because it's becoming so common. And what makes me unhappy is very few people not very few, but only a limited percentage get to recovery. They just they just struggle along. They find individual therapists, they kind of get a little bit better, and they do the same thing over and over and over again. And it's not a great You hurt a lot of people in those cycles, both yourself and others, and you don't you don't really intend to, but you do, and it's it's it's awful being on your side of it too. It's really rough, the betrayal, the confusion.
It was tough. Yeah, but on the other side of that now, which is good. Good on the internal medicine side. How bad do you hate Google?
You know, I'm we're getting a better We're getting to a better place with the Google. Me and me and doctor Google are getting to a better place. Okay, because I.
Am I texted my internal medicine dude, doctor, dude, doctor, dude, doctor com a dude doctor, and I'm like, I either have MS or I have a brain tumor so like, because I go on and I deep dive and I'm like and that's kind of my conclusion that I'm drawing myself. And he's like or I'm like, no, no, no, there's no or like, here's my symptoms and here it matches this and that, and he's like, you have to get off Google. And I'm like I can't. Like, I just there's so much out there.
Yeah, it's hard. Uh. We many of my peers, maybe fifteen years ago started putting a sign in our office that frame where patients could see it, that said, please do not confuse your Google search with my medical training, because they are not the same. And people have been very confused about the difference between information and wisdom, knowledge and understand that whatever you found on Google, I knew at the end of second year medical school, and then I trained for another ten years coming to understand what it is in a as it manifest in a human being. And to the point now where when you have years and years of experience, you can walk in the room and you're like, you know immediately what's going on. You just can practically smell it and you know it's not going on oftentimes, And so what we do then once we you know, sort of draw our clinical conclusions, then we move through a careful workup to make sure we're right. But your doctor would have a pretty easy time knowing the difference between MS brain tumor and sleep disturbances or anxiety or whatever.
Else going on, you know, to be determined.
And an easy thing. You know, we'll rule out MS very very quickly with an MRI if if it's important, you know, every need to calm me down. But right, but there are ways to tell that these are not There's just differing qualities to these things as they manifest in the human experience.
To stay in our best you know, for a body, like what is the best not only wellness practice, but also just like is there a set like what do you take? What is the supplements that you take?
So I want to finish my relationship with doctor. Google has improved now where I find patients Now when they bring they used to bring in stacks of stuff and go did you know?
You know?
It's like yeah, now they go. Now they tend to take more of approach. Like I was searching around and maybe I'm being anxious and maybe I'm being dramatic, but here's what I found. Here's what I'm thinking. What do you think? And that I appreciate because that's a well informed patient now, you know, And that's something that I can really work with. But back to health maintenance and stuff. It's funny I just finished a podcast with doctor Gabriel Lyons. I'm a big fan of Peter A Tia, and we are spending a lot of energy helping people understand the importance of maintaining body muscle mass across the lifespan. That's starting to work out with resistance training early and often and maintaining it throughout your life is an exceedingly important element in living well and living long, as well as addressing some of our metabolic problems and our obesity problems. She was saying. She was making the point that she came to a conclusion one day that really the problem wasn't a body weight body fat problem, It was a encyclopaennia problem, a lack of muscle mass, and that the organ system of the skeletal muscle needed to be really carefully addressed. And I believe that wholeheartedly. There are you know for me, I follow you know, an exercise program that is I used to lift very very heavyweights all the time, and I destroyed my shoulders doing that. I happen to be one of the people that really liked doing that. I did it every day for at least thirty to forty minutes, just something I really enjoyed. It was my study hall. But I I would listen to podcasts and things like that, and I destroyed my shoulders doing that. And for years, trainers were telling me to train otherwise, but I was too stubborn, and I just would go back to what I liked, which is what people do tend to do. And I do recommend that people who do the exercise they will like. The most important thing is that you do something, but that excessive cardio or even lots of cardio may not be the well it isn't the best thing. It raises cortisol. It actually can increase fat deposition. It certainly can decrease muscle mass. And because we know that muscle mass is a really important ingredient, resistance training has got to be a part of everybody's program. And don't worry that you're going to gain too much muscle. It just doesn't happen. You've got to do some resistance training and picking up a weight as an important part of that. It's not just body weight, not just bands. I think actually having a weight that you doesn't have to be a lot of weight, but you have to do that. And so for me, I get involved with somebody asked me to do a cameo for the organization called v Shred, and I was looking at their stuff and I thought, God, the way Vince is training and training everybody, it's exactly what I should be doing. So I started to following his videos and they I've had huge success with it, and so I do hit cardio with them. I do a lot of cable training. I do higher reps and you know, like fifteen reps no longer the six to eight reps that used to do and I'm having really, really a good time with it and a lot of success with it, and it's helped me with my weight management too. Interestingly.
I love that. And then what about supplement wise.
Sublements I am, I am an advocate. There's two supplements that are kind of all over the place. We do live in sort of the goal so much.
I know, I literally like the ones from my blood work that I need. But then there's just like, there's armor, there's a g one, there's I mean, there's just so many things.
I don't know what to make of armor right now. I'm looking at them. They seem to be a good product. I think there's something there. But there are two, and I take a bunch. I take a bunch of stuff, but there are two that I can recommend with absolute clarity. One is nicotinamide ribicide, which is something called the highest vert quality version. That's something called true niagen and that is a you know you heard of NAD infusions. You've ever had in any D infusion? No? Okay. As we age, our NAD levels fall off. That is a natural part of aging, and it affects the oxidative state, particularly of our mitochondria and that is a core process in aging, and we can enhance that orally with nicotinamide riboside. And so I take true niogen every day about a thousand milligrams true nagen. I've done that for ten years. And whenever anybody says to me, you know, you know, look, you're right. I'm sixty almost sixty six now, I always think, I wonder if it's that nigen. I wonder if that's what did it, because that plus the resistance training, to me is like those are two anti aging in inputs or interventions anybody can do. Okay, so true nigen resistance training. There's a new supplement called Fatty fifteen fat.
Oh, I love that. My guy, my doctor dude, has me on that one.
Okay. So that comes out of dolphin research and it's a very fine couple. She's a veterinarian, he's an orthopedis. They researched this. The Navy maintains a fleet of dolphins. She was the veterinarian for the dolphins. She noticed that some of them got Alzheimer's. She did some research. She found this is the short story, that they had a deficiency in this compound and when they replaced the compound, they didn't get dementia, and so now they have some human studies. This one seems like a real deal to me. So and certainly no downside to either of these for sure. So fatty fifteen, true Niagen.
Yeah, I like the Fatty fifteen I've I mean, I like that one.
I'm going to come out with. I'm I'm going to be pushing out a couple of my own sort of products, and soon I'm gonna, I think for a less expensive way to get something similar to what true nigen does is going for glue to thione and asteal systeine kind of combinations. You can do that. There is nicotine on my mononucleotide, which I actually don't like as much as n R. But that's another way these are. These things are expensive if you really are doing But so I'm always trying to find ways to make it with your bad people need to but people need to have accessible ways to do this. So I'm also always looking for cost effective ways to do this.
So I've got I've got three kids, my oldest is a and you know, I'm always looking into well, first of all, I don't like so social media. I have to be on it obviously for work, but I'm very much like, get off the technology, get off the phones. I don't want her to have social media. I mean, her friends have phones when you're eight, Like, I'm not giving you a phone because I personally can attribute some of my depression from when I was locked into Instagram and social media, and there's just so I mean, I'm like, I'm almost I'm a forty year old woman now and I still can see the how the effects of how social media can affect me, and I'm like, I'm not giving that to a precious eight year old or nine, ten, whatever.
It is the big problem. I mean, everybody agrees, right, it's inescapable the measurable impact negative impact it has on people's mental health, particularly young women. But the hard part is getting not just your kids off social media, but they're peers.
Well yeah, because she's going to be the one friend that doesn't, and then what it cans.
You can't cripple her socially. But by the same token, if you could just get some cooperation from the rest of the parents so at least emit, or not have them in school or something where the community is together on this, then you have an opportunity. A friend of mine studies all this, that's all she does. She's a very fine psychologist. She has a website called DCA Kids. I think it's called dot org, which is about Digital Citizen Academy, about how to be a digital citizen in an effective way as a young person. She limited her kids to two hours a day and eventually, of course they hated it when their grant, but eventually they ended up thanking her for that. And of course you can also put lots of sort of parameters. You can put electronics sort of gatekeeping on the systems, but of course you can't control what the other kids are showing to your kids, which is where things get really out of control.
Do you think that's the rise in the depression, anxiety and kids today or do you think it's more food life like lifestyle.
Well, it's I mean all the above, right, I think. I think you can't underestimate the impact of screens. I think we will look at screens one day the way we look at tobacco now. Uh Number one. Number two, our family systems are struggling, and we're not supporting family systems the way we could. We have just been through an insane experience for young people. When lockdown started, I kept saying, we are sacrificing eight to fifteen year olds. They are not going to recover from this. This is a developmental window that you are closing for them, which is when they need their peers the most, and you're telling them, you're telling them if they have contact with their source of nourishment, their peers, they're going to kill their family. Oh great, in the meantime, hide under your bed, shelter in place. That was a disgusting and predictable sacrificing of millions of kids. And then the cognitive development of stuff, particularly at risk kids or the kids that aren't you know, sort of who are already financially stressed. Those are the ones, of course get it the worst. So there's that, you know, And there's food sources. Right, we don't eat good food. We don't we have yummy food. I just did an interview with guy named CALLI means I don't think I had a book handy here. He wrote a book about the food system. He's a former food lobbyist and his sister was a head neck surgeon, and they both started began to dedicate themselves to this problem of food because he realized that, you know, the food companies that produced some of the so much of the processed food are actually the formerly the tobacco companies. The tobacco companies when tobacco started getting sort of eviscerated, started buying up food companies, and they brought the scientist, the lobbyist and the strategies they used for tobacco now to food. And so the yummiest, the most addictive, at least no attention to health are the things that are going to be advocated to your kids.
Yeah that makes me sick, but yeah, yeah, and even.
Even who even real foods, even whole foods. You have to be careful where they're sourced. You have to pay attention. You have to have a label reader, you have to. You have to pay attention. You have to grass fed beef, you have to.
When my fiance moved from England to the States, he was sick for months, like his stomach, I mean, he was so sick, and I'm like, it's our food, like I've been trying, like it's just it's just a disgrace.
It's a problem. And we have even even paying attention, it can be difficult to get food that is nutritious. You ought to interview Andrew Gruhl, Chef Gruel. Do you know him? He's in high school. Yeah, but Andre look Sydney make notes. He would love to know. He's a great advocate for this stuff.
Okay, I love that. All right, have two more questions. One, you've been married to your wife, Susan since nineteen ninety one. I'm about to go get married, So what is your best piece of I'm married again? Sorry, what is your best piece of wedding? Marriage? Advice? Marriage, it's comp.
I'm not naive to the fact that vida is challenging. Is difficult for people to maintain these relationships. It just is, And of course the baggage of our past always comes to bear. So my number one piece of advice is if first, first of all, stay commitment is the part that most people miss. You just you don't run for the door. I mean, if you have to leave like you, you were in a situation where you hung in, you hung.
In, you thought for seven years.
Yeah he was sick. He wasn't staying with the program. I mean, okay, that you did the best you could, but you have to really not have the door open. You have to have the door constantly closed. You don't run for the door if there's trouble. And then two access mental health services. Mental health services pay dividends, and if there's interpersonal issues, get help. It really does. We've had various therapists in our family system over the years for various situations and it's always paid. Difficulties always, always, always, and any different than if the kids got sick, had medical problems, you would you would get help. Same thing with mental health and interpersonal issues. It paid. It really does help, and then you know, cultivate healthy practices. The resentments I've just noticed recently, it's in something on my mind that resentments are poison. We always used to say that in the recovering community, that it's like taking a poison and expecting it to hurt the other person. But more than it's gotten worse than that. I mean, resentments are flying around in this country everywhere, and people are resentful of one another, resentful of one another's everything. It's just it's out of control.
Like when you're resentful, that just brews stress, which stress breeds I think diseases in your body.
So for sure, for sure, one hundred percent. So the flip side of that is cultivate gratitude, uh, and have some kind of spiritual practice, whether it's whether it's helping other people or finding purpose. Something you've got to. You gotta you've got to. You know, your religion. I don't know if you have religion in your life, but that used to serve that function. We need it as human beings. Envy, resentment, these things are destroying us right now. And it happens in It happens in interpersonal too. There's a study that came with the reason that's been on my mind. It came out and to study recently that women were measured more resentful and we're actually preventing their husband from doing things in their careers they wanted to do because they resentful of the success. And I thought, wow, that's a level of effecting the interpersonal experience that is new and it doesn't need to be there, shouldn't be there.
Yeah, no, I agree with you. That was great advice. Okay, so you're in the chief medical board of the wellness Company. What is tell the listeners? What is the wellness company? How does it different from different wellness brands?
Wellness Company is really a readiness company's We saw I complained a few minutes ago about lockdowns. We saw what the government can do to affect our lives and to interfere with our ability to get medical care. One of the other board members is a docor named Kelly Victory. She's a friend of mine. She said, you know, if we were talking about this five years ago, I'd go, I don't know if this is so smart this maybe this is a little crazy. And she goes, now, it's crazy if you don't do this, because we've seen what they can do, and we have to get treatments in the hands of patients so they can be ready to use them should they need them, because it's ridiculous that you have to go to urgent care, or that you can't get into an appointment, or that you have to spend a ton of money to get simple treatments that are we have telehealth backup with all the products, and we have manuals with them. It's things to be ready to do. For instance, the travel kit. I was very involved in manufacturing and putting that together, and it's all things I give to my patients when they travel and particularly overseas. But now We're at a point where you should be ready in this country too, because urgent care is are you're paying for all that infrastructure when you walk into an urgent care and there's no reason for it. You know how to use these things, you know what they are, you have back up, we should have access to them. I've spent most of my career defending the patient physician relationship, and I feel like it's been so adulterated that we really have to know, focus on empowering the patient, and that's what we're about at Wellness.
I love that, Doctor Drew, thank you so much for coming on the show. I really appreciate it.
You've got good to talk to you.
This interview was brought to you by the Wellness Company. You can visit them online at urgentcare kit dot com slash Jana to get your kit today again, you can get fifteen percent off your kit today at urgentcarekit dot com slash Jenna and use promo code Jana