Hi, I’m Rée.
Growing up, I felt like the education system wasn’t built for people like me to succeed. As a student with undiagnosed neurodivergence, learning disabilities, and anxiety, I struggled to learn in the ways my peers learned.
In the decades following, I became an educator and taught in various classrooms around the world. I taught in public schools, private universities, large government funded programs, and small academies. I designed curriculum, measured student success, and even assessed teacher efficacy.
Then, while teaching a group of English language learners in South Korea, who like me, hadn’t received adequate attention in school, I realized I was using the same methodologies as the ones that had failed me.
homeroom is my attempt to remedy this on an international scale. To speak with as many people from around the world about their own education systems to rethink what schools can be. What it should be, when we design systems and metrics which are inclusive of more diverse types of learners and thinkers with varying levels of family involvement and access to resources.
In this episode, I speak with Dr. Andrea Love, an immunologist, microbiologist, and science communicator, about her early interests in science and scientific literacy. We talk about how she became interested in science, what her parents and teachers did to encourage her to continue pursuing her curiosities, and why she is passionate about encouraging children toward a career in STEM. We also discuss her various efforts to combat scientific misinformation in the media, including the weekly newsletters she writes and distributes through her Substack publication, Immunologic. I ask her about how we can raise a generation of critical thinkers who can separate fact from fiction, and what society can do to help that mission.
Check out this important conversation, and share widely!
Auto-generated Transcript
00:00:03:02 – 00:00:27:18
Rée
Hi, I’m Ray. Growing up, I felt like the education system wasn’t built for people like me to succeed. As a student with undiagnosed neurodivergent learning disabilities and anxiety, I struggled to learn in the ways my peers learned. In the decades following, I became an educator and taught in various classrooms around the world. I taught in public schools, private universities, large government funded programs, small academies.
00:00:27:20 – 00:00:53:08
Rée
I designed curriculum, measured student success, and even assessed teacher efficacy. Then, while teaching a group of English language learners in South Korea who, like me, had not received adequate attention in school, I realized I was using the same methodologies as the ones that had failed me. Homeroom is my attempt to remedy this on an international scale. To speak with as many people from around the world about their own education systems.
00:00:53:13 – 00:01:16:13
Rée
To rethink what schools can be, what it should be. When we design systems and metrics which are inclusive of more diverse types of learners and thinkers, with varying levels of family involvement and access to resources. In this episode, I speak with Doctor Andre Alev, an immunologist, microbiologist and science communicator, about her early interests in science and scientific literacy.
00:01:16:15 – 00:01:41:00
Rée
We talk about how she became interested in science, what her parents and teachers did to encourage her to continue pursuing her curiosities, and why she is passionate about encouraging children toward a career in Stem. We also discussed her various efforts to combat scientific misinformation in the media, including the weekly newsletter she writes and distributes through her Substack publication, immunologic.
00:01:41:02 – 00:01:59:19
Rée
I ask her about how we can raise a generation of critical thinkers who can separate fact from fiction, and what society can do to help that mission. Check out this important conversation and share it widely. Here is our edited conversation.
00:01:59:21 – 00:02:26:00
Dr. Andrea Love
I love this because, I actually my mom just recently moved to the UK and when she was moving out, she had lived in my childhood home until she moved last year. And so a lot of my childhood possessions, report cards, all that sort of stuff were there. And I was I had gone up there to sift through it all, and, I actually was looking through my report cards and my self assessments, which I got to do in elementary school.
00:02:26:02 – 00:02:50:00
Dr. Andrea Love
And, and it was pretty much in line with what I remembered. So I was always I was always one of the best students in class. I was always a perfectionist. But I would always finish my work early, and then the teachers would have to give me something to occupy myself. And so in the comments, I would always get like, you know, excellent.
00:02:50:06 – 00:03:20:06
Dr. Andrea Love
You know, performance, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then it was like, talk too much in class or distract the other students. And and it wasn’t because of anything malicious. It was because, like, I had finished my task and I was ready for the next task. And so I was really fortunate, in elementary school, to be in, it was at the time, kind of a pilot program where instead of doing the, the traditional textbook workbook, materials, we did like creative research projects.
00:03:20:08 – 00:03:39:23
Dr. Andrea Love
And one of the stipulations was that we had to we were allowed to do like visual displays, and we were allowed to have pets in the class, which was not common in the other classrooms. And so one of the things that they would, you know, tasked me with was like changing the hamster bedding and feeding the gecko and, you know, all this sort of stuff.
00:03:39:23 – 00:04:05:21
Dr. Andrea Love
So I was a very, inquisitive and curious kid. And this really started at a young age. I grew up in a small town in eastern Connecticut, and we had a lot of woods behind our house. And so my brother and I would go into the woods and, you know, climb trees and collect bugs. And that’s kind of where my fascination with the biological world started.
00:04:05:21 – 00:04:16:06
Dr. Andrea Love
And so, yeah, it was always this like, well, she was a high performer, but she also was incredibly annoying to her classmates.
00:04:16:08 – 00:04:45:17
Rée
That’s so funny. You know, I’m wondering, you know, where do you think, I mean, I, I know some, like, I remember students that were like you and I always wondered, like, how are you able to keep up? Because I was, like, very slow. Like I was on the other side of the spectrum. I’m wondering, like, do you know, like, like, what was the caregiving like at home?
00:04:45:17 – 00:04:50:09
Rée
What did you get a lot of attention? Like, what was happening at home?
00:04:50:11 – 00:05:13:03
Dr. Andrea Love
Yeah. So, you know, it’s it’s interesting. I mean, I think every, every adult child kind of reflects back and is like, yeah, I had a complicated relationship with my parents. But, you know, and they divorced when I was pretty young when I was 11. And it, you know, it wasn’t, the most amicable, divorce. And, and my brother and I had very different reactions to it all.
00:05:13:05 – 00:05:34:21
Dr. Andrea Love
But, you know, I would say, you know, they both, came from moderate education. They, they actually met in college. They they had both gone to Cornell. My dad was on a Navy scholarship. He went through Rothesay and he served on, nuclear submarines after college and, and, you know, but they were both pretty science minded.
00:05:34:21 – 00:06:01:18
Dr. Andrea Love
They’re both pretty intelligent. And so I think, you know, while maybe they wouldn’t be classified as like the most nurturing of parents, they did make sure that my brother and I were able to participate in as many activities as we could afford. We were not an affluent family. But, you know, there was there was, science program at one of, community colleges, near where I lived.
00:06:01:18 – 00:06:27:14
Dr. Andrea Love
It was like a weekend science program for kids. And so brought my my brother and my late brother. You know, I can say his name now because he’s, he passed away a few years ago, but, thank you. But, we were both very nerdy. I’ll just say it, you know, very nerdy, very into science. He was very into a lot of the, like, astronomy and and, you know, planets and space and, and geology and all of that.
00:06:27:14 – 00:06:50:08
Dr. Andrea Love
And I was a little bit more on the biology side. But we would do this the science program. And then we also, the high school in our town had this weekend art program where kids who weren’t in high school could, you know, parents paid, but it was pretty affordable. And every Saturday you would go in and use the high school art facilities to, you know, do stuff.
00:06:50:08 – 00:07:09:13
Dr. Andrea Love
And and I’m not an artist, but I have I have some of the pottery I made, in my third grade and it’s ugly, but but it was like an outlet, right? It was like a way for us to kind of channel some of the energy. I guess we would have, like beyond the school walls. And of course, we did a lot of sports as well.
00:07:09:13 – 00:07:31:23
Dr. Andrea Love
I think, you know, the, the concept of being well-rounded, it’s it’s more than just like being good as an applicant for college or whatever it was really, you know, so you would have a well-rounded perception of the world, you know, that, you know, I was obsessed with science, but it didn’t mean that I was going to be ignorant on history or current events or things like that.
00:07:31:23 – 00:07:51:12
Dr. Andrea Love
It just wasn’t my primary area of interest. And I think you know, that approach for parents and for for kids as they’re growing up, it it makes you a, a better person on the whole. Because because you become aware of much more than just your little bubble that you’re raised in.
00:07:51:14 – 00:08:19:01
Rée
Yeah, that sounds like a lovely memory or recollection of your childhood. And I’m wondering, it sounds like, I mean, if your parents were into science and they were sort of exposing you to science related programs and activities, maybe they had some hope that you would become a scientist, too. And I was wondering, like, you know, or that you would go into those fields as well.
00:08:19:01 – 00:08:30:21
Rée
And I was wondering, if that was actually the message you received from your caregiver caregivers and also, your teachers, like, what kind of messaging did you receive from them?
00:08:30:23 – 00:08:52:22
Dr. Andrea Love
Yeah. So I think for my parents, I don’t think we really got any specific messaging. When I was, a younger kid, my mom was kind of a stay at home mom. She taught fitness classes at the local gym. My dad, actually, after the Navy, while his bachelor’s degree was in geology, he actually never did anything with that.
00:08:52:22 – 00:09:18:12
Dr. Andrea Love
After the Navy, he he actually started his own business, and he did, like, surface restoration, like fiberglass bathtub, hot tub repair. And, you know, he kind of you owned a franchise, and he worked for himself, but he was always, you know, very intelligent. And he ended up eventually retiring from that and starting a company where he actually engineers and manufactures the equipment for that, but not anything that you would consider traditional science.
00:09:18:14 – 00:09:43:05
Dr. Andrea Love
And my mom, she actually went back to school when I was in elementary school to get her master’s in education, and she ended up being becoming a middle school science teacher. But that wasn’t until I was like, you know, 10 to 12 years old. And so it was almost as if we had kind of like pursued these interests together.
00:09:43:06 – 00:10:01:14
Dr. Andrea Love
She was technically pre veterinary, I think, in college. But then, you know, after they got married and he enlisted in the Navy and he was overseas, like, you know, she she lived in Navy housing and they had kids. And and so, you know, I don’t think there was ever this really like hard push to do that.
00:10:01:14 – 00:10:29:19
Dr. Andrea Love
It was more like I was just kind of obsessed with bugs. And then, when she went back to school, she had brought me to the Eastern Connecticut State University Library, and I found a medical textbook, about arthropods that are disease vectors. It’s a it’s a medical, like, legitimately a physician’s medical textbook. And I would I think I was ten years old, I checked it out and I would walk around reading it to people like, did you know that there’s this beetle in Africa that eats your flesh while you’re sleeping?
00:10:29:19 – 00:10:46:11
Dr. Andrea Love
And I just thought it was cool, like it was the X factor. I think more than anything, initially when I was a kid, like, I would tell my classmates about tapeworms because we had cats and I thought, tapeworms are fascinating, or I would try and, you know, convince everyone that they have head lice or they’re scratching their heads in class.
00:10:46:11 – 00:10:58:18
Dr. Andrea Love
And but again, like, I think it was initially like, what could I do to gross out my friends? And then it just kind of evolved from there as like, yeah, this stuff is actually really interesting. Oh.
00:10:58:19 – 00:11:22:01
Rée
Wow, that’s so funny. And really just I can just see it, like visually, cinematically. That’s that’s really amazing. So, okay, so you kind of, you know, had a love for it ever since the very beginning. And I’m wondering when you decided or when you knew that you would, like, pursue it professionally.
00:11:22:03 – 00:11:40:22
Dr. Andrea Love
Yeah. So I think this really goes into like the teachers, you know, and, and so, you know, in elementary school, of course, you know, we did these creative research projects. And if I actually tracked down the VHS tapes of them, I’m trying to restore some of them. But if I look at the topics I picked, they were all very biology related.
00:11:40:22 – 00:11:58:23
Dr. Andrea Love
Right? I’ve got the leeches. I was obsessed with leeches because I got bit by a leech one time in a pond that we used to swim in, and I was like, this is this is fascinating. And so a lot of it was kind of informed by, like, experiences that I had. And I was like, oh, I need to learn more about these leeches, this thing that I pulled off my arm.
00:11:58:23 – 00:12:14:16
Dr. Andrea Love
Right. And the, the the tapeworms. Right. I grew up with tons of pets, and I was like, oh, why do we give them this medicine? Oh, because a tapeworm. Well, what’s a tapeworm? I need to know more about the tapeworm. Right? I need to know about the fleas. I need to understand why I’m doing the things I’m doing.
00:12:14:16 – 00:12:38:06
Dr. Andrea Love
And I think now I know it’s because, you know, I had ADHD and I wasn’t ever diagnosed, but I needed to have those answers. And, so in high school, I was really fortunate. My high school was technically a public school, but we had, it was like quasi privately funded. And so we had some additional classes that you might not find in a, in a more traditional high school.
00:12:38:06 – 00:13:05:12
Dr. Andrea Love
So we had a forensic science class, we had environmental science. We even had like a basic microbiology class and, my 10th grade biology teacher, he’s now a principal at, at a school near my home town. We reconnected recently, but, he, I was in the advanced biology class in 10th grade, and he was actually a very new, like, green, fresh out of school teacher, very young.
00:13:05:12 – 00:13:29:01
Dr. Andrea Love
Like a bunch of my classmates had crushes on him. That was really funny, but he was, like, this bright eyed, bushy tailed. And then, like, I came in and I was, like, really, like, intense and, like, wanted to learn everything. And so, but we, you know, we kind of developed this like, you know, mentor peer relationship and, and similarly, the year later when I took AP chemistry, I had a similar dynamic with the AP chemistry teacher.
00:13:29:03 – 00:13:53:22
Dr. Andrea Love
And most people hated that class because it was really hard. It was it was college level chemistry, but I was just, I, I thrived in it. I was really good. And so those two teachers, I think, really kind of encouraged me, even though I was definitely a little bizarre. And so my senior year in high school, my, my 10th grade biology teacher, I did an independent project with him where I actually use it as a scholarship application.
00:13:53:22 – 00:14:20:12
Dr. Andrea Love
But I did kind of a rudimentary, epidemiological analysis on the, impact of a vaccine mandate for bacterial meningitis, because in the microbiology class, we watched a documentary about how severe bacterial meningitis can be that it often presents like the flu, but it can progress and it can lead to death. But limb amputation and all sorts of, disabilities.
00:14:20:12 – 00:14:43:02
Dr. Andrea Love
And in the U.S., it’s not a required vaccine. Nationally, it’s kind of state by state for college entry. And that’s when people are at highest risk for spreading that infection. And so I wanted to see, you know, was there a benefit of implementing, you know, cost benefit or a health benefit of this? And now, granted, I didn’t know much about mathematical modeling and all that, but I did what I could.
00:14:43:02 – 00:14:57:06
Dr. Andrea Love
And and so I knew I think then that I was, you know, my college essays. I was like, I’m going to get a PhD in microbiology and immunology, and I’m going to study infectious diseases. And I pretty much followed that track from there.
00:14:57:08 – 00:15:29:09
Rée
Wow. Oh, I am so impressed. Really, really impressed. I think I only heard about bacterial meningitis like two years ago. So. Yeah, and I’m in my 40s, so, that’s really that’s really incredible. You know, I wasn’t very good at science at all. When I was in school, like, I would draw, like, mitochondria and cells and things like that, but I would have no idea, like, how they would really impact me in any kind of way.
00:15:29:11 – 00:15:57:13
Rée
And there was like one unit that I enjoyed in high school, like chemistry. But when my grades didn’t really reflect, my enjoyment, you know, I just kind of checked out, and so I was wondering, like, what do you think? I mean, you did reference your ADHD, but, you know, like, I’m wondering, like, if we were to sort of use your, experience as kind of a template, right?
00:15:57:15 – 00:16:09:15
Rée
How do you think we can foster a love of learning, for science in ways that, like, nurture our students curiosity rather than, you know, just, like, reprimand them every time? Maybe I was like.
00:16:09:17 – 00:16:36:23
Dr. Andrea Love
This is. I mean, this is the million dollar question, because I think right now we’re really at this precipice of like, conflict in, like how education is implemented and, and this kind of battle between, like, focusing curriculum on standardized testing and scores versus actually teaching and obviously there’s a lot of ideological opposition in a lot of topics, and I don’t want to get into that.
00:16:36:23 – 00:17:03:05
Dr. Andrea Love
But I think, you know, this idea of critical thinking and like, intellectual curiosity has really been lost from education on the whole. And it has to start at an early age. And so, you know, I don’t have the power to change or revamp that. But I feel like, you know, we’ve kind of lost the goal of education and school because that’s what it really should be, right?
00:17:03:05 – 00:17:31:11
Dr. Andrea Love
It should be, you know, providing this very broad, kind of comprehensive overview of things that are really impactful. And that’s across all topics, right? Not just science. But then allowing students to kind of explore what is piquing their interest, what is kind of igniting their curiosity. And, you know, I was really fortunate to have, you know, be a part of this pilot program.
00:17:31:13 – 00:17:49:17
Dr. Andrea Love
But that was that was an exception, you know, and I actually got in because my brother had gotten into it two years before me. And so there was a little nepotism there. But, you know, I think and that was before, you know, No Child Left Behind and the really, like, hard core fixation on a lot of these standardized tests.
00:17:49:17 – 00:18:08:10
Dr. Andrea Love
Granted, we had those back then, but but I think it’s gotten even worse. Right. We’re fixated on like putting these benchmark instead of, you know, saying, okay, well, these benchmarks, we’re not hitting these benchmarks. So what do you do to improve that? And I and I think that there are certain benchmarks that we should be focused on. Right?
00:18:08:10 – 00:18:30:03
Dr. Andrea Love
We need basic literacy. We need basic reading comprehension. And then we need like functional literacy like right science and health literacy. But if you don’t have basic regular literacy, you can’t get to those other places. And so it really all starts with this critical thinking and this and this asking questions and not the well, I’m just asking question.
00:18:30:03 – 00:18:51:21
Dr. Andrea Love
The red herring of people who spread misinformation but like legitimate exploring phenomena. Right. And so you made this point about, you know, drawing, mitochondria and cells and things like that. And I personally am terrible at that. You know, we all had to do it, right. We had the pond water and you have your algae, and you look on the microscope and you’re drawing what you see.
00:18:51:21 – 00:19:30:08
Dr. Andrea Love
And like my class, my like, you know, paramecium were terrible. But but, you know, I knew I wasn’t going to be the creative side of science. I’m the more analytical side. But, you know, nowadays you look at this and you see there are roles in science and technology for our artists, for creative types. And it’s and it’s really interesting because a couple of years ago I went to, I was in Paris very briefly, but I went to the Marie Curie Museum because it’s free and it’s on, it’s on campus and you can it’s small, but it was her old lab, and it’s, you know, they decontaminated it.
00:19:30:10 – 00:19:53:19
Dr. Andrea Love
But what was really cool is that in the lab, when they were doing all of their research, they didn’t have microscopes to take pictures. Right. They’re hand drawing all of these pathology, the pathological tissue sections. And these pictures are gorgeous. I mean, the people, the scientists in the lab that were drawing these, I mean, it’s it is it’s so incredibly detailed.
00:19:53:19 – 00:20:21:04
Dr. Andrea Love
It’s beautiful. I took photos of them inside the glass case. But, you know, I think we need to we need to get kids to understand that, like, it doesn’t matter if, like, you’re not great at memorizing all the metabolic pathways or the Krebs cycle, it’s it doesn’t it’s it’s okay if you’re, you know, your math and your, you know, ability to do stoichiometry and chemistry, you know, isn’t there nobody’s going to be perfect at everything.
00:20:21:05 – 00:20:55:08
Dr. Andrea Love
So if your interest in the sciences is on the creative side, like, let’s foster that, let’s explore that. But I think that unfortunately, you know, teachers in particular are kind of bound by the structure of the educational system right now. And so, you know, I don’t have a great answer, but I think, you know, it presents an opportunity to figure out how we can make this more interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary, where there can be the structure and the standardized tests, if that’s what you know, it dictates right now.
00:20:55:08 – 00:21:20:15
Dr. Andrea Love
But there can also be room for these creative explorations or, you know, side projects. And granted, I did a lot of that outside of school. But, you know, there are ways to integrate that into school. I have I have to I have three young nieces, but I got two of them who are siblings. You know, a little basic chemistry kit where they can make, like, guac and glue and do the baking soda volcano.
00:21:20:15 – 00:21:39:09
Dr. Andrea Love
And they’re, you know, four and six years old, and they they just love making messes at home. And my stepsister hates me for it, but but they’re, you know, and and they’re, you know, and now I see them, I’m going to be a firefighter and I’m going to be a pilot, and I’m going to be a teacher, and I’m going to be a scientist, and, you know, but now they know that there are all these options out there.
00:21:39:09 – 00:22:00:18
Dr. Andrea Love
And so, you know, I think there’s, a sense of responsibility of really anyone who interacts with a kid to kind of allow that to, to grow. And whether you’re a relative or you’re a parent or you’re a teacher or even just like a caregiver, I think we want to encourage that instead of stifling it.
00:22:00:20 – 00:22:18:21
Rée
Yeah. No. Absolutely. And so it kind of sounds like you’re saying, you know, like as long as there is an entry, like an entrance into pursuing something, something in science, like there’s there’s a little bit of science for everybody. I agree to find that entry point. Right.
00:22:18:23 – 00:22:45:12
Dr. Andrea Love
Yeah. And I think, I think, you know, people often get really hung up on this like, you know, science is a vacuum thing because people don’t realize that science is so broad, right? Like every single thing in our world is related to science in some capacity science, technology, engineering, math, whatever. They’re all related to science. Right? You talk about like someone who’s a contractor, right?
00:22:45:12 – 00:23:09:16
Dr. Andrea Love
How do they know what materials to use that are going to withstand the elements, weather patterns, force weight. You know, this is all science, right? So, like, even if you don’t want to be sitting in a lab and, you know, playing with petri dishes, that’s, that’s only relevant to biological sciences, right? There’s a lot of science is out there that, you know, maybe you’re in the field and you’re studying the interactions of animals.
00:23:09:16 – 00:23:24:02
Dr. Andrea Love
Maybe you’re looking at geologic formations, maybe you’re, you know, looking at tensile strength of various, you know, materials and alloys for building. I mean, it’s all related to science. So I feel.
00:23:24:03 – 00:23:24:14
Rée
Yeah.
00:23:24:18 – 00:23:42:15
Dr. Andrea Love
But there’s not this perception of that. Right? It gets very pigeonholed into like science only relates to things personal health related. Right. And in reality, science is is really everywhere. And I think if we reframe it that way, then I then there’s a place for anyone.
00:23:42:17 – 00:23:46:04
Rée
Yeah. Even like cooking and baking, right. Yeah. That’s science.
00:23:46:04 – 00:24:07:13
Dr. Andrea Love
It’s a chemical reaction. Right. You know it’s I, I love I mean that’s I’m the person that’s in the kitchen. I’m like, I need an aliquot of, you know, baking soda. And it’s like, yeah, I’m super nerdy, but yeah, I mean, getting excited about cooking, it’s science, right? If you bake muffins and they’re not rising properly, it’s because your chemistry was off.
00:24:07:15 – 00:24:37:22
Rée
Yeah, exactly. Oh, my gosh, that’s so fun. You’re making science fun for me. I’m like, oh, yeah, that’s really awesome. So earlier, like, you were talking about misinformation, but, I was actually wondering, you have a Substack newsletter, immunologic, immunologic, where you actively try to root out misinformation, fear mongering, pseudoscience. And, you know, I subscribe to it.
00:24:37:22 – 00:24:53:05
Rée
And I was just like, gosh, she writes in such an accessible way. And, you know, I’m just so grateful to you for, like, offering such quality, I think. Rebuttal link. To the public for free. So thank you for that.
00:24:53:07 – 00:24:58:11
Dr. Andrea Love
So and I will say, I try so hard to not include jargon, so.
00:24:58:13 – 00:25:26:20
Rée
Well, yeah, it’s very easy. And even when you do, you explain it, and. Yeah, it’s it’s very I love it. Some of it like like I said, my prerequisite of science is so little. So, yeah, sometimes it goes over my head, but I, I just reread it a couple of times. What do you think it’s the most, I guess threatening misinformation out there that is high priority for you to root out.
00:25:26:22 – 00:25:34:10
Rée
And I’m curious, like, why? Like, what is the impact of that threat? And like, yeah.
00:25:34:12 – 00:26:01:14
Dr. Andrea Love
Yeah. I mean, that’s that’s a really tough question. I would say if I needed to categorize something as the highest priority, it would probably be the impact of chemo phobia, because I think chemo phobia really pervades into a lot of areas that impacts public health and planetary health. And so chemo phobia is the irrational or unsubstantiated or unfounded fear of chemicals.
00:26:01:16 – 00:26:37:17
Dr. Andrea Love
And we see this propagated by a lot of activist organizations, a lot of companies using marketing, a lot of online influencers. And so, you know, the the impact of this is that, well, first of all, every single thing is chemicals, right? Your body is a sack of chemicals. And so if we’re creating fear about chemicals, we’re we’re really eroding literacy and science literacy and also critical thinking, because what it does is it causes people to have these emotion based reactions to things that are not accurate.
00:26:37:19 – 00:27:01:08
Dr. Andrea Love
And so in in the way chemo phobia is kind of weaponized. You see it with regard to consumer products, whether that is cosmetics or cleaning products or foods, where people are like, oh, well, it’s it’s not, you know, it’s got to be natural or all. It’s got to be additive free. It’s it can’t be. It can’t have chemicals in it.
00:27:01:08 – 00:27:27:06
Dr. Andrea Love
And it’s like, well, you know, a blueberry is just chemicals. And, and then of course, you see it with regard to agriculture because you have fear mongering about conventional pesticides where people actually don’t know that organic farming uses a ton of pesticides that are actually, many of them, are more ecologically damaging and are more potentially harmful after human exposure.
00:27:27:07 – 00:27:51:06
Dr. Andrea Love
It also impacts the ability to use genetic technologies to improve the stability of our food supply. Because people are afraid of, like, things that use the term genetic and GMO and so on. But then of course, it goes into direct public health, too. When we talk about anti-vaccine rhetoric. Right. It’s about, oh, the toxins in the vaccines or the, the, preservatives in the vaccines.
00:27:51:06 – 00:28:29:00
Dr. Andrea Love
And so this kind of irrational fear of chemicals and chemistry really pervades, and it crosses ideological boundaries. Right? We see legislation that is, happening as a result of keema phobia, and it’s happening across all political ideologies. Right? We see, bans on perfectly safe food ingredients coming from, many kind of left leaning, states or left leaning, countries even like, Europe is incredibly chemically chemically averse, even though, ironically, most European countries use many more pesticides and much higher quantities of pesticides.
00:28:29:00 – 00:28:51:17
Dr. Andrea Love
And some place like the US, and then you also see kind of the antic, the keema phobia movement on kind of the more right ideological sides where we’re talking about banning, lab grown meats and, and, of course, you know, these kind of false narratives about medications that are demonstrably safe and have been approved for for many years.
00:28:51:17 – 00:29:20:19
Dr. Andrea Love
And so, you know, it is so pervasive. And it really, you know, there’s a lot of other logical fallacies that that cross over. Right? You’ve got the the appeal to nature fallacy, which is very common. But but it really all stems from this kind of manufactured fear of chemistry and this keema phobia. And that’s exploited by people that are really trying to pit pit science against nature, when in reality, like science is harnessing nature and utilizing our tools to expand on it.
00:29:20:21 – 00:29:53:21
Dr. Andrea Love
So I think that that’s probably kind of the biggest concern. And, and the challenge is, is that, you know, nowadays we’re seeing legislation which is kind of the end result of science. Well, it should be the end result of science, but now it’s being created, policies being created as a result of public outcry and, and opinion, and active misinformation by organizations who have conflicts of interest, vested interests in promoting misinformation as opposed to being informed by scientific evidence.
00:29:53:21 – 00:30:09:11
Dr. Andrea Love
And so that is that’s the crux of it all, is that, you know, this this, these fallacies, this misinformation, the pseudoscience is is tangibly impacting our day to day lives in, in many more ways than I think people realize.
00:30:09:12 – 00:30:31:09
Rée
Okay. Yeah. And you mentioned a lot of really important things. I think your latest actually newsletter is about, keema phobia. And I think you were talking about, like, the pesticides used in, like, France. Like the wine. I think you were saying that there were so many more pesticides there, and I was actually really surprised.
00:30:31:12 – 00:30:55:12
Dr. Andrea Love
Yes. And it’s really interesting because a lot of times when I talk about, like, you know, agricultural science and usually this is in the context of genetic engineering or, you know, pesticide. These, you know, people are like, well, you know, Europe, you know, they’re organic. It’s better, the food’s safer there, you know? And, you know, that’s a very complex topic because when you talk about food regulations, different countries utilize different approaches.
00:30:55:12 – 00:31:27:18
Dr. Andrea Love
We us uses a risk based approach, whereas countries in Europe use a hazard based approach. And that is a very different approach. But if you actually look at per unit area of pesticide applications, France uses about double the amount the kilograms of pesticides per hectare compared to the US. And a lot of that is because they preferentially use organic pesticides as opposed to conventional pesticides, because there’s this perception that they’re better, but they’re not actually better.
00:31:27:18 – 00:31:49:14
Dr. Andrea Love
They’re typically less effective in many of them because they’re not allowed to alter the chemistry to, increase the stability or improve the specificity. So you’re not killing non-target pests. It’s worse. And so they can often bio accumulate. They have worse ecological impacts because you’re killing things that you don’t want to kill. And you have to apply more of them.
00:31:49:14 – 00:32:10:15
Dr. Andrea Love
And so the example in France and Belgium in particular relates to a fungicide that is very commonly used in organic farming, called copper sulfate. And copper sulfate is a chemical, it’s a chemical, and it’s got copper in it. And it’s used as a fungicide. It’s not very efficient unless it’s used at a much higher, concentration.
00:32:10:17 – 00:32:34:10
Dr. Andrea Love
But the challenge with copper sulfate is that it doesn’t just kill fungi, it kills fish, it kills other animals. And it because it’s it’s got a metal ion in it. It persists in the environment. And it can be, particularly noxious to humans as well if they’re exposed to high levels of it. And so there’s this perception that like countries like France, it’s all natural and like, yeah, technically, chemically, it’s all natural, but natural doesn’t mean better.
00:32:34:10 – 00:33:00:11
Dr. Andrea Love
And in many instances it can be worse. So we get into this kind of, you know, circular logic where people are like arguing against improving natural chemistry to, to improve health outcomes, to improve yields, to be able to physically reduce the amount of pesticides we would need to apply to control pests. Because, you know, I love the idea of what we would never need to use pesticides.
00:33:00:11 – 00:33:19:10
Dr. Andrea Love
And that’s great. You know, if if we didn’t have 8 billion people in the world. Right. But but pests are always out there. They’re going to eat your crops and we have to control them. And so that’s the way to control them, because if we didn’t, we would not be able to feed people. And that’s, you know, that’s simply that’s the reality.
00:33:19:10 – 00:33:40:01
Dr. Andrea Love
And so, you know, people kind of romanticize this idea of like, well, you know, my backyard garden doesn’t use any pesticides, and that’s organic. It’s like, yeah, but when you’re talking about large scale organic farms, they’re not feeding just your family, right? They’re feeding millions and billions of people and they’re using pesticides. There’s no other way around it.
00:33:40:03 – 00:34:15:20
Rée
Wow. So, you know, in these examples you mentioned, the appeal to nature and like another logical fallacy that, you know, I’ve heard you use is, you know, appeal to authority. And, you know, I read your slate article about Andrew Huberman, Salty Science and, you know, the insidious platform of that is his podcast Empire. And in that article, you reference, you know, the hierarchy of research, placing randomized control trials at the top.
00:34:15:22 – 00:34:40:09
Rée
And, mentioned that even with, randomized controlled trials that, you know, study design matters. And I heard, Doctor Sarah Godfried on Huberman Podcast talk about the end of one trial being the highest quality data, according to her professors at MIT and Harvard. First, would you kindly tell me if that’s true or not?
00:34:40:11 – 00:35:09:23
Dr. Andrea Love
Yeah. So, so the end of one trial kind of refers to a clinical trial where they basically say it’s a single subject clinical trial where an individual patient is kind of the the sole observation in this study. And, and this is really related to the taking maybe a therapeutic outcome and then seeing if it’s working for a given patient.
00:35:10:01 – 00:35:45:05
Dr. Andrea Love
Now this is usually after, you know, all of the other kind of trials have happened, your randomized controlled trials, your population based clinical trials, and all of that. And, and I’m not exactly sure who Sarah heard that from, but, you know, we you can’t make generalizations to a population based on a sample of one. Even if that that person, you know, is demographically similar to another person, because every single person is genetically distinct, even twins.
00:35:45:05 – 00:36:14:04
Dr. Andrea Love
There are certain things that change, outside of your DNA that actually impact how you would react to things. And so, you know, maybe I won’t talk about how Sarah Gottfried’s mentor is one of the most, virulent anti-vaccine activists on the planet, Christian Northrup. But, Sarah Godfrey is considered a contrarian in her field, and she kind of talks she spreads misinformation about, you know, the impact of diets in regulating your hormones and so on.
00:36:14:04 – 00:36:46:17
Dr. Andrea Love
But but, but typically, if you’re trying to assess whether a study design is valid, you have to look at, you know, the methods, the, the actual population within the study, whether it is truly representative of the observation or the phenomenon you’re trying to assess. You often have to do a power analysis which allows you to help determine how many subjects you need in that to actually, you know, suss out if there’s a legitimate statistical difference between outcomes.
00:36:46:19 – 00:37:10:17
Dr. Andrea Love
You know, and so from there, then you have to say, okay, well, are the data points you’re collecting actually relevant to the thing you’re trying to explore? And then from there, you know, is the data being analyzed correctly. And so there’s many, many layers of study design methodology analysis to kind of assess whether it’s, it’s appropriate.
00:37:10:17 – 00:37:45:09
Dr. Andrea Love
And so, you know, I talk a lot about the limitations of things like petri dish studies and animal studies. And so a lot of people are like, well, you know, if they’re not physiologically relevant to people, why even do them? And it’s because you can’t just jump into people without having some foundational knowledge. So petri dish studies and animal studies are used to start the understanding of a particular mechanism, or ensuring that a dosage is going to be safe before you move into humans, because it would be unethical to simply jump right into humans without having some preliminary information.
00:37:45:11 – 00:38:14:10
Dr. Andrea Love
But for example, like during the Covid pandemic, we I, I remember seeing some news headlines talking about how, you know, it was infecting immune cells and causing immune dysfunction. And when I looked at the studies, they were petri dish studies. But the reason that this was being misinterpreted is because the cell lines. So these are just kind of, clones, they’re kind of, grown in plastic and they’re kind of propagated over many generations.
00:38:14:10 – 00:38:34:21
Dr. Andrea Love
They’re not they’re not kind of from a patient. They’re not representative of a real, you know, cell population. But those cell lines that they used were, cell line that is a derived from an immune cell type called B cells. So people were like, well, they infected these cat cells. You know, they’re for it must have in fact, immune cells.
00:38:34:21 – 00:39:03:23
Dr. Andrea Love
And it’s like, well, that’s not how it works in a body. Right. And so, you know, a lot of it is maybe unintentional misinterpretation, but there’s also this lack of understanding that every single study that’s published isn’t meant to stand alone. Right. You can’t take a single study and say, okay, well, this is every piece of evidence or all of the data I need on a topic, because every single study is it’s it’s an accrual of information.
00:39:04:04 – 00:39:33:05
Dr. Andrea Love
And so one study builds upon the previous study and builds upon the previous study and so on and so forth. And so when you look at a topic, you have to look at all of the studies within that topic. And too often we have people, whether they have medical or science training or not, that, that, kind of selectively search for things on Google Scholar or PubMed and they use that, they cherry pick that and they use that as evidence when it’s not representative of everything we know on that topic.
00:39:33:05 – 00:39:53:16
Dr. Andrea Love
And that’s kind of how these studies get misinterpreted, misconstrued, or even, you know, exaggerated. And we see that with the media. Right? You know, they, they take, they take a paper that is an in vitro study on, you know, a certain chemical compound. And in a petri dish, you can blast cells with super high doses of whatever.
00:39:53:16 – 00:40:18:18
Dr. Andrea Love
And you could say, oh, well, we killed them. And I mean, you could kill them if you poured some regular water on them because they would explode. But that doesn’t mean that that’s what happens in your body, and it doesn’t mean that that’s how you interact with that certain chemical. And so recently there was, there was a Washington Post article, and it was talking about quaternary ammonium compounds, which are very effective disinfectants, and they’re used to neutralize viruses that can cause serious illness.
00:40:18:20 – 00:40:38:08
Dr. Andrea Love
And they were saying, oh, well, it causes neuronal damage because there was a petri dish study that, you know, poured a ton of quartz on some neurons in a piece of plastic. But that’s not how people are interacting with these cleaning supplies. They’re using them on surfaces. They’re using them. They’re they’re touching them at most. It’s not getting into your skin.
00:40:38:08 – 00:40:55:19
Dr. Andrea Love
It’s not getting into your brain. People aren’t consuming lots. And I was kind of reading through the comments and all these people are like, that’s why I don’t use chemicals like these chemical companies are out to get you. That’s why I use vinegar. That’s why I use baking soda as cleaning. And, you know, first companies are selling you vinegar and baking soda.
00:40:56:00 – 00:41:19:21
Dr. Andrea Love
Second, those are also chemicals. Third, those can also be toxic depending on how you are exposed to them. And on top of that, those chemicals are not effective disinfectants. So if we’re talking about controlling an outbreak of norovirus, pouring vinegar on your countertops is not going to kill norovirus. You need something that is actually going to interfere with their replication.
00:41:19:23 – 00:41:49:02
Dr. Andrea Love
And but again, it goes to this bigger issue of media outlets, people personalities, kind of mischaracterizing science and and exploiting the schema phobia. And this appeal to nature fallacy. And because like podcasting has become so, profitable it’s being used as this like scientific outlet, but it doesn’t have peer review, it doesn’t require being accurate, it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.
00:41:49:02 – 00:41:59:07
Dr. Andrea Love
And so people are using that as their source of credible information when we need to be viewing it as entertainment and nothing else.
00:41:59:09 – 00:42:30:00
Rée
Yeah. So you said a lot of really important things here. And I wanted to say like, so my daughter, she’s like two years old, and so she doesn’t really understand a lot of things that could harm her. She doesn’t understand things around safety. But she still has an insatiable desire for control and power. And I think that that’s a very human thing.
00:42:30:02 – 00:42:58:23
Rée
And, you know, I think a large appeal of, like, the wellness industry, is that we’re encouraged to take our health into our own hands. And I think that’s why when we hear some guru talk about something that natural that feels less threatening than, like, chemicals that we can’t pronounce, that, that, you know, that’s something that everybody should be doing.
00:42:59:00 – 00:43:31:21
Rée
And also, you know, like, I guess like the alternative, to the wellness industry is like waiting months to see doctors and hospitals who, you know, like, not only invalidate our symptoms, and show us out of their office as soon as they can. But also because of, like, the unsustainable cost of tests, procedures and, you know, even medications and like, oh my gosh, us, you know, insurance premiums.
00:43:31:21 – 00:44:06:05
Rée
Right. And, you know, like, I feel like I successfully reversed my pre-diabetes and like, my fatty liver following glucose goddesses like hacks. And so, you know, I really was surprised that her methods were not scientific at all or that, you know, she was cherry picking, data and like, you talked about, like, you can’t, make those, conclusions based on, you know, things that don’t that we don’t know how it works in our bodies completely.
00:44:06:07 – 00:44:33:04
Rée
And so I’m wondering, like, I don’t really know how to ask this question, like, to really get to the bottom of this. Maybe you can help me, but, like, what do you think the health care system can learn from the wellness industry? I guess, like about giving, like, scaffolding people, teaching people, giving them tools, and strategies to really control and manage our health.
00:44:33:06 – 00:44:55:01
Dr. Andrea Love
Yeah, I mean, I, I completely agree with you on all of this. You know, it the appeal of all this kind of alternative, you know, wellness and practitioners is because of this messaging, right? The medical system, the health care infrastructure doesn’t have your best interests in mind. They’re they’re a money making machine. And they’re, you know, and they don’t care.
00:44:55:01 – 00:45:22:02
Dr. Andrea Love
And they’re just, you know, looking to roll through patients and keep you sick and this, that. And the other thing I think, you know, first of all, the US health care system is a disaster. I think the first to say that, and I say that as someone who technically has medical insurance and yet my medical, my, my monthly medication costs, even with insurance, are over $400 a month.
00:45:22:04 – 00:45:45:15
Dr. Andrea Love
And, yeah, I mean, I have a job, so and, you know, it’s it’s not I’m not rich, but I’m comfortable. So I can afford that. But I shouldn’t have to afford it, you know, is is the point. So, I mean, I think first we have to kind of, separate like science and evidence based medicine from the health care kind of capitalistic infrastructure because they’re not one in the same.
00:45:45:15 – 00:46:11:05
Dr. Andrea Love
Now, you know, health care kind of falls into that bucket because that’s the way that health care providers provide services. But I think most have trained, you know, credentialed health care providers agree that it’s not a good model, and they don’t even like it. But what happens is, is that the wellness industry kind of exploits that. And they’re like, well, you know, they’re just out to make money off of you and they’re just out to get you.
00:46:11:05 – 00:46:40:00
Dr. Andrea Love
But but I think we forget that the wellness industry is very profitable. And there things are never covered by insurance, because insurance covers things that have evidence to support them. And they triage it based on like the population level benefit, which is why, you know, certain screening tests are not going to be covered until you reach a certain age or they won’t be covered after a certain age and so on, because they’re looking at kind of the benefit of the population in that coverage.
00:46:40:02 – 00:47:01:10
Dr. Andrea Love
But I would I would challenge people to look at, okay, if you’re subscribing to these wellness practitioners, how much money are you spending on the supplements and the home health tests that are not validated? How much are you spending on protocols and books? If you’re going to see these on credentialed providers like naturopaths and chiropractors, how much are you spending on these visits?
00:47:01:10 – 00:47:21:11
Dr. Andrea Love
Because I would bet that you’re spending a lot of money, but you don’t realize it because you’re not getting like a bill from your insurance company. It’s kind of coming out in, spits in for spurts and fits, when you’re like, getting your subscription for your supplement package or whatever. You know, so, so, and they do this intentionally, right?
00:47:21:11 – 00:47:44:00
Dr. Andrea Love
They try to undermine kind of science and medicine and science kind of informs medicine and to kind of insinuate that they’re giving you something that, you know, medicine won’t give you. And that’s that’s actually why the phrase allopathic medicine was created, because it was actually it was actually created by wellness influencers to essentially suggest that there’s two different schools of medicine.
00:47:44:00 – 00:48:09:19
Dr. Andrea Love
When I look past medicine is just evidence based medicine, and all the other stuff is, is doesn’t have evidence. Right. But but I totally agree that it’s very challenging when you’re feeling vulnerable, when you’re feeling like you’re not getting the care you want or deserve, especially with certain types of medical, conditions that are complex or chronic or don’t have an immediate cure or solution or answer.
00:48:09:19 – 00:48:29:15
Dr. Andrea Love
It can be very, very easy to be like, well, what’s the harm? Like, I might as well try this while I’m also waiting in line to get in. And kind of to your point with some of these influencers like Glucose Goddess, some of her kind of broad, you know, messaging is, is, in line with kind of general guidance.
00:48:29:15 – 00:48:55:02
Dr. Andrea Love
Right? High fiber, etc. like, those are things that are good because fiber helps you regulate your cholesterol and triglyceride levels. But that’s not a divergence from what other evidence based practitioners are doing. But what it does is it gives her an air of credibility and legitimacy. And so that’s how she draws people in. And then she can start to spread the non evidence base, the unsubstantiated things.
00:48:55:02 – 00:49:21:22
Dr. Andrea Love
And now we know she’s also selling a supplement which has no evidence, to support it. And so it really is kind of this predator predatory industry that is kind of broadly unregulated. And so a lot of people jump into that space for, for money, for fame, you know, and it’s, and it’s, and it’s really sad because I think people are led there because they think that that industry is altruistic, but it really is.
00:49:21:22 – 00:49:48:10
Dr. Andrea Love
And it’s really exploit you. And, you know, instead of, you know, being like, well, we don’t actually know the answer to that. And science is really complicated. And, you know, we’re trying to figure it out. They kind of slap labels on things. And so it gives people false hope, but it also causes them to, ignore and and avoid or even reject, real medical interventions that can improve health.
00:49:48:12 – 00:50:10:09
Dr. Andrea Love
I think the other thing that really compounds this is that I get the desire to want to control everything. But it’s really hard to reconcile with the fact that there are a lot of things about your health and your life that are not in your control. There are a lot of fundamentals that you can do to try and be as healthy as you can.
00:50:10:11 – 00:50:31:01
Dr. Andrea Love
But even if every single person did all of those things right, like had the the most diverse diet with the optimal level of fiber and micronutrients and macronutrients, and they exercised at the appropriate moderate level every single day. And they got all their preventative vaccines, and they slept really well and they had no stress and all that. You would still have different health outcomes.
00:50:31:01 – 00:50:58:22
Dr. Andrea Love
People would still develop cancer. People would still develop neurodegenerative disorders. People would still develop gastro and gastrointestinal disorders because there’s a lot that just your lifestyle can’t control. B you know, your genetics, your epigenetics, which is a whole other thing. But there are so many other things that impact you as an individual, as a biological organism. That you can’t control everything.
00:50:58:22 – 00:51:20:03
Dr. Andrea Love
And so I think these wellness influencers, while they kind of play on this desire to control, and I get the appeal of that, it also exacerbates health anxiety because you then feel like, well, I’ve done all these things and I’m still feeling this way. And now you’re like, what am I doing wrong? Is am I am I to blame?
00:51:20:03 – 00:51:50:04
Dr. Andrea Love
And so it creates this this shaming and this guilt and this anxiety when, you know, it seems very silly. But I think sometimes you just kind of have to let go and realize, like, you can do all of the things, but something may still happen. And and being prepared is great. And, and staying up to date on all of the things that are recommended by science is great, but I think we also have to wrestle with that uncertainty, which is really hard for people.
00:51:50:06 – 00:52:18:05
Rée
Yeah, absolutely. And thank you for that. And, you know, I definitely want to be mindful of your time. So I’m going to try to squeeze in two questions together. Right after I gave birth to my daughter, I had so much anxiety around what I was eating because just everything was broken. And so I, like, was seeing a doctor and, I was like, I need, like, a nutrition plan.
00:52:18:05 – 00:52:40:06
Rée
Can you help me with this? And he took one look and he was like, okay, I know what this person is dealing with. I know what this girl, this woman is dealing with. So instead of telling me, like, what to focus on, what to eat and all of those things, he basically was like, he kind of was giving me like, life coaching advice to sort of ease my anxiety.
00:52:40:08 – 00:53:04:15
Rée
I eventually, you know, developed an eating disorder. Now I’m on the tail wind of that. But, you know, talking about that anxiety is real. And it is it is very, it’s very hard to overcome. So, yeah, the fear mongering like that needs to stop. And so, you know, like, I am like, sort I feel clueless, I feel powerless.
00:53:04:17 – 00:53:34:09
Rée
I didn’t grow up with a lot of knowing, like what the best health practices were. So I am very like, I need to do right by my daughter. And so I was I wanted to ask you, like, what do you think needs to change about how society approaches or thinks about health maintenance or public health and, you know, the prevention of diseases to optimize for a healthier population?
00:53:34:09 – 00:54:10:18
Rée
Or like in other words, what do you think the education systems like schools, parents, society can do to make health and nutrition more of a priority for the next generation so that, you know, they don’t need to rely on the wellness industry when they are a little bit older. And, you know, one thing that I taught to my elementary school students, while teaching them debate, was to identify, like, credible sources, like, look out for, making sure that they are the experts of what they say they are.
00:54:10:18 – 00:54:27:01
Rée
Just because they’re doctor so-and-so doesn’t mean they can be talking about this other field. So, you know, I’m curious, like, what are some specific strategies, information we need to include in our curriculum or, you know, habits we should encourage anything?
00:54:27:03 – 00:54:52:18
Dr. Andrea Love
Yeah. I mean, this this is the uphill battle that we’re facing, right? So, you know, I mean, science is complicated and nuanced and nuanced is not attention grabbing or sensational. And so these kind of wellness claims get the attention because they’re sensational, they’re clickbait. And so anything that evokes an emotion, especially negative emotion, is, the stuff that circulates more quickly.
00:54:52:18 – 00:55:17:10
Dr. Andrea Love
So if people are being bombarded with messages about things being toxic or things causing cancer, or things causing adverse events or things impacting fertility, like these are very triggering concepts. And so people are going to kind of perk up and pay attention and often share that, among their community without without really verifying it. So I think the first thing is, is that we have to really get past this idea of, emotion.
00:55:17:10 – 00:55:43:05
Dr. Andrea Love
You know, having an emotional reaction to something is often a flag that you should maybe check, you know, just pause. You know, I think, I think verifying your sources and verifying credibility of sources is super important. Absolutely. And I think it’s also important to know that you know, just because someone has, you know, outside of the okay, well, they have a PhD, but it’s in literature or they shouldn’t be talking about vaccines or, you know, they have a Ph.D. in engineering.
00:55:43:07 – 00:56:07:12
Dr. Andrea Love
They shouldn’t be talking about immunology. Like, those are all absolutely true. But there are also contrarians in relevant fields, right? So, you know Robert Lustig, right? He’s a common example because he’s spread a lot of misinformation. He’s he’s technically a pediatric endocrinologist, right. He has a he has a medical license, but he spreads misinformation about foods and sugar and all sorts of stuff.
00:56:07:12 – 00:56:27:02
Dr. Andrea Love
And so I think we have to look at kind of what what is what is the consensus say. And consensus is often confused because I think people envision it as being like some scientists sitting around a table and like, yes, we all agree, but consensus is actually what does the body of evidence on a topic say? You know, not what does the outlier individual say?
00:56:27:02 – 00:56:44:06
Dr. Andrea Love
Or what does a cherry picked paper say? And so, you know, even if someone does have relevant credentials on a topic, they could still be sharing misinformation and that and that makes it all the more challenging for people to figure out what to trust. And I, I wish I had a simple answer. I don’t have a simple answer.
00:56:44:06 – 00:57:07:06
Dr. Andrea Love
And that’s partly because, you know, social media and social media algorithms really reward people for spreading clickbait. And and there aren’t fact-checking mechanisms in place. There isn’t a control of what gets shared and what doesn’t get shared. And, you know, the fact checking organizations are often governmental or regulatory agencies, and there’s this concerted effort to undermine and erode trust in them.
00:57:07:06 – 00:57:38:07
Dr. Andrea Love
So so then it becomes this battle of like, if you share fact checking and then it aligns with a regulatory or governmental agency, you’re considered to be bought and paid for. But the wellness influencers are literally bought and paid for and are selling you products, are somehow viewed as altruistic. So I think societally we have to reframe the whole mentality of why are you trusting the person that you’re getting your information from and what you know, what’s the underlying motivation of that person?
00:57:38:09 – 00:58:09:18
Dr. Andrea Love
I think that public health on the whole is, is trying to improve kind of some of these big picture, you know, messaging and focusing on, you know, a lot of the lifestyle factors that include or feed into kind of overall health outcomes. But it really is kind of an uphill battle because, you know, you kind of have this systemic distrust, particularly among minority groups of certain, you know, governmental and medical, you know, practices, which we have a lot of protections for now.
00:58:09:18 – 00:58:31:20
Dr. Andrea Love
But, you know, it’s it’s tough to kind of erase, erase that. And, and these kind of alternative messages really prey on that emotional reaction. And so when you have an emotional connection to a piece of information, you’re going to be more likely to dig your heels and believe it and kind of reject, things that conflict with that strongly held belief.
00:58:31:22 – 00:58:56:13
Dr. Andrea Love
You know, I think we’re really in this moment where the concept of, chronic medical conditions that impact health outcomes is really kind of butting heads, like with all the Ozempic talk and GLP one, inhibitors. And, you know, the idea that there’s a spectrum of healthy body weights, but also this, this kind of health at every size.
00:58:56:15 – 00:59:22:03
Dr. Andrea Love
I think it’s really important to talk about, you know, the diversity of body shapes, body types and so on. But I do think we we can’t gloss over the fact that there are real risks of certain adverse health outcomes associated with extremes on all sides. We’re talking about excess adiposity, but also being severely underweight and malnourished. There are health.
00:59:22:07 – 00:59:48:05
Dr. Andrea Love
There are adverse events on all sides of that. So I think it’s important to be inclusive. But I also think we can’t brush that stuff under the rug for fear of ostracizing or offending. And I think we have to frame it in a way that provides people information. But there’s still going to be it’s still going to be their responsibility to kind of make the decisions for their health.
00:59:48:05 – 01:00:10:12
Dr. Andrea Love
But, but, but I think they need to understand, you know, the direct linkages with certain health behaviors. It’s the same with, you know, so we talk a lot about like risk factors for disease. Right. And often they’re focusing on physical risk factors like obesity or, you know, excess sun exposure that’s unprotected and how those can play into mortality and cardiovascular disease and cancers and so on.
01:00:10:14 – 01:00:36:03
Dr. Andrea Love
But like in my in my family, you know, I have mental illness and that increases the risk of suicide. My brother, as I mentioned, he died. He died by suicide. He had bipolar disorder that was unmanaged. So, you know, I mean, but is it is it is it ablest to talk about, you know, the fact that I have anxiety, depression, you know, as being a risk factor, like I have an increased risk of suicide because I have a family member, an immediate family member that died by suicide.
01:00:36:05 – 01:00:57:05
Dr. Andrea Love
I think it’s important to talk about that. Just like I think it’s important to talk about, you know, increase, you know, excess obesity and adiposity being an increased risk factor for certain health outcomes. And so, you know, I think there’s a way to talk about these things that really can impact your overall health, that are a function of some things you can control and some things you can’t.
01:00:57:05 – 01:01:16:18
Dr. Andrea Love
And I think people maybe operate under the impression that some of these things, like obesity is like it’s it’s an issue of self-control, but it’s not right. Just like mental illness is not something you can inherently control. It’s just something that is a reality. And so I think we have to frame it differently to get people to be more receptive to that information.
01:01:16:20 – 01:01:37:11
Dr. Andrea Love
And I think ultimately when we talk about the educational system and kind of society, it really goes into this critical thinking, right? We have to talk about these things in a way that that fosters actual discussion. But doesn’t it elevate or legitimize the misinformation? Right. And so you have this, you know, you talked about debate.
01:01:37:11 – 01:02:01:15
Dr. Andrea Love
Right. And so we have to get away from this like both sides is or the, the false balance premise because there are complexities with these topics. But with certain things there aren’t equal and equivalent sides. These are not opinions based topics. There’s a body of data on one side. And then there’s like a couple of cherry picked, you know, things and maybe some opinions on the other side.
01:02:01:15 – 01:02:32:08
Dr. Andrea Love
And so we can talk about, you know, why one side is flawed, but we can’t give it the same visibility. And I think right now with the way that the media ecosystem is, it really does elevate that and it creates this false perception. So that’s not a great answer because I think it’s just really complicated. But I think, you know, I think, you know, being aware of the fact that anyone that’s sharing information, like there’s usually some motivation behind it.
01:02:32:08 – 01:03:03:13
Dr. Andrea Love
And so I think exploring or being aware or just understanding what that person’s motivation is like, even I, I have a motivation. My motivation is to dispel misinformation because I work in the field, and it’s very frustrating to see poor health outcomes as a result of that. But but, you know, everyone’s motivation is different. And I think, societally, I think the motivation needs to be more focused on how can we improve the quality and quantity of our lives, but that feeds into the live event life of our planet, too.
01:03:03:13 – 01:03:33:01
Dr. Andrea Love
And so when we talk, I talk a lot about agriculture because, you know, the resistance to adopting technology in agriculture is actually worsening our planet. And and I think that there’s this disconnect between people, you know, adopting technological innovation in health because it impacts them immediately versus adopting technological innovation with regard to feeding the planet or reducing the amount of pesticides that need to be sprayed or improving the ecological diversity.
01:03:33:01 – 01:03:48:08
Dr. Andrea Love
And there’s again, it’s it’s born out of misinformation. But I think it also lacks the critical thinking or the exploration of, you know, kind of your selective belief in, in those tools.
01:03:48:10 – 01:03:57:06
Rée
Thank you so much for listening. If any part of this episode resonated with you, please connect with us on social media at the links in the show notes. Until next time.