293. Admiral Brian Christine, MD: Why 77% of Young Americans Can't Serve in the Military

When Dr. Brian Christine, the 18th Assistant Secretary for Health, told me men's sperm counts have dropped nearly 50% in just a few decades, it stopped me cold. We got into why America has fallen below replacement fertility, what's really driving it, from microplastics to ultra-processed food, and why restoring peptides to compounding pharmacies matters for anyone who's been buying them online. If you care about your fertility, your health, and staying out of the chronic-disease hamster wheel, this one's for you. CLICK HERE TO BECOME GARY’S VIP!: https://bit.ly/4ai0Xwg Connect with Dr. Brian Christine Website: https://bit.ly/3ShXdX4 Thank you to our partners A-GAME: “ULTIMATE15” FOR 15% OFF: http://bit.ly/4kek1ij AION: “ULTIMATE10” FOR 10% OFF: https://bit.ly/4h6KHAD AIRES: "ULTIMATE20 " FOR 20% OFF: https://bit.ly/4a3Duze BAJA GOLD: "ULTIMATE10" FOR 10% OFF: https://bit.ly/3WSBqUa BODYHEALTH: “ULTIMATE20” FOR 20% OFF: http://bit.ly/4e5IjsV COLD LIFE: THE ULTIMATE HUMAN PLUNGE: https://bit.ly/4eULUKpCYMBIOTIKA: "BRECKACYM30" FOR 30% OFF: https://bit.ly/4tjyluP GENETIC METHYLATION TEST (UK ONLY): https://bit.ly/48QJJrk GENETIC TEST (USA ONLY): ⁠https://bit.ly/3Yg1Uk9 GOPUFF: GET YOUR FAVORITE SNACK!: https://bit.ly/4obIFDC H2TAB: “ULTIMATE10” FOR 10% OFF: https://bit.ly/4hMNdgg HEALF: 10% OFF YOUR ORDER: https://bit.ly/41HJg6S PEPTUAL: “TUH10” FOR 10% OFF: https://bit.ly/4mKxgcn SNOOZE: LET’S GET TO SLEEP!: https://bit.ly/4pt1T6V WHOOP: JOIN & GET 1 FREE MONTH!: https://bit.ly/3VQ0nzW Watch the “Ultimate Human Podcast” every Tuesday & Thursday at 9AM EST: YouTube: https://bit.ly/3RPQYX8 Podcasts: https://bit.ly/3RQftU0 Connect with Gary Brecka Instagram: https://bit.ly/3RPpnFs TikTok: https://bit.ly/4coJ8fo X: https://bit.ly/3Opc8tf Facebook: https://bit.ly/464VA1H LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/4hH7Ri2 Website: https://bit.ly/4eLDbdU Merch: https://bit.ly/4aBpOM1 Newsletter: https://bit.ly/47ejrws Ask Gary: https://bit.ly/3PEAJuG Timestamps 00:00 - ​Intro of Show 01:24 - Meet the Assistant Secretary for Health 02:40 - From neurosurgery to men's health 07:15 - Praying for the job at the cathedral 09:08 - What the Assistant Secretary actually does 10:32 - Flipping the food pyramid 14:14 - Prevention first, not reactive care 17:56 - Fighting big food resistance 24:44 - What's in the HHS crosshairs 25:16 - Bringing back the fitness test 26:51 - Fertility below replacement 28:31 - Sperm counts down 50% 32:56 - Peptides return to compounding 35:06 - The peptide black market danger 37:06 - The Surgeon General's office 39:08 - Rebuilding trust after COVID 43:02 - The next three years at HHS 45:17 - What it means to be an Ultimate Human 48:47 - VIP questions on food and water Disclaimer: This podcast is for informational purposes only and does not provide medical advice. It is not intended for diagnosing or treating any health condition. Always consult a licensed healthcare professional before making health or wellness decisions. Gary Brecka is the owner of Ultimate Human, LLC which operates The Ultimate Human podcast and promotes certain third-party products used by Gary Brecka in his personal health and wellness protocols and daily life and for which Ultimate Human LLC and / or Gary Brecka directly or indirectly holds an economic interest or receives compensation. Accordingly, statements made by Gary Brecka and others (including on The Ultimate Human podcast) may be considered promotional in nature. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Do you know that about 77% of young men and young women are not fit for military service, a lot of it because of obesity or other chronic disease issues? You talk about a real national defense crisis going on, which is why our guidelines, talking about eating nutrient-dense, healthy food, talking about getting our youth active, getting away from screens.

• 0:21Speaker 01

  I think there's two ways to attack this chronic disease pandemic. One is to go in and fix the entirety of the bloated, broken healthcare system. The other is to educate people so they can stay out of it en masse.

• 0:32Speaker 00

  We've taken that old food pyramid, and we have literally flipped it on its head. And so now we're emphasizing protein that we obtain from nutrient-dense food. We're emphasizing healthy fats. What we are moving away from are the ultra-processed, highly-processed foods.

• 0:47Speaker 01

  By updating the nutritional guidelines, these will now determine how our military servicemen and women are fit, how public school lunches are formed. This is a major, major deal.

• 0:57Speaker 00

  This is Maha, taking care of our women, taking care of our kids, taking care of our men, so that we have strong, healthy men, healthy women, healthy kids, for a strong, healthy family.

• 1:06Speaker 01

  In a perfect world, how would the next three years of your career role at HHS play out?

• 1:12Speaker 00

  I will tell you, one of the things that I think that we are seeing in this administration that, like, we've never seen before is...

• 1:30Speaker 01

  Hey, guys. Welcome back to the Ultimate Human Podcast. I'm your host, human biologist Gary Brecka, where we go down the road of everything: anti-aging, biohacking, longevity, and everything in between. And as you know, I am an enormous supporter and participant of the Maha movement, Secretary Kennedy's agenda, what we're seeing at Health and Human Services, what we're seeing at the Food and Drug Administration, the wins we're having for Americans all over the spectrum of health, how we feed our military, how we feed our public schools, how we feed our patients in our hospitals, how Medicaid and Medicare are reimbursing nutritional foods, removing black box warnings from female hormone therapy, getting petroleum-based diets out of the food system. This is not a political message, it's a human message.

• 2:14Speaker 01

  And today, we're sitting down with somebody very, very special. He is a physician by training, he is an admiral by career, and I think is uniquely qualified for the role he's in. He is the 18th Assistant Secretary for Health and Human Services at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I didn't even, no offense to you, know that that role existed until, first of all, welcome to the podcast.

• 2:39Speaker 00

  Thank you very much.

• 2:40Speaker 01

  Thank you so much for sitting down with me. My father was a Navy captain.

• 2:42Speaker 00

  God bless him. Thank you for your service.

• 2:44Speaker 01

  Captain John Brecka, and was also in naval intelligence for a while, which he'll tell you is an oxymoron. But don't take offense to that either. But major impact on my life, and still my mentor today. He's, by the grace of God, he's still with us. But Dr. Admiral Brian Christine, I am so excited to sit down and talk to you today, and I'll tell you why. Because I believe that some of the most principled, passionate, purpose-driven people I have seen in roles now in charge of changing and modifying and expanding and fixing our healthcare system to the benefit of the American people.

• 3:28Speaker 01

  One thing that really touched me was you and I joined each other at a roundtable and then a dinner in Washington, DC not too long ago.

• 3:36Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 3:37Speaker 01

  And you told the story about how you got into the role that you're in now. And I wonder if, for my audience, you would just talk a little bit about how you, how the importance to you of seeking that role and how you really and literally prayed for this role.

• 3:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 3:54Speaker 01

  And how it came to be.

• 3:55Speaker 00

  Yeah. First of all, thank you so much for having me on today. I'm really pleased to be here. And as you were going through just there in the introduction, kind of listing all of the wins that we have for the American people at the Department of Health and Human Services, there are so many wins that we are delivering for the American people on a daily basis, whether it be, again, the things you pointed out, whether it be our dietary guidelines, whether it be the things we've done to protect our most vulnerable children, the things that Dr. Oz is doing at CMS with lowering prices and most favored nation drug pricing, the good things that are happening at FDA. We have done so much for the American people. We could take victory laps all day long, but we don't do that. We continue to produce the wins for the American people.

• 4:37Speaker 00

  So I appreciate you mentioning those things, and yeah, it's great to be on and to see myself here, or rather, to see myself as the Assistant Secretary for Health, serving President Trump and serving the men, women, and children of our republic, getting to work with just an incredible individual, Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. It's the pinnacle of my medical career. I am, by training, a urologist. I went to medical school at Emory University in Atlanta, did my residency in urology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, which is the medical arm of the University of Alabama system, because you have the flagship campus in Tuscaloosa, where you have the football team and the undergrad school. And then you've got the University of Alabama in Huntsville, which is more hard science,

• 5:22Speaker 00

  works with NASA, engineering and such. Then you have the University of Alabama at Birmingham, which is the health sciences, the medical school, the dental school, the nursing school, the School of Allied Health, a lot of research. That's where I did my residency. And the interesting thing is, actually, the way I wound up in Birmingham is, I actually matched, so when you go through medical school, you then decide what you want to do for your residency, and then you go through a match system to match you up with your residency location. I actually matched and did two years of neurosurgery.

• 5:50Speaker 01

  Really?

• 5:51Speaker 00

  That's how I got to Birmingham. I was really turned on by some dynamic neurosurgeons at Emory University, a fascinating field, very competitive residency to get. I was blessed, and I matched in and went to Alabama and did two years of neurosurgery. And about 18 months in, I said, you know, this isn't, this isn't right for me. I'm not as happy as I could be. I had a great meeting with the chairman at the time and said, listen, I don't think I want to do this for the rest of my life, but, but you know, I'd like you to help me find another position. And he said, you've been a great resident. He said, let's complete this year, let's have you find something. And ultimately, I was able to find a spot in urology because I wanted to operate. I've always, the only thing I've ever wanted to do in my whole life, literally, from the time I can remember, is be a doctor and be a surgeon.

• 6:36Speaker 01

  So you could fix people.

• 6:37Speaker 00

  Exactly. So I could, in my own way, minister to my brothers and sisters out there, and then use the things that really interested me, like science and biology and human, human science. Anywho, I was able to get the spot in urology, and urologists are great, they tend to be incredibly happy people. You have an office practice where you can form relationships with your patients, and then you spend a lot of time operating. So I loved the operating room. So I actually did a residency in urology, and then I joined a large urology group in Birmingham, Alabama.

• 7:07Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 7:08Speaker 00

  A large group that now has 30, 32 doctors, I believe, in it now.

• 7:12Speaker 01

  You're in the military the whole time?

• 7:13Speaker 00

  No, no, no, no, no. So, no, we'll come to that. I was actually in the Georgia Army National Guard during medical school in Atlanta.

• 7:20Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 7:21Speaker 00

  Served in that for a few years and then rotated out. I'm actually an Army brat. My father was in the Army. I was born in what used to be West Germany, and I'm old enough to, and probably you're old enough to remember, there used to be an east and a west Germany.

• 7:33Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 7:34Speaker 00

  But I was born in West Germany. My dad was in the Army. He was severely injured in his second tour in Vietnam and left the military. But no, I'd never served in uniform, except for those few years in the National Guard. But I did my residency, joined a group in Birmingham, and then no one in the group really wanted to own men's health. And so I dedicated, that's what I spent the last 27 years of my practice, I practiced about 35 years, spent the last about 26, 27 years exclusively in men's health. And so that was kind of my medical career. But when I had the opportunity to come serve the President, to come serve this country, it's the pinnacle of my medical career. It's like a dream come true.

• 8:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:15Speaker 00

  So, yeah, I'm very blessed and very lucky to be where I am.

• 8:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, you told the story about how it was down to two candidates, and, and you, you left the room, walked down the street in DC, and I forget the church that you went into.

• 8:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, so that was, do you mind if I recount that? Is that okay?

• 8:30Speaker 01

  No, go ahead. I love that story.

• 8:32Speaker 00

  No, so when I got the nomination from the President, well, before that, when I expressed interest with the transition team and said, listen, I would like to serve at HHS, you know, I submitted my application, and I knew an individual in the transition team who said, yeah, put your application in. And so we did that, and then went through a series of interviews, ultimately interviewed with RFK and his team, had that interview. And then the final interview was at the West Wing of the White House, not with the President, but with some of the staff. And after that interview, they escorted me out of the West Wing, and they said, yeah, it's down to two individuals, and we'll let, you know, the President makes the decision, we'll let you know. And again, I walked out, and I'm a Catholic, and I wanted to go pray, and so I walked to the Cathedral of St. Matthew.

• 9:12Speaker 01

  That's what it was, yeah.

• 9:13Speaker 00

  Which is the seat of the Archdiocese of Washington, and I'd never been there before, but I wanted to go pray. So I walked in, just wanted to go kneel in front of the high altar and reflect. And as I walked down the central aisle, down the central aisle of the cathedral, right in front of the high altar, is a disc in the floor, and it says, this is where the body of President John F. Kennedy Jr. laid in state after his assassination.

• 9:36Speaker 00

  And so I knew I was on hallowed ground because I was in a church, but this was particularly hallowed ground for our republic. And I literally, Gary, I literally hit my knees. And I said, Lord, I said, I said, please let me serve this president and let me work with this amazing man, RFK. And here I am, I'm blessed.

• 9:52Speaker 01

  Wow, right on. So now, you know, I'm following this road into public service. And why Assistant Secretary of Health? And for for those people that are not familiar with like, the inner workings of the government, we know what the Health and Human Services is, is the department. Most people are familiar with Secretary Kennedy. And you are directly beneath Secretary Kennedy and Health and Human Services, am I right?

• 10:20Speaker 00

  That's right. That's right. One of the Assistant Secretaries there, in my case, the Assistant Secretary for Health. And it's one of those positions, as you pointed out, that a lot of people aren't familiar with.

• 10:29Speaker 01

  Massive department.

• 10:29Speaker 00

  But it's a big department. And the Assistant Secretary for Health kind of has three roles. You help produce policy, form healthcare policy across the different divisions of HHS. And then you actually help to implement that policy, which is important. And then there's a communication role where you communicate policy to the country writ large, right? So you have this policy formation role, this policy rollout role, and then the communication role that I truly enjoy. The other role that the Assistant Secretary can have, you can serve as a civilian, or you can ask for commission from the president, in which case you become commissioned as the senior flag officer, the senior admiral in the United States Public Health Service Commission Corps, the uniform branch of the public health service. And

• 11:14Speaker 00

  that was incredibly meaningful for me to serve in uniform. And so I have these roles in. But you're right, a lot of people don't know about the Assistant Secretary for Health. They know about the Surgeon General.

• 11:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. Or how many, how many uniformed public health professionals there are?

• 11:28Speaker 00

  No, that's right.

• 11:29Speaker 01

  Six thousand.

• 11:30Speaker 00

  There's a, well, right now, there's about 5,400.

• 11:32Speaker 01

  5,400, okay.

• 11:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, again, of members of the Public Health Service Commission Corps. So it's a big role to fill. And like anything of that size, it takes an incredibly devoted team. And I have an amazing team that works with me.

• 11:44Speaker 01

  So working under the Secretary Kennedy, I've been in a tangential part of Maha, I'm a co-chair of Maha Action.

• 11:50Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 11:52Speaker 01

  Very often, I think these things make headlines, and we, we don't really realize the impact that it has. We flipped the food pyramid upside down, basically.

• 12:04Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 12:04Speaker 01

  Pulled it out of the ground, flipped it, or stuck it back in. But by updating the nutritional guidelines, you know, part of my messaging was to let people know, we didn't just change the food pyramid that's going to go on a wall in a kindergarten classroom. These nutritional guidelines will now determine how our military service men and women are fed. They're going to determine how public school lunches are, the, the, how public school lunches are formed. They're going to determine how Medicaid, Medicare recipients in hospitals are going to receive nutrition. This is a major, major deal. It may have been one policy, but the impact for the American people and, and people on my, you

• 12:46Speaker 01

  know, platform, you know, are furious when they go into the hospital and they see a loved one in their, in the ICU, or in the emergency room, or doing overnight stays in the hospitals, and looking at the garbage that they're eating.

• 13:01Speaker 00

  Right.

• 13:01Speaker 01

  I've done many, many a post on this. I had a friend of mine dying in the ICU at Mayo Clinic of a pretty advanced colon cancer. And when I walked into his room, there were, you know, Seagram sodas, pureed applesauce, high fructose corn syrup laden fruit cups.

• 13:18Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 13:19Speaker 01

  This is a part of what put him here. So these have demonstrative impacts. I think the sad thing for what is happening in the administration and for folks like you is that we won't see the real impact of this for, maybe for several years, how these policy shifts are really going to impact the American people.

• 13:41Speaker 00

  No, I think that's a great point. Our dietary guidelines, and I'm glad you brought them up, because I think that's one of the most important things that we have done under Secretary Kennedy at, at HHS, is institute these new dietary guidelines, because we have done literally what you said. We've taken that old food pyramid that we all remember, right? And we have literally flipped it on its head. And so now we're emphasizing, as you know, we're emphasizing protein in our meals. We're emphasizing protein that we obtain from nutrient dense food, beef and poultry and chicken and, and healthy fish. We're emphasizing healthy fats. We're not afraid of fat at the Department of Health and Human Services. We know, we know that healthy fats are necessary for brain development

• 14:24Speaker 00

  in our kids, right? They're necessary for, for hormone balance in us as adults. We're not afraid of fresh fruits and vegetables and healthy carbohydrates. What we are moving away from and what we advocate against are the ultra processed, highly processed foods, additional amounts of sugar in our diet, particularly for our kids. So you're right, producing these is going to have an immediate effect, because as you know, you eat better, you do feel better. You do have the energy to do the things that you need to do. But it's going to have the benefit of years to come as we see a decrease in those chronic diseases that Secretary Kennedy rightly says are ravishing our country. Obesity, diabetes,

• 15:06Speaker 00

  hypertension, cardiovascular disease, all of those things. So we're going to have an immediate effect, but more importantly, probably be a more lasting effect. And you know, the cost savings from the work that we've done with our new guidelines, ultimately, as we improve healthcare, as we reduce the burden of chronic disease, is going to be, is going to be astronomical.

• 15:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I think that, I mean, that's another side effect of this. And I think every person listening to this podcast right now knows somebody suffering from one of those chronic conditions that you just named. So the, the agency has a tagline that are current Health and Human Services, prevention first. And Secretary Kennedy, I'm just going to read a quote, chronic disease is a lifestyle driven issue. So can you give us some specific guideline updates and policy moves, maybe that are currently in flight, that where you're taking a prevention first posture towards chronic disease? Because I think there's, there's two ways to attack, attack this chronic disease pandemic. One is to go

• 16:08Speaker 01

  in and fix the entirety of the bloated, broken healthcare system, which will take some time. The other is to educate people so they can stay out of it en masse. And I think a lot of, as I zoom out and say, what is the implication of a lot of these policies? Removing black box warnings, femohormone therapy, removing petroleum based diets from, from, from the food system, flipping the food pyramid, is that people are going to be healthy enough that they don't go into this chronic disease hamster wheel. That's one way to fix the problem. So what is the agency doing, you know, with this orientation of prevention first?

• 16:44Speaker 00

  No, we know, as you, as you know, we have a very reactive healthcare system. And listen, I'm a product of the healthcare system. I'm trained in the United States, went to a great medical school, did a great residency, but we have a very reactive healthcare system. One of the things, again, that Secretary Kennedy does talk about, and we all talk about at HHS, is being more preventing chronic disease. And that's, that's more important than reacting to. You have to be able to treat, of course. But don't be as reactive, be more preventative. And for example, we're talking about dietary guidelines, a perfect example of how we do that. We've produced these new dietary guidelines. We're now, of course, in the process of rolling them out, educating, educating the public is so incredibly important with our guidelines or anything we do at the Department of Health

• 17:28Speaker 00

  and Human Services, because that's where the real changes are going to occur.

• 17:32Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 17:32Speaker 00

  And that's why I think it's incredibly important doing things like this, and why I'm so appreciative, because this is part of that educational process. This is part of the catechesis, the catechizing, right, Americans about the benefits of our guidelines and eating healthy, about the benefits of getting active and exercising and getting our bodies moving again. And I think it's great when we see Secretary Kennedy on the road, as he is so often, talking to the people, educating, talking about what we're doing, advocating for getting active and eating healthily. You know, he's probably the greatest evangelist for what we're doing. He's out there speaking. But you have Dr. Oz doing the same thing, out there advocating for what we're doing. That educational component is incredibly important as we move forward.

• 18:15Speaker 01

  So what do you feel are some of the, to be blatantly transparent, some of the, let's call it forces working against you? You know, one of the things I see is that people try to politicize these messages. I don't see any political angle to improving the health and nutrition of our public schools, about getting highly processed foods out of our children's diets, about attacking the chronic disease, you know, pandemic, whether you believe in it from a fiscal responsibility standpoint, because it's going to save us hundreds of billions, if not trillions of dollars, or whether you believe in it from the humanitarian standpoint, and this is the best thing to do for, for humanity. But...

• 18:53Speaker 01

  When you took on this role, what surprised you about how either how difficult it was, challenges that you would face? Or what surprised you about the support that you that you received?

• 19:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think I think both of those things. In that this is a very different role than I've ever had in my entire life. I've spent my professional career in the operating room, over an operating room table or counseling patients in the clinic. Right? And so now I find myself in a role where you are working with incredibly smart people to develop policy and to and to execute and put that policy into action. It's very different. This is something that I did. If I didn't have a great team, if I didn't have the support from people like Secretary Kennedy and all the individuals in my team, then it wouldn't be we couldn't do it. I couldn't do it. I will tell you, one of the things that I think that we are see in this administration under President Trump that like we've never seen before is the collaboration,

• 19:50Speaker 00

  the interagency collaboration, working together through all the agencies at HHS, but across the federal government, really totally to produce the wins for the American people. This is this is an administration that is very collaborative on all levels. And that's something that helps produce these wins, helps drive these wins forward, helps us initiate and execute the policies that we're developing. It's incredibly important. So that's been a real surprise to me to see how, again, in this administration, we do work across the different, we do across the different agencies and we work together. You know, just as an example of that, you know, there's, there's a very large Ebola outbreak going on in the Democratic Republic of Congo. And so there are a lot of Americans who are there are.

• 20:35Speaker 00

  It's probably it's it's on scale or it's on track to be probably the worst Ebola outbreak that's ever occurred. Cases are already racking up in the Democratic Republic of Congo. There are a lot of Americans who work with NGOs who are trying to help out the people in Congo. And so we were tasked at HHS and specifically the Public Health Service to help set up a quarantine facility in Kenya for American citizens who are over there and before they return to the United States, quarantine there and then bring them back safely to the United States. But we had to work with the Department of State, had to work with the Department of War, obviously different areas within the Department of Health and Human Services. This collaboration to produce this facility has been amazing.

• 21:18Speaker 00

  And what we have, starting from an empty field over there to now we have a world-class quarantine and treatment facility. But it couldn't have happened without the collaboration that we see across agencies that the leadership of President Trump and people like Secretary Kennedy and Secretary Hegseth have allowed to happen. And of course, Secretary Rubio have allowed to happen, bringing together, allowing the collaboration. So that's incredibly important as we as we initiate the Maha agenda, right? Having that collaboration. So that's been eye opening, pleasantly so. It's been eye opening to see how we all are working together in this administration to make America healthy again and to make America greater than she's ever been. Truly, that collaboration is impressive.

• 22:01Speaker 01

  I like to hear that. So and where do the waters get a little muddy? Like.

• 22:06Speaker 00

  Well, you know, I think that.

• 22:08Speaker 01

  Politicians don't like to talk about that, but like, what is what is slowing you down?

• 22:11Speaker 00

  Well, I think it's, you know, there are forces who don't want to see the Maha agenda initiated. You know, talked about, you know, you know, big food and Secretary Kennedy has talked about that. Although what's really interesting to see is how people are coming on board. Even big food, restaurant chains and such are recognizing that the American people say, yeah, we've heard what Bobby Kennedy is saying and we believe in it and we want to have healthier options. And so Secretary Kennedy is getting getting getting these big industries on board to make their food healthier, to have healthier options. You mentioned about the food and hospitals. You know, it was just a week or so ago when Secretary Kennedy was at a hospital, I think with with Dr. Oz at a hospital, hospitals voluntarily saying,

• 22:55Speaker 00

  yes, we're going to adapt your dietary guidelines. We're going to make our food healthier.

• 22:59Speaker 01

  Before, before.

• 23:00Speaker 00

  But not, that's right, not only for our patients, but for the loved ones who are visiting them. So I think this is, this is, this is a movement. The Maha movement is something that has really, I think, taken America by storm. I think, I like to say this, that Secretary Kennedy has been almost a modern day John the Baptist. He's been crying out in the wilderness, look what we're doing to ourselves with ultra-processed food. Look what we're doing to ourselves by not exercising, by not eating, eating healthily. And people heard that cry. They heard that voice. They heard this prophet and said, yeah, we believe in this. It's been amazing to see and it's been amazing to be a part of that.

• 23:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, it's when you look at, you know, we were talking about this before the podcast. I come from a data science background. So, you know, when you look at the big data, you know, what is, what are the meta-analyses and the big data and the blue zone studies? Like, what do all of these, what does this vast opinion agree on? Well, it doesn't agree that dogmatic dieting extends life. It's not all carnivore, all keto, all paleo, all pescatarian, all vegan, all vegetarian. It's the absence of processed food. You mean, you don't go to any areas of the world where you have hyper-sentenarianism, extended life expectancy and fine concentrations of highly processed food.

• 24:13Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 24:14Speaker 01

  So just targeting that. And I think too, the narrative sometimes, in my opinion, gets twisted that we are attacking food, pharma, chemical companies. That's absolutely not true. I would love to see, personally, and I think my audience too, the most powerful, profitable, influential companies in America, and if not the world, be the most in service to humanity. Nobody cares that you are making a profit. I would love to see Kellogg, General Mills, you know, these, these big food companies that have the capacity to make choices that impact so, so many lives. I would love to see them be.

• 24:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 24:55Speaker 01

  Profitable and.

• 24:56Speaker 00

  Nothing wrong with.

• 24:57Speaker 01

  Successful.

• 24:58Speaker 00

  No.

• 24:58Speaker 01

  It just not at the backs of making our kids.

• 25:02Speaker 00

  That's right. And I think we are.

• 25:03Speaker 01

  Making us sick.

• 25:04Speaker 00

  No, that's exactly.

• 25:04Speaker 01

  Especially in a knowing way.

• 25:06Speaker 00

  And we are seeing that. Like I said, we are seeing, you know, companies and chains come on board and say, yeah, we want to be part of this. We do want to help make America healthier because we see that's what people want. People have responded to the secretary and the president when we talk about making America healthier. They're coming on board and I predict we're going to see more and more of that as we go on.

• 25:24Speaker 01

  So what are some of the, what are some of the agenda items in your crosshair right now? And how, how aligned are you with the messaging coming from Secretary Kennedy? And I think what I'd love to land for my audience is how does something go from a passionate, great idea to actually being implemented? You know, because at some point, policy's got to shift and somebody's got to do some work to put these things in, in, in motion. So first, I'd love to hear like, what's, what's in the crosshairs of HHS right now?

• 25:54Speaker 00

  Right. So specifically talking about, specifically talking about the Office of the Assistant Secretary. Because that's what I have the most knowledge of, of course. You know, again, we're continuing to roll out and evangelize about our dietary guidelines. We're not going to stop that because that's so incredibly important. Right? And like you said, it reaches our children, reaches our men and women in uniform service. You know, it reaches all across the society. So we're going to continue to roll those out and evangelize and educate about those. You know, we have reinstituted there. We started back this year with the Presidential Fitness Test.

• 26:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, I love that.

• 26:26Speaker 00

  Is an amazing thing, right?

• 26:27Speaker 01

  I think we had that when I was, I remember it.

• 26:29Speaker 00

  Oh, I remember doing it.

• 26:30Speaker 01

  Fourth, fifth, sixth grade, seventh grade, and then it sort of kind of went away.

• 26:35Speaker 00

  It did go away.

• 26:36Speaker 01

  High school.

• 26:37Speaker 00

  It was, yeah, it was. So I remember doing it as a kid and we took great pride in doing that, right? And if you couldn't, you know, if you couldn't, you know, it was always a healthy competition, right? There's nothing wrong with competition.

• 26:46Speaker 01

  Run a mile nine, nine minutes or less. What?

• 26:49Speaker 00

  So we, when I was doing it as a kid, it was the pushups, the situps, and then it was the run.

• 26:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, pushups, situps, runs, yeah.

• 26:55Speaker 00

  Exactly. And so that was, the Presidential Fitness Test was unfortunately sunset under the Obama administration. Well, this year, President, President Trump said, listen, we're going to bring this back. Of course, engaging Secretary Kennedy and we're relaunching the Presidential Fitness Test. And what's really great, Gary, is that in preparation for this happening in the upcoming school year, we have a program that we're, that we're conducting, that we're carrying out this summer called Get Kids Active. And what we're doing, Secretary Kennedy is going to different sites, different cities around. We're getting kids together at YMCA's, at boys' clubs. We've got the WWE involved. We're getting big groups of kids together.

• 27:31Speaker 01

  Making fitness cool.

• 27:32Speaker 00

  Making fitness cool. And I'm proud to say it, my Public Health Service officers are at each of these events, teaching the kids how to do the movements, working, for instance, with WWE out there, having the kids do the pushups and the situps and the shuttle run that they're doing and the planks and all those kinds of things that are part of the, part of the test. And this is going on throughout this summer. Again, Secretary Kennedy, myself, our different locations doing this. It's so much fun to do. That's hugely important for our country. This is an initiative that we're really proud of.

• 28:01Speaker 01

  And you gotta get to that generation so that it permeates up through.

• 28:05Speaker 00

  Absolutely. So that's something really important for us. You know, we know that there are falling fertility rates in the country, right? We know that we are at

• 28:15Speaker 01

  Sperm rates too.

• 28:16Speaker 00

  Exactly. We're at the lowest fertility rate our country has ever seen. We're far below replacement. That's a problem.

• 28:22Speaker 01

  We're below replacement.

• 28:23Speaker 00

  Below replacement. That is a problem. It's a problem, for instance, for our workforce in the future, right? You gotta have the people to work. It's a problem for defense readiness when you think about it, because we have to have the pool of individuals who will serve in uniform to protect our country. So the fertility challenges we have are incredibly important. We, through the Office of the Assistant Secretary, we're going to be having a roundtable on male and female infertility, looking at that, looking at root causes, offering pathways forward. They're going to help solve these problems. So that's going to be coming up later in the summer. A date's not set yet, but that's incredibly important for us.

• 28:56Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 28:56Speaker 00

  This administration has been incredibly supportive of women's health. The Office of Women's Health exists under the Assistant Secretary for Health. Our Office of Women's Health, we take women's health and well-being very, very seriously. There have been things done in this administration that we have enacted to lower maternal mortality by 40% or more.

• 29:19Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 29:19Speaker 00

  Really important things that we're doing to support women, to support children. So important.

• 29:24Speaker 01

  Black box warnings, female hormone therapy, that was huge.

• 29:27Speaker 00

  Out of the FDA, exactly right about that. You know, so you mentioned falling fertility in men, falling fertility in women. Again, what are the root causes? We're going to be talking about it, but not just talking. We're going to be offering concrete ways forward. That's to come. So that's very important for us.

• 29:42Speaker 01

  Because I think you start coupling some of these statistics together, they get really scary, right? If you have fertility rates dropping at 2% and you have sperm counts dropping at 1%, you know, 1% a year doesn't sound like a huge, big deal. That's 10% every decade.

• 29:56Speaker 00

  Well, no, our sperm counts in men have dropped, you know, over the past three or four decades, 50% or so. So it's really, really important. So we have to figure out what's going on. What are the reasons for this?

• 30:06Speaker 01

  I'm just gonna ask you that. I was like, as a urologist, I was definitely asking you that question.

• 30:11Speaker 00

  Well, you know, we know that things like chronic disease, obesity, lack of exercise, those things can affect fertility, but also environmental toxins, microplastics. There are things in the environment that we believe, and this is not just me, scientific community believes are affecting fertility. Again, we're going to be really working on those things. So that's a project going forward. Again, there's so many things that we're doing. Always supporting Secretary Kennedy and his efforts, always collaborating across the agencies to support. Yeah, really exciting things happening.

• 30:42Speaker 01

  So women's health, fertility, which I think is, you said, and I don't want to gloss over that, that we are below repopulation. I read a statistic, I don't know if this is true for every country, but it said when the birthing rates, when the fertility rates drop low 1.2%, the birthing rate drops low 1.2%, there reaches a point where that population may be permanently unrecoverable. More people obviously passing away than

• 31:12Speaker 00

  Than being born.

• 31:13Speaker 01

  Than being born. I think you have fertility rates, you also have sperm counts dropping, you also have, and we don't need to go down this bandwagon, I think the disruption of the nuclear family, which is a challenge.

• 31:29Speaker 00

  I would agree.

• 31:29Speaker 01

  You would agree with that too?

• 31:30Speaker 00

  I would agree, 100%.

• 31:32Speaker 01

  And so all of these things combined, so you have socioeconomic forces, and then you have these actual health issues. And have you been able to put a spotlight on what we think is causing this male fertility drop, or these fertility rate drops in females, or that's what this next objective is for? This is what's in your crosshair?

• 31:55Speaker 00

  Always, one of the things that Secretaries Kennedy has said from day one is that we will be driven by gold standard science. And that's going to be part of this roundtable and expert panel. They're going to be bringing in individuals who are experts in these fields, not only to opine on what they think is going on, but to make research initiatives going forward, to look at concrete ways to treat the root causes of infertility, because that's important to do. Talking about it is great, but action is more important. And there will be action that comes out of this. There's no question about that. Incredibly important. Again, like I said, there's national defense ramifications to this, because if you don't have a ready pool of soldiers, because your population is going down. Something that's similar to that, and we'll come back to kids for just a moment, do you know that about

• 32:39Speaker 00

  77% of young men and young women ages 18 to 25, which is the prime recruiting years, are not fit for military service? A lot of it because of obesity or other chronic disease issues. 77% are not fit for military service. You talk about a real national defense crisis going on, a real problem for protecting our borders and our shores and getting men and women who are ready to serve in uniform. Again, which is why our guidelines, talking about eating nutrient-dense, healthy food, talking about getting our youth active, getting away from screens.

• 33:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:19Speaker 00

  Getting out there.

• 33:20Speaker 01

  I saw the Surgeon General's report on the detriments of screen time.

• 33:24Speaker 00

  And that report out of the Surgeon General's office, I think is going to be one of the most important things we see out of the Department of Health and Human Services during our time there, because that's critical. But again, this all bleeds over, and you know, this is Maha, right? This is Maha, taking care of our women, taking care of our kids, taking care of our men, so that we have strong, healthy men, healthy women, healthy kids, for a strong, healthy family. Because again, personally, I believe that's the bedrock of our society. So that's Maha, right? That's Maha. And that's the beauty of the Maha movement, is that it's the right thing to do, it's being led by the right man, Secretary Kennedy, under the right president, Donald Trump.

• 34:05Speaker 01

  You know, I watched this PCAC committee hearing on Thursday and Friday last week, which was to recommend, make recommendations to the FDA relative to these certain peptide compounds. Six passed, one did not. These are, just so that people understand, because I think for people that are not familiar with how the government operates, Health and Human Services, Food and Drug Administration, so there was a committee that made a recommendation

• 34:39Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 34:40Speaker 01

  To move six peptides from what they call category two onto the category one, put them back in the hands of compound pharmacies. This does not mean that it is FDA-approved. And where do we go from here? Does it go into rulemaking? What is the next stage for something?

• 34:58Speaker 00

  Right. So the next stage, again, you said this panel has made recommendations to the FDA. And then what will happen is the FDA will make a decision, there'll be a rulemaking to move those peptides, you're right, from the schedule into schedule one, which will then allow United States compounders to be able to produce these, as these peptides are undergoing scientific study and review. So the people need to understand, we're not saying, and listen, I agree with what this panel suggested.

• 35:26Speaker 01

  So do I.

• 35:27Speaker 00

  Secretary Kennedy has advocated for this. I totally advocate for this. I believe that there's great utility in peptides. Also, I believe that we have to always do studies, right?

• 35:38Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 35:38Speaker 00

  And so we want the American people to understand, we're not saying that if this happens, that we're simply going to throw something that's not going to be studied. No, it simply says you can have access as they are being studied. And the important thing is, right now, it's kind of the Wild West out there with peptides. You don't know, when people buy peptides, you don't know where you're getting them. They could be coming from offshore, they could be coming from China, they could be sources that aren't sterile or tainted. No, what we want are men and women to be able to have access to these peptides as they're being studied, but have safe product to use. I fully support that, 100%.

• 36:11Speaker 01

  So do I.

• 36:11Speaker 00

  Obviously, you do. Secretary Kennedy is very passionate about this.

• 36:14Speaker 01

  Because I saw what happened, and maybe it was an unintended consequence, because in the administration prior to this past one, the, you know, peptides were under the purvey of compound pharmacies. My clinical team was prescribing them on a regular basis. And then one day, we woke up and the light was just shut off. And what happened is the demand didn't go away.

• 36:36Speaker 00

  That's exactly right.

• 36:37Speaker 01

  It just shifted to, whatever you want to call it, the black market, the gray market. And the consumer didn't know. They would go to websites, order peptides. I saw sterile vials that would show up to clients' minds with screw-off tops. That definitely was not made in a compound pharmacy.

• 36:56Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 36:56Speaker 01

  And you would take the top off and just put a syringe down into an open bottle of liquid. And then, you know, you've seen a lot of the studies, there's a lot of influencers out there doing it too, you know, ordering peptides from different websites and finding endotoxins and heavy metals, and just simple things like rice flour and no trace of the peptide. So I applaud restoring this chain of custody, because it doesn't mean that

• 37:23Speaker 01

  All peptides are safe and effective. It also doesn't mean that everybody needs to be on peptides. What it means is you're restoring that doctor-patient or clinician-patient relationship. The patient is going to have a clinician guiding them to compound pharmacy who's going to at least give some measure of guarantee for stability, sterility, potency, so that at least you know what's going into your body is what's on that label.

• 37:44Speaker 00

  No, that's exactly right. This is an example of what you want your Department of Health and Human Services to be doing. You want it to allow science to proceed, studies to proceed, while at the same time protecting you so that what you're getting in that bottle is not going to be tainted or dangerous or not sterile or not even have the product in it.

• 38:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:02Speaker 00

  Incredibly important. I think that's a big win for the American people.

• 38:05Speaker 01

  I think so, too. I want to also talk about what is under the umbrella of your office? Surgeon General?

• 38:12Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 38:13Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 38:13Speaker 00

  So, so you have the Assistant Secretary for Health. Then there are a variety of sub-offices, offices underneath the Assistant Secretary for Health, the Office of Women's Health, Office of Minority Health, the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion.

• 38:28Speaker 01

  Right.

• 38:28Speaker 00

  So, different offices, and there's a variety of them underneath the Office of the Surgeon-

• 38:32Speaker 01

  These are the different verticals under there.

• 38:33Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 38:34Speaker 01

  How big is the department? How many people does it employ?

• 38:37Speaker 00

  You know, when you look at the number of employees, probably around, I want to say 300 or so. So, a significant number of, maybe a little bit less than that. But then you also have the Commission Corps of the Public Health Service, that 53 or 5400 individuals in uniform. The Office of the Surgeon General falls underneath the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health. So, the Surgeon General reports up to the Assistant Secretary for Health. And I'm going to be very happy when we get a Surgeon General in place.

• 39:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would love to see a Surgeon General, too.

• 39:04Speaker 00

  America needs, America needs a Surgeon General. And they need, they need a Surgeon General in place. I'm excited about when we get, of course, right now, we have someone who's been nominated. I don't know when, Dr. Sapphire, Nicole Sapphire, I don't know when her hearing will be. I haven't heard that. But I'm excited about having the opportunity, once she is confirmed, to work with her and form a relationship as we begin, we begin to speak to the American people. We begin to advance policies for the betterment of the country. The United States needs its, needs its Surgeon General, so I hope that will come soon. But that falls under the Assistant Secretary for Health. So, we really touch a wide range of, of, of things that happen in the government at, at HHS, Office of Population Affairs. So, a lot of things fall under the Assistant Secretary for Health.

• 39:48Speaker 01

  And, and just in a broad sense, you know, with so many departments there and such a behemoth, you know, it's like trying to steer an aircraft carrier, you know, and turn, turn it in the oceans. Doesn't slow down very quickly, doesn't turn the other direction very quickly. And you've had a certain number of years to make the biggest impact that you can. How do you restore trust in, in, in the American people? That there isn't a sub-agenda, you know, there's, I think, I think, and I'm going to be very careful not to turn this into a political podcast, I mean, I think we've gotten so, you know, the temperature is so high in a political environment right now.

• 40:32Speaker 01

  But I think it's important that we sort of cut through that. And when we talk about health and we talk about food, we talk about chemicals in our food supply, we talk about feeding our children, okay, this is the one place that we should all be able to sit at the same table and say, we, we can at least agree upon, you know, these, these agenda items. So, how does your office restore trust in the American people that you're doing, doing the right thing?

• 41:00Speaker 00

  Gary, I really appreciate you asking that question because that is one of the things that motivated me to want to work at the Department of Health and Human Services. Because as we saw during the COVID pandemic, we just have to admit-

• 41:12Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 41:12Speaker 00

  That there was a loss of trust in our higher institutions in healthcare. You know, in general, when you talk to someone and say, do you trust your doctor or your nurse practitioner? Yeah, I trust them. How do you feel about CDC? How do you feel about NIH? You know, a lot of people just aren't, aren't trusting. And there's good reason for that. We know what happened in the past in this country. And it was really important to me to say, okay, I, I'm a product of our, I'm, I'm a physician, I'm a surgeon. It's been an amazing career for me. It's been such a blessing. Like I said, it's all I ever wanted to do was be a doctor. And so, when I saw this loss of trust, it was really hurtful. And I said, I want to be able to try to help restore

• 41:52Speaker 00

  trust in our higher institutions of healthcare and healthcare policy in this country. I believe personally that one of the reasons that I was selected, that I was nominated by the President is because I did practice as a Main Street physician, if you will, for three and a half decades, administering healthcare, you know, taking care of patients. And I believe it's beneficial for me to bring that experience to my job as the Assistant Secretary. And part of that is, as a surgeon, as a physician, and more specifically as a surgeon, I had to earn the trust of my patients, right? Because if you're going to administer care to someone, they got to trust you. If you're going to take them to the operating room and have them undergoing anesthetic and manipulate their body, they have to trust you.

• 42:36Speaker 00

  And so, I believe I have a certain skill set, like many physicians and surgeons do and nurses do, to be able to endure trust from their patients. And I wanted to bring that to this. And so, I think, how do we do that? I think exactly what you see, what we're doing, transparency. Secretary Kennedy talks about radical transparency. The transparency is important. We'll answer questions, we'll do long-form podcasts like this.

• 42:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, I love it.

• 42:59Speaker 00

  We'll do interviews. I love being out there doing interviews. Secretary Kennedy, part of his superpower is how he can connect with people and they believe him because he is an eminently honest man. And I think that's part of the way that we restore that trust. Again, I referenced Dr. Oz, Mehmet Oz, amazingly honest, a truly good man, a smart man, who, does he, does he have to have this job? Does Secretary Kennedy have to have this job? No, they could be doing other things, but they want to restore trust as well. So, we're part of that team to do that. Again, transparency, answering questions, being willing to sit down, talk to people. I think that's incredibly important.

• 43:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think so, too.

• 43:37Speaker 00

  And admitting, I'm sorry.

• 43:38Speaker 01

  No, go ahead.

• 43:39Speaker 00

  Admitting that we have made mistakes in the past.

• 43:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a big one, too.

• 43:42Speaker 00

  You know what? Because, again, how much have we seen that? The hubris and not saying, hmm, we got it wrong. You can always make mistakes. I think people are understanding and forgiving if you say, maybe we got this wrong and we're going to do better.

• 43:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:53Speaker 00

  And I think we are not above saying, if that time comes that we've made a mistake, we can admit that and move on and do better.

• 44:00Speaker 01

  So, in a perfect world, how would the next three years of, of your career role at HHS play?

• 44:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think it's going to be continuing to work with Secretary Kennedy and the amazing people at HHS to serve the President, to advance his agenda, and of course, to advance the agenda of making America healthy again, making America great again. Whatever role I play in that, like I'm doing now, helping formulate policy, get that policy out there, and working with the Commission Corps. Because I have to say, one of the, it's been, it's been the highlight of my medical career to be the Assistant Secretary for Health.

• 44:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're only the 18th one.

• 44:36Speaker 00

  The only 18th one.

• 44:37Speaker 01

  Ever, so that's a big deal. Congratulations.

• 44:40Speaker 00

  No, thank you.

• 44:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:41Speaker 00

  But to serve in uniform and to lead my officers, and I call them my officers, not because I own them, but because I have a love for them. To see my officers, the men and the women who wear this uniform, who are out there, their, their expertise, their dedication, their moral character to be out there. And they could be doing other things, I'm sure, that would make them more money, but they want to serve our republic. They want to be on the front lines. Like I said, we have, now, we have over 60 Commission Corps officers who are at the Ebola facility in Kenya.

• 45:14Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 45:15Speaker 00

  They were there.

• 45:15Speaker 01

  Out of the 5400.

• 45:16Speaker 00

  That's right. And they're happy to be there. We have public health service officers who work with DHS, right? Many of them work with DHS, helping keep our borders secure, doing the right things for our country. I have 15 or 16 Commission Corps officers at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, providing medical care and services there. I went to visit them a few months ago, which was an amazing trip. We've got Commission Corps officers that are in the Indian Health Service. And that's, and that's a passion of Secretary Kennedy to take care of and render service to our Native Americans and Alaskan natives. So, we have a large number of Commission Corps officers, their Indian, Indian Health Service, taking care of their Native American brothers and sisters, right? We have Commission Corps officers that are at FDA, at CDC,

• 46:01Speaker 00

  working with the other uniform branches of the military, Commission Corps officers that serve in the White House, that serve in the Pentagon.

• 46:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:07Speaker 00

  I'm incredibly proud of the job that they do. It is a privilege to wear this uniform. It is a privilege to lead them. It's been, that's been a tremendous blessing. It's been one of the best parts of my job. And so, I look forward to, like we said, you know, three more years of wearing the uniform and taking care of my officers.

• 46:24Speaker 01

  Amen to that. Admiral Christine, I wind down all my podcasts by asking my guests the same question. And there's, there's no right or wrong answer to this question.

• 46:34Speaker 00

  That's good.

• 46:34Speaker 01

  Good. But what does it mean to you to be an ultimate human?

• 46:42Speaker 00

  To be an ultimate human?

• 46:43Speaker 01

  To be an ultimate human?

• 46:44Speaker 00

  I would say this, what I think it means to me, as I think about that, and I like being put on the spot, as I think about that, what it means is taking the blessings that I have had with, with my fund of knowledge, right? Taught to me by so many people, so much smarter than me, and mentors who have taken me under their wing, taking my fund of knowledge, taking my skill set, which I think hopefully involves communication, dedication to our republic, and then using that honestly to better the lives of my brothers and sisters that are out there, right? I think, I think you feel the same way. I haven't known you long, but I think you feel the same way. Part of that comes down to love, right? A lot of it, love of our republic, love of the men and women and children who are in this republic,

• 47:27Speaker 00

  love of the fact that we have the privilege of having a knowledge base and an understanding that we can use to try to help. So, for me, I, I think that, that certainly plays into that as part of the ultimate human. You know, I'm sure there are other things if I thought about it, but that's what comes to my mind.

• 47:43Speaker 01

  Well, it gives me a great deal of confidence to know that there's men and women like yourself at the highest levels of our government, fighting to make this country healthier again, championing the, the wins. I will continue to be a big supporter of, of this agenda to make America healthy again. I think the, the, the policies that have been taken and enacted so far, like I said, we will see those effects years from now in such a demonstrative way, the impact on chronic disease, on, on the number of our children that are facing chronic disease, on morbid obesity, on type 2 diabetes, and eventually on healthcare costs.

• 48:27Speaker 01

  So, I, I really just applaud what you're doing and I appreciate you coming on the Ultimate Human Podcast.

• 48:33Speaker 00

  I appreciate that. Thank you for the opportunity to do it. One of the, some of the many nice things about this are that we are getting to have radical transparency, talking about what we're doing, to let the American people know that in this administration, we really aren't taking our foot off the accelerator. I mean, people might say, two years in, you're going to lay back? Not under this President and not under Secretary Kennedy. We aren't laying back on nothing. I mean, we are keeping our foot on the gas and we're moving ahead, which is exactly what we should be doing because it's a privilege to do what we do. So, being able to, to talk about that, being able to, to have people get to know us as, as, as humans, and that also, and also helping to form a friendship between you and me because I really want to nurture this friendship. I love what you're doing. I want to be supportive of you because I know you want to be supportive of us at HHS.

• 49:17Speaker 00

  I want to be supportive of you.

• 49:19Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 49:19Speaker 00

  Because I think what you're bringing to people is really important. It's really cutting-edge, really important.

• 49:24Speaker 01

  Thank you so much. Admiral Christine, I hope you come back on the Ultimate Human Podcast.

• 49:28Speaker 00

  I will.

• 49:29Speaker 01

  I appreciate you for your time today. And until next time, guys, that's just science.