- Hey guys, welcome to another episode
of the Wednesday Checkup.
I just spent the full week in Israel,
and while national media mainly focused
on my flight over there,
I wanna talk to you about the trip itself,
which was incredibly enlightening.
Let's get started.
(upbeat music)
We have to give a huge thank you
to America's Voices in Israel.
They're the nonprofit that brought me over there,
allowed me to connect with the hospitals,
universities, the biotech companies.
Let's start from day one.
Day one, I visited a nonprofit called Save a Child's Heart.
This is something that's obviously
near and dear to my heart,
being a family medicine doctor,
I treat children all the time.
But because we're in the United States,
we're very fortunate to have the amazing
high technical caliber care where if you're born
with a congenital deformity of your heart,
meaning that there's something wrong
structurally within your heart as a child,
we're able to operate cause we have all this fancy tech,
highly trained surgeons,
but those who live in developing countries
don't have access to care like that.
So what this nonprofit does is
it brings children from all across the world,
something like 59 countries right to Israel.
And it not only treats these children,
but it also takes medical professionals from that country,
and trains them how to perform
some of these life changing procedures.
I'm talking open heart surgery, catheterizations.
And they've done this with over 5000 children.
They're saving lives every single day in this foundation.
And the thing that I love most about them
is that in these divisive times,
their core mission is to save children's lives,
regardless of the nationality, the gender, the religion.
And I think that's something powerful
because it shows how medicine can bring the world together.
It's just amazing.
There was a few doctors that I spoke with from Africa,
that left their families behind for the opportunity
to train for three to five years
under these skilled surgeons,
so that they can better serve their community.
They're giving their all to be able to participate
in one of these opportunities.
It was not only enlightening to me,
the work that's being done that I've never heard about,
but it makes me wanna work harder,
it makes me wanna do more nonprofit work
and see what I can do from my little YouTube channel here
to change the world.
Next, we went to the Weizmann Institute
and visited with a doctor by the name of Dr. Spiegel.
He essentially studies how our current experiences,
change not only how our genetics are expressed,
but also possibly changing our genome.
We often say, you know, oh, I can't get big muscles,
because I don't have the genetics for it.
Well, if his research comes to fruition,
at least his hypothesis,
which he has great, you know, references for,
maybe working out consistently throughout our lives
can change our genetic code so that when we procreate,
we can create children that have better genetics
that can work out and build bigger muscles.
Now, I'm obviously using a very
simple example here for that,
if he's able to pinpoint certain pathways of how we learn
or how our genetic code gets activated or changed
based upon certain experiences,
we can create novel treatments for things
like Alzheimer's, schizophrenia,
possibly autism, maybe even ADHD,
those are some of the things we talked about.
Our conversation took us even further down the line,
talking about mental health.
How does playing on our cell phones
all the time affect future generations?
So, there's the fact that I keep getting dopamine hits
and, you know, my attention span is constantly getting,
you know, fed all of these signals,
how does that affect my genetic code in my brain,
both from an expression standpoint, but then also,
how is it changing my genetic code for when I procreate?
And I guess I should say, if I procreate.
Next, I did something that I've been watching
for a long time on television called Shark Tank.
Okay, I didn't exactly do Shark Tank.
Ourcrowd, which is a company in Israel,
has a med tech fund that essentially democratizes
the ability to invest in private companies.
Before you had to be very wealthy
in order to invest in a given product,
or at least know somebody or be in that country.
Now anyone in the world can invest as little as $10,000
in some of these private companies.
And what OurCrowd set up for me in Israel,
was 15 minute pitches by some of the leading
biotech companies, software companies, med tech companies,
and these people blew my mind.
I mean, I met the folks who printed the human 3D heart,
the folks who created the hologram,
which is the next generation of imaging,
called real view imaging,
where not only can you see the image in front of you
without getting fatigued or having the dizziness
from traditional 3D images,
but they can also make the patient transparent.
I mean, that was the craziest part.
Like if you're gonna do some sort of intervention,
like take a needle and put it into a tumor,
they can project onto the human body
what the insides look like,
so that you can be accurate beyond accurate.
And I mean, right now, it's very expensive,
but there's already some laboratories
that are getting this stuff.
I mean, it's the absolute future.
Then I met with a company who's creating
software to triage radiology scans,
so that if you get 100 scans in a busy ER,
the computer uses AI learning to see,
oh, that looks like appendicitis,
that looks like peritonitis, whatever.
It sends you, based on what is the most severe case,
so the radiologists read them in order.
On top of it, it points out to radiologists,
things that they may have missed.
When a radiologist looks at a CAT scan,
they're looking to see, oh, there's abdominal pain,
let's see what's going on in the abdomen,
but they may miss that this patient has osteoporosis.
And what some of the research this company has showed
is that they can use it as a screening tool.
And then probably my favorite company
that I met with is called Tyto Care.
They're basically functioning in the field of primary care
by creating a stethoscope, tongue blade,
autoscope, and thermometer,
and a little camera that you can have at home,
which will attach to your iPad or whatever device you use
to improve the physical exam for telemedicine.
What did I say my biggest problem with telemedicine is?
No good physical exam.
You have a child with a fever,
you can't look inside their ears from a Skype.
But if you have an autoscope
that's attached to a little device, now you can.
So I got very excited about the work that they're doing
and we're in talks to see how we can help one another.
You may be hearing about that in the near future.
My Next up was in Hadassah Medical School
where I met with Dr. Danny Ben-Zvi,
who's running the lab that studies bariatric surgery,
and how it reacts on certain metabolic pathways.
There's lots of digest there so follow along with me
and enjoy the pun that I said digest.
Bariatric surgery are the weight loss surgeries
that we do when patients find themselves
to be extremely obese, where we call morbidly obese.
What we found is that once patients lose weight,
we see a tremendous decrease in chronic diseases
like high cholesterol, diabetes,
and we attribute most of these improvements
in chronic diseases, some even say cures,
to the rapid weight loss that patients have.
What Dr. Ben-Zvi has found in his research
is that even in mice who don't lose weight
after bariatric surgery,
we still see improvements in these chronic diseases,
and what he's trynna isolate are the metabolic pathways
for why bariatric surgery helps improve
some of these chronic diseases.
Imagine if he's able to find a pathway,
a hormone, a marker, a signaling pathway,
for why bariatric surgery improves diabetes,
we can then use that to create a medication, a treatment.
As with all initial research,
or research that's done on mice,
there's a lot of promise
and then we have to take that promise
and bring it into human trials
and see if we can make that same impact on not only humans,
but on end result markers, blood sugar, lifestyle,
life expectancy, morbidity, mortality, all of that stuff.
It seems like all I'm doing is being super business minded
and altruistic and all that stuff,
I was able to make a little fun for myself as well.
I had a meet and greet,
huge thank you to everybody that showed up,
despite all of the transportation issues
that arose on the day of the meetup.
I was actually able to go to the Judean Desert
and ATV off road.
I've never done that before and that was so fun.
I was able to visit Hebrew University in Jerusalem,
where they have essentially
like a startup city or an incubator,
if you watch Silicon Valley, I'm a big fan of the show.
They have an incubator, that's not for profit.
Essentially, what they've done is they put
all this high tech gear for people who have great ideas
to be able to use that gear together,
as sort of like a little community,
and then create the basis of their research
and then spread out and get grants and funding
for all the phenomenal work that they're doing.
And the company that excited me most there
was a company by the name of BrainQ.
They essentially take electromagnetic waves,
expose patients to them at no risk to them, no discomfort,
and allow nerves to essentially regrow
and reconnect after they've been severed.
Now they don't like saying the term reconnection,
I guess, you know, medically and through nomenclature,
that's not exactly what's happening,
but they've shown me results of patients
who've used their technology and actually recovered
limb mobility just by using their technology.
Now the way the technology works is essentially
they were able to perform EEGs,
which is an electroencephalogram.
We put on this brain cap,
and we put all these electrodes on the brain,
and we see the brain activity.
And what they've done is they've been able to map out
all of these different brain waves
that are supposed to happen when your neurons
fire during certain activities,
that they can essentially reprogram your nerves
that are damaged to do those same functions.
Now they're in preliminary testing,
they're about to start doing some clinical trials,
but the foundation of their research is really interesting.
Their founder, in fact, has a very touching story.
I don't wanna ruin it and get any details wrong,
but he's very passionate about what he's doing,
he has a great team in place.
If this comes to fruition,
I mean, this is gonna be amazing.
This is gonna be used in addition to physical therapy,
to speed healing, possibly treat stroke patients,
treat, you know, traumatic brain injuries,
all of these really serious conditions neurologically,
that once were thought to be, you know, permanent,
can now be changed and affected by this technology.
On the rest of my last day I spent
touring all around Jerusalem.
I mean, it was powerful, spiritually,
and from an educational standpoint,
to be around a mosque, a church, a synagogue,
all in like the small radius,
where you have people from all different religions,
living in harmony.
Me being someone who's not very religious,
but I am somewhat spiritual, this was very powerful.
It was educational to learn about the history of all peoples
and how this place has ended up such a holy site
for multiple religions in different aspects.
You know, I was thinking,
would it be safe to be in this area?
It was very safe.
I did not feel threatened at any moment.
It feels like everyone was very welcoming.
They wanted to share their history,
they wanted to talk about what makes,
you know, their religion or their spirituality special,
and me being someone who was eager to learn,
I was excited to participate in that and learn about
all the different cultures that live in Israel.
In its entirety, this was such an educational
eye opening trip where I got to learn
some of the amazing work being done in Israel,
allow me to bring some of that work to you,
within this video, and in the future.
Obviously, on the trip going there,
were able to help our buddy Matt, who is now alive and well,
and we actually had a little meet and greet
inside one of the Jerusalem hospitals.
I learned a lot.
I think that I'm gonna become a better doctor as a result,
and hopefully we can all come together
and do some really great things in this world
without focusing on solely the divisive nature
of what's going on in our politics.
Let's put that aside and focus on our health,
focus on our humanity first.
And with that, I'll leave you to watch
a little bit more of a fun video if you click right here.
As always, stay happy and healthy.
(upbeat music)