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

21:59Truly, that collaboration is impressive.

22:01Gary Brecka:I like to hear that. And where do the waters get a little muddy? Well, you know, I think that when— Politicians don't like to talk about that, but like what is slowing you down? Well, I think it's – there are forces who don't want to see the Maha agenda initiated. We've talked about 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.

22:37And so Secretary Kennedy is getting these big industries on board to make their food healthier, to have healthier options. You mentioned about the food in hospitals. You know, it was just a week or so ago when Secretary Kennedy was at a hospital, I think with Dr. Oz, at a hospital. Hospitals voluntarily saying, yes, we're going to adapt your dietary guidelines. We're going to make our food healthy. Before we force you. That's right. Not only for our patients, but for the loved ones who are visiting them. So I think this is a movement. The Maha movement is something that has really, I think, taken America by storm.

23:12I 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 foods. Look what we're doing to ourselves by not exercising, by not 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. Yeah, you know, it's when you look at,

23:38Gary Brecka: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 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 pescetarian, all vegan, all vegetarian. It's the absence of processed food. you don't go to any areas of the world where you have um hyper centenarianism extended life expectancy and find concentrations of highly processed exactly 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 i think my audience too the most powerful profitable um influential companies in america and if not the world be the most in service to humanity.

24:36Gary Brecka:Nobody cares that you're making a profit. I would love to see Kellogg, General Mills, these big food companies that have the capacity to make choices that impact so many lives. I would love to see them be profitable and successful. It's just not at the backs of making our kids. That's right. And I think we are. And make it not sick. No, that's exactly right. Especially in a knowing way. And we are seeing that. Like I said, we are seeing, you know, companies and change 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.

25:16People 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.

25:24Gary Brecka:So what are some of the agenda items in your crosshair right now? and 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? Because at some point, policy's got to shift and somebody's got to do some work to put these things in motion. So first I'd love to hear, what's in the crosshairs of HHS right now? Right. So 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.

26:05We'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. Yeah, I love that. Which I think is an amazing thing, right?

26:27Gary Brecka:I think we had that when I was, I remember it. Oh, I remember doing it. Fourth, fifth, sixth grade, seventh grade, and then it sort of kind of went away. It did go away. High school. Yeah, so I remember doing it as a kid, and we took great pride in doing that, right? Yeah. And if you couldn't, you know, it was always a healthy competition, right? There's nothing wrong with competition. Was run a mile nine minutes or less? So when I was doing it as a kid, it was the push-ups, the sit-ups, and then it was the run. Yeah, push-ups, sit-ups, runs. Exactly. And so that was the presidential fitness test was unfortunately sunset under the Obama administration.

27:00Well, this year 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 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 YMCAs, at boys clubs. We've got the WWE involved. Oh, dear.

27:29Gary Brecka:We're getting big groups of kids together. So you're making fitness cool. 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 push-ups and the sit-ups and the shuttle run that they're doing and the planks and all those kind of things that are part of the test. And this is going on throughout this summer. Again, Secretary Kennedy, myself are at different locations doing this. It's so much fun to do. That's hugely important for our country.

27:59This is an initiative that we're really proud of.

28:01Gary Brecka:And you've got to get to that generation so that it permeates up through. 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 the lowest. Sperm rates too. Exactly. We're at the lowest fertility rate our country has ever seen. We're far below replacement. That's a problem. We're below replacement. Below replacement. That is a problem. It's a problem, for instance, for our workforce in the future, right? You've got to 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.

28:37So 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 that are 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. Wow. 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.

29:11There have been things done in this administration that we have enacted to lower maternal mortality by 40 % or more. Wow. Really important things that we're doing to support women, to support children. So important. Black box warnings, female hormone therapy, that was huge. Out of the FDA, exactly right about that. 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.

29:42Gary Brecka: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. 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? I personally... Just going to ask you that. I was like, as a urologist, I was definitely asking you that question. Well, you know, we know that things like chronic disease, obesity, lack of exercise, those things can affect fertility, but also environmental toxins, microplastics.

30:20There 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.

30:42Gary Brecka: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 below 1.2%, the birthing rate drops below 1.2%, there reaches a point where that population may be permanently unrecoverable. More people obviously passing away than - Than being born. Than being born. um 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 which which is a challenge i would agree um you would agree with that um and and so all of these things combine so you have socioeconomic forces and then you have these actual health issues and 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?

31:54Gary Brecka:This is what's in your crosshair? Well, I think looking always, one of the things the Secretary 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 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.

32:22There'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 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.

33:09Again, which is why our guidelines, talking about eating nutrient-dense healthy food, talking about getting our youth active, getting away from screens, getting out there. I saw the Surgeon General's report on the detriments of screen time. 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.

33:49Because 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.

34:04Gary Brecka: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 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.

34:53Gary Brecka:and where do we go from here? Does it go into rulemaking? What is the next stage for something like that? 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 will 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. So do I.

35:27Secretary 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? Yes. 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.

35:57They 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%. So do I. Obviously, you do. Secretary Kennedy is very passionate about this.

36:14Gary Brecka:Because I saw what happened. and maybe it was an unintended consequence because in the administration prior to this past one, the 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. That's exactly right. 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 of mine with screw off tops.

36:53Gary Brecka:That definitely was not made in a compound pharmacy. 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 peptides. So I applaud restoring this chain of custody because it doesn't mean that 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.

37:31Gary Brecka: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. 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. Yeah.

38:03Gary Brecka:Incredibly important. I think that's a big win for the American people. I think so too. I wanna also talk about what is under the umbrella of your office, Surgeon General? That's right. Okay, 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, right? So different offices, and there's a variety of them underneath the Office of the Surgeon General. These are the different verticals under there. Exactly.

38:34Gary Brecka:How big is the department? and how many people does it employ? 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 Commissioned Corps of the Public Health Service, that 53 or 5 ,400 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. Yeah, I would love to see a Surgeon General too.

39:03You know, America needs a Surgeon General, and 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 Surgeon General, so I hope that will come soon. But that falls under the Assistant Secretary for Health.

39:35So we really touch a wide range of things that happen in the government at HHS, Office of Population Affairs. So a lot of things fall under the Assistant Secretary for Health.

39:48Gary Brecka: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 it in the oceans. It doesn't slow down very quickly. It doesn't turn the other direction very quickly. And you've got a certain number of years to make the biggest impact that you can. How do you restore trust in the American people that there isn't a subagenda? You know, there's, I think, and I'm going to be very careful not to turn this into a political podcast. I think we've gotten so, you know, the temperature is so high in the political environment right now.

40:32Gary Brecka: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 uh upon you know these these agenda items so how does your office restore trust in the american people that you're doing you're doing the right thing 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.

41:08Because as we saw during the COVID pandemic, we just have to admit 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 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'm a product of our, I'm a physician, I'm a surgeon. It's been an amazing career for me. It's been such a blessing.

41:42Like 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 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, because I did practice

42:04Gary Brecka: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 undergo an anesthetic and manipulate their body, they have to trust you. And so I believe I have a certain skillset, like many physicians and surgeons do and nurses do, to be able to endear trust from their patients.

42:44And 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. Yeah, I love it. 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 have to have this job?

43:22Does 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. Yeah, I think so too. And admitting, I'm sorry.

43:38Gary Brecka:No, go ahead. Admitting that we have made mistakes in the past. Yeah, that's a big one too. You know what? Because again, how much have we seen that? The hubris and not saying, 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. 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. So in a perfect world, how would the next three years of your career role at HHS play? 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.

44:19Whatever 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, it's been the highlight of my medical career to be the Assistant Secretary for Health.

44:34Gary Brecka:You're only the 18th one ever. So that's a big deal. Congratulations. No, thank you. 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 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, now we have over 60 commission corps officers who are at the Ebola facility in Kenya.

45:14Wow. They were there. Out of the 5 ,400. 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 Commissioned Corps officers that are in the Indian Health Service. And that's a passion of Secretary Kennedy to take care of and render service to our Native Americans and Alaskan Natives.

45:48So we have a large number of Commissioned Corps officers, their Indian Health Service, taking care of their Native American brothers and sisters. We have Commissioned Corps officers that are at FDA, at CDC, working with the other uniform branches of the military. Commission Corps officers that serve in the White House, that serve in the Pentagon. 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. 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, three more years of wearing the uniform and taking care of my officers.

46:24Amen to that.

46:25Gary Brecka:Admiral Christine, I wind down all my podcast by asking my guests the same question. And there's, there's no right or wrong answer to this question. That's good. But what does it mean to you to be an ultimate human? To be an ultimate human? To be an ultimate human. 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 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 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?

47:14I 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, 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 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.

47:43Gary Brecka: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, And championing the wins, I will continue to be a big supporter of this agenda to make America healthy again. I think 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 the number of our children that are facing chronic disease, on morbid obesity, on type 2 diabetes, and eventually on healthcare costs.

48:27Gary Brecka:So I really just applaud what you're doing and I appreciate you coming on the Ultimate Human Podcast. I appreciate that. Thank you for the opportunity to do it. 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.

49:01So being able to talk about that, being able to have people get to know us as humans, 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. I want to be supportive of you. Thank you. Because I think what you're bringing to people is really important. It's really cutting edge, really important. Thank you so much, Errol Christine.

49:26Gary Brecka:I hope you'll come back on the Ultimate Human Podcast. I will. Thank you, Gary. I appreciate your time today. And until next time, guys, that's just science.