- Welcome back everybody to the Building Lifelong Athletes podcast. I'm your host Jordan Rehnke. Thanks so much for stopping by. If you're new here, the goal of this podcast helps you active and healthy for life through actionable evidence informed education. As I mentioned before, my name is Jordan. I'm a dual bore certified physician in family and sports medicine. And the topic we're gonna talk about today is Robert F. Kennedy Jr's Health Revolution Initiative titled Make America Healthy Again. That's the whole thing we're gonna talk about with the key proposals, examine the scientific evidence and discuss the potential implications, both positive and negative for the future of American healthcare. So let's get started. So what is Make America Healthy Again or MAHA? It is a political action committee really at its core that's seeking to ignite a health revolution in the US is what they say. Their goals are to end corporate control of government agencies and support candidates who prioritize public health and sustainability. Obviously the figurehead of this is RFK Jr. If you haven't heard of RFK Jr, he's a politician and he's kind of heading this. But MAHA itself is actually a political action committee saying, hey, we wanna do this. And it's a grassroots movement working to empower voters and shift the political landscape to put people's health versus what they're saying. And it's a energetic rally cry saying, make America healthy again and supporters are coming along to advocate for this. But once again, the actual MAHA is a political action committee. And before the election, they said, hey, they'd support whoever supports these candidates. Obviously it's kind of gotten tied with RFK and the Trump administration. And it's just been a, yeah, it's been very interesting. And they kind of have a, their goal is to transform healthcare system across the country and transform healthcare across America. That's really it and try to improve outcomes for Americans. So that's what like it generally stands for. Now let's talk about what they actually want to do. So they've kind of explained five key pillars of their mission, right? So MAHA has five missions. These are, you know, talking about the chronic disease epidemic, regenerative agriculture, habitat preservation, combating corporate corruption and removing environmental toxins. So that's kind of their pillars that they're on. And each of these pillars represents a critical area that they are focused on addressing in order to create a healthier, more sustainable future in their opinion. And we're gonna dive more into each one of these and explain why they're so important to the work. But understand that this is like where they're coming from. These five pillars is really kind of important, right? So once again, these are, you know, the chronic disease epidemic, regenerative agriculture, habitat preservation, combating corporate corruption and removing environmental toxins. Everything they talk about kind of stems from there. So we're gonna go through here and talk more about those things individually. But this is like the core tenant of their entire idea. And so I'm just kind of breaking this down from my perspective, what I see as a physician and you know, what people are saying, and you know, there's a lot of people talking, good and bad on the right and left about these proposals, but I'm gonna kind of break it down here. You know, this is an initiative that has very much, there's several positive aspects that are worth highlighting I think. You know, I think first of all, it has a strong health focus, which is great. Addressing a growing epidemic of chronic disease in our communities, which is awesome. You know, they're saying we wanna promote healthy lifestyles and nutrition. And overall they want to improve wellbeing. I think that's a slam dunk. I think anybody's gonna argue with that, right? If you were saying, hey, I wanna decrease the chronic disease burden of America. If someone's like, no, no way. I mean, I'd question that person's sanity. We, I think it's a great thing that we wanna do that. How we're gonna get there, we'll talk more about that in a little bit, but that's a good goal that I think everybody can agree on. On top of that, they support sustainable agriculture practices, which this encourages regenerative farming methods that protect the land and the environment for long-term use. And I think nobody's gonna be like, no, that's bad. I think that's also a good thing to make sure that for generations we have healthy farmland and ways to regenerate our farming communities. And then finally, they're also dedicated to environmental protection. It works to preserve natural habitats and remove harmful toxins and pollutants to the environment. I think that's great. Ensuring a healthier ecosystem for all. That's great. And then they have these three core pillars, right? So health, sustainability, environmental stewardship. I think most people are gonna agree that those are probably good things. You know, people will argue all the time about stewardship, like, oh, it's actually not ideal to do this way versus that way. Okay, but overall, the 20,000 foot view that we're trying to keep our habitats clean, renewable so we have them for generations, and improving our chronic health. Like, nobody's gonna say like, those are bad things. Those are all, I think, very good things. However, it wouldn't be fair to talk about this without talking about the controversies. There are definitely controversies surrounding this. You know, the organization itself, the politicians involved, and there's been a lot of debate and concern from a lot of people. One key issue people bring up are the controversial views of the leaders of this movement of RFK specifically, which kind of raised questions about the organization's credibility and approach with him being kind of the leader of this. He's, in the past, been very outspoken about things like corruption, vaccines, and makes some pretty wild claims at times. You go back and look at some of his vaccine claims, talking about there's never been a benefit to a vaccine. You know, people will take that with a grain of salt, and they'll run with it and say, "Hey, like, you know, that's what he's saying." But he definitely has controversy around him. He comes off occasionally as someone who's anti-establishment almost all the time. And with that kind of comes sometimes anti-science that is against science. That's what some people have said as well. But obviously this is why there's lots of controversy. And there's also concern that Make America Healthy, their activities may undermine public health measures and erode scientific trust in the community at large. When they said they roll back things, they specifically said they wanna deregulate lots of things in the government, decrease the size, all these things. People are worried that we know we'll be safe. You know, some people also view that these actions are politically motivated, meaning that, hey, attaching themselves to this movement will get them more voters. And then that actually, when they get the voters, they vote for them, they won't care about any of the actual issues. So like people have claimed that, you know, the Trump administration will teamed up with RFK to get his voters. And then once they have them, it's not really a priority. And so some people feel it's politically motivated. That's once again, controversial and we don't know the answer to that. And then at the end of the day, also the organization has been criticized for lacking concrete or well-defined strategies to achieve its actual stated goals, leaving a lot of people, including myself, worried about its true intentions and effectiveness, right? It's easy to say, we're gonna revolutionize America. It's really hard to actually revolutionize America's healthcare, that's gonna be a very challenging thing to do. And I'd love to see some more concrete ideas, but this is kind of where the more controversial side of things starts. All right, what's my take on this? Well, there's a lot of takes here. I think overall, I think, as I mentioned before, it's awesome that we're having a focus on chronic disease prevention, lifestyle medicine, and environmental health. I think overall, those are good things. However, there's definitely some cons to consider, including the risk of oversimplifying complex issues, the lack of concrete action plans, and the possibility of undermining existing health structures. What I mean by that is that, hey, they're saying, hey, we wanna do this. We wanna revolutionize everything. Okay, what are like actual plans? You know, like, I think you kind of have to think about what do we wanna do when we say, we're gonna tackle corruption and do that. Okay, well, will that actually fix anything? You know, they talk about dismantling the FDA and the CDC and, you know, stripping them down and powering them. Okay, that's fine. But like, is that actually gonna lead to better health outcomes? Like, we have no idea, you know? And we're not doing these things systematically. We're saying we're gonna dismantle things. We need to like figure out what's actually going on here. And on top of that as well, like, you know, I think a lot of times what is lost in this is, you know, RFK put out a tweet saying, these are the things we're looking at. And he talked about, you know, raw milk and ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine and all these things. And like, it's very valid to have discussions. I think in 2020 during COVID, I think we, a lot of people felt hurt by the medical system saying that, you know, when people were saying, get vaccines or pretty much die, you know, it could be misleading. And there's a certain population with younger men who maybe didn't benefit as much from vaccine. And they were told that. And there's a lot of stuff going on there. There's a lot of hurt from the medical establishment. And I think it's valid to talk about options and things like alternative medicines, but like, I think at the end of the day, that is such a small, small portion of anything. Like raw milk, ivermectin, like those are, maybe they're just microcosms of things of people being anti, you know, anti against the system or they're not willing to open their eyes. But like, when he's talking about those things, that's just like, I think, pandering to people who are like, yeah, yeah. Whereas like that, none of those two things are gonna solve healthcare in America. Like, let me tell you that. Healthcare in America is so jacked up that like, those are kind of most things like, to me, I see that as a way to like garner, to achieve fake support, meaning, hey, people are passionate about these topics because they felt hurt by it. And so they're gonna rile them up. But like, if you sell raw milk or don't sell raw milk, that's not gonna, that is not gonna change the health trajectory of America. Like not at all. And so maybe people were saying, you know, those are the flood gates, you open those up and we have less regulation, you go from there. But really that doesn't do much for me. The big thing for me is how do we help people in whole? Right, like what's the biggest issue in America with our chronic disease? If we just talk about chronic disease, you know, what's the biggest thing? Like, well, it's really our food environment is what it comes down to. You know, for the predominant history of human beings on earth, we do not have an abundance of food. We go find food and we didn't have a lot of it. And now we have excess food. We pretty much have as much food as we could possibly want. And now we have diseases of over nutrition is essentially what it's come down to. And how do we change that environment? That is what we need to do. And obviously I'm not sitting here with proposals saying, hey, I have a perfect solution. So I'm not trying to be hypocritical saying, you know, they have no plan and I don't have a plan, but also stop my job and it's not my political platform. I better believe if I was running for political platform, I have a actual plan of what I wanna do. And so that's my biggest concern with this movement is that, hey, like they have these big dreams. It's awesome, but it's really just like smoke and mirrors saying, hey, you know, this is what we're gonna do, but are they actually gonna do something? So for me, if we're not actually talking about like, how do we change things from the ground up, right? You know, removing corruption, that's great. I think we can all agree, like having corruption in science and pharmaceuticals and FDA, anything like that, that's good, that's clean enough. That's fantastic, I'm not arguing that. But the day to day, people who don't have access to solid food, people who are, you know, why are grocery stores full of processed foods and we have just a little bit of unprocessed foods, like those are the systemic issues leading to this environment of access. We just have untapped potential. We can just literally eat as much as we want. Like that's ultimately, I think, the underlying cause of this, you know, disease epidemic is that we just have an overabundance and that's what we have currently in America and the Western world at large. And how do we address that? That's the biggest thing. I wanna find that, you know, how can we actually get to the root of the problem instead of just pointing fingers and saying it's, you know, the elites causing all these problems, like, okay, I don't think a top down approach working at governmental levels or like that saying, hey, we're gonna clean things up, it's gonna actually fix day to day things and so I wanna see a more concrete plan. But I am very excited. I'm optimistic for sure. But, you know, I think we need to find a balanced approach that capitalizes on the strengths of the momentum going here, but also having concrete plans. And so moving forward, what I'd like to see, well, once again, I'd like to acknowledge the progress we've made as a whole in terms of, we've done a really good job in Western healthcare of eliminating like infectious diseases. That's been awesome. That's been a huge assessment to sanitation and vaccines. And so like making progress off what we got there, not regressive there necessarily from back there. And we also need to make sure that we have strategies that are inclusive and accessible to everybody from every different level. You know, a lot of times people talk about have to eat organic this or organic that, and that's just not an option for a lot of people who are struggling. And so making sure that we, as we move forward, we're thinking about everybody and how we can get everyone to be better and healthier. And then I think at the end of the day, we need to prioritize the basics, right? Getting enough sleep, regular exercise, any health promoting diet. These are the building blocks of health. Like these, how do we implement strategies? And whether it's systematic, whether it's governmental influence, whatever, how do we get people to do those main three things? And if you do those main three things, a lot of things are gonna fall into place. And if we keep them, you know, keep it simple, that will yield really, really good results. And overall, I didn't want this to be a rag session on this. Overall, I'm actually very encouraged. I think it's awesome that we are having a conversation about how terrible our health is in America. You know, I think Make America Healthy represents an optimism for positive change in American healthcare. And I think that's fantastic. I'm all for that. I would love to eliminate corporate greed. I would love to eliminate for-profit hospitals. You know, I don't think that those are fantastic. These are just, you know, me talking and generally what I've seen in my experience. And so I'm not saying necessarily, this is the ultimate way, but I'd like the general idea of, hey, let's make America healthier again. I wholeheartedly agree. But I think the focus needs to be on addressing the major health factors that affect all Americans rather than getting bogged down on smaller details, which I think we're kind of doing right now. And so I'm excited to see where this goes. I'm excited to see how it's developed. I hope we make positive changes. I hope that we don't swing so far. You know, if we're here, sometimes we want to shift the pendulum all the way. Like most things, we're probably in the middle is where we need to be. And so I'm excited to see there, but once again, a conversation about chronic disease and America, I think that's a good thing overall. I just wanted to kind of pose this as my questions and my concerns for the progress moving forward, not just to have a blind faith that, hey, this is gonna work great. And then we're gonna do amazing, but to say, hey, these are my concerns, but overall I am very encouraged and I'm excited to see where this goes. And that's gonna do it today for our podcast, short and sweet, not too bad, but I just saw this and I wanted to talk on it saying, hey, this is actually what their stance are. There's a lot of rhetoric. I just wanted to clear it up a little bit. So if you did find this helpful though, it would mean the world to me if you either share this with a friend or give us a five star review on your podcast platform or choice, it really does help other people find the show and I appreciate it. But that's it for today. Now get off your phone, get outside, have a great rest of your day. We'll see you next time. - Disclaimer, this podcast is for entertainment, education and informational purposes only. The topics discussed should not solely be used to diagnose, treat or prevent any condition. The information presented here was created with an evidence-based approach, but please keep in mind that science is always changing and at the time of listing this, there may be some new data that makes this information incomplete or inaccurate. Always seek the advice of your personal physician or qualified healthcare provider questions regarding any medical condition.
