Keto Reverses Type 2 Diabetes Pharmacist Explains | KCL34
Keto Reverses Type 2 Diabetes Pharmacist Explains | KCL34
Episode Description:
In this episode, Carole will have a special guest, Cory Jenks, a pharmacist turned keto enthusiast, that also does improv comedy! Cory will share how he supports patients diet and lifestyle changes to help them get off medications and his upcoming book where he teaches health care providers how to use humor and empathy with patients.
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Transcript:
Carole Freeman: [00:00:00] Hey.
Cory Jenks: We need to start singing like, I can do it. You have to know what your ship higher though.
Carole Freeman: Can you do a random musical melody that would not get a copyright infringement?
Cory Jenks: Oh, I only do ha-, I only know things that are copywritten exclusively.
Carole Freeman: Okay. Okay. Bummer, bummer. If we were in Tiktok, that would be fine, but Facebook and YouTube is a little more picky about what music we can use.
Carole Freeman: Do you have a generic version of the birthday song that you sing to your kids or anything? Or
Cory Jenks: We don’t celebrate their birthdays, keeping tough,
Carole Freeman: Tucson, hits a little harder. That’s ah
Cory Jenks: We do. We gotta stay tough compared to all the folks in Phoenix, actually. No I, that was a lie. I’ve been on an improvised rapping team before, but I would need a background beat really to get me going, but I I have been known. Yeah,
Carole Freeman: I can’t beat box. I don’t know. That’s terrible. All right. Let’s just get this party started then. Let’s see, what am I supposed to stay to start with here?
Carole Freeman: Hey everyone, do you love going to your doctor? Are you afraid to [00:01:00] talk to your doctor about your keto diet? Guess what we’re live right now. Welcome to the show, everyone. Do you have a great relationship with your doctor or are you afraid to tell your doctor about your eating habits? Do you wish your experience with your doctor felt more empathetic and adaptable to your needs?
Carole Freeman: Guess what this episode is for you, I’ve got a very special guest today. Corey Jenks, he’s a clinical pharmacist and improv comedian he’s teaching healthcare professionals, how to apply valuable skills or the valuable skills of improv comedy to create a more adaptable, empathetic and humanizing healthcare experience for both patients and providers.
Carole Freeman: And also he is, dabbled in the keto dad a little bit. You know what? He’s the perfect guest for us to have here today. So welcome everyone. If you’re watching the show, go ahead and join the show. This is interactive. I’m going to recognize everyone who’s commenting and I can’t see who you are until you actually comment. So please join the show.
Carole Freeman: Welcome, Cory.
Cory Jenks: Thank you. Oh my goodness. That is a lovely introduction. All of those glowing words I hope are true. And I’m excited to, to inter, [00:02:00] inform worlds that we should have comedy, keto healthcare, boy oh boy, if you are afraid to talk to your doctor about keto, don’t worry. You can talk to this pharmacist about keto.
Carole Freeman: So great.
Cory Jenks: I’m a keto friendly pharmacist. If you can believe it, there are at least three of us that exist. I know.
Carole Freeman: When you reach out to me on Instagram, I was just, and we chatted the first time. I was like, this doesn’t seem real. Somebody who can prescribe medication that is helping people with lifestyle, be able to maybe not need them.
Carole Freeman: I was just like, all right, we need more of these people in the world. Let me do the official introduction. Welcome those of you that are watching live. Please join us, let us know where you’re watching from. And we’ll welcome you to the show. I’m your host. This is, oh, the show Keto Chat Live everyone.
Carole Freeman: I’m your host Carole Freeman. I’ve a master’s degree in nutrition and clinical health psychology. I’m a certified clinical hypnotherapist and board certified ketogenic nutrition specialist. Lots of words. That don’t really matter. I’m actually, I specialize in helping women 40 plus follow a keto diet for sustainable weight loss.
Carole Freeman: That may be [00:03:00] more more interesting to you all. And. Are you ready to read our medical disclaimer? I tasked him with his improv skills to see how this goes. So
Cory Jenks: Yes. So medical disclaimer, this show is meant for educational entertainment purposes only. It is not medical advice nor intended to diagnose, prevent, treat, or cure any condition. If you have questions or concerns related to your specific medical condition, please contact Siri, Alexa, or the personal voice assistant of your choice. And seriously, please contact your personal healthcare professional.
Carole Freeman: Love it. Since we’re both credentialed, we have to be very careful. We’re not we’re just here to an entertain y’all.
Cory Jenks: Honestly I use my credentials, my pharmacy license all day long, so all I really want to do once the clock strikes at 4:00 PM is to entertain, edutainment. I think there’s a level of edutainment that we can find here, but yeah, this is a thrill. I love talking about a low-carb ketogenic approaches.
Cory Jenks: Now I am a male under 40, so basically outside your [00:04:00] demographic, but I still think I might be able to offer those some today.
Carole Freeman: Yeah. W share your information. You can be outside of our bubble, but we, we let some, smart guys in once in a while to share some information. So
Cory Jenks: Thank you.
Carole Freeman: That was a great, I love what you did with our medical disclaimer and I maybe I’ll capture that and replay it every time. So, that was great
Cory Jenks: You have my verbal, I, you have verbal permission to do that, please.
Carole Freeman: If we need any further than I’ll get the transcript of the show and have you sign it legally then, so
Cory Jenks: Yes.
Carole Freeman: Welcome viewers. I can see we’ve got some people live joining us. So go ahead and give us a comment. Let us know where you’re joining from. I actually have a quiz for our viewers as well, so I like to have something that’s fun and engaging for people to try to guess along the way. My quiz for today is, guess how many chickens that Cory has, him and his family have? He sent it to me in his bio. Just a fun little fact. He has some chickens. And so viewers just start putting your guests in there. How many chickens do you think Corey has or actually [00:05:00] I could, could’ve said do you think he even has chickens, but he has chickens. That’s how many he has. And could I be so bold to just say that the winner, whoever gets the number right. Gets one of your chicken eggs?
Cory Jenks: Yes, they would like to come visit me in Tucson. I will gladly they’ll have to fight my two toddlers for it, but I will hand over a chicken egg to them.
Carole Freeman: Fresh from Tucson, Arizona, chicken eggs.
Cory Jenks: So, I will say that medical disclaimer, I think I made it pretty clear how many chickens I had. So it’s an easy quiz, but so that was as good as the judge that I put in there that wasn’t as good as the joke actually inserted into the into the disclaimer there.
Carole Freeman: Okay. So I’m wondering if actually in the description of the show, it might’ve actually had this in there, but I don’t know.
Carole Freeman: Maybe Wendy’s just super smart. Wendy Lopez. Guest’s 10 chickens. Should I actually, let’s just wait to reveal it for a little while. So Wendy, we’re not going to tell you whether you’re right or wrong because I want more people to guess.
Cory Jenks: I will say that whatever you’re thinking out there, how many chickens I have, I will say last month we did have a coyote incident. There has been a co, there was a CA still have chickens. I [00:06:00] still have enough to feed my wife. But just take that into effect. We live in, I live in Tucson, there are coyotes. Our coop is pretty good. They were, I was giving them some free range time I was outside. And these coyotes, they were, it was a wildly coyote. It did not hear me. So there was a coyote incident.
Carole Freeman: You meant, you mentioned that you still have chickens and that that to feed your wife and kids, you’re feeding your wife and kids to the coyotes. Is that what you’re doing or? Oh,
Cory Jenks: I’ve tried. They’re more interested in the chickens now yeah the eggs from the chickens are enough to give my wife and two growing toddlers. So
Carole Freeman: Grown toddlers.
Cory Jenks: Yeah.
Carole Freeman: That’s what I call my ex-boyfriend is a grown toddler.
Cory Jenks: I think my kid, my, my three, one and three year old might be more than your ex-boyfriend a hungry little boys.
Carole Freeman: I have a 26 year old son, and I remember that time where they’re, they could eat me out of house at home. I always tell the story.
Carole Freeman: Some of you may have heard it where people would, are always surprised at how big of batches of food I cook. And it was because of the one time when my son was [00:07:00] 12 and I, cooked in the kitchen for, I don’t know, 20 or 30 minutes and made what I thought was like plenty of food. Now, keep in mind, we’re coming from a family that we all blossom, very like we’re full grown, very young.
Carole Freeman: So at 12 years old, my son was six, four size, 14 shoes. And it was a learning curve for mom to figure out how much to feed him. And so I’d cooked enough. I thought it was, oh, this was plenty of food. And I build a giant plate of food for him. He went out to the dining room to eat that, and I served up myself what was remaining.
Carole Freeman: And by the time I just walked from the kitchen back to dining room, he didn’t eat it, inhaled his entire plate of food and was what, is there more mom I’m still hungry? And all it was left was what was my serving. And I was like, oh, this is the hard part of being a parent is that I have to decide, do I want to tell my son he’s have to go hungry or do I want to not eat for tonight?
Carole Freeman: And so I gave him my plate of food and I made myself something else. And I learned from then on always cook [00:08:00] 10 times more than you think you need, because you have a growing teenage child that’s gonna eat as each out of house at home. So I can’t imagine you have two, two children.
Cory Jenks: Yeah. They’re like, one’s almost four, one’s 18 months but they are, the 18 month old will eat, three eggs for breakfast. So
Carole Freeman: It’s it’s amazing how much they can put away. Like the tiny little body can eat as much as an adult. Yeah.
Cory Jenks: Yeah. But I’m proud of him. He’s got his dad’s appetite, so it’s all good. All we got chickens, we thought it’d be cheaper than trying to buy eggs just to feed them. And to let them know where like food comes from, I think,
Carole Freeman: Yeah, I think that’s so cool. When I was a kid growing up in Oregon, we had chickens, I think a couple of times. And my sister and I had so much fun with them though. This is a very girl thing to do, but we went out and we painted the chicken’s toenails. They were like our pets and oh, of the pedicure day.
Carole Freeman: Oh, that’s a fun fact. I’ve never told on air to anyone. Yeah, growing up in Oregon, we know how to give chicken [00:09:00] pedicures is the moral of that story. I want to mention as well, if you all support the show, if you’re watching on YouTube, you can support us with the super chat and on Facebook you can actually Oh, give us I’m like, what did I type in there?
Carole Freeman: I can’t read my own writing and it’s typed on Facebook there’s awards that you can give as well. So we appreciate that. And if you’re listening on podcast in the future we’d appreciate a review that would really support the show. So write some kind of a rule of it. So Cory’s first time on the show up next is the personal check-in segment of the show.
Carole Freeman: So I will share a little bit about what I’ve been up to, and then this is where we get to learn more about who you are and your history and all that. So I’ll just start out cause mine’s a little boring and shorter. And then we’ll talk all about you share with the audience. I drove to Vegas and back twice in the last week.
Carole Freeman: So I live in Phoenix, Arizona now, and I had two different comedy shows and I had to drive there on Sunday and back on Monday wait, I gotta get the order. Actually on Wednesday last week I drove there Wednesday back on Thursday, and then I turned around on [00:10:00] Sunday and drove back on Monday. So 10 hours of driving in one week, 1200 miles for the love of comedy.
Carole Freeman: Hope I don’t have to do that anytime soon because it is, it’s basically driving through the middle of the desert and it’s a boring, not scenic trip, except for the Joshua tree area that you drive through. That’s very interesting. Have you seen the Joshua trees? Cory?
Cory Jenks: It has. It’s been awhile since I drove that route. So I can’t give any recent memories of the Joshua trees
Carole Freeman: They’re, they, to me, they look like some kind of thing out of Dr. Seuss story or something like that. They’re just very odd. And apparently they’re really, there’s some kind of a Palm tree like so I was looking up the origins of them or what they are, but they’re just adapted to the desert. So they’re very odd looking. There’s a big dense forest of them for us. They’re only like four feet tall, but forced to them on the drive. That’s one, then the Hoover dam. That’s the other thing that’s pretty scenic on the drive. Otherwise it’s five hours driving through the desert of flat boring. Nothing.
Cory Jenks: Yeah. I like the Hoover dam. [00:11:00] I’ve driven to Vegas a few times. I’m partial. I think living in the desert, anytime you can see a body of water. And then I just think, how did you build this? How big but this is an engineering podcast. I don’t need to bore people with my wonder missing insights on structural integrity of dams system.
Carole Freeman: Wait the, I stopped this, the last drive back and first time in a while going over the dam. And yeah, I had the same thoughts of who thought to build this. And then also if you go down below, because you used to build the drive straight over the dam, and apparently with security staff that went happened about 20 some years ago.
Carole Freeman: I won’t mention specifics cause I don’t know what’s being censored these days. Something that happened in 2001 in the United States, that was pretty serious. They no longer want and they may driving across the dam. So now they built a whole new bridge that goes farther away, but you go down for the damn tour and you can look back up and see this giant bridge that they built and looking at it from below is oh my gosh, we drive over that.
Carole Freeman: It’s [00:12:00] massive. I had the same thoughts Cory about who built that, who knew how to build that. And how do they know the first time that it was not going to just completely collapse when you drove over it? Like just,
Cory Jenks: Yeah. I don’t think bridge testers high on my next career choice list. I don’t even like getting up on ladders around the house, so forget forget going over the bridge. So yeah.
Carole Freeman: Yeah. And then seeing the dam water how far it’s come down. It’s pretty dramatic too. So the turbines are sticking out the top of the lake because we’re using a bottle of water out here in the desert. So
Cory Jenks: Everyone’s moving to Phoenix, Carole. From rainy places like Seattle.
Carole Freeman: Yes. Yes. Oh, we should have brought some of the water with us to the, to fill up the wait, what’s the name of the lake there?
Cory Jenks: I think it’s Lake Mead.
Carole Freeman: Yes. That’s it. That’s it. All right. That’s enough of my boring drive to the desert talk. Let’s talk about Cory.
Cory Jenks: Oh, my favorite subject.
Carole Freeman: Yeah, I’ve got, so I’ve got a little bit of your bio that you said here, so I’ll just share that. And then we’ll [00:13:00] just get into a little bit more of keto.
Carole Freeman: So just to let you know, I’ll just share a little bit about what you shared with me, except for how many chickens you have, cause I still want people to guess that. And Cory has an a study work, we’re going to talk about as well too. And then I have some more in-depth questions for you as well. Hey, you all want to hear about Cory? Why the heck did I ask him on here? You want to know who he is?
Carole Freeman: So Cory earned his Doctorate of pharmacy degree from the University of South Carolina in 2011. And since then he had his practice as a retail pharmacist, outpatient clinical pharmacist, and inpatient clinical pharmacist will have to share with people what those are, because you know what I think most people only know what retail pharmacist is like
Cory Jenks: Pretty much
Carole Freeman: That’s all we see,
Cory Jenks: We’re, pharmacists are not good at publicizing, what we do so I can get a little more detail at that.
Carole Freeman: You guys are a little more like you’re behind that counter back there and. If we have a question about our medication, you guys go, ah, okay. What? Maybe not you, but some of them. Yeah. Let’s see, what else did he tell me?
Carole Freeman: Currently practicing clinical pharmacist and [00:14:00] improv comedian and Cory travels, the country, teaching healthcare professionals, how to apply the valuable skills of improv comedy to create a more adaptable, empathetic and humanizing healthcare experiences for both patients and providers. This is the important stuff who doesn’t want more of that.
Carole Freeman: We all need that. Cory lives in Tucson, Arizona with his wife, Cassie and their two grown toddler, children and X, number of chickens, mystery number of chickens that I I’m inviting everyone to guess how many chickens Cory has. So again, welcome to the show. Thank you for taking the time to be here.
Cory Jenks: Yeah, definitely. No, it’s a pleasure. It’s a, it’s an honor. I love getting a chance to share a little bit about the keto, low carb my little comedy background, I’m happy to go into, in depth of what is ever, whatever was burning on your mind. You want to know more about, I can fill in those blanks.
Carole Freeman: Yeah. Yeah. So tell me more. Let’s see. Let’s just do that. Let’s talk about, so what’s the difference between retail pharmacist, which probably most of us are familiar with you walk into Walgreens, CVS, the guy behind the counter that’s dispensing the medic medicine for us. [00:15:00] Outpatient, clinical pharmacist and inpatient clinical pharmacists.
Cory Jenks: Yes.
Cory Jenks: Yeah. Retail pharmacists. You pretty much nailed that your corner drug store, where you get your prescription from your doctor, you go, you get it filled these pharmacists. I used to work at target that before it become caught up by CVS. Yeah. It’s
Carole Freeman: Did you have to wear a red shirt even as a pharmacist?
Cory Jenks: Yes. I did remember a red shirt and khakis. I was an intern there and then I worked a little bit after graduation there as well as a pharmacist and they have really hard jobs. Just a plea from the farm as a pharmacist, to those who, when you go get your prescription filled, I know it takes longer than you want.
Cory Jenks: I know you’re sick. They have really hard jobs. They’re getting vaccinations, they’re filling prescriptions. They’re on the phone with insurance companies. There’s people that drive through is honking their horns. It’s a really hard job. I work at a federal facility and I actually did. What’s called a pharmacy residency.
Cory Jenks: A lot of people don’t know pharmacists can do residencies. So I did a general PGY one residency. And when I finished, I worked as this outpatient clinical support pharmacist. And in this role, I was helping with prescription verifications. If the doctor puts the prescription in, and [00:16:00] sometimes if you can believe it, doctors get things wrong or they dose things incorrectly, or they’re not paying attention to how someone’s kidneys are working.
Cory Jenks: Someone’s got to double check that I loved being a nitpicker after 10 years of being a pharmacist. I’m like, I don’t want to, I want to, I don’t pick on people who for being wrong, but I did a lot of that. I did prior authorization requests. So if you want a prescription, that’s not covered by an insurance, the doctor needs to justify why we need it.
Cory Jenks: So I was going through the criteria and making sure that works. And then general patients come in with questions and in our clinics, I can help fix that. Then I an inpatient clinical pharmacist. So in the hospital, when you’re admitted to the hospital medicines, don’t just appear out of magic. The pharmacy in the hospital is filling them.
Cory Jenks: They’re verifying the orders. They’re making sure again. Is everything good. As far as how your kidney function, is your liver based on your weight, is everything dosed correctly. Then we had these IVs going right into your body. There’s no barrier. If you’re getting an IV and it’s messed up, there’s nothing.
Cory Jenks: There’s no liver. There’s no stomach. There’s no kidneys to filter anything out. It’s going right into your blood. So we’re got to make sure everything looks good there. Their pharmacists [00:17:00] show up to codes. When you hear like a code blue someone’s heart stops, pharmacists are there getting the medicines ready.
Cory Jenks: I did not like any of this, by the way. I’m a I’m I don’t love the adrenaline. My wife was an ICU nurse where I was, where I met her. She loves the adrenaline. She’s she lives for that, so that she was perfectly suited for that. So I went back and now I worked in what’s called as an ambulatory care clinical pharmacist.
Cory Jenks: And this is, think of me as like a physician’s assistant. So I function in a role where I quote in that we’ll roll our eyes. It’s keto people where I say I manage chronic disease. And this is where my story sort of diverges is as the clinical pharmacist that you see the doctor. So you have diabetes, blood pressure.
Cory Jenks: We start throwing the medicine. That’s a typical thing. You come into my pharmacy clinic, I can independently adjust those medicines based on your blood sugars, blood pressures. And I do a number of different things. Smoking cessation cholesterol. We don’t need to get into that controversial area as well. With the S word medic class medications.
Cory Jenks: I won’t go into that. That’s a really cool role, cool role in that. The prescription goes out with my name. Now about the end of [00:18:00] 2015, I found the the low carb world through the magic of what you’re listening to now, a podcast. And it just
Carole Freeman: Mention, mention which one, which one
Cory Jenks: So the, I was actually the Adam Carolla show. He had this guy, Vinnie Tortorich who?
Cory Jenks: Yeah, Vinnie and he’s, if anyone’s knows Vinnie Tortorich, he was my gateway drug to low carb and he had all these experts on the entire Schultz, Gary Tobbs, Jason Fung. They all had books and I was in the, I hadn’t totally transitioned in my pharmacy while I was sitting around doing a lot of this typing and verifying prescriptions.
Cory Jenks: So I could pop in your books in. And become an expert on something or at least I want to be expert. And so you listen to these podcasts, you read these books and my wife and I were always very into fitness health. So we always follow the general, eat low fat counter calories, saturated, fat, bad, whole grains good. And we were this at this time, we were still young and dumb in our twenties. And so you could get away with a lot more, but I noticed like I was hungry all the time. And so we just 2016 were like this crazy low carb thing. And we’d done like challenges before we did like a vegetarian month.
Cory Jenks: We were, it was which I call the [00:19:00] peanut butter and cheese month. We didn’t lose any weight. And we, it was the, it was just like, oh, we could do that. And we did a no sugar month. And that was like, oh, this feels pretty good, actually. So we just did the low carb thing. And then the things that was nice about it, we were already at a pretty healthy weight, but wasn’t hungry.
Cory Jenks: Pharmacists are generally high-strung people mellowed out much less anxious that depression happened. Haven’t had issues with that since I’ve been low carb and I just feel better. I’m I just turned, not to insult your audience of over 40 women, but I just turned 35.
Cory Jenks: So that’d be the middle age. And I, but I have the two young kids and I can say competently, I feel more energetic and better than I did 10 years ago. Not that I was bad 10 years ago but then now I’m in this world where I can, I do my best to apply it to patients. Now there are, I have to practice with them within my scope, but essentially whenever I get someone with diabetes, I tell them, Hey, we could reverse this or we can give you lots of drugs.
Cory Jenks: What would you like to do? And now we all have our own [00:20:00] struggles, our own journeys. It’s not as simple as yep. I’ll just stop eating sugar and everything will be great. There’s environmental factors. There’s a number of things. I work in a clinic that’s, it’s a mental health, primary care clinic. So everyone has underlying bipolar, depression, PTSD. Homeless clinic I work with as well. Guy, someone is oh, I live at the convenient store while we do the best we can. But it’s it, I think we’ve used the analogy from the matrix it’s so app, like I took the red pill on this and I can’t unsee the benefits of eating that low carb or keto lifestyle. So that’s my healthcare journey and, maybe two, three minutes.
Cory Jenks: But that’s where I stand now. And I enjoy what I do. I, however, am frustrated at the hubris of relying on medications for what is inherently a lifestyle issue that thousands of years humans didn’t have diabetes drugs. No, I’m talking type two diabetes. So the metabolic obesity related diabetes, and somehow we managed to not have drugs for this.
Cory Jenks: And now we are just like going all in on drugs and myself and I’ve brainwashed a couple other pharmacists. Then [00:21:00] I can tell you the magic of getting patients off medicines. Like when I type into my progress notes, stop insulin. It’s my favorite day. So that’s where I’m at with the, with this whole pharmacy degree.
Cory Jenks: So I joke with my patients. I tell them like, I want you to, I want to, I want you to put me out of business. Like I want you off medicines. And they’re like, I think he went to the wrong profession. I’m like, in retrospect, maybe, but here I am. So let’s make the most of it. Let’s be the I think pharmacists, we can be the experts in deep prescribing medications that is, we have gotten to a place of overprescribing.
Cory Jenks: It’s not uncommon for me to see patients on twenty-five meds 30. I’ve seen 15. So it’s a great, it’s I’m cynically saying, I’m not agreeing with this idea. It’s cynically said, that’s a great business model. We’ll get you on lots of medicines. And now I’ve got to get a job. You could shop these medicines, but darn it.
Cory Jenks: That’s no life for anybody to be on that new medicine. So that’s my mission. And in my current practice, I do the best I can. What I love to find a world where I am exclusively in a supportive environment where it’s med reduction and dietary and lifestyle first and foremost.
Cory Jenks: Yes. But I’m [00:22:00] better. I think I’m in a better place than when I would have been, several years ago. So that’s Cory the pharmacist and that’s what pharmacists can do. We can prescribe medicines, we’re the med experts. So let us be the experts at stopping them when you start, when you cut out the garbage food.
Carole Freeman: That’s so great. And I know it’s rare. And it’s, that’s why I was so excited to meet you, is that those of us three in this world and all the people that I’m working with, the ladies I’m working with that, like I started the show off by saying a lot of them were really afraid actually this morning I had, group coaching call with my clients and one of them was so she’s in Canada.
Carole Freeman: I’ve got a referral where I’ll send people to get their own medication, or sorry, not medications were on the medications, things that second, my brain, their own labs run their own lab and it, they can’t get it in Canada. And so she’s I need to go ask my doctor for these baseline labs, but I’m really afraid to tell them that I’m following keto.
Carole Freeman: And so it’s great to hear, all other healthcare professionals that are on board with this and like your experience every time, everything I’ve seen is that, if a provider has tried it [00:23:00] themselves and, or, implemented it in any of their patients, it’s just indisputable that it it’s positive changes like health-wise energy.
Carole Freeman: Like you said, mental clarity, labs look better. Typically people need less medications. And so there’s no doubt when people have implemented. It’s only the people that are reading about it, or just have heard about it. Those are the ones that are the naysayers or the doubters, or they say it’s just a fad, or it’s not healthy for you.
Carole Freeman: And so it’s great to hear that you’ve actually tried that and had that experience of being able to see that, because that’s really what it takes. So if you’re, if people out there are doubters, give giving it, and also the other ones that don’t get it to work for themselves, I always say they just didn’t do it correctly because when you do it right for yourself then like you experiences like, oh, you just feel so much better.
Carole Freeman: Welcome to the show. I can see we’ve got new viewers, here’s two. So let me know where you’re joining us from. Chime in. We’ve got an ongoing quiz going on too. If you’d like to participate. We’re trying to guess how [00:24:00] many chickens that Cory has.
Carole Freeman: Thank you for joining us. Yeah. And Corey, you had a reply to my healthcare naysayer in the mainstream.
Cory Jenks: Oh the healthcare. Yeah, I think that the biggest thing, the biggest complaint I get from patients and this is not just diet is just, and I’ll give credit to my wife as well, is that, I think we’re both very good at listening to patients.
Cory Jenks: Now I have a little thing above here. It’s a little sticky note and it says, and it’s from a book that I read and I’m blinking. Cause I’m just in the moment here on this podcast. But the quote is less certainty, more inquiry, less certainty, more inquiry. And I just, I try to take, I take it.
Cory Jenks: I’m going to take a 10,000 foot view of healthcare and just be like, how are we doing? Because we have a country where only 12% of people are metabolically fit or 12% of adults are metabolically fit. And yet we, I think have this tendency in medicine to just, like I say paradigm, we’ve got to keep we’re just not doing the paradigm well enough, but at some point there’s gotta be some improvement but there’s no improvement.
Cory Jenks: And I understand to providers, pharmacists, doctors, nurses, we’re all [00:25:00] stressed. We’re all have minimal time. We don’t have time to go and read all the wonderful books on low carb. And to me, it’s, I want to listen to the patient. And I have some patients that are like, Cory, I have to have read once a week or I have to have a beer once a week.
Cory Jenks: I’m like, okay, let’s try to make that fit with, within how you’re doing. And I also have patients, and I know this is a keto podcast. They’ll say the evil view where like I have patients that go vegetarian or vegan. And they’re like, I’m doing great and my sugars are good and I’m coming off meds. I don’t say no, you have to go keto.
Cory Jenks: I’m like, we ask them, this is great. I don’t, I try to be as diet. Like I, I have my bias, I’m on keto chat. Like I like this way of eating, but I’m not so Hebrews to think that there’s 7 billion human beings and that there’s the one diet to rule them all. And that’s where I think that as a provider, I just want to listen in and meet the patient where they are and find out what, what’s what they want, what they’re going to work with.
Cory Jenks: And I don’t think I’m, my attitude is normal sadly, which is my non low carb mission that I’m on with the other things I’m doing. But yeah it’s frustrating. Like today I had a patient in my office that [00:26:00] spent the first 15 minutes yelling at me about his pain management and I don’t do pain management.
Cory Jenks: I was talking about his blood pressure, but no one had just heard his concerns and he’s he got it all out. And he was like, I’m sorry, I had to vent. I’m like, no, you need it to, I would be upset. Like I that’s okay. I feel powerless sometimes to make, to fix those things. But the whole thing is creating in my bio, how can we create a better healthcare experience?
Cory Jenks: I can listen, I can’t fix it. I can’t change some diagnoses. But getting back to that naysayer, like you say, once I experienced it, I’d be like, oh my gosh, I can’t go back. And the cool thing is we’ve had my wife and I, her sister did it and she was like, oh my gosh, this is me. She couldn’t keep weight on.
Cory Jenks: She always thought she was just like getting older and was feeling tired. And she’s got, they had between her and her husband. They had a Brady bunch of, they have five kids. So it’s like a crazy house full of kids. And she’s oh, I have energy now. And so you just don’t want to go back to eating that way.
Cory Jenks: And yeah, I think it helps if a provider has tried it, but I also don’t like the nay-saying of, I wouldn’t even consider it. That [00:27:00] is not. I don’t like that. No one cares what you’re a few people care what I like.
Carole Freeman: Yeah. And maybe most people’s experience of a pharmacist is that overstressed, retail, pharmacists, like you were mentioning, it sounds like you’re talking about all those stressors you’ve got there. That sounds really stressful to be in that environment. I’m sure they’ve got quotas and things like that too. So that’s not the, I’m probably not the one that you want to try to inquire about. Hey, can you advise me on some lifestyle changes or
Cory Jenks: yeah, I did a talk on intermittent fasting the other night for a continuing medical education event. And I had, I literally had a question that was like, what can I tell my patient in 15 seconds on intermittent fasting? I’m like, oh gosh, that is not enough time to safely talk about anything. And that’s a sad Testament of healthcare, but that’s that the solution to that is not, that’s a different book in a different talk, but.
Cory Jenks: Yeah, it’s and that’s just the way our healthcare is run as quick and quick as you can get them in and get them out. And I find it. I think it’s sad that your client is afraid to talk to their [00:28:00] doctor about getting baseline labs. That’s the attitude. I don’t know. I try to see this. I tell patients I can’t tell you how to do anything, or I can’t tell you what to do.
Cory Jenks: I’m here to dispense information for you to make the best informed choice together with me. And cause I’ll have patients that are, you’re not collect my blood sugars. I don’t know. They’re your, it’s your blood sugar? It’s you? It’s your body. I’m just like, I’m not here. I’m not let down. I will keep trying so
Carole Freeman: well, that’s great because that means you’re not in a place of judgment. Like you’re really, like you said, I love the phrase, less certainty, more inquiry. So just listening and questioning and instead of just following this is the protocol we do this and we do this. How can I see this as a real person in front of me?
Cory Jenks: Yeah. Everyone’s journey gets them to the place where they’re at with what they’re trying to change. Like I have a patient who’s a veteran of a war and he just eats all night long. Like he’s eating himself to that night. And he said when I was in combat, we didn’t have enough food. So I was eating, like I was eating bugs, I was eating leaves. And so he always says that fear of going hungry. [00:29:00] And so now you put them in our modern food environment and he can’t stop eating at night. And so I can’t judge that. It’s easy to be like, oh, this guy is always eating at night. Like, why can you just fix it? Cause he’s been conditioned over the last several years to be worried about that.
Cory Jenks: And that’s, it’s hard to individualize. I think it’s key to individualize that, to understand like that background, but like all of our experiences add up to like where we are now and how we can approach our health. And so that’s what I try to do with my patients. It’s not always effective and easy and that we all have our own lifestyle circumstances, but I think we have to, as a provider, acknowledge that the challenges our patients face. They’re not cases in textbook they’re human beings in front of us.
Carole Freeman: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that’s heart heartbreaking. And like you said you said a phrase, this like my philosophy with working with people and I’m like, oh, I didn’t know that other people thought of that, but people are doing the best right now, based on what they’ve been through in their life, different version of, you said it a little bit differently, but I was like, yes, that’s what I believe in working with people.
Carole Freeman: I was like in the moment, like they’re beating themselves up [00:30:00] because they feel like, oh, I should be doing better. I should be doing something different. But basically everything you’re doing in this moment is the adaptation from everything you’ve been through. You are absolutely trying to do the best that you can for what you’ve been through.
Cory Jenks: Yeah. Like not to like sound cynical, but like we’re all messed up in some way. Like whatever. It was like a parent, a friend, a relationship an experience with a coach or in school. They’ve all gotten us to a place where, whether it’s we re like I’m going to lay it out on the line. I’ve been on this podcast now for 35 minutes. My comfort thing is peanut butter and cheese. And so if I’m like stressed or having I don’t give me ideas.
Cory Jenks: Yo like we all have the thing that we go to and we’re like, it could be checking a phone, it’s being nervous tech. And so it’s, and again I am not putting the onus on our poor primary care providers who get seven minutes with a patient. Like you can’t get to the root of their issue in seven minutes.
Cory Jenks: I could blame the bigger healthcare system in general, but I think that’s where, what you do is so crucial because you can take the time you get to know the person. And so I think there’s that place like it’s this team-based approach where your [00:31:00] client should be able to go to the doctor and say, I am trying this thing. My health is not great, but I just,
Carole Freeman: We just got a heart from one of our viewers. Thank you for whoever sent that. They’re loving. It was either something you said, or I said, or maybe what we’re both talking about.
Cory Jenks: I think it’s the whole gestalt of what we’re both getting at right now.
Carole Freeman: Or maybe it’s a cat that’s walking in my background right here.
Cory Jenks: If I know me and how much love I get from people, it’s probably your cat.
Carole Freeman: Oh, thank you, viewers. We’re glad that you’re here. So if you’d like to join the show, the the quiz we have going right now is guess, how many chickens that Cory has, we will reveal it here shortly, but.
Cory Jenks: Yeah, that’s great.
Carole Freeman: So w one of the questions are actually one of the things that I’ll have people say, and I prefer working with people that want to do keto. I’m not here trying to convert anybody. Like you said, like whatever dietary approach that people want to take, especially if it’s away from like standard American, fast food and snack food, it’s almost always gonna re result in an improvement in [00:32:00] your health and your weight.
Carole Freeman: I’m here for the people that are, want to do keto. And so I’ll get this comment sometimes from people when they find out what I do, they’re like, oh, I have type two diabetes. And my doctor said, I can’t do keto because I’m on insulin or I’m on all these medications. So what I told you, I promised you that I was going to ask you this question about what do you say to those people that like, their doctors told them that they have to keep eating carbs because they have diabetes and they need have all these medications that they’re on.
Cory Jenks: Yeah, I forgot to bring my pillow to scream into. Oh no. I literally had that happen with a patient of mine who was eating. I never, I don’t usually use the word keto with patients unless they’re like, I was looking at this keto diet and then I’m like, Ooh, tell me what you’ve learned, but they’re doing a little low carb thing and they’re coming off their insulin and we’re in, whenever you do low you, whenever you go keto, if you’re on medicines for blood sugar and blood pressure too, generally, you’re going to be able to come down off of them.
Cory Jenks: And I had and I’ll just call out the certain profession, a dietician who met with the patient and we’re like, oh, blood sugar is [00:33:00] running low, eat more carbs so that your sugars don’t drop. I’m like, no, tell me I will cut down their doses of insulin more. So if you have type two diabetes and your doctor says you’re on these medicines.
Cory Jenks: So if you do low carb, it’s dangerous. You got to keep taking these medicines, tell your doctor, oh, I want to be on less medicines. And so there are a number of different protocols and literature for how to safely reduce medicines with type two diabetes and blood pressure, if you’re eating a ketogenic diet. And so like the reason, like no one wants to look like type two diabetes is not a lifetime sentence. Medicines for type two diabetes does not need to be a lifetime sentence. Now the amount that you can come off, that whatever it is, it depends how long you’ve had it, how severe it is. So I’m not saying snap, your fingers will be off your medicines.
Cory Jenks: However, if you are wanting to do a ketogenic diet and you’re on medicines for type two Diabetes, we just reduced your medicines. And depending on it depends on the class of medicines. I don’t let you know, unless we get some specific comment and this is not medical advice, but depending on the class, depending on if you missed my awesome disclaimer, it to your doctor, [00:34:00] but depending on the medicine you’re on, we can just maybe cut the dose in half, completely stopped the dose depending on where your sugars are, when you start, maybe we don’t even change your medicines just yet.
Cory Jenks: It just requires more intensive monitoring, more close monitoring. And that means checking your finger sticks. Or if you’re lucky enough to have one of those sweet CGMs that I can’t get for any of my patients like, oh my gosh, that’s just going to be a game changer for you. And yeah, I find it like, I hate this and be like, find a different doctor.
Cory Jenks: Like your poor doctor has no time to read about the ketogenic diet and probably doesn’t know this. So I try to have empathy for the provider as well, but we can, you reduce it. You can reduce your medicines and then you, maybe it means you find a doctor that can work with you and is willing to work with you in reducing your medicines.
Cory Jenks: Yes, maybe too long. I wanted an answer, but it gives me really passionate and it makes me think of that one, that single patient. And I will never forget that because it was just so dumb. We could get you off these medicines and more carbs to titrate up to your
Carole Freeman: Yeah. If you’d like to maintain your diabetes and keep on your [00:35:00] medications and you absolutely need to eat carbs.
Carole Freeman: And, but like you said earlier, that type two diabetes can be put in remission for a lot of people. You don’t have to have that as a life sentence, eventhough it’s, it’s often because doctors don’t see people like it, it’s true that most people have a difficult time changing their diet and their lifestyle.
Carole Freeman: And so doctors are used to people not getting off their medications. And so their norm is people have this diagnosis for the rest of their lives. However, with proper support for lifestyle change, dietary change for a lot of people, not everyone, but for a lot of people, you can put diabetes in remission.
Carole Freeman: You can no longer need your medications with the right supervision. Now with my clients, I always screen them. What medications are you on currently? What what are you being treated for with your doctor? And it’s not within my scope to tell anyone how to take any of their medications. And so I’ll do some coaching about how do they talk to their doctor if their doctor doesn’t know I’ll say things like, okay, so these medications are ones that typically what people that are doing this [00:36:00] clinically, like doctors like Dr. Eric Westman, for example, What they typically see is that people will cut that dose in half. Now, I can’t tell you how to change that. You need to schedule an appointment with your doctor, so you can talk about this blood pressure medications. Another one that often need to be adjusted rapidly as well.
Carole Freeman: So the advice I’ll give my clients is check your blood pressure at least twice a day here’s symptoms you want to watch for and talk with your doctor about like when would you need to change your medication? What size, what things do you need to watch for? So I make sure that they’re consulting.
Carole Freeman: So even if their doctors aren’t familiar with things being reduced, I’ll give them some coaching about how do they actually, discuss this with their doctor without having to go, try to find a whole new doctor.
Cory Jenks: Yeah. And I think that the pushback that I get from other doctors or other professions is this diet is too onerous. It’s too hard to do whatever. And that, I don’t need to get into the weeds of that, but my counter is so taking insulin once or twice a day and checking your sugars three times a day isn’t onerous, isn’t difficult. And I’ll tell patients. We can [00:37:00] and will the school is when you tell patients you don’t have to have type two diabetes forever.
Cory Jenks: They’re like, no one’s ever told me that. Or when I say makes you gain weight. And they’re like, no, one’s told me that. And so I what I tell them is, okay, we have these medicines, you’re taking off your blood sugar, or you can change your diet and it might feel restrictive. And I have to admit like, okay, so you don’t like these foods that have a lot of carbs are tasty.
Cory Jenks: I’m not going to be like donuts and pizza aren’t delicious. They are. So it’s not like it’s a hundred percent easy peasy, but it’s is it, do you want the pain of having to take all these medicines? Or do you want the pain of limiting some of these foods and maybe not permanently either? Like there, there are ways to work around it.
Cory Jenks: There’s the local carb alternatives that I think are that are more whole food and tastes better than the process junk that we eat anyway. And, it’s like the pain, the painful reality of life. There’s no. Pardon the pun here on like on a a food pockets. There’s no free lunch. So we gotta take medicines.
Cory Jenks: We gotta eat bright and to some extent to the exercise thing, but yeah it’s eminently doable to come down on medicines and [00:38:00] it’s, like I said, my favorite day is when I type into my progress note, stop insulin it’s in patients love it. Like I’ve never had a patient be like, oh man, I don’t have to check, I don’t have to inject insulin anymore? Cory, come on. Or, oh man, I can see my toes again, Cory cause they’re losing weight so
Carole Freeman: I could tie my shoes with ease. So
Cory Jenks: Yeah, I don’t tie my shoes.
Carole Freeman: This is a perfect time to talk about the article that you shared. Those of you watching, we’d love you to participate in the show.
Carole Freeman: Let us know you’re here. You can share a comment, let us know where you’re joining us from, where you’re watching. Also, if you’d like to participate in the quiz how many chickens does Corey have? That’s our quiz take your guess. And this is a really fun article that Corey is going to go through with us.
Carole Freeman: It’s and actually I just did a Google search and it’s been posted published in nature communications, nature.com. So the research article is a randomized controlled trial of pharmacist led therapeutic carbohydrate and energy restriction and type two diabetes. So it fits perfectly with what we’re chatting about.
Carole Freeman: I’m gonna go ahead and put it a link to the article [00:39:00] in the comments. Sometimes Facebook won’t post it. Oh, it did. It went one, both of them. Okay. So actually it doesn’t look like it’s going in the. Groups. If you’re watching from the Facebook group, you won’t see the link, but it’s on YouTube and in, on my Facebook business page.
Carole Freeman: Also we’ll be in the show notes. If you’re listening on a podcast later we’ll put a link to this in the show notes as well, too. Published in nature. And so Cory, tell us about this. And I, this is so fun because I had no idea that pharmacists were leading these kinds of interventions.
Cory Jenks: Okay. So we had our little Canada issue earlier. And so this is actually a study out of Canada because I think it was a little bit more with a nationalized health system. We’re not going to debate the best way to pay for healthcare that is not there, but that’s the reality is Canada has what they have.
Cory Jenks: We have a, we have, and so with their nationalized healthcare system, they were able to incorporate, actually talk to the second author on this study. Sean McCalvi cause I saw it. I was like, this is super cool. I’m a pharmacist. So I had a chance to chat with them a little bit about it, but it was really cool.
Cory Jenks: What they did is they got pharmacists in retail [00:40:00] stores to. With some diet counseling, they did a low carb and this was also energy restricted too. So I have to admit that they like, and they used a a meal supplement replacement as well in the intervention group, in the control group, they just got general advice and their primary outcome was how many patients they could get off all their diabetes medicines.
Cory Jenks: And this was 12 weeks. So relatively short, think of the time it takes. If you’ve been had diabetes for a number of years, things might not turn around right away after three months, but they had 35% of the patients in the intervention group got off all meds. 35 patients.
Carole Freeman: Wait. This needs repeating. 35% just from the pharmacist, giving them some education. This wasn’t. They were going to see a nutritionist every week, or they need mental health counseling. They needed a support group. This was just
Cory Jenks: Pharmacist led. And I think they had health coaches as well. So it was a team-based approach.
Cory Jenks: But the reason that we had the pharmacist involved is we need that expert to help lower the medications and [00:41:00] adjust them, or preferably stop them. And so you had the pharmacist’s involvement and you had improvements in A1C, BMI, blood pressure, all these other metabolic markers. But to me being in the pharmacist talk and low carb, a unicorn, but this study was great because it’s our it’s a randomized controlled trial.
Cory Jenks: It was a small study. I think they had about a night. It was the 98 in the treatment group in 90 and the treatment as usual controlled group. And it just to me, points out that the unfilled niche that pharmacists have. And so to all nights, if there are any pharmacists watching and you work in retail, again, you have a hard job and we want to expand what pharmacists can do.
Cory Jenks: And I think this is a great a great opportunity for pharmacists to, to intervene and incorporate those lifestyle interventions and changes. And this is, I have a small cohort, a pharmacist I work with that I’ve red pilled in the low carb world. And we all share, we love sharing our little stories on our Microsoft teams of check out this patient boom off medicines, boom, stopped insulin, boom did this.
Cory Jenks: [00:42:00] And now not every patient is a success story and that’s okay. But what my, my, one of my best friend that I work with back in 2016, 17, I caught him onto the low carb world. And he had been practicing for five years and he said, I got more patients off insulin and had their diabetes under control in the year.
Cory Jenks: Following when I started discussing this than I had in the five years previously. What we found is when we are, when we do quote disease, state management with medications is we keep your blood sugars okay. Meds always escalate, patients generally gain weight. And now there’s some newer medicines that are better at being weight neutral and losing weight and how they with problems with the cardiovascular outcomes versus just looking at the blood sugar numbers, but patients weren’t getting better, but this is a great example of not only is it feasible, but pharmacists can lead the charge in it.
Cory Jenks: And so it’s small, it’s initial, it’s from another country, but I don’t got a lot, so I gotta hold on to what I can. And so that’s that’s the, that’s why this study really stood out.
Carole Freeman: Oh, that’s really cool. Really exciting. And so not only [00:43:00] 35% were able to discontinue medications, but this is in the study as well.
Carole Freeman: I posted this in the comments for you all to see, as it says the medication reductions occurred concurrently with meaning like clinical speak. It means at the same time as clinical meaningful improvements and their hemoglobin A1C, which is just a, like a 90 day average of your blood sugar anthropometrics fancy word that means body measurements. So you lost inches around your waist and other parts and weight loss was also an anthropometric blood pressure and triglycerides. And so those doubters and haters out there that say that a low carb approach is not safe. It’s not healthy. Those of us clinicians that are looking at the actual research or have done this with actual people is that it’s not, that’s not true at all. It’s just an unfounded myth that perpetuates out there and articles when they get some healthcare provider to provide a quote about a keto diet or low carb diet. So really cool and all, but I’m gonna, I’m gonna throw in a a little like this would work in Canada, but maybe not so well in the US [00:44:00] is we’ve got different motives.
Carole Freeman: The, do Cory do you want it? I don’t know if we want to go there, but like what about, big pharma in the US and how much they really like insurance companies would love to hear this insurance companies would love to save money and not pay for medications for people. But what about the, I dunno, do we want to touch this subject? I don’t want to get canceled.
Cory Jenks: We can have a rant episode, maybe
Carole Freeman: Incentives to people, keep people on medications too.
Cory Jenks: Yeah. It’s no it’s challenging. But I think that what we have to look at is the overall cost of someone who has an, again, this study specifically, I want, you can speak to your everyone, who’s watching your audience, but the cost of diabetes alone.
Cory Jenks: And it’s not just the medicines for diabetes, it’s the complications foot, amputations, heart attacks, stroke days at work loss. And I’m sure there’s some sort of measure, but like quality of life loss. Again, we talk about managing medications, checking blood sugars, disposing of syringes, like all of these things that you have to think about all the time.
Cory Jenks: And so [00:45:00] I do have a friend that’s a pharmacist that is doing a keto clinic under the call it incident to billing as a pharmacist. So you work with the doctor you build the physician and then the payment comes, but the pharmacist is making the intervention. And she is the only other pharmacist.
Cory Jenks: I know that’s doing this and in the American healthcare system, She’s proving it’s doable. It’s hard. She’s a bulldog and amazing. And I think she would actually be maybe a great guest for a show for you. I can tell you about her another time. But it’s doable, but it’s hard. This system is that make it easy.
Cory Jenks: This system makes it easy to be, and this is not a, this is not a judgment of patients, but it’s easy to be obese, medicated, and not really healthy. It incentivizes that. Our food environment incentivizes that. So we have, we’re fighting against a lot, but I think the beautiful thing is when people see the light and then make the changes and they feel so good, they’re like help with the way of doing it.
Cory Jenks: Like I’m going to, I’m going to keep doing this. And then what my friend is seeing with insurers is oh crap. If we don’t have to pay for days lost to work, you don’t have to pay for hospitalizations. We don’t have to [00:46:00] pay for the obesity. Think of that. Like knee replacements, hip replacements. How many of those?
Cory Jenks: Because you carry around an extra 25, 50, a hundred pounds, like our joints get worn out more quickly. It’s a reality. There are looked downstream, health savings, but the problem is we have, are so focused like right now. And then if you have an incentive from like big like pharmaceutical companies, I don’t want to sound like I’m always a pharmacist.
Cory Jenks: I likes big pharma. Like they do some good, but they also do some very highly frustrating things. I’ll say that. I’ll say that as, as politely as possible. And so we want medicines for when we need them, but we don’t want to use them if we don’t need them. And I I think that when we adopt a ketogenic low carb lifestyle, we don’t need as many dang medications.
Cory Jenks: And that’s a great thing for the patient, the human being that has to take them all. And I have no worries about insurance companies. They’ll find a way to make money somewhere else. It’s fine.
Cory Jenks: Like the beautiful thing about our system and our market and the world we live in is that, we adapt. And I see this role. We have all this like sick care. What if people we’re all healthy [00:47:00] and work we’re fit? Then we have an economy of people going out and doing cool things that are, they weren’t able to do before. Sorry, this took, it just took a turn for the philosophical and
Carole Freeman: No, we need, we need that you’re right. These companies are going to pivot and find. Ways of making money. So like some of the companies that were into cigarette production they got, they saw the writing on the wall and they’ve diversified, and now they’re in a big junk food. And I look forward to the day where, these big pharma and big food companies are investing in, technologies that help us all be healthy.
Carole Freeman: So maybe it’s wearable devices for blood sugar regulation, or wearable devices to manage stress and sleep, right? Like we, we can charge lots of money for all of those things in a way that we’re keeping everybody actually healthy. And so I look forward to the day where it’s th they’re making their money off of that instead of actually on trying to keep us all not healthy.
Carole Freeman: So let’s move towards the healthy environment and brawl much more productive in the world. We’re working more, we’re making more money. We have more money to spend [00:48:00] on these optimizing our health devices and other things.
Cory Jenks: Yeah, versus just instead of fighting, being not sick, I just see, I see patients and it makes me sad that like we’re meant to thrive.
Cory Jenks: Humans are meant to thrive and be active, vibrant beings. And we are not that right now as a population and it’s not to the fault of people. We we respond to our cues and incentives. If we are addicted to food, because some smart people create an addictive food. I don’t blame the user as much as I do the people doing it that are creating it.
Cory Jenks: But I think that you’re doing this show, you’re working with your clients, like it’s small, but it’s making a little debt and that’s it. That’s, what’s really cool to see people getting what I see it is people getting their lives back?
Carole Freeman: Yeah.
Cory Jenks: People getting their lives back.
Carole Freeman: Quality of life. Peace of mind, happiness and body.
Carole Freeman: Yes, totally. Corey, we’re going to talk a little bit about your improv. Like how did you get into improv? Cause then I wanna roll that into the book that you’ve got coming out as well. So tell us a little bit about how you got into improv, how that influences the work you do.
Cory Jenks: I loved, I grew up watching [00:49:00] the Simpsons Saturday night, live back when you had to watch a show live, you will show up the next day, quoting it and stuff. So I always had this enjoyment of comedy and in college we actually had an improv crew. I went to the Hershey of South Carolina, went to a show, was blown away. And so naturally. I didn’t join because I needed to focus on pharmacy.
Cory Jenks: I, I, in retrospect, like I could have done a little bit in college. And so I always had this little comedic edge burning out. And I’m like, if you can tell, like I’m not a normal pharmacist. I always enjoyed getting in front of people, giving our presentations in pharmacy school. I like making little jokes, next to people when I was in class.
Cory Jenks: I wouldn’t be haven’t called the class clown, I was like a stealthy, funny guy, but I finished pharmacy school in my residency. And I had all this time on my hands. And so my then girlfriend now wife said, what do you want for your birthday? And I was like, give me a guitar lessons or an improv class. I’m always interested in that.
Cory Jenks: And so I took the improv class back in 2013, just kept taking classes, a little theater here in Tucson, and proud moment started performing and then ended up teaching and coaching, ran our comedy school for awhile. And so I really, I, it transformed my experience as a pharmacist.
Cory Jenks: The same skills that I do in an improv [00:50:00] stage are listening, communication, teamwork, putting your ego aside, fostering curiosity, all things that healthcare surely lacks. But I realized I stopped being like nervous when patients would ask me weird questions or stuff off the wall, it became a game it’s more of a game than a, than it’s something that was terrifying to me.
Carole Freeman: What’s the game of the scene, right?
Cory Jenks: The game of the scene. Yes. The inside lingo here. And and then I live in Tucson, I’m happy here. And then we had our first kid in 2018. And as much as I enjoyed performing to crowds of 10 to 15 people for free it’s hard being away from, I still love doing it. I don’t care how many car you go up. You get to it’s adults playing. We don’t get to, there’s not a lot of opportunities for that. And I realized I’m not moving to New York, LA, Chicago, and that I’m not pursuing comedy as a full-time profession. However, I realized, oh, this blend of improv and healthcare, I think is a really good niche to fill because healthcare professionals suck at talking to people.
Cory Jenks: And so for the last few years I’ve been going out and speaking and. Healthcare specific improv teaching. So pharmacists nurses, doctors whoever will be willing [00:51:00] to listen to this crazy pharmacist that does comedy. And so it’s culminated in a in a book I, that I have coming out next month, or if you’re listening to this on a podcast February of 2022 called permission to care billing, a healthcare culture that thrives in chaos.
Cory Jenks: And so the whole idea is I take a lot of the lessons I’ve learned as an improviser and talk about how we can create that better health care experience by being better listeners by being present by taking these lessons from the improv stage and converting them over and applying them in the healthcare stage as well.
Cory Jenks: And I think one of the things I mentioned earlier was, not being, we don’t get to control the outcome in healthcare a lot. I don’t get to control your diagnosis. I don’t know what happened to you 50 years ago to make you where you are. But I can make this experience as, as positive as possible.
Cory Jenks: Now that doesn’t mean that we just give MDs to people who aren’t qualified to treat healthcare conditions. We want competent people doing the job, but how can we do it in a way that’s more empathetic, not just to patients, but I’ll say this as a pharmacist, the turf wars, we call it turf wars between different healthcare professions [00:52:00] or within even different specialties within a profession can be maddening and frustrating and the ultimate loser of those situations of the patients.
Cory Jenks: And so I’m pretty, pretty excited. I’d never written a book before. So now I have a book coming out to share with the world. Maybe make healthcare, suck, like maybe make it suck a little bit less. We don’t go to the doctor because we’re feeling great. Usually unless you’re on the key, repeated panic, and you’re just crushing it with your life goals, but usually you’re sick or you have something wrong and how can you have that a good experience, even if you’re having a crummy day.
Cory Jenks: And I think that this is one little way of of improving, I won’t say fixing, improving our massively dysfunctional, irritating healthcare system.
Carole Freeman: Yeah. Is this a, how people can find you improvrx.com? Is that correct?
Cory Jenks: Yeah. They can go there. They can go to coryjenks.com the other side door under my website. And then my book is actually at permissiontocarebook.com.
Carole Freeman: Okay, let me put that one on here. Permissionto care, oops, care.com. Permission to care.com
Cory Jenks: permissiontocare book.com. I’ll share that with you in the, in our chat,
Carole Freeman: You can type it at, in a banner here. There we go. [00:53:00] I got one. I I’m trying to type care and I have to, I spell Carole cause that’s just my fingers just do that. So permissiontocarebook.com is how you can find. So, that’s how you can find your book. Oh, I have to remember. We have listener only, so permissiontocarebook.com how you can find Cory’s book. If you want to just know more about Cory in general improvrx.com.
Cory Jenks: Got it. That’s the place to go. And from there you can get to all my socials and all the ways of getting at me. That’s
Carole Freeman: All the socials. You got your book linked on there too, right?
Cory Jenks: Yes.
Carole Freeman: Okay. Excellent. Let’s see my notes here. What else was I going to ask you? What anything else that you were hoping to share or you’re hoping I was asked, would ask you about?
Cory Jenks: You hit everything and more than I was hoping to talk about tonight, we talked about the health care experience. We talked about my book. We talked about the Hoover dam. How’d, I wanted to talk about the Hoover dam. I don’t know, but you nailed it. And so no this was absolutely a joy. I don’t get a [00:54:00] chance to talk a lot about low carbon keto. Because it’s that out of animosity or meanness, it’s just a culture that, that is not as open to it.
Cory Jenks: I ha I have a few different people that I’ve caught their ears and done a few talks on informally. And so that’s great. But to share with an with an enthusiastic audience is great. And then to talk a little about the comedy journey and talk about that. I think the thing we talked touched on and talked about was that patient experience and being listened to being seen, heard and understood as a patient and as a provider, I think are sorely lacking in healthcare.
Cory Jenks: And especially for those of you doing keto so on behalf of my profession, I’m sorry if you’ve had a bad experience, but I’m trying to make it a little bit better. And so if you were my patient and you want to talk about keto or vegan or the all Twinkie diet, I’m all ears. I want to hear about it. And then we can work together to find a solution. Safe and appropriate as possible.
Carole Freeman: Cory, the the one thing we forgot to reveal how many chickens you have.
Cory Jenks: Oh my goodness.
Carole Freeman: Those of you following along. What’s what’s the,
Cory Jenks: So [00:55:00] the final tally of chickens. So we in October of 2020, we bought, we got we got 10 chickens, we got 10 chicks. One of them had its wing bitten off and we give it to my sister-in-law and she nursed it back to health. And gimpy is a good layer for her today. So we had nine and then my sister-in-law had a friend that was getting rid of chickens. And soon we got three chickens, so we have 12 chickens. And then my in-laws lost all
Carole Freeman: I love the buildup. This is perfect.
Cory Jenks: So we had 12 chickens and then we gave them two. I’m also working. I’m just like doing a lot of basic math, trying to teach my kids, man.
Carole Freeman: And this is like the nightmare story problem for middle school that we all had.
Cory Jenks: You’re on a train leaving at 300 miles an hour leaving. So then we get 10 chickens and then last month we let them out and the coyote took two of them. So we have now eight, eight chickens is the total number of chickens that we have.
Carole Freeman: Wendy was so close with their 10 and that’s what you’d sent me in your bio. So I was like, wait, did we put this in the show description? So Wendy you’re, you got really close guess. [00:56:00] So if you never go visit a Cory down in Tucson, you get one free homemade chicken egg.
Cory Jenks: Honestly, you can have two eggs. She was willing to be the first guesser. You could have two eggs and I won’t even make you fight my son for them. I will send them to their rooms.
Carole Freeman: So I’ll spend so awesome. Let’s see. I appreciate you being here so much, Cory. You’re not going to be here, but do you want to know what we’re going to talk about next episode?
Cory Jenks: I, you can’t see my seat, but I’m on the edge of it already.
Carole Freeman: Oh my gosh. I’m going to be sharing how to lose weight without counting calories. So it’s one of my magic tricks that I get to do with my clients. I don’t have anyone counting calories. I have a way of doing keto low carb, where you can actually just finally trust your appetite and eat in a way that you can not have to count calories and you can trust your appetite.
Carole Freeman: So I have clients have lost over 80 pounds this way. And if you missed it a couple episodes ago, what do we call their successive Palooza? And I had three people come on and share their weight loss journey. [00:57:00] And at the very end, I teased that too. And I was like, do you guys count calories? And they’re like, Nope, not at all.
Carole Freeman: So that’s what I’m going to talk about in the next episode. Today we talked about creating more adaptable, empathetic, and humanizing healthcare experiences for both patients and providers with the one and only Cory Jenks, everyone. So let’s give him a round of applause again. We’ve got a, oh, here it is.
Carole Freeman: Yay. So if you want to check out more, if you want to connect with Corey, learn more about what he does. If you have an organization that you’d love to have him come and do a improv training improvrx.com and check out his book, at permissiontocarebook.com. Anything else?
Cory Jenks: Thank you so much for having me. This is, this was like the highlight of my day. Thanks for letting me share my story. Make some jokes with ya. It’s always fun to meet another community, like the niche of comedy and low-carb, it’s small, but it’s powerful and it’s us.
Carole Freeman: Oh, if anyone watching this, if you’re struggling with keto, I’m here to help visit my website. I think I’d have it on here somewhere. [00:58:00] We don’t even have my, oh, here it is. Here. It is my own website. Ketocarole.com. Carole has an E on the end. It’s the fancy French spelling of Carol. So Ketocarole.com. Support the show. If you got something out of this, we’d love to see a super chat on YouTube. Give us an award on Facebook, or if you’re just listening on your podcast app, we’d love to have a review.
Carole Freeman: Let us know that really helps us out. So remember, help us grow the show and we’ll help you shrink. Thank you for being here.
Carole Freeman: permissiontocare.com. We’ll see you all next time. Bye.
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