Transcript
Singers: [00:00:00] Knock, knock, hi! Knock,
Will: knock, hi!
Hello, welcome to Knock, Knock, Hi! with the Glockenfleckens! I am one of your hosts, Will Flannery, also known as Dr. Glockenflecken.
Kristin: I am the other of your hosts, Kristen Flannery, also known as Lady Glockenflecken.
Will: Well, Welp. It’s been a while.
Kristin: We
Will: took like a couple week break from recording anything.
Kristin: Yeah, I don’t know if if that’s evident to anybody, given that they
Will: won’t know podcast
Kristin: release schedule.
But yes, we did. We took a Why did we take a break? I think we were
Will: is I don’t know. Sometimes
Kristin: it works out that way
Will: And I guess people are realizing now that you and I just we just don’t talk when we’re not recording.
Kristin: That is true Actually, we mostly I mean we talk but it’s mostly like [00:01:00] well It’s mostly just logistics of like running our household a lot of
Will: logistics.
Kristin: There’s so many it’s
Will: just it never ends
Kristin: Yeah,
Will: speaking of logistics. We got a live show coming up
Kristin: Yes,
Will: very
Kristin: excited.
Will: This is, we’re starting our, our, our, what do you call it? Q3 tour, our fall tour. It’s going
Kristin: to be fall and winter. Fall and winter. And then into 2025.
Will: Latter half of the year tour. It’s, it’s, it’s kicking off in Raleigh.
Uh, I’m so excited. Uh, you know, I’m not, I’m not excited about the East coast time zone.
Kristin: Yeah, that’s a rough one. So what
Will: I thought we could do real quick. Uh, let’s power rank the time zones.
Kristin: Ooh. Okay, but we’re going to have different criteria probably.
Will: Well, we’ll just do this real quick. All right. You give me your, so we’ll do the major, you know, Hawaii time is whatever.
Kristin: So the three time zones for the contiguous United States.
Will: The three, the four.
Kristin: Four, excuse me. Clearly,
Will: we know one of yours is last on the list. Yes,
Kristin: it’s so far down that I never remember that it exists. Let’s hear [00:02:00] your
Will: top four.
Kristin: Okay. Go
Will: start from one to four.
Kristin: Okay. Uh, I mean, I have gotten partial to Pacific time zone, but I will
Will: go with your gut.
Kristin: Yep, I have to say probably central time zone is number one because it’s it’s in the middle so You can do the most things and it’s easiest to travel from the central time zone to the other time zones uh, then I think i’d go, uh pacific and then uh, Then eastern and then I always just forget that mountain even exists.
So interesting. Yeah.
Will: Interesting. There
Kristin: you go
Will: I have a slightly different one, actually quite a bit different.
Kristin: Okay. Let’s hear it.
Will: I actually, I, I used to think central was the best for the reasons you mentioned.
Kristin: I
Will: think mountain is better.
Kristin: Really? I really
Will: do. I think mountain is better because in almost all of my opinions have to do with, uh, either travel or what’s on TV at what time.
So sports.
Kristin: Yeah,
Will: you [00:03:00] know, it’s it’s not so early like on the west coast it’s but so it’s just a little bit later when and then things start and But they don’t keep they don’t go so far into the evening that you’re like exhausted the next day So like west coast time zone Like, a lot of sporting events start at like 5 p.
m. I’m still like driving home from work.
Kristin: So you miss the beginning. So I
Will: miss the beginning. And so mountain, I feel like would be perfect, like 6 o’clock, you’ll come home, put on the TV, you’re done. All right? So I’d go mountain first. Maybe
Kristin: people are discovering why we don’t talk about anything but logistics.
Will: Mountain, mountain’s number one. Central’s number two.
Kristin: Okay.
Will: Um, uh, I would say west coast number three. East coast. West coast. is way, way down there. That’s probably the worst time zone.
Kristin: You’re going to be offending a lot of people right now. We’re so excited to come
Will: and see you in Raleigh and all the other places on the East Coast.
We [00:04:00] love you. It’s nothing against you. This is just about my own personal weird idiosyncrasies. Our
Kristin: synchronicities. And they have like a Like a Large circadian rhythms. And how they operate. And
Will: the other thing is, East Coast It’s hard to travel. West Coast That’s the
Kristin: thing with the For us, right? We live on the West Coast.
It is like traveling The whole
Will: day.
Kristin: To get from the West Coast to the East Coast, it is a Pretty much identical to traveling from the East Coast to Europe
Will: true
Kristin: like it’s that far. It takes that long close It’s at least a six hour flight.
Will: Why are we even talking? Oh, yeah, Raleigh come see us in Raleigh everyone And then all the other check out our tour dates Glockenflecken.
com slash live if you don’t see a place that’s close to where you live just Wait,
Singers: yeah, we’re working on it. We’re working on it.
Will: We only have so many, you know, free weekends to like do things And if you
Kristin: know a good venue send us that too. I mean, we’ll take that if you have a
Will: connection at a venue You’re like, hey, you want to hook us up with with a nice little theater spot.
We’d love to hear [00:05:00] that.
Kristin: Yeah Let’s get a good time. It’s a good show And you’ll love it. It’s so much fun. Yeah, we’ve gotten a lot of good feedback from it People seem to enjoy it. So come on out.
Will: All right, let’s talk to our Let’s talk about our guests Our guest, Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez, we talked, uh, he, he instructs me on how to best, best pronunciate his name, uh, cause I am not a Spanish speaker, but he is triple board certified internal medicine, emergency medicine, and obesity medicine.
He practices medicine in New York City.
Kristin: New York City. Do you ever think, when you say New York City, do you ever think of that, uh, was it a, uh, a paste commercial, a salsa commercial?
Will: Pace Picante. I kinda know what you’re talking about. But
Kristin: little cowboys sitting around the campfire and they all go, New York City.
Let’s
Will: let’s stay on track here. Shall we? We’re so close People are so close here.
Kristin: No what I’m talking about.
Will: So dr. Gonzalez is a is a social media phenom really he’s Particularly in the US but also he’s a very large Latin American audience Uh, and [00:06:00] he’s a trusted voice for medical information, uh, and he’s been all over the places a contributor for CNN and Telemundo and Univision and has been featured in Forbes and Newsweek and Today Show.
Uh, he’s all over social media, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Twitter, all the things. Yes. And do you know who
Kristin: runs? Uh, his life and his company.
Will: I’m going to guess because you’re excited to tell me his wife.
Kristin: His lovely wife.
Will: They, they work well together just like we do. Yeah. Uh, and so, uh, just
Kristin: like we do. She’s the brains behind the operation.
All right, let’s get to our guest. Shall we?
Will: All right, here he is. Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez.
Today’s episode is brought to you by the Nuance Dragon Ambient Experience, or DAX for short, to learn about how the DAX copilot can help reduce burnout and restore the joy of practicing medicine. Stick around after the episode, or visit nuance. com slash discover DAX. That’s N U A N C E dot com slash discover D A X.[00:07:00]
All right, we are here with Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez. Mauricio, thank you so much for joining us.
Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez-Arias: I love the pronunciation. Say it one more time with a Latino accent, Will. She’s
Singers: the
Will: one, see, okay, so if you’re gonna like make fun of our inability to speak Spanish, direct it toward me because Kristen actually was a major in Spanish.
Oh,
Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez-Arias: really?
Will: She has no excuse.
Kristin: I, yeah, well, it’s, I do have an excuse. It’s been quite some time since I graduated from college now, and unfortunately, you know, with the states that we’ve moved to, I haven’t had much opportunity to continue to practice my Spanish, but I do remember some things.
Will: That’s true.
Iowa. Not so much. New
Kristin: Hampshire.
Will: New Hampshire. Not so much.
Kristin: Oregon. Yeah.
Will: We really did maybe go through the three like worst states for practicing your Spanish. I don’t know.
Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez-Arias: All in all, perfect pronunciation. [00:08:00] So I’m great. I’m great. I’m honored to be here.
Will: That’s great. Well, so last time we talked, we were at an event for the American Heart Association.
We got to go to the TikTok headquarters. Yes. In New
Kristin: York City.
Will: In New York. And that was, we got to chat a little bit and I learned some things about you. Uh, but I want our audience to learn some things about you. The first thing I have, uh, I have to ask you about, what compels someone to take three different board certifications?
I have the
Kristin: same question.
Will: I mean, come on.
Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez-Arias: It’s probably due to an undiagnosed psychiatry disorder. For sure. That’s what I
Kristin: think. Yeah. For sure.
Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez-Arias: Especially when I’m looking at all the requirements that I have to fulfill in order to recertify, I’m like, why did I do this? Yeah, right? Yeah, you don’t think about that.
Yeah,
Kristin: it’s not even just a one and done. You gotta continue that. You
Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez-Arias: know, there’s a reason, I think. And actually, it’s not that uncommon among international medical graduates. I was born and raised in Mexico. I was not [00:09:00] thinking about moving to the States. Never. I was a happy Mexican person. And at the last year of med school, my, uh, the dean of my, you know, the dean of my school said, Hey, Mauricio, we have this.
academic exchange with the University of Miami and, uh, Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami. And we want to send you because you speak English and you have the basically the GPA or whatever it is that you call it for med school here. Um, and I was like, sure, let’s go. So I went there three months and You know, I look like a chill, relaxed person, but I’m not.
I’m kind of like type A. I love schedules. That’s
Kristin: very evident from your resume. Yeah.
Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez-Arias: I like schedule and times and routines. And when I moved here, I realized that residents and med students in the United States Oh my god, they’re so spoiled. They’re like wonder kids, you know, you can’t [00:10:00] touch them. I was like, I want to be here.
Here everything has a routine, a time, they don’t abuse you. In Mexico, I don’t want to say bad things about Mexico, but you know, it’s, it’s the old guard kind of thing. Residencies, you know,
Will: like, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Like you have no work hour restrictions. You’re you could, you can put in 120 hour weeks if someone makes you.
Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez-Arias: And I was trained that way. I was trained that way because. In Mexico, it’s funny, you guys do internship after you graduate from, from med school, right? That’s how we do it here in the States. But in Mexico, you do it at the last year of your med school.
Kristin: That makes sense.
Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez-Arias: So you’re, you do everything. You spend more than 100 hours per week in the hospital.
So I was quite confident. Yeah. delivering babies, uh, working with pediatric patients and you do all sorts of stuff. Um,
Will: but so, but so by the time you went over to Miami, sorry, what, what education and training had you done in Mexico whenever you moved to the States?
Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez-Arias: So I had finished med school [00:11:00] and internship and I was doing something called social service that you don’t have it here in the States, which is basically.
My, my, my, uh, med school was free. It’s public. So I basically have to pay these debt to the government by helping an underserved community for a whole year. And there it’s really an underserved community where you go there and you deliver babies, you take care of pediatric patients, you take care of everything.
You basically have an OB GYN, a surgeon, and you, and you figure it out. Wow. And it’s really good. I mean, It makes you comfortable. It makes you really comfortable taking care of patients. But yeah, that’s, those are the main differences between the Mexican system and the American system.
Will: Okay. And then you came over, uh, so you, you, you went through medical school at In Miami?
Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez-Arias: No, no, no.
Kristin: No, in Mexico.
Will: No, but I guess whenever you came to, you did the, the exchange program.
Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez-Arias: Oh
Will: yeah. At the hospital in [00:12:00] Miami. Yeah. What were you, what was your role there at that point?
Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez-Arias: So they call it an observership. So basically you’re like a shadow, like no one knows your name. No one knows who you are.
They just see you there. You can’t touch patients. You just do like. Uh, HPIs and stuff, but it was like really motivating seeing, you know, amazing people, like really, really good, committed residents. And I was struck by, it’s just insane. I realized that how many medical students were doing research along with med school and how these like PGY1s worked for three years in a lab doing like weird lipid research.
And I was like, what is this? Some of us did that, some of us
Will: did that. I would have actually hated that if I had, you know, felt like I had to do that. In fact, that’s another issue in and of itself is how much of that research that’s being done is quality research. Because there’s this [00:13:00] arms race right now in like residency applications in the U.
S. around like how many publications do you have? Yeah. How many do you need to, in order to be competitive for residency? It’s this whole thing right now. So there’s a, a double edged sword. Quantity over quality issue. Yeah, exactly.
Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez-Arias: Uh, I gotta say that something really funny happened to me and listen, I’m grateful.
It’s sometimes it’s luck. Uh, when I was in my med school, um, these very well known neuroscientists moved from Mexico City. Uh, he’s a, he’s a postdoc from Harvard and he moved to my med school to do neuroscience research. He was working on sleep and, uh, he got there. We met and say, Hey, you want to come join me?
Like do something with me in my lab? And I was like, sure. So I helped him for like a couple of years and my name was on a couple of publications that he made. And since it was a big name, I got a lot of citations and ultimately that helped me to get my green card. because I applied [00:14:00] for a national interest waiver where basically you have to prove to the United States government that you’re worthy of staying here because of your, whatever, academic acumen, or whatever you want to call it.
So, it worked in my favor. I, I really like research. It’s not my favorite thing though. I, I really like being here. practicing hands on medicine.
Will: Yeah. Yeah. What was the, the residency application process? Because I know you did, you did two different residencies, both at New York Medical College.
Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez-Arias: Yeah, no, absolutely.
Kristin: Back to back.
Will: I feel like we need to unpack this. And at what point in
Kristin: your story does your wife come in? Because she had to do all this too, if she was in for
Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez-Arias: that. Yeah, it’s crazy. We’ll go into that. But so, We had our first kid when I went into the internship in Mexico.
Kristin: And we had our second
Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez-Arias: kid when I was doing my internship for internal medicine here in the States.
So I basically skipped intro, you know, in that hard phase. [00:15:00] Uh, yeah, she was my hero. I mean, I, I couldn’t do what she did. It’s, it’s just insane. And I’m very grateful. And also, let’s be honest, She makes sure she reminds me of that pretty much every week. Yeah, rightly
Kristin: so.
Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez-Arias: Yeah, don’t forget about this.
Kristin: Yeah.
Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez-Arias: So I, listen, I want to give you a little bit of context.
Emergency medicine is really developed in the United States and Australia, I want to say, perhaps New Zealand and Canada. That’s it. Outside of these four countries, emergency medicine is not as developed as you would think. So, when I trained in Mexico, I was like, no, I don’t want to do emergency medicine.
That doesn’t seem like something appealing to me at all. And then when I started doing my internal medicine residency and I had to rotate in the ER, I really liked the environment, uh, the autonomy. Of course, you have to consult people, but you do what you need to do. You know, I remember one time you tweeted something [00:16:00] about an eye ultrasound, which I always do.
Like, hey, you know, Thank you for telling me that you did your eye ultrasound, but I’m gonna do my own thing. It’s fine But I love it. At least you do it You know you do it and then you send the patient to a specialist and then you move on that kind of autonomy You don’t have it in a lot of countries. So I actually fell in love with it and I don’t know man I I think I’m a adrenaline junkie as well because
Kristin: yeah doing emergency
Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez-Arias: medicine in New York is Oh my God, so fun.
So fun. I
Will: bet.
Kristin: Yeah, I bet you have seen pretty much everything.
Will: But when you say it’s not, not as developed in other countries, because I think emergency medicine is in and of itself a relatively new specialty, like even in the US. Um, but when it’s not developed, you mean like lack of resources, just the, the, uh, definition of what an emergency physician is in other countries.
Like, so what is the, what is being, what’s it like in Mexico, for example?
Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez-Arias: So in Mexico, we do [00:17:00] have the specialty and it’s growing and it’s getting more. academically robust. But in a lot of countries, you go to the ER and you don’t see emergency medicine specialists. You see, you know, sometimes cardiologists doing moonlighting, or you see internal medicine folks, or in Mexico, we have something that we don’t have here, which is general practitioner.
When you finish med school, You’re able to practice medicine in Mexico. In the States, you have to go through residency,
Will: right? Yeah, you technically can practice medicine, but no one, no one does that. Yeah. No one’s going to hire you. No one’s going to hire you, and it’s going to be hard to, to, to do
Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez-Arias: that. So in Mexico, there’s a large population of doctors who are general practitioners.
And these people, bless their hearts, man. They take care of really, really, you know, underserved communities. But, you know. some of the times these general practitioners are in the emergency rooms. And I mean, if you think about it, it’s not ideal because emergency medicine is so vast and [00:18:00] diverse and you need people who really know what they’re doing, who get like trained in these tragic scenarios and whatnot.
So that’s the reason why I say it’s not as developed, right? And here we have research. Okay. I’m going to give you like a simple example. You go to any ER in the United States, at least in the big cities. And you’re going to get an ultrasound, right? I mean, you’re going to get an ultrasound. Like, nobody uses stethoscopes anymore.
You’re going to get an echo, right? And, um, one of my former interns, Evan, he, he’s in Bellevue hospital right now. The guy is a legend, man. Every single patient with a fracture. He does these spinal blocks, and then he doesn’t use morphine anymore. He doesn’t use, it’s, everything is ultrasound guided, right?
And it’s becoming, it’s becoming a common thing. And if you think about it, it’s amazing that in emergency medicine we do that. Um, and that part is not [00:19:00] as developed in other countries. That’s what I meant. Gotcha. Yeah.
Will: Okay. And so you, you did emergency medicine before you did internal medicine? No. No, you did the other way around.
The
Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez-Arias: other way around. And I didn’t know that there are combined programs. I didn’t know that because I didn’t want to go into emergency medicine at all. It’s, it’s basically a passion that I. you know, I found afterwards. I did internal medicine for three years and then emergency medicine for three years.
And then I got board certified in obesity medicine. And you want to hear like something really funny, like really, really funny. Um, so it’s not the same program, right? So I did internal medicine first, emergency medicine first. And part of the curriculum for an emergency medicine resident. is rotating through internal medicine.
And my program director couldn’t find an excuse for me not to undergo it. Like they fought and said like, no, we need interns. We need, basically we need workforce. Yeah. [00:20:00] So I rotated as an emergency medicine resident, as an internal medicine intern.
Will: Oh my God, I bet the attending on Internal Medicine loved you.
Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez-Arias: They were, they were so ashamed and they were so extremely nice. They were asking me along, like, what do you think Marisa, should we do this? And I’m like, I don’t know, this is weird. Like it was very strange, but they were very nice, very nice, but that was like very odd.
Will: Well, I feel like that’s a, that’s a situation that probably a lot of, um, uh, people who come to the U S from other countries who are practicing physicians.
probably experienced that, right? Foreign medical graduates who have been doing, they have to start over and read and totally do a whole new residency. Um, and so I’m sure there are a lot of people that can relate to that feeling of kind of already being an expert in your field and, and being at the bottom of the Hierarchy again.
Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez-Arias: A lot, a lot. And I actually [00:21:00] trained with a guy in internal medicine. He was an ICU specialist in a Saudi Arabia hospital, in a military Saudi Arabia hospital. The guy was like incredibly good. Like he could put a central line in like five minutes, like, you know, sometimes like the fellows were like, Hey, Mohammed, do you have to use ultrasound?
No, no need. Landmark. Boom, boom, boom. So it was like hard to cope with that because. You know, usually when you are in residency, you have to compare yourself with your peers, right? That’s what every program director does. They compare you. But it’s so hard when you have people like that experience ICU, you know, specialists in Saudi Arabia for so many years, uh, but at the same time, it’s great.
Because they’re your friends and you can ask a bunch of questions without, you know, feeling ridiculed or laughed at and then you learn a lot.
Will: I have a question for you. Um, as we’re going to get you a third board certification here in a second, we’ll [00:22:00] work our way there. So as, as when you have the two, the internal medicine and emergency medicine, have you ever felt the desire to admit patients to yourself?
Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez-Arias: Yes. Yes. Yes. 100%.
Will: And I, like, I’ll just do it. I’ll just do it. I’ll do it.
Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez-Arias: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 100 percent because I know how things go. I mean, it’s a really nice place to be in this interface between the ER and internal medicine words. Um, I got to say that perhaps not all of them, but most hospitalists in my hospital love me.
Why? Because I see patients, I treat them in the ER and I discharge them with appropriate treatment. I don’t need to admit them. Right. Right. Right. Or sometimes they go. And they have uncontrolled diabetes, I don’t freak out, I basically treat them, I, you know, prescribe the treatments that they require, and goodbye.
And that’s great. You, actually, you save a lot of resources that way.
Kristin: Right. Yeah.
Will: And then, and then when did the, so, alright, so, obesity myths.
Kristin: Wait, hold on, before we get to that, I have [00:23:00] to ask. I want to know what the conversation was like when you finished internal medicine residency and you come home and you say, honey, I want to go back to residency.
Start all over and do this all again. Yeah.
Will: Yeah. Good question. Uh, yeah. Yeah. Give us the insight into your marriage. I’m
Kristin: asking because I can’t. If you had come home and said that What if
Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez-Arias: I had said that?
Kristin: Oh, that would have been a rough day. That would have been Well,
Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez-Arias: here’s the thing. You would relate to that.
Okay, so let’s be frank. Before me becoming an entrepreneur and influencer, I was a resident, period, right? So we didn’t have other sources of income, right? So let’s set ourselves in that context. And then you do internal medicine and then you get, okay, if I’m a hospitalist, I will make this amount of money, but I also like emergency medicine and I’m [00:24:00] liking the routine and the schedules.
You only go to the hospital three or four days per week, max, right? And, uh, And you make more money. So I, basically that was my pitch for my wife and she was like, okay, we’re immigrants, we need more money. It makes sense. Right. Then as we were moving along, the whole influencer just took off exponentially.
And I, we found a niche in medical education and now it’s a different story, right? Now I don’t go as much to the ER. I have my own private practice here in Manhattan. And well, yeah, so that was our thinking. And I’m sure you guys can relate. Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. Sure.
Kristin: Yeah. Delayed. There’s a lot of delayed gratification when you’re married to a person in medical training.
I’m sure
Will: the shift work could be a good selling point, right? Oh yeah. Sure. We just
Kristin: put in these next three years, then after that Then you
Will: know, like, you’re gonna have a large portion of your week where you have time off to be able to, you know, spend with family [00:25:00] and do other things, but, um, so you brought up the, the influencer thing.
Let’s, let’s take a break and then I want to come back and talk with, with, um, talk with you about, um, Your social media network.
All right. We are back with Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez. Is that good? Did I get it? Oh
Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez-Arias: man, at least 63 percent better.
Will: I’m glad, glad I could do it. Oh, okay. There’s so much to talk with you about still. Um, uh, you, you teased your influencer status here. Now this is. This is becoming very common, especially among, you know, residents, med students to start a social media platform.
I’m, I did it myself. Um, but you are in a different, a little bit of a different world. You are huge in the, in, in the U S obviously also, but, but you have a really large Latin American audience. And so when you first [00:26:00] started doing the influencer thing, the social media thing, What was your, I guess, what was your mindset?
Who was your audience? Who were you making content for?
Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez-Arias: Oh man, I wish, you know, I could try to come up with a very detailed answer and sound very smart. Well, you know this, right? You start and you just figure it out. You don’t know what the hell you’re doing. You don’t know. You might as well. This seems fun.
You might as well be portrayed as a douchebag who, you know, is saying whatever it was. So I want to tell you my personal story and that’s a perfect segue to explain why I did obesity medicine. I have many flaws, obviously, I’m not perfect. But one of the things that. I think is my biggest skill is that I can connect with people.
Like if you were a patient of mine and you would relate to me the struggles that you’ve been through with obesity or hypertension or I don’t know, I [00:27:00] immediately, I immediately get it. Like I get it and people feel like I get it. So I’ve always been able to make great connections with patients, especially in the chronic disease department.
Why? I don’t know. I honestly don’t know why. So I decided to do the same thing with social media and I didn’t want to be like this authority or whatnot. I just wanted to like share medical knowledge and um, I’m very metric driven, very metric driven. And I remember it was 20. That’s
Will: very emergency medicine to be very metric driven.
Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez-Arias: Yeah. Very RVU driven. Which by the way, that blew my mind when I found out about this RVU business. I was like, what is this? Okay. Anyway, I, I, I don’t want to sound like I’m going to a different direction, but anyway, I realized that 40 to 80 percent of American patients in the ER walk out of the ER [00:28:00] without having a clear.
understanding of whatever happened during that visit. That blew my mind, right? That blew my mind. It’s like, how is it possible that 40 to 80 percent and that’s fairly symmetrical across different populations. So it’s not like a Latino thing. It’s not a white thing. It’s not an African American. It’s, it’s, it’s a human thing.
And I was like, how? And then, you know, You understand the need of people to go to YouTube or podcast and social media and consume medical information because they didn’t get that in the first place. And that whole spiel from all doctors like, hey, if you have a question, consult your physician. Like, who does that?
Like, who picks up the phone and says, like, hey, dog, I have this question. I have this supplement. Let me tell you about it. No one is going to pick up the phone. No one is going to pick up the
Kristin: phone. Well, and the system doesn’t make it where that’s even possible. I mean, it takes a month to get in to see a primary care [00:29:00] provider and, you know, I mean, you just can’t do that most of the time.
It depends
Will: on how fast you can fax your request
Kristin: in. Yeah, that’s right. If you have your at home fax machine, then it goes faster.
Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez-Arias: But people want immediate answers. And listen, it’s justifiable, it’s reasonable. So that’s why. Every time I give a lecture about medical education and social media, I start with this.
This is not a suggestion, this is a need people have. So just start from there, this is a need and it won’t go away and it will only grow bigger because you know, we’re 8 billion people on this planet. So I think at that moment I realized medical education is here to stay. I want to continue and I want to see where this goes.
Will: And where did you start? Where on social, what network did you, was it Instagram?
Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez-Arias: I’m 42, so take a guess. Facebook.
Will: I’m going to go with Facebook,
Singers: yes.
Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez-Arias: Yeah, Facebook. Uh, yeah, Facebook and then I moved to Instagram. I remember I opened my account, my Instagram account in 2015. [00:30:00]
Will: Gotcha. What were you doing? Was it Spanish language content though?
Yeah. Is that that’s what you were focused on? Yeah. The whole time? Okay. Yeah. All right. Yeah.
Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez-Arias: And then I started to migrate a little bit of More English on my TikTok and some podcasts and uh, sometimes on Instagram, I do some English content. So right now I say that I do 80 percent Spanish and 20 percent English.
Will: I’m curious what the dynamics, the differences really in, in building an audience, a Spanish language audience versus an English language audience. And do you see a difference in how they communicate with each other? And, um, just talk a little bit about that difference.
Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez-Arias: That’s so weird. I actually don’t know.
Like, honestly. Yeah. Okay. What I do know is that there’s a mark difference. Like there’s a difference. In Spanish, you’re more like your hands and your face and you talk and you move and you know, people feel it, right? In [00:31:00] English. Yeah. the language itself, even when I’m speaking the exact same content in English, I don’t feel like moving my hands that much.
I don’t know why. I mean, and, and, and I don’t know, maybe it’s.
Kristin: See, this is why I was drawn to learning Spanish. I’m very like. You’re always moving your hands around. Yeah.
Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez-Arias: Actually, it’s very funny when you hear like, uh, Spanish content podcast, you hear taps. every now and then because people are moving their hands that they always hit the microphone.
Uh, but I don’t know how different it is. Another thing that I’m tapping into is the fact that Latinos are the second largest minority in the United States, right? So there’s a need for Latino representation for people that look like me, that speak like me, you know, so. I guess that’s where I’m going nowadays.
Will: And so you’re, you mentioned you’re, you just have a knack, a gift for connecting with people around chronic illness. And so [00:32:00] it was, it’s, it’s impressive that you tuned into that early on, because I’m sure that factored into you pursuing obesity medicine as a third board certification. Uh, and so I want to, I want to get into that because.
That is, as an ophthalmologist, I, I just don’t really pay much attention to everything going on with the GLP 1, uh, medications. And so I, I’d actually love for you to, to just give us your spiel, whatever you want to call it, just about OBCMS and why it’s important.
Kristin: I mean, I feel like you should be paying attention, right?
Don’t you have a, like, diabetic retinopathy? Oh, I
Will: do. And obviously I treat, I mean, it’s, I’m not saying, like, obesity is not important to me to, like, recognize, but I, I’m so focused on my one area as an ophthalmologist that, uh, that the, like, the systemic medications and some of the other things that so many [00:33:00] people are talking about these days, I feel like I could learn a better, a thing or two from you about those.
And. and how it relates to obesity medicine.
Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez-Arias: Yeah, no, not totally. And I, listen, of course, it’s really hard to keep up with, you know, one specialty, let alone two, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s Or three, sir. Well, we’ll see how that goes. Don’t sell yourself short. Um, okay, listen, obesity has undergone this massive transformation within the last 25 years, right?
So I’m going to give you an example you can relate to. Imagine a patient with a cataract is coming to see you. And Go on. And then you say, Ma’am, this is your fault. You should have worn glasses and protect yourself from the sun, okay? And eat better and not aging or whatever, right? So that’s what we did for obesity patients for many years.
Will: Yeah, that would not go over well in the [00:34:00] eye clinic.
Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez-Arias: Right? You don’t do that with cataract. You say, so this is a defect, got exacerbated with whatever risk factors there are, but I’m going to take care of you. I’m going to treat it. Okay. So people, folks with obesity. They struggle with healthcare for like a hundred years.
Why? Because we thought that this was basically a lack of willpower. And the reason why we thought that is because we didn’t do any research in the matter. Now 25 years of research has unequivocally shown that folks with obesity, they don’t feel appetite signals as much in their brains. And we’re not talking about the conscious part of the brain, we’re talking about the non conscious part.
It’s not, they’re not even aware of that. So basically when you and I eat, we release hormones in your intestines. These hormones, they travel through the bloodstream, reach the hypothalamus, and it tells a specific type of neurons called [00:35:00] POMC. to say, hey, cut it out, no need to eat anymore, right?
Kristin: Not producing the hormones or is it a receptor issue or do we know?
Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez-Arias: Both, Kristen. That’s so important. That’s actually both. And if you think about it, that’s kind of cruel, right? It’s not only one defect, it could be two.
Singers: Yeah. Right.
Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez-Arias: So basically they produce less satiety hormones and their brains are less responsive to the satiety signals.
So they just can’t stop eating, right? And they do this conscious effort. And then what happens is They lower their caloric intake and they, and then they feel this urge to eat because these compensation mechanisms are so strong that they can overcome. So these medications, they go to the root of this biology mismatch.
These, first of all, these hormones that we produce in our guts, [00:36:00] They last for minutes in the bloodstream. Our enzymes destroy these hormones, these peptides, like in a matter of minutes. So pharma, because, you know, pharma people are like very smart and bright, they figured out a way to create these hormones to become indestructible.
So that’s why they last seven days in your bloodstream. And during those seven days, they go to your brain and tell your brain, Hey, just eat what’s necessary. And when they start eating less, they don’t feel the urge to eat more because this medication helps with that. So it doesn’t matter morally where you stand on this.
It doesn’t matter. The fact of the matter is that these medications are life transforming in every sense. They’re not perfect and they have serious side effects. There are things that I don’t know, might happen in the future, but we know that obesity is, is, um, related to 17 different types of cancer, heart [00:37:00] disease, heart failure, type 2 diabetes, probably vascular dementia.
So in a sense, these are, you know. Game changers.
Will: So, so I was going to ask you the, I feel like we get a lot of information about things, obviously on social media, right? From some trusted sources and some not so trusted sources. And so sometimes it’s hard for people In particular, general public with no medical background to know what’s, what’s real out there.
What’s, are, are these medications like, like Ozempic or Munjaro? Are they overhyped? Are they appropriately hyped? Are they under hyped? Like, are they Uh, and so, you know, I would love for you to just speak about that, this class of medications, just specifically, um, where are you on the excitement scale about this?
Like, are you cautiously optimistic? Are you like, man, this is, we just need to go full [00:38:00] bore, keep going with this. Like, where, I guess, how do you feel about this class?
Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez-Arias: I like you guys, so I’m going to give you the honest answer.
Will: Please
Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez-Arias: do. When you listen to podcasts and you go to, you know, these super high end academic lectures, you hear all these researchers and important doctors in the obesity space talking about how they’re cautiously optimistic,
Singers: right?
Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez-Arias: Yes. But when we go behind the curtains, we all talk about how insanely good these medications are for people. We’re like so happy we want to cry, basically, because, man, they worked. And having for the first time in human history, a medication that has anywhere from 80 to from, anywhere from 70 to 90 percent chances of being successful at 5 percent or 10 percent weight loss, it’s a major breakthrough.
So what I can tell you is [00:39:00] I’m cautiously optimistic in, in, as a doctor, as As a human being, I mean, you want to cry. So, because when I see patients who are, I don’t know, 250 pounds, and then after eight months of treatment, they’re in 180, 185, and then you see the biggest change that you can see, right?
They’re happy, they’re confident, their self esteems are back. It’s just hard to, it’s just hard not to notice and not to be excited. About these medications. Yeah, so that’s my that’s my very balanced answer.
Will: What are the you mentioned side effects? What are some of the I’m really asking as as I just have no idea and I feel like I need to know more about these because I have a lot of patients that come in are on these medications, right?
And so I feel like I need to learn and you’re the best person to tell me because you’re triple board certified and everything. So, please, [00:40:00] educate us.
Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez-Arias: Listen, let me ask you this question before I go into that. One of the warnings for these medications for GLP1s is that they can worsen diabetic retinopathy.
I don’t know if this is like a thing. Have you seen that?
Will: I, I can’t say I’ve, I’ve seen a, like a direct correlation between the two, you know, um, it’s so common to have diabetic retinopathy. And then this, the, the, especially if you’ve had the disease for more than 10 years, um, and it can, it can just fluctuate with.
With, uh, with wild swings in blood sugar, you can get pretty significant fluctuation in diabetic retinopathy, you know, in either way. If you get control really fast, sometimes actually like temporarily will blow up the diabetic retinopathy before it gets better. So I don’t know. It’s hard to, it’s hard to really say.
Is it
Kristin: more of a long term question that you mentioned, especially if they’ve had it for like 10 years and these GLP 1s are brand new. So is that just something that we can’t tell [00:41:00] yet, do you think? Yeah. Yeah.
Will: I mean, probably if, if, if people are suggesting that it worsens diabetic retinopathy long term, but I, I would find that hard to believe if, if the blood sugar is under better control long term, so.
Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez-Arias: Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you for that. Um, listen, the most common side effects are GI issues, period. And The literature is all over the place, but I can tell you that more than 80 percent of patients experience some sort of GI issues. Bloating, nausea, sometimes vomiting. Um, yeah, those are the most common ones.
And it’s, Understandable because these medications slow gastric emptying. So it makes sense. Now, having said that, yes, more than 80 percent of patients experience that, but a huge, a huge proportion of these patients, these side effects are mild. And they just go away in 24, 36, 48 hours and they don’t present [00:42:00] a big issue, right?
In some folks, some folks, uh, yeah, they can be severe enough so you can, you have to discontinue the medication. In the ER, you can see patients who can’t stop vomiting or, you know, they have like this massive bloating. I’ve seen those, it’s very rare, very rare, thank God, but that does happen. Also, there’s this, this, there was a hype around pancreatitis and pancreatic carcinomas, which is a big thing.
Right? Especially pancreatic carcinomas. But we have two or three long term studies now do not show any higher incidence of pancreatitis or pancreatic cancers, thank God. So for the time being, that’s not a reality. And the most interesting thing was, I don’t know if you know this, but these medications have a warning for suicidal ideations.
I was like, so curious because I never read this as a [00:43:00] side effect on any of these medications. So I was like, Oh, wow, why is this? So it turns out that the FDA mandated these, but not because there was any data. It’s because historically some weight loss medications cost that. So, some big time researchers did a big, big study, like hundreds of thousands of people, and they did not find any higher incidence of suicidal ideations.
Actually, as a matter of fact, they had less. incidents of suicidal ideations with these medications.
Kristin: Your life is getting so much better.
Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez-Arias: Exactly. But, you know, the FDA did the right thing. You know, in my view, it did the right thing. Historically, this has happened. So let’s just be cautious and just write that.
I think it’s the right way to go. Some people disagree. It’s fine. The other one is that I’m sure you’ve heard about these thyroid tumors that can happen with these medications. We’ve only seen that [00:44:00] in rats. We’ve never seen it in humans. Just to be cautious. Just to be on the safe side, we ask the patients, Hey, have you had any thyroid cancer, specifically medullary thyroid cancer, or anyone in your family has had medullary thyroid cancer?
If they say yes, we recommend not taking the medication. Interesting. Yeah.
Kristin: What are your thoughts on, um, you know, who this is appropriate for? Because there’s, you know, all this media around people using these drugs for weight loss who maybe are not, um, you know, obese or who don’t have diabetes, but just want to lose a few pounds.
What are your thoughts on all that? Oh,
Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez-Arias: my thoughts are very simple. Uh, human beings abuse medications. They’ve always done it and they will keep doing it forever. And this is nothing new. Like people has been abusing phentermine for, you know, weight loss. [00:45:00] I mean, diuretics, it, it’s really hard to avoid that behavior because that’s part of human beings.
They, we want this edge. Um, I got us Vizine. Yes. Vizine. Yeah. Yeah. Of course. Oh, I totally get it. Yeah. Um, these medications are harder. to abuse because they’re significantly more expensive. But that’s why you see the Kardashians and all these like super rich, over rich people, you know, talking about this medication because they have the money to pay for that.
Um, but yeah, the answer is yes, Christine, like people abuse this. Yes, for sure.
Will: Are you, are you seeing, are you, uh, referring people to, for, um, obesity surgery? Fewer? Yes. Fewer consults there.
Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez-Arias: Listen, it’s rare that people do not respond to these medications, but it does happen. I’ve had, I don’t know, on top of my head, at least five or seven patients that did not respond well at all to these [00:46:00] medications.
And weight loss surgery was like, a beautiful thing for them. They’re back. Right. You know,
Will: they There’s still a role. There’s still a role for that for sure.
Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez-Arias: 100%. Like people, I have friends who are weight loss surgeons, especially in Texas, and You know, they always text me and say like, Maurizio, this is crazy, but 50 percent or 65 percent of the surgeries that we used to do in the past, they’re gone, no more.
So there’s a healthcare transformation for sure, but it’s not going to go away, especially since this new weight loss surgery called duodenal switch. I don’t know if you’ve heard about it. It’s just insane. It’s safer than the rest of weight loss surgeries and the weight loss percentage is approximately 30 percent or more.
So, for some people with like super high BMIs. This is gonna be, you know, this is gonna be the answer. Answer.
Will: Well, they’re just, they’re just like turning the, the duodenum around or,
Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez-Arias: yeah, something like that. Listen, there are more , there are smarter [00:47:00] people to explain that. I, I don’t get it at all that, well, it’s out, but basically it’s outside
Will: my experience.
Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez-Arias: They , they, uh. And somehow they cut the intestine in a way that produces weight loss and at the same time it doesn’t produce any long term side effects such as malabsorption or those kind of things. And the weight loss is amazing, like incredible. Yeah.
Will: So I have one more question before we wrap up here.
What’s your next board certification? What do you want to do? Maybe a little critical care medicine? No, not for now. Do a little gastroenterology? I don’t know. I mean, it’s, you know, could go any direction.
Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez-Arias: Not for now. Not for now. I know I can go anywhere. I, you know, when I have friends who are doing fellowships right now and I don’t know why it’s just that it’s so fun learning things.
It’s so fun doing fellowship and learning new stuff and feeling. Ignorant.
Will: You hear that, [00:48:00] everyone? It’s so fun doing fellowship.
Kristin: That’s the quote from this episode. You heard it here first. Yeah.
Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez-Arias: It is fun. Come on. Like, learning new stuff. It’s, it’s really fun. Learning is fun. Yeah, learning.
Will: I know Kristen would agree with that.
Yeah, I do. You love learning.
Kristin: Right. I mean, he does not. I
Will: like to turn my brain off whenever do not understand that. But we’re kind of opposite in that. I spend so much time thinking about things during the day. I kind of like having a Well,
Kristin: I do too! What are you implying? I just think thinking is Stimulating and, and apparently for you, it’s very taxing.
So
Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez-Arias: did you, did you guys start your whole influencer company when you were in residency? Well, or was that after
Will: I started, I started Glock and Fleck in a residency, but it wasn’t
Kristin: a company at that point, it was just a Twitter account. I
Will: could have used some, some advice early on and what to do with it.
Cause I didn’t know what to do with it. So for like five years, I was just kind of making content randomly and didn’t have a. And we need that kind of [00:49:00] like a, a defined, you know, plan, uh, Oh man. Until Kristen came along. So yeah. You
Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez-Arias: touch a great point. Like I get messages from like residents and fellows and attendings seeming like, Hey, I want to start on social media.
Give me your advice. And I feel like very intimidated because I don’t really know. Like I wish I could say, hey, I’m an expert. I’m going to tell you A, B, C, D. Uh, how do you feel about that? Like when people approach you because they must approach you all the time with that question.
Will: I mean, I, I have like.
Talk to my wife. No, I have, I have way, like, you know, tips and, and things to do. I do have advice I can give to people who are just starting their social media journey. Um, most of it’s around like how to avoid getting fired or canceled or something, but you know, and then, so there’s, there’s so much to it though, and it’s, it’s, uh,
Kristin: I think that those of you that are on [00:50:00] physicians that are on social media right now who are not grifters, right?
People who are trying to provide accurate medical information. So, um, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, you guys are kind of the pioneers of this new thing. And so I think we’ve all been blazing new trails. So there has not been a playbook. There’s no
Singers: best
Kristin: practices. There’s no, you know, just everybody is figuring it out sort of by accident as they go.
That’s a really common theme that we hear from people, that they never really, you know, You know, sought to start this big company or anything. It just sort of happened, right? And, and I think that’s more common than not right now.
Will: The grifter thing is, is a big deal, right? It’s like, cause there’s, there’s so many.
Shady companies and people that, that want your expertise or really that want your platform as a physician to sell whatever it is they’re, they’re, they’re wanting to, to distribute to the public. And a lot of times those aren’t good products. And so. You know, it can be, it’s very [00:51:00] easy to turn into like a Dr.
Oz type, you know, where you’re hawking supplements and, and things, uh, it’s just, the, the opportunities to do that are out there. So part of the, I think the education for young people needs to be like, what, what is okay and what’s not okay to, to lend your, Your
Kristin: your name
Will: and your platform. What’s what’s what’s dangerous to the public and what’s okay?
Yeah, so there’s that so that’s hard to figure out I think sometimes because some of the pitches that you get for these companies are are pretty uh, you know They’re pretty professional look sounding and so you got
Kristin: yeah, you have to do your due diligence sometimes know whether this would be a good and ethical fit or not.
Right. So
Will: that’s a whole other topic.
Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez-Arias: That’s a whole other topic, but okay. Let’s be honest. Uh, you know, we both are on the medical education space. You know, you talk about a lot of educational content through your bits [00:52:00] and, uh, listen, it’s hard to monetize that. It’s hard to monetize education. And I can totally understand these.
residents and med students that get desperate because, you know, they’re spending 20, 30 hours per week, you know, doing the grind and they don’t produce any financial incentives. But at the same time, you need a mentor, someone to tell you, listen, just keep doing it. Because if you start selling supplements or doing these.
Oh man, you’re going to destroy your name. Like the only thing that’s worthy of you being a doctor is your name. And grifters, unfortunately, they have no name. They have no moral. They, they can do whatever they want to do. Um, but yeah, you need a mentor for that. You do. So
Will: yeah, I didn’t make. I didn’t make any money on social media for, for like the first five years, I would say For long.
Yeah. I think it was five years before I, and that was never the goal started making. Yeah, exactly. And that’s at, at that time. So that’s the thing. So, well, let’s, let’s wrap up here. Uh, I [00:53:00] don’t wanna take too much of your time. Mauricio .
Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez-Arias: I love it. Love it. Ma. Mauricio.
Will: Mauricio. Uh, tell us what you’re working on.
Anything you want our audience to know about you? Yeah,
Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez-Arias: no, Kristin said that basically there’s no playbook and she’s 100% right. So basically. I teamed up with a Harvard researcher, my good friend Kenny Mendoza, he’s an epidemiologist in Harvard, and, okay, so. Basically, what do we know about medical education and social media?
We do know with excellent clinical data that it raises awareness. Like when you talk about prior authorizations and you make fun of these, you know, issues, people become aware. Actually, I’ve had a lot, not a lot, but some patients that have said, Oh, Dr. Mao, yeah, I know the PA struggles because of Dr.
Glaucon Flecken. And so we know that social media is excellent for raising awareness. What we don’t know scientifically speaking. is the people change their [00:54:00] behavior, right? Like you can raise awareness about LDL cholesterol. Yeah, sure. What’s my number? But between that and saying, okay, I’m going to get a blood test just to know my numbers.
That’s a different story. So we have decent data that shows that people do eat less sugar, less saturated fat and do more exercise based on health related content on social media, but we don’t have the metrics. So basically the American Heart Association, Kenny and I, we’re going to do a project where I’m going to do three videos based on the American Heart Association’s Life’s Essential 8 campaign, which is basically raising awareness.
for cholesterol, glucose, blood pressure exercise. And we’re going to frame it in a way that commands action. And with some fancy researcher metrics that don’t ask me about, which Kenny will take care of, we’ll try to prove if people do change their behavior. And [00:55:00] basically we want to do this because if we can show to the CDC, You know, to the government, that people do change their behavior based on social media and medical education.
They might look at us as a weapon for public health. Not as an influencer anymore, but as part of the whole public health ecosystem. So that’s what I’m working on right now.
Will: That’s so cool.
Kristin: Yeah, that is very cool.
Will: And then obviously you can find, um, we can find you on social media, all over the place.
Instagram, Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez. On Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, all the things. So keep up the great work, my friend. Thanks, guys.
Kristin: Yeah, we love what you do and, uh, we take some inspiration from you as well.
Will: Thank you. Thank you. We’ll have to have, we’ll have to have you back on some time to, uh, to just talk social media.
Like, you know, the things we’ve learned and, and mistakes we’ve made and what we would do differently. I think that would be fun to let our audiences know about that stuff.
Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez-Arias: I, I think it would be fun, [00:56:00] you know, because I’ve been in the past, I would have said, no, I’m just an amateur, but so far I’ve done work with the WHO, American Heart.
Kristin: I don’t think you can consider yourself an amateur anymore. You got
Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez-Arias: something going on here, man. Yeah, I think you’re doing all right. What I mean is that if we do these, you know, if we talk about it from, um, our experience perspective, we can provide like excellent guidance. I think it’s good to motivate doctors to do the right thing.
Yeah.
Will: Well, thanks again for coming on. We’ll do it again sometime.
Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez-Arias: Yeah. And I got to say my favorite character of yours is Jonathan. I love Jonathan. I want to have a Jonathan in my life.
Will: I think we all do. Jonathan.
Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez-Arias: Jonathan.
Kristin: Yeah.
Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez-Arias: Jonathan.
Kristin: Yeah. What would that be in Spanish?
Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez-Arias: Probably Jonathan. Jonathan?
Kristin: But how would you pronounce it?
Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez-Arias: How would I pronounce it? Jonathan.
Kristin: Yeah.
Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez-Arias: Jonathan. I actually had friends whose name was Jonathan.
Will: Jonathan, it transcends all [00:57:00] cultures and languages. It’s Jonathan in everything. It’s like jumping jacks.
Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez-Arias: Everybody understands what jumping jacks are. All right, well have a good one. It was good to talk to you.
Say hello to your wife for me. I will. Thank you guys. All right,
Will: take care.
Singers: Hey
Will: Kristen, I see you found my friends.
Kristin: Well, you sort of forced them on me. Did you ever
Will: think eyelid mites would be so cute?
Kristin: No, I did not. Look at
Will: these little guys with their little legs.
Kristin: These ones are pretty cute. Crawling all over your eyelids.
Stuffed animal guys.
Will: Yeah. I don’t
Kristin: think the real ones would be as cute. I don’t want them on my eyelids.
Will: Almost though. Close. I mean, the one problem is they do cause a disease called demodex blepharitis.
Kristin: That is a problem.
Will: Yeah, you get red, itchy, irritated eyelids.
Kristin: Yeah, and all crusty.
Will: Yeah, it’s kind of uncomfortable, you just want to just rub your eyes.
Kristin: Yeah. No thank you.
Will: Well, but it’s not something you should get freaked out by. You gotta get checked out.
Kristin: Oh, well, okay. Yeah, that’s
Will: right. [00:58:00] Eye doctors. We see these little guys sometimes. Yeah. Nothing to be scared of. All right, you just got to get checked out to get more information, go to eyelidcheck. com.
Again, that’s E Y E L I D check. com to get more information about our little friends here in Demodex Blepharitis.
Well, I think I need to learn Spanish.
Kristin: You’ve been saying that for so many years. you
Will: to teach me.
Kristin: Well, you know, I’m already doing so many things for you.
Will: Mira abajo.
Kristin: Where did you even pick that up? That’s why are you telling me to do that?
Will: No,
Kristin: you’re just you
Will: know, that is
Kristin: pulling random things that
Will: is
Kristin: what go ahead tell me
Will: I think that’s how you say it.
I don’t think
Kristin: you’re saying that right look at look
Will: at my ear Isn’t that isn’t that ear and that look at your ear
Kristin: Uh, it’s been a while, but I think ear [00:59:00] is oreja.
Will: Oreja At
Kristin: my ear
Will: look at my ear All I know is that when Luis interprets for me, he always says, Or that’s what it sounds like.
Kristin: Why is he telling people to look at your ear?
Oh, because you want them to look right there. I’m telling the patient, look at
Will: my ear, and he is, he is interpreting.
Kristin: That’s why you’re saying soup, because he’s saying look at his ear.
Will: Oh, okay. If you were to say
Kristin: that to a person, you need to say,
Will: Okay, so he is saying sue because it’s
Kristin: Got you.
Will: All right. Oh, man, I’m learning so much about about Spanish.
He’s cared.
Kristin: Okay, I you know Okay, very good.
Will: I
Kristin: do you want a cookie?
Will: I know so many Spanish words. What a fun guest Glad we got to talk. This is the first time I’ve I’ve We’ve talked a lot [01:00:00] about these new obesity medications and I just don’t know much about them so I haven’t touched on them in any of our episodes.
Um, and so, finally, getting a board certified obesity specialist to talk about it, that was a, that was quite a treat.
Kristin: It really was. They’re everywhere and everyone is talking about them, so I think a lot of people probably do.
Will: Let us know what you guys thought of the show, uh, of the episode, if you have guest suggestions or just anything, any suggestions, we’d love to hear it.
You can email us, knockknockhigh at human content. com, visit us on all our social media platforms. platforms. You can hang out with us and our human content podcast family on TOK at human content pods. Thanks to all the wonderful listeners, leaving feedback and reviews. If you subscribe and comment on your favorite podcasting app or on YouTube, we can give you a shout out like today.
Like I’m a little indigestion here at Jessica young, eight, five, three, zero on YouTube about a Glock talk episode. I always listen to knock, [01:01:00] knock I, and never listened to knock, knock. Hi. But I loved this episode.
Kristin: We’ve been getting some backhanded compliments lately. Yeah,
Will: that’s great. But I’ll take it.
That’s good. You know, what that says, all of you Knock Knock Eye fans, maybe try out a Knock Knock High episode from time to time. All right. We got these Yeah,
Kristin: we have interviews. We have non interview Knock Knock High episodes. Where we
Will: just heckle each other for
Kristin: some of the night.
Will: Full video episodes are up every week on our YouTube channel, at Glockenfleckens.
We also have a Patreon. Lots of cool perks, bonus episodes, react to medical shows and movies. Hang out with other members of the Knock Knock High community. Got a nice little community going. Early ad free episode access, interactive Q& A, live stream events. You can get access to some of our like meet and greet stuff during our live shows.
Patreon. com slash Glockenflecken or go to Glockenflecken. com. Speaking of Patreon community perks, shout out to all the Jonathans! Patrick, Lucia C, Sharon S, Omer, [01:02:00] Edward K, Steven G, Jonathan F, Marion W, Miss Grrgrrrandaddy, Katelyn C, Brianna L, KL, Keith G, JJH, Derek N, Mary H, Susanna F, Jenny J, Mohamed K, Avika Parker, Ryan, Mohamed L, David H, Jack K, David H again, Gabe, Gary M, Medical Mag, Bubbly Salt, and
Kristin: Pete.
Will: Macho! I did, I did really well. You said
Kristin: Jenny J.
Will: I did, I said Jenny J. You
Kristin: didn’t do the G, that was very good. Patron
Will: roulette time, random shout out to someone on the emergency medicine tier, Seth H! Thank you Seth H for being a patron, and thank you all for listening, we’re your hosts Will and Crescent Planetary, also known as the Golagomplacons, just thanks to our guest Dr.
Mauricio Gonzalez. Adios. Our Executive Producers are How did I do? Is that good?
Kristin: No. I give you a 50%.
Will: Oh, that was even worse. I said it better earlier. Our Executive Producers are Will Flannery, Krista Flannery, Aron Korney, Rob Goldman, and Shahnti Brooke. Editor and Engineer Jason Portizzo. Our music is by Omer Ben Zvi.
To learn about our Knock Knock High’s Program, Declarative Ethics, Policies, Admissions, Verifications, and Licensing Terms, and April Release Terms, [01:03:00] you can go to Glockenflaggen. com. Reach out to us at knockknockhigh at human content. com with any questions, concerns. Sometimes people have concerns. Some people have questions.
A
Kristin: lot of people have questions. Some
Will: people have concerns. Danganronpa is a human content production.
Singers: Hey,
Will: Kristen, would you like to have a Jonathan in your life?
Kristin: Would I ever?
Will: What do you mean, have me? That’s something, right?
Kristin: Uh, yeah. Yeah. That’s something. That’s something. Yeah. But do you have a Jonathan? Are you offering?
Will: I know. I do have the Nuance Dragon Ambient Experience or DAX for short.
Kristin: All right. That’s kind of like a Jonathan.
That’s great.
Will: It’s AI powered ambient technology. Sits there in the room with you. It helps. Decrease admin burden,
Kristin: could
Will: all use a little help with admin work. Definitely.
Kristin: No one needs more paperwork.
Will: It reduces burnout. It improves the patient physician [01:04:00] relationship.
Kristin: Yeah, we really need that these days.
Will: It helps physicians get back to what they love to do.
It’s just taking care of patients. Yeah. Right? I mean, 79 percent of physicians also say their work life balance improved on DAX. I’m in
Kristin: favor of work life balance.
Will: I’m an ophthalmologist. Oh, you know, I love me some work life balance, right? Today’s physicians are feeling overwhelmed and burdened so much that work life balance feels unattainable.
Singers: Yeah.
Will: Well, if DAX can help, that’s great, right? Yes. All right. To learn more about how the Nuance Dragon Ambient Experience or DAX Copilot, visit Nuance. com slash Discover DAX. That’s N U A N C E. com slash Discover D A X.
