Stan and Clarence chat with Dr. Robert Turesky about prostate cancer.Dr. Turesky currently serves as a Professor in the Department of Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Minnesota. Before this professorship, he served as the Director of the Masonic Cancer Center’s Analytical Biochemistry shared resource - a mass spectrometry facility devoted to cancer and chemo-prevention programs at the University of Minnesota. Dr. Turesky's research investigates the biochemical toxicology mechanisms of potential cancer-causing agents in the environment, tobacco, foods, cosmetic dyes, and traditional herbal medicines.Listen along as Dr. Turesky shares his wealth of knowledge on prostate cancer.Join the conversation at healthchatterpodcast.comBrought to you in support of Hue-MAN, who is Creating Healthy Communities through Innovative Partnerships.More about their work can be found at http://huemanpartnership.org/
Hello, everybody. Welcome to Health Chatter. And today's episode is on prostate cancer and some of the community implications, public health implications, and messaging. And we'll get all into that in a second. We've got a great crew, as always, that keeps us, keeps both Clarence and I hopping with good information. Maddie Levine-Wolfe,
Aaron Collins, Deandra Howard do our background research for us. Sheridan Nygaard also does research for us, but also our marketing. And then of course, there's Matthew Campbell, who's probably busy right now getting one of our shows out to you, the listening audience. So thanks to all of them. They're a great crew and we appreciate all their hard work. My partner in crime,
As always is Clarence Jones. And we're having a good time doing these shows, chatting about a lot of different issues around health and healthcare. And hopefully it's useful for you, the listening audience. Our sponsor for these shows is Human Partnership, a good community health organization that provides a lot of programs out in the community for all of us.
You can check them out at humanpartnership.org. In addition, you can see our website as well. Visit our website to see our shows. And also, all the background research that we provide to these shows is on our website at healthchatterpodcast.com. With that, I'm going to turn it over to Clarence, and he can introduce our great guest for today.
Thank you, Stan. And I am honored to introduce, to sound present to others, Dr. Robert Teresky, who is a professor in the Department of Medical Chemistry at the University of Minnesota. He served as the director of the Masonic Cancer Center Analytical Biochemistry Department. He's also received his PhD in nutrition and food science at MIT. He has worked around the world.
But even more importantly, he has done a project with me. in terms of the topic that we're gonna talk about tonight, which is around prostate cancer. And I want to just tell our listeners, thank you for listening to us. And one of the things about Health Chatter, and I always like to frame this like this, is that we enter into a lot of different kinds of conversations.
So today it's gonna be a grown folks conversation, which is kind of a cultural thing. So we're gonna be talking about some really interesting things. We're gonna talk about some racial differences And we're going to talk about some perceptions when it comes to this issue around prostate cancer.
One of the things that I will share with you is that out of all of the diseases that I struggle with, talking about, probably the number one disease is one or two is going to be around prostate cancer. And one of the reasons for that is that it has been such a kind of a taboo subject within my own community. It's been a kind of a taboo subject in terms of men.
And we're going to get into that when it comes to this topic today. Dr. Robert and I have recently done a study around prostate cancer and African-American men. And what was so intriguing to me about our conversation was the fact that he talked about two things that really impact me. One was food. One was prostate cancer. But this topic was barbecue and prostate cancer.
And then one thing about me, one I really, really love and one I really, really hate to talk about. And so there was that conflict that we had in terms of talking about this topic. And so it was a very wonderful place to enter into. But it's also one in which I think is very important. So I'm really glad that he has spent the time, has given us the time to come in and talk to Health Chatter.
about prostate cancers. So Dr. Robert, I want to thank you.
Well, I'll tell you, Clarence, you and I have something in common. You with barbecue food and me with a good pastrami sandwich. So I guess we all have our vices, right?
Exactly, exactly, exactly, exactly. So Dr. Robert, let's first, let's start off, let's talk about, we're talking about prostate cancer. Let's first talk about and explain what is a prostate?
Well, the prostate is a small organ, walnut-sized organ, contributes to various biological functions, sexual development in men. It's critical for hormone development, influences various biological functions, bone development, growth. And fortunately, since it is associated with hormone cancer, men are susceptible to this disease.
So particularly after the age of 50, when men become most susceptible because cancer prostate cancer, like many other cancers, is an age-related disease. Men have to get, like women with breast cancer, need to be screened annually for early signs of prostate cancer.
And one of the things that, you know, as I was reading this topic, is that prostate is probably the second most common cancer?
Yeah, it's a very prevalent cancer throughout the world. It occurs in the Countries more prominently, for instance, in Western Europe, United States, the Caribbean, than other parts of the world.
Again, whether this is due to genetic factors or environmental or dietary is still an area of research that's being extensively investigated by epidemiologists and people as myself who do a lot of exposure assessments on potential cancer-causing agents in the diet environment.
So let me ask you something. You know, as a young man many, many years ago, you don't worry about these things, so you don't think about them. But let me ask you, has prostate cancer increased over, you know, like, I don't know, the last 10, 15 years, for instance, that you might be aware of?
I don't have those statistics. in front of me. Most cancers have plateaued off. I believe that there's more prevalence of some of the lethal prostate cancers, particularly in African-American men, because there is a hesitancy to either get tested annually, screened annually, or for biological susceptibilities that they're at higher incidences.
I don't know that that number has increased or not globally for all types of prostate cancers.
but there's enough of it that we should be concerned.
It's a very common cancer, yes. I mean, it should be screened annually.
You know, I once heard, and then Clarence, you can get into all the community programmatic components here, but I once heard that, or have heard quite often actually, that prostate cancer seems to be more self-contained than other cancers, you know, just by virtue of maybe the size of the organ or the ease, the relative ease of removing it if need be.
But have you come across any of that kind of information in your background or your literature?
Yeah.
But either one, yeah, it's more self-contained. And, you know, I've heard people, I've heard some, you know, gentlemen, you know, physicians say, don't worry about, you know, an enlarged prostate or whatever, or your cancer prostate, because chances are, you know, it's more self-contained and you'll probably land up, you know, dying or getting something more severe down the road.
Is that still in the psyche here?
Well, yes and no. Again, I want to emphasize that I'm a PhD. I'm not a clinical physician. Fortunately, many prostate cancers are slow growing. You're correct when you do state that they are more or less contained through either irradiation or surgical treatments. many men who have been identified with prostate cancer can live a long, fulfilled life.
But prostate cancer, like many other cancers, there can be metastasis to other organs. And that's when additional treatment or hormonal therapy, reducing testosterone, which is kind of like the driver, the gasoline that moves the car, that can They can fuel growth.
And so there are many treatments and new medicines that are coming or are on the market that also are impacting or trying to kill these cancer cells by inhibition of DNA repair or damage. And so there are people that do have a higher prostate cancer risk or aggressiveness. And so these treatments come in line, but I'd say probably, I think my, my memory is correct.
70, 80% of these cancers would not be considered aggressive and metastatic, but they're clearly a subset that is.
Yeah. Okay. That's good to know. So Clarence, go ahead.
Yes. I want to let our listeners know that I do love Dr. Robert. And Dr. Robert is definitely a clinician. And so when we got together to talk about this issue, he was really able to enter into the conversation and to work with the community in a way that really engaged them. And I think that the work that we're going to talk about now, which is the
the work around the African-American community and prostate cancer. I said, we're going to talk about some racial things. There's some racial differences when it comes to prostate cancer. The thing that I was hearing was that Asian Americans, Asians probably are the lowest when it comes to prostate cancer and African-Americans are probably the highest.
And so I know from my community perspective that if you want to get a guy to go to the doctor, a black guy to go to the doctor, tell him about prostate cancer. That's the one thing that seems to just drive them to help them to get a medical exam.
And so the thing that I wanted to do was to say that, Shannon, I think you kind of alluded to this a little bit earlier, was the fact that for many men, this is really a very, very tough topic because of the perception about getting a test for prostate cancer. And I think in my community, guys don't want to talk about it because it's a digital exam.
Many times that's just not, you know, that's not something that people want to want to talk about or have done to them. And so, uh, Dr. Teresky, I would like you to just talk about the project that you're doing, uh, and talk about some of the, uh, some of the reasons why you did it.
Okay. Uh, so as Clarence mentioned, uh, African-American men do have, uh, amongst the highest risk for developing prostate cancer, certainly in the United States and Northern America. And there are a number of potential reasons for this. First of all, again, prostate cancer, it's multifactorial. There are many things that contribute to the risk of disease. One is genetic.
And so clearly there are African-Americans and whites that we have differences in our genetic makeup. It's thought that African Americans may have a higher prevalence for faulty genes that are involved in DNA repair or protective mechanisms. We're exposed to chemicals in the diet, the environment, or even in our bodies that could damage DNA. And we have different enzymes in our bodies that are
like policemen, they surveyed the cells, they surveyed the chromosomes and the genes, and they see an alteration of something that's not right, they repair the DNA, they repair the genes and mitigate mutations. But unfortunately, some different ethnicities have different levels of expression of these enzymes or faulty enzymes.
And so those that have faulty enzymes are at higher risk for cancer, okay? Most, many cancers are thought to be attributed to some sort of chemical exposure, or those chemicals are contributing to the risk. So I work, I study a lot of different chemicals that are produced, for instance, in tobacco smoke. Tobacco smoking causes lung cancer, okay?
And also several other cancers, but most of the carcinogens in tobacco don't form until you combust or burn the tobacco other than some nitrosamines. And so this is not a perfect analogy, but this is how I explain it to the layperson. When you cook meat at high temperature, you're producing these nice flavors and aromas that we like, whether they be in barbecued or roasted
Actually, less the roasted meat, but the barbecued high temperature flames meats. You're charring the surface of the meats the same way as you kind of produce chemicals in the tobacco. We're producing these flavors and aromas that we like in the cooked meats.
But unfortunately, there are a series of different compounds that are produced at high temperatures in meat that we know are cancer causing agents. at high doses, at high doses, an experimental laboratory animal, but they could be contributing to human cancers.
So African-Americans, at least based upon some of the data in the literature from behavioral scientists, have reported that African-Americans have more frequently eat well-done cooked meats, barbecued meats, than, say, do white men. So some of the chemicals that I work on in cooked meats actually cause prostate cancer in laboratory animals, rats and mice at high doses.
We have seen that they cause DNA damage. If you take a biopsy specimen from prostate patients and you treat the cell with some of these cooked meat agents, They damage the DNA in these cells in the test tube. So what we had developed many years ago is a way to measure some of these cancer-causing agents in our hair.
So when we eat foods, not only foods, but smoke, cigarettes, drink beverages, most of the chemicals get absorbed in our bodies and go through the entire body. circulatory system via the blood. And even some of these chemicals will reach the hair follicle. So one of the specific chemicals that we work on that is in cooked meats, it's a cancer-causing agent. We think it's a prostate carcinogen.
It actually gets entrapped in the hair follicle, a very small dose. And so as the hair staff grows out, you can snip your hair, or I can snip somebody's hair, and I can break that or digest that hair, and I can analyze and see whether someone has been exposed to this chemical in cooked meats that we think are the cause of aging. We've done this actually in individuals who are meat eaters.
We've done it to analyze for people who are vegetarians. Vegetarians don't have this carcinogen. only people that eat meat. And we've seen, we've done controlled feeding studies and we've shown that the more that people eat well done cooked meats, the more this carcinogen they have in their hair.
So what I had wanted to do, and this is where I had the opportunity to meet a network of clients, is we want to ask the question, very simple question, do African-American men who frequently eat well done cooked meats do they have more of this carcinogen in their hair than, say, do white men who also eat frequently eats?
And so we established a study with Clarence last year where we have given some flyers to African-American men to explain the study, what we're trying to do. And so our goal right now, this past summer, we did the study, we recruited the men over the summer season, because that's essentially when most people frequently, at least in the North, are doing barbecuing. My wife is actually watching.
She won't let me use the barbecue in the middle of the winter. So we think the barbecue season, the summer season, is the most prevalent. So what we've done is we've recruited African-American men at the end of August, early September. We've also done the same with white men,
And we're currently analyzing the carcinogen in hair to see whether, in fact, African-American men have more of it in their hair than white men. If they do, that is a first line of exposure data showing that, well, showing that African-American men eat more well-done cooked meats containing this potential, manuscript potential, human prostate, carcinogen, then do whites.
And perhaps that is contributing to the elevated risk. And again, I want to emphasize prostate cancer is multifactorial. Okay. It's not just one thing, but you know, this chemical, we know it damages DNA. We know it damages DNA, experimental laboratory animals. We know it damages DNA in human prostate cells in the test tube. And this is our first line of data. It's going that it may,
be more prevalent. This intake of the carcinogen may be more prevalent in African-Americans than whites. It may help to explain some of the increases in susceptibility to prostate cancer in African-American men. We've actually done a study here at the University of Minnesota. We published this about two years ago where we actually had a cohort
of 300 men who had prostate disease or other neurological diseases. And unfortunately, the study was predominantly white. We had more than 90% of the men who were treated here at the university were white. So we don't have a large enough sub-cohort of black men to draw conclusions. But what we had seen is that in that cohort of white men,
those men who had an elevated PSA score, prostate-specific antigen, the protein that's produced in the prostate, that's generally not always, and there's some controversy with the PSA test, but there's a trend where those men who have higher PSA levels have a more aggressive prostate cancer form than men with a lower PSA level. So we had seen that in the men who had higher PSA levels,
they had higher level of this chemical in cooked meat called FIP, which we think is a prostate carcinogen. And then those men who had a low PSA score. We also had men who had inflammation, benign prostatic hyperplasia, that's non-cancerous. And those men also had lower levels of FIP in their hair than men with an elevated PSA score. And so That shows that there's an association.
It doesn't prove causality. I mean, it could be something else in cooked meat that is contributing to this aggressive, higher aggressive form that we have observed in this cohort here in Minnesota. Or it may be that, you know, there's another lifestyle factor that we don't know what it is that's being picked up with men that like to eat well-done cooked meats and have high levels of carcinogens.
But we're excited about this data because it's the first chemical marker for a lifestyle factor that we can link with prostate cancer pathology. So for me, it was a natural thing to hook up with Clarence and try to recruit more African-American men to get more extensive data. Now, these are healthy men that we're working with. Ideally, what we'd really like to do longer term is to work
in a cohort of, again, patients with urological diseases, whether it be prostate cancer, bladder cancer, or benign prosthetic hyperplasia, not only with white men, but also with blacks, and see if we can see whether there's a difference between the African-American cohort and the white cohort with levels of PIP in prostate cancer patients. That would strengthen our data.
and allow us to provide more specific advice to both, well, men in general about the health, potential health risk of eating well done cooked meat.
I've got a question here. So, all right. So I'm going to just play this out a little bit. So, you know, Clarence is my good buddy here. I'm sitting next to him. We're in a barbecue restaurant. Okay. So, and I'm enjoying myself saying, yeah. Okay. Right. So here's, here's the deal. If, if Clarence goes ahead and gets, you know, you know, a rack of ribs and,
and I go ahead and get a rack of ribs in a barbecue restaurant, is what you're saying that just by the mere fact that Clarence, let's just play this out a little bit, likes a lot, eats a lot of barbecue, and the fact that he's African-American, and then there's Stan that's sitting next to him that I like barbecue, I don't eat a lot of it, and I'm white. He's just inherently based on...
what you're hypothesizing at least at higher risk. Is that what you're, you're, you're, you're kind of getting at here?
Maybe going a little bit too far because we don't understand enough of what's going on in our bodies.
Got it.
There is, Well, let me back up a little bit.
So I could still go ahead and eat it. It's so clear. Go ahead.
I will eat it. Listen, I still love barbecued ribs. That's my wife, Nicole. Yeah. You know, what I tell the layperson is, you know, if you drink too much water, it's going to make you sick too.
Yeah, right.
So, I mean, everything in dose and moderation. But some of these chemicals that we think may be contributing to prostate cancer, they themselves are not hazardous. They're not toxic. They're not carcinogenic. But once you eat them and they're in your body and they go through your liver or different other organs like the prostate, there are enzymes that convert or change these compounds.
Our body wants to eliminate all this stuff. Enzymes called cytochrome P450s, that make these things more water soluble so we can excrete them in our urine, for example. But unfortunately, these enzymes, they don't, you know, they're kind of indiscriminate.
Depending where they convert or transform these carcinogens or the procarcinogens, they can either convert them to non-hazardous detoxified metabolites, or they can convert them to reactive intermediates that latch onto DNA. And so Clarence's profile of enzymes their levels may be different than yours.
Yeah.
And so it's that balance of these different enzymes in our body that either bioactivate or detoxify these chemicals. which is one important risk factor. And so there are multiple enzymes.
And also amount, right? Amount of, okay. So, you know, it's like I, you know, you know, most docs will tell you, for instance, ice cream isn't great for you because it's, you know, it's got a lot of cholesterol in it. But, you know, I also say that once in a while, it's okay to have an ice cream cone. It's good for your mental health. So, you know, it's like amount of,
how is that in the research that you do, how do you figure out amount to indicate risk?
Well, that's a great question. So one of the challenges that we have, not only for the work that I'm doing, but for anybody who, like me, who's looking at different chemicals in the diet and the environment and their relative risk for developing cancer, the challenges that we have is that
the way that we do these risks assessments up to now are by using experimental laboratory animals, like bats, mice, and they're given very, very high doses of these chemicals, like a hundred thousand, a million times more than you and I would each day. Right. Yeah. So how do you do that extrapolation? Right. So the reason why they do these high doses in animals is, is to have a security margin.
But, you know, if I'm getting this number on top of my head, if, say, one out of 100,000 men develops prostate cancer, I mean, does that mean I need to study 100,000 rats? Right, yeah. So they do, we do, not me personally, but people that study this animal carcinogens pathology, I mean, they'll dose animals at very high levels. And they'll do a couple of different doses to do a dose response.
But still, they're thousands of times more higher than what you and I would eat. So how do we do this extrapolation? So some of the things that I do is we look at the damage of DNA in our cells. We look at the frequency. We look at the levels. or we use surrogate biomarkers. So some of these chemicals will latch on and modify blood proteins.
The same reactive intermediate that damages DNA can modify hemoglobin and albumin. And we try to see what kind of levels of these reactive intermediates are in our bodies versus, you know, a high dose rat or mouse or, or a cell system. Right. So, um, Other things that we can do is we can look at people's urine after somebody eats a well-done hamburger.
And I told you, I can measure, I can determine, I could tell whether someone is a meat eater or vegetarian because vegetarians won't have this carcinogen. We could look at a meat eater. These chemicals I told you get changed to get metabolized. And we can look at the urine of different individuals because there's going to be a different pattern of metabolism that
Some people will detoxify the carcinogen more efficiently than others. And so we have these chemical biomarkers in urine. We can say, yeah, well, person A is more efficiently in converting this to a hazardous metabolite than person B. And so that's some of our long-term goals.
I mean, we have an understanding of how these chemicals that I'm interested in, how they're metabolized in, we've done studies which were dominantly with Caucasians because we didn't have an African-American cohort.
But for instance, the studies that we're doing with Clarence now, if our data holds up and we do see that, yeah, African-American men have higher levels of this potential cancer-causing agent in their hair, we don't understand whether there's a difference in how African-American men or white men process carcinogens. One way we could do it is we can identify
men who have high levels of this in their hair. We could measure the amounts of this carcinogen in the cooked meat. We can collect urine over the 24 hour period after they ate the meat. And we can see how they transform this chemical by looking at the metabolites in urine.
And we can compare those to say white men and understand that there's a difference in how the two different races metabolize this compound. And that could also perhaps help to explain elevated risk in one cohort versus the other. This is all stuff that we would like to do. We just need to get funded to do it.
Yeah. So Clarence, all right, so you have your colleagues and friends in your community. So I'm just curious. OK, so Rob says, God, it'd be great if we could get an African-American cohort here. So all right. you go ahead and you talk to your friends or your colleagues to see if they'd be interested in a study like this.
I'm just curious, when you try to get people, okay, for a study like this, what was the response that you get from an individual? I mean, it's like... They were excited, man.
They were excited.
Interesting. Okay. So they were... The way in which we... They were excited in the sense of what? Go ahead, either one of you.
Do we lose power? They knew that there was, yeah, did I stop off a little bit? Yeah, go ahead. Okay, yeah. So the people in our community was very, very excited about the topic. In fact, they couldn't wait hardly to get into the barbershop. Now, we provide an incentive for that, but more than that, we just told them this is more than about the incentive.
This is about finding out why and how we are going to address this issue around prostate cancer. And if this is one of the ways in which we have to do it, Then, you know, we want you to be willing to do that, you know, from a very authentic perspective. And so that was that was that was a response. They like, OK, let's do this. In fact, they would get their friends.
Hey, look, man, let's let's do this. They'd have stories. They would talk. They would talk about it. The barber, the barber had was trying to figure out how then do I talk to my other customers when we don't have the we don't have the study going on? How do I talk to my other customers about this? How do I identify what could be done? And what are some of the ways in which to identify this?
But I want to get back to Dr. Robert. I think one of the thing, and this is totally candid conversation. One of the things that really, really kind of really threw me off and bedazzled, befuddled me was this PSA stuff. PSA is, you know, the way that I was understanding it was not always the most, the clearest sign of what's really going on inside of a person's body.
And I was so emotionally attached to the topic of prostate cancer. I was figuring like, you know, is there another, is there something else that's more effective? We didn't want the digital exam, you know, And then you're going to tell me about PSA. And I'm like, so what in the world do I do?
Which is one of the reasons why we were excited about this new, about the study with you, was that we struggle with. Did I know?
I'm sorry. Clarence, is he being cut off? Were you able to hear him? Yep, yep, we got him. I just, I... I'm being cut off with some of the audio.
Yeah. I'm sorry. So the question for me was, you know, in our community, we're still struggling with this issue. And the question is, what is it that we should be doing around prostate cancer?
Right. Well, again, so the end point that we're looking at, we're very excited about because it suggests a lifestyle factor. meaning eating well-done cooked meat, and I underscore may, may be contributing to prostate cancer risk and may, underscore, contribute to an elevated risk for African-American men.
So what I try to convey, you know, when I have to give talks, and most of the time I give to a scientific audience, okay, so I can use a lot of technical jargon, but when I'm speaking to the public, I tell them, if you don't understand anything that I'm talking about, if there's one message or two messages to take home is one, don't burn your meat, right?
It's when you really char your meats that you're increasing the levels of this cancer causing agent. All right. So, you know, I don't eat my meats well done anymore. I try to eat the medium to medium rare. Uh, and, um, first of all, it's a lot healthier for you. A lot of the nutrients and the essential amino acids are present in a higher amount of meat than the non-food well done.
And you form a lot less of this cancer-causing agent. So already, if you can just do that, minimize the charring in eating meat well done, you've already done something that's positive, right? And as I said earlier, It's all about the dose. So, I mean, it's not healthy to eat well-done cooked meats or grilled bacon, crispy grilled bacon every day. I mean, moderate your diet.
I mean, instead of having grilled burgers five days a week, I mean, do some roast, do some stewed meat, have some fish, other things that are not charred meats. And already you will lower your levels of exposure. We advocate for people to eat a lot of green leafy vegetables because there are things in these vegetables which are anti-carcinogenic. They're protective.
They stimulate enzymes in our body that detoxify carcinogens or antioxidants. And so I've conveyed this to Clarence and to the African community. And also when I have to give other talks to laypeople, moderation is most important. Vary diets and just don't burn the meat. I'm not telling people to be vegans. There are some people that advocate no red meat.
Life is to enjoy and part of things in life that are enjoyable is what we eat. If you can modify your diet and you can lower your exposure to these potential hazardous chemicals by Simply changing the temperature or how you cook the meat, that's already a beneficial thing. And so that's the take home message.
So let's talk about this from a public health, overall public health perspective, which you've obviously touched on here. I assume that underlying the work that you do is prevention. How is it that we truly can prevent? And also, I guess treatment, you might say that eating less charred meat or really, really well cooked meat is a form of treating yourself in the prevention aspect of it all.
All right. we're working with a community, you're working with the African American community, and when all is said and done, when your research is done and you get a gazillion million for your research through grants, et cetera. Yeah, right, yeah. Then the question is, how is it that you translate your research into good public health usage?
Well, it's communication, ultimately it's the communication to the public, right?
Yeah.
So, I mean, I certainly have a role in that, as does any other research investigator who's studying risk factors for disease. And also regulatory agencies are important. The American Institute of Cancer Research advocates minimizing red meat consumption, International Agency for Research in Cancer, National Institutes of Health.
These agencies are the official organizations that provide recommended guidelines. And so as we do more research and we publish more data, these organizations continuously reviewing health benefits and risk factors for diseases. And it has to come from different sources. And clearly what I need to do is to publish data to show these things.
And when I have opportunities to speak to the public, like this event today, and hopefully, you know, if someone is listening to me and says, oh, wow, yeah, I didn't realize that. I'm going to stop charring my burgers and eat the medium. I mean, I'm helping some.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And, you know, down the road, you know, we've done shows on Health Chatter that involve state, for instance, health plans around various chronic diseases. One of those is the cancer plan, where within it are objectives and programmatic initiatives for, in this case, the state of Minnesota.
Then on a much broader scale, there's Healthy People 2030, right now, the Objectives for the Nation. And for researchers like you, there could be strong implications for new updated objectives in the cancer arena for Objectives for the Nation, and also dietary guidelines going forward. So there are really some really good, strong implications here.
Absolutely. Yeah. I'm really excited, Dr. Robert. I want to thank you for actually being on our show today. And I know that this is a conversation that is very complex, but it's also for a lot of people very emotional.
And I think that I was trying to convey that in terms of some of the conversations that I was having that as important as this issue is, we have to continue to find ways to get people to enter the conversation. And part of the work that you're doing does that. I mean, the idea of working specifically around a topic of interest to me really excited me about working with you.
But I also understand the bigger ramification of what we're trying to do. And so I just want to personally thank you for the work that you've done. And I know that we're going to be disseminating this information back to the community. One is when just kind of a midterm report, whatever. And then when the other report comes out, we're going to do that.
But that's part of what, you know, Stan, your question is that we're going to disseminate this information. And we told the participants in this study that we were going to disseminate it. So as complicated as it could be for some, it's important that at least we enter the dialogue. And so, again, I just want to say thank you, Dr. Robert, for your time.
Well, thank you for the kind words, Clarence. And if I might add, I didn't know what the UMEN organization was two years ago, two and a half years ago. Clarence and I've been involved in a number of meetings with the UMEN organization now and the health advocacy. And what Clarence does, I find is So inspiring for the African-American community in particular.
He does a wonderful service to the community.
Yeah, I can't. I agree with you a lot on that one. I mean, you know, I wish we could clone Clarence in many ways for all the different types, all the different populations that we have, because it really helps. It really, really helps in the long run. So, Dr. Teresky, thank you. I I applaud your efforts. I look forward to hearing more.
And to be honest with you, we reserve the right to get back to you or you back to us as soon as you have something exciting to say. We'll have you on Health Chatter again, for sure. So thank you. It's been a pleasure. So for our listening audience, our next show we're going to have is on cardiac rehab.
rehabilitation, which should be very interesting, especially for those we're seeing, unfortunately, incidences where people are not taking advantage of cardiac rehab after having events. So we'll be talking about that on our next show. So in the meantime, everybody keep health chatting awake.