Meghan Yost Wilczewski

[Vertigo_Warrior @VertigoWarrior]

Life in the Era of the 1990s. A Thread🧵

1. Hands-free telephone headset tv commercial from 1993

[Meghan Yost Wilczewski @MeghanYost]

My face peeking out to the left of the white sunglasses. 😎

[Julian Edelman @Edelman11]

Would’ve been nice to have you here @stoolpresidente

[Brittany Hugoboom @BritHugoboom]

The questions you SHOULD be asking: why are so many women being dismissed and gaslit by their doctors to such a degree that they have to turn to social media to get answers from other women sharing their lived experiences?

And where can women turn to for reliable alternatives to hormonal birth control? But instead, you’ve decided to blame and shame the victims in all this - women.

[Brittany Hugoboom @BritHugoboom]

The Washington Post wrote about me and my company in an article titled “Women are getting off birth control amid misinformation explosion.”

It was a horrible (yet predictable) hatchet job full of fear-mongering and, ironically, misinformation.

@LaurenWeberHP, you should be ashamed that you, as a woman, are contributing to the mass gaslighting and dismissing of women’s horrible experiences on birth control.

I’d say you are out of touch and uninformed at best, but you’re also directly complicit in TikTok censoring and removing viral videos of women speaking out.

[Calley Means @calleymeans]

In a burst of energy before she died, my mom urged us to take her to where she'd be buried.

Cupping my dad's face, she talked about how magical their life was together.

It was the most profound moment of my life, and it wouldn't have happened if we listened to her doctors.

Just 13 days before, in January 2021, my mom was apparently healthy.

She felt a pain in her stomach during her morning hike and got a scan. Stage 4 pancreatic cancer.

She called me and said she wouldn’t meet her future grandchildren. The family rushed to her side. My sister @DrCaseysKitchen and I learned three things over those next 13 days... Lessons that we think provide an explanation - and solutions - for the largest issue our country faces: the fact that we are getting sicker, fatter, more depressed, and more infertile at an increasing rate while bankrupting our country with healthcare costs.

The first was that the predominant incentive in medicine is to intervene after you get sick.

Right after my mom's unexpected cancer diagnosis, a medical team out of Stanford and Palo Alto Medical Foundation jumped to action, recommending a laundry list of surgeries and procedures—biopsies, blood transfusions, and a liver stent. In most cases, the patient would have agreed to these procedures, and the meeting would wrap up quickly.

These recommendations were coming from some of the most prestigious institutions in the world, after all.

But based on my sister's experience in medicine (Stanford MD and surgical residency), she started asking questions. We learned that these procedures had about a 33 percent chance of extending her life a few more months at most, a 33 percent chance of shortening her life span, and a 33 percent chance of not impacting her life span (yet keeping her away from the family). In all cases, the invasive route would mean that my mom would need to sit in a hospital room alone, because of Covid-19 protocols, and potentially longer if the surgery had complications, as they often do with immunocompromised cancer patients.

My mom made it clear to the oncologist that she was not afraid of her rapidly impending death, but she wanted to minimize unnecessary pain or nausea in her final days. Despite being clear, the system pushed the exact procedures that would yield pain and nausea and aggressively shamed our family for questioning the full-court press approach.

Thank God we had my sister - who had routinely seen doctors push unnecessary surgeries to terminally ill patients during her training - who had the wherewithal to push back.

In 99.9% of cases, my mom would have died alone in a hospital room and we would have missed the life-changing final days with her.

The second lesson was that my mom's cancer was not "random." Her oncologists said it was "bad luck." It wasn't.

In the decades leading up to my mom’s cancer diagnosis, she was informed her rising cholesterol, waistline, fasting glucose, and blood pressure levels were conditions that she could “manage” for life with a pill. But instead of isolated conditions, all of the symptoms my mom experienced leading to her death were warning signs of the same thing: dysregulation in how her cells were producing and using energy.

But through decades of symptoms, my mom—and most other adults in the modern world—are simply prescribed pills and not set on a path of curiosity about how these conditions are connected and how the root cause can be reversed.

The third lesson was that there is a better way than our current system, and it starts with understanding that the biggest lie in health care is that the root cause of why we’re getting sicker, heavier, more depressed, and more infertile is complicated.

Depression, anxiety, acne, infertility, insomnia, heart disease, erectile dysfunction, type 2 diabetes, Alzheimer’s dementia, cancer, and most other conditions that torture and shorten our lives are actually rooted in the same thing.

And the ability to prevent and reverse these conditions—and feel incredible today—is under your control and simpler than you think.

After leaving traditional medicine and working with patients to understand their biomarkers and take simple root causes actions - my sister routinely saw quick reversals of formerly intractable conditions.

The siloing and medicalization of chronic disease in the past fifty years has been an abject failure. Today, we’ve siloed diseases and have a treatment for everything:
✅High cholesterol? See a cardiologist for a statin.
✅High fasting glucose? See an endocrinologist for metformin.
✅Depressed? See a psychiatrist for a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI).
✅Can’t sleep? See a sleep specialist for Ambien.
✅PCOS? See an ob-gyn for clomiphene.
✅Erectile dysfunction? See a urologist for Viagra.
✅Sinus infections? See an ENT for an antibiotic or surgery.

But what nobody talks about—what I think many doctors don’t even realize—is that the rates of most of these conditions are going up at the exact time we are spending trillions of dollars to “treat them.”

In the face of these unprecedented trends happening to our brains and bodies across our life span—which all have metabolic dysfunction as a root—we are told to “trust the science.” This obviously doesn’t make sense. We have been gaslighted to not ask questions over the past fifty years at the exact time chronic disease rates have exploded.

The truth: we should consider listening to the medical system if we have an acute issue like a life-threatening infection or broken bone. But when it comes to the chronic conditions that plague our lives, we should distrust almost every institution giving the advice. The answers are much more simple and under our control.
___

In the days following my mom's death, my sister and I affirmed to devote our lives to changing these broken health incentives. And Casey expressed a passion to write a book with lessons she's learned working inside and outside the medical system. I have helped her write this book over the past several years and it will be coming out in May.

A lot of issues will be discussed as we enter 2024, but the most important is that our human capital in America (particularly kids) is being decimated by preventable and reversible metabolic conditions. Thank you @bariweiss @TheFP for publishing an excerpt.

[Meghan Yost Wilczewski @MeghanYost]

@SueMel29 Sending love and prayers your way Sue. We are all thinking of you. ❤️

[Mykhailo Fedorov @FedorovMykhailo]

Starlink — here. Thanks, @elonmusk

[Clay Travis @ClayTravis]

Here’s the video of every celebrity without a mask during the Super Bowl. But every kid in California will have to be wearing them tomorrow in school. They must all be holding their breaths the entire game.

[Meghan Yost Wilczewski @MeghanYost]

@nypost

[Meghan Yost Wilczewski @MeghanYost]

I feel for this family. It’s hard enough getting a two year old dressed. Forcing them to cover their face with a mask is absurd. ⁦@newyorkpost⁩ @united https://t.co/mdhcogLdPD

[Meghan Yost Wilczewski @MeghanYost]

America's junk food diet makes us more vulnerable to coronavirus https://t.co/wXcy6Tqeim

[Cameron Kyle-Sidell, MD @cameronks]

FROM NYC DOC at BEDSIDE: 100,000 Americans don't need to die. https://t.co/dVmE7pm0xY The vents protocols must be changed!! @theintercept @jeremyscahill @ggreenwald @lhfang @matthewacole @fastlerner @MazMHussain @ryangrim @democracynow @AlleenBrown @TinyRevolution

[Meghan Yost Wilczewski @MeghanYost]

@Ginger_Zee loooovve your green shirt today. Could you share where it’s from?

[Meghan Yost Wilczewski @MeghanYost]

The hubs and I have been kind of obsessed over here with this healthy take on cookie dough. I was going to form it into balls, but instead we’ve been storing it in the fridge and eating it by the spoonful. It’s plant… https://t.co/XoJMLY8yUo

[Meghan Yost Wilczewski @MeghanYost]

@melissablake Go Melissa!!!

[Meghan Yost Wilczewski @MeghanYost]

Soooo it’s my birthday today, but now that I have a baby it seems so insignificant (plus, I’m just getting old 😂😭)
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So instead of celebrating my birth, I’m celebrating Grace's. I’ve finally gotten around to writing… https://t.co/S0RPFCqyD2

[Meghan Yost Wilczewski @MeghanYost]

What is wrong with people???! Why?? This is horrendous. “Video of duck being killed with broomstick by football players infuriates community” - ABC News https://t.co/PCKsziQClH

[Meghan Yost Wilczewski @MeghanYost]

I’ve been exclusively breastfeeding Grace since she was born, but while this moment may look picture perfect, it only captures PART of the story.
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Here’s how I envisioned breastfeeding going before giving birth:… https://t.co/xAUjjfrvwJ

[Meghan Yost Wilczewski @MeghanYost]

⁦@DenverHealthMed⁩ This is absolutely awful. I can’t imagine having given birth alone, not to mention the fact that an innocent baby was put at risk. “Diana Sanchez gave birth in Denver jail cell alone, lawsuit says.” -⁦@washingtonpost⁩ https://t.co/4OqTMVQEcJ

[Meghan Yost Wilczewski @MeghanYost]

So many toys and books, so little time! Here are some of the best toys and books for a four month old baby - aka my daughter Grace's favorite things: https://t.co/MBCB83wT9a #babytoys #babybooks #fourmonthold #4monthold