Doctors EXPOSE Medical Myths on Statins, Supplements, and Reflux

🎙️ **Welcome to Episode 1 of *Two Doctors Tell the Truth*** — the medical podcast that cuts through misinformation and hype to bring you the *real, evidence-based truth*. Hosted by **Dr. Michael Richman**, a double board-certified cardiothoracic and general surgeon, and **Dr. Michael Fiorillo**, a double board-certified general and plastic surgeon, this show is dedicated to giving you straight answers about your health.

These two highly trained, no-nonsense doctors are not here to sell you supplements or push trendy cures — they’re here to **expose the myths, decode the data**, and help you become your own health advocate.

🧠 **IN THIS EPISODE: **

✅ Why you can’t trust most “TikTok doctors” and online health influencers  
✅ The truth about **statins** — do they cause Alzheimer’s or *save lives*?  
✅ Are **supplements and IV drips** helpful or just expensive fads?  
✅ The dangerous link between **reflux medications** and **esophageal cancer**  
✅ Why today’s medical training has changed — and why that matters to *you*  
✅ How to **fact-check health claims** and take back control of your own care

With a combined **100,000+ surgeries** and decades of clinical experience, Dr. Richman and Dr. Fiorillo have seen it all. And they’re here to give you real-world insight into what actually works — and what’s just marketing hype.

💡 **WHAT MAKES THIS PODCAST DIFFERENT? **

In a world flooded with influencers, wellness warriors, “functional” practitioners, and supplement shills, *Two Doctors Tell the Truth* stands out as one of the only podcasts hosted by two **real, practicing, double board-certified surgeons**. These guys have:
- Done the surgeries
- Treated the patients
- Read the journals
- Trained under the old-school, high-stakes model of medicine
- Seen through the fog of modern misinformation

They’re here to bring you **medical clarity** in a noisy, profit-driven world.

🔍 **TOPICS WE COVER REGULARLY:**

- Cardiovascular disease & prevention  
- Anti-aging medicine (what’s legit, what’s not)  
- Supplements, peptides, biohacking, detoxes  
- Weight loss drugs: **Ozempic, Wegovy, Semaglutide**  
- Cancer screening: colonoscopy, mammography, full-body scans  
- Testosterone therapy for men  
- Cholesterol, statins, and lipids — explained in plain English  
- The REAL impact of diet, exercise, and lifestyle  
- How to interpret medical studies without a PhD  
- Why you MUST advocate for yourself in today’s healthcare system

If it’s trending on TikTok or Instagram, chances are it’s already on our radar — and we’ll tell you whether it holds up or falls apart.

📚 **EVERYTHING WE SAY IS BACKED BY SCIENCE**

We reference **peer-reviewed medical literature**, real clinical studies, and our own experience from thousands of hours in the OR and clinic. This is medicine from the inside — not YouTube university.

Get all episode references and links at:  
👉 **(https://www.thetruthdocs.com)**

There, you’ll find:
- Articles and papers we reference in every show  
- Extended show notes  
- Submissions for YOUR medical questions and topic suggestions  
- Our contact info and links to follow us on every platform

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🗣️ **WHO ARE DR. MICHAEL RICHMAN & DR. MICHAEL FIORILLO?**

🔹 **Dr. Michael Richman**  
- Cardiothoracic surgeon  
- General surgeon  
- Expert in advanced cholesterol & lipid management  
- Over 25 years of surgical experience

🔹 **Dr. Michael Fiorillo**  
- Plastic & reconstructive surgeon  
- General surgeon  
- Anti-aging and hormone therapy educator  
- National speaker on medical myths and misinformation

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:00

Good afternoon, everybody. This is Dr. Michael Richman, and today is our inaugural episode of our podcast, Two Doctors Who Tell the Truth. I am with my very close friend, Dr. Michael Fiorillo, and we are both so excited to do our first show, and hopefully we're going to keep going and do as many episodes as we can. as we can. Just a little bit about myself. I'm a double board certified cardiothoracic and general surgeon. And I've also spent 20 years doing complex cholesterol management. I've spent decades practically in the operating room doing cardiothoracic, which is anything in the chest, lungs, heart, esophagus surgery. And basically, I have dedicated my career to educating people on the truths in medicine, what is true, what is evidence-based. And I'd like to introduce now officially my partner in crime and good friend, one of the best plastic surgeons that I know, who's also double board certified in general surgery and plastic surgery. So with further ado, there's Dr. Firo.

SPEAKER_00: 1:18

All righty, all righty. So Man, this is great, isn't it? We've been talking about this for quite some time. And it seems like yesterday that me and Mike met each other in 1991 at LA Children's Hospital. We were doing pediatric surgery rotation. God, that seems like a lifetime ago. Well, I guess it was. And, you know, we've always kept in touch, but we just kind of reconnected recently. And we were just talking about all the information that's out there. We didn't have this when we were residents. And now there's so much information, information age, right, with Twitter and Instagram, Facebook. And we just sit there every night and we're talking about how this study is wrong and this study is not true. And people are making all these claims with no evidence. So between both of us, we figured out today we might have about 100,000 surgeries between us, maybe more. If you include all our training and go back

SPEAKER_01: 2:18

to that. Features and everything. Yes.

SPEAKER_00: 2:21

And how many patients we've treated. And that really leads us with our experience, plus the boards, plus journals that we respect and we trust to really bring, you know, our audience real information as truthful and as evidence-based as possible. Not us guessing, hey, take this or take that. And we really want to be advocates for our patients like me, like we talked about. And we're going to have some really hot topics and we're going to dive into it. We're going to give you the references and let you make your own decisions and we'll help guide you.

SPEAKER_01: 2:59

I mean, a little bit about both our training. So things have changed a little bit today, but Mike and I are still one of the few double board certified. You have to, you don't have to today, but when we trained, you had to be board certified in general surgery, which is basically everything from head to toe. And it's a five or six year residency. So Mike and I both can take care of pretty much every problem. We could even figure out neurosurgery if necessary, you know, which is brain surgery. But so, you know, we have unique training and our mission here is, like Mike said, is to If it's an opinion, we're going to tell you an opinion, but it's based on evidence. And, you know, you'll see on the internet and on TikTok and all these guys who have podcasts, if you look and dive deeper, you see their qualifications. So many of them are not even doctors. And they're giving you stuff that's, they're saying it's factual or they're saying some study, but never quote the study. We're going to teach you to be able to critically read a study, to know if it's garbage or as I call, industry magazines or toilet journals? Or is this legitimate? And with the information that we're going to teach you from cancer, cardiovascular disease, supplements, anti-aging, you're going to have a knowledge base with which to go in and number one, challenge your doctor. Because you need to remember when you go see a doctor, you... They're lucky to have you as a patient. People forget that. You're going in to interview the doctor, not vice versa. And Mike and I both hate when somebody says, whatever you say, doctor. No, it's a patient-physician relationship that needs to develop. And Mike are just going to empower you with that knowledge We're not selling anything. We're not selling snake oil. We're not selling products. What we're selling is the best, most accurate knowledge to allow you to navigate the complex healthcare space.

SPEAKER_00: 5:08

A hundred percent. You know, you need to advocate for yourself. You find yourself in a hospital or a loved one, you know, there's a lot of good caring doctors out there for sure, but you also need to advocate for yourself. And especially today, you can do the research and you can find what works and what doesn't work. And I see so many people come in and they say, hey, I saw this on TikTok and I'm supposed to, you know, live seven years longer. Well, I mean, you know, who knows where that's coming from, right? And there's a lot of people spending a lot of money on products. So what worked? What doesn't work? I mean, look at all the hot topics today, right? We could go just through and name a few, right? So Dr. Richman is an expert in lipids. So a lot of people will say, oh, my HDL allele is fine. I'm fine. There's so much more to it than that, which Dr. Richmond is going to really deep dive upcoming episode. How about all the weight loss drugs, all the Ozempics, semiglutide? What about IV drips? What about all the numerous supplements? What about cancer screening? Me and Dr. Richmond talking about that. So much now in cancer screening. Should you do it? Should you do prophylactic stuff? So this is just the tip of the iceberg that we're going to go through.

SPEAKER_01: 6:25

Right. I mean, we're going to go through, I'll give you another esoteric topic. Reflux, which everybody talks about. I have reflux, I have reflux. Well, esophageal cancer, the rise in esophageal cancer parallels the rise of using the drugs that you take over the counter, Prilosec and Nexium, the purple pill, because that gets rid of the ouch, the part that tells you you have reflux. But the problem that's causing reflux the cancer to develop is still going on. So if you look at the curves, there was a parallel rise. So Mike and I are going to empower you to be like, okay, hey, I have reflux. Yes, you need to go have an endoscopy. You can't just sit and keep taking medicine. So, you know, not only we're going to do hot and fun topics, talk about lasers, which he's, you know, a pro in, in plastic surgery. And, you know, if you're going to have implants that, but, but like, Cardiovascular disease is the number one killer of men and women in the United States. And if you total up the next seven causes, it doesn't even come close. And why is that? Well, we're going to dive into that. And we're going to tell you because there is a reason, you know, but we're going to give you factual evidence-based medicine. And remember, so much of this stuff has been around for decades and decades. And it's just, if you ask us, like, why doesn't anybody know it? Just in general, there's a lot of reasons. They don't teach it in school. It's not lucrative. It takes too much time to spend with patients because, you know, the dynamics of healthcare have changed. So, you know, just a myriad of topics. We're going to take topics from you, hopefully the listener who will give us topics, and we're just going to have fun with this and see where it

SPEAKER_00: 8:13

goes. Yeah, 100%. One of the reasons we started talking, too, was I told you about all my friends are getting off their statins. Everyone says it's causing Alzheimer's, causing dementia. Don't take it. And then the other literature says statins is one of the few things that can save your life, prolong your life. So these are topics that people want to hear. Should men our age be taking testosterone? Fair question, right? Should we all be on Ozempic? Should we be microdosing Ozempic? Does fasting work? Should we be fasting? I mean, there's so many topics, but what I'd like to do is to bring you the actual paper. papers from real journals, not, you know, 30 men feel better. Yeah, correct. Not like, oh, 30 men feel a little bit better because they took this vitamin. And it's not a real study.

SPEAKER_01: 9:05

Right, right. I mean, to give you an example, because Mike, since we decided to do this, he aggravates me. I wake up aggravated most mornings because he's on the East Coast, I'm on the West Coast. So he sends me, he sends me stuff. And I three in the morning, you know, being doctors, I can't, we can't turn off our phones. It's just habit. And so he'll get up at six and I'll get something at three in the morning and I'll look at it and I just get beyond aggravated. So he sent me a study recently with creatine, which is a hot topic because somebody on Instagram or Tik TOK, some functional medicine doctor said in the study is it was like 60 men in And it was a 12-week study of taking creatine versus no creatine. And the endpoint was a six-minute walk. Did they do it faster than before creatine or the placebo? And that's what people are quoting. It's insanity. And then people are going out and buying it.

SPEAKER_00: 10:08

It really is. And we talk about this all the time. Most of the people you see that are experts, nutritionists, biologists, you know, functional medicine. And that's fine. They're all great specialties, you know, and very smart people. But I think we have the unique advantage of extensive training. I did seven years. Mike, what did you do, seven or eight years?

SPEAKER_01: 10:32

I did five years of general surgery. Then I stayed on faculty as a for one year doing trauma at LA County. And then I did two more years of cardiothoracic training.

SPEAKER_00: 10:45

Yeah. So you did

SPEAKER_01: 10:46

eight. And there's how everybody, that's after our four years of med school.

SPEAKER_00: 10:50

Right. So, right. So after four years, you did eight, I did seven. And then the thousands of people that we treated. So we're writing prescriptions. We're ordering blood work. We're checking blood work. We're reading EKGs. We're cutting people open. We're seeing people on the inside. So we're It's not that we're better or smarter than these other people, but we have the experience and we have really good training because the training today is not like it was. I mean, I lived in the hospital. So did Mike. We did, baby, 81 of the hours a week.

SPEAKER_01: 11:24

Right. It was not uncommon for us on certain rotations, 120 hours in the hospital a week. Okay. And this isn't exaggerating. And, you know, we're going to talk about it after she, on a show, but after 2005, they changed the residency rules because of fatigue. So now residents max can spend 80 hours a week in the hospital. Now, yes, there's good and bad, and we'll all discuss that. But I have a Substack page, and I write a lot, and I just wrote an article about that doctors are ordering 60% of tests that are ordered today are medically unnecessary. And I have this adage, If the result of a negative test is the same, you're going to do the same action as the result. If it's positive, you don't need to do the test. And the problem is all we're doing today is testing because the art of physical diagnosis is gone. So Mike and I, I mean, I know we're older than you think. We're the same age. We're not going to divulge it, but we're older than you think. We still train where you actually... diagnosed an acute appendicitis with your hands. You didn't get an ultrasound and you didn't get a CT. We actually listened to the heart and could decipher murmurs. So, you know, that is the lost art, the lost art of physical diagnosis. So, you know, it's not that we're special, but it's, you know, while still being young and our vitality, we bring the ability with us of knowing how to take care of people, how to diagnose them, and how to treat them.

SPEAKER_00: 13:06

Yeah. Listen, I'm really excited about this. I think it's going to be great. I think hopefully people will love it and they'll learn from it, maybe save money from it. And who knows? I think we're going to have a fun time doing it as well. And we're going to save people's lives. Correct. Hopefully we will. Yes. And it's going to be a lot of fun. And I think we're going to learn a lot ourselves too. I'm excited to start, you know, really digging in on these topics. You know, a lot of them we already have, but we're going to really do deep dives on a lot of topics. And I think we're going to surprise a lot of people.

SPEAKER_01: 13:42

And we're going to have some experts on, you know, and as time goes on, but, but guys who we know, some of we don't know, but like real legitimate experts, thought leaders in the field who, who, a lot of them we talk to to get some guidance and to get opinion. So it's going to be a fun show. Definitely we're going to laugh and we'll tell you stories about our training and the insanity we went through and lighten it up sometimes. And sometimes we're going to be very, very serious. But I just can't be more excited to do this because, I don't know, I don't think there's anybody... who's doing a podcast like this. Everybody's selling something. We're selling truth, reality, knowledge to empower you to have a healthy life, essentially. So we wanna thank you for listening and we're gonna wrap it up right now. We can be found at www.thetruthdocs.com. And we look forward to you leaving comments and we'll be leaving literature on there that we talk about and papers. So if you want to deep dive into it, you'll be able to.

SPEAKER_00: 15:05

Yeah, I want to encourage everybody to subscribe and submit questions. We'll be on all social media. The links will be down below. You'll see everything. Ask questions, submit topics and stay healthy, my friends.