Hey guys, what is up? Welcome to my channel. I am filming this on Saturday, so happy Saturday or whatever day you are watching this. For today's video, I'm going to be going over all of my favorite products for the month of March. If you would like to see what I was loving this month, then just keep watching. Hi guys, if you're new here, my name is Morgan. I'm a product knowledge enthusiast and I just love knowing anything, everything about all of the makeup on the market. So I might be a little bit low energy today. I got my second dose of the vaccine yesterday and I woke up and I was feeling really sluggish. I took some Tylenol, so I'm feeling a lot better. But I do have kind of like an underlying headache, you know? So bear with me if I'm not the most chipper person in this video. Anyways, so I want to start off this month with a channel of the month. I've not been doing this very often just because I haven't had the time to sit down and watch my favorites. But a channel that I've been watching a lot this month is Chelsea from Glam Girl. Chelsea, she actually just had a little baby. Her name is Riley, she is so cute. And even though she just had a baby, she is still grinding on YouTube and I love how she covers all of the new products. She does a lot of different comparisons as well. So if you were curious about how different products compares, she will do that as well. She's so engaged with her audience and most importantly, she is just so sweet. Her personality will make you smile and watching her videos will make your day better. So make sure you go subscribed to Chelsea's channel. You will not regret it. And as far as what she reviews, she reviews a lot of the same products that I also review. So we have very similar taste in makeup. So if you like my taste in makeup, then you will definitely like her. She definitely stays more in the high end luxury sector of makeup. I don't have a ton of products this month. Not too many new new items. I don't know, I just, I don't even have any eyeshadow palettes. That's kind of sad, but we'll talk about it. So first let's start off with a primer that I fell in love with this month. It's nothing new, but I was blessed enough to do a sponsorship with Armani Beauty. And that is where I discovered this primer. This is the Luminous Silk Hydrating Primer. If you're looking for a moisturizing glowy primer and you will love this, I haven't heard anybody ever talk about this primer and it is so nice. So I have more normal to dry skin. I prefer a more moisturizing base. This is a little bit thicker. It's not like a watery base. It has some thickness to it, but it has some slip as well, so it's not gonna make the makeup stick to your face. It's just that perfect combination of having some thickness so you know it's gonna sink into the skin and last a long time with hydration, but also not sticky. I like a sticky primer here and there, but for the most part, I prefer something a little bit more smoothing and this is really great. And not to mention it does add a nice glow underneath the skin, which just makes the makeup on top look really healthy. So this is something that a lot of these products actually might be my Sephora recommendations that are coming up if it's not up yet already and this is gonna be one of them because it's just so nice, I've been loving it. The next product, hard to get your hands on, but it restocked on the brand's website recently. This is the KVD Beauty Good Apple Balm Perfecting Foundation, whatever. I think I messed that up, but I reviewed this like the first day that it came out or the next day or something like that and it's really good. It is worth the hype. Now, wear time is not its strong suit. So if longevity of foundation is important to you, don't buy this foundation. If you have oily skin, I don't think you should buy this foundation either because I have more normal skin and this does not last on me. Now it lasts just long enough, but what I love about it is how easy it is to apply and how perfected my skin looks. Now people market this as a full coverage foundation and you definitely do get a full coverage foundation, but please don't wear it like all the Tik Tokers are showing you.   So share it out, it blends out beautifully. You still get the coverage even when you blend it out and less is more with this foundation if we're talking wear time. So I really like this. I definitely recommend this for dry skin. It is amazing. The next product is a older product and it's a product that I've recently changed my mind on. So I used to not be the biggest fan of the Armani Luminous Silk Concealer. In the times of mask wearing, I've been loving this. So I've said this many times before, but I cannot stand wearing makeup underneath my mask. When I do want to wear makeup and I know I'm gonna wear a mask for the day, I will apply just a little bit of this underneath the eyes. So why I didn't like this previously is because I feel like it did absolutely nothing with coverage. It is a very light coverage concealer, but to me, I just really don't like it when I'm wearing foundation. When I'm not wearing foundation, it's the perfect under eye concealer to just kind of brighten up the under eyes and it blends in seamlessly to the skin. So if you don't wear foundation, this is awesome. I mean, I'm wearing it today. It looks pretty good. It's with a pretty full coverage foundation, but still I prefer a little bit more thickness in my concealer because I feel like it's too thin and you can kind of see my under eyes peeking through. However, when I'm not wearing any foundation, I really have been enjoying this and it's been one of my go-tos for every day. Just popping it right in here and a little bit right where I have some blueness and it brightens it up, picks my face up. Really beautiful for that. The next product, she is quite pricey, but I have been using it non-stop. This is the Westman Atelier Face Trace Contour Stick and Biscuit. So I'm not as big into creams right now even though they seem to be everywhere, but again, the mask thing, creams in a mask are gross while I do try and stay away from wearing makeup under a mask. Sometimes it just happens. I get ready for the day. I get ready for my videos. Sometimes I need to leave the house. So I've been liking setting this with powder, but I think if we one day get to the point where we don't need masks, I'm really gonna like this. So what I like about this shade, it's in the shade of biscuit, is that it's a little bit more cool. So I do like to set it with a warmer bronzer and this just blends out so beautifully. It's the perfect size to really get into the cheeks as well and for me and my skin tone, I just find it to be the perfect contour color and then setting it with a warm bronzer on top is just perfection. It blends out beautifully and it's so luxe. If you're into luxe packaging, it has a magnetic closure. It's nice and heavy. So you also get the experience with this as well. I know you guys have been asking for that powder video. Lots of powders have come out. It's coming soon. I'm pretty much done testing out all the powders. I know what I want to say about all of them, but two powders have come out on top. So the first one is the Dior Backstage Face and Body Powder No Powder. Emphasis on the powder no powder, because when you put this on, you literally can't tell that you have powder on your face. It really is just a traceless powder that sets your face. Now, warning, I got mine in the shade Too Neutral and I was worried it would be too light for me. Boy, was I wrong. So I would say go lighter.  But anyways, if you like a glowy look, but you still want your makeup set, this is the perfect powder. Completely traceless on the skin, so lightweight. Kind of can't even tell that you have powder on. It's awesome. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, it is also blurring. The next powder is a foundation powder. I'm big on foundation powders. I think they are such an underrated product. I'm so excited to see powder foundations becoming more trendy. It's so Fenty Beauty, as you know, came out with the Profilter Soft Matte Powder Foundation. I got mine in the shade 230N, just a fair warning. If you are my skin tone, this is a smidge too dark for me, but I figured summer's coming anyway, so it's fine. Normally I have more color to me, just not right now. Anyways, this is a really beautiful powder foundation. I personally prefer to apply it with a kabuki brush. I think just with the kabuki, the kabubulu. I think that with a kabuki brush, it just does a nice even coverage all over the skin. I would say this has more of a medium coverage if you build it up. If you use the sponge that's inside, you can get a full coverage, but I love how this wears. I find it to be really blurring on the skin. It just makes the skin look super smooth. It wears really well, and I think a misconception with powder foundations is that they're gonna make you look powdery. That's absolutely not true. If you put a hydrating base down, as time goes on, this actually looks more like a liquid foundation, really. It just evens the skin and looks more natural, so I love a good powder foundation. I'm very surprised that these are all my favorites this month, but I found myself consistently reaching for them. These are the Jacqueline Cosmetics blush and bronzing duo. Now, I have one shade that I prefer over the other, so I have lilac love and top tan. These are more made for fair skin tones. I have more of a light to medium skin tone, so these are a little bit too light for what I prefer, but that was my mistake.  Very pretty though, so if you have more of a fair skin tone, I think you would really like this, but the one that I've been digging for more is the shade Pink Me Up and Oh Honey for two reasons. One, it's a little bit deeper than the first one, and second, I just love the colors in here. I prefer a pink blush. It's the blush that I'm wearing right now, and I use this warm bronzer, which is still not too warm to set over top of that West Minatilly A Contour Stick. I love how lightweight these feel on the skin. Not quite as pigmented, so you have to build them up. I find that looking back at some of my older videos, I think I just went a little bit too heavy with the powder. I think it's just a stage of makeup right now that people are preferring more natural makeup, and because I'm wearing less makeup, because I'm wearing a mask all over the time, I prefer a lighter look on the skin, less pigmentation, just something that's more natural because that's what I'm used to seeing. So I think these are a beautiful formulation. They do have a little bit of a sheen to them. They blend out easily. They aren't too pigmented, but you can still blend them out. So these have been something that I've just been consistently reaching for, and I'm interested in picking up one or two other colors that I think would be more fit to my skin tone. Next up, eyebrows. Lots of eyebrow products came out this month. It was actually pretty hard to narrow them down. So I have three different brow products that I fell in love with this month. So I did do a sponsorship with a Chinese cosmetic brand called ZC, and one of my favorite items that I tried from their line were their eyebrow pencils. So they have, I believe it's like a sister company that's called the Palace Identity or something. Maybe this is the collection, but anyways, it's a Chinese-inspired packaging and it's so luxe, you guys. It's a really great deal for what you're getting and the pencil is just awesome. So first of all, the packaging, incredible. You even get a velvet pouch at the bottom to keep your nice thin pencil in, but I'm keeping it in this packaging still because I love it. But this is the perfect consistency of a pencil. First of all, it's very, very thin, which is what I prefer. I just prefer to have a little bit more control that way, less is more hair, like strokes, all that good stuff. It feels so heavy, like the packaging is so luxurious and the consistency of the pencil itself is a little bit more waxy. If you prefer something more creamy, then you won't like this one, but if you're like me, I like something that just isn't quite as pigmented and isn't quite as blendable, but is more waxy, powdery kind of base and these kind of fill that void. Today I'm wearing the shade number two and I know it's like a random company, but their eyebrow products are so good. The next eyebrow pencil is from Gucci Beauty. Now I made a mistake and have the wrong shade. I have the shade auburn. I do not have auburn hair, but I've been making it work anyways. I've been using it when I'm doing warmer looks so it doesn't look as weird, but if I'm wearing a cool tone look, I'm not gonna grab for this. I'm thinking during the Sephora sale to pick up a color that actually matches my hair, but this is called a powder eyebrow pencil and that's why I love it. It blends out so easily on the eyebrows like a powder. I would say my preference for eyebrow products are actually putting powder in the eyebrows. I just think the way that they blend makes the eyebrow look really clean and very natural as opposed to a pencil even though I'm featuring only pencils today. So this definitely is reminiscent of a powder in a pencil form. So I think that's why I really love it. It's a bit of a thicker tip, but I'm okay with it just because of how easily it blends out. So the lines that you draw, they don't look too thick because they end up being blended out anyways and it looks so natural. So the Gucci Brow Pencil, obviously super pricey but definitely in my opinion, worth it. And the last brow pencil that I've been loving is from Hooda Beauty. She launched the hashtag bomb brows in the shade medium brown. Now I said this before, I think the packaging is a bit too thick for how thin the actual product itself is. Now I'm not a fan of using this all over my brows. I feel like it takes forever and also I feel like it just makes the product go down, down, down, down, down.  I prefer to use this for detailing in my eyebrow. So it's perfect for getting right in this area for those hair like strokes that you want or sometimes I'll do it right out here if I'm going for more of a fluffy brow look. This is the perfect pencil for truly imitating eyebrow hairs. It's amazing and there isn't one like this that I've tried that's this small. So I've been loving it more as an accent piece to my eyebrows, not necessarily to do the whole eyebrow. I discovered a bomb mascara, you guys. So again, Armani, I feel like it's taking over this video but their stuff is so good. I wanna say underrated, they're not really underrated but anyways, this is the Armani Eyes to Kill mascara. And you guys, I have very short, sparse, thin eyelashes. So when I like a mascara, that's a very big deal. Most of the time, mascaras, they don't really wow me but it's not the mascara's fault, it's my eyelashes fault. But do you see this? My lower lashes don't ever look like this. This gives me length, it gives me volume. Now I do have a very natural false lash on my upper lashes, so pay mine to that. But on my lower lashes, my lashes never look this good down there because they are so thin and far apart when there's no mascara on them. So this has done wonders. And it is a little bit flaky, like you know how the Pat McGrath fetish eyes, I feel like it gets so flaky underneath. It makes my eyelashes look so good that I deal with it. Same thing with this, it's not quite as flaky as the fetish eyes but I just like a flakier mascara because I feel like it just builds up on my lashes better. So something I gotta put up with but just be aware of that. Last makeup product is Four Lips and it is the Natasha Denona. I need a nude lip crown in the shade Natasha. This for me is just the perfect everyday pinky nude. It's not too warm, it's not too cool. It's not necessarily my natural lip color but it's what I want my natural lip color to be and it's very, very creamy. So you can put this all over the lips and feel very comfortable. It's not the longest wearing lip line or ever but it's so creamy and comfortable that I'm okay with that and I just love the color so much. I have another color, Michelle. I'm not as in love with Michelle. Natasha just kind of top notch for me. So this is what I have underneath my lip gloss and it's the majority of the color that you see. I have the Wayne Goss Petunia lip gloss on top so this does have some color but they're kind of like the same color if you like these tones and this is a really nice combination. Okay, I have one tool to talk about from Refere. So Refere came out with the number 23 brush and I swear before this brush they already had the most tiny pencil brush but they really outdid themselves for this. And this is just so useful. I consider myself to have smaller eyes. So this is fantastic for detail work on the lower lash line for blending eyeliner out. Even for putting eyeliner on you can use this. I use this with eyeshadow to make a wing and to line my upper lash line when I want something a little bit more smoky. Today I just use it for the inner corner. I just find that if you have smaller eyes and you're looking for a pencil that does more detail work, this is great. I don't have a smaller pencil brush than this and that's what Refere does so great. They just come out with shapes in smaller sizes for smaller eyes that are great for detail work that other brands won't touch. Okay, last product that I have is actually a hair product. I get asked a lot about what hair products I use and I know I've been promising you guys I had a hair routine coming. It's on my list, I don't know when it's coming. It just sounds like a lot to set up. But the hair product that I've been loving this month is from Not Your Mothers and I wish I could be sponsored by Not Your Mothers, you guys, because they are like 90% of my hair care routine. Anyways, so if you have curly or wavy hair, I recommend looking into Not Your Mothers. I think they have really great ingredients and very affordable, you can get them from Ulta. But I've been using the Curl Talk Refreshing Curl Foam. So this isn't my main curl product. I use this on second, third day hair because it's so lightweight, it doesn't make your hair crunchy, it just refreshes the curls. We'll use my normal curling products on day one then I'll go to sleep. Day two, I wake up, my curls are kind of funky looking, a little bit frizzy, I will take a spray bottle with water in it and just dampen my hair and then I go in with this foam. It's so lightweight and I re-scrunch my hair and again, I have those beautiful curls that I have. No, but it just refreshes the curls and it's something that's a little bit lighter on your hair for your second day curls so that it doesn't weigh your hair down or you just don't feel like you have too much product because it's so lightweight. So if you do have curly or wavy hair, I recommend looking into not your mothers in general but this has been a lifesaver recently. All right, you guys, there we have it. Those were my favorites for the month of March. I hope you enjoyed it. We are already a quarter of the way through the year which is awesome. I mean, I don't know, maybe you don't consider that to be awesome but I can't wait till summer anyways. That is all I have for today's video. If you guys aren't subscribed to my channel already, I would love it if you would consider taking the time to do so and I will see you all in the next one. Bye guys, have a good one.


Lakeland Currents, your public affairs program for North Central Minnesota, produced by Lakeland PBS with host Ray Gildow. Production funding for Lakeland Currents is made possible by Bemidji Regional Airport, serving the region with daily flights to Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport, for information available at BemidjiAirport.org. Closed captioning for Lakeland Currents is sponsored by Niswa Tax Service, tax preparation for businesses and individuals, online at NiswaTax.com. Hello again, everyone, and welcome to Lakeland Currents, where tonight we're going to be talking about the Minnesota Institute for Minimally Invasive Surgery in the Crosby-Irton Regional Medical Center. I guess we don't say Crosby-Irton, but the Crosby Regional Medical Center is the correct term. Sorry about that. We get it right. My guests this evening are two surgeons from that center. Dr. Howard McAllister is the chief of surgeons, and he has been on our show before, and we appreciate your coming back and submitting yourself to this again. It's nice to be here, right? And to his right is Andrew Lovett, who is one of the newer surgeons at the center. Welcome to both of you.  Well, I am trained as a general surgeon, and in the course of my 40 years of practice, I've been through various evolutions, including traditional general surgery, then rural general surgery, and then advanced minimally invasive surgery, and now robotic surgery. So it's been quite an evolution over that period of time. And how about you? Sure. You know, I was born and raised actually in Maine. I completed my training out in New Jersey, and then last year I had the opportunity to come to the Minnesota Institute of Minimally Invasive Surgery for fellowship training, which for those that aren't familiar, is just an extra year of very advanced specialized training. I completed that with Dr. McCollister, Dr. Severson, Dr. Roberts, and Dr. LaMire, who are all the surgeons over there, and had a great experience. So my wife and I decided to stay here, and we're lucky enough to have the opportunity. And you were saying that you have how many surgeons now at Cayuna? 15 surgeons, I think. That's incredible for an area the size of where you're working. Well, it's interesting. In all surgical specialties, it's especially remarkable, given where we came from 30 years ago when we had two surgeons on the staff. And how long has Cayuna Regional Medical Center been that center itself? 19. They just celebrated our 50-year anniversary two or three years ago. So 50 years are there. So you've seen a lot of changes in your time there. A lot of changes not only in your medical staff, but in the national health care scene. That's probably some of the biggest changes that we're all experiencing, isn't it? It's been tough keeping up with not just the advances in surgery, but the advances in the politics and the paperwork and the regulatory environment. Those things have been difficult to keep up with. It's a lot to juggle. And Andrew, I would guess that coming from Maine, you have some of the same climate in Maine. Very similar. A little snowier in Maine, actually, from my experience so far, but certainly a little bit colder here. I'm down from near the ocean. And where did you actually take your medical training? So I did my medical schooling at University of New England, which is in Maine. And then my residency program was down in New Jersey outside of Philadelphia. Okay. So talk a little bit about how this technology is changing. I mean, how you used to just cut us open and do the surgery. It's really, really revolutionized, isn't it? It really has. In about 1987 was where that revolution began to take place. When we started, you know, in my training, there was really very little in the way of laparoscopic or minimally invasive surgery.  Now we do that same surgery through just little tiny incisions. And the results have really been significant. Patients oftentimes, if it's not outpatient surgery, only spend a day or two in the hospital. Pain has decreased, complications are decreased. It's been a remarkable evolution. And that has continued over the years and has progressed to the point of robotic surgery as well, which is kind of an extension of minimally invasive surgery done with a machine rather than with human hands. Talk a little bit about your fellowship programs. I'm not sure a lot of us understand what that is. Well, surgical training is very complex and getting increasingly so. In the United States, there are 172 accredited fellowship programs, programs that are accredited to teach advanced techniques in minimally invasive surgery. In Minnesota, there are three. There's us in the University of Minnesota and the Mayo Clinic. And what we do, the concept is to provide one year of advanced surgical training. We're accredited to certify our fellows in minimally invasive surgery and in bariatric surgery and flexible endoscopy. And Dr. Lovett has been going through that this past year. I'm sure he has a take on how that all worked. And how does it work? It must be a little awkward when you're starting to do this kind of surgery for the first time. It is. And Dr. McCallister's being humble and that we've at MIMIS, or Minnesota Institute, done minimally invasive surgery for many years. But that's not to say that there isn't lots of old-fashioned, open general surgery still being done out there. And certainly in my training and residency, I encounter that where, you know, there's certainly laparoscopic minimally invasive surgery being done, but not to the extent that we do it at Kayuna. And it was just, you know, one year really kind of polished off all my skills and added, I can't even list the number of new skills that I gained in that short year, as opposed to even a five-year residency that I was building on. So you really have good mentorship. I mean, that's really kind of how you get through this program. Yeah, absolutely. And that was one of the big reasons that I decided to stay is that I really love working with everyone there. The surgeons, the staff, the hospital, it's a really nice place to be. It's a fellowship is sort of an apprenticeship in many ways in that it's a very collegial environment and we're basically committed to passing on the experience and the knowledge that we've gained over the last 30 years or so. And I know you do a lot of different kinds of surgeries, but bariatric surgery is one of the areas of your expertise. You want to just talk a little bit about that? Weight loss surgery is an important concept, an important part of what we do. There are probably 40% of the U.S. population is obese, and that doesn't show any signs of decreasing anytime soon. One of the problems with that is that there are associated illnesses that go along with that. Things like sleep apnea, heart disease, some types of cancer, and diabetes, which has had a remarkable increase over the last 25 years or so. In 1955, I think about 1% of the population had type 2 diabetes, and I think this past year almost 10% of the U.S. population has had that. And it's 30 million people. That's a tremendously debilitating disease and can be difficult to manage. It goes along with obesity. That's amazing when you think about it. It's just absolutely amazing. So when you do bariatric surgery, what is it that you're actually doing? What we're trying to do is it's very difficult to affect weight loss just on the basis of lifestyle change alone because it's very hard. I just wake up one morning and say, well, I think I'll just change my lifestyle. I'm going to eat healthy and exercise regularly and stuff like that. What weight loss surgery does is it helps people to affect that weight loss to actually, or that lifestyle change to be able to tell patients that the operation is not going to make them lose weight. It will help them to change their lifestyle and that will make them lose weight. It's a mixed bag, isn't it? I have friends who have gone through that and they got into the same old habits and started gaining that weight back. So as you said, it's a lifestyle start. And you have to be at a certain stage to be, at least from Medicare or from the health insurance perspective, you have to be a certain weight, certain BMI to even qualify for that, don't you? You have to be morbidly obese. You have to have a body mass index greater than 40 or greater than 35 if there are associated illnesses like diabetes or heart disease or joint disease or something like that. And that BMI is pretty easy to figure out, isn't it? There are calculators all over on websites in a variety of places. It's basically your height and your weight. I mean, that kind of gives you a rough idea, doesn't it? It's based on body surface area and you can calculate that based on height and weight and get approximation of it. Body mass index has some... I mean, it's a very rough guide. It is not a hard and fast number that is extraordinarily accurate. But I think when applied to the general population, it has some validity in terms of large populations of people. And do you have average ages of people that do this or is it just all ages that you just deal with? Our center, we're a credit and center of excellence in, but we're certified for adult... so patients younger than age 18 or thereabouts is not something we do. It's kind of a specialized area. There are only a couple of centers in Minnesota that actually do that. But we're focused mainly on adults in that obese category. So do you basically, in the surgery, do you go in and reduce the size of the stomach? Is that basically what you do? Or how does that work? There's a couple of different techniques that we can do. The two most common, one is called the sleeve gastrectomy. And that is where we are essentially just reducing the portion of the stomach. The other that we do commonly is the ruin-wide gastric bypass, which is really the classical kind of traditional surgery. And in that surgery, we are reducing the size of the stomach to a small pouch. And also we're re-configuring some of the intestine. Both of these surgeries, beyond just reducing the size, which we would call a restrictive effect.  They also have very profound hormonal effects. When we either at size part of the stomach or re-route the direction that the food goes initially, there's immediate hormonal effects. Oftentimes we'll see people with profound diabetes, even by the time they're out of the hospital on a much lower dose of insulin or their medications, which obviously hasn't come from the weight loss alone. It's because of those hormonal effects that also accompany these surgeries. So you see that diabetes changing already? Very quickly. Wow, that's amazing. And when you have folks that go through this surgery, do you have a support program for them to help them work through this process? Absolutely. And that's probably the most important part is the support program. Leading you up to the surgery, the insurance requirements based on a certain number of nutritional visits, a certain number of visits to various specialties to make sure that you're mentally and physically prepared for the surgery. But I would say that those beyond being insurance requirements really should be requirements for the surgery in general because it's a profound change to your life. And certainly the people that do best are the people that continue to engage in some type of support group or keep the lifestyle modifications in mind. As Dr. McCollister said, it resets your life for six months to a year and really helps you lose the weight. But beyond that, you really need to continue to continue the lifestyle modifications. As you mentioned, it's a mixed bag. Some patients do better than others. And it mainly reflects the commitment to the lifestyle changes necessary. The operation is not going to make people lose weight. It will help them to lose weight. It makes it possible for them to lose weight. But they have to still make the effort. They still have to do the work. So it's very successful, but not 100% successful. There are people who regain weight. It's rare in our practice that they regain all their weight, but it is not uncommon to see people regain some of their weight as the years go by after this is done. And do you do a lot of follow-up to kind of see how successful this has been? Do you keep track of the patients that you worked with? We keep very close track of them. We want to see them back yearly for the rest of their life. And certainly very frequently in that first year. But we want to keep track of the various potential complications, nutritional complications and those types of things. In many cases, because we have so many patients come from long distances, we work with their primary care doctors in their own facilities. We don't have to drive all the way back up to see us just for a 15-minute visit. Now, is that surgery usually done minimally too then? Absolutely. It is. Wow. And that must be a challenge if somebody, you see the size of some people, there are people who are very huge. That must be kind of a challenge to get into that, through that body fat to do that. It can be, but there's certainly very well-established techniques. And again, that's why we're specializing in this, and we learn those techniques. And it's completely doable. It's, you know, and once you're on the inside, we can get it done. It's amazing. I was with a heart specialist this summer, who's not from the area, but we're talking about what it's like just if you go to this Minnesota State Fair, for example, and you see the obesity walking down the streets. It's just really mind-boggling. I still like the old Lone Ranger shows, because they play those old reruns on TV in black and white. And you hardly ever see an actor that's overweight from the 50s and the 60s. I mean, I'm sure there were overweight people, but like you said, not to the degree of which they are now. No, it's been a remarkable shift in the demographics of obesity, and it has been an alarming increase over the last 25 years thereabouts. It tends to be a regionally variable. Minnesota is not even one of the most prominent states relative to the percentage of obese people. I think that that's an honor that's reserved largely for some of the southern states. But certainly we contribute our share. How about, and I know this is a huge topic, heartburn and reflux issues, talk a little bit about what your folks do there. That's a huge, that's a huge area, and it's very under-treated. It's one of the most common reasons for people to take care of doctors. And the various medications that are used to treat that, to suppress acid are some of the most popular and hottest selling medications on the market, particularly now that they're over the counter. And what we have, we have always been, done a lot of work relative to managing reflux disease, but I think over the last four or five years, we have really kind of coalesced that to a formal center, a coordinated approach to the diagnosis and the treatment of gastrosophageal reflux disease. It's been a very rewarding thing and we've really had a lot of success with that and a lot of response. We've got people that come to us literally from all over the state and from all over the upper Midwest region. What are some of the techniques you use when you're treating that reflux? So I would add that the coordinated effort that we use for the reflux is really unique and in fact, you know, my family's from Maine, I was anticipating going back there and there's nothing even similar to what they do at the Miss River Reflux and Harper and Center in Crosby and in Riverwood, anywhere that I've seen. Really? A lot of this testing, the key component to doing proper reflux surgery is the testing and making a proper diagnosis. And a lot of this testing can take weeks to months in multiple various different specialties, different hospitals, different clinic visits where many times we can do it all in one day at our center and making that diagnosis is the key component. That's a good point. One of the things that we try to bring to the table, you know how it is when you go to the doctor. The doctor says we need this test or you need to see this specialist but you can't see him or her for two weeks or three weeks or two months and so that happens and then they want to do testing and that's scheduled for two months down the road or two weeks down the road or something. It's a very cumbersome process and what we want to try to do is to do this efficiently. Try to do it all in one setting or in a short time frame if we can so that the patient's needs are met on this. Most of these people are pretty miserable by the time they come to see us. So you come in and you've got heartburn and reflux issues. You almost have to go down and look. Don't you really be able to diagnose what the problem is? That's where we start. So you can do that and usually take a mild sedative or something when you do that to relax the throat. It's completely painless. It's done with the patient sedated basically asleep. They don't feel a thing. It takes us about 10 or 15 minutes to do the examination and the associated testing to gather the data necessary to understand what's going on. We do what's called a comprehensive esophageal evaluation that starts with the upper GI endoscopy and the various testing associated with that but there are a couple other tests that we do as well to try to put a fine point on it to make sure we understand everything there is to understand about a person's esophagus and their lower esophageal sphincter and the reasons why they're having reflux and figure out the best way to manage it, whether it be surgery or whether it be with medical treatment. I also say, if in fact they are having reflux, there's a lot of people out there on medication for reflux that don't actually have any and the medication is not helping them. Our goal is to treat their reflux certainly if it's there but if it's not there then to get them off of unnecessary medications. And I've read that some of those medications can actually be harmful if you're taking for a long period of time. They certainly can over time. If you actually go through and read the little packet literature when you get your over-accounted medications which I'm sure most people don't, they're really only supposed to be used for about two weeks at a time and of course we know many, many people have been on these for years and years and years and there's starting to be some data that there's side effects from that which is unsurprising. Some correlation with kidney disease, heart disease, even dementia and even some correlation with earlier death. These are all very preliminary studies. It's there and really any medication is not too surprising. They are preliminary but since 2010 there have been six black box warnings from the Food and Drug Administration on that particular class of drugs. Omeprazole and that group. So we pay attention to that but I think more importantly in this age of Dr. Google, the patients are paying more attention to these types of things as well so those are questions that we commonly get about that. If you Google Omeprazole, I think the first eight or ten hits on that are going to be from attorneys because of the potential side effects that can go along with these medications over a period of time. It's not solid data. It's not a for sure thing but it's enough that it has our attention. The other thing that we worry about with reflux disease is its contribution to esophageal cancer. Since in the last thirty years there's been a six hundred percent increase in the incidence of esophageal cancer. Now that's a scary statistic particularly when you compare it to the other forms of cancer that have been relatively stable or only mildly increasing over that same period of time. There's an epidemic of esophageal cancer that's very alarming and it's preventable. It's related directly to the incidence of reflux disease. I know everybody's individually different but what's causing this reflux increase? Is it our diet? Obesity I think plays a huge role. Obesity is a big part of it. The circle back to obesity but I think that the anatomic changes that go along with accumulating that much fat inside the abdominal cavity plays a significant role in the amount of reflux that people have in particular diseases going hand in hand. We see that very commonly associated with our bariatric patients and we see in our bariatric patients a very high incidence of reflux disease. In fact, a number of the patients that come to see us to be treated for reflux disease end up being treated for their obesity. So it would be probably fair to say that most normal weighted people don't have this high incidence of it anyway. I don't know if that's accurate. I would say that it's more accurate to say that the incidence of reflux disease certainly increases with increasing weight with increasing incidence of obesity. When you've identified a problem what are some of the treatment options that you do? Dr. McCollister said we can use medications and certainly we always try to tailor that so that it's the proper regimen based on when people are having their reflux episodes but certainly as surgeons we would like to get them off their medications and there's numerous surgical techniques. We specialize in one procedure called the Lynx device which is a small magnetic beads that actually go around the lower esophageal sphincter. The lower esophageal sphincter is the muscle that's there that's supposed to keep the acid down the stomach and out of the esophagus. So what that set of beads does is it actually reinforces that and it's just strong enough so that you can swallow outright but it doesn't let that acid back up. That's been a really revolutionary concept in the treatment of reflux disease mainly because it doesn't come with the associated side effects of some of the other operations that we do, number one. And number two, it's an outpatient operation. It's a very straightforward operation. It's done using minimally invasive surgery but again most patients go home on the same day. So that's good. Surgery typically in reflux disease and the treatment of it is a last resort. If we can control people's symptoms and eliminate the risk of esophageal cancer using medical treatment without surgical treatment then that's certainly our preference but there are a number of patients who don't respond to medications who don't respond to the lifestyle changes and the other types of things that go along with that and surgery is an option for those particular patients. There are a number of patients for example whose symptoms are fairly well controlled on medication but they don't want to take the risk of the side effects of that medication or just don't want to take the medication and opt for surgery instead and that's a valid reason to do that. So when you put those beads in a person is that for life? Yeah. It is. Unless we take it out. And what would be a reason that you might take it out? In some cases if somebody has difficulty swallowing or ongoing difficulty swallowing that goes along with that and that's one reason we would do that. Typically it would not be unusual I think the explanation rate for that device is in the neighborhood of about one percent one out of a hundred people may not be able to tolerate that device long term which is similar to other types of surgical procedures as well. So it's pretty low. Yeah. Yeah, pretty low. So you do gynecology obstetrics what are some of the things you do there? I can't say it but Dr. Leavitt and I aren't obstetricians or gynecologists that's a land of mystery to us but we do have a partners there that specialize in that at King and Regional Medical Center that do an excellent job and similar to MIMIS they apply a wide variety of advanced surgical techniques to gynecologic disease. And you do some work with a da Vinci robot maybe could you explain to us what that is and what kind of surgeries you do with that? Dr. Leavitt is the chairman of that committee I'll pass that out to him. Yeah, the Da Vinci robot misperceptions that we're not controlling it certainly we use the robot as a tool and we are controlling it at all times. We don't turn the robot loose from the patient to do its own thing on that. But what the robot really allows us to do is two things number one, better visualization when we perform traditional laparoscopic procedures it's on a flat TV screen essentially and really you do lack a little bit of depth perception now over time with training you make up for that and it's okay. The Da Vinci robot is in stereostopic or 3D view so when we look through that lens it's like looking inside the patient's body in real perspective. The Da Vinci robot also has what we call wristed instruments. Traditional laparoscopic instruments are straight and it does limit our ability to do some things. The Da Vinci robot we control it has an actual wrist on the end of the instrument so we can suture upside down and get in finer areas. It just allows us to be a little more facile and operate in just a little bit more detail. It's laparoscopic surgery as we've been doing for all these decades but it allows us to apply a little bit the robot allows us to apply a little bit more precision to some of the things and that's important for some types of operations that we do. And how many of your surgeons are trained to do that with Da Vinci? By January all five of us will be. Wow, that's incredible. And just generally what kind of surgeries do you usually do with that like gallbladder or... Yeah, any traditional laparoscopic surgery certainly can be done. Our focus is kind of turning towards hernias in the upper GI surgeries that Dr. McAuliffe was talking about but any laparoscopic surgery can be done with the robot. All the operations that we do within the abdominal cavity typically can be done with the robot and eventually we'll be moving in that direction I'm sure. We're out of time it's really exciting work that you're doing there and thank you for taking the time to come and join us and share what you're doing. It's always a pleasure, right? Thank you for the information for how to contact you on at the end of the show so thank you very much for jumping out with us today. Appreciate it very greatly. You've been watching Lakeland Currents where we're talking about what you're talking about. I'm Ray Gildow, so long until next time. For more information on the Minnesota Institute for Minimally Invasive Surgery see the screen.


On this date, we will have $801,000 in stock. I mean, come on, guys. When they own multiple aisles inside of the grocery store, and they have a good dividend payment, they are dividend kings. I'm gonna go over that in just a second. Hey, what's up, you two? I'm Zeke, and welcome to The Dream Green Show. In this episode, I'm gonna bring you guys my next home brand stock.  People not wearing that mask and everything. So the journals are starting to spread, and I did catch the coming cold. And while I caught the coming cold, I went to the store and bought all the over-the-counter medicine I could. I bought some VIX, Theraflu, and some more, and all kinds of medicine just to make me feel better. And I gotta feel that a lot of people out there is gonna start catching the cold again. And hoping that it's not the virus, you guys are gonna take any medicine that you can to make you feel better. So while I was buying all of this medicine, it got me wondering, who made VIX, who owned Theraflu? And after doing all of this digging, I found that it was just this one company that pretty much made the whole aisle of medicine. And that company, I'm gonna put $1,000 into that company today. So make sure that you stick out the entire video. I'ma let you guys know exactly what company that is. And after doing that digging on what company it was, I looked at all of their other products and they make everything from head and shoulders to old spice body wash to personal care. I'm gonna go over everything in this video. So make sure you stick throughout the entire video. I'm gonna go over by the stock and then I'm gonna go into exactly what, why was the reasons I bought this stock. So make sure you guys hit the thumbs up button. It helps out the shine of morning you can even imagine. Hit that subscribe button and what's more important is that you guys hit that notification bell. Right now I think we're sending around 14,000 people that hit the notification bell. Yeah, we got 100,000 subscribers but YouTube do not care about that at all. It's not for the algorithm. What they care about is how many people hit that notification bell. Right now we sent around 14,000 so if we could get that number to around 25,000 of you awesome subscribers to hit that notification bell that would help out this channel a bunch guys. But before we dive into it, this video is brought to you by Weeble. Click the link down in the description and now they're running a special offer. Now all you have to do is deposit $5 and you can receive two free stocks valued up to $2,300 guys. With those two free stocks you could keep them inside the platform and decide to use it or you could sell those two free stocks and withdraw all of your money. It's literally free money. I think this offer, the offer's so good that it's gonna end in July, 20th. So you guys might wanna take advantage of that offer right now. Also I'm gonna leave a link to Coinbase down in the description and that's about for the easiest way to buy and sell cryptocurrency. But enough talking, let's go ahead and dive into this awesome stock and I'm adding to my portfolio today.  I'm seeing that $62,417.25 over the last month. I'm up 3.76%. I'm up $2,262. Right now in buying power I have around $1,032.01 of buying power. So we're gonna try to buy as many shares as we can of the company that makes all of the, that pretty much saved me when I was sick last week from the coming cold. So the stock that we're gonna be looking at is PG, tickle sum of PG, Procter and Gamble. That's right guys, over the last year they're up 11%. They're around $135.98. Now I know a lot of you guys are thinking hey this stock been around, but hey, you have to think about the wave. You have to think about the future guys. A lot of people are gonna start to go back outside and hope that they don't catch the pandemic flu. And if they do get the cold, they're gonna do anything they can to recover very fast. So they don't have to worry about if it's the virus or not. So right now, Procter and Gamble's at $135.98. So if we look at them, they do have an awesome dividend year of 2.39%. So after I go over everything Procter and Gamble have then you're gonna, you guys, if you haven't paid attention to them, I know a lot of you investors out there already know everything about what they're investing to. But if you haven't paid attention to them, after I tell you everything that they own, you guys are gonna be very interested into investing into them as well. Because you guys know I love invested companies that pretty much own a whole sector and a whole bunch of different products. So other companies will be Johnson and Johnson. Johnson and Johnson makes everything. And 3M, Tickle Cymbal, MMM, they make everything as well. And Procter and Gamble is another company that makes everything inside of the supermarkets. So let's go ahead and dive into exactly what do they own and why I'm going to invest into them right now. So right now I'm gonna hit trade, hit a buy. And let's see if we could get eight shares. Okay, so we could get seven shares of Procter and Gamble. Tickle Cymbal PG for $951. Gonna hit review and swipe up. And there we go guys, when the market open, we should have around $951 worth of Procter and Gamble. All right, here we are over on seeking Alpha right quick before we go into everything that they own. Let's go over to the Procter and Gamble website first. So I can show you guys everything that they own. This is their brand page. And this is everything that own their own loves, Charlene, Banana, All Good, Pemper. So the diaper out they got on the control. If we look at Fabric Care, they got bounce, cheer, Downey, Gain, Tide. So when you really in there thinking who makes more money, Gain or Tide, they both own by the exact same company, Procter and Gamble. It's really not a competition guys. We look at Family Care. Even the napkin out from Puffs to Charmin to Bounty, they own the napkin out. Feminine Care, they got tampons, tampaks. Grooming, they got Gillette, everything Gillette from the shaving cream to the disposable shavers. Haircare, we got head and shoulders. Old Spice, I mean, come on guys. When they own multiple aisles inside of the grocery store, this is these, and they have a good dividend payment. Now I'm gonna tell you guys right now, they are dividend kings. I'm gonna go over that in just a second, but they, let's finish this first. They have head and shoulders, Old Spice, and others. We got a Home Care right here. They got Gain, Fabrice, Cascade, Done. I mean, they own the dishwasher soap aisle, Oral Care, come on dog. Oral B, Scope, Chris, they own that aisle. So when you trying to decide on which two places you should get, don't matter. They own both of them, okay? Personal health care. Here we go, Pepto-Bismol, VIX. We're gonna go back to VIX in a second. Skincare, Gillette again, Old Spice, and so forth and so forth. Secret, so that's deodorant. Okay, let's go back to VIX right quick. If we go inside VIX, remember, each of these is its own brand. So let's click on VIX. We're gonna click on the website. Here we go on VIX, VIX, under the VIX brand, you got Dayquil, Nightquil, disease, Cynex. So anytime you drinking Theraflu, no, Theraflu is not VIX, but Dayquil and Nightquil is the go-to for medicine. And these two, plus the VIX vapor rub was what made me look into who owned VIX and goes to show Procter & Gamble owned VIX and pretty much everything else that you guys are gonna see inside of the store. Nightquil, Dayquil, and so forth. So they are balling. So Procter & Gamble owns the grocery store, guys. Okay, if we take a look at the Max, I know Procter & Gamble is at a high price right now. They have a big run-up and then they pull back. Big run-up and then they pull back. Another big run-up and then they pull back and right now it's looked like it's on a big run-up. So yes, I'm probably not buying in at the best price, but this is a very long-term play for me, guys. I'm gonna go over that in just a second. Right now they're $135.96 at the recording of this video. Could it pull back? If you wanted to wait to get in at the perfect buying opportunity, I do not know how to time the market, but it's probably gonna pull back soon and you could get in for a much better price than I got in for. But this is a 10, 15, 20-year play for me. I'm gonna show you guys why in just a second. Let's take a quick look at the dividends. The dividends go card, they have increased their dividends over the last 64 years. Anything over 50 years means they have been inside of the S&P 500 and increased their dividends every single year for the last 64 years, making them dividend kings. There are not that many dividend kings out there, guys. And Procter & Gamble is one of them. They proud their dividends every single quarter. They have a dividend year of 2.56%. Paying out on average around $3.48 for every share that you own of Procter & Gamble. So let me show you guys why I mean by it's a long-term play for me. If we was to invest into Procter & Gamble, here we go on portfolio visualizer. If we was to invest into Procter & Gamble for in 2020, right now it's 2021, let's include year to date. And we started off with just $1,000 and we reinvested. Right now I currently invest $200 into the stock market every week. That's around $800 a month. So let's go in and type in $800 and we're gonna invest that into it monthly. Revalence annually and let's not re-invalence. Dividends yes, show income yes. And here we go. We're gonna type in PG for Procter & Gamble, 100% of our portfolio. So after we hit analyze portfolio, this is us investing $1,000 back in 2020 and $200 every single week after that. So here we go, analyze portfolio. If we scroll down, if we invest in $1,000 right now, on this date we will have $801,000 inside Procter & Gamble guys, $801,000. That's why I said, hey, I'm just gonna go and buy into it now because if I continue to invest to this company over the long run, it really doesn't matter if I cut it on sale or at the very top, it is a company that have increased their dividends for the last 64 years guys. So this is me reinvesting $800 a month. I'm starting off with just $1,000. In 2021 I will have $800,000 almost a million dollars guys. So if we scroll down and look at the dividend payments, in 2000 we will only receive $87 in dividends from Procter & Gamble. In 2010 we will receive $5,000 from Procter & Gamble that year. And in 2020 we will have received $17,000 and from Procter & Gamble. So we're seeing them around like every 20 years they'd crowd Drupal, so in about year 2030 you'll be receiving around $55,000 from Procter & Gamble, so forth and so forth. You could pass that portfolio on to your kids and then if they pass that on to their grandkids they would make billion dollars every single month in the form of dividends just from owning Procter & Gamble guys. So that's why I mean that I'm a long time investor. If I continue investing to this, I could start pulling out dividends when it's time for me to retire and then pass on this portfolio to my kids when the time is ready after they hit of age, right? So that is Procter & Gamble guys. So there we go, you two. Let me know down in the comment section if you ever used any of Procter & Gamble products before. If you haven't used none of that Procter, if you have never used none of Procter & Gamble products before that means that you live in another continent. I ain't just talking about another state, I ain't talking about just another country. You live on a completely different continent than North America. If you never heard or bought of any of those products that I just mentioned that Procter & Gamble own. So pretty much if you go to any grocery store you're gonna see that product on pretty much every single aisle except for the full aisle. So that's why I'm investing into Procter & Gamble. Right now I started off investing by $950. I plan on to reinvest my dividends right back into that company and picking up more shares along the line. As long as this company doesn't come out with any surprising bad news I'm going to continue to ride with Procter & Gamble. Let me know what you think about this decision to buy Procter & Gamble down in the comment section. Although a lot of you investors out there are already in it and you've been in it but there's a new wave of investors out there. I like to teach to you while you're young and that you don't blow all of your money on penny stocks that you can become rich by investing into these very stable companies that just so happen to pay dividends. So let me know down in the comment section was this a good idea for me or was it not. But other than that make sure you pick up your two free stocks by just depositing $5 by clicking the link down below in the description by signing up for Weeble and get your two free stocks valued up to $2,300. It's free money guys you don't want to miss out on that opportunity. But other than that, I'm Zeke. Bring you the dream green show. I'm out. Peace.