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What are some simple and accessible ways for the average person to increase their health, longevity, and quality of life? Nurse Kate Johnson is here to share some practical wisdom from her healthcare experience. Stay to the end to hear how she has helped her reluctant reader get excited about learning, and catch a couple of quick stories about her friendship with Charlie and Erica Kirk along the way!

Episode Transcription

Note: This transcription may vary from the words used in the original episode.

Marlin Detweiler:

Hello again and welcome to another episode of Veritas Vox, the voice of classical Christian education. Today we have with us Kate Johnson, sometimes known as Nurse Kate. Welcome, Kate.

Nurse Kate Johnson:

Hi. Thank you for having me.

Marlin Detweiler:

It's so good to have you here as this episode unfolds. Some of you listening will find out that you may be more familiar with Kate than you realize. But first, Kate, tell us a little bit about your personal background, your education and career and that sort of thing.

Nurse Kate Johnson:

Yeah. So my personal background is I'm number four of 11 kids, and my mom homeschooled all of us.

Marlin Detweiler:
That's like a bricks and mortar school! How many grades did you have set up in different rooms?

Nurse Kate Johnson:

Yeah, it really was more like. It was like a one room schoolhouse kind of thing more than anything. And we had two co-op kids all the time, so we always had kids from the community.

Marlin Detweiler:

Oh that's great.

Nurse Kate Johnson:

So it really was more of the kind of old fashioned Laura Ingalls Wilder kind of school setting.

Marlin Detweiler:

Did you grow up on the prairie?

Nurse Kate Johnson:

I grew up on a farm.

Marlin Detweiler:

Yep. What state?

Nurse Kate Johnson:

I'm from Delaware. Where I grew up looks very different now from when I was a kid, but it used to be very rural. It's becoming much more popular now that everybody is trying to flee New York and New Jersey and Washington, D.C. They have come in droves to the sweet little community I grew up in, but it's still quite rural.

So I'm a nurse, and I went to a private university just outside of DC and then did my first ten years in Washington, D.C., working in critical care and trauma at the biggest level one in Washington, DC. And then I transitioned from that to Blue Cross Blue Shield, where I was a consultant, and I finished up my professional career in that capacity as the director for a national consulting program, working on quality improvements for the VA.

And then I had my first daughter, and after working for a year of her life, I decided that I needed to be a stay at home mom. So now I take my health and wellness advocacy work and quality improvement and motivation to the online space, and I help make it real and practical to implement healthier lifestyles. For everyday people, especially for moms.

Marlin Detweiler:

Before we jump into that, you've been married since 2016, right? Yeah. To Benny Johnson. Many people might remember that Benny spoke at Charlie Kirk's memorial service, and you all were close with the Kirks. We'll talk about that in a few minutes. But I want to hear a little bit more about your career.

One of my sons, who was diagnosed with Crohn's about the time he was finishing college. It was a pretty bad case. It really affected him. It took a while to get it diagnosed, and so he had a lot of deterioration before it got addressed. And for the most part, he has been able to keep it at bay through diet.

Very careful, very strict diet. And so we've become people who are, like many in the homeschool world, very quality of food conscious and that sort of thing. In your career, talk to us about how you have come about here and where you stand today with regard to health and exercise and fitness.

And I'm happy for you to focus on mothers, since you said that's really where your focus is. And I can understand why. So tell us a little bit about how you've evolved in your thinking in the time frame of your health career.

Nurse Kate Johnson:

Yeah. So as a critical care nurse, I understand and appreciate the value of the Western medical system. We can do incredible things in those very high level situations where your life is on the line if you have a critical emergency. America is where you want to be. We have incredible technologies. And in a case like your son, I'm sure that as he was navigating those initial phases, the Western medical system is a great model.

What I saw after working bedside critical care was a lot of people who were suffering with things that were preventable, and they were coming in at very young ages. We'd have people with catastrophic cardiovascular events that were in their 30s and 40s.

Marlin Detweiler:

Give us a time frame so that we can frame this, because the last 30 or 40 years have had some dynamics.

Nurse Kate Johnson:

Yes. For sure. So I started my career in 2011. Okay. And I finished working bedside seven years after that. So from 2011 to 2018, that was where I was. And then I transitioned from that to working to do a focus on preventive care. So I thought that if I went to Blue Cross Blue Shield, where they were doing a lot of modeling for incentivizing people to use preventive medicine, to go to their primary care physician, do screenings, that kind of thing.

That would be where we could see improvement in people's health. And I wanted to be a part of that. What I realized is that that system is extremely corrupt, and it is in no way designed to actually help people prevent developing illnesses. It's maybe at best designed to help people detect illnesses that they already have.

Marlin Detweiler:
You just may be jumping the gun a little bit. And if you want to unpack more, you can say, hold off a second. But are you suggesting that Big Pharma might have a financial agenda that's in competition with our health?

Nurse Kate Johnson:
Yeah. So that was one of the big things that I realized working for insurance companies is how the pharmacy benefit managers and the insurance companies are actually the same thing. So pharmacy benefit managers were supposed to be kind of a watchdog of the pharmaceutical companies, and they have ended up becoming owned by the insurance companies, and it's corrupted the entire system.

So now what quality metrics look like is if people are compliant with their medications. So that's the main driver for what is viewed as good quality medicine provided by the physicians is if they are prescribed medications and how well their patients take them.

Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah. Well, that sounds like reactive health care, not proactive health to me.

Nurse Kate Johnson:
At best.

Marlin Detweiler:
At best. Okay. Yeah. Tell me what you mean.

Nurse Kate Johnson:
What was that?

Marlin Detweiler:

And so tell me what you mean at best. Oh.

Nurse Kate Johnson:
At best, I just mean that if you're reacting to something that's already there, then maybe that could be beneficial. But a lot of it is managing symptoms and illnesses that exist and with no intention of helping people recover and heal from them. So what we drive for is management when we should be striving for cures.

Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah. And management is primarily geared to symptoms.

Nurse Kate Johnson:
Yes. Almost exclusively geared to symptoms. There are very few places where cancer is one of the places where you can see a drive towards cure. But that's really the only place in the metabolic disease world where we have any desire at all to cure.

Marlin Detweiler:
Wow. Well, so I have all kinds of questions and limited time, but let's jump to it a little bit. What does it look like to be proactive about our health as opposed to focusing on symptoms?

Nurse Kate Johnson:
It's all in the basics. The health gain is really won or lost in what you do day in and day out with your basic habits. This is what I talk about all the time on my platform, which is just if you do the simple things really well, then you're going to cover 95% of what you need to do in order to not only have a healthy lifespan, a long lifespan, but to have a good health span.

So not just the number of years you live, but the years that you live are of high quality. So walking, being outside in the sunshine, getting up, getting off the couch and moving. The average American moves 4000 steps or fewer a day when really we should be somewhere in the 7 to 10,000 range at least.

Most Americans spend less than ten minutes outside per day, and that includes children, small children. So the benefits of being outside include everything from synthesizing vitamin D, which we really do best in the sunlight. Vitamin D is a huge component in our immune system and our overall metabolic health. It regulates our sleep cycles to be outside.

So it produces melatonin. And it also produces sex hormones. So estrogen, progesterone, testosterone are produced when your eyes take in sunlight. So this is a really important part of overall development for small children, but also for older adults as they're aging. We need to maintain healthy hormone levels. So we're missing out on all those benefits if we're not spending time outside, making sure that we eat real food. About 70% of the foods that small children eat.

So school-age children come from ultra-processed foods. Ultra-processed foods are devoid of nutrients. They've been stripped down, and they're not getting the vitamins and minerals, proteins that they need out of those food sources. Most of them are very basic, simple carbohydrates that will add calories to their day, but they don't add any value to those calories.

So it's a really tough dynamic when you have kids that are not moving, and then they're also not eating anything nutrient dense.

Marlin Detweiler:
Good. I'm sorry. And you said sleep?

Nurse Kate Johnson:
Oh, sleep. Yeah. Sleep is the other kind of pillar of this, making sure that we have good quality sleep, especially for kids.

Marlin Detweiler:
Okay. It's sleep. It seems an obvious thing, and I'm sure there are a number of things that we can talk about there, but I'd like to focus on diet and exercise a little bit. I wish I was more regular in exercise, but I exercise more than most people my age too. And I care about exercise because I care about playing competitive golf and it helps.

What are the elements of exercise that are important at various stages in life? I think in terms of weights, flexibility and cardio as three categories.

Nurse Kate Johnson:
I mean, those are the big ones, right? So if we're moving and it kind of doesn't matter how you move, if you like to swim, swim if you like to bike, bike if you like to walk, walk. I like to jog. That's just, you know, whatever your preference is. It doesn't really matter. You do need to do resistance training in some capacity.

Muscle is the currency of longevity. So the more muscle mass you have, the healthier that muscle mass is, the better off you're going to be metabolically and the longer health span you'll have. So making sure that we are prioritizing resistance training. Now when you're a mother, I have four kids, five and younger. I do lift weights, but also, you know, just carrying my kids.

Marlin Detweiler:
I know what you mean.

Nurse Kate Johnson:
Yeah, that's resistance training. So, you know, as you go through life, like, this could look very different at different periods, but you need to be making that a priority as you go through life. And then mobility. So if you want to get a good golf swing, you're going to have some spinal mobility. You have to have mobility is huge.

Marlin Detweiler:
Sometimes I feel like cardio is what makes me feel best. And stretching and flexibility exercises are what make me perform best. And strength is not as important. Now, I'm an old guy and it's probably different at different stages in life. Is it not?

Nurse Kate Johnson:
It is, but I would say that the older as you age, maintaining strength and muscle is going to be extremely important because, you know, you want to be able to do things like get up off the toilet. As you're aging, right, you don't want to have that. Well, it's a precipitous decline for most people over the decade that they're in their 70s.

They lose a lot of that strength because the slow decline begins to catch up to them. So, on average, you lose about 2% of your muscle mass every year. 1 or 2% after you turn 35. So by the time you're 70, you know, we've had a very significant decline in muscle mass for the average person.

If you're not working to maintain that. So, you know, just your regular everyday activities, falls are one of the biggest causes of death for people as they age. And the ways to prevent falls is to be strong, to have good muscle mass. But that also connects back to your mobility. You need to be able to have flexibility and mobility in order to engage those muscles.

Marlin Detweiler:
How about a little focus on the 25 to 50 age group? That's probably more of our audience. What are the things that you would recommend strongly there?

Nurse Kate Johnson:
Yeah. So a huge thing is of course making sure that you're just moving. Moving is the foundation you need to be using your body, moving however you feel good. So I agree with you. Cardio makes me feel my best. A good run, but if you can't afford a treadmill, then grab a jump rope, go jump rope, get a small trampoline, get your kids involved, chase them around the yard.

You know, it doesn't really matter as long as you're out moving. And grab some weights or some bands or do some body weight work. Learn to do a push up. You know, do some squats, work on keeping that muscle mass healthy in that time frame. And if you can, as your kids get older, start working to build muscle. Building muscle will keep you healthy for your lifespan.

Marlin Detweiler:
That's a new thought for me. I got to really pursue that. Thank you. Yeah. Let's change the focus of the conversation for just a little bit. Talk to us about food quality and where we stand today. As we're recording this, of course, Robert F Kennedy Jr. is speaking to us about food quality issues.

These are not things that are new to me. We were kind of cutting edge brought into it by our son with Crohn's, and we've become pretty radical about how we look at food quality and what is good for us and what isn't. Where are you coming from in that?

Nurse Kate Johnson:
Yeah, I try to keep this as simple as possible because I think there's a lot of nuance and it's easy to say, I can't do that because it's too overwhelming. So for the most part, 80% of your diet should be foods that have no ingredient list. So eggs, tomatoes, cucumbers, avocados. If 80% of the foods that you eat have no ingredient list and you put them together in your own kitchen, then you've got a great foundation.

We also want to make sure we're prioritizing proteins. So in that you need to have at least one serving of protein per meal. At least I would. I prefer more than that, but some of your foods can have a simple ingredient list, like think like cheese, and a cheese that's not an ultra processed cheese, but a cheese that's just milk and enzymes and salt.

Marlin Detweiler:
Generally, the harder cheeses. Well, I guess you'd have Brie and other things that would be in the category.

Nurse Kate Johnson:
Yeah, yeah, but not like Kraft Singles.

Marlin Detweiler:
If they're cheeses at all.

Nurse Kate Johnson:
I know, I think it's like actually plastic.

Marlin Detweiler:
So you mentioned things without an ingredient list. But what about the sprays that go on tomatoes and corn? And what about the engineering that goes into corn? I've spent a lot of time. My life grew up there and now part of each year in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. And corn is not the same all the time from one place to another.

And we like to get corn that hasn't been engineered at all. And we can get it in Lancaster. And it's very different looking. I don't know, it's sort of different tasting. And I have to believe that there's some value in why it's been preserved and made important.

Nurse Kate Johnson:
So corn and wheat specifically have been engineered to be able to withstand very, I hate the word toxic, but toxic pesticides and herbicides. So the GMO or non-GMO labels really are indicative of products that have been genetically modified so that they can withstand those herbicides and pesticides. I think most famously, most people are familiar with glyphosate, also known as Roundup.

So that product in particular is pervasive in our food system. I do think that it's ideal when you can to opt for locally grown organic products. I know that's not accessible to everybody. And sometimes especially, you know, in the demographic that is listening to you, it can be very hard and overwhelming to try to think about how do I source stuff from a local farmer?

Marlin Detweiler:
It's expensive.

Nurse Kate Johnson:
And it is.

Marlin Detweiler:
The quantity of it that's being produced is increased. And with that, the price difference is starting to be mitigated. But it is a lot more money to eat what we would consider to be foods that have not been processed or have not been treated in ways of things that we would not want in our system, like Roundup.

Nurse Kate Johnson:
Yeah, it is a lot more expensive for the farmers. The reason that it's more expensive is that their crops are a lot more vulnerable. So, if we're talking on the whole to the average person, I think starting from just get the food that you eat to be real food, that's number one.

And then once you get that down, then start to look at like, okay, how do I get the best quality of this food that I can afford? But at the end of the day, eating a conventional blueberry is going to be so much better than eating blueberry Pop-Tarts. So even if it's not organic, right? Like, pick the blueberries.

Yeah, and that's really, you know, a lot of people will say, well, I can't get the very best. These aren't from a local farmer. They're not organic. And so forget it. I'm just going to do what I've been doing. Yeah. So don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah.

Nurse Kate Johnson:
You take that next best place.

Marlin Detweiler:
You don't have to be perfect in order to get benefit.

Nurse Kate Johnson:
Yes, yes. Exactly. So I think that that's a really long way.

Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah. That's a wonderful practical encouragement because boy if we it. Yeah. When you're traveling especially, you know, when we're at home we can get the material, we can get the food that we want. But I can't always I can't know what was in the green beans I ate last night at a restaurant in a hotel.

We're grown with. It's you know, there's some instances where you can, you know, the whole idea of farm to table, but even terms like farm to table and organic are terms that have been played with to where yeah, we have to know more than that.

Nurse Kate Johnson:
Yes. Yeah. So unfortunately, that's true. And even the term organic doesn't mean that it's free of pesticides and herbicides. So there's a different list that's acceptable to be used on organic produce, but it doesn't mean that it's pesticide-free.

Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah. Where do you interact and provide more information like this for people that might be interested in following you or interacting with you?

Nurse Kate Johnson:
So my Instagram is where I do the most of my social media posting. That's @nursekatejohnson.

And then I'm on X, sometimes when I have the stomach for it, @Nursekatejohn.

Marlin Detweiler:
Okay. Very good. Well yeah, the world of nutrition and exercise is filled with people that don't do anything all the way up to radicals that are hard to listen to. I love the very practical way that you approach, “do something.”

Nurse Kate Johnson:
Do something. Exactly, exactly. You know, as a mom of four kids, like, I know how hard it is to do something. Yeah, yeah, that barrier is a lot.

Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah, take first steps. Speaking of first steps, as a transition here, I know you've been using the Phonics Museum, which is kind of how we got connected. Tell us about your experience with the Phonics Museum. For those that are listening that don't know, it’s the curriculum that we created back in the year 2000 with physical curriculum initially, that teaches young children how to read and begin to write.

And now it's both hard goods—the curriculum—and an app found in Google Play and iTunes. But tell us about your experience with it.

Nurse Kate Johnson:
Well, my oldest is five, and she has been a little bit resistant to learning how to read. And the Phonics Museum has been so much fun. It creates this world where she gets immersed into the world of the Phonics Museum, which is very much—she's very creative—it’s how she learns best when she becomes a part of what's going on.

And then we, you know, there's all these activities that you do throughout the house. You collect things that start with the letter you're learning. It's just been a really amazing tool. And my three-year-old is learning how to read because she's kind of going along with it. And her skill set development has been incredible.

Just tagging along as I'm working with my five-year-old to do this. That's great. It's really been so much fun. She's my oldest, so as my first time going through this, it's been such a joy to watch her learn and develop. And her dad comes home from work, and she's like, “Dad, look, I learned how to read this word today, and I can spell this word.”

And the excitement that she has over it is so, so cool. And it really plays so well to how she learns. She has a very unique learning style in that she needs to be engaged and part of it. She can't listen to you talk to her—she has to do it.

Marlin Detweiler:
One of the things that was important to us as we created it was to provide what we would call a multisensory approach to learning, realizing that especially children at that age learning to read do learn using different learning gates, different ways of really getting excited. And the most important thing is to have students excited about reading and reading quickly so that they can really enjoy what they're doing.

It's not quite so laborious as some curricula are, and that was important to us. And I'm so glad to hear you talk like that, because that's exactly what we wanted to hear.

Nurse Kate Johnson:
It's not laborious at all, which I was worried it would be, because having a list of tasks and things that I have to do—I mean, we maybe spend three hours a week on it. And the amount that she has learned in those three hours a week over the last two months is truly unbelievable. I am blown away.

Marlin Detweiler:
That is so exciting. That is so exciting. But changing the subject one last time—you have been close to Charlie and Erica Kirk. Your husband Benny spoke, as I think I mentioned, at the memorial service. Tell us about how you got to know them and what your connection was.

Nurse Kate Johnson:
So my husband and Charlie were kind of cut out of the same cloth, and way back when Charlie was first launching Turning Point, my husband was involved with being one of their speakers. We used to go to Turning Point events when they were held in rooms that were teeny little spaces and they could barely fill them, and there were maybe 200 people. He would speak at those, like 2012, 13, 14, and over the years, they just became really good friends and close.

I used to pick Charlie up from the airport in Washington, DC back when he didn't have all of his entourage, and he'd ride in the back of my car and I'd drive him over to some event and he'd crash in our guest room at our house. So Charlie was just kind of part of our life for the last ten plus years.

And then Erica, his beautiful wife, when he started dating her, we became friends. Actually, Erica, it took us a while to have our first daughter. And Erica prayed with me one night that God would give us a daughter or give us a baby. And so next month we found out we were going to have our first.

Marlin Detweiler:
Wonderful. That's great. We're an answer to prayer.

Nurse Kate Johnson:
Yeah. She's a true prayer warrior. She was a champion.

Marlin Detweiler:
As you think of Charlie and Erica, is there one experience that really stands out? You've given us a couple already. But is there one experience that you take with you in his absence?

Nurse Kate Johnson:
I think the overall theme of both of their lives that has become so clear to me and has really given me a lot of courage in this time is he was a fearless warrior for Christ, and she is a fearless warrior for Christ. When you are around them, especially them together, you could just feel that and the urgency that I think a lot of people feel in Charlie's absence is to make sure that everybody knows who Jesus is and that if you commit your life to him. No matter what happens, it's going to be a good life here on earth and an even better life in heaven.

Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah, you just reminded me of a story. And maybe this will kind of be the end. But when my wife and I were dating, we went to Key Biscayne Presbyterian Church. Key Biscayne is an island off of downtown Miami. And Steve Brown, who now has a ministry called Key Life Ministries, is mostly a preaching and teaching ministry that's on the radio.

But he was the pastor there. And I remember a story that he said, and I think that this is something that probably really energized people like Charlie and maybe you and your husband and Erica, of course. It was that there was an old black man who was sitting, he was, I think, a janitor at a school.

And the principal at the end of the day walked past him and saw that he was reading out of the book of Revelation. He asked him, "So what did you learn?" And he said in very simple terms, "Jesus is going to win."

Nurse Kate Johnson:
Yeah. That's it. I mean, that's it, right?

Marlin Detweiler:
We've got a battle. We are in a real battle that is part of a real war. But we know the outcome, and that's very part of it, because it is.

Nurse Kate Johnson:
It really is. And you get the honor of being a warrior with Christ and a messenger for him here on earth. Like, what a privilege.

Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah.

Nurse Kate Johnson:
What a privilege that he would use us.

Marlin Detweiler:
Nurse Kate, thank you.

Nurse Kate Johnson:
Well, it's been a pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Marlin Detweiler:
And folks, thank you for joining us on this episode of Veritas Vox, the voice of classical Christian Education. We hope to see you next time.