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AI Can Give You a Protocol. So What Is a Doctor For Now? · Health, Life & What’s Next

• 0:00
  Welcome to Health, Life and What's Next.
• 0:03
  with Dr.
• 0:03
  Jennifer Ginty.
• 0:05
  This is the podcast where we explore what it really means to live well through honest conversations about health, life, business, and everything in between.
• 0:17
  Because remember, healing is about more than medicine.
• 0:21
  I'm so glad you are here.
• 0:24
  Let's get into today's conversation Okay, so today's podcast is one that I've been meaning to record for weeks now, specifically with everything that has been changing so rapidly.
• 0:37
  So that is why I titled it, AI Can Give You a Protocol, Or, so what is a doctor for?
• 0:44
  Now, here's something that may make some doctors uncomfortable.
• 0:48
  I don't think information is what makes us valuable anymore.
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  When I say us, I'm referring to doctors.
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  Because think about what is happening right now.
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  You wake up at 2:00 AM in the morning because something does not feel right.
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  You can pick up your phone and ask an AI system ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, you fill in the blank, the following questions: why am I exhausted even though my labs are normal?
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  Why am I gaining weight?
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  What supplements should I take?
• 1:19
  What labs should I ask my doctor for?
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  What causes hormonal imbalance?
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  What causes iron-deficiency anemias?
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  What should I eat if I have insulin resistance?
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  And within seconds, not hours, seconds, you can have pages of information.
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  You can get possible explanations, questions to ask, food list, exercise recommendations, even something that looks remarkably simple or similar to a treatment protocol.
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  Now, that does not mean AI is your doctor.
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  Please understand that.
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  These systems can still make mistakes, and they do.
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  They can produce convincing inaccuracies and give false or unsafe guidance.
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  Current medical research and WHO, World Health Organization, guidance continue to emphasize those limitations and the need for clinical oversight.
• 2:15
  But something fundamental has changed.
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  Doctors no longer own the information, and I think medicine has to be honest about what that means because if my only value to you as the patient is that I know something you can now find online in 30 seconds, we have a problem.
• 2:37
  And strangely enough, that realization is one of the reasons I changed this podcast.
• 2:42
  For a while now, I'm gonna be very honest with you, I was very frustrated.
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  Every, every time I sat down to record, I would look at possible topics.
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  What should I talk about today?
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  And I would ask myself,"What do they need to learn from me today?
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  Maybe I'll talk about the five reasons you are tired.
• 3:01
  Maybe we'll discuss signs your hormones may be off, foods for inflammation, what supplements for energy," right?
• 3:08
  "What labs should you ask for?" And I would think,"I don't want to do another episode like this." Not because those things do not matter, they do, but I am a functional medicine doctor.
• 3:19
  I spend my days thinking deeply about physiology, symptoms, labs, medications, medication side effects, nutrition, supplements, hormones, metabolism, you name it, all of it.
• 3:32
  But I kept having this feeling there has to be more to the conversation than this.
• 3:38
  There has to be more than just, uh, than just talking about your hormonal imbalance symptoms.
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  Because my patients are not walking bodies filled with biomarkers, they are people.
• 3:48
  They are humans.
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  And what I have learned after years of doing this work is that sometimes the most important thing happening in someone's health cannot be ordered on a lab requisition.
• 4:00
  Sometimes the woman sitting across from me is exhausted, and yes, we do need to look at all of the things, okay?
• 4:07
  We need to check her thyroid.
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  We need to look at the glucose.
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  We need to evaluate her sleep, looking at her hormones, medical past abilities.
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  Like, we need to do all of that.
• 4:16
  But she's also the person everybody calls when there's a problem.
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  She has a demanding career.
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  She's taking care of family, friends, aging parents.
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  She's saying yes when she really wants to say no.
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  She has not had an uninterrupted hour to herself in months.
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  The minute she gets up, she's on the go.
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  She's eating standing up.
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  She's answering emails in her bed.
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  She's bringing h- work home with her.
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  She's terrified that if she slows down, everything will fall apart.
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  And then she looks at me and says,"Dr.
• 4:51
  J, what supplement should do I take?" Right?
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  "What supplements do I need?" And sometimes I want to say,"Well, we may need a supplement, but what we also need to talk about is your life." That is the conversation that I'm interested in now in this stage of my career, of my profession, having been practicing functional medicine for a long time Here is another thing I think we need to say more openly.
• 5:16
  Functional medicine can fall into the exact same trap as conventional medicine.
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  You have a symptom, here's a pill, or the pill for the ill, and then sometimes we replace it with you have a symptom, here's 12 supplements.
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  I am amazed how many supplements my patients are taking.
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  Different bottles, same conversation.
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  That is not what I want my work to become.
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  I have a desire to do deeper work, to have uncomfortable conversations, to go above the usual of functional medicine.
• 5:51
  I did not go into functional medicine simply because I wanted a bigger supplement cabinet.
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  I want deeper because I wanted to understand why.
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  I went deeper with my patients because I wanted to understand why.
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  Why is this person this way?
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  Why now?
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  What changed?
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  What is connected?
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  What is missed?
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  What is happening medically?
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  And what is happening in the life this body is trying to survive?
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  The body does not live separately from the woman.
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  That sentence has become almost foundational for me.
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  The body lives inside a life, and if I only talk to you about your body while ignoring the life it is living in, living inside, I may be missing part of the story.
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  So this is why the explosion of AI is so interesting to me.
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  I'm not afraid of AI.
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  I use it when I need to.
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  I love technology.
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  It makes my work even faster.
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  I think AI can be incredibly useful, don't get me wrong, but I also think it is forcing medicine to answer a question we probably should have answered years ago.
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  What is the actual value of a doctor?
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  Is it memorizing information?
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  Because a computer can store more information than I can ever will.
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  Is it giving you a generic list?
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  Because you can get that instantly online.
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  Is it telling everyone with the same symptoms to follow the same protocol?
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  Technology can do that, too.
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  So what remains?
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  Judgment, context, discernment, relationship, accountability, knowing when the obvious answer does not fit, knowing when something needs further investigation, knowing when five abnormalities matter and when only one of them actually changes what we do, knowing your history, watching patterns over time, hearing what you said, and sometimes hearing what you did not say, and perhaps more importantly, building enough trust that you are willing to tell me the thing you almost didn't want to tell me.
• 7:58
  Because that thing can matter.
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  When information becomes abundant, trust becomes the scarce resource, and scared resources become valuable.
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  That is why I believe trust is becoming one of the most important currencies in medicine right now.
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  Because not I'm the doctor, so don't ask questions.
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  I hate when-- Okay, hate is a big word.
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  I don't like when people say that.
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  I earn your trust, the kind where you can say,"I read this online.
• 8:30
  What do you think?" And I don't become threatened.
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  I can tell you that information is correct, but I don't think it's the most important thing for you to focus on right now.
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  Or I know this is trendy.
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  I don't think it fits your situation.
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  Even yes, this option could help you, but before we start, I need to understand three other things.
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  That is very different than handing someone information or handing it, handing them a supplement All right, so I'm gonna use the weight loss as a perfect example.
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  Disclaimer, I do not prescribe GLP-1 in my practice.
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  I am not against medication.
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  I think medications have their place.
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  I think everything that is created, we created, God created, has its purpose.
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  So when I go through this, please believe I'm not discounting all the people that need this drug.
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  So today, access to weight loss medication can be remarkably convenient through telehealth and online channels.
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  I was watching a commercial the other day where Amazon had this, and you can purchase it online.
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  You don't need to see any doctors.
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  So that increased access can be valuable for appropriate patients, but it has also created a marketplace in which the FDA has recently warned telehealth companies about misleading claims involving GLP-1 products and has separately warned consumers about unap- unapproved and fraudulent compounded semaglutide or all the other tides And again, this is not me saying weight loss medication is bad, Like, you do your own research.
• 10:10
  I'm sure you have your own opinion on it, and I have mine, so we're just gonna leave it as that.
• 10:15
  But weight is not one simple problem with one universal explanation, and that's what I think is fascinating with all the GLP-1 medication You can't lose weight, take this pill or do this injection.
• 10:28
  But we also have to consider how sleep, medications, side effects, health conditions, eating patterns, physical activity or inactivity, stress, and other factors can all influence weight and weight management.
• 10:43
  So imagine someone says,"Dr.
• 10:45
  Jay, I gained 30 pounds.
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  I need one of those injections." Maybe that medication's appropriate.
• 10:50
  Again, you get to decide for yourself.
• 10:53
  But I still want to know what's happening.
• 10:56
  When did the weight start?
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  What changed?
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  Are you sleeping?
• 11:00
  What medication could be causing the weight gain?
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  What is happening metabolically?
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  What are you not eating?
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  You'd be amazed, like, how many patients are losing weight when they eliminate mold, when they decrease mycotoxins, when they do a proper full body detox.
• 11:20
  But again, most people are not thinking about that, right?
• 11:23
  We're just gonna take the medication.
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  So I don't want to practice medicine where the medication becomes the diagnosis, and I don't think patients want that either.
• 11:32
  They want a solution, yes, but not everybody want to take a pill for every single ill or symptoms or discomfort, right?
• 11:41
  I think people are going to be able to obtain things easily, specifically now with the way things are moving.
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  Information will be easy.
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  Testing, you can actually stay home and go online and find a company to send you a kit, and then you do your own testing.
• 11:55
  Yep, it is happening.
• 11:56
  Supplements is all over the place.
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  You don't need a doctor to recommend.
• 12:00
  You can just, again, put your symptoms, put in your information, your discomfort, and then you get tons of recommendations.
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  Wearables like Oura Rings that tells you how much your stress or your sleep quality or the Apple Watch.
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  Medications right now, sometimes I'm hearing you can just get it online.
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  Like, the harder thing will be answering what does any of this mean for me?
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  That's where I think the future of good medicine lives.
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  And this is where the podcast needed to change because I realized I was still creating content for an old version of the health information landscape.
• 12:37
  I was behaving as though my job behind this microphone was to give you more information, and you don't need me to compete with the internet.
• 12:45
  I cannot compete.
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  I will lose.
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  Like, literally lose, There's always going to be another article, another creator, another AI response, another wellness account telling you the seven things for you to do to balance your cortisol, another person telling you how your nervous system is out of whack and to do this and that.
• 13:05
  Okay, another person telling you to put this in your morning smoothie, and then you're gonna be cured, right?
• 13:10
  I don't want to spend the next decade screaming louder into that noise.
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  I want to have the conversations that happened after the information, the ones where someone says,"Dr.
• 13:21
  Jay, I know I'm supposed to do this, but why can't I make myself do it?" That is interesting.
• 13:28
  I know I'm burnt out.
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  Why can't I stop?" Let's talk about that.
• 13:33
  "I say I want help, but I don't let anyone help me." Now we're going somewhere.
• 13:38
  I've built the career I want, and now I'm miserable." You know how many people are doing things they don't wanna do, they don't find joy and happiness in their career?
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  I wanna talk about that.
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  Or, I have everything I prayed for, and somehow I still feel unsettled." My body's changing.
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  I don't recognize myself" or,"My relationship is affecting me more than I want to admit." That's the conversation I wanna talk about because these conversations may not look medically, because this conversation may not look medical at first, but tell me they don't affect how someone sleeps.
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  They do, right?
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  How they eat.
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  It does affect how they eat, how they cope, how they sleep, how consistent they take care of themselves, how much stress they are carrying, whether they follow through or not, whether they have the capacity to make changes or not.
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  Health does not happen in a vacuum.
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  I say this, uh, multiple times.
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  And I think this is something we have gotten wrong in wellness too.
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  We keep telling people,"Eat better, sleep more, exercise, meditate, reduce your stress." Okay, but how?
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  How does the woman working 12-hour days reduce her stress?
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  How does the caregiver prioritize herself when everyone depends on her?
• 14:50
  How does the business owner sleep eight hours when she believes the company will fall apart if she's not available?
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  How does the woman in an unhappy relationship regulate her nervous system when she goes home every night to conflict, to judgment, to shame.
• 15:08
  How does someone change her habits when the habit is the only way she knows how to comfort her?
• 15:14
  That's where advice stops being enough, and that's why telling someone that what to do is often the easiest part of medicine, helping them understand why they cannot do it yet, to me, that is much more interesting, and that's also more human.
• 15:32
  I see this in myself too, I'm gonna record a podcast next week.
• 15:36
  I'm gonna release it talking about why it took me eight years to get married, okay?
• 15:42
  Nobody needed to explain the concept of marriage to me.
• 15:45
  The issue wasn't that I needed another list of the benefit of commitment.
• 15:50
  I had to confront fear, identity, work, but again, that's another podcast next week, so stay tuned.
• 15:56
  That is exactly the kind of space I want this show to become, where we can speak honestly about things that are not being spoken enough.
• 16:03
  So yes, I changed the name, but this is a bigger podcast than just a name.
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  I changed the container because the conversations had outgrown it.
• 16:13
  don't want you to hear health, life, and what's next and think,"Well, Dr.
• 16:17
  Gentille isn't talking about medicine anymore." Absolutely, I am.
• 16:22
  I may talk about fatigue.
• 16:23
  We talk about hormone.
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  We will talk about IV.
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  We talk about labs.
• 16:26
  We will discuss medication, but I also want to talk about the woman inside the body.
• 16:33
  I wanna talk about marriage, money, business, identity, loneliness, success, boundaries, age, and fear, what we are seeing culturally, what technology is doing to us, what happens when you achieve the thing and it does not feel the way you thought it would, the conversations women whisper to each other after the official conversation is over.
• 16:58
  Because to me, that is not living half.
• 17:01
  That is finally putting half back into the context where it actually happens in real life And I think the timing matters more than ever.
• 17:11
  We are entering an era where information will become easier and easier to obtain.
• 17:16
  AI capabilities in healthcare are advancing rapidly, while researchers and global health authorities are, like, warning that accuracy, safety, governance, and appropriate human oversight remain unresolved challenges.
• 17:34
  So I don't think the answer is to compete with AI by trying to know more facts than the medicine.
• 17:41
  So I don't think the answer is to compete with AI by trying to know more facts than the medicine.
• 17:47
  I think the answer is to become more human, more discerning, more present, more willing to listen, more willing to say,"I don't know yet," more willing to have conversation that don't fit neatly into a 10-minute appointment, because maybe the future of medicine is not less technology.
• 18:06
  Maybe it is better technology and deeper humanity at the same time.
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  Maybe it will be the person they trust enough to help them make sense of all of it.
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  So that's what I want to build here.
• 18:18
  Not another health podcast.
• 18:20
  We don't need another one of those, okay?
• 18:22
  Not another place where I can tell you,"Take five foods to stop eating.
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  Do this to balance your hormone.
• 18:27
  Do this for weight loss." Not another stream of information you save in your computer or in your phone and never use.
• 18:34
  I want this to be the place where we talk about what happens when the information meets a well person with a well job, well responsibilities, well relationships, well fear, well habits, and a well history.
• 18:49
  Sometimes we'll talk about medicine, sometimes we'll talk about marriage.
• 18:53
  We're definitely gonna address business, and sometimes what I am seeing in the world, we'll talk about that too, and sometimes we'll have a conversation that appears to have absolutely nothing to do with health.
• 19:04
  I wanna talk about it all.
• 19:06
  Maybe this has everything to do with what I've been living, okay?
• 19:11
  That's the show I wanted, and that is the reason I had to change it.
• 19:17
  Because in a world that can give you almost unlimited information, I don't think you need another person telling you what to do.
• 19:25
  I think you need people you trust who are willing to help you understand what matters, and maybe even more importantly, people willing to sit with you long enough to ask the questions no algorithm, supplement bottle, lab result, or prescription can answer for you people willing to sit with you long enough to ask the question no algorithm, supplement bottles, lab result, or prescription can answer for you.
• 19:55
  What is really going on in your life, and what are you finally ready to do about it?
• 20:00
  That is the conversation I want to have right here every week in this podcast.
• 20:06
  So let's continue this deep conversation on the next episode That is fantastic.
• 20:16
  You completed another episode.
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  So thank you for spending this time with me.
• 20:23
  If today's conversation gave you a new perspective, I hope you carry it with you into the rest of your week.
• 20:29
  If someone you love needs to hear this today, share this episode with them.
• 20:35
  Until next time, take good care of yourself.
• 20:38
  I'll meet you back here for our next conversation.