Latest / Wellness In Every Season / Optimizing Your Long-Term Health

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Optimizing Your Long-Term Health · Wellness In Every Season

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Hello, welcome.
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_01: We have another functional medicine doctor on, which I am so excited for because I'll tell you a little bit about my health journey.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to Wellness in Every Season.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_01: We talk all things wellness to help you align yourself, align with your goals, get find balance in your life, and just recalibrate yourself.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: If you are listening for the first time, welcome, welcome.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: I'm so glad you're here.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: And let's get started in the rest of the podcast.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: I started seeing my doctor years ago, and then I had stuff come up and I started seeing specialists, and no one was getting to the answer.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: That popped up around the same time as my car, and I feel like that kind of just shook everything up from my body.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: And going back several years, looking at my blood work, things were wrong.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: And my doctor kept saying, No, it's okay, no, it's okay.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: So it's been very interesting working with the functional medicine nurse through her program and uncovering stuff that is like generationally not getting enough nutrients.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: So this is a huge deal.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: This is something that talking to other people is common.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm so grateful to have another functional medicine doctor on and to have her talk about this.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: Without further ado, welcome Dr.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: Paul.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: And then let me read your bio because it's really great and really helpful.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: She is an internationally trained, board-certified internal medicine physician, which I think is a big deal.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: I used to work for internal medicine doctor and functional longevity expert.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: Don't worry, we'll be asking everybody what that means in a minute.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: She works with men and women to optimize their health and performance.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: She specializes in getting to the root of complex, persistent health issues that can for foundation and internal medicine combined with advanced training in functional and longevity medicine, gives her a unique ability to connect the dots where others see dead end.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: She takes an active listening, precision, and data-driven approach to uncover what is actually driving fatigue, brain fog, hormonal imbalance, metabolic dysfunction, and more.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: And from there, she builds targeted protocols designed for each individual.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: That does not sound like modern medicine, right there.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: And as founder of Extend Medical, Dr.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: Paul helps people finally resolve the health challenges holding them back.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: They reclaim their energy, mental clarity, and long-term vitality.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's made me think of a friend of mine who is working with a specialist, and I keep recommending him working with a functional medicine doctor.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I want to continue down this path a little bit longer, and seeing how much it's affecting his marital life and lots of other aspects of his life, and me going through that myself, and I have some other friends doing it too, but he's somebody who I had a recent conversation with just a couple weeks ago.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's a big deal, and it literally affects every aspect of our lives, and it feels like it ages us, and it feels like it really just comes forefront in our 40s and 50s.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: A lifetime of not knowing the mineral imbalances that we have and everything else.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: What are you saying?
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: Because you actually see patients who come to you with this problem compared to me.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: No, I think we're all in this space, right?
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: And you're absolutely right.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: I often find myself thinking about why do we have to work this hard at health?
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a couple of different things, right?
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: The first is our environment.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: So the worlds we live in is very different from even one or two generations before us.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: I talk about this all the time, the same head of cauliflower, for example.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: And they've done research on this.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: If you test that cauliflower, even if it's an organic cauliflower now versus before, the nutrient profile in it is very different from 30 years ago.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: And that is a culmination of multiple different factors: the quality of the soil, the toxins in our air, the toxins in our water.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: Our bodies are equipped to detox by itself, right?
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: Just not at the levels that we're exposing ourselves to in today's world.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so we then have to be a lot more mindful because the grocery stores are filled with products that aren't good for us, unfortunately.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: And as the industries are picking up that people are trying to be more mindful about eating, they're finding ways to sneak in ingredients that are going to push us in the other direction, which is so unfortunate.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: And then the other part of this is with traditional medicine, which is very necessary when it comes to sick care, there's a broken system with traditional insurance and traditional medicine.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: You have them focusing on just trying to treat you when you're sick and not really putting enough eggs in the basket to stop you from getting sick.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's easier to fix a problem at its early stages for a cut like an oil leak.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's easier to fix it when there's a tiny hole because you could find it, patch it, instead of when the whole thing's exploded or when the whole car is broken down.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: And our bodies are really the same.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's because of that we're finding that a lot too many people that are having these problems that aren't fully addressed.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: And if you think of traditional annual physicals, right, they're built to catch things early, but they're not spreading a wide enough net.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: And the other problem is they're very limited in time.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're going for an annual physical with a person you're seeing once a year, 10 minutes is insufficient for me to get to know you, right?
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: To talk to you about are you moving?
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: How are you eating?
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: What all are you taking?
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: Not just what I'm giving you as a practitioner, right?
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: You likely have other people in your corner that are prescribing you things that are doing other things.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so you can't really get the whole story with just 10 minutes of care.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I say this all the time.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of what I do is listening because I have the benefit of time with my patients.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so that in itself allows me to connect the dots a little bit deeper to get to the root of these problems.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: So let me ask obvious questions for us, but not for the listeners.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: So how is it that you have more time when internal medicine doctors don't have that time?
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's the nature of the system.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so we have more time because we go out of the insurance model.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: And so it has to be cash rates and it has to be out of the insurance model in order for us to provide that time.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason it works is if you think about investments.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: This is me asking people to invest in their health.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: We don't take it for granted.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: The patient population we have to see are people who are able to see us, right?
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's about investing in your health.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so even if you think about what unfortunately is an epidemic, pandemic, something like diabetes, and say you're on just one medication, metformin, which is like your first line medication that you will typically get put on if you get this diagnosis.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: And that's if you get the diagnosis, right?
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: So that medication, right, say you started early on and you're on it for 30, 40 years, right?
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: You've got maybe$5 a month, maybe$2 a month, whatever it is.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: You take that number, you multiply it by every month and every decade, right?
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: And that's already an amount, that's a huge amount, right?
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: If you then are actually diabetic and you get diagnosed early on, likely what will happen is you will have multiple medications.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're not into preventative care, you then unfortunately will experience side effects because most of the time, all the doctor is following is your blood sugar, not realizing that the elevated blood sugar in your bloodstream is contributing to mood changes, cardiovascular disease, like renal disease.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: We know these as endline complications, but if you're only testing it and identifying it at the tail end, you've already, and then if you end up in hospital, co-pays, deductibles, all of it adds up.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: So it's really just educating people to shift that mindset to invest in their health early outside of the insurance system.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: Because just like true investments like GICs, dividends, or stocks, like it will pay.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: You gotta stay with it, and it'll be long-term benefits.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's how we're able to provide time.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: And it makes sense.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: So many people think I have family members that smoke, and they're asking me, Well, why don't you have blood pressure?
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_01: Why don't you have the Do you realize what smoking does to you?
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: It affects everything.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: And then I also have family members who are diabetic, and it's one of those are you seeing the specialists that you need to be seeing?
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: Are you seeing not just your optometrist, but an ophthalmologist?
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: Because it affects every system of your body, and so many people don't think about that and how much long-term care goes into it, like you're saying, but you need to be seeing several specialists if you're diabetic, and specialist means time, it means money, it means you are very aware of the jobs that you get, so you have good insurance and it means deductibles, it means a lot of things in there, and there's a portion of our population that is so afraid of being diagnosed as diabetic that they don't go to the doctor and then it gets worse, and it's one of those you can be the ostrich that sticks your head in the sand, but the problem's still there, and there's so much with that.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_01: So I definitely agree with what you're saying, but knowing that it's only a certain population who can afford this for those who do have insurance, can they still come to you and can they submit it to insurance?
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: Are there worker outs to make it a little more economical for the rest of the population?
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of what we do with the services itself, that's out of insurance, but any of the testing that is applicable typically gets insurance covered, especially blood work.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: But with any of the specialized testing, the problem is insurance is built for sick care.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: We work really hard to stop that diagnosis of diabetes.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: Because once you get that diagnosis, once your blood sugar has stayed elevated for that long that you now meet diabetic criteria, then, you know, it's never too late to fix it.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's just how hard you're gonna work at it and how much you're gonna have to bring that noodle back.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas if you find it early, you make the changes, you stop yourself from getting there to begin with.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the sort of thing that insurance isn't built for.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why we have to take insurance out of the picture.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: A tool that I use often is a continuous blood glucose monitor.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: In order for insurance to cover that, you need to have catastrophically low blood glucose levels.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: You need to already, you don't need to just be diabetic.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: You need to be diabetic and already require insulin, plus lead catastrophic numbers, in order for insurance to cover this tool.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's a very inexpensive tool now available over the counter, thankfully.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: But it's such a good tool for my patients who are kind of early in that insulin resistance where their blood levels of sugar doesn't match the levels of insulin your body produces to help metabolize, there's to help detect that early and to act on that.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's such a great tool, but insurance doesn't see it as valuable because they're more about sick care.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: So they'll cover the medication to treat it, but they won't cover these early services.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so a lot of the times, some of my patients don't have insurance, but they utilize these services because it's more valued.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: But there's weight, whenever we can utilize insurance, we do use it.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: But the problem we run into is a lot of the preventative services aren't covered.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: Because, say you go to your doctor with bloating, or I'm tired, and they do your basic 19 biomarkers that they do in an annual physical, they haven't uncovered the real reason, but you're still left with that problem.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so you got to go digging to identify what's causing that.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's hard for insurance to see as valuable.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's a better way than using AI to figure it out.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: Because there's a lot of things that AI internet will tell you that can be semi-helpful, but they can lead to other things being out of whack.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_01: And if you're that far out of balance or you don't understand that there's certain foods that work for the general population, quotes that don't work for you and cause bloating.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: You can be in decades of pain or being uncomfortable, where within a visit, I'm sure that you could figure it out for us.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: This space of alternate medicine, whether you call it integrative, functional, holistic, whatever it is, right?
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: Like these are we are all guided by similar principles.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: And we call ourselves precision medicine because of that.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so you could be the person who, if you're interested in health and wellness, I'm sure your social media is targeting you, right?
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so you're gonna be finding generic advice.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: And if you follow some of this generic advice, your bottom line will add up quickly.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: But we believe in your story and what's gonna work for you, because what works for you, even if your neighbor is the same age and is brought up in the same household, is not gonna be the same.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: And that's related to diets, what type of movement you do, whether or not you do fasted intervals and things like that.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: So it's very variable and it has to be person dependent.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: So something like bloating that you just talked about, right?
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: What food is triggering that is gonna be different for you and your story versus the person next door because their gut profile could be very different.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: And that's some of the other extensive testing that you could do to identify that.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: What is my bacterial species or my protozoar species, or is do I have an overgrowth of mold or funguses, anything like that to contribute to some of this?
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's really identifying where the root of your problem comes from.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: Because our bodies are constantly telling us that they're sending us signals, but often we just haven't, we're taught to kind of suppress them for as long as possible before we seek health.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: And that's kind of how we've thought about health care in general, because healthcare traditionally is sick care.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: So you suppress these symptoms until you actually get sick and then you go seek help.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: And the people coming to us with, you know, when you think about, oh, I'm bloated all the time, or that made me feel sick, they're not, they don't feel empowered to go seek help for that.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm not even sure whether they should be seeing a specialist.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_01: I remember when my gallbladder was falling apart.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: I grew up in a traumatic environment.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: I stored so many emotions there, it's no wonder that it went kaput, especially after having four kids.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_01: But I was in so much pain, and my husband wanted me to go to the ER, and I said, no, I'm not gonna go there, they're not gonna figure out what's wrong.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: Thankfully, Google, I had the classic symptoms.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_01: I Googled it, I'm like, okay, now I know where to go.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_01: Once I was feeling well enough to get there.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_01: But that's also growing up in Arizona where the health care isn't quite as good, so I'm used to that level of care.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: I'm very used to huge wait times.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_01: I had a baby I was nursing, it was just like there's no way I'm doing this.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I know that I am the typical patient right there that waits too long.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I've worked in healthcare, and it's very interesting how many people work in healthcare and they don't take care of themselves.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: They don't see doctors or other healthcare professionals often enough or really at all because they're too busy working in the healthcare field.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: It's very interesting how we value money.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: But we don't value our health in the same way.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, I work a lot with professionals, entrepreneurs, business owners, and I tell them all the time, you would never run your business without knowing every line item in your budget or without knowing what meetings you have for the day, expenses, your intake, your income, all of it, right?
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: Without knowing this detail spreadsheet, your KPIs, all of it.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: And you shouldn't run your body the same, why don't you run your body the same way?
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: Because you need to know these details about your health.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: And this is where prevention comes in, right?
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: And this is a longevity arm of what I do as well.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: Like you might feel completely well, you might be on the right diet, doing the right movement protocol.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: But if you don't know your numbers, right, if you've never tested what your thyroid levels are, if you've never tested what your hormone levels are, how your kidney's functioning, how your liver is functioning, you might not know that there's early warning signs of this.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: Our body's sending us signals, we don't understand what they are, and we don't understand what to do with them.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm sure in your case, Autumn, right?
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: Like there's a lot more right now out about this gut brain axis, right?
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: And how we carry a lot of our nervous system dysfunctions in the gut, right?
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: The simple one that a lot of people can relate to if you're going into a nervous environment or if you're feeling scared about something immediately.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: You see it in cartoons where they butterflies in your stomach, or you feel like your gut turning, you end up with loose stools.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: That's how much our emotions impact our gut.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: And that our gut is one of the places where we almost rapidly can feel that overt symptom, but our hormones might not show that to us as quickly.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: Your estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, cortisol, thyroid, it won't give you such obvious symptoms like maybe your gut can, but those connections are there.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: And some of these stories like yours with your gallbladder going out, right?
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: You can tell like that was at a time of high stress, high need, high demand in your life.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: That's not unfortunately by coincidence.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: And you might have had some symptoms before, you just didn't know it was that much of value to maybe go seek help for it or change around some of your practices to help support your body.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_01: And typical.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_01: I think it depends on the time in our lives.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: But when you have little young children, it's one of those get them until they're in school full time, and then you can schedule your own appointment, right?
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: We're so focused on getting our kids through the door that we don't really focus on our own health.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: And that's mental health, physical health, like all of it.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: We're constantly giving ourselves an excuse.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna do this when things slow down.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: But the answer is it doesn't slow down.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: I've got kids too, Autumn, and I'm sure you resonate with this.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: You always think that the milestone is that next thing, but you get to that next thing and you're still really busy, right?
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: And this is not just with kids, this is the same thing with running a business, right?
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: The kids of in school, you that's technically supposed to free up your time, but still kids are finishing at different times, starting at different times.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: The stress just changes from one version to another.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so this whole thing about I'm gonna do it when things slow down, we should know better.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: Like things are just never gonna slow down.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: If we're in a busy season now, that's just the trajectory that we're on.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: Sure, there's gonna be ups and downs, but busy season is the best time to entertain something like preventative care because you can optimize your body functioning to combat that.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: Because, say we're finally sleeping seven hours a night, right?
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: Are you actually hitting the deep sleep that you need?
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: Are you feeling restored when you wake up?
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: And then if you're not, then you say, How can I make it better?
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: Some of these tracking devices and all of this, but again, it can be a lot of noise if you don't understand what to do with it and how to make those changes to improve it.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_01: I have a smart bed and I had to put it in a chat GPT, and I'm like, what does this even mean?
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what am I supposed to be getting for this kind of sleep and this kind of sleep?
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what did this bar graph mean?
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't understand it at all.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: So I totally get that.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_01: We have this data, and then it's well, what do we do with this?
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: And then one thing that keeps coming to mind as we're talking, when you were talking about how we could have a similar diet to somebody else, but our body responds differently.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: For me, what I was thinking of is stress.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_01: So, how often are you talking to your do you call them patients a client?
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_01: Both how often are you talking to Your patient about stress with the amount that you see in a day a lot.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: Honestly, I talk about it with every patient because it's the nature of the people that I see as well.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: Because I have a lot of business owners and busy professionals, right?
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: Stress is my hardest complaint to battle because a vitamin D deficiency is simple.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: I identify it, I give you the vitamin D, and then it improves.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: I give you the right type, all of that, it improves.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: But stress is one of those buckets where I have to really spend a lot of time and work with my patients on, right?
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: Which is your biggest stress?
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: Where is it coming from?
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: Which modality of stress relief is going to be more amenable to your day and your schedule?
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: Not everybody wants to journal, not everybody wants to deep breathe, not everybody wants to meditate.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: There's some people who can't do any of it.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: But stress is such a big component and honestly is the root of a lot of our issues, but is the one that we cannot take away.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: And then the way you win that bucket is by optimizing a lot of your other buckets.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: So you fix those.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, I'm stressed.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, I have this, yes, I'm a new mom.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, I've got this busy business.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, I've got to be in 10 places at one time.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: I can't take that away.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, you start incorporating some practices, bookend your day.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: And what I mean by that is have a consistent, this is what I do when I wake up, and this is what I do before I go to sleep, so that your cortisol melatonin knows when to rise and fall.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: So that's one bucket of it.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: But then a lot of what we can do is where we identify a lot of those deficiencies.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: Some of it are as a result of the stress, and some of it are feeding the stress more.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: And so you balance those deficiencies so that that end of the seesaw can get lifted up to help you battle that stress.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: So for it's nothing as simple as a vitamin D deficiencies, which is really more of a hormone than a vitamin in itself, right?
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: If you correct that, then that already gives your body more tools for better estrogen levels, better thyroid levels, better cortisol levels, and things like that.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_01: That's one of the deficiencies I had, especially in the winter when we have less sun.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: But we are very much a society where we're not spending time in sun.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_01: And when we are, we're covering up because skin cancer, but we also need vitamin D.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: So, as we're talking about vitamin D, the other thing that we do in this space, there's something called normal lab values.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_00: But what we look at are optimal ranges, right?
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: So normal traditionally falls anywhere between 30 and 80.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: But we know for your body systems to function adequately, you actually need closer to 60 to 80.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's tightening up those ranges for you to function optimally, again, to then to balance something like stress, which is hard to balance with a pill.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_01: And there's also the idea that are my results being judged against male.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_01: And if yes, I'm a white female, but if I am black, am I being judged against somebody who's white?
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_01: Because we know that different races have different needs depending on what it is.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_01: There are certain races and certain areas of the world where they are more susceptible to having different health challenges.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_01: So it's very much understanding that as well is what I've learned.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: So it's the same individualizing your needs and your care plan.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_01: And especially with sleep, I've learned that a lot of the first studies were done with male.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_01: Women need more sleep.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_01: And it goes with our menstrual cycle.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_01: If I'm trying to fix my sleep, the best time for me to do that is at a certain point within the month where I get my deeper sleep.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_01: So I know that if I'm traveling or I really want to start waking up earlier or just really tighten up my sleep, that's when I start to do it.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_01: Because I'm already naturally sleeping deeper.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_01: Not everybody realizes that.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_01: They can be so just in the thick of it with stress and thinking, where you know what, I'll get less sleep and then I do more.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_01: But it goes back to that do you function as well?
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_01: Do you have to go back and redo the work that you've done?
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_01: Because it's not as good as when you're getting the optimal amount of sleep or when you're not as stressed.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: I talk a lot about pillars of health, and often I've been asked to pick the most important.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I struggled because it's so hard to pick one.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: Everything's so important, they have such big interplace with each other as well.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, maybe movement, maybe food.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: Like, how can you not do those and be optimal?
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: But really, I landed on sleep.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: Then you're yeah, so and sleep is probably if you force me and you say you have to pick one.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: In the end, I decided that's the one I'm picking because, and you're absolutely right.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: Women need more sleep on average than men.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_00: And you're right, the studies are typically done with men.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: I have a patient who she's like, Oh, we me and my husband, we go to sleep together, we wake up together and we work out.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I just feel tired.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_00: He doesn't.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, I want you to go to sleep an hour before him and try that.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: And she was amazed at how much better she felt.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: So she would go to sleep half an hour before and then wake up half an hour later.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_00: And it made the world of a difference to hit that eight hours instead of seven hours.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: And so our cycles play a big part in that because through our menstrual cycle, we go through huge hormone shifts, like that big estrogen shirts, then it drops, and then progesterone takes over.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's a lot for our bodies to go through.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_00: We get used to it, but it's about knowing and providing our body with what it needs.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_00: Some women are able to work out heavily despite being on their cycle, and some women are not.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: So then again, it's case-dependent with how it is that makes you feel.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: But what you experience in that time also doesn't have to mean that that's what you have to do every day of your cycle.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_00: And sleep is also one of those things, honestly, like when you think about alcohol and alcoholics, right?
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_00: They develop a bit of a tolerance.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: People who drink regularly can tolerate more.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so there's been studies that shown that sleep is like that.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_00: When you start consistently sleeping less, your body is able to handle it, but you're still functioning subpar.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_00: But the scary part is that you think that's your normal.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: So, same thing with alcohol, right?
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: Like you start drinking more, you think it's okay to drink three because I can handle it.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: Then it gets to five, right?
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: So it's that tolerance that fails, but actually your body's screaming for help.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's the scary part with sleep as well.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_00: It should be one that we should really be mindful of because it's not just rest, it is where we build, it's where we grow, it's where our hormones are the peak.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's like when we do hormone therapies, peptide therapies, we do a lot of them at night because that's where our bodies will utilize them the best.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_01: That's when we have that really good chance to flush out all the toxin and where all the things are rewired in your brain.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_01: Our brain likes to do the easiest way first, so they'll form deeper trenches of like this is the habit that I'm building to make it easier.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_01: But I did not know that that's when like I just always thought it was when repair happened.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, grow and rebuild.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_01: I did not realize that our body can build up a tolerance to less sleep.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_01: That does make sense with all the other people who say that they don't need as much sleep and like they've been like this for years.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_01: It makes sense.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_01: So, how do you know what your optimal sleep amount is for you if you built up this tolerance?
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_00: So you can test your levels and you can truly assess to see where your other symptoms are, right?
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_00: The simplest way is to wear, because we all probably have phones or some sort of smartwatches and things like that.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_00: You can wear that at night.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_00: Check if you're hitting the deep sleep that you're supposed to, check if you're, you know, are you sleeping enough?
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: And then the other way is actually do testing to identify where your deficiencies are that are going to be as a result of this lack of sleep, as a result of your body not having the space and time to rebuild and grow.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_00: This also will impact your gut because your gut, just like a lot of systems, run on a daylight cycle.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_00: There's a reason that what we call optimal, even having stools, is first thing in the morning where your body's got that ability to detox and you then get rid of it, get rid or excrete in the morning.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_01: Makes sense.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, we are getting closer on time.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_01: So I want to ask you do you see patients only in person?
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_01: Do you see patients all around the world?
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_01: Like if somebody is really resonating with you, wants to work with you.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_01: Explain this part.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I run a virtual practice and we cover most states.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_00: You get to have all of your medical appointments with me as a licensed physician.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_00: And we coordinate all of your testing.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: You get real-time feedback with things that you're doing.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_00: So with your care plans, you have access to our team to report any wins, any things that are working, any things that's not.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_00: And we in real time change your protocols.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: So people are able to contact us and feel well taken care of.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: Because when you come into proactive and preventative care, we want you to kind of go at it head on and to make sure that you're taking all the steps to fix that and optimize your full potential.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_00: And those people who come with stubborn health problems, they've often been in multiple different systems where they haven't gotten answers.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so we want to really help them find their healing so that they could get to this state.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_00: So we run virtual appointments.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_00: We give our appointments last anywhere from 30 to 60 minutes, especially the early consults.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: We allocate 60 to 90 minutes actually for the first few, so that they're have the ability to ask lots of questions and understand their care plan.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_00: We used to do in person, but I realized that people like the flexibility.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_00: Most of my calls are virtual.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_00: And so we move to entirely virtual, and it means that we can serve a larger population as well.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_01: So, what about the people who are like, I have this spot right here?
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_01: Do you just have them send pictures?
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_01: Like, how does that part work for those who are like, I'm so used to the care of being in person, and it's always been this way my life.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_01: Explain that part.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_00: So we encourage patients to continue their relationships with their primary care physicians and their current network of doctors, and we work in collaboration with them.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_00: And then we really make an assessment, right?
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_00: Because I have the background that I do in internal medicine and in inpatient care.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_00: We make an assessment to see is it something that then needs a visual assessment?
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: Is it something that needs an in-person visit?
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_00: And then we direct them accordingly.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_01: That's really helpful for those who are like, I want to dip my toe in this, but I don't want to do the straight dive in.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_01: Like, how does this work?
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_01: So I assume that for most people, they would go to your website and just start there.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_00: So you can go to our website or you can send us an email.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_00: You are able to send us a message there, see the services we offer.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're really struggling with anything that you feel like you haven't been heard with your health symptoms or any of this resonated with you, we'd love to chat further and to see how we can help you because we really do tailor care plans and meet people where they are.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_00: So some people are coming to us and they've never taken a supplement before.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_00: And then, you know, we don't just suddenly give them 10 new things.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_00: And some people already have 10 new things, but they're trying to scale back.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: And some people want directly like the full gamut and say, make me my best self in, you know, a year and things like that.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of what we teach is long-term solutions.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_00: We're big believers and taking small steps to make those big differences because a lot of these things can be overwhelming.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_00: Sleep eight hours, drink lots of water, work out, and all of that.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_00: It can be very overwhelming.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_00: Even burnout.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I have to remind myself this as well.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_00: Just because I do this doesn't mean that I'm perfect in all of my actions.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_00: We have to constantly remind ourselves that we have to do these things.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm a big proponent of getting people to make small changes, making it daily habits.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: But those small daily habits then make big differences in your life.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_00: Like you suddenly start sleeping 15 minutes longer, then that becomes a habit.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_00: Then you try to push it to half an hour, then you try to push it to the hour until you feel like when you wake up, you're optimal.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_00: You feel rested.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_00: And same thing, whether it's supplements or water intake or movement.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: You just do that little bit, make it consistent, move to the next step.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: So these are really long-haul things.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_00: Like we don't offer three-day juice cleanses where we give you a magic potion and things get better because that will not give you long-term solutions.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_01: I think we had that magic wand, we would not be looking at long-term and our journey through this life of like this is where I want to end up.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we talked about this, like we're in a chronic disease epidemic.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_00: The numbers of cancers, diabetes, dementia, heart disease, they're going up exponentially year over year.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_00: Traditional medicine and insurance-based care will not catch up with it fast enough.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's going to be up to us to take that ball and keep it at our court so that we don't have to end up on that sick care spectrum, that chronic disease.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're already in the chronic disease, it's knowing that a lot of it is still reversible.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_01: And the whole point of getting insurance back in the day was for this.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_01: And now we can't even use it for this.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_01: And it would be so much cheaper for insurance companies if they paid out for stuff like that.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_01: Hundred percent.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_01: Waiting until we were in the hospital or we have something chronic or we're in a nursing home or whatever.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's so much more expensive for them.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_01: So that's my little two cents.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_01: But back in the day, doctors could take their time and they would pay whatever the doctor charged them.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_01: It is not that way anymore.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_01: I used to do medical billing and coding, and there's a whole thing there.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's very annoying.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_01: But with that in mind, I'm used to having insurance and I have medication.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_01: It sounds like we could still get our medications renewed through you for some of these.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_01: But we're not totally dropping our primary care physician or our specialist because it's not one of these all or nothing ideas.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_01: No, we're not we're not looking listeners.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we're not looking to replace your current healthcare providers or your current medication.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_00: Inevitably, as we make you better and stronger, you will be dropping medications, but we're not looking to replace your current current practitioners.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_00: We actually work with them to try to give her the most optimal solution.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's about because a lot of the time these specialists are looking in each body system in silo, and we get the benefit of looking at it all together.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_00: So because as you, you know, we talk about I've got this spot on my skin, you go see the dermatologist, the dermatologist says take this medication.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_00: The dermatologist isn't really thinking about what this medication is going to do to your gut or your hydration status or something like that.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so that'll really impact you.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_00: So it's about saying, oh, hey, doc, I asked to take this for this spot, and you know, that's on your intake form, and then we talk about it, but you've also got low mood or low energy or weight gain.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_00: Then you say, Well, I think it might be this.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_00: So let's work to see what else is missing so that we can fix that and then maybe get you off that.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_00: And like I said, I still practice traditional medicine.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_00: There's a time and a place for that, but it's just looking at health with a different lens.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's creating health as opposed to treating you only when you get sick.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's also creating the space to have real conversations.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_01: This is everything that's going on in my life.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_01: And this is exactly the part that was missing in my coaching practice that I started putting in was you're also going to work with a functional medicine nurse because we are going to find out what your vitamins and nutrients are really, where they really are.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_01: There's so many clients that I worked with where they had what they thought was severe burnout.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_01: They felt like they could never fully get to that next level, and it turns out it was a vitamin mineral deficiency.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_01: You can only push through things for so long until your body's saying no because other stuff is going on that you're ignoring.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_01: So it's more important than we really give time for.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's something really to think about.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_01: If you are having those moments in your life when you look back and you're like, okay, I see that I was functioning well here, and then I bottomed out, and then I'm functioning well again, and then I'm bottoming out what's going on.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's actually something that's physically wrong.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_01: Something that maybe everybody says is normal, but it's actually not diabetes, it's not normal.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_01: Having heavy carriage is not normal.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_01: Having severe mood swings, but not normal.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_00: This type of data is so valuable for each person.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's so valuable.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_00: Because a lot of the times when you're in those ranges that are in the lower end, or you've just slightly missing the bar, that's like crucial times to make a difference before you get there.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_00: I've had so many patients bring me lab work and they've just done their physicals.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, what were you directed to do about this?
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, nothing.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's just borderline or it's a maybe.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, they're actively having symptoms.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's just not meeting that diagnostic criteria.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of these normal ranges are based on an average population.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_00: But when your average population is sick, it's not giving us the whole story.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_01: In the exam room with the doctor long enough to have that conversation to say, I've had this for a long time and I don't feel this is right.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_01: Like maybe the fatigue during a weird part of the day, or I wake up tired when I am giving myself enough time on the mattress, like what's going on, or any flu of things that we don't have the time to really have that connection with the doctor to then explain these things.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's hard.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_01: Well, thank you.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_01: You told us where to find your website, that's also in the show notes.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_01: I will also link where to find her on social media.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for being here.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_01: And if there's anything that you feel like we missed, let me know and I can put it in the show notes.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm grateful that you were here.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_01: This is something that I've been going through with my own journey, and I've been working with clients to get on this journey as well, because there's so many things that we go throughout this life being like, well, this must be the bar, right?
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_01: We kind of just lower our bar along the way of our health.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_01: And that's not right.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's not okay.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_01: Society tells us if we get this magic pill will be okay, and that's not the case.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_01: This magic pill that is being marketed to everybody else.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_00: And if there's one thing I can leave all your listeners with is to let them know that our bodies are constantly sending us signals.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_00: Try to listen to them and be an advocate of your own health.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_00: And we'd be happy to be your quarterbacks to do that.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_00: So send us a message or contact us.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for listening to this episode.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_01: I hope that you found the answers that you needed and you had some amazing aha moments.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_01: Please share this episode with others because it helps us align ourselves and then better align the world so that we can seek the healing that we really are looking for.
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_01: I am a certified life coach with a bachelor's in applied health.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_01: This is general advice taken as such.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_01: See you in the next episode.