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Following the Patient Instead of the Paradigm with Dr. Pamela M. Cipriano | The Holistic Pharmacy Podcast · Pharmacy Podcast Network

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: You are listening to the global network of podcasters dedicated
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: to the pharmacy profession.
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: Welcome to the Pharmacy Podcast Network.
• 0:29
  Speaker 3: Hello and welcome to the Holistic Pharmacy Podcast. I'm your host,
• 0:34
  Speaker 3: Marina Buksov, and I'm a functional medicine pharmacist in New York.
• 0:39
  Speaker 3: I'm also a clinical herbalist and an integrative health coach
• 0:43
  Speaker 3: specializing in mindfulness and empowerment. I'm on a mission to
• 0:47
  Speaker 3: transform the way we approach healthcare by bridging the wisdom
• 0:51
  Speaker 3: of traditional medicine with modern practice. And in this podcast,
• 0:56
  Speaker 3: I will be highlighting guests who do just I'm constantly
• 1:00
  Speaker 3: inspired by them, and I know you will be as well.
• 1:04
  Speaker 4: Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the show. I'm so excited.
• 1:08
  Speaker 4: I'm here with today's guest, who is Dr. Pamela Cipriano,
• 1:12
  Speaker 4: and she's the founder and president of the Practice of
• 1:15
  Speaker 4: Health and Wellness in Thomaston, Connecticut. A board-certified acute care
• 1:20
  Speaker 4: nurse practitioner with more than 30 years of healthcare experience,
• 1:23
  Speaker 4: she specializes in integrative and functional medicine, helping patients with
• 1:28
  Speaker 4: complex chronic illnesses by combining evidence-informed conventional care with personalized
• 1:34
  Speaker 4: root cause approaches.
• 1:36
  Speaker 5: Without further ado, welcome, Pam.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: I was excited about this podcast.
• 1:43
  Speaker 5: Yes, yes.
• 1:44
  Speaker 4: There are so many topics we can dive into with
• 1:48
  Speaker 4: everything that you specialize in. But first, I really want
• 1:50
  Speaker 4: to get started with a little bit about your background
• 1:52
  Speaker 4: and why you chose the healthcare field.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: I think I came out of my mother's womb knowing
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: I wanted to be a nurse. The nurse practitioner thing
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: didn't come around until I was much older. I realized
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: that I was an ICU nurse.
• 2:06
  Speaker 5: I was an.
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: ICU nurse for years and found that I just wanted
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: something more. And then I went back to school to
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: be a nurse practitioner. And it was really the best
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: decision I ever made, to be honest with you. I
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: think as a nurse, we see you know, the physicians
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: who do a great job and the ones that really
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: don't do such a great job. And so we have
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: a bird's eye view of how we'd like to practice medicine.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: So I think that that was the biggest part that
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: I wanted to be able to give back to the
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: community because I had helped so many patients over the
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: years improve as an ICU nurse. My big goal was
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: to try and help them get to a point where
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: they didn't.
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: End up in the hospital. Wow.
• 2:48
  Speaker 4: That is so interesting because the acute care setting with
• 2:51
  Speaker 4: the ICU intensive care unit, you would think that those
• 2:55
  Speaker 4: kinds of cases are, you know, like last resort, you know,
• 3:00
  Speaker 4: very kind of dangerous and risky place to be. And
• 3:05
  Speaker 4: then there's not a lot of follow through that you
• 3:07
  Speaker 4: can have with those patients afterwards to understand what caused
• 3:11
  Speaker 4: the illness or the condition they came in with or
• 3:13
  Speaker 4: the diagnosis and whatever happened. And then You kind of
• 3:16
  Speaker 4: send them off your way. Maybe you do some med
• 3:19
  Speaker 4: reconciliation like myself as a pharmacist. That's what we might
• 3:22
  Speaker 4: be involved with. But then you kind of hope for
• 3:26
  Speaker 4: the best.
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 3:27
  Speaker 5: So like what made.
• 3:29
  Speaker 4: You want to follow these patients further and like dig
• 3:33
  Speaker 4: deeper into root causes, which you now practice?
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: So it was an ICU nurse. It was a lot
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: of education. Um, my first job was in the coronary
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: care unit. So it was a lot of education of,
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: you know, why the heart attack happens and how not
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: to have another one occur. Um, when I became a
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: nurse practitioner, I was working as a hospitalist. I kind
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: of put myself through my own residency. So I was
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: working as a medical hospitalist, a surgical hospitalist. I worked
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: in the emergency department in urgent care and neurology and urology. Um,
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: And it wasn't until I took a position in internal
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: medicine in a primary care office. It was a two-physician practice.
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: One of the physicians had retired. I never thought I'd
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: ever take a job in an office like that. And
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: I just found a niche where, you know, the medications
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: are being used more for a Band-Aid rather than to
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: find the root cause of why the disease process is
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: actually occurring. And when I found that, that's when, you know,
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: I went back, you know, I got my doctorate degree.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: And then after that, I went back to school for
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: functional medicine to try and figure out how to reverse
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: a disease process, get patients off of as much medications
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: as possible with, you know, the understanding that there are
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: certain medications that should never be discontinued. That led me,
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  Speaker 1: you know, to my own practice. I opened up my
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: own practice in 2016. I was a first nurse practitioner
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: in the state of Connecticut to do so. That had
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: its own issues because the insurance companies weren't prepared for
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: a nurse practitioner not to have a collaborating position. So
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: I had to hire an attorney to get the insurance
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: companies to credential me.
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: It was a lot.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: It was more than I can actually say in one
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: podcast what I had to go through. But it did
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: open up the doors for other nurse practitioners in Connecticut
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: to start their own practices as well. And I opened
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: up my doors to them to help them not make
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: the same mistakes that I make. And so now 10
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: years later, I just started another business of consulting, a
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: consulting business of trying to help other providers, whether you're
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: a physician, a nurse practitioner or a physician assistant, how
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: to open up your own practice. And, you know, I
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: find concierge medicine is really the way to go because
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: we're not strong armed by the insurance companies.
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: We are more ability to treat patients, get to the
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: root cause of why the disease is happening.
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: So a little bit of a background story. I had
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: over 3,000 patients while I was taking insurance. And in
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: the midst of this, I had gotten two very nasty
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: letters from Connecticut and Blue Cross and Blue Shield, both
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: berating me for taking too many people off their medications
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: and not prescribing enough meds on my own. And that
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: really upset me because they clearly either didn't read my
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: notes or didn't care to read my notes. Their problem
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: was the bottom line. I was taking money out of
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: their pocket. And so I contacted my attorney and he
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: had said that I either had to start playing the
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: game and keep people on their meds or I was
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: going to have to stop taking insurance and go concierge.
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  Speaker 1: So I almost sold my practice to Hartford Hospital that
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: had been coming around at the time buying up practices.
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: And it was my husband and my kids who really
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: encouraged me to try concierge first before I did that.
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  Speaker 1: And I'm so glad I did because I've been able
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: to help so many people now, you know, get back
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: to their their state of health and wellness without taking,
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: you know, 20, 30 medications every day.
• 7:04
  Speaker 5: Wow.
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  Speaker 4: It sounds like you're a real pioneer and you're the
• 7:07
  Speaker 4: first in your field and in your state building this.
• 7:10
  Speaker 4: And while I really want to get to the clinical
• 7:13
  Speaker 4: topics we had planned for today, I really just want
• 7:15
  Speaker 4: to take a moment and talk about like the scope
• 7:18
  Speaker 4: of practice and the legal challenges and like the way
• 7:22
  Speaker 4: that you had to navigate things in your state with
• 7:26
  Speaker 4: your license and the decisions that you had to make
• 7:28
  Speaker 4: to then build a cash-based business that doesn't take insurance
• 7:32
  Speaker 4: and How do you then consult other people that may
• 7:36
  Speaker 4: be in different jurisdictions with different licenses, different scopes of practice,
• 7:42
  Speaker 4: and different state laws?
• 7:44
  Speaker 5: How do you help them navigate all that?
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: Do you mean the patient or providers?
• 7:48
  Speaker 5: So providers that you're now consulting.
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: So the providers I consult with, they predominantly take insurance.
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: So I don't take insurance. Patients pay out of pocket.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: I have memberships. I've tried every avenue of how to
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: do this the best way for the patient. And at
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: one point I was, you know, doing per visit. I
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: found it didn't work because what was happening was they
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: didn't want to come up with the money to.
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: Come see me.
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: Then they ended up going to an urgent care center.
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  Speaker 1: They were misdiagnosed. They ended up having to come back
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: to see me anyway. Now I had to correct from
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: what an urgent care center did, which was incorrect. get
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: them on the right medications to treat whatever ailment that
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: they had gone there for and found that, you know,
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: a monthly fee, you know, we have like this for
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: functional medicine is $ 2, 500 a year. They pay up front,
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: they get a 10% discount or they can make monthly payments.
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: We don't charge finance fees or anything like that. For
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: functional medicine, that turned out to be the best way
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: because people can come here every day if they had to.
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: And we did have a couple of patients that did that,
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: but it was very few and far between. Most people
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: don't want to live in a doctor's office, but it
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: was good that they knew that they can either text me,
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: call me, or come in for a visit. My older
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: son was misdiagnosed for 10 years. The whole time he
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: had had Lyme disease. So that sent me off on
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: an entirely different branch of medicine. I ended up getting
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: involved with Lyme disease, joined ILADS, found Dr. Horowitz, went
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: away for training with him and preceptorships. And that opened
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: up an entirely different door for me, which what I
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: didn't know is you cannot take insurance when you're treating
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: Lyme disease. I found that out the hard way because
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: I was still taking insurance and treating patients for Lyme disease.
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: And I had UnitedHealthcare that dropped me with no explanation
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: and sent a letter out to all my patients that
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: I dropped them. And every time I called to find
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: out what was going on, I could not get a
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: straight answer. So it was my second year with ILADS,
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: which is the International Alignment Associated Disease Society. And they
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: had a panel of attorneys there for people who were
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: having issues with insurance companies and things like that. So
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: I decided to go to this cause it was, I
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: was pretty new in the Lyme community. I decided to
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: go to this panel just to see what other people
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: were talking about to see if maybe that was a
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: reason for the insurance company dropping me. And there was
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: this one attorney that was just bigger than life. Like
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: he should definitely be on one of those, those, you know,
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: law dramas, but he, um, you know, asked me how
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: I was charging for for visits. And I said, I
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: was charging the insurance company. He just literally got in
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: my face and said, don't you know, there's no such
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: thing as Lyme disease.
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: Don't you know? I mean, he just was like comically
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: berating me in front of everybody.
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: And, uh, and he said, that's why they dropped you.
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: And if you go back and try and recoup the
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: money that they never sent you, they'll report you to
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: your certifying agency and they will do everything to have
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: you lose your license because they don't want to pay
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: for tick-borne diseases. So That was I've had so many
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: eye opening experiences as a nurse practitioner.
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: That was one of many.
• 10:55
  Speaker 5: Yeah, absolutely.
• 10:59
  Speaker 4: So what what has been like the most challenging thing
• 11:02
  Speaker 4: that you had to overcome in order to now run
• 11:05
  Speaker 4: a successful concierge practice?
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: Wow, that's a really good question.
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: I had so many starts and stops along the way,
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: and I had to learn, you know, so many things
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: along the way, just as an employer, hiring employees. I mean,
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: I feel like I've nailed it now, but in the beginning,
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: I was really hiring the wrong people. You know, they
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: would present themselves so well in person, their resumes, you know,
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: showed how well they can do the job. But then
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: when I hired them, they really did not do what.
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: They said that they could do. I've had issues with that.
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: I've had issues where I thought maybe because I can
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: be a little bit more laid back, maybe I need
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: somebody who's a little bit more feisty.
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: That did not work out at all well.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: And I remember an old boss I had when I
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: was in sales, he had said to me, when you
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: hire somebody, you want to hire somebody who's like you,
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: because that's when you know that you're going to, you'll
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: both get along, you'll both mesh. And after making so
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: many blunders, I decided to take that advice and that
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: has paid off so well for me. So the office
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: now is an exceptionally laid back environment. Everyone has their
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: own job to do. We all work so well together.
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: I've had a number of office managers that I found
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: it's easier just to do it myself. Because I don't
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: have to pay somebody to do nothing, pretty much. I
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: feel like that office manager role went right to their head.
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: And it didn't happen with one. It didn't happen with two.
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: It seemed like it happened with all of them. And
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: so I said, okay, there's no more managers here. I'll
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: be taking care of everything. And now I have assistant managers.
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: So I have an assistant manager for the office side.
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: I have a med spa here as well. We do
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: IV vitamins. We do vitamin injections. We have halo therapy
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: from Himalayan salt. We have an infrared sauna with red
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: light therapy. Couldn't get anybody to walk in the door
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: for those reasons, so I had to go away for
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: training for injecting fillers and Botox and things that I
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: don't necessarily agree with. We actually bought a machine that
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: takes the serum from your blood and makes it into
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: an all-natural filler. That I love much, much better. So
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: it actually, we can use that as a filler. So
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: it has your own properties, which helps to improve connective tissue,
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: grow collagen, fill in areas. And it continues to do
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: this for up to a year or two.
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: So those are the things I really, I try and
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: do things as naturally as possible.
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: But in the beginning, I definitely had to start, you know,
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: using hyaluronic acid fillers and Botox because that's what was
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: bringing people in the door. And then once they saw
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: that we, what we do all naturally, people started to
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: slowly change.
• 13:55
  Speaker 5: Wow. Amazing. Yeah.
• 13:56
  Speaker 4: It sounds like a lot of moving pieces and arms
• 14:00
  Speaker 4: and legs of the businesses. So could you give us
• 14:03
  Speaker 4: a sneak peek into what it looks like on the
• 14:06
  Speaker 4: backend to operate all of that? Like what your role
• 14:09
  Speaker 4: is and then the people that work with you.
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: So I manage everything.
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: Um, I do all the buying, all the purchasing, I
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: do the payroll, um, I literally take care of all
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: of the, you know, there are.
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: Certain people we still take insurance for.
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: When I stopped taking insurance, my 80 plus year olds,
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: I kept on insurance because a lot of them were
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: my patients for up to 13 years. And I felt
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: terrible to just cut them off because a lot of
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: people don't accept Medicare as it is. And so I
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: kept anybody 80 years of age and up. That was
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: in 2021 when I went concierge. So I manage all
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: of the insurance issues that they don't pay the claims
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: or they're looking for a refund. I have to submit
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: additional information and things like that. That's exceptionally time-consuming. So
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: I have somebody who actually started with me when I
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: opened my, my practice back in 2016. Um, she left
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: for a short time and then she actually returned recently
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: and she loves talking to insurance companies. She loves trying
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: to put the pieces of the puzzles together. So she
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: gets all of the ones that are rejected. So she
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: could figure out why were they rejected? Then she gets
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: them back to me and then I re resubmit them. Um,
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: I have another employee who's been with me almost since
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: the day of inception. Um, I opened 10 years ago.
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: It'll be 10 years in November. She started with me
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: nine years ago. So she can literally finish my sentences.
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: She was an office manager at one point. She's the
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: only one that didn't go to her head. She did
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: an amazing job.
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: She got married. She had a baby.
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: She was going to be moving to North Carolina. And
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: so she actually found somebody to replace her before she left,
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: which was incredible. Sadly, exceptionally sadly, Her baby was only
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: three months old and her husband died unexpectedly. He was
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: only in his 30s. She came home and found him
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: dead in the bedroom. And that was, when I say devastating,
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: that doesn't even cut how devastating it was. Because I
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: knew him almost as long as I knew her. And
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: she never did move to North Carolina. She ended up taking,
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: you know, obviously additional time off. And then when she returned,
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: she only works two days a week right now. Her
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: daughter just turned two years old. So those two days
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: a week she's here, she's literally doing the work of
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: an entire week's worth because she just knows what she's doing.
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: She knows everything. When her whole world got taken away
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: from her.
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: She was trying to just do anything to stay busy.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: So she was working for a friend who owned a florist.
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: she was working for someplace else. And then she was
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: just like, I really don't, I'm like, I love working here.
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: Cause she didn't knew what she was doing. And so when,
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: you know, she came back for.
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: Those two days, she's, she's, she's, she's a duplicate of
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: me is what she really is.
• 16:59
  Speaker 4: Wow.
• 16:59
  Speaker 5: Well, thank you so much for sharing that. And my
• 17:02
  Speaker 5: heart goes out to her.
• 17:04
  Speaker 4: And it sounds like the people that you did end
• 17:06
  Speaker 4: up hiring and taking on are really passionate, much like
• 17:10
  Speaker 4: they're interested in solving the pieces of the puzzle when
• 17:13
  Speaker 4: it comes to insurance claims and organizing and all of that.
• 17:16
  Speaker 4: It sounds like it's similar to how you are as
• 17:19
  Speaker 4: a clinician, really looking to problem solve and not being
• 17:23
  Speaker 4: afraid to roll up your sleeves and get new degrees
• 17:25
  Speaker 4: and certifications and qualifications to help your patients. Yeah.
• 17:29
  Speaker 5: Sounds amazing. And now let's go a little bit to
• 17:31
  Speaker 5: the front end.
• 17:32
  Speaker 4: So say somebody gets interested in either the wellness side
• 17:36
  Speaker 4: of the business or like the beauty side and the
• 17:38
  Speaker 4: beauty spa, or, you know, somebody wants to become a patient.
• 17:42
  Speaker 5: So walk us through like the client journey of that.
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: So two different businesses.
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: When you walk in the front door, it's the office,
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: the medical office. Off to the right is an entirely
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: different area. That's the IV lounge and med spa. And
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: a lot of times what we'll do is they'll be
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: patients on both sides. So if you're a patient on
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: the medical side, there are some of the memberships that
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: include the IVs, the vitamin injections, the halotherapy, and the
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: infrared sauna. We don't have anything that includes the beautification part.
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: That's entirely separate. We do all natural weight loss. We've
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: won a number of Reader Choice Awards for the medical
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: office as well as the med spa. People like that
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: I try not to prescribe meds if I don't have to.
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: They like that I try and get them off their medications.
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: So like I had a.
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: Patient that, you know, came to me. She was literally
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: a hot mess. And I think the problem is that
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: when providers prescribe a medication, they're not really paying attention
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: to how long they're prescribing it for. So she was
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: on a PPI for over 25 years. Her pH in
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: her stomach was too high. The nutrients that she's eating
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: are not getting absorbed. She ended up with candida throughout
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: her entire GI tract. She had a doctor who was
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: giving her dexamethasone to rinse out her mouth to try
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: and decrease the amount of.
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: Oral sores she had.
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: The oral sores were because of the dry mouth and
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: the candida. So the dexamethasone was actually increasing the candida.
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: She was a hot mess. And so it was, you know,
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: trying to get her off of one medication at a time.
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: Like what we really focused on was what were the
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: top meds she was taking that were causing the dry mouth.
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: We got her off of those. A lot of them
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: she really.
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: Didn't need, and a lot of them were able to
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: be replaced with supplements. She wasn't drinking the right amount
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: of water, so we got her water intake up. So
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: she drinks half of her body weight in ounces of
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: water now. Her mouth was so dry, she couldn't eat
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: any longer because she had no saliva to break down
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: the food. These are the patients I get.
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: And they're going, she had to have had eight different
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: doctors that were actually seeing her. You know, she had
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: had an enormous panic attack five years earlier while she
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: was in Florida visiting her daughter. Ends up in a fib.
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: They put her on Xarelto and Siltiazem. She never had
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: another round of a fib.
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: She converted right back into a sinus rhythm, but they
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: kept her on these medications for the past five years.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: So I wanted to prescribe her idraconazole for the candida
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: in her GI tract, but I couldn't do that because
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: of Xarelto. got in touch with the cardiologist to try
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: and get her off of the Xarelto and the Diltiazem.
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: I actually did a Halter monitor for two weeks. She
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: never went into AFib. She actually has Cardia. Actually, she
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: doesn't have Cardia. It's on her Apple Watch. She's able
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: to get a reading of what her heart rhythm is
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: on a minute-by-minute basis. And he absolutely refused to take
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: her off those medications. So there's a lot of old
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: thinking old thought processes too. You know, a younger provider
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: would have been more up on, well, the research shows,
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: you know, he kept saying her Chad score was two. Well,
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: her Chad score was two because she, she was over
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: the age of 65. So there's one point right there.
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: The other point was because she was female. That doesn't
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: tell me she's going to have another AFib.
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: You know what I mean? Like some of the things
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: that I deal with are ludicrous.
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: You know, so it's a lot of taking on more
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: than I ever thought I would take on. And it's
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: hard to refer patients out when I know I'm going
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: to be referring them to a doctor like that. You know,
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: somebody with old school ideas. Nothing that's newer and, you know,
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: cutting edge.
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: We'll put it that way.
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: But she's never gone back into AFib. All of the
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: problems she had are reversing themselves. She's no longer bleeding out.
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: This poor lady was a hot disaster. She really was.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: So I'm so happy when she comes in now and
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: she still feels like, you know, she's not where she
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: wants to be. Well, she only started seeing me in October.
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: It's not even a year yet. You know, I have
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: to keep reminding her where she started from. And then
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: she kind of like then she's like, OK, I get it.
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: I'm like, it didn't take you, you know, nine months
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: to get here. It took you decades to get to
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: where you are now. It's not going to take you
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: decades to get better, but it's going to take you
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: longer than you think it will.
• 22:19
  Speaker 5: Yeah, absolutely.
• 22:20
  Speaker 4: And as a pharmacist, I am absolutely appalled at the
• 22:24
  Speaker 4: amount of polypharmacy.
• 22:26
  Speaker 5: That goes on.
• 22:27
  Speaker 4: And in the retail setting, when I am out there
• 22:31
  Speaker 4: dispensing meds, I'm just like, how can people be prescribed
• 22:35
  Speaker 4: so many things? And like you said, so many different
• 22:39
  Speaker 4: providers following the old guidelines and the algorithms, but not
• 22:44
  Speaker 4: really cross-communicating. And then really, I find that the pharmacist
• 22:48
  Speaker 4: is the gatekeeper, and I say this all the time.
• 22:51
  Speaker 4: So we actually should be educating and advocating for deprescribing
• 22:56
  Speaker 4: whenever possible. But of course, because it hurts the retail's
• 22:59
  Speaker 4: bottom line, that doesn't really happen. And then we have
• 23:03
  Speaker 4: MTM services now that are supposed to do that, but
• 23:07
  Speaker 4: they tend to also err on the side of, well,
• 23:09
  Speaker 4: let's over-Medicaid rather than under-Medicaid. And so it just is
• 23:14
  Speaker 4: a vicious cycle. And I'm so glad that there's providers
• 23:17
  Speaker 4: like yourself that are willing to go the extra mile
• 23:21
  Speaker 4: and communicate and contact the providers and educate and Who knows,
• 23:25
  Speaker 4: maybe if enough of us do that, the providers will
• 23:27
  Speaker 4: then look at the research and reevaluate.
• 23:31
  Speaker 5: Because really, it's on an individual basis, and.
• 23:34
  Speaker 4: We can't start to lump people together without actually looking
• 23:39
  Speaker 4: at what the risks are for this individual patient of
• 23:42
  Speaker 4: staying on a medication or discontinuing the medication.
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 23:46
  Speaker 4: So, I'm really, really happy to hear that people like
• 23:49
  Speaker 4: yourself are doing the work and doing the advocacy for
• 23:53
  Speaker 4: their patients. And like you said, it's really much more
• 23:57
  Speaker 4: beneficial for the person to be able to function without
• 24:01
  Speaker 4: that band-aid so that their biology can then kick in
• 24:05
  Speaker 4: and the feedback loops and the biochemistry that we have
• 24:08
  Speaker 4: and everything.
• 24:09
  Speaker 5: Using food as medicine, maybe using some.
• 24:11
  Speaker 4: Supplements, some lifestyle things that they can do on a
• 24:15
  Speaker 4: regular basis instead of having to rely on a system
• 24:19
  Speaker 4: that has a lot of side effects in that one
• 24:22
  Speaker 4: medication that we were able to discontinue. So amazing to
• 24:27
  Speaker 4: hear that. And I would love to also know what...
• 24:32
  Speaker 4: kind of diagnoses or like what kind of specialty areas
• 24:37
  Speaker 4: you've had to become an expert in to serve your clients?
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: So when COVID hit, a lot of practices closed down
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: or consolidated. And so to try and get somebody in
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: with a specialist, you're looking at months. Like I have
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: a patient right now. I can't get her to GI
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: until January. There are certain things I can't do. I
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: can't do colonoscopies. I can't do endoscopies. You know, I
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: can do other things. But if they're having, you know,
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: physical issues that I'm concerned about, It's just a different
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: world right now. It's so difficult, but I've had to
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: really take over with endocrinology.
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: Oh my gosh.
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: I took over all the thyroid because I found that
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: endocrinologists do not know how to manage thyroid disease at all.
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: Their guidelines are backwards. You know, the T3 is the
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: active form of thyroid, but they follow the T4 or
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: the TSH, which makes zero sense to me. So years ago,
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: I had thyroid cancer. It was an incidental finding. I
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: had severe thyroid disease. My TSH was about 5.3, but
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: my symptoms were astronomical. You would think my TSH was
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: closer to 90. That's how bad I was. I could
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: gain and lose about 20 pounds in a week.
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: My emotions were all over the place. anxiety attacks, panic attacks.
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: It was totally not me.
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: Like there was nothing about this that was me losing
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: my hair, losing my eyebrows, heart palpitations, just from folding clothes.
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: My heart rate would go into an SVT into the 150s, you.
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: Know, doctor after doctor, after doctor, you know, two and
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: a half years of this. And nobody is even putting
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: their hands on my thyroid, you know, no thyroid ultrasounds,
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: nothing like that. And it wasn't until, um, I kept,
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: and I was coughing.
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: Like that was a big thing.
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: I was, I had such dyspnea and such, uh, this
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: chronic cough that at one point I'm telling them I'm
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: coughing up tissue. Like there is a, there's something I'm
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: coughing up. That is a, is an organ in my
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: body is coming out of my, the craziest thing ever.
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: And nothing.
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: I went to the pulmonologist. Um, he had me walk
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: around his office with pulse oximeter. to do an exercise
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: pulse oximetry test. And, um, my heart rate just walking
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: was in the one sixties. My stats went down to
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: this stats went down to sixties. I have blue lips
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: and he diagnosed me with.
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: An anxiety disorder. I'm female. Of course I have an
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: anxiety disorder. Don't we all?
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: So it was just like, I have like, I have,
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: I am not impressed with the medical community at all.
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: Based on what happened to me and all the patients
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: I see.
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: And I think that that experience made me the provider
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: that I am today because I don't let things go.
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: I am like a pit bull and I will figure
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: it out. You're not going to leave my office without
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: me figuring it out. Like I am that dedicated to
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: my patients and they know it, they know it. But yeah,
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: I finally passed out and my 13 year old, he's
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: now 38. He was 13 years old at the time,
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: found me in the shower, passed out, called 911. And
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: at that point, I thought I had a pulmonary emboli
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: because I really couldn't breathe.
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: They got me to the hospital. They did a CAT scan,
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: which they should have done two years ago. And it
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: was my thyroid that was actually growing in and blocking
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: off my trachea.
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: And that was a tissue that I was coughing up.
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: And so they took out my thyroid along with it
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: came an itty bitty tiny little cancer. So my TSH
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: is always suppressed now.
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: But I had to.
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: Walk into my endocrinologist's office. She was an integrative endocrinologist.
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: I really, really liked her. She studied under Deepak Chopra.
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: She was fantastic when I first started seeing her. Brought
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: in a box of research on T3. She finally half-heartedly
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: started me on Cytomel and that was a missing piece.
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: So my TSH was great. My T4 looked great, but
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: my T3 was low.
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: I wasn't converting. And it's not in the guidelines, like
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: the endocrinology guidelines. It's just not there.
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: And so she finally got me on Cytomel and my
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: everything changed. I felt like I was back to my
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: normal self. But then the medical community must have given
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: her a bite because she turned into every other doctor
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: I had been seeing.
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: You know, she wasn't listening to me anymore. She was
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: exceptionally good at listening to me. She started dropping my
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: thyroid medications because of my age. She was worried about osteoporosis.
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: I'll deal with osteoporosis. I can't deal with the brain fog,
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: the constipation, the hair loss again, because you're changing my
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: thyroid medications, you know? So I stopped seeing her.
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: And I saw a nurse practitioner that I've known for years.
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: And I pretty much run my own labs.
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: You know, I, you know, tell her what medications to
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: change for me.
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: I lost a lot of weight when I changed.
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: Um that's an entirely different story about thermography um but
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: the thermography was showing that I was developing I could
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: develop breast cancer in about 10 years from now and
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: it was because of silly things it was you know
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: I was cooking on aluminum foil I don't eat meat
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: so I was eating more fish the fish had a
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: lot of mercury so a lot of heavy metals and
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: storing food in plastic containers, drinking from plastic water bottles.
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: I got rid of all those things, including nonstick pans
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: and not knowing those things were causing.
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: A hormonal imbalance in my body. And I lost 30 pounds.
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: So this is my normal weight. But for years, I
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: had gained 30 pounds, especially after my thyroid was gone.
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: And so I just figured that was my new metabolic rate.
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: My weight was 30 pounds heavier than this. It wasn't
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: because of that. It was because of the things that
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: I was ingesting. And it wasn't the food. It was
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: the other stuff. So I got rid of all of
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: that and dropped the 30 pounds. My energy level skyrocketed.
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: My son found that the breast thermography wasn't changing. He said,
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: it's going to be your well water. And I said,
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: we have the house's filters. He said, you can't filter
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: out heavy metals. And sure enough, he was right. I
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: started using a distiller. We actually bought a distiller. He
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: was the one with Lyme disease, my older son. He
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: had done a lot of research on distilled water. And
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: he bought me the same one that I had bought
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: him years ago. And within two months, I went back
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: for my next thermography appointment and my breast.
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: Tissue went back to normal.
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: It's just amazing that we don't realize what's going on
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: inside the body. And I think what disturbed me the
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: most was that this thermography showed things that mammograms, MRIs,
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: and ultrasounds cannot show.
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: It's FDA approved.
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: It's been FDA approved since the 1950s, but there's no
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: money in it. It's a camera, an infrared camera that
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: takes pictures of your body, your entire body or, you know,
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: just body parts, but you don't need these big bells
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: and whistles. There's no insurance involved.
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: It costs $ 300. Like, You know, our medical system is
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: literally broken. It is so broken. Everything is about making
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: money and nothing about helping the patient.
• 31:47
  Speaker 5: Yeah, absolutely.
• 31:48
  Speaker 4: I mean, you're speaking to how disjointed each part of
• 31:52
  Speaker 4: the medical system is and how all the providers, even
• 31:56
  Speaker 4: the specialists, they're all specializing in a tiny piece of
• 32:01
  Speaker 4: that puzzle and nobody's coming together and putting the whole
• 32:05
  Speaker 4: thing under like a functional medicine lens.
• 32:07
  Speaker 5: Or a root cause or just a unifying theory. Like
• 32:11
  Speaker 5: I think I heard a saying that there's not enough
• 32:13
  Speaker 5: generalists anymore.
• 32:15
  Speaker 4: Everybody's a specialist because It's a higher qualification.
• 32:19
  Speaker 5: They're more respected. They're paid higher, you know, and they're
• 32:22
  Speaker 5: valued more overall.
• 32:24
  Speaker 4: So everybody's going into the specialty areas and going on
• 32:28
  Speaker 4: residencies and fellowships and training over training. But then you
• 32:32
  Speaker 4: kind of miss the big picture when you're focusing in
• 32:36
  Speaker 4: on the tiny little piece of it.
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: You said a mouthful. You really said a mouthful. You know,
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: There are physicians who go to medical school nowadays. These
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: medical schools are owned by the pharmaceutical companies. They graduate,
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: not even realizing that the entire body is connected and
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: everything is going to affect everything else. But you, you know,
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: you have a gastroenterologist and you have a neurologist, you
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: have an endocrinologist, you have a rheumatologist. It's one body,
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: you know, and if you can have that one provider
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: who can see the entire body, and how everything is
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: connected and be able to fix what needs to be fixed,
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: the entire body gets helped, not just the gut or
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: the skin or the eyes or the, you know what
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: I mean? It's the whole, and that's what I do.
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: I see things that other providers just don't see. And
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: it's because, you know, I think it's because of my,
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: my personal experience with what happened to me with my thyroid,
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: my son who was misdiagnosed for 10 years and the
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: whole time he had Lyme disease and nobody was really
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: looking at the whole picture.
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: Everybody was just piecemealing everything together.
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: You know, I remember being in the hospital, you know,
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: when I passed out and it was before they did
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: the CAT scan and my doctor came in and told
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: me this was my asthma. So I'd been treated for
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: asthma because of the coughing, the shortness of breath, the
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: whole bit.
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: Have you ever had asthma?
• 34:06
  Speaker 5: No.
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: I do now because he destroyed my lungs with all
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: of the steroids they gave me. So now I definitely
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: have to use it before I go for a run
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: or something like that. Now I've developed exercise-induced asthma, but
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: never had it before that. And I remember him coming
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: into my hospital room. They put me in the ICU
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: and he said, this is going to be your asthma.
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: And my exact words to him were, if this is
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: my asthma, you might as well bury me now because
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to survive this.
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: You know what I mean?
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: Like with all the prednisone I was on, the steroid
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: inhalers I was on, The rescue inhalers I was on,
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: I was not going to survive this if this was
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: my asthma.
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: It never was asthma. But nobody looked at my thyroid.
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: So I'm exceptionally.
• 34:49
  Speaker 5: Good.
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: I'm a very good diagnostician. I'm very good at diagnosing
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: what's going on with a person. But I'm also very
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: good at treating the entire body and not just a
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: piece of it.
• 35:00
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 35:00
  Speaker 4: Well, my philosophy is that we should really adhere to
• 35:03
  Speaker 4: the Hippocratic oath and first do no harm. But unfortunately,
• 35:07
  Speaker 4: it seems like there's so many iatrogenic caused like exacerbations
• 35:13
  Speaker 4: and problems that are caused with polypharmacy and.
• 35:17
  Speaker 5: Drugs and things like that.
• 35:18
  Speaker 4: So You know, I think we really need to reevaluate
• 35:21
  Speaker 4: as a system and also as a participant in that
• 35:24
  Speaker 4: system and communicate that to our providers, our preferences and
• 35:29
  Speaker 4: our willingness to make lifestyle changes and dietary changes and
• 35:34
  Speaker 4: other kinds of things and ask those questions or look
• 35:38
  Speaker 4: for providers like yourself that will offer alternatives. And, you know,
• 35:42
  Speaker 4: I don't even like the word alternatives anymore because it's
• 35:45
  Speaker 4: kind of painted as a less than, but I think
• 35:49
  Speaker 4: everybody should have choice, you to be autonomous and to
• 35:54
  Speaker 4: make a decision based on the facts provided and not
• 35:58
  Speaker 4: just an outdated guideline that the research shows is not
• 36:02
  Speaker 4: the only way anymore. So, you know, I think education
• 36:05
  Speaker 4: is the first step. And like, since I have you
• 36:08
  Speaker 4: on here, I'd love to hear from your clinical practice,
• 36:12
  Speaker 4: what you see as the biggest root causes that are
• 36:16
  Speaker 4: underlying some of these disease processes that we've been describing
• 36:20
  Speaker 4: like chronic inflammation and, you know, bacterial or other kinds
• 36:26
  Speaker 4: of microbial overgrowth? You know, anything that like you feel
• 36:31
  Speaker 4: is unifying or exacerbating these disease processes?
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: It's diet.
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: Diet is the most important thing that you can focus
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: on in your body. It is the one thing that's
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: going to either make you very healthy or very sick.
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: And there's really no in between. So the American diet,
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: In other countries, we're known as a junk food country because.
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: Our diet is nothing but junk food.
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: You have to work very hard to live in this
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: country and eat healthy, very hard. You cannot just go
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: into a grocery store and buy something off the shelf
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: and think it's going to be healthy for you because
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: most likely it's not. If you're not shopping the outskirts
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: of the grocery store and going through the aisles, you're
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: really going to get yourself sick. So I see that
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: people are exceptionally dehydrated.
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: They're not drinking enough water.
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: They have to pay attention to the water that they
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: are drinking. That's why I like distilled water. There's times
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: when my urine is just clear. If there's no color
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: to it, I'll actually add Celtic salt, the gray salts,
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: they're larger granules, just to try and give me some electrolytes.
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: I have an electrolyte drink every single day to make
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: sure I'm getting everything that I need. My diet is
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: exceptionally healthy. Anybody who comes to my office gets an
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: anti-inflammatory diet that I put together. It started with my
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: doctorate degree. It was more for preventing the progression from
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: prediabetes to diabetes. That's what my research was on. And
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: it was statistically significant just from diet alone. Outside the research,
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: because there's inclusion and exclusion criteria, I had patients who
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: were so diabetic that they were going to be needing
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: to start on insulin. Like this one man, he was
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: a truck driver. I'll never forget him. His A1C was 15.
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: And I said to him, you're going to start losing
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: body parts if we don't get this under control. And
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: being a truck driver, he's eating in the truck, not
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: being able to make meals. So his diet was absolutely god-awful,
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: not exercising the whole bit. And he had said if
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: I started him on insulin, he was going to lose
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: his job. He said they'll find a way to fire
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: me because there's such a big risk of somebody on
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: insulin not having enough sugar in their body and going
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: into insulin shock. And I gave him six months. I
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: gave him the diet that I gave to everybody else.
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: And in six months, his A1C went from 15 to 5.4.
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: He lost almost 100 pounds just from changing his diet.
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: That's how bad his diet was.
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: In six months, he reversed everything, you know, and the
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: medical community said for decades that you cannot reverse diabetes.
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: It's a metabolic issue. Once you have it, you have
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: it forever. I was 15 years old when my dad
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: was diagnosed with diabetes. His whole family was diagnosed with
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: adult onset, him, his six sisters, and his mother. And
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: I remember saying to my dad, you know, if you
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: didn't drink so much, we're Italian, if you didn't drink
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: so much red wine, you know, maybe cut back on
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: some of the bread and the pastas. I'll bet you
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: that this, cause he wasn't a sweet person, a sweet
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: eating person, you know, maybe this would all reverse itself.
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: And he thought it was so cute to be this
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: concerned about him. And he said, you know, I talked
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: this over with my doctor and he said that it's
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: diabetes is irreversible.
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: Well, guess what?
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: The GLP ones come out. Soon as the pharmaceutical company
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: can make money on it. Now, yes, you can reverse
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: diabetes with diet alone. As long as you have a
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: GLP-1 on board. Because think about the GLP-1s. There's no
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: insulin involved. There's nothing on there that decreases your blood sugar.
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: You know, it works in the brain to decrease those
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: cravings of food. It works in the gut by decreasing
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: gastric emptying. So you feel fuller for a longer period
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: of time. But other than that, I mean, you know,
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: semaglutide is semaglutide is semaglutide. Whether it's being sold as
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: Ozempic or Wagovi, it's the exact same medication and pretty
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: much the same dosing as well, whether it's diabetes or
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: you're using it for weight loss. And people are reversing
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: their diabetes. So, yeah, I'm not a fan of the
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: medical community at all. And I've lost so much faith
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: and trust in it.
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: And it's mostly because, you.
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: Know, people go to work for, you know, an institution,
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: they have to go by what that medical director says.
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: And I honestly, I'd probably get fired now if I
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: had to work for somebody else, because I'm sorry if
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: you don't agree with that, but I'm still going to
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: do it my way. My way works, you know, I
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: reverse the disease process. I get patients on a healthy diet.
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: I increase the amount of water they're drinking and guess what?
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: All of their medical problems go away, you know? So yeah,
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't, I wouldn't last long.
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: We'll put it that way.
• 41:06
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 41:07
  Speaker 4: It's quite ironic that the people that are getting great
• 41:10
  Speaker 4: results for people reversing disease processes, getting people to deprescribe
• 41:15
  Speaker 4: their meds are the ones being villainized.
• 41:20
  Speaker 5: What world are we living in? Isn't that the goal
• 41:22
  Speaker 5: of health? Yep.
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: So true.
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: And like that doctor that wouldn't take my patient off
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: of the Xarelto, um, and diltiazem when she never, I mean,
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: she had AFib once. And I've had that happen to
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: a lot of people. During COVID, they would go into
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: an AFib rhythm and then never again. You know, the
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: flu will do that to you. Anything that's going to,
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: you know, irritate the SA node in the heart can
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: throw you into AFib. It doesn't mean it's going to
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: be permanent, but you get put on these medications, you're
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: on them forever. And so she's explaining to him, she
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: practices functional medicine. So she's been slowly getting me off
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: the medications.
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: I don't need.
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: And he said to her, I don't believe in functional medicine.
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: And when she ever said that to me, I couldn't,
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: I laughed out loud. I said, so he doesn't.
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: Believe in Hippocrates?
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: Hippocrates was clearly a functional medicine doctor who said, like,
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: food is medicine. Like, if you prescribe medication for your patient,
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: you're doing them a disservice. So he doesn't believe in
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: the father of medicine. That I found so funny.
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: I don't believe in functional medicine. What does he even
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: think it is? Like, that's what was so funny.
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: We're reversing the disease process. by giving the person the
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: right foods to eat, the right amount of water to drink,
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: you know, exercise, all the things the body's supposed to do,
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: and you reverse the diseases and you get them off
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: their medications.
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: But a doctor doesn't believe in that. That was just comical.
• 42:46
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I hear that sentiment too.
• 42:48
  Speaker 4: And it also makes me ponder, well, what do you
• 42:51
  Speaker 4: think it even means?
• 42:53
  Speaker 5: How can you.
• 42:53
  Speaker 4: Disagree with something before you know the facts about it?
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: Yep, exactly.
• 42:58
  Speaker 4: Okay, well, besides food, which is clearly a number one
• 43:03
  Speaker 4: thing that we need to look at, what are the
• 43:05
  Speaker 4: other pillars that you find are necessary or helpful so
• 43:09
  Speaker 4: that people are working towards reversal and repair?
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: So we talked about water. We talked about the proper
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: type of foods to eat. We didn't go into detail.
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: And if anybody wants to know that, I can always
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: post it on my website, the diet that I offer
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: to my patients. It's all inclusive. It's just very healthy options.
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: I even have snacks listed that you can eat. Vitamin D,
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: huge misunderstood vitamin for real. So we were all taught
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: that it's a fat soluble vitamin. Now we know it's
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: actually a hormone. If you don't take it, your levels
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: are going to drop immediately. Fat-soluble vitamins will generally stay
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: in your body for a longer period of time. And
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: if you're overweight or have an abundance of fat cells,
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: it's going to stay in your body even longer. We
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: know that's no longer true with vitamin D. Another thing
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: is the levels that it should be at. Optimally, it
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: should be between 60 and 80. In fact, 55 is
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: that magic number. If your vitamin D level isn't at
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: least 55, you're not going to get all the benefits
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: that it offers.
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: So vitamin D.
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: starts the levels for the lab starts at 30 to 100.
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: 100 is a little bit too high. It's going to
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: increase your calcium levels. You're not really going to become toxic,
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: but you can't have too much calcium in your body,
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: which is going to cause some neurological changes in your body.
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: So you want to keep those, make sure that you're
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: getting your vitamin D levels checked. 30 to 50 is
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: going to be good for your bones, but that's it.
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: Once you get into the 60 to 80, now it's
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: going to be covering good bone health, but it also
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: helps reduce your risk of Alzheimer's disease, ALS, Parkinson's, MS, cancers.
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: In fact, there was research done during COVID to find
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: out why certain people who either should have died from
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: COVID or at least ended up in the hospital and didn't,
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: and what they found was their vitamin D levels were
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: close to 80. That's how important vitamin D is. In fact,
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: if your vitamin D level is too low, it actually
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: contributes to autoimmune diseases, including MS. So it's one of
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: the most important vitamins that you can take. Probiotics is
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: another one. Probiotics are so essential.
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: They really are.
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: I was in second grade when I had strep throat
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: for an entire year and we didn't know anything about
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: probiotics back then because I'm 63 now. So that was
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: 50 something years ago. They didn't know anything about probiotics
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: back then. And starting in third grade, I started gaining weight,
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: which be normal.
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: You know, they give.
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: Animals, livestock, antibiotics to help them to get bigger, quicker,
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: gain weight faster so they can go to slaughter so
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: much earlier and make more money off of them. Antibiotics
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: are going to cause weight gain. I'm on penicillin orally
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: and getting injections of penicillin, which.
• 45:46
  Speaker 2: Hurt a lot. I remember that.
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: I finally had to have my tonsils out when I
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: was 10 years old, but That really set me up
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: for failure for years to follow. I ended up with
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: autoimmune diseases because my gut microbiome was so diseased from
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: being on these antibiotics for so long without the proper probiotics.
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: So as I got older, you know, my diet was
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: exceptionally healthy. I would gain weight a lot quicker than
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: my friends would, but it was all because of the microbiome.
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: Learned more and more about probiotics, got myself on the
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: right probiotics, and that alone changed my whole life. I
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: was healthier in my 40s, 50s, and 60s than I
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: was in my teenage years, 20s, and 30s, which is
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: sad if you think about it.
• 46:33
  Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah.
• 46:34
  Speaker 4: That is such a huge topic as well with how
• 46:38
  Speaker 4: much we're depending on these antibiotics, especially for children. And
• 46:43
  Speaker 4: as soon as they go to school or to daycare
• 46:45
  Speaker 4: or any public settings, they are going to come down
• 46:48
  Speaker 4: with some viral and bacterial illnesses.
• 46:50
  Speaker 5: And then we just.
• 46:51
  Speaker 4: first line, throw a bunch of antibiotics to them. And
• 46:54
  Speaker 4: then any sign of fever, we give them antipyretics. And
• 46:59
  Speaker 4: then we wonder what's going on with their gut and
• 47:01
  Speaker 4: why are they continuing to get ill?
• 47:04
  Speaker 5: And it's a problem.
• 47:06
  Speaker 4: And now we're noticing that there is such a thing
• 47:09
  Speaker 4: as bacterial resistance mechanisms. And now we have to be
• 47:13
  Speaker 4: careful and we have to practice antimicrobial stewardship to And
• 47:17
  Speaker 4: it's so, so challenging because now we've created all of
• 47:20
  Speaker 4: these mutant strains that we don't know what to do
• 47:23
  Speaker 4: with anymore.
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: So true.
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: And a lot of it too is, especially in primary care,
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: when you don't really know.
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: What the antibiotic does, you know?
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: So like azithromycin, for example, which is so overused because
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: it was given for everything.
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: And then when you really need it, it no longer works,
• 47:42
  Speaker 2: you know? So that was like, that was a big one.
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: So like for, I treat a lot of tick-borne diseases
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: and there are certain antibiotics for each different tick-borne disease.
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: But for Bartonella, you need azithromycin. You also need rifampin
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: and you need, you know, one of the tetracyclines. I
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: haven't had any issues. And so many patients are on
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: antibiotics for quite a while. Like my son was on
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: antibiotics for three and a half years before I finally
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: got it under control because he had had it for
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: so long. He got bit by a ticket six. He
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: had a bullseye rash on his calf. He had no
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: symptoms whatsoever. If he didn't have that bullseye rash, I
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: would have never known he got bit by a tick.
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: So his pediatrician put him on 10 to 14 days
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: of an antibiotic. And I can't remember which one it was,
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: but it wasn't a penicillin because he's allergic to penicillin.
• 48:32
  Speaker 2: So I'm not really sure what it was at this point.
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: 13 years later, he had a hernia and He's on
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: the table having the hernia repaired and the surgeon left
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: the OR to talk to me to find out if
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: he had a connective tissue disorder that I neglected to
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: tell him about. And I said, no, he was a
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: very healthy 19 year old kid, like no issues at all.
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: And they described his abdominal wall to look like Swiss cheese.
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: So I completely forgot at that moment that he had
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: had Lyme disease when he was younger. He reminded me
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: after the fact that he had Lyme disease because we
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: couldn't figure out what is going on with this connective tissue?
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: Just like, I had no idea why, you know, he
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: had one, he had pain in his left lower quadrant,
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: one little area, the tiniest hernia you can find, never experienced.
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: him to have his entire abdominal wall needing mesh for
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: everything to try and, you know, enclose all of the hernias,
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: which was just frightening. And it was after the surgery,
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: all hell broke loose. So whenever you have a chronic
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: form of these tick-borne diseases, there's a trigger. So they'll
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: still stay pretty dormant for a while. They'll reside in biofilm.
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: The immune system can't penetrate this biofilm. Antibiotics can't penetrate
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: this biofilm. They're happy-go-lucky staying in there until you have
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: some type of a traumatic event, whether it's an illness,
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: a surgery, an accident, a death of a loved one.
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: There's a trigger that just drops your immune system. The
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: biofilm breaks open, and now your body is infiltrated with
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: all this bacteria. And so it was after the surgery
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: that he started with the brain fog and the joint
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: pain and the muscle pain. I mean, it was just like...
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: it was a nightmare, you know, four years into this,
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: he could no longer urinate. Um, he had so much inflammation.
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: He's trying to push the urine, not telling us at
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: this point, not even telling his father or me, uh,
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: it wasn't until he was 26.
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: He couldn't urinate at all.
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: Cause he had built up his, his pelvic floor so
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: much that it was blocking his ability to urinate.
• 50:28
  Speaker 2: His prostate was fine.
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: Like we went through so many urologists, And I was
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: working as a hospitalist at the time. And fortunately, the
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: urologist met us Easter Sunday morning to show my son
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: how to self-catheterize himself.
• 50:40
  Speaker 2: It was an absolute nightmare. It really, really was. And
• 50:45
  Speaker 2: he was the only one.
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: My son had seen probably four to six doctors in
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: this period of time from 19 to 29. He was
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: the only one that actually tested him for Lyme disease twice.
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: But he tested him through local channels. So he's either
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: Quest or LabCorp. which is CDC guidelines. So you do
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: the ELISA. If the ELISA is negative, you never get
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: tested for Lyme disease. So his ELISA was always negative.
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: So he never actually got tested. So now he's 29,
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: a month away from turning 30. And I, for 10 years,
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: I did nothing but research and trying to figure out
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: what is going on with my kid because he's getting
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: worse and worse and worse and worse. And I found
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: one research article on the Journal of Urology and it
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: was a case study about a man who had walked
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: into this urologist's office with these exact symptoms. So I
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: called my son and I said, I know what this is.
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: You have Lyme disease. And he, I could cry when
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: I say this. He said, no, mom, they told me
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: it's all in my head. That is a terrible thing
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: to say to anybody.
• 51:44
  Speaker 2: Like if you don't know what it is, then you
• 51:46
  Speaker 2: don't know what it is.
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: It doesn't mean that their symptoms are made up or
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: you know, a figment of their imagination or anything else
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: like that.
• 51:54
  Speaker 2: It means that you don't know, not there's something wrong
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: with their brain, you know? So that really upset me.
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: And I just feel like if you tell a patient
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: that their symptoms are on their head, you need to
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: find a different way to earn a living because you
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: should not be a doctor.
• 52:07
  Speaker 2: You should not be a provider.
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: You should not be treating patients because if your ego
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: is that big that you can't say to yourself, wow,
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: I am missing something here. Maybe refer to it with
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: somebody else who might know what's going on. get out
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: of the medical profession seriously. That's my own personal, very
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: strong belief. So now I, you know, test him through hygienics,
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: which is, you know, the world-class lab.
• 52:32
  Speaker 2: For tick-borne diseases. And he was negative.
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: And I'm like, nope, this is impossible. So I sent
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: his blood off to our Armin labs in Germany. He
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: was negative. And I'm like, nope, he has to be positive.
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: It was the only thing that made sense at this point.
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: So now I'm a part of ILADS. I contacted the researcher.
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: He was the one that told me about ILADS.
• 52:51
  Speaker 2: And I joined ILADS. I find Dr. Horowitz, a Lyme expert.
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: I do all my training with him, my preceptorships with him.
• 52:57
  Speaker 4: And.
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: I'm going back in the conferences. So they have all
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: their conferences on the website that I can review.
• 53:06
  Speaker 2: For a price. I had to pay a lot of
• 53:09
  Speaker 2: money to go through all of these conferences. And it
• 53:11
  Speaker 2: was Dr.
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: Berescano, who now I know all these doctors so well,
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: was Dr. Berescano who was talking about the natural killer cells,
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: that when you have a chronic form of these diseases,
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: it will whittle away these natural killer cells. And the
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: test is going to come back a false negative. because
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: your immune system isn't strong enough to produce a positive antibody.
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: And so I checked my son's, it's called an HNK1
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: through LabCorp.
• 53:37
  Speaker 2: I tested him.
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: Normal values are 60 to 360. His was 10. That's
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: why he was never coming back positive. It wasn't until
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: he was on antibiotics for three years that his 10
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: turned into a 59, and the Lyme test came back indeterminate.
• 53:54
  Speaker 2: Once I got him up to the 70s, it came
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: back positive.
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: So it was like, I saw it in real time
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: how this actually works. So now what I do is
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: if I have a patient who, you know, either has
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: a history of a tick bite or Lyme disease from
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: years ago, the first thing I do is get an
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: HNK1 because if their Lyme test is going to be negative,
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: I know it's going to be a false negative because
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: if that number is so low, but I've never had
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: anybody with a 10. I did have one person with
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: an 11 and it did take a while for me
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: to get rid of her Lyme disease as well. Cause
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: it's just the longer you've had it, the longer it
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: takes to get rid of. So it's so important to
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: get the tick off of you as quick as possible.
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: That 24 to 48 hour.
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: Thing is ridiculous.
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: As soon as you get bit by the tick, you're
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: getting bacteria, but the longer it stays on you, the
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: more bacteria it's putting into your system. So as soon
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: as you get bit by a tick, you should get
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: treatment for it. I put people on a month's worth
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: of doxycycline. You know, I did a program for the
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: Connecticut APRN Society, and we were talking about doxycycline because
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: according to CDC and IDSA, two weeks, two weeks of
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: doxy is fine. If you have pimples, you can stay
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: on doxy for two years. But for a tick-borne disease
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: that can change your life forever, two weeks.
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: Like it makes no sense to me whatsoever at all.
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: So there is another Lyme vaccine that's coming to market
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: in 2027.
• 55:22
  Speaker 2: Right now, the.
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: Research isn't promising, but I'm sure they'll do things to
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: try and get it so that it'll be probably more
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: like 90% effective instead of 60% to 70% effective. So
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: I'm very looking forward to what's going to happen with
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: all these naysayers that Lyme doesn't exist, or you don't
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: have to worry about it when this vaccine is going
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: to be, you know, it's through Pfizer. They're a big
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: pharmaceutical company with a great sales force, so you know
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: that government is going to be pushing this vaccine. And
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: I think people should know that, you know, get it
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: or not, it's only going to cover Lyme disease. There's
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: 18 different bacterias, viruses that a tick can carry and parasites.
• 56:05
  Speaker 2: Lyme is only one of them.
• 56:09
  Speaker 4: Wow.
• 56:10
  Speaker 5: Yes.
• 56:11
  Speaker 4: I mean, these are complex issues that you're navigating. And
• 56:16
  Speaker 4: I think the fact that you personally had gone through
• 56:20
  Speaker 4: the medical system and were very disappointed and disillusioned and
• 56:25
  Speaker 4: then healed yourself. And then now with your son's journey
• 56:29
  Speaker 4: and Lyme disease, I mean, there's a lot of pain
• 56:33
  Speaker 4: and suffering and it's very challenging for sure to navigate
• 56:38
  Speaker 4: all that. And at the same time, it taught you
• 56:40
  Speaker 4: compassion and tenacity and to dig deeper. And now you
• 56:44
  Speaker 4: can turn around and serve so many other people through
• 56:47
  Speaker 4: those lessons. So it's just really inspiring to hear you
• 56:52
  Speaker 4: and to know that you've built this thriving practice.
• 56:56
  Speaker 5: And I really want to have you back for like.
• 56:58
  Speaker 4: 10 more sessions and episodes so we can talk about
• 57:01
  Speaker 4: parasites and like all these other different things that you
• 57:05
  Speaker 4: deal with and when, what your approach is. But we
• 57:09
  Speaker 4: are coming to the end of the episode. So if
• 57:11
  Speaker 4: you have one more minute, I'd love to do a
• 57:14
  Speaker 4: fire rapid round with you.
• 57:15
  Speaker 5: Sure. Okay.
• 57:17
  Speaker 4: So what's your number one advice to help somebody improve
• 57:21
  Speaker 4: their quality of life right now?
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: Stop eating anything that's processed or preserved. Stop eating anything
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: that comes from a box or a package. Start getting
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: back to basics. Start making your own food. If you're
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: going to eat meat, I never tell people not to
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: eat meat. Make sure it's organic. Make sure the eggs
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: you're buying are organic and pasteurized. Make sure I don't
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: eat any bread from this country. I buy flour from Italy.
• 57:50
  Speaker 2: I make my own bread.
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: It's the only bread that doesn't cause bloating, joint pain,
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: brain fog, all the stuff that the gluten in our
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: country causes because it's grown in poor soil. It's over
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: processed and it just changes the whole dynamics of the bread.
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: Drink half your body weight in ounces of water unless
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: you have heart failure or kidney disease. But it's really
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: going to be diet is going to be the most
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: important thing.
• 58:17
  Speaker 2: And start moving.
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: You really have to exercise every single day. None of
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: this three times a week or four times a week.
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: Exercise every single day. If you want to do treadmill
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: three or four times a week, that's great. The other
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: week should be strength training. You should definitely be moving
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: every single day. Because as soon as you start sitting still,
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: all the disease processes start coming to life. Every time
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: I hear somebody is going to retire, I don't get
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: joyful for them. I get anxious for them because when
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: people retire and they don't have a plan of how
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: they're going to get up every day, have a routine
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: every day, you know, get to the gym every day,
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: things like that. They think they work their whole lives.
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: They're exhausted. They just want to relax and sleep. Say
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: hello to death because that's what's going to happen next.
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: Everything that has been just on the surface is going
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: to start growing and you're going to be in the
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: ground before you want to. And that is a real
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: blunt way of saying it, but it is a God's
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: honest truth. I have never seen a retired person who
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: didn't get up and move every day, live a long life.
• 59:22
  Speaker 2: If they lived a long life, it was in a
• 59:23
  Speaker 2: nursing home, unfortunately.
• 59:27
  Speaker 5: Yeah, really, really great tips there.
• 59:29
  Speaker 4: So if there is one overlooked tip that you can
• 59:34
  Speaker 4: give somebody that's looking to improve their life outside of
• 59:37
  Speaker 4: diet and exercise, what would that be? And maybe it's
• 59:40
  Speaker 4: overlooked in both the conventional and perhaps even the functional spaces.
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: It's going to be make sure you're in a happy
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: and healthy relationship because stress alone will eat away at
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: your entire body really, really well. Stress really is a
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: number one killer. It causes a host of problems, including
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: heart disease and cancer. And, you know, my first marriage
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: was a very unhealthy marriage. I had more health problems
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: in my first marriage than you can possibly imagine. Once
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: I got divorced and got myself into therapy that I
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: honestly kicked and screamed over, I did not think I
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: needed a therapist. And thank God my sister just sat
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: on me until I finally started to go to one.
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 2: Changed my life. You have to get the right one.
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: You have to get somebody who's like you, you know, another,
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: just like you're going to hire employees that are like you.
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: You want to find a therapist who's like you because
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: you'll be able to communicate a lot better. But I
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: found one that literally she didn't take insurance. At the time,
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: I had two small kids. I couldn't afford $ 150 an hour.
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: I went to see her twice. And my first visit,
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: she asked me to write down 11 positive qualities about me.
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: And I could not think of one. This is how much.
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 2: Self-esteem he took from me. Like, you know, for years
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 2: I heard how.
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: I couldn't cook right. I couldn't iron right. I honestly
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: couldn't breathe right. I couldn't do anything right. And it
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: stays with you. You don't realize how that negativity can
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: really affect your body.
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 2: But once I got.
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: Divorced and went for therapy and, you know, really delved
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: into myself, I even, you know, joined a woman's group.
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 2: It was called Women Against Domestic Violence.
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: I did so much to get myself healthy that, I mean,
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: I can pick out a red flag now immediately. Before that,
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: I didn't see red. I swear, I just did not
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: see the red flags. You know, I had an excuse
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: for every reaction or every, you know, personality flop. There
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: was always a reason for it.
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 2: Well, that's great.
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: There's a reason for it. It doesn't need to be
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: my reason. It doesn't have to be my problem. It
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: doesn't have to be my issue. I get to walk
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: away and live my life the way I want to
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: live it. So my husband now is an absolute gem.
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 2: I don't even know.
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: I can't say enough wonderful things about him. He's not
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: only a great husband, he's just a great person. He
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: treats everybody the same, everybody with respect. He's just a,
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: I'm so grateful that I met him.
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 5: I really am.
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 4: Wow, what a powerful story of transformation and how much
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 4: changed literally like physically on a health level from that
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 4: spiritual emotional support that the relationship now gives you. So
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 4: last question, what advice would you give to an earlier
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 4: version of yourself?
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 2: Wow, don't marry your father.
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 4: No. All right.
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 5: Awesome. We'll keep it at that.
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 4: So please tell everybody, Pam, how they can get in
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 4: touch with you, learn more about your work.
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 5: Do you take new patients? Are you online as well
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 5: as in person? Give us all the deets.
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 4: I am.
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: So I actually treat people around the world. I have
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: patients in Italy. I have patients in Italy. in, uh,
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: Puerto Rico, in Australia right now. And I have them
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: all over the country. Um, I have to see you
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: for me to prescribe medications for you, especially in the country.
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 2: I have to see you once a year in Connecticut. Um,
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 2: and then I can prescribe anywhere.
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: I do a lot of televisits for people who live,
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: you know, in other areas, I, including in Connecticut, because
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: Connecticut's a pretty small state, but it's still a certain
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: areas will take about two hours to get to me.
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: So as long as I see you that one time,
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: once a year, I try and do all the testing.
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: We draw blood while you're here. I encourage people to
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: do the hygienics testing. The one that I use, it's
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: called the 401B panel.
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 2: So it's $ 1, 299.
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: I don't want people to think it's $ 12. 99. Medicare is
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: the only insurance company that will cover this test. Generally,
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: Medicare sets the standard, and the other insurance companies follow suit.
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: This is the only one they've never followed suit because
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: they don't want to have anything to do with tick-borne diseases.
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 2: But Igenex will give you the vast majority.
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: I only test for Lyme, Bartonella, Babesia, and tick-borne relapsing fever.
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: All of the other tick-borne diseases are pretty accurate through
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: LabCorp Request. Bartonella is a funny one. If you have
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: it for any length of time, it can get into
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: your nervous system. And so it's no longer going to
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: be in the bloodstream. So that's when I'll go to
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: Galaxy Labs for $ 500. And that's when I'll usually do
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: a second test through them to see if a person
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: has Bartonella. But I've gotten to a point where I
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: can identify what tick-borne disease you have based on your
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: clinical symptoms. So we treat, you know, parasitic infections, which
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: do exist in this country, believe it or not, chronic
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: inflammatory infections, autoimmune diseases.
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 2: A lot of these autoimmune diseases.
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: Are brought on by bacterial infections. Once you get rid
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: of the infection, you get rid of the autoimmune disease.
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: So I've learned so much in the 10 years I've
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: been on my own. It's been an absolute journey for sure,
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: but it's been a pretty positive experience for me. I'm
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: located in Thomaston, Connecticut. You could find me on the internet.
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: It's thepracticeofhealthandwellness, all spelled out, dot com. And our phone
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: number is 860-880-2525. We're on Instagram. We're on Facebook. And
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: I have a YouTube channel. It's Dr.
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 2: Pamela Cipriano, 1329.
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 5: All right. Beautiful.
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 4: I'll have all that info in the show notes so
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 4: people can reach you. Thank you again so much, Pamela,
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 4: for coming on, sharing your wisdom, and I look forward.
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 5: To staying in touch.
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure.
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 2: Thank you. Bye.
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 5: Bye.
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 3: Thank you for tuning in to another episode of the
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 3: Holistic Pharmacy Podcast. and I truly hope you enjoyed the show.
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 3: If you learned something useful in this episode, please consider
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 3: giving the show a five-star rating and a sincere review
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 3: so that more people can find it or share it
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 3: with a friend directly. To get in touch with me,
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 3: you can find me on social media by looking up
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 3: my name, Marina Buksov, or email me at marina at rawfork.com.
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 5: Take good care and see you soon.
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 4: Thank you.