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123: You Are Not Your Diagnosis: Take Back Your Voice in Your Health Care · The Everyday Awesome Project

• 0:27
  Polly Mertens: Hey, superstars.
• 0:28
  Polly Mertens: Welcome back.
• 0:28
  Polly Mertens: Polly here.
• 0:29
  Samantha Pruitt: And Sam Pruitt.
• 0:30
  Samantha Pruitt: What's up, beautiful humans?
• 0:32
  Polly Mertens: Yes, yes, yes, yes.
• 0:33
  Polly Mertens: Talking about something that has shown up in at least my life and your conversations and things that are going on with you.
• 0:39
  Polly Mertens: We're calling this episode You're not your diagnosis.
• 0:42
  Polly Mertens: Right.
• 0:43
  Polly Mertens: And you and I were just chatting before we went on air about different diagnoses we've had in our life, right?
• 0:48
  Polly Mertens: And how we handled them.
• 0:50
  Polly Mertens: And you know, you've got a recent one, and I've got one that's 30 years old, and how I would have handled it differently and stuff.
• 0:56
  Polly Mertens: And really what we want to challenge today is like, you know, the mindset of like you get a diagnosis, you know, what starts to happen and how you go into this, and just help people see um perhaps a new paradigm shift is what that's what I'm out to cause, right?
• 1:13
  Polly Mertens: Mm-hmm.
• 1:13
  Polly Mertens: Mm-hmm.
• 1:14
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah.
• 1:15
  Samantha Pruitt: And I'm up to, you know, pointing out, just question everything.
• 1:19
  Samantha Pruitt: Well, agree with nothing.
• 1:22
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay, most people who know my personality know that I'm already not a big fan of like rules and things.
• 1:30
  Samantha Pruitt: I mean, I like to live by structure and discipline.
• 1:33
  Samantha Pruitt: That's very different than um society or others, the othering coming into my world and trying to tell me who am I gonna be, what is my life gonna be, what is my body gonna look like, da-da-da-da.
• 1:45
  Samantha Pruitt: Like I just have a natural resistance against that and sort of always have been.
• 1:51
  Samantha Pruitt: So my thing is just to bring to the conversation today.
• 1:54
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, I've had several diagnoses, including uh one recently, and that's all right.
• 1:59
  Samantha Pruitt: It's it's just part of the fact I live in a physical body and my energetic cellular physical being, this shell that I'm walking around in, um, you know, it's human, it's made of human cells.
• 2:15
  Samantha Pruitt: So, and it's in an environment that is complicated, you know, our environments where we live and all of that kind of stuff.
• 2:22
  Samantha Pruitt: So shit's gonna happen to all of us.
• 2:25
  Samantha Pruitt: And so today I think we just want to talk about what happens when you get a diagnosis.
• 2:30
  Samantha Pruitt: How can you mentally, emotionally process that and really become empowered around that path rather than taking it on as a label or an identity and having it hold you back or restrict you from living your best life, right?
• 2:47
  Polly Mertens: Yeah.
• 2:47
  Polly Mertens: And, you know, there's a couple of different things I want to maybe insert here as we go into this content.
• 2:52
  Polly Mertens: One is, you know, the idea that there's different phases people are at, you know, we talked about this before we went on air.
• 2:59
  Polly Mertens: So, you know, if you are pre-diagnosis, let's say, or or you know, you've got some blood work that's signaling some stuff, but you don't necessarily have a you're a stage four, right?
• 3:11
  Polly Mertens: So there's varying, we we recognize that.
• 3:13
  Polly Mertens: So take this as like there's different um severity to the conversation and and the immediacy that with which you need to take action.
• 3:22
  Polly Mertens: So that aside, what we're looking for is, you know, we want you to be from passive patient to just like, oh, tell me, you know, whatever this person in the left coat in a white coat says is gospel to inform, right?
• 3:36
  Polly Mertens: And I love your word as we were talking about this idea is like getting curious.
• 3:40
  Polly Mertens: Like you said, question everything, get curious.
• 3:42
  Polly Mertens: And something I uh spoke to so 35 years ago, I think it was, you know, picture 1990-ish.
• 3:50
  Polly Mertens: Um, you know, I had a diagnosis of hypo hyperthyroidism.
• 3:56
  Polly Mertens: There was no internet, or maybe there was, but I don't think there was.
• 3:59
  Polly Mertens: You know, there was like no internet.
• 4:01
  Polly Mertens: It was like, this is your physician, this is the relationship and access to medical information.
• 4:07
  Samantha Pruitt: The one person.
• 4:07
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, I mean, I was like, one person in the world that would be the expert.
• 4:12
  Polly Mertens: Walk around here the library and like research, and who knows how outdated those books were.
• 4:17
  Polly Mertens: Whatever, right?
• 4:18
  Polly Mertens: So I had this diagnosis.
• 4:19
  Polly Mertens: He comes to me with you got three options, choose one, la la la, off I went, right?
• 4:24
  Polly Mertens: Didn't, you know, would today would I have done it differently?
• 4:28
  Polly Mertens: Oh hell yeah.
• 4:29
  Polly Mertens: Like I know somebody who cured her hyperthyroidism with lifestyle changes.
• 4:34
  Polly Mertens: And if I had even known that, that's where I want people to just like think outside of maybe what you have known or have grown up with or have heard in the media, or just debunk myths or you know, old paradigms to go, you know what, maybe maybe my body is a natural healing mechanism.
• 4:52
  Polly Mertens: Maybe I've just um had some influence.
• 4:54
  Polly Mertens: I've created resistance, I've created toxicity, I've created inflammation, and maybe I can also undo that, right?
• 5:01
  Polly Mertens: And so I think the core thing also that I want to point to, just at a high level, is oftentimes I see, and maybe I'll speak from my standpoint, not just everyone, is I see physicians that I talk to are not root cause-based in the Western medical system.
• 5:19
  Polly Mertens: They tend to just be like service, like you know, they're catastrophic or, you know, like symptoms management, not root cause.
• 5:27
  Polly Mertens: And I think your study of Eastern medicine and and Ayurvedic medicine is like there's something at the root of why the body's doing whatever it's doing, whether it's a rash or a disease or an inflammation or name it, name it.
• 5:39
  Polly Mertens: Um and if you don't get to that and understand it, A, you can't influence it.
• 5:44
  Polly Mertens: You can, you know, it's like taking an aspirin for a pain.
• 5:46
  Polly Mertens: Well, what's causing the pain?
• 5:48
  Polly Mertens: Right.
• 5:48
  Polly Mertens: So wanted to insert, throw all that out there into the conversation as we get started.
• 5:54
  Samantha Pruitt: So thank you for yeah, the more severe the disease state is, depending on the diagnosis and the disease itself and the complexities and so forth, um, this is a very nuanced conversation.
• 6:05
  Samantha Pruitt: I mean, yeah, I've got three people that I care deeply about who are currently in cancer treatment, and they're in a very extreme state of that, and you know, fighting for their lives, basically.
• 6:15
  Samantha Pruitt: So that becomes a very different conversation.
• 6:18
  Samantha Pruitt: But before you get to something along those lines, many, many, most of us will just go in for a regular medical or just experience something within our own body, not even in a doctor's office, you know, throughout the body, just how we feel or whatever.
• 6:32
  Samantha Pruitt: And so those are warning lights on the dashboard of the car that we're trying to drive 100 miles per hour down the freeway on.
• 6:40
  Samantha Pruitt: You know what I mean?
• 6:41
  Samantha Pruitt: So it's just those are warning lights.
• 6:42
  Samantha Pruitt: And if we can look at those as what they are, warning lights of, hey, it's time to take some action.
• 6:49
  Samantha Pruitt: Something within the system of this body is not functioning at its best level, disease may never set in, hopefully, right?
• 6:59
  Samantha Pruitt: And even there's in Western medicine, you know, uh sure, these doctors are experts in their field.
• 7:06
  Samantha Pruitt: They went and became educated and spent a lot of time and energy becoming an expert in whatever the thing is, right?
• 7:11
  Samantha Pruitt: But they can't know everything.
• 7:13
  Samantha Pruitt: It's impossible.
• 7:15
  Samantha Pruitt: And we shouldn't expect them to be an expert in everything.
• 7:18
  Samantha Pruitt: You know, general medicine is generalized medicine, right?
• 7:21
  Samantha Pruitt: They know a little bit of all the things, or a specialist is a specialist in that thing.
• 7:26
  Samantha Pruitt: So we should respect them for who they are and the knowledge that they do have, and then understand that it's always changing.
• 7:32
  Samantha Pruitt: Science is always evolving.
• 7:34
  Samantha Pruitt: It's mind-blowingly cool, if you're a nerd like me, to be like following any of this and see what's happening.
• 7:41
  Samantha Pruitt: And then when you reference like Eastern medicine or a more traditional, you know, Native American and all these different types of cultural, knowledge-based medicines, all the way back to the beginning of mankind, you know, there's ancient, brilliant wisdom within that, you know, wheelhouse, if you will.
• 8:02
  Samantha Pruitt: So you can, depending on your own beliefs and who you are as a human, you can exercise any and all of these things.
• 8:08
  Samantha Pruitt: There's a time and a place for it, right?
• 8:09
  Samantha Pruitt: And it's your choice.
• 8:10
  Polly Mertens: Yeah.
• 8:11
  Samantha Pruitt: It's your choice to decide how you want to take care of this body, this physical body, and that you're entitled to own and operate and ultimately be responsible for.
• 8:21
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, and you said, like, it's a choice.
• 8:24
  Polly Mertens: Like uh what I'm what I'm saying in my paradigm shift is like, don't just be passive and hand it over to, okay, just tell me what to do, right?
• 8:31
  Polly Mertens: Or it's outside of my control.
• 8:34
  Polly Mertens: I wholeheartedly want to debunk that because like one of the things as you were saying something is like, you know, we we talked about um before we decided on this topic, like, should we go into mental health, you know, and like how people can, you know, take their mental health and that can get, and but we said let's stick to physical.
• 8:50
  Polly Mertens: And as I, you know, we think about diagnosis and disease, things that show up on blood work.
• 8:54
  Polly Mertens: And I, like you, I think, um, you know, if I have something out of whack in my body, I don't just let it sit there.
• 9:01
  Polly Mertens: Like, for example, this morning I was doing, I was at body pump, and like my shoulder was like my right shoulder was just like not as strong.
• 9:08
  Polly Mertens: And I was like, oh, no to self.
• 9:10
  Polly Mertens: Okay, what's going on there?
• 9:11
  Polly Mertens: And sometimes it can be like you have you twist your neck doing a hundred pull-ups, you crazy woman, right?
• 9:18
  Polly Mertens: So it's like, okay, that's just overuse.
• 9:21
  Polly Mertens: But if you notice something, like my big thing, especially from a um body functional system, you know, muscle skeletal type of thing, is uh, you know, like if I have like like I have a friend who like can't lift his arm over his shoulder, and it's like, well, how long has that been like that?
• 9:39
  Polly Mertens: You know, like I'd be like, like, hello, you know, like when you you can't lift it up, you know, you you address it sooner is what I'm saying.
• 9:48
  Polly Mertens: Like we we empower ourselves to root cause, not just like, oh, the body just doesn't, I can't just lift over my my head over my arm over my head or whatever.
• 9:58
  Polly Mertens: So looking at like, oh, I'm in, I'm in charge in this body.
• 10:04
  Polly Mertens: I thought, yeah, sure, the body's gonna have a natural breakdown, it's gonna do, and it whatever.
• 10:09
  Polly Mertens: But where am I empowered to choose differently, uh, adjust something, get some help, and like, hey, I why can't I do this?
• 10:16
  Polly Mertens: And then like I go to my physical therapist, and he goes, Well, that's because of this, and we need to like stretch this out and you know, like some fine-tuning, get to that root cause, don't just accept, like, I can't, I'll never lift my arm over my head again.
• 10:28
  Samantha Pruitt: So oh gosh, if that were happening to me for an hour, so like for example, I couldn't turn my head for a day, you know, because I had done way too many pull-ups way too early on in my you know, coming back to fitness thing, but I was having a damn good time, okay?
• 10:41
  Samantha Pruitt: And so there's that.
• 10:43
  Samantha Pruitt: But yeah, lunacy of it all.
• 10:47
  Samantha Pruitt: But if I went for a week and couldn't function on this shoulder or name any body part, there would be hell to pay because I would need to get that resolved.
• 10:59
  Samantha Pruitt: So I would immediately start doing the research and trying to figure out you know a resolution.
• 11:03
  Samantha Pruitt: So that's the empowering part.
• 11:04
  Samantha Pruitt: But let's talk first a little bit about the fact that chronic diseases do happen.
• 11:10
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay.
• 11:11
  Samantha Pruitt: Um, again, we're human.
• 11:14
  Samantha Pruitt: We're not robots, we are human, right?
• 11:17
  Samantha Pruitt: And then additionally, we are exposed to all these things over the course of our lifetime.
• 11:21
  Samantha Pruitt: But many, many times, well, so the top four chronic diseases cardiovascular disease.
• 11:27
  Samantha Pruitt: These are the things that kill people, what they get into disease states and die from.
• 11:32
  Samantha Pruitt: Um, cancer, right?
• 11:35
  Samantha Pruitt: Uh, neurodegenerative diseases, metabolic diseases.
• 11:41
  Samantha Pruitt: So those are the top four diseases, and in those diseases of category is so many diseases, so many disease states.
• 11:50
  Samantha Pruitt: You know, so it's like if you have cardiovascular disease, there could be 30 or 40 different things that could possibly be going wrong.
• 11:58
  Samantha Pruitt: It's not like one disease, right?
• 12:00
  Samantha Pruitt: Um, but again, warning lights come on, the dashboard of your human vehicle when you feel any of these things might be within your body systems going wrong.
• 12:14
  Samantha Pruitt: But how many people even know what these systems are?
• 12:17
  Samantha Pruitt: The cardiovascular system, the metabolic system, the nervous system, the neurological system of the body.
• 12:26
  Samantha Pruitt: So at the root of this conversation, I can't stress enough how people should actually know how their body works, the basic systems of the body.
• 12:38
  Samantha Pruitt: You don't have to be a nerd like me, but you need to understand like muscles and bones and the different systems of the body and how they function in a healthy state, how they develop and function in a healthy state.
• 12:50
  Samantha Pruitt: And I feel like um, as a society, we do a shitty job educating children and parents and then adults as to how their bodies function.
• 13:02
  Samantha Pruitt: So let's just point out the obvious is these books do exist.
• 13:06
  Samantha Pruitt: There's a thing called science, and you can find out about these things.
• 13:09
  Samantha Pruitt: And now that there's the internet and YouTube, you could basically watch a couple movies and have most of this stuff down.
• 13:15
  Polly Mertens: Totally.
• 13:15
  Polly Mertens: Okay.
• 13:16
  Samantha Pruitt: You don't have to go back to school instead of holistic health like that.
• 13:21
  Polly Mertens: You don't have to be forwarding one.
• 13:22
  Samantha Pruitt: Watch a couple videos and figure that shit out.
• 13:24
  Samantha Pruitt: So, anyway, that will give you at least a little bit of confidence and why this is important.
• 13:29
  Samantha Pruitt: Confidence and agency over your own body and conversation when you go into have these blood tests or have these other tests done or have conversations with doctors and nurses or have a decision point around a treatment, a drug, or a surgery.
• 13:46
  Samantha Pruitt: You will feel at least like you can have the conversation.
• 13:50
  Samantha Pruitt: And I think that's what holds a lot of people back.
• 13:53
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, and you, I love it.
• 13:54
  Polly Mertens: You know, I I can uh so A, I just want to add throw in YouTube and you said um internet and just AI.
• 14:01
  Polly Mertens: Like it's so sophisticated what it can, you know, help you.
• 14:04
  Polly Mertens: Like, I know don't self-diagnose and all that stuff, but like you can get very informed, you know, if you have something asking it questions, right?
• 14:11
  Polly Mertens: And I love you.
• 14:12
  Polly Mertens: Um, how many times I've heard you say you pretty much walked into the doctor with like a list of questions.
• 14:16
  Polly Mertens: Like, this is not an interrogation, but it might feel that way a little bit because like we need to, you know, because you're often on the level with them.
• 14:24
  Polly Mertens: Like you've done your research going in.
• 14:27
  Polly Mertens: It's not just, okay, doc, you tell me what's going on with me.
• 14:30
  Polly Mertens: Like you go and say, I'm I'm seeing this in my body, and what do you think about this?
• 14:36
  Polly Mertens: So you guys interact and dialogue about it, not just trust what comes over.
• 14:41
  Samantha Pruitt: Sometimes they're not stoked about that, by the way.
• 14:43
  Samantha Pruitt: I have fired many, many.
• 14:45
  Samantha Pruitt: We have had breakups.
• 14:47
  Samantha Pruitt: But I would say, at least at this point, and it could be how I deliver it now or being older or whatever, the doctors I've picked, you know, is different, is different.
• 14:55
  Samantha Pruitt: But um they do engage in the conversation intelligently.
• 14:59
  Samantha Pruitt: They like it.
• 15:00
  Samantha Pruitt: It's really kind of fun for them to sit down and be able to talk to somebody who understands how their body works or has curiosities and real scientific-based questions about specific things.
• 15:11
  Polly Mertens: Well, I think more people are doing what you're doing, also.
• 15:13
  Polly Mertens: They've got to get it.
• 15:14
  Polly Mertens: You just gotta get used to it.
• 15:16
  Polly Mertens: People are not, well, uh, you know, we're here to we're we're assuming that people are not, so we're saying, you know, come in doing that, but more and more people are also like there are more people that are like, I'm not just gonna accept this, I'm gonna heck yeah.
• 15:29
  Polly Mertens: And it's so at our fingertips.
• 15:31
  Samantha Pruitt: So really so there's lots of diseases and disease states, um diagnosis versus destiny or DNA.
• 15:43
  Polly Mertens: So this is where this whole thing gave you because you and I like we shoot back and forth in coming up with topics for our podcast.
• 15:49
  Polly Mertens: And it was like, okay, we need to have a topic, and the problem is because someone in my life recently was like, we're working on it.
• 15:58
  Polly Mertens: Well, uh yeah, I'm on this medication and that medication, and I'm like, oh my god, I didn't know you were on those medications.
• 16:04
  Polly Mertens: What what's going on?
• 16:05
  Polly Mertens: You know, and he's like, Well, I just you know, I've got that in my genetics, you know, and it was like a high high tension, hypertension, you know, heart thing, and I think diabetes.
• 16:14
  Polly Mertens: And I was like, just just that's it, like, oh, just I and accepted it.
• 16:19
  Polly Mertens: And I was like, and this isn't a smart person.
• 16:21
  Polly Mertens: I was like, hold up.
• 16:22
  Polly Mertens: Like, and why did you, you know, so that's where this started is like, oh, I'm genetically predisposed.
• 16:31
  Polly Mertens: Predisposed, I would say inclined, but that's yeah, predisposed.
• 16:35
  Polly Mertens: So I just accept it and then take medicines for the rest of your life.
• 16:39
  Polly Mertens: So what do you have to say about that?
• 16:42
  Samantha Pruitt: Well, what I have to say about that, yeah, scientifically, is that the diseases that I listed off or the disease categories, if you will, you know, there's a 10 to like 40 percent on the high end where the DNA and the genes are actually linked back to the disease and any kind of predisposal state might be there.
• 17:02
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay, so sometimes there's zero, and sometimes it's very, very low, the correlation.
• 17:07
  Samantha Pruitt: And then it will immediately be all the lifestyle factors as to whether this will actually engage this disease state and become a thing or not, right?
• 17:17
  Samantha Pruitt: So even if there is a small element of okay, my mother did die of cancer, my sister has had cancer, my grandmother has said cancer.
• 17:29
  Samantha Pruitt: So I have a in my family line a lot of cancer.
• 17:33
  Samantha Pruitt: I've been genetically tested and have zero of the genes related to any of these cancers.
• 17:41
  Samantha Pruitt: Go figure.
• 17:43
  Samantha Pruitt: Right?
• 17:44
  Samantha Pruitt: That's a possibility.
• 17:45
  Samantha Pruitt: You know, and now genetic testing is of course available.
• 17:47
  Samantha Pruitt: My dad died of a heart attack, doesn't mean I'm gonna have a heart attack.
• 17:50
  Samantha Pruitt: Like, you know, it's all of these things that we either attach ourselves to that family history and story because it gives meaning to our life in some way, in this instance, I would say, in a very negative, you know, limiting way that will restrict us from really taking responsibility of this body and this life and allowing our mental and emotional state as well to get attached to that, not just our lifestyle choices and the physical, you know, results that will manifest, but like how we feel about the world and what we can and can't do.
• 18:26
  Samantha Pruitt: Why would we choose that?
• 18:29
  Polly Mertens: Well, you know, that's just the the paradigm that that person, you know.
• 18:34
  Polly Mertens: And one of the things I want to just touch upon is we're hitting upon this, is like there's research in health psychology that shows that identity-based beliefs, like how, like I'm, you know, I'm predisposed for cancer, I'm predisposed for diabetes or whatever.
• 18:49
  Polly Mertens: Not maybe don't even, not even true.
• 18:51
  Polly Mertens: Like if you had just come up with that, you're like, oh, look, because I I totally know.
• 18:55
  Polly Mertens: I remember in my 30s when I'm going to the doctor, and you know how they ask the same questions, tell us all about your family history, right?
• 19:02
  Polly Mertens: Pretty quick, I was like, I don't care what my family history is like because this is not a fact, you know, like my family was doing some, you know, alcoholism and you know, crappy hints to themselves.
• 19:11
  Polly Mertens: And I'm like, I'm not doing all of that.
• 19:13
  Polly Mertens: So like I really quickly had a different paradigm of how I saw myself.
• 19:17
  Polly Mertens: But, you know, in health psychology, they say that, you know, if you identify that, right, like as that, or you have a belief, it significantly influences your behavior and your outcomes, right?
• 19:30
  Polly Mertens: Like if you're just predisposed to it, you know, some people will just be like, well, I'll just eat all the pizza I want.
• 19:34
  Polly Mertens: I'll just you know, eat all the junk food or whatever.
• 19:36
  Polly Mertens: Like I can't outrun it or something like that.
• 19:38
  Polly Mertens: And if you see that condition is fixed, you're just not gonna take action, you're not gonna make meaningful changes, you know.
• 19:45
  Polly Mertens: And I look at this like, you know, even if you were 50% or you said 40% predisposed for that or whatever, it's like you still got a 60%, you know, you can like that's some good upgrade.
• 19:55
  Polly Mertens: 50% don't double down on it.
• 19:58
  Polly Mertens: Like, like don't exactly don't throw in your cards and like vote for it.
• 20:03
  Polly Mertens: Be like, okay, what can I do?
• 20:05
  Samantha Pruitt: It's a vote for it.
• 20:06
  Samantha Pruitt: You're right.
• 20:07
  Samantha Pruitt: That's what it is.
• 20:08
  Samantha Pruitt: It's like, oh, well, it was 40% um for whatever, and these are extreme scenarios, but uh now I'm gonna do 10 more things, make sure it gets up to 80% because I want to win this thing.
• 20:18
  Samantha Pruitt: You're betting on the wrong horse or sorry.
• 20:21
  Polly Mertens: Exactly.
• 20:21
  Polly Mertens: You're sitting on the wrong side of the table.
• 20:23
  Polly Mertens: That on vitality, right?
• 20:26
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, yeah, totally, totally.
• 20:28
  Samantha Pruitt: So identity is connected.
• 20:30
  Samantha Pruitt: Um anyway, there's so much science around uh DNA and you know, all of this kind of stuff now in terms of any and all things that might be going on with your body and your brain and your mental and emotional state, of course, and even addiction, all that kind of stuff.
• 20:45
  Samantha Pruitt: So, like if you have these ideas in your head because grandma told you or your parents or a doctor told you or something like that, I would just want to encourage you to go actually research the latest science to see what is true here.
• 20:58
  Samantha Pruitt: And then if you choose, you can get these things tested.
• 21:01
  Samantha Pruitt: You know, I was supposedly not given hormones when I went through menopause because I had early menopause with my autoimmune disease, and then I had to have hysterectomy, all these things.
• 21:11
  Samantha Pruitt: So I was not given um hormones because my mom had cancer, had had breast cancer, and my grandmother had ovarian cancer.
• 21:19
  Samantha Pruitt: So there was an assumption made there, right, that I was high risk.
• 21:23
  Samantha Pruitt: A, that science has all changed, and we've completely debunked who and who should not get hormones and all that stuff.
• 21:29
  Samantha Pruitt: But I mean, I lost a good five to ten years of high-quality building of this body and this brain and my cardiovascular system, all the things I care about.
• 21:38
  Samantha Pruitt: I was doing the work, but I was like depleted at the same time because of that.
• 21:42
  Samantha Pruitt: And that's just not fair or right.
• 21:44
  Samantha Pruitt: And then in hindsight, to have all of these things tested now and see that I have zero genetic markers as like, what the why didn't I get tested then?
• 21:53
  Samantha Pruitt: If that was a supposed reason, right?
• 21:55
  Samantha Pruitt: Anyway, don't get me started on that's just my personal.
• 21:59
  Samantha Pruitt: Um, another thing is people label around age being a label related to their medical condition.
• 22:07
  Samantha Pruitt: So naturally age, how many doctors?
• 22:11
  Samantha Pruitt: Oh my God, okay, now I'm gonna rant about something else.
• 22:14
  Samantha Pruitt: How many doctors have you experienced that because you hit a certain age bracket, whatever.
• 22:19
  Samantha Pruitt: It was, this kind of started for me in my 40s.
• 22:21
  Samantha Pruitt: And when I went into um early menopause, I was around 40, which is really young.
• 22:26
  Samantha Pruitt: And so then from then up until now, like because of my age, they put me into a bucket.
• 22:32
  Samantha Pruitt: Right.
• 22:33
  Samantha Pruitt: And then they find out, oh, she's a multi-time Iron Man, ultra runner, cross, all the and they're like, what?
• 22:40
  Samantha Pruitt: They don't even know how to talk to me in most instances, right?
• 22:43
  Samantha Pruitt: But if I they didn't know all these other things about me and I didn't share them, they would just drop me into a bucket, which is kind of an abyss, and categorize me based on my age.
• 22:53
  Samantha Pruitt: And a lot of us go into the doctor's office and do the same thing to ourselves.
• 22:58
  Polly Mertens: Yeah.
• 22:59
  Samantha Pruitt: Oh, I'm just getting old now.
• 23:00
  Polly Mertens: Well, and I'm sorry, there is a thing called a bell curve, right?
• 23:04
  Polly Mertens: And you know, you can plant yourself in the middle or on the lower percentiles of it, or you can see yourself and live into the higher percentiles.
• 23:12
  Polly Mertens: Like, yeah, you're on the you're on the you're on the lean part of the percentile, but like I'm walking in, yeah, like I absolutely walk in there like I'm fit as get out and taking good care of myself and have been, you know, sure there's things that aren't working as best as well as they did when I was a teenager, or whatever, but like, okay, but not in that, and that's where some of you know the healthcare system is like they're designed for managing symptoms.
• 23:37
  Polly Mertens: You know, they're seeing people coming in in that bell curve, and they're like, well, the majority are in here, right?
• 23:42
  Polly Mertens: Sure, they're gonna have some outliers like you, and you know, menopause early symptoms or whatever.
• 23:47
  Polly Mertens: And then the the premies, like, you know, premium taking really good care of themselves, like you have to tell them how different your lifestyle is, right?
• 23:57
  Polly Mertens: So that they can adjust that bell curve and go, oh, you're out here.
• 24:00
  Polly Mertens: Okay, yeah, you're right.
• 24:02
  Polly Mertens: I agree.
• 24:03
  Polly Mertens: So you we want to optimize our health care, right?
• 24:07
  Polly Mertens: You know, so there's the healthcare system, you know, God bless it, is largely around that middle of the bell curve.
• 24:14
  Polly Mertens: And guess what?
• 24:14
  Polly Mertens: The food system and the, you know, exercise, you know, it's it's like you got to get out where the branches are thin where you're taking great care of yourself, you're doing the exercise, you know, regularly.
• 24:26
  Polly Mertens: So you don't fall into that bell curve, and then you're just sort of like, like you said, the abyss.
• 24:30
  Polly Mertens: And, you know, are we treating, you know, or is your provider treating health?
• 24:34
  Polly Mertens: Are they helping you optimize, right?
• 24:36
  Polly Mertens: Like you are, like that's how you and I think is I'm not just trying to have a comfortable decline to the finish line.
• 24:42
  Polly Mertens: I'm like, how do I optimize and feel as good as possible?
• 24:44
  Polly Mertens: Because we got mountains to get up to.
• 24:47
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, and doctors don't have time to be really digging into, you know, what's your nutrition like, how much exercise, and all these things.
• 24:55
  Samantha Pruitt: Hey, generally, it's not their wheelhouse of expertise.
• 24:59
  Samantha Pruitt: And also that science is changing all the time.
• 25:01
  Samantha Pruitt: But it this is the patient or the human's responsibility to understand these things.
• 25:09
  Samantha Pruitt: And, you know, because I've taught it for so long, it's really fun for me to like have people learn about their bodies and to see the evolution of somebody that comes in really disempowered and just not knowing, and instantly just not knowing, to coming out the other side, just like, you know, crushing it because they've just taken on, hey, this is really important to me, and I'm gonna invest in this, and I care.
• 25:33
  Samantha Pruitt: And we should all care.
• 25:34
  Samantha Pruitt: We shouldn't expect the person on the other side to care more about us than we care about ourselves.
• 25:40
  Samantha Pruitt: And that's nuts.
• 25:43
  Samantha Pruitt: They're seeing hundreds of people, okay.
• 25:45
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, and I think the other thing, just in what you were talking about and describing, is like, do not wait for a diagnosis to do something.
• 25:53
  Polly Mertens: Right.
• 25:54
  Polly Mertens: Right.
• 25:54
  Polly Mertens: Right?
• 25:54
  Polly Mertens: Do not wait to have a surprise or a too late, or you know, like, oh, geez, you know, or if you are getting early warning signs, do something about them early, right?
• 26:05
  Polly Mertens: Or even earlier, you know, like optimize for health and well-being, right?
• 26:10
  Polly Mertens: But if nothing else, don't wait for like the wake-up call.
• 26:14
  Polly Mertens: Because you and I see it, you know, you know, we see the people who take dramatic, they take their life into their hands, their health into their hands when they but it's like, why weren't you doing that 20 years ago?
• 26:26
  Polly Mertens: You know, so like do it now when it matters, and you can you know extend that.
• 26:30
  Polly Mertens: You can have optimal health now and now and now into the future.
• 26:33
  Polly Mertens: Wait for that diagnosis to be that wake-up call for you, right?
• 26:39
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, yeah, don't waste any time.
• 26:41
  Samantha Pruitt: Don't waste any time, right?
• 26:42
  Samantha Pruitt: So how can you do this?
• 26:45
  Samantha Pruitt: How can somebody realistically do this?
• 26:48
  Samantha Pruitt: Um, we can give examples of how we've done it, but we should at least give some tips on how to walk in um and advocate for yourself, how to, you know, I see this in people who are doing, you know, some kind of disease prevention or even so they're trying to get informed, you know, and get tests and things of that nature, like me trying to get the genetic, you know, test for the various cancers and all that kind of stuff, or whatever it is.
• 27:16
  Samantha Pruitt: We're trying to get educated and informed, we're trying to get empowered, but you know, insurance doesn't want to pay for it, and doctors don't want to write the orders for the thing.
• 27:25
  Samantha Pruitt: And you have to really advocate to get and sometimes fight to get what you want and what you need for yourself in terms of information, because information is really the power, the liberation of choice.
• 27:40
  Samantha Pruitt: If I'm not informed and I go in, I'm just gonna default to whatever comes at me, right?
• 27:47
  Samantha Pruitt: It will be decided for me.
• 27:49
  Samantha Pruitt: But if I can get some resourced information and knowledge about my body and my things that might be going on, then I have the power to influence any and all decisions, frankly, whether I choose to do whatever I do.
• 28:04
  Polly Mertens: Absolutely.
• 28:05
  Polly Mertens: And I think the the thing I just want to so most times it's you go in and you have some blood work and then or a heart track or whatever, you know, like the the the the wake up, whether it's a small hit or a big wake-up.
• 28:19
  Samantha Pruitt: Let's start there.
• 28:20
  Samantha Pruitt: You're gonna have blood work.
• 28:21
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay.
• 28:22
  Samantha Pruitt: How many people?
• 28:25
  Samantha Pruitt: I mean, these are funny questions because I know plenty of people in my life that don't do any work at all in this area.
• 28:34
  Samantha Pruitt: They won't go to the doctor for 10 years.
• 28:36
  Samantha Pruitt: So they go to blood work, go for blood work, for example, because it's been awarded as part of their annual exam or whatever the deal is, right?
• 28:43
  Samantha Pruitt: And so they go and they have blood work, have no idea what the blood work is they're actually getting done.
• 28:47
  Samantha Pruitt: They just go to the lab and have blood drawn.
• 28:50
  Samantha Pruitt: Where what in the heck is that blood draw for?
• 28:54
  Samantha Pruitt: They have no idea.
• 28:54
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay.
• 28:55
  Samantha Pruitt: Then they get the blood drawn and the results come back into their inbox because now we can all access our stuff, right?
• 29:01
  Samantha Pruitt: They don't even look at it.
• 29:03
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay, because their thing is, well, I wouldn't know how to interpret it, so that's a story.
• 29:08
  Samantha Pruitt: And then they wait until they go into the doctor's office, and the doctor's now going to tell them whether it's good, bad, or ugly, and what the next steps are.
• 29:16
  Samantha Pruitt: They should know, first of all, you're going in and giving blood.
• 29:20
  Samantha Pruitt: You're having a test, whatever the test is.
• 29:22
  Samantha Pruitt: Well, recently I had an echocardiogram.
• 29:24
  Samantha Pruitt: It was fascinating.
• 29:25
  Samantha Pruitt: I was such a triple nerd, dude.
• 29:27
  Samantha Pruitt: I was literally like, that's my heart.
• 29:29
  Samantha Pruitt: Oh, that's this part of the heart.
• 29:30
  Samantha Pruitt: What's this thing over here?
• 29:31
  Samantha Pruitt: Why is it going like that?
• 29:32
  Samantha Pruitt: And the gal that was doing it was like, Who the heck is this chick?
• 29:37
  Samantha Pruitt: But she totally loved me.
• 29:38
  Samantha Pruitt: We had this great combo this whole time.
• 29:40
  Samantha Pruitt: And I was like, Hey, what about this thing?
• 29:43
  Samantha Pruitt: And you know, she was so incredibly educated.
• 29:45
  Samantha Pruitt: But it was no one asks her these questions.
• 29:47
  Samantha Pruitt: And I was curious, that's my freaking heart.
• 29:51
  Samantha Pruitt: How many times in your lifetime will you get to actually see your heart, people?
• 29:57
  Samantha Pruitt: Come on, this is magic.
• 29:58
  Samantha Pruitt: That's awesome.
• 29:59
  Samantha Pruitt: It's on the screen.
• 30:01
  Samantha Pruitt: And it's like talking to me.
• 30:04
  Samantha Pruitt: Hey, what's up?
• 30:07
  Polly Mertens: It was so cool.
• 30:08
  Polly Mertens: So, something I learned because of the thyroid condition that I have in years of, you know, I mean, I mean, for two to three years, and when I first had the diagnosis, I was pricked and poked um every month.
• 30:19
  Polly Mertens: I had to get blood work every month, you know.
• 30:21
  Polly Mertens: So I just got really used to that and you know, whatever.
• 30:24
  Polly Mertens: Later, I come to find out there are tests that they don't always run on thyroid that you can ask for.
• 30:32
  Polly Mertens: So some of it is, I'm not saying all blood work you need to ask for, but I I definitely probe my doctor sometimes to ask for things that he hasn't requested, right?
• 30:42
  Polly Mertens: Because they're doing whatever they whatever.
• 30:45
  Polly Mertens: So, you know, like here's here's okay, you and me and I AI, right?
• 30:49
  Polly Mertens: So I I love to, you know.
• 30:50
  Polly Mertens: So one of the things with AI, you can like ask it back, like, what did I miss?
• 30:53
  Polly Mertens: Or what could I have done differently, or whatever, right?
• 30:56
  Samantha Pruitt: Like you can like AI because you're in relationship with AI.
• 30:59
  Samantha Pruitt: I know you are.
• 31:00
  Samantha Pruitt: You are having a love affair.
• 31:02
  Samantha Pruitt: I got you, girl.
• 31:03
  Samantha Pruitt: I got you.
• 31:04
  Polly Mertens: It's it's uh master and student right now.
• 31:07
  Polly Mertens: It's like it's I'm learning it.
• 31:08
  Polly Mertens: I'm learning Sensei.
• 31:10
  Polly Mertens: Sensei, sensei, yes.
• 31:11
  Polly Mertens: One of the things is, you know, you ask it, like, okay, well, what could we have done differently, whatever, that kind of a thing.
• 31:16
  Polly Mertens: So, like back to your doctor.
• 31:18
  Polly Mertens: So he says, you know, order and he and they don't tell you what they're ordering.
• 31:21
  Polly Mertens: And that's what was fascinating for me is I didn't know there's like, because I I know that you and I nerd out on this stuff, right?
• 31:28
  Polly Mertens: So I'm talking to my phlebotomist who's in my doctor's office, and I'm like, so which panel did he order?
• 31:32
  Polly Mertens: And she's like, Well, he ordered this and this and this.
• 31:34
  Polly Mertens: And I go, Well, what about you know?
• 31:36
  Polly Mertens: And so just getting more educated in what got ordered, you know, and then I, you know, I read because I get blood work at least every year.
• 31:43
  Polly Mertens: He wants it every six months because of the thyroid to maintain it and stuff.
• 31:46
  Polly Mertens: Anyway, um, so you just start to like now, and like I said, as you go down sometimes a rabbit hole, if you have something that is a condition that you have, I come to find out that there's additional, you know, there's like TS um TSH, T4, T3, you know, like different ones that they can test for, and just sort of like they can test for vanilla or they can test for the rainbow, right?
• 32:07
  Samantha Pruitt: And it's like, oh, I didn't know that, you know, and a lot of the reasoning that they're picking and ticking this box versus that one or whatever the thing is, is the Western medical system and the insurance system in particular, and what they will and will not cover and what is normal.
• 32:23
  Samantha Pruitt: And then they have to put a code on there, uh diagnostic code.
• 32:28
  Samantha Pruitt: I think this person has metabolical disease, metabolic disease, code number XYZ, and therefore I'm gonna do number one and number two, or I think this person has cardiovascular disease, and I'm gonna pick number one, two, three.
• 32:41
  Samantha Pruitt: So that's kind of just to give people a background how that gets determined.
• 32:45
  Samantha Pruitt: But remember, you're in the doctor's office talking to the doctor.
• 32:49
  Samantha Pruitt: So you can walk in and say, these are the things I'm experiencing, these are my concerns, these are the things I'd like to have tested.
• 32:58
  Polly Mertens: Exactly.
• 32:59
  Samantha Pruitt: And it could be that they don't pick one thing, they pick two or three things.
• 33:03
  Samantha Pruitt: Or if it's like hormones, for example, it's very complex, right?
• 33:07
  Samantha Pruitt: You can't just be like, oh, I'm just gonna test her estrogen today, and then we're gonna make all her life decisions for the next year plus based on that.
• 33:17
  Samantha Pruitt: It's complete lunacy, right?
• 33:19
  Samantha Pruitt: But if the patient doesn't have some basic baseline intelligence and like way to address it with the practitioner, it's gonna be hard to get these tests done.
• 33:29
  Samantha Pruitt: It really is.
• 33:30
  Polly Mertens: And the second thing, like you asked, is you know, what do we do?
• 33:33
  Polly Mertens: So I get that, you know, log into your portal, you have blood results.
• 33:36
  Polly Mertens: I'm like ding ding ding, going in.
• 33:38
  Polly Mertens: I pull them out, I see if anything's abnormal.
• 33:40
  Polly Mertens: I put it into you know, Google, I go, what is abnormal this mean?
• 33:44
  Polly Mertens: This is high.
• 33:45
  Polly Mertens: What does that mean?
• 33:45
  Polly Mertens: What are some lifelything?
• 33:47
  Polly Mertens: I mean, and I do not stop at like step one, like, oh, that means like one of them is um I have this common one that shows up is my my blood platelets are large.
• 33:58
  Polly Mertens: What the hell does that mean?
• 34:00
  Polly Mertens: So like you know, like it just says like that tells you your blood platelets are large.
• 34:04
  Polly Mertens: I'm like, well, well, why would I have large platelets?
• 34:06
  Polly Mertens: Is that normal?
• 34:07
  Polly Mertens: Is that okay?
• 34:08
  Polly Mertens: Is that down the road?
• 34:10
  Polly Mertens: Mean they're gonna get stuffed up faster?
• 34:11
  Polly Mertens: Like, what does that mean?
• 34:12
  Polly Mertens: You know, so just getting curious.
• 34:15
  Samantha Pruitt: Is that genetic?
• 34:16
  Polly Mertens: Yeah is that you know, cause there's something I'm doing that's causing my platelet, you know, do I do I live in higher altitude or lower altitude?
• 34:23
  Polly Mertens: Is that have anything to do with it?
• 34:25
  Polly Mertens: I mean, all sorts of things.
• 34:26
  Polly Mertens: But so the first thing, anything that's I've normal, I I put it in and I find out what is what is a MSH or I'm I don't know what the letters are.
• 34:34
  Polly Mertens: You know, I know a TSH, that's thyroid, but like, what is that test?
• 34:38
  Polly Mertens: And what does high and low mean?
• 34:39
  Polly Mertens: And what are some things that what could that signal, you know?
• 34:41
  Polly Mertens: And so yeah.
• 34:43
  Samantha Pruitt: Totally, totally.
• 34:44
  Samantha Pruitt: So you go in there, you know what kind of tests are being uh run.
• 34:47
  Samantha Pruitt: You know then how, well, first of all, how get some damn access to read your test results, read them, do some research before you go back to the doctor, which usually is weeks or months sometimes, for these results to be a conversation between the two of you.
• 35:03
  Samantha Pruitt: And then you can walk in with your own ideas about what you'd like to have happen next rather than default on them.
• 35:09
  Samantha Pruitt: Because by the way, you know, they might get 10 minutes with you and they haven't even read these results.
• 35:14
  Samantha Pruitt: They just don't have time.
• 35:16
  Samantha Pruitt: It's not reasonable to expect that when they walk in for your 10-minute session, that they're gonna be completely informed and up to speed on all things Samantha Pruitt.
• 35:24
  Polly Mertens: Well, and the other thing is, you know, what what else in your life does the things that it signals do you need to tell them about that they probably didn't ask about or don't, you know?
• 35:34
  Polly Mertens: So, like I was chasing this whole candida thing down this rabbit hole for years, right?
• 35:38
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, and so once I knew what was the causes of candida, so I would go into the doctor and I would tell him more.
• 35:44
  Polly Mertens: I was like, hey, I'm doing this and I'm seeing this, and this is also happening, and you know, could this be a factor?
• 35:51
  Polly Mertens: So we would dialogue about it, you know, so I he I could help him know more about me to help me treat it, you know.
• 35:59
  Samantha Pruitt: So yeah, yeah.
• 36:00
  Samantha Pruitt: Um, you know, I have an autoimmune disease.
• 36:02
  Samantha Pruitt: So like most of the doctors I see would not know that.
• 36:05
  Samantha Pruitt: They would it would be somewhere buried on my chart, but you know, I'm many years out of that illness down the so I'm not gonna walk in and uh put a have a badge on my shirt that says all the things going on with me, post-menopausal QR code, just you know, QR codes, get the summary.
• 36:26
  Samantha Pruitt: Actually, that's a freaking good idea.
• 36:29
  Polly Mertens: That's a summary of me, Doc.
• 36:31
  Polly Mertens: The things that you need to know, just read up on me.
• 36:33
  Polly Mertens: It's like my socials, you know.
• 36:37
  Samantha Pruitt: But then when you go in and you're having this conversation, it's not just good enough to go in and be like um, you know, again, the red light on the dashboard talking about the thing.
• 36:51
  Samantha Pruitt: Yes, the thing needs to be talked about, and there needs to be some resolution.
• 36:55
  Samantha Pruitt: You need to be empowered to know what your choices are, and then you choose, of course, right?
• 36:59
  Samantha Pruitt: But in addition to that, when you go in and you have these doctor practitioner patient moments, and whatever type of doctor it is, right, you should also be able to articulate what it is you are trying to accomplish.
• 37:18
  Samantha Pruitt: Right.
• 37:20
  Samantha Pruitt: So again, post-menopausal female could get put into this bucket over here that looks and sounds a certain way.
• 37:27
  Samantha Pruitt: And from this point on, I would be treated exactly appropriately, which would mean decline is normal and all of these things, and eventually she'll come back with some sort of disease, frail disease state, and then we'll just keep her alive as long as whatever, whatever.
• 37:45
  Samantha Pruitt: I have to go in and say, So this summer I'm going to hike the PC, the John Mueller Trail for 250 miles, and then in the fall I'll be running this hundred-mile rate.
• 37:57
  Samantha Pruitt: And you know, like I have to tell them what my life is and what my goals are so they can get behind that.
• 38:02
  Samantha Pruitt: Like when I had the back surgery, right?
• 38:04
  Samantha Pruitt: And I say to the doctor on the way literally into the surgery room, you have one thing.
• 38:08
  Samantha Pruitt: When I come out of here, I best be able to run again.
• 38:11
  Samantha Pruitt: Are we on the same page?
• 38:12
  Samantha Pruitt: Are we going?
• 38:12
  Samantha Pruitt: Are we doing this?
• 38:13
  Samantha Pruitt: If not, I'm backing up.
• 38:16
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, for sure.
• 38:17
  Polly Mertens: For sure.
• 38:18
  Samantha Pruitt: You know, or whatever.
• 38:19
  Samantha Pruitt: But as an example of like, here's what I want my life to look like now and moving forward.
• 38:25
  Samantha Pruitt: And and I want you to partner with me on helping to make that happen.
• 38:29
  Samantha Pruitt: Those are the resources I'm here for.
• 38:31
  Polly Mertens: Yeah.
• 38:32
  Polly Mertens: And that's, you know, I want to say two things I hear in that is like self-care and self-advocacy, right?
• 38:39
  Polly Mertens: So it's like, you like I'm caring about myself.
• 38:42
  Polly Mertens: I'm not just like turning it over to, oh, this is the end of the line for me, you know, whatever.
• 38:47
  Polly Mertens: It's like, no, I care about myself.
• 38:48
  Polly Mertens: What how can A, because you and I both have the underlying belief and values that align with, we can optimize for as long as possible.
• 38:57
  Polly Mertens: And the, and that's in our own hands, right?
• 39:00
  Polly Mertens: So we self-advocate, right?
• 39:01
  Polly Mertens: So we ask questions, we get opinions, we engage other people to help us care for ourselves, right?
• 39:06
  Polly Mertens: Like maybe I don't see something, right?
• 39:08
  Polly Mertens: And like you said, hey, I'm going into this just so you know, like this is important to me.
• 39:12
  Polly Mertens: Like this is, you know, and not that they would not want you to have a good recovery or whatever, but you're right, like letting them know, like, you know, so I and I have friends that like they have more important things on their list, like from a hormonal standpoint.
• 39:26
  Polly Mertens: Some people's, you know, especially female hormones, some people it's you know, brain fog or central uh libido or it's tummy, big weight gain, you know, whatever your priorities are, whatever that may look like, like I have them advocate and support you in that care, that self-care, right?
• 39:46
  Polly Mertens: Yeah.
• 39:47
  Samantha Pruitt: Um exactly.
• 39:48
  Samantha Pruitt: And if they can't be a resource, and you'll know right away whether they're capable of or not, it becomes really obvious when you start to have conversations.
• 39:57
  Samantha Pruitt: This is no judgment upon those professionals who have worked and spent years getting educated and developing themselves in their career path.
• 40:05
  Samantha Pruitt: They're saving lives.
• 40:06
  Samantha Pruitt: There's no doubt about it.
• 40:07
  Samantha Pruitt: They're saving lives, they're treating disease, and for many people, they're making significant changes in their trajectory moving forward, right?
• 40:15
  Samantha Pruitt: But for you, you don't have to settle with the end, the conversation ending there and you just moving forward on that path.
• 40:23
  Samantha Pruitt: You can choose to do whatever the hell you want.
• 40:26
  Samantha Pruitt: You can also choose to say no thank you to what they're offering.
• 40:30
  Samantha Pruitt: And there's there's they shouldn't be offended, right?
• 40:34
  Polly Mertens: They shouldn't be offended.
• 40:34
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, and it's not like rebellion or distrust or whatever.
• 40:37
  Polly Mertens: It's like self-advocating, you know, it's an informed participation and you are choosing, right?
• 40:42
  Polly Mertens: Just like if you went to a buffet and you're like, which one of these do you want?
• 40:45
  Polly Mertens: Right.
• 40:45
  Polly Mertens: And I think um what I what I often see with older family members that I have, they go into the doctor.
• 40:53
  Polly Mertens: It's just like they go in, like whatever they say, you know, just sort of um not and I'm always like, wait, take your own care into your own hands.
• 41:03
  Polly Mertens: You can, like you said, have conversations around this, get curious, don't just say like diagnosis, oh well, it's over, you know.
• 41:10
  Polly Mertens: It's like depending on the stage, as we talked about, you know, you're closer to being able to have a meaningful impact and you have agency and power to do something.
• 41:19
  Polly Mertens: Later stage, okay, your options are more limited, but you still often have options, A, and how you think about it, what you know, what you and and knowing that agency is like you have a belief that your actions matter.
• 41:32
  Polly Mertens: You have that belief that I can do something about this, right?
• 41:37
  Polly Mertens: This can something can happen, I can do it, right?
• 41:40
  Polly Mertens: Um, and it directly influences your behavior and your outcomes, period.
• 41:44
  Polly Mertens: You know, going back to that set in health psychology is like, do you think this is what would change if you thought that you could do something about this or you can't?
• 41:51
  Polly Mertens: Are you gonna ask about it or are you just gonna like, okay, well, I guess there's nothing that can be done.
• 41:56
  Polly Mertens: Like I have friends with like the rheumatoid arthritis or things that are they build on each other.
• 42:02
  Polly Mertens: You know, you can reverse, you can slow down that train.
• 42:05
  Polly Mertens: And I think, and I've seen people, you know, in lots of cases, especially with the power of the mind with the Joe Dispenza work, like you can reverse disease.
• 42:14
  Samantha Pruitt: So, but it's it's just well, let's let's say you choose to go on uh pharmaceutical, for example, or do some kind of treatment protocol because things have gotten flared up or to a certain level or whatever.
• 42:26
  Samantha Pruitt: You can also come off of it.
• 42:28
  Samantha Pruitt: It's not a death sentence or a life sentence.
• 42:32
  Samantha Pruitt: Maybe there is a circumstance where you need to temporarily be treated for this thing and whatever the uh you know plan is that you sign on for, that's totally fine.
• 42:41
  Samantha Pruitt: There's a time and a place, right?
• 42:43
  Samantha Pruitt: But then you should immediately get to work figuring out how do I ensure this doesn't go farther, go deeper, go further?
• 42:51
  Samantha Pruitt: How do I ensure that?
• 42:53
  Samantha Pruitt: And how can I actually get back into homeostasis so my body can hopefully do a natural protocol around this thing, whatever this thing is that's currently in disarray.
• 43:05
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, right?
• 43:05
  Polly Mertens: And you know, like we we talked about different degrees of let's call it desperation or you know, limited options.
• 43:13
  Polly Mertens: So I remember um my mom was diagnosed with light uh diabetes, not extreme, but light diabetes.
• 43:20
  Polly Mertens: And the doctor even gave her the option that she had.
• 43:24
  Polly Mertens: She was like, Okay, well, you gotta, you know, get on this medication because you got um, you know, it's too high and whatnot.
• 43:29
  Polly Mertens: She said, Well, you could get off this um if you would just walk 30 minutes a day.
• 43:33
  Polly Mertens: Wow, good job.
• 43:36
  Polly Mertens: She never walked, but at least the doctor said, Well, you don't, I mean, the doctor knew enough to say that, and unfortunately, you know, mom didn't take that into into heart, and so she never did, and so she was on that medication for a long, long, long time, you know.
• 43:50
  Samantha Pruitt: So and all of its and all of its side effects.
• 43:52
  Samantha Pruitt: Oh yeah, oh yeah.
• 43:54
  Samantha Pruitt: I mean, you're hitting the next nail that we need to before we wrap this thing up, is like lifestyle medicine is an actual thing.
• 44:03
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay, some people call it functional medicine, lifestyle medicine, longevity medicine.
• 44:09
  Samantha Pruitt: Call it whatever the hell you want.
• 44:10
  Samantha Pruitt: It's this giant bucket of things that the human can do throughout their.
• 44:19
  Samantha Pruitt: Day by various thoughts, choices, and actions that generate a state of health or disease, function or dysfunction.
• 44:31
  Samantha Pruitt: Right.
• 44:31
  Samantha Pruitt: So if you just want to do a little bit of research in that arena, it will blow your mind.
• 44:37
  Samantha Pruitt: There's just so much good science going on here.
• 44:40
  Samantha Pruitt: But the basics, just real foundational stuff we should touch on, obviously, are gut health and the permeable gut and all of the impacts that your gut has on the rest of the systems.
• 44:52
  Samantha Pruitt: Right?
• 44:53
  Samantha Pruitt: Like if your gut health is off, most things in the body will be off.
• 44:58
  Samantha Pruitt: So, I mean, you could nerd out all day long on gut microbiome and gut health, but maybe you want to touch bases on that for just a hot second.
• 45:06
  Polly Mertens: It's one of my favorite topics.
• 45:07
  Polly Mertens: Let's nerd on that.
• 45:09
  Samantha Pruitt: Let's talk about poop too.
• 45:11
  Samantha Pruitt: Wow, we're here.
• 45:12
  Samantha Pruitt: I mean, people aren't pooping, dude.
• 45:16
  Samantha Pruitt: Anyway, I digress.
• 45:17
  Samantha Pruitt: Talk about gut health.
• 45:18
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 45:19
  Polly Mertens: Yeah.
• 45:20
  Polly Mertens: I agree.
• 45:20
  Polly Mertens: And, you know, there's um there's a guy named Dr.
• 45:23
  Polly Mertens: Dean Orish.
• 45:24
  Polly Mertens: You know, he has clinical research.
• 45:25
  Polly Mertens: We talked about one of those top ones, like cardiovascular, right?
• 45:29
  Polly Mertens: His research shows that lifestyle intervention interventions can reverse many aspects of heart disease, right?
• 45:37
  Polly Mertens: So, like challenging, challenging that it's inevitable.
• 45:40
  Polly Mertens: I just have it, whether it's genetic or you got a diagnosis.
• 45:43
  Polly Mertens: It's like, no, actually, there's probably some options, some things you could do today to reverse that.
• 45:48
  Polly Mertens: You know, don't need to be like in the hospital with a widowmaker, get a stint.
• 45:53
  Polly Mertens: I mean, everybody, you know, I've got too many friends and family and loved ones getting these stints, like, you know, just like they're handing them out like straws at a bar.
• 45:59
  Polly Mertens: It's like, I'm sorry.
• 46:01
  Polly Mertens: Like, no, like, let's get you on the treadmill, let's get you out for a walk, let's, you know, get get you off the sugar a little bit, you know, a lot of things, right?
• 46:10
  Polly Mertens: So, and gut health, yes.
• 46:11
  Polly Mertens: Like, yeah, I mean, and what what's often so there's like two things.
• 46:16
  Polly Mertens: One is, you know, A, it's identity, right?
• 46:18
  Polly Mertens: If you don't think you can do anything, or if you're just, you know, predestined or whatever, you won't take the same actions as if you did, right?
• 46:25
  Polly Mertens: And second is like, you know, knowing what to do and then doing it, right?
• 46:30
  Polly Mertens: It's not always easy in this environment that we live in with all the junk food and the choices and the stressful days, and you know, like it costs something to work out and whatnot.
• 46:42
  Polly Mertens: Like it's not always easy to live a life, a healthy lifestyle, but it is a choice that you can make, right?
• 46:48
  Polly Mertens: And so you've got to get over that inertia sometimes of like, you know, body at rest tends to stay at rest.
• 46:53
  Polly Mertens: You know, it's like, and a body in motion tends to stay in motion.
• 46:56
  Polly Mertens: Once you get on the healthy angle, it's easier to stay in that lane and in that zone, just as it is to stay out of shape, out of good health, out of, like I said, dysbiosis.
• 47:08
  Samantha Pruitt: And you really only need to do the 80-20.
• 47:10
  Samantha Pruitt: If you can make the right decision, 80% of the time, you are crushing it.
• 47:16
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay, it doesn't mean you all of a sudden have to live this very extreme lifestyle and everything has to be perfect.
• 47:22
  Samantha Pruitt: That's a whole other psychological problem that we're not gonna get into in this show.
• 47:27
  Samantha Pruitt: But if you live the 80-20 and 20% of the time, you're kind of like, yeah, I'm not feeling it today, or I'm gonna do this other thing today.
• 47:33
  Samantha Pruitt: Cool.
• 47:33
  Samantha Pruitt: But if 80% of the time you're making the right choices, the right decisions, taking the right actions, you're gonna be fine.
• 47:39
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, you're gonna be fine.
• 47:40
  Polly Mertens: Yeah.
• 47:40
  Polly Mertens: And you know, one of the things is just start with what you probably already know that you need to be doing.
• 47:46
  Polly Mertens: You know, if if you've got the wake-up call, or if you fear that you're close to having a wake-up call or, you know, a diagnosis or something like that, and you're like, I know I should whatever, stop having that extra glass of wine at night, or stop eating that candy bar, or stop, you know, whatever, or I know I need to walk more.
• 48:04
  Polly Mertens: Okay, well, you know it.
• 48:06
  Polly Mertens: Okay, let's do something about it.
• 48:08
  Polly Mertens: And like one of the things that I see is, especially as people, you know, age up, whatnot, is you know, one of my favorite phrases in terms of relationships is um Jim Rohn says, I'll take care of me for you, and you take care of you for me, right?
• 48:24
  Polly Mertens: Because it's this partnership, right?
• 48:26
  Polly Mertens: And it's like, I'm gonna take care of this body and myself and my well-being and being the best partner I can be because I care about you, and you do the same for me.
• 48:36
  Polly Mertens: And I see that also with families.
• 48:38
  Polly Mertens: Like people don't often see the not caring for themselves, the eventual impact that's gonna have on their loved ones.
• 48:46
  Polly Mertens: You know, it's like it's massive.
• 48:49
  Polly Mertens: Hey, you're probably paying a price also, and you're gonna ask them to pay a price in watching you whatever, uh young death, uh you know, long painful, you know, decline, whatever it is, but like taking care of you for them also.
• 49:08
  Samantha Pruitt: 100%.
• 49:08
  Samantha Pruitt: I mean, yeah, we could go on about this all day long, obviously.
• 49:14
  Polly Mertens: Well, I hope, I hope, you know, my biggest thing was a friend who was like, ah, just you know, it's inevitable.
• 49:20
  Polly Mertens: I hope you've heard enough in this in the way that you and I think that if you haven't already awakened to getting curious, shifting your paradigm, asking more questions, feeling more empowered, taking your agency back, goddamn, then this was like, okay, click next, don't listen, keep listening to us.
• 49:39
  Polly Mertens: But that's who we see you as is somebody who wants control of their life, wants more agency in making their choices and doing something about it.
• 49:49
  Polly Mertens: So yeah.
• 49:50
  Samantha Pruitt: I mean, it's it's not that we're saying don't trust, you know, Western medical or this or that.
• 49:55
  Samantha Pruitt: What we are saying is trust yourself above all.
• 49:59
  Samantha Pruitt: And you can trust yourself when you know yourself.
• 50:03
  Samantha Pruitt: The more I know what who I am and how I work and what what's good for me, what the more I know me, the more empowered I am to trust myself to make the right decisions.
• 50:17
  Samantha Pruitt: Yes.
• 50:18
  Samantha Pruitt: At whatever stage, no matter how big the crisis, no matter how small the thing is, I know the answer.
• 50:26
  Samantha Pruitt: And so it's that to me, like that's the take home is like, dude, know yourself and trust yourself.
• 50:32
  Samantha Pruitt: You're gonna be fine.
• 50:33
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah.
• 50:33
  Samantha Pruitt: But if you somehow decided that's someone else's job, we have a problem.
• 50:39
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, that's what we don't want to say.
• 50:40
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, and take actions.
• 50:41
  Polly Mertens: Like, like if you find out something, you have the power to not just take that as destiny, you know, like take it back into your own hands.
• 50:50
  Polly Mertens: Like uh one of my mentors says, like, you know, you you walk in and the doctor hands you a uh a diagnosis, whatever, and it's like, okay, thank you for your opinion.
• 50:59
  Polly Mertens: I will not be following, you know, that trajectory, right?
• 51:02
  Polly Mertens: It's like, okay, that's an opinion.
• 51:03
  Polly Mertens: And I'm, you know, and what do you think?
• 51:06
  Polly Mertens: What do you believe?
• 51:07
  Polly Mertens: What do you know about yourself and your ability?
• 51:10
  Polly Mertens: Because I'm sorry, if you just look, if you just search for people, there's probably every disease, including blindness and all sorts of things known to man that people have reversed.
• 51:21
  Polly Mertens: There is, there are people all over the planet.
• 51:23
  Polly Mertens: So if they can, why not you?
• 51:26
  Polly Mertens: Like you can too.
• 51:28
  Polly Mertens: So you just have to know, you know, if you if you activate that in your mind, like, well, if somebody has reversed this, I can reverse it.
• 51:34
  Polly Mertens: If there's a way to do it, I can do it, right?
• 51:37
  Polly Mertens: And then you take that power back.
• 51:39
  Polly Mertens: So this was fun.
• 51:41
  Polly Mertens: It was fun.
• 51:43
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, I like helping people remember their awesomeness, their absolute awesomeness, and take it into the world and dimension of your health.
• 51:52
  Polly Mertens: By God, right?
• 51:53
  Polly Mertens: Nothing else.
• 51:54
  Samantha Pruitt: Because how your life feels and your body and your brain is more important than how it looks.
• 52:02
  Polly Mertens: And every day is your opportunity to find your awesome.