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How functional medicine and faith are healing healthcare from the inside out · Cultural Wars | America Out Loud News

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Hard-hitting medical truth, cutting through conflict and confusion to the understanding you're searching for.
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Join Dr.
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Peter McCullough, world-renowned medical expert and practicing physician for this edition of the McCullough Report.
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Your life may depend on it.
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Let's get loud.
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America Loud Talk news.
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This is a McCall reporting.
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I'm Dr.
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Peter McCullough.
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Now let's get on with the show.
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We have functional nurse academy and a wonderful, wonderful presentation about how functional nursing can play a critical role in making America healthy again.
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Let's get real.
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Let's get mild in America.
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Let's get real.
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Let's get loud on America Talk News.
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This is a McCullough Report and Focal Point Substack.
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It's a great pleasure to welcome to the program, Melissa Schreibfetter.
2:00
And wow, is that a great German name or what?
2:03
And she told me she's married to a great German man, has a young family, uh, but she is a leader in health care.
2:10
And we're going to talk today about functional nurse academy, some major issues of nursing and in medicine.
2:18
Melissa, welcome to the program.
2:20
Thank you so much for having me.
2:22
I really appreciate it.
2:24
Well, let's kick it off.
2:25
And why don't you describe a little bit about your background where you went to school and your professional experience, and then we'll get into the academy as I silence my phone.
2:35
Okay.
2:36
Yes.
2:37
You know, my husband was just in here reminding me to silence my phone.
2:41
So I have been a nurse for oh god, having to think 13 years now.
2:47
And I actually went to school in Texas at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio, and started my career as a, you know, conventional nurse.
3:00
And I will say I was indoctrinated into the system.
3:04
However, there were always things that just did not sit right, things that just didn't make sense to me.
3:09
And what really woke me up and turned me to wanting to practice more holistically, which is how nursing should be was uh long story short, I got sick with my own health crisis, autoimmune condition, chronic fatigue, which I was essentially healed through functional medicine, because again, the conventional system is not recognizing treatment for things like chronic Lyme disease or looking into triggers of autoimmune conditions.
3:43
But through that experience, um, that is how I got started in functional medicine as a nurse.
3:49
I started my own functional nurse business and got a few women well.
3:55
They went into their local mom Facebook groups and blew up my business, and then I ended up being able to operate completely outside of the system, actually helping people.
4:06
And then when what I like to call the COVID shenanigans, when that happened, I was hearing from more and more nurses that were being fired for not getting their COVID vaccines, or they were quitting because they didn't agree with what was happening in the hospitals, and that is basically how the functional nurse academy was born, you know.
4:30
I mean, putting uh together like my experience, my clinical skill set, my training into a program to actually provide that root cause approach care that nurses can practice within scope outside of the conventional medical model.
4:46
And it's really been um it's been such a blessing because through it I've been able to train hundreds of nurses of across the country, and then the program also is absolutely vaccine risk aware, which is a problem that I saw in a lot of holistic training programs.
5:05
Since it's considered controversial, a lot of programs don't want to discuss it, but this is a very vulnerable population, and healthcare providers and practitioners should be aware of it.
5:19
For sure.
5:20
Now, uh, how many nurses are there in the workforce in the United States?
5:24
So there are approximately about five million nurses.
5:29
Okay.
5:30
The number I had in my mind was about seven million.
5:34
Now, uh of those, um, how many of those nurses work less than full-time?
5:41
Oh goodness, I do not, I do not have the stats on that.
5:44
I wish I did, but you know, I I do think that with nursing, you're going to see more nurses that are part-time and PRN because we are one of those professions that allow for that type of work environment.
5:58
So I if I had to guess, maybe maybe 30, maybe 20 to 30 percent.
6:03
Yeah, well, a couple of interesting observations.
6:05
Um in nursing, uh, there is one of the uh areas where there's a tremendous gender discrepancy.
6:13
You're probably aware of this, where in nursing it's about 90 percent women and 10% men.
6:20
Uh whereas with physicians, MDs, and DOs, it's exactly 50-50.
6:26
And uh, so we have this gender discrepancy.
6:30
And uh and the fact, like we're with so many women, they may become mothers and end up having you know responsibilities with child rearing.
6:39
So, with that kind of gender disparity, uh, many nurses are our part-time.
6:45
In fact, I I think you know, a substantial fraction uh are.
6:49
And another little interesting observation is that um health care, particularly hospitals and clinics, they're the leading employer of women raising children uh in the United States proportionally, and particularly young single mothers.
7:08
And that would be, you know, nursing, medical assistance, AIDS, other technologies.
7:14
So every time people say, well, we need to cut health care costs and what have you.
7:18
And I've always been in these discussions in Washington and say, well, health care costs, and we're talking about hospitals and what have you.
7:25
I said, largely the costs in hospitals is people.
7:29
It's the employee workforce and we're largely talking about women.
7:34
And it's always been the toughest discussion about uh because hospitals are the leading employer of uh of you know the now in large cities, middle, and small towns.
7:45
So nursing, very, very important profession.
7:48
And together with doctors and others, we're about 17% of the GDP.
7:55
So healthcare.
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Other countries try to keep it, you know, less than 10 or even less than five.
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United States, we we spend a lot of money taking care of each other.
8:05
And as you pointed out, we probably can do a lot better.
8:09
So tell us uh tell us a bit about uh and describe uh functional holistic nursing.
8:17
Yes, so functional holistic nursing is basically taking an approach a root cause approach to health care.
8:26
And we see this time and time again in the healthcare model.
8:30
Uh, of course, I have so much respect for the ER and critical care.
8:37
They really shine when it comes to emergencies, but the conventional model is under serving the population that is struggling with chronic illness.
8:49
And then also our chronic illness rate is very, very high.
8:53
It is among the highest among other when we compare uh health outcomes from other developed countries.
9:01
So, for an example, say that someone is um experiencing again, some I'll give you the example of what I went through.
9:11
Chronic fatigue, okay.
9:13
So something like Lyme disease, the standard care, they now are finally recognizing post-treatment Lyme disease, where someone was treated with Lyme disease, but they're still not well yet.
9:27
Well, the standard of care, the clinical guidelines for that condition is not to treat the underlying infection, it is to medicate the symptoms with antidepressants such as SSRIs and to manage pain if pain is an issue with long term pain medication.
9:47
And again, that when you just step aside and you use your logic and reasoning, that doesn't make very much sense.
9:54
And also, we have a problem in conventional medicine where the standard reference range.
10:00
That are being used is essentially a statistical average of the US population.
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But then we know major organizations, even the American Diabetes Association is saying that approximately 88% of the US population is metabolically unhealthy.
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So why in the world are we using these standard reference ranges?
10:23
So in functional medicine, we're really looking at okay, what what are your current symptoms?
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What could be some potential root causes?
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What are some potential triggers?
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And we also know in the conventional system that on average there is a 17 year time lag from when we discover new concepts in the scientific literature to when that may even get established in clinical guidelines.
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And that may never happen if there are conflicts of interest with industry.
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So uh, and then of course, so of course, with the labs, we're looking at more optimal ranges, we're looking at more up to date research.
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We're asking the questions why, and not just relying on pharmaceuticals and surgery and things like that.
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And then, of course, we also are implementing dietary and lifestyle changes because we know the vast majority of chronic disease is due to lifestyle and nurses, again, we are the best coaches.
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This is what we do.
11:27
We're so well suited for this.
11:30
And uh for the lab testing and things like that, a lot of nurses don't realize that you can absolutely um offer functional medicine services.
11:40
And even if you're not a nurse practitioner, there are ways to partner with laboratories where you can actually order lab testing under a medical doctor and then use that data as education and collaboration with the healthcare team.
11:55
Well, Melissa, you know, uh you almost don't need any orders anymore.
12:00
So if if you've been on lab corp, labs on demand, I think virtually everything is there for self-order now.
12:08
Same thing is true with any any lab test uh dot uh dot com and what have you.
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So I think doctors' orders for lab tests uh uh are are going away.
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And the consumer can order them.
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They need some direction.
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I think that's clearly a role that that uh that functional nursing can provide.
12:27
But I I don't think you're you're tied to a doctor.
12:30
I I like your comments that you know, we need help.
12:34
If you try to get an appointment with a doctor, it is so hard.
12:40
The waiting list is so long that you know other professionals outside of doctors are gonna have to start solving problems.
12:50
It's just too much.
12:51
And so I've I've you know I've talked to the naturopathic and holistic uh communities and others and said, yeah, we, you know, I think that community really needs to build up.
13:03
Um the conventional medical doctors like myself, we we can't build it.
13:08
We're just uh overwhelmed all day long.
13:11
And uh, you know, for my perspective, we're not pushing drugs on people.
13:14
You know, we're just you know, patients are so deep into medical problems, we're doing the best we can.
13:21
I'd love for a lot of this to be intercepted far earlier on by functional and holistic nursing.
13:29
Oh, absolutely.
13:30
And and again, when we look at lab work and things like that, we the way that the system is set up, the system is set up in a way to fail because again, so many of these providers that are working within the system, they're working under the confines of insurance, which I oh gosh, I think we could probably do a whole show on that.
13:51
But you know, providers are having to see so many patients in a day, they have very limited appointment times with them.
13:59
So, how can you completely serve these people well and the limited resources and time?
14:05
And then also we know that when a uh patient is using their insurance, it's really the insurance companies that are dictating the care and they're dictating what labs can be ordered and whatnot.
14:18
And again, with the self-pay labs and the labs that a uh nurse can order.
14:24
So the way that I do that, the way I teach about it is actually to bypass insurance and to give uh your listeners an example.
14:32
I used to review medical charts uh from the ER and whatnot.
14:38
And I used to do case management.
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And I've seen where a patient goes to the ER for a simple test, complete metabolic panel of CMP.
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And then their insurance is billed 500, and then it gets adjusted down to around 30 or 40 dollars.
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And then that patient is thinking, thank God I've got my insurance.
14:59
Well, we can order that without insurance for a total of five dollars.
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So a lot of these labs are actually very affordable, and people are really branching out to use things like HSAs, FSAs, health shares, payment plans.
15:15
But if we don't have those confines of insurance, um, we can actually start looking at things early, catch dysfunction early before it turns into a full-on disease process that then is going to require more um medical workup, medications, and then possibly even surgeries.
15:35
I'm so glad you mentioned it, Michelle.
15:37
I decided to um uh bring up um lab corp just as a um an example for us to comment on.
15:48
So let me uh bring it up.
15:55
Okay, can you see that?
15:57
Yes, I can.
15:58
Okay, so this is 10% off your first test.
16:03
So let me get back to that frame here.
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And um see if I can navigate through it.
16:16
But um in typical format, I think um uh imprisoned here.
16:27
Um see if I can get out of it.
16:29
Um but uh uh take a look at these tests.
16:34
Can you see this?
16:35
Um so uh I just went on here, and this is all cash, but I can give you an example.
16:44
This is 169 for 169.
16:49
Let's take a look at what this is.
16:52
So this includes a um uh this includes a comprehensive metabolic panel, CBC, UA, cholesterol lipid panel, and hemoglobin A1C for 69.
17:08
And other systems you may be able to get that bundle for much cheaper.
17:14
So instead of going through the capture of, you know, having to see a doctor, waiting, getting the labs ordered, this and that, and you can just or you can just add it to your cart, they give you 10% off, and you're often running with respect to your tests.
17:33
And um uh this is so uh liberating.
17:38
And the tests uh are really deep.
17:41
I mean, they have things from annual wellness, uh, hormones, uh, sexual health.
17:47
And here's an important one that I measure all the time immunity and infectious diseases, and I click on this, and then um I I order the uh COVID uh uh antibody test, which gives us the antibodies to the spike protein, this one right here.
18:11
So, and the 69% off.
18:15
So the the point is that ordering your own labs or having a functional nurse guide you on this is so liberating.
18:28
Do you know that 70% of all diagnoses in medicine are uh arrived at by laboratory testing?
18:39
So it seems to me a big part of functional nursing is to develop a lot of skill in clinical utilization of the lab.
18:50
Yes, absolutely.
18:51
And also when nurses are working in that hospital setting, we also are looking at the lab testing and then talking to the physician.
18:59
So we're really bringing that model outside into the outpatient, uh, basically outpatient care where we are focusing more on health promotion, because there are a lot of conditions out there, like you know, for an example, when we start to someone gets a diagnosis of diabetes type two, or even when they're in the pre-diabetic range, well, what is happening before that?
19:25
Are we just watching the blood sugar and the hemoglobin A1C go up and then we're not doing anything?
19:31
And then we also know in functional medicine that um we see associations with things like with things like insulin resistance with deficiencies and vitamin D, magnesium, chromium.
19:44
Uh, so many of the so much of the US population is significantly nutrient deficient, not just because of the uh high intake of processed foods, but also because so many people.
20:00
Are experiencing gut issues and are in these chronic states of fight or flight, which we know then can really impair the production of things like stomach acid, which you need to properly break down and utilize nutrients from your food.
20:16
And these are all things that we can help and support people through.
20:21
And you know, from doing this now for several years, it is remarkable the type of health outcomes that you can see.
20:30
And many of these interventions are not very costly interventions.
20:35
I think that patients just need help and they need support and they need education.
20:40
Well, Michelle, is Melissa.
20:43
Is it reasonable to say?
20:45
I'm sorry, Melissa.
20:47
Um, is it uh reasonable to say that um that a functional nurse can you know can develop the expertise to directly counsel patients on this without a doctor?
21:00
So yes, and in some situations, now if a nurse is say if the nurse is not a nurse practitioner, they're not advanced practice.
21:09
There are many, many ways that these interventions that we would be implementing through the modalities of functional medicine are actually independent nursing function.
21:20
So actually, one of the things I have when I am teaching my students, uh it's one of the activities is that you review your state nursing scope of practice, and then whatever services that you are offering, make sure that that is in alignment of what you are illegally allowed to do.
21:37
But again, the vast majority of what we are doing, honestly, is through the scope as educators, which is a universally accepted nursing scope of practice.
21:48
Right.
21:48
At the level of uh a BSN or associates uh RN or so well with RNs, um, associate RN, BSN RN.
21:58
Now LPNs as well can do this.
22:00
Now their scope is a little bit more limited, but again, when we talk about health promotion, that's where LPNs can also be more independent.
22:09
But what I also, when I am, you know, practicing and in my independent business.
22:14
So I always tell my clients that I am not a nurse practitioner.
22:19
I cannot diagnose treat.
22:21
I cannot manage any medical condition, but I am helping you with nutrition, lifestyle, we are doing labs through education.
22:28
But I also explained to them, which I think is very important that this is not a replacement for your primary care provider.
22:36
I honestly do still think it is okay to have a trusted primary care provider on board in the case that you do have a medical event that requires a prescription.
22:46
And then also if I am ordering labs for them, then I also have a um, you know, licensed professional that has prescriptive authority in the case that maybe there is a medical need.
23:01
Like the number one reason why I am reaching out to their provider or writing a recommendation letter is because I may run a full thyroid panel, which it's very difficult to get a complete thyroid panel.
23:13
And I'm seeing that somebody may have a need for a thyroid hormone.
23:17
So that's just like a simple example right there where why I may reach out to the provider.
23:23
Well, for sure.
23:24
You know, about about 15% of women ultimately, you know, go on some form of thyroid replacement, about 8% of men.
23:32
I mean, that that's a common one as an example.
23:35
Um now, is the does the functional nurse academy now is that a formal training where there's uh a curriculum and some type of certification?
23:45
Yes, yeah, it's actually dual accredited.
23:47
So it is a self-paced program.
23:49
I made it for crazy busy nurses.
23:52
So you can complete it your own pace, and it is accredited for 90 nursing CEUs.
23:58
It also is peer reviewed and endorsed by the American Holistic Nurses Association.
24:05
And in addition to that, we are also board certified through multiple other organizations.
24:11
So when our nurses complete the program, um, there is a multiple eligibilities for board certification titles in functional medicine.
24:22
Okay, so this sounds really, really solid.
24:24
So those of you out there in nursing, a lot of the people who listen to the McCullough report are on focal points nursing.
24:31
They they they've been asking the question ever since this pandemic kicked off, how can I get involved?
24:36
How do I, you know, professionally grow?
24:38
This sounds like a terrific opportunity for progressive nursing growth.
24:44
Do you have any regrets or any caveats?
24:47
Oh my goodness.
24:48
I well, I definitely think it is a God thing.
24:51
I and I before we turn the camera on, you know, to your listeners, we were talking about how I have two babies in the other room, and I am so incredibly blessed that I am able to operate the functional nurse academy because it allows me to stay at home with my babies.
25:09
So opening up my business as a nurse, it has been the best thing that I have ever done professionally.
25:15
But I'm I'm really excited about it.
25:17
And I I remember when COVID happened.
25:21
Um, yeah, I did not stay quiet about what was going on with the protocols and the vaccines.
25:28
And I remember so many people were in my ear and they were like, Melissa, you're gonna lose your business, you're gonna lose your license because I was speaking about these things.
25:38
And it really the opposite happened because I was outspoken, um, the vast majority of nurses that are fed up with the sick care system and they want to practice holistically, those are the same nurses that were not okay with what happened with the vaccines and with COVID.
25:55
So I think that that is one of the reasons why I actually I've just grown so quickly in this business.
26:01
Well, well, there you go.
26:03
And um, yeah, you know, people want to know who to trust.
26:07
And you know, one of the criteria, it's a very simple one.
26:10
Did you take a COVID vaccine?
26:13
And uh the answer can be yes, and the answer can be no.
26:17
But if if the answer is no, many times the trust grows immediately.
26:20
If the answer is yes, then it's always, well, what do you think about it now?
26:25
And uh that happened with my wife.
26:27
She she sees one of the, you know, one of the more senior OBGENs in Dallas, and uh she went to see him and she was, you know, really uh apprehensive.
26:37
And she asked him, she said, Did you take the COVID vaccine?
26:40
He goes, Yeah, I did.
26:41
He goes, but look at me, I'm old and I'm frail.
26:43
He goes, I'd never recommend it for you know young woman like you.
26:47
So uh, you know, honest answer, right?
26:49
So the trust is built.
26:51
Um, but we saw such great harm with the COVID vaccines and it sounds like there's only a fraction of nurses that can see it.
26:59
You know, sadly, the majority of vaccines given were given by pharmacists or medical assistants or nurses and others.
27:07
They were physically giving the shots.
27:10
So um, you know, I I was at a symposium recently, and uh someone said, well, you know, uh, doctors are involved in sick care and hospitals are involved in sick care and and uh doctors don't make people well.
27:26
And I heard Robert F.
27:28
Kennedy said, well, doctors should uh, you know, go to medical school and learn nutrition.
27:33
I thought to myself, you know, we're giving complex medical treatment for very serious illnesses like heart failure and cancer and and you know, we're doing life-saving surgeries and highly technical work.
27:49
The answer is no, no, we we don't, we're not in the business of making people well.
27:56
People present to us with deep into problems, and it's called problem-based practice.
28:02
That's what we do.
28:03
And it's just there's a million doctors, there's not seven million, there's a million, and we're dealing with very serious problems.
28:11
And no, we can't teach people nutrition.
28:14
No, that's the work of others.
28:16
And so, you know, that's where we need our five to seven million nurses in the workforce to really beef up their abilities to educate patients.
28:25
You know, doctors have the longest training uh phase of all for me.
28:29
It was like 17 years.
28:31
It's like, no, uh, I just did this idea, it's called doctoring up.
28:36
Well, the doctor has to do this, the doctor has to do that.
28:38
The doctor, doctor, doctor.
28:39
I think we have to level the playing field.
28:42
And this is a great opportunity for functional nursing to really step up.
28:46
Yes, yes, I I agree.
28:48
And I've heard that too, where there's criticism about nurses doing this because then there's people saying, well, it needs to be from a medical doctor.
28:57
But I'm like, the medical doctors cannot do everything.
29:00
And again, we have so many just severely medically compromised patients in this country, and all of these people that may have, you know, they're starting to have symptoms.
29:13
They don't have a severe medical diagnosis yet.
29:16
Those are just the ideal types of patients for nurses to be able to work with one-on-one to work on turning their health around.
29:26
And I really do believe that uh, you know, nurses being the largest healthcare profession in the country that we actually have the numbers to make a true impact.
29:36
Yeah, no, I agree.
29:38
So let's get into some uh scenarios, uh, just some common health scenarios.
29:43
Uh you know, as we could encounter before the pandemic and certainly now.
29:48
And let me ask you about um your brief advice.
29:52
So uh you mentioned metabolic disease.
29:55
Uh I would say well over 90% of metabolic disease because people.
30:00
People are too fat.
30:01
It's really overweight and obesity.
30:03
The metabolic problems essentially would go away if that, you know, if they were at a normal weight, they wouldn't be where they are.
30:09
So what's your brief advice for people in losing weight?
30:15
Yes.
30:15
So, well, first of all, eat real food.
30:20
I like to tell people, okay, eat God designed our bodies.
30:23
Eat the food that God biologically designed for us to eat.
30:27
But I also do recognize we are exposed to so many things in our environment that is not natural for us to be exposed to.
30:37
Okay.
30:37
And some of those things are endocrine disrupting chemicals.
30:41
And I have worked with a number of women, men too, but mainly women who are doing all of the right things.
30:49
And they are experiencing rapid weight gain, weight loss resistance.
30:55
And there's a variety of reasons that that may happen.
30:58
But so much of that can be attributed to an increased toxic burden.
31:04
So that's why it is really, really important, especially with women.
31:08
Like when you look at all of the personal care products that women are using, so many of these chemicals that are in the products that women are using were not properly safety tested.
31:20
And we know that in the US, we use ingredients that are not widely used in places like Europe because they have stricter standards.
31:29
So again, like it is absolutely what we eat, exercise, water, the basics, but also reducing your toxic burden and the body is we're healing when we sleep.
31:41
We heal when we're in parasympathetic nervous system response mode.
31:45
We are not meant to be running around all the time in chronic fight or flight.
31:50
And also when we are sleeping, that is when the body is, you know, detoxifying, metabolizing hormones, all of these wonderful functions that the body does.
32:02
And when the body gets out of balance, um, you know, the body speaks to us in symptoms.
32:06
And then one of the symptoms may be that the body's holding on to more calories as fat.
32:12
Yeah, it's so true.
32:14
So out of all your clients, what percent do you think are overweight or over or obese?
32:19
Oh, oh my goodness, let me think.
32:22
Oh God, I feel like they're gonna be listening to me.
32:25
They're gonna think does Melissa think.
32:27
Well, say just in general that nurses encounter in.
32:30
Okay, okay.
32:30
Oh, God, you know, I would say I think it's over 50%.
32:35
Yeah.
32:37
Probably nationwide, it's 70%.
32:39
Now, what proportion of clients or just patients in general, do you think have less than optimal sleep?
32:48
Oh my goodness, probably most of them.
32:50
It's very rare that when I do that assessment that someone says that they are just sleeping well throughout the night, or they will say you always have to ask people uh details.
32:58
Because they'll be like, oh, yeah, my sleep is fine.
33:00
Then I assess them, and then it's like six hours of broken sleep, and they're not waking out rested.
33:06
But I do think a lot of people are in that chronic uh stress response all day, and then they can't sleep.
33:13
So then they're on their phones and their devices and all the blue light exposure, and then they're not getting restful sleep.
33:19
So that's very common.
33:21
Um yeah, I think that that's my interpretation uh too.
33:26
Now, what I do is on losing weight, I tell people on diet, there's two parts to diet.
33:33
There's making healthy choices, and then there's reducing the portions.
33:38
So even if you made perfectly healthy choices, you would call it real food.
33:43
If you don't cut down the portions, the weight's not going to go down.
33:47
And uh that about 80% of weight loss is on the side of diet, and about 20% is on the side of exercise.
33:54
Now we want people to do all of them healthy choices, reduce their portions in exercise.
33:59
Uh, but as the human body ages, the number of fat cells, if we get fat, the number of fat cells can increase 10fold in the human body.
34:09
And the size of each fat cell can increase 10fold.
34:13
So somebody who's carrying 50 extra pounds, they have a lot of extra fat cells.
34:19
And, you know, if you rapidly shrink those fat cells down, they don't go away.
34:24
They're still there.
34:25
And they can rapidly regain weight.
34:27
And it's only until weight is down, typically for nine months or a year or more, do those fat cells actually drop out and you can have permanent weight loss.
34:34
But of interest in the United States, I think uh obesity crested about three years ago.
34:40
And now it's on the way down.
34:42
Um let me ask you a couple more things on diet.
34:46
Uh, do you advise patients uh on the use of over-the-counter uh GLP one agonists?
34:54
Absolutely not.
34:55
And also I will say, as an RN, that would be a violation of my scope.
35:00
So if I were to do that, which I don't, um, it would be more like I recommend you ask your provider about this.
35:06
But I do have, and again, I don't want to um judge providers for prescribing them or uh patients feel judged for taking them, but I do think that they are being over-prescribed.
35:19
And I also am concerned about the uh side effect profile.
35:25
I also am increasingly concerned about the risk of things like suicidal ideation.
35:30
And I also think I see this frequently, where uh GLP ones are are prescribed when there is not a thorough workup of your hormones.
35:42
And again, you want to assess things like the sex hormones, fasting insulin.
35:48
You want to look at a full thyroid panel and make sure those are optimal because sometimes people are being prescribed this peptide, and then the rest of it is being overlooked, or people, I see this a lot where people are taking these uh medications, and then they still are eating Doritos and they haven't made the you know uh proper nutrition choices.
36:12
And uh, yeah, I think that there's there's a lot of risk, you know, with those medications.
36:17
But again, I I think if someone is extremely obese, you know, I mean, say that someone is three, 400 pounds, we know that that is going to increase your risk of death, and we know all of that fatty tissue also is producing inflammatory cytokines.
36:32
So again, just like with any medical decision risk versus benefit, but I believe they are widely overused.
36:39
Yeah.
36:40
Well, yeah, I misspoke about over the counter, but they are certainly available over the internet.
36:44
There's usually a check-in with a doctor.
36:47
The current statistics are I think about 16% of Americans have at one time or another had a GLP one receptor agonist.
36:55
And the current number of people on them right now is about 6% of Americans.
37:00
And so you can see these prominent cases.
37:02
So uh I think Serena Williams is just on TV advertising it, and she never really looked obese to me, but um, she said she lost 30 pounds on the commercial.
37:12
Mike Pompeo is nearly unrecognizable.
37:15
He was in politics.
37:17
And I don't know if you saw Jimmy Levy, he's the rapper and that uh uh singer, he's a very good singer in the health freedom movement.
37:24
Uh he's lost an extraordinary amount of weight.
37:27
You don't even recognize him.
37:29
So I every time I see a big weight loss, I always ask about GLP one drugs because they're being used.
37:34
And now recently, uh, what's been introduced is an oral pill form of wigovee, for instance, um, which is uh just osempic or semaglutide.
37:45
And again, you know, people lose a lot of weight on those medications.
37:49
However, a high percentage of that, I believe it's around 30% or so, may be muscle mass.
37:56
And that also, I believe, is one of the reasons why when people go off of these weight loss medications, some people have a hard time keeping the weight off.
38:06
And when you lose a lot of your muscle mass, your muscle mass is important for your metabolism.
38:12
Oh, good point.
38:12
Yeah.
38:13
Yeah, but you know, one of the stocks that really skyrocketed today uh was a drug company that's now making a drug to try to preserve the muscle mass during the weight loss of having a GLP one drug.
38:27
So it's it's another drug.
38:30
Um so you can see where this is going.
38:33
But uh, what I know about it is with just good old diet and exercise, um the pounds that come off, about 75% of his fat, 25% of his muscle.
38:43
With GLP one receptor agonist, it's it's about 60 pounds, 60% of its fat and 40% of its muscle.
38:50
And it's very hard to get that muscle mass back.
38:54
And so have you seen the term ozempic face?
38:57
I was just gonna say that.
38:59
Yes, yes.
39:00
I uh I oh my goodness, I have I cannot tell you how many friends and family members that I have that are taking it, and the people that I'm real close to, I'm like, I can tell that they're taking it because I you can see it in the face.
39:13
Yeah, you can see it, and I do prescribe them uh the uh the um the uh FDA approved version for weight loss is the same drug for semaglutide as Wagovi, and then for uh for um terzeptide uh for Manjaro is for diabetes, and then it's zep bound for weight loss.
39:36
I do prescribe them of those two, I do think the zep bound is better.
39:40
The the it's a it's a dual acting product.
39:43
Uh it's a little simpler to dose, but um, you know, the typical patient I have is well over 300 pounds, life-threatening obesity, diabetes, and I'm using his favorable cardiac and renal data for sure.
39:57
By the way, they've been on the market for about 20 years.
40:00
I remember a long time ago, exenatide.
40:02
So we've worked at these drugs for a long time.
40:04
But we're, I think we're going to see an explosion now of the oral drugs and other modifications of them.
40:11
The inappropriate use that I see in my clinic is I had a woman the other day who uh I think she was she had to be like 120 pounds, 100, maybe 125 at the most, and she's probably five foot six.
40:26
And she was taking uh I think semaglutide.
40:30
Uh and she goes, Well, I just went on it for a few months.
40:33
You know, I've got uh I've got a wedding reception to go to I see that too, where these individuals that um I I have uh one client who I've worked with for years, and and she maybe she looks completely healthy, but she wanted to lose 10, 15 pounds, and her primary care provider said, No, I'm not gonna prescribe this for you.
40:55
You're not a candidate for it.
40:56
It's not worth the risk.
40:58
But if your primary care provider tells you no, there are a number of ways online that you can go ahead and get a prescription for that.
41:07
Oh, yeah, there's all kinds.
41:08
You know, one of the leading um uh lawsuit um recruitment strategies now are people have developed blindness on the drugs and uh and there's all kinds of things medullary C cell uh tumors and the thyroid and preclinical uh studies and then certainly pancreatitis, constipation.
41:30
So I mean, I mean, they like any other drug, they really do work, but we have to find the applications there.
41:36
And I think nursing uh coaching can can certainly help.
41:40
Uh uh, I'm gonna ask you one more question before the break, but so uh we talked about diet exercise and GLP one.
41:48
What do you advise for patients who have too much weight on them and they don't sleep very well and they tell you they drink alcohol?
42:01
What do you advise?
42:03
Well, I like to first educate about the impacts of alcohol use.
42:09
A lot of uh individuals are not aware that alcohol can actually, of course, it can contribute to obesity.
42:17
It also really uh negatively impacts your sleep.
42:21
And when individuals are not sleeping well, that also is going to increase their risk of obesity because that's when a lot of fat burning occurs.
42:32
So again, again, like I'm never shaming anybody for anything, but I'm providing them with the proper education.
42:39
And then, you know, when we're talking about lifestyle changes and things like that, I also like to coach them around that.
42:46
So helping people to find some type of internal motivating factor, I think is very powerful.
42:52
If someone is a believer in God, I think that implementing their faith base into their program also is extremely powerful.
43:01
And again, like if someone is, you know, morbidly obese.
43:06
Um, I I do think it is important to assess for things like sleep apnea.
43:12
And and again, when we talk about the GLP ones, you know, I I agree with you when you say that like you prescribe it appropriately when you are seeing morbid obesity, because again, um, the risk of that person having early mortality from the obesity, that's uh likely a much higher risk than taking the medication.
43:35
Yeah, I I can tell you uh uh my short is on alcohol is uh I I I tell everybody give it a try drinking no alcohol at all.
43:45
You know, 30 day challenge or a 90-day challenge, and and see if you don't feel better, have more energy, wait come down, sleep get restored.
43:56
And um you can reduce a whole bunch of risks.
44:00
Uh the prior surgeon general had it right.
44:02
You know, alcohol is a risk factor for cancers for oral esophageal and gastric cancers, raises the risks for seizures and strokes, you know, is a strong risk factor for macular degeneration, a leading cause of of senior blindness, and is an overwhelming risk factor for dementia and atrial fibrillation.
44:22
So when we kind of weigh that out, the theoretical benefits of of maybe raising blood HDL is is not good.
44:29
And so I have many of my patients just stop drinking alcohol.
44:34
And it's it's it's it's uh I think a huge advantage.
44:38
And do you know something else, Melissa, is that alcohol is kind of out for Gen Z.
44:44
I don't know if you know this or not.
44:46
But young people aren't drinking like they used to.
44:48
Oh, I didn't know that.
44:49
Yeah, and I'm seeing that with smoking too.
44:51
I mean, I remember when I was, you know, in high school, it was a cool thing to be smoking.
44:55
I think that if you're smoking now in high school, you're gonna get made fun of.
44:59
But um alcohol is down.
45:01
My daughter's kind of just a little bit older than the Gen Z, but she's keeping tabs on it.
45:06
And do you know the um the uh value of all the companies making beer and wine and spirits is plummeting?
45:14
People are not drinking alcohol like they they used to.
45:17
So I had no idea.
45:19
Yeah, well, we're gonna take a break here, and then we're gonna come on the backside.
45:23
We want to hit a couple hot topics before the end.
45:26
So we've been talking to uh Melissa Schreibdaipher, who is uh leading the functional nurse academy.
45:34
A lot of the nurses listening are gonna want to sign up and do this, get this training.
45:38
I think it's gonna is filling a huge void in medicine as we have all these tensions.
45:43
You're listening to the McCullough report.
45:44
Let's get real.
45:45
Let's get loud on America Out Loud Talk News.
45:48
This is McCullough report and focal points sub stack.
45:51
Pause right here.
45:55
Let's get real.
45:56
Let's get loud on America Out Loud Talk News.
45:59
This is a McCullough report and focal point substack.
46:02
We're talking to Melissa Schreibdeffer, who is a Schreibfetter, who is a leading functional nurse.
46:13
And uh it sounds like it sounds like Melissa, you do this all from home.
46:18
I do.
46:19
I do.
46:20
It's absolutely a wonderful.
46:21
I have my home office, and uh, we've been extremely blessed because my husband was actually just recently able to leave his full-time job to come on board full-time with the business.
46:36
So we are running our business from home and also raising our young children.
46:42
Now, do you also homeschool?
46:44
Yeah, so I don't.
46:46
Um, so my uh my big boy, my biggest baby, he's nine, and he goes to a classical Christian school, but my other two, they're very close in age.
46:56
So we actually, since we're both going to be working from home, I actually do want to attempt homeschooling my little ones.
47:04
Wow.
47:04
That's so neat.
47:05
You know, my observation on homeschooling, and I had a chance to attend the Texas Homeschool Um Association one time in Houston.
47:14
It was a huge meeting.
47:17
And I learned that nearly 10% of children in Texas are homeschooled.
47:21
10%.
47:22
That's big.
47:23
And the my uniform observation on this, in fact, I discussed a patient today, a child like this, is homeschooled children are certainly bright and they do incredibly well academically, but uniquely they can talk to adults.
47:40
You can always tell a homeschooled uh child because they can look you straight in the eye and they can talk to adults.
47:45
And that without saying the words like or um, this like or um using the word like in every other word is is now almost uniform in kids who go to public school.
47:57
And it pervades through college, by the way, and then into the workplace.
48:01
So homeschooling is unique, and I think it's that diction and that uh parental interaction that's key.
48:08
Are your kids who are going to um school away from home?
48:12
Are they saying like an um?
48:14
No, yeah.
48:15
So my child, he goes to a pretty small Christian school.
48:20
And I was just having this conversation yesterday with some mom friends about the, and it's one of the reasons why I and my oldest child, if I pulled him out of school and was like, I'm gonna homeschool you, he would not be happy about it because he loves the school setting.
48:36
But I want to homeschool my younger too, because I have seen this time and time again, that the homeschool children, they are so much more comfortable in social interactions and from what I see with the public school kids, and then also the work ethic is much higher.
48:53
So I actually had our mother's helper who was here today who is a homeschool teenager, and the homeschool kids, they are doing their schooling, and then they're also working during the week.
49:06
So I mean, work ethic is better.
49:09
They seem more advanced.
49:11
And you know, there are all of these myths around homeschool that these kids are socially awkward and that they're you know, delaying an academics, and that's just not true.
49:22
It's not from what I experienced.
49:23
Yeah, that's not been my observation.
49:25
My my kids went to public schools, K through 12, and then off to college.
49:30
My son went to um private university as I did, Christian school, and then he went on to medical school as I did.
49:37
Um, but my daughter went to uh a state university and then to a private law school and she's off.
49:42
However, my daughter still says like and um a lot.
49:46
Somehow my son uh didn't pick that up.
49:48
So we'll go out to dinner, I'll say, Haley, I'll give you a hundred dollars if you can go the entire night without saying like or um as a as a filler word in your diction.
49:59
It is fine to.
50:00
Have silence in between the words.
50:02
The empty emptiness doesn't need to be filled in with uh what's called an audible pause.
50:08
So let's get back to a few more questions before we finish.
50:11
And I do want to, you know, get into this issue of vaccines.
50:16
And uh recently I was at a symposium, and there was a you know a big powerful media figure who's been an activist against uh uh you know excessive childhood vaccination.
50:27
And his major theme is well, the doctors are terrible, the doctors are doing this, uh you know, screw your doctors.
50:35
It's a very anti-doctor message.
50:38
And uh, and I told him, I said, listen, I'm a doctor.
50:42
I said, I've never given a vaccine my entire life.
50:45
I've never advised anybody to take a vaccine.
50:48
And I can tell you the eye surgeons and orthopedic surgeons and orthopedists and the rest of us and the gastroenterologist we don't, vaccines are not part of our practice.
51:00
I said, it's part of pediatrics, but um I think it's I think it's an off-target message.
51:08
I said, the one thing for sure though, is that nurses and medical assistants and pharmacists physically give these vaccines and they get informed consent.
51:21
So if you want to have an activist message, you've got to involve the nurses.
51:26
And this person completely uh rejected me.
51:28
No, they're just following orders from the doctor, it's really just the doctor's uh, you know, fault.
51:35
So, how do you land on this and this this perception of excessive vaccination and kind of health freedom and nursing?
51:44
Yes, uh, it's one of my favorite topics to discuss.
51:47
You know, when I was a conventional nurse, I knew very little about the vaccine schedule.
51:55
And I thought that the vaccines that we were giving today, which I which now I know, um, my children's generation, um, they are not on the CDC vaccine schedule, but if they were, it would be about 72 doses by the age of 18.
52:10
Now, um, I was born in the 80s.
52:13
I was recommended about 24 doses um from birth to the age of 18.
52:20
So as a nurse, I had learned safe and effective, safe and effective.
52:26
But it, but again, I never really sat down and studied vaccines because when I was in nursing school, they torture us.
52:33
I had some weeks where I had 600 pages of assigned reading.
52:37
So you just learn and you are told that like this is safe, this is you know settled science.
52:45
But then what really woke me up was seeing the comparison between the vaccine schedule that I was given and then how that had advanced in just a number of years, and that did not make any sense.
53:03
And after I saw that, uh light bulb went off, and I started learning about other things.
53:08
And then I started learning that they're not typically placebo safety tested.
53:15
And then that does not make any sense.
53:17
And again, there's so much when you go down the rabbit hole of vaccinations.
53:22
And I will say, nurses, especially post-COVID now in the system with nursing, it was not acceptable to have uh to even question that narrative.
53:36
If you said something, you were likely going to be ostracized.
53:41
Now, because they really the industry really overplayed their hand with the COVID vaccines.
53:47
There are so many nurses that are very, very upset about what happened with the COVID vaccines.
53:54
Almost everyone knows someone that had a severe event because of it.
53:58
I've talked to many nurses that say that they've never been so sick in their life from when they were given the COVID vaccine.
54:05
So that has really woken up a lot of nurses.
54:08
Many nurses now are becoming skeptical of that of that schedule.
54:14
So I will say in the just regular hospital system, um, they're not routinely doing the childhood vaccination schedule.
54:24
However, it is in the pediatrician offices where they are giving so many vaccinations to these infants, and then more and more vaccinations have been added to the schedule.
54:36
And again, I know that the current administration has tried to dwindle that down to about 30 doses, but I know it now there's issues with the courts getting involved.
54:47
But anyway, um, in general, I think hospital nurses are starting to ask questions, but the champions of the current schedule that know very little about vaccine safety science are the nurses and the medical assistants that are working in the pediatric offices and um this population of nurses, they revere what the American Association of Pediatrics says.
55:15
And I know we both, I'm sure you probably feel similar as I do about that not being a reputable organization because they have said many things that are not evidence-based.
55:29
Well, has the functional uh nursing academy had any type of formal statement on the childhood vaccine schedule?
55:36
I do teach about the vaccine schedule.
55:39
So I actually do teach about um increased toxic burden and and things like that.
55:45
And I have a variety of resources in regards to vaccines and vaccine injury and theirs reporting, because again, most nurses don't know what theirs is, vaccine adverse event reporting system.
55:58
So I do discuss about how the schedule has changed over the years, and then I also discuss the uh level of aluminum adjuvants that children are being exposed to, because again, uh, you know, the safety of when HHS was FOIA asking, please provide the safety studies that you use to justify the safety of this ingredient, they were unable to provide any documents.
56:30
The level of aluminum hydroxide is very high.
56:34
So it actually is.
56:36
It's true.
56:37
Aluminum, yeah.
56:38
Aluminum is in about 60% of all the the doses.
56:41
Um Melissa, we're gonna have to leave it here.
56:44
This has been such a great discussion.
56:46
Um I would say parenthetically, maybe your organization should issue some type of formal statement.
56:53
You know, I'm a member of the Association of American Physician and Surgeons, AAPS, and you know, in the year 2000, that's 26 years ago, they passed a resolution that there should be no mandates for vaccines or any medicinal product.
57:11
So maybe the functional uh nurse academy ought to issue uh a resolution.
57:15
You know, have your your leaders uh think about this because the more organizations that do this, you know, the the farther we'll go.
57:23
I recently joined the International College of Integrative Medicine.
57:26
That's the first thing I asked.
57:27
I said, is there any formal statement on these COVID vaccines?
57:31
I said, no.
57:31
I said, well, why don't we have one?
57:33
They actually asked me to draft it that they're unsafe for human use.
57:37
Um I'd like to see a nursing association really step up on this.
57:41
But again, thank you so much for joining us.
57:43
And I'll let you get back to your kids and your family and your husband.
57:46
You're you're doing God's work, and you're clearly influencing others in such a positive way.