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Functional Medicine and the ROR: Return on Relationships with Dr. Sandra Scheinbaum · Authentic Living

• 0:01
  Welcome to authentic living with Roxanne, a place where we have as conversations about
• 0:08
  things that really matter in our lives.
• 0:11
  And now here's your host, Roxanne Derhodge.
• 0:36
  Hi, everyone.
• 0:36
  It's Sarah Roxanne.
• 0:37
  I'm, really happy today to have a colleague Sandra Scheinbaum.
• 0:43
  She is a clinical psychologist.
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  So we share a bit in common, you know, in the field of psychology and may treat as a clinical
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  psychologist, but now she is a functional medicine expert.
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  She has the coaching academy for functional medicine, that she's started quite a long time
• 1:03
  ago now.
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  And we are also, privileged to, also belong to the Forbes Council where that's where Sandra
• 1:12
  and I met.
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  So, Sandra, thanks so much for coming up in today.
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  And sharing your wisdom with us, on my show.
• 1:20
  Well, thank you, Roxanne.
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  It is such a pleasure to be here.
• 1:24
  Awesome.
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  So let's so let's talk.
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  I I love to hear people's paths, when I hear about where they are today, what made you want
• 1:35
  to get in?
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  I'm gonna say the it's a realm of health.
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  I know my path was that I you know, thought as a little girl that I love talking to people and
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  I hope that maybe one day when I grew up that I'm able to be able to help people by having
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  conversations.
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  So tell me a little bit about your path and kind of, you know, was this 1st career, or is
• 1:54
  this something that you kind of, you know, transition to as you went?
• 1:59
  Sure.
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  Well, if somebody had told me when I was looking at what to major and in college, that
• 2:04
  one day I would be CEO of a company.
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  I would just say, you're crazy.
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  I don't know anything about business and, but, I came of age at a time when for women, our
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  career choices were more limited.
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  And I was told, okay.
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  You could be a teacher, a nurse, secretary, go to secretary, school.
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  And I chose to major in education and then went on in special education.
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  And was always a lover of learning, wanting to know more.
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  So as a teacher of kids with special needs, I started getting fascinated with the idea of
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  what is stress.
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  And I was pretty soon.
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  I was running groups for parents, stress management, parenting techniques, long story
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  short, that led to getting my doctorate in clinical psychology, and I became a
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  psychologist.
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  And those were the days when It was very much more psychoanalytic based, and mind body
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  medicine did not have a name, but that fascinated me.
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  And it was for a personal reason because I was having panic attacks.
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  I also had this condition called rainouts, where your hands and feet get white when it's
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  cold.
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  And someone said, one of my teachers said, oh, you can, real that'll be really a a great, if
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  we taught you biofeedback, enroll in this workshop in biofeedback, and that could really
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  help you.
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  On both levels.
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  And so I did, and that was life changing.
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  And I realized, wow.
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  I can just breathe and I can use some guided imagery and I can warm my hands or I can stop a
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  panic attack.
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  And so I went on to specialize in mind body medicine which then I gradually merged with
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  helping people to change their thoughts so that they have a different emotion that they're not
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  upsetting themselves all the time.
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  And at the same time, on a personal level, I was always interested in food and how nutrition
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  it plays a big role.
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  Again, for personal reasons, I had a serious addiction to sugar and would literally binge on
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  cakes and candies.
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  And so at the time, we didn't associate any connection between what you ate and certainly
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  mood states and anxiety or depression But that was what I eventually started to study, and
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  this was after having a long career close to 40 years as a psychologist But I went to study at
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  the Institute for Functional Medicine, and that was eye opening where we're really looking at
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  root causes of chronic illness in including anxiety and and and other emotional, disorders.
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  So I had this idea then at 65, rather than retiring that I would create a school that
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  would train people to be health coaches that would really focus on the principles of
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  functional medicine.
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  As well as positive psychology and mind body medicine, the things that I knew backwards and
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  forwards.
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  And so I approached the Institute for Functional Medicine.
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  They liked the idea.
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  They had wanted to start a coaching program for a long time.
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  The right person hadn't come along.
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  And since I had just trained in functional medicine and I was a psychologist, they entered
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  into a collaboration agreement.
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  And, no, I was 65.
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  People thought I'll just retire and what do you need to do this for?
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  And I just felt this is my mission to train health coaches, to partner with people, to help
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  them with physical as well as the epidemic of mental illness and issues that are related 2
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  that are lifestyle connected.
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  So that is my story and, in terms of how it happened, but lots of twists and turns along
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  the way.
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  Well, it's it's not interesting, right, because, you know, myself at the stage I'm at,
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  if you're meeting someone just getting in the field, they say, how did you get here?
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  And it's never a lean year path.
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  And I think when I was training and, you know, wanting to help people, but love.
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  It's just meandering into the different aspects of overall hold individual.
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  And I know when I trained as well, they didn't take the body into I'm into consideration as
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  much.
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  So I remember doing a lot of, complex PTSD early in my career, and the somatic was so
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  present.
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  You could see it, but there was no language or knowledge to go along with it.
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  So going back to that whole element of the whole person, I think of you know, when I
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  started, in grad school, every it was well intentioned.
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  Right?
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  Like, you're dealing with people's minds, but there was there still that clear delineation
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  between, the physical and the mental when I would deal with some of these clients was clear
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  they'd be in that, you know, hyper route state when they were in process, but there was there
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  was no language associated with that element in looking at whole person to hear someone flooded
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  and you would understand this.
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  And, you know, we were trying to still work with the cognitions and what they could do
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  different, but what was missing is the somatic and clearly functional medicine.
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  And I want you to talk, you know, about that evolution.
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  When you went from clinical, to finding the path, and it's interesting that having anxiety
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  now you've you've lived it so you understand it.
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  To come out the other side of it and how the body is so very, very interesting, in what what
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  you kind of path that you're talking clearly that most people like us now recognize that was
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  a gaping, was a gaping hole in in the in the helping people with psychological problems.
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  Yes.
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  Absolutely.
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  And a perfect example of this mind body connection would be you get embarrassed.
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  Well, some you blush, for example, or, something happens and your heart starts to
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  rise.
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  Well, it's a clear evidence.
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  We can't separate what and what's real in the mind is real in the body.
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  So it really this comes from cognitive behavioral work and looking at how you
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  interpret events, how you interpret emotions, and how you can use a different approach to
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  have a different perspective and then change that emotional state.
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  But functional medicine is really not a way of practicing medicine.
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  It's the medicine of why.
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  And the example would be if you go to your dulce, you have a rash and you go to your
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  dermatologist and they're gonna diagnose it so they name it.
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  And then they're going to say how we treat it.
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  Okay.
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  We'll give you a cream.
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  So they're addressing the symptom.
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  Go to a functional medicine doctor and you have a rash, they would look at your timeline, your
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  story, and would see Okay.
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  Even back to your family history, your birth history, maybe you were bottle fed, maybe you
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  had a lot of antibiotics, Well, that's going to have an impact on your microbiome in your gut.
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  And maybe now, not just you have a rash, but maybe you also, maybe you have impression.
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  Maybe you have gut issues.
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  Maybe you have constipation, for example.
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  Okay.
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  What is causing all of those?
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  What's the root cause?
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  It could be inflammation.
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  And then how do you address that?
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  And it's typically Diet and lifestyle.
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  So maybe you're eating lots of gluten, and it turns out you're sensitive to gluten, or maybe
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  it's dairy or maybe it's a whole combination of foods and you go on elimination diet to be the
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  detective to determine what are some of the culprits And then for a short period of time,
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  you eliminate them.
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  And maybe it's it's looking at things like, the oils that you have in in your diet.
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  Maybe you have 2 maybe it's your toxic load.
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  Maybe you do a toxic exposure question, and it turns out that you're living with mold or other
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  issues or you're you're eating a lot of seafood every day and tuna and you've got high mercury
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  levels.
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  So it's looking at those root causes and then addressing them through diet and lifestyle
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  change.
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  And lifestyle, it is that combination.
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  It is your, what are you eating and when are you eating?
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  What about movement and exercise during the day?
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  The your stress, your relationships, and looking at those factors and and as well as
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  sleep.
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  So we call those little modifiable lifestyle factors.
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  That's where the health coach comes in, and that's was my area to because you might see a
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  functional medicine doctor, and functional medicine is evidence based So it's based on
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  what the research is showing.
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  It's not one size fits all.
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  It's not here's the keto diet, and it's good for everybody or everybody needs to be paleo or
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  vegan.
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  It's looking at your profile, your it's precision personalized medicine, and you get
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  recommendations.
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  And that's where the coach comes in, helping people to decide, how are they gonna start?
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  What are the obstacles and helping them to achieve success in reaching what their goals
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  may be?
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  You know, that that's that's fascinating.
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  Right?
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  Because I always say holistically, you know, as I've gotten older, I've realized that, like,
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  this how much changes I had to make?
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  Like, when you're younger, maybe you're not thinking about it as much, but I as I got into
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  my fifties, then there was certain things.
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  I realized I had to do certain things early in the day.
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  Like, let's say I'll get tired.
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  So I wouldn't try to exercise.
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  If I got to do a bit of exercise later, that would be great.
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  But when I was younger, I would exercise early.
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  But as I got older, I got too tired.
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  So guess it wasn't By the time it's 5:30 at 6 o'clock at night, I didn't have the energy.
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  So it's interesting.
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  What I love about this and the core concept of looking holistically at the individual, what
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  they're eating, like you said, movement stressors.
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  So, obviously, as we get older, our body can tolerate Yes.
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  You can still, you know, tolerate stress, but what kind of things do you have need to do to
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  inoculate yourself, to some degree, even more, because the body is getting more from you?
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  And and diet.
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  Like, you know, when you talk about, and I'm trying to think.
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  I'm gonna forget the colleague's name that you and I chatted about that I follow.
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  It's his name just escaped me.
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  But talk a little bit about, what what we know about the guts because I think that's so key.
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  You know, I think we we kinda still separate out diets.
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  Yeah.
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  Well, you know, when you're older, it's kinda like, let's stay in shape and eat's good and
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  all that.
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  But as we're getting more knowledge, it's recognizing that diet is such a core
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  fundamental when it comes to mental well-being and psychological well-being.
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  So I'd like you to speak a little bit about that and share with people what you know and
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  kind of what most of your coaches kind of, deal with when they deal with individuals that come
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  to them.
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  Well, the gut is most people in functional medicine and naturopathic medicine really turn
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  to gut health first.
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  And, often people don't realize that the gut is your second brain.
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  It's probably more important in terms of driving the as the decision maker.
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  And we produce serotonin in our gut.
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  Our immune system.
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  It's our gut because the gut, it's we tend to think of, okay, our stomach, our intestines,
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  but it begins in your mouth and it is long.
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  And it is where we take in foreigners.
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  So everything that comes in has to be we can be absorbing things that are not our friends.
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  And the immune system is the job to think friend or foe.
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  And sometimes it misses the mark and starts attacking like in the case of it, things gonna
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  attack gluten, but uh-oh, it attacks the thyroid, let's say, instead.
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  And then you have Hashimoto's or, so this is understanding the key role.
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  And the example, Doctor David Perlmutter who is one of the noted functional medicine
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  neurologists.
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  And now with his son, Austin, who is also a physician.
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  They wrote a book called, brainwash.
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  So consider that you let's say you have a day and you're just making bad decisions.
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  You're on edge or irritable.
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  And what did you eat the day before and when did you eat it?
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  Or a few days before.
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  So let's say that you ate late, maybe you had dessert, maybe you had something really close
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  to bed, sugary, foods, overly processed foods.
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  And what happens is, in a nutshell, and they go into great detail in the book, but These food,
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  it's like they hijack your brain.
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  The brain now can't the executive functioning is compromised.
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  So because let's say you are not making decisions as well, So the executive functioning
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  where you plan and you reason and you apply good judgment, and that's really important.
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  But when your diet is consisting of these ultra processed foods and you are perhaps snacking
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  all day long, then that is going to ultimately translate to your brain not getting the
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  nutrients that it needs.
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  And your executive functioning is compromised because that's what goes first.
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  And we know this from the stress response.
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  So with anxiety, with panic, for example, the response that where you go into this fight or
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  flight alarm response That is life or death.
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  You have to have that.
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  But let's say there's a wild animal coming towards you.
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  You have to either fight or run away the other.
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  Response is to freeze.
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  But at that time, if this is a no brainer, there's no decision making You don't have to
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  plan.
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  You just jump in to those responses.
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  You know how to the body knows.
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  It's an instinct.
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  You know how to fight or run away.
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  But just to reason it out, that is compromised.
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  So the blood is shunted away from that center of the brain.
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  So so those are, you know, just some of the things that I think when we look at gut health
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  is not just in the gut.
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  What is in the gut, doesn't just stay in the gut.
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  It is really every cell.
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  And we're every day finding more and more about the role of the microbiome.
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  And the trillions of different, organized organisms that reside there.
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  And it's this is a science that is really just in its infancy where, we may get to the point
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  where this will be driving medical decisions.
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  We've made great inroads.
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  And so looking at prebiotics pro probiotics, there's even now something called postbiotics.
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  And so looking at you, those food choices, but the good news is that this can change quickly.
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  And so there's a lot of turnover.
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  And So I'm very much of an optimist looking at how we can change.
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  We can change our emotions We can change neural pathways by practicing and rehearsing things.
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  We create new neural pathways.
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  And by making some changes in terms of these big factors that we just mentioned, our stress,
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  our relationships, our sleep, Our movement during the day, our food, we can all of those
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  impact gut health.
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  And that changes the microbiome consistently.
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  Consistency turns over frequently.
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  So it's it's it's like 1.
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  It's an, like, an additive effect.
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  Right?
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  The the person, the holistic Organize it.
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  It's like an organization.
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  Yes.
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  These parts have to kind of work synergistically to create you know, overall
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  health.
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  And I, you know, I often think, you know, when in the roles that I play, whether it's speaking
• 19:06
  to teams, or it's that element of that intuitive liver body knows to heal, how and
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  what it needs to heal.
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  But if we're doing things that's diametrically opposed to health.
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  And we're not aware.
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  Right?
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  Like, maybe someone is going to see a clinical psychologist, but you know, they're they're
• 19:25
  taking on massive massive amount of changes, or maybe they're in a relationship that's really
• 19:31
  draining mom or it's detrimental, you know, there's conflict every day, and you're looking
• 19:36
  at parts of the whole, like, the traditional kind of western medicine just says, New York
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  saying you've got a bit of anxiety.
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  You're having panic attacks.
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  Here's the anti anxiety medication that you need versus saying, Okay.
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  In Canada, I think the average position on it, you know, in the US, I'm gonna say it's
• 19:54
  probably different, maybe not.
• 19:56
  The average family physician sees someone, Sandra, about 6 minutes.
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  Mhmm.
• 20:02
  Yeah.
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  Minutes.
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  So you're lucky if you say Why are you there?
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  What are the symptoms if you can articulate it enough and to see potentially what you've
• 20:13
  tried?
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  And here's the next, you know, up and coming popular anti anxiety medication.
• 20:19
  Here you go.
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  And that's the extent of it.
• 20:23
  So let's talk about that bridge.
• 20:25
  I'm gonna assume that, with functional medicine, you're looking at physicians or
• 20:30
  people that are wanting to do that work, but what what does Western medicine think of
• 20:34
  functional medicine?
• 20:36
  Is there a divide?
• 20:37
  Because I'm interested because I think when you work with companies, you know, they would look
• 20:41
  at the pharmacological training analysis of what employees are are using, but are they
• 20:46
  willing to look at the overall perspective of some of the things that you might be able to
• 20:51
  shield from?
• 20:52
  Sure.
• 20:52
  So, the divide was great.
• 20:56
  I love when I was starting this work, late seventies, early eighties, And I would have
• 21:03
  meetings with physicians.
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  I remember one cardiologist.
• 21:06
  He I was in his office, we were talking about how breathing and mindfulness.
• 21:11
  We didn't talk about meditation much back then, but it was use of relaxation techniques and
• 21:16
  breathing.
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  How that would help his cardiology patients.
• 21:19
  And he stood up, and he held up the New England Journal of Medicine that was on his desk.
• 21:23
  And he said, Shame on you, you went to Northwestern University.
• 21:28
  I would graduate there as well.
• 21:30
  Peddling this garbage.
• 21:31
  This is nonsense.
• 21:32
  When I see what you're talking about, that breathing can help by your meditation, not
• 21:37
  meditate.
• 21:38
  Mindfulness can help when it's in the New England Journal, then you can come back and
• 21:43
  I'll refer patients to you.
• 21:45
  Well, bottom line, his younger associate started referring people.
• 21:50
  They did really well.
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  And there have been research.
• 21:54
  They're now there's there are hundreds of studies, and now it's common for physicians to
• 21:59
  recommend meditation and mindfulness training to their patients.
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  So those who are conventionally trained.
• 22:05
  I think we also saw after the pandemic, a lot of doctors exhausted burned out.
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  This is a serious, serious problem.
• 22:14
  Many of them are saying there has to be something else.
• 22:17
  They are also frustrated.
• 22:19
  They are seeing their patients not getting better.
• 22:23
  Recent statistic, 88 percent of adult Americans are considered metabolically unhealthy.
• 22:31
  And those are shocking statistics and it's increasing.
• 22:35
  Number of people diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, young children with fatty liver
• 22:40
  disease, pediatric conferences are talking about fatty liver.
• 22:43
  This was something we never ever saw, especially other than in alcoholics, certainly
• 22:48
  not in a pediatric population.
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  So they are frustrated and they realize we have to do something.
• 22:54
  And so there is a gradual coming together people who are looking who are in the medical
• 23:00
  community as healthcare professionals are looking at functional integrative medicine
• 23:05
  approaches.
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  And we have seen a lot of interest, but it is also patient driven.
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  Consumers want this.
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  They are really feeling like there's got to be other answers.
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  And so this is largely driven by, people themselves, patients who are wanting something
• 23:25
  different.
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  They want to feel better.
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  So the Institute for Functional Medicine, their conferences are selling out They're getting a
• 23:33
  lot of medical doctors saying I've I just want to be, I want I have a mission know, I've this
• 23:41
  is not what I went to medical school for, to just be a, a cog in the wheel of this large
• 23:48
  hospital system where I spend my days just entering in the medical record, and I'm not
• 23:53
  really, as effective as with my patients as I would like to be.
• 23:57
  So they're studying functional medicine.
• 24:00
  And we're seeing the Cleveland Clinic opened the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional
• 24:05
  Medicine a number of years ago.
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  We're seeing other hospitals following suit.
• 24:10
  Amazing because, you know, I, you know, I think of as myself as a young clinician and, you
• 24:14
  know, you see people.
• 24:16
  Right?
• 24:16
  They go on the antidepressant So the anti anxiety and, you know, and then you start to
• 24:22
  talk to them on other things.
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  Right?
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  And they'd be like, well, you know, I tried it, but it didn't work.
• 24:26
  And they expect the outcome to be different because the because the medicine, right, the
• 24:31
  anti anxiety could make me less anxious And but I'm so anxious, but I'm not learning any new
• 24:36
  skills.
• 24:37
  This was such a great interview that we decided to turn it into a 2 part series.
• 24:42
  Be sure to tune in next week for part 2 so you don't miss out on the amazing content.
• 24:48
  Thanks for tuning in to authentic living with Roxanne, creating the space for positive
• 24:53
  healthy change.
• 24:55
  Roxanne is a keynote speaker, psychotherapist, and coach to work with Roxanne, visit
• 25:01
  rocksandirhaj.com/blueprint.
• 25:05
  We'll see you next time.
• 25:07
  On authentic living with Roxanne.