Realfoodology - 59: Food is Medicine and Information for the Body with MD Dr. Aaron Hartman

Episode Date: October 6, 2021

On todays episode I speak with MD Dr Aaron Hartman,  MAR, FAAFP, DABFM, DABIM, DAIHM, IFMCP. The medical system didn’t offer much hope for his daughter's medical condition and he was forced to explore alternative treatments. We talk about this journey he went through and the improvement he saw in both his daughter and son once they started focusing on real food and alternative treatments. We talk about COVID long haulers syndrome and what he’s seen in his practice.  We also talk about the current medical system, the changes we need to actually help people and the importance of real food. Food is medicine and food is information. We need real food with real information for our bodies to self regulate and heal. Dr. Hartman graduated Summa Cum Laude in Biology from Virginia Commonwealth University in 1995, earned his MD from Medical College of Virginia in 2000, and then completed his residency in Family Medicine at the Hanover Family Practice residency program at the Medical College of Virginia in 2003. In 2012 he formalized his commitment to exploring new and advanced treatment opportunities through his membership with the American Board of Integrative and Holistic Medicine and then the Institute for Functional Medicine. In 2015 he received his second board certification in Integrative and Holistic Medicine through the American Board of Physician Specialties and in 2016 earned the recognition as a Certified Practitioner in Functional Medicine from the Institute for Functional Medicine. Show Links: Resilience has become the key concept in 2021 for health and wellness. In this free eBook, Dr. Hartman addresses the foundations of functional medicine and how they can change your health trajectory today. https://richmondfunctionalmedicine.com/about/aaron-hartman-md/ Free Gift: https://go.richmondfunctionalmedicine.com/brguide-pod

On today's episode of The Real Foodology Podcast. Our healthcare system, it's the same system my grandfather had. You go in, you got a problem with doctor, give you something to go on. It's like, well, that was a great one. Antibiotics were revolutionary and vaccines were revolutionary. We're now where cancer is exploding. One out of two adults will get cancer in their lifetime. When half our country's diabetic or pre-diabetic,

one in 12 adults has an all immune disease in our country. We need to change our model. Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of the Real Foodology Podcast. I am your host, Courtney Swan. Every time I do these intros, I try to think of a different way that I can say hi and welcome to the show. And you know, they always end up sounding very similarly, but there's only so many ways that you can say hi, welcome to the show. And you know, they always end up sounding very similarly, but there's only so many ways that you can say, hi, welcome to my podcast. But I am so happy that you're here. I am so grateful to all of you listening because without you, I couldn't do this podcast. So I just want to take a moment to say thank you so much for listening. It means so much. And I'm so happy that you're here. Today's episode is a really interesting one.

I brought on Dr. Aaron Hartman, who is a board certified MD who specializes in family medicine and integrative and holistic medicine. What I love so much about Dr. Hartman's story is that he is an MD first, and then he started getting more into integrative and holistic medicine. So I think this is really important to note because integrative medicine is really just the combining or the integration, if you will, of modern conventional allopathic medicine and a more holistic approach. So it means that these MDs have all of the training that every traditional MD has, but they have also gone above and beyond to recognize and do the training to be able to treat patients with food and lifestyle changes as well.

It doesn't mean that they don't prescribe prescription drugs. It doesn't mean that they are against allopathic conventional ways of treating patients, but it means that they really are able to zoom out and look at the whole picture of the body. And first and foremost, they try to get to the root causes of things. This is more important than ever. And we dive into this in the episode. So I'm not going to go too deep into it, but we're, we're living in a time where many, many people are dealing with chronic diseases. This is not just acute care anymore, where you go in and, you know, you have a broken leg and we're able to fix that

and send you on your way. This is, you know, people are dealing with chronic issues, autoimmune disorders, diabetes. And what we're realizing is that our conventional medical system is not really set up to treat patients and help them get to the root causes of this so that they don't have to suffer these chronic diseases for their whole life. They shouldn't be lifelong chronic diseases. We should be able to get to the root cause, treat it with food and lifestyle, obviously intervene with drugs if necessary. But in integrative medicine, what I love so much about it is that there really is an attempt to try to avoid as many side effects as possible. So if we can get someone to a place where their diet is in order, their lifestyle is in order, they're getting more sleep, their stress is reduced, they're getting exercise, and they're able to

mitigate those symptoms naturally instead of having to take on a medication that comes with its own side effects. I'm very careful to never villainize modern medicine. I want to make this point again because I think it's really important. I believe in modern Western medicine. I believe that we wouldn't be here as humans, and we wouldn't have made all the advances had we not had this modern medicine, but I do believe that we've gotten to a place where we're over-prescribing. We're very quick to throw a pill at an issue that can sometimes otherwise be treated with diet and lifestyle interventions. And I like to find balance in all of this. I really like to try to get to the root cause of things. I want to treat things with food and preventative measures and lifestyle changes whenever possible. But I also do believe

in medical intervention. So I think that both of these worlds can live together in the same space. So Dr. Hartman and I dive deep into that discussion. We also talk about COVID long hauler syndrome and how he's been treating some of his patients with it. So you'll definitely want to tune in and hear that. He talks about his journey as a doctor. We also talk about his little girl, his daughter, who has cerebral palsy and interventions that he has taken to better her health and her life. We also talk about what is causing about half or even more than half of chronic disease in this country. So you're definitely going to want to tune in to hear that. I really loved this conversation. I learned so much from Dr. Hartman and I am excited for you guys to hear it. So I hope you enjoy it as always. If you're enjoying this podcast, could I ask you to leave a five-star rating in a review?

Your support means so much to me and it really helps the show and it helps get this into the ears of more people. So with that, let's get to the episode. Did you know that most cookware and appliances are made with forever chemicals? Yes, that means your nonstick pans, your air fryers, your waffle makers, your blender could possibly have PFAS and yes, even our beloved crockpots and pressure cookers. I have actually been talking about this for so long. Back in 2006, my mom came to my dorm room and made me get rid of all my nonstick pans because she was concerned about me being exposed to something called Teflon. Teflon is a coating that is used on nonstick pans and a lot of these appliances that I

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veggies. And the other one is called Protect. It's a delicious wild berry punch like the Kool-Aid that we used to have as a kid, but without any sugar. This is really exciting. And if you've listened to the podcast for a while, you know that I'm a huge fan of Organifi and most specifically because every single product that they make is glyphosate residue free. So you know that you're going to be able to give these powders to your kids and know that they will be able to consume them safely without any glyphosate in it. So let's break down each one. The Easy Greens is a nourishing and delicious blend of superfoods and veggies that provides essential nutrients, probiotics, and digestive enzymes to bring balance to kids growing bodies without fillers, additives, or junk.

It helps to fill in nutritional gaps, aids in growth and development, supports digestive health, has a rich micronutrient profile, and includes digestive enzymes. This would be a great way to sneak in greens for your little one without them actually knowing that it's healthy for them. And the second one, which is the wild berry punch similar to Kool-Aid, is called Protect. And it is to support your child's daily immune health with food-derived nutrients that work to strengthen their body's first line of defense. I know just through girlfriends of mine that have children that when your kids are going to school, going to daycare, they're coming home sick a lot more often just because they're getting exposed to different kids and different viruses when they're out in the world playing with kids.

So this would be a great way to help to support your little one's immune health. It's organic and it's also made with real whole food ingredients. It has a delicious berry taste and it's low sugar and it's gentle enough for kids to take every single day. And I really love the ingredients in this one. It's orange and acerol cherry, which is a powerful source of vitamin C and antioxidants, astragalus, elderberry, and propolis. These are all really great for overall immune health. If you want to try the products that I talked about today or any of the Organifi products, go to organifi.com slash realfoodology and use code realfoodology for 20% off. Again, that's Organifi. It's O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I.com slash real foodology and use code real foodology for 20% off. Again, that's Organifi. It's O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I

dot com slash real foodology. Thank you so much for coming on today, Dr. Hartman. How are you doing? Courtney, it's great to be here. I'm glad to be here today and just share some insights with you and your audience and looking forward to it. Yeah, me too. I'm really excited for my audience to hear your story. So why don't we start there? Why don't you give people a little bit of a background on what you do and how you got started? All right. Well, so I'm a medical doctor. And what actually started this journey for me was my wife and I adopting our kids, specifically our first daughter. And a little backdrop, my wife is a pediatric occupational

therapist and her specialty was kids with special needs. And so one of those actually ended up being our first daughter, Anna. And so when we adopted her, one of the first things that we were approached to by one of the medical specialists was she was too small for her size and that we should put a feeding tube, which is a plastic tube you put in someone's stomach, so we could pour formula down her stomach and make her grow bigger and faster, right? And so it just didn't feel right, you know, taking a two-year-old girl, putting a hole in her stomach, you know, our thoughts were we had high expectations, even though the medical system didn't expect her to walk or talk or crawl or anything like that. We had hopes that she would do all those. And so putting a feeding tube in that affects speech, that affects oral development. And you can't

crawl with a plastic thing kind of hanging out of your belly, you know. So we just opted out of that, you know. And six months later, my wife, she actually found this growth chart for kids with CP and my daughter was right in the middle. And that was the very first time we kind of had this like aha moment where you say the specialist the expert might not actually know everything maybe there's things they don't know and actually trust our intuition trust our own knowledge base and that kind of started to result the path a little bit a year or two later a similar thing happened with an eye surgeon for eye she has strabismus as well and eyes kind of bobble around a little bit and they wanted to cut some muscles for cosmetic reasons and we were like already kind of primed, didn't sound right.

Found another doctor who was a little older and had more experience with these kids and said, hey, she's fine. Worry about it in six or eight years, you know? And that was the very first time we actually learned, like, wait a second, the experts don't always know all the details and we need to actually trust our gut,

trust our intuition, do our own research, because ultimately we're the people stuck with our medical decisions, not the people we're consulting with. And so that was kind of what led me down eventually after year, after year, after year into integrated and functional medicine, because you ask a bunch of questions and eventually you wake up one day and you're in Wonderland, the world's in color. And you're like, I had no idea all these different therapies were available at different countries around the world and things they were doing 50 years ago that I'd never heard about in school. So that's kind of over 10 years led into my clinical research company, which I do clinical research as well now in my functional medicine practice. And now some of

the online stuff I'm doing just kind of burgeoned out of that, veering off the path, you know, back in 2000, you know, 2006. That's so amazing. I love hearing stories of medical doctors that find themselves in functional medicine practices, because I find that a lot of people were waking up to the traditional allopathic conventional medicine structure that we've been working in for so long now in the medical system is failing us in certain ways. And what I love so much about functional and integrative medicine is that we're integrating this like modern Western medicine with more holistic practices. And like you said, you know, there's other countries that are using different practices. And it's cool to see when, um, when we kind of mold those together,

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Just so they know. It's cerebral palsy. It's actually something that happens to a kid before they're born. Different reasons for that. But usually it's something that causes decreased blood flow to the child's brain. And the result is they're born with neurological damage. And so that's kind of what cerebral palsy or CP is. Okay. And when you adopted your daughter, is this what really led you into functional medicine? I mean, I, I'm a, I'm a natural inquisitive, but it's, the thing I say is like, it's when you, when you have a little two-year-old girl who, who you've got a limited amount of time with, and you know, there's things you can do, it just lights a spark under you like nothing else. And so it motivates you to get up before in the morning and do research. And so it was like throwing gas on my fire.

And so it just motivated me. Every piece of hope I found, I took a deep dive into genetic research, into all kinds of things, into peptides, into lipid therapy, into epigenetic stuff. And you just take these deep dives. And so I'm naturally inquisitive my daughter definitely was the the spark and the gas that just accelerated my learning curve because you have to i mean if you you have kids you can do what you can for them it's there's nothing more me out patients motivate me you know family motivates me but my my daughter was there's nothing like that to just speed up your desire to help her and just it was yeah that's that's what started and accelerated even now. I mean,

she's 15 now and I started doing a whole new therapy thing based on some stuff from, from Europe. Yeah. I started lipid therapy on her about two, three years ago. We were doing it for almost 10 years. I had no idea what we're doing now. I know it's lipid therapy, you know, which they actually have Hopkins. They have a neuro lipid plank that uses lipids. The top of lipid lab in the country is at hopkins the kennedy kruger institute right i had no idea until six years ago this thing even existed it's been

around for 30 40 years you know so that's kind of what's kind of taking me more and more and more off the beaten path and it's interesting because you go to places like hopkins like harvard these places that are sebastians of learning and they learn this stuff and never makes it out to standard of care in the regular world. Why do you think that is? Why does it not make it out to the standard care? Because, well, there's many reasons. One, our educational system is siloed. You know, we've got this specialist and this specialist and this specialist, and they don't communicate between each other. You know, it's always been like this. I was just reminded there reminded, there's a guy called Ignaz Simmelweiss, and he was actually a guy in Austria back in the early 1300s, and he was having lots of women die of puerperal fever.

They would get sick during delivery, and a quarter of women were dying. And so he's trying to figure out what's going on. He noticed that women delivered by nurse with wives, not that many died. So he was trying to figure out, they deliver them on the side versus the medical students in the back. Maybe that's it, right? Eventually, accidentally found out that it was an infection that students were taking to the patients. For that discovery, he was ostracized because doctor's hands can't be dirty. That's foolishness. There's no magical bugs floating around. This is before Pasteur, right? He lost his career, lost his status because of this thing.

And it's like, you know, things haven't changed a whole lot. And so you still have pioneers finding new things. And so my search now is to find those pioneers, you know. But in the system we have, it's great for delivering care to masses. It's great for creating standard care. But it's not really, it's terrible at individual care to masses. It's great for creating standard care, but it's not really, it's terrible at individualized personalized care. And with this dearth of information out there, like how do you individualize care? And that's where finding really educated individuals that have their expertise, like yourself, like myself, like other practitioners, and then

combining this, I think is the way we get around this. But ultimately, our system is designed for acute care, not chronic care. And the new disease model is chronic care, chronic health issues, not acute appendicitis, gastric ulcer, bleeding out. These chronic issues that you really need a bigger, different model for in 12-minute time slots in a doctor's office can't deliver that kind of chronic long-term care that requires a lot of intellectual work. And our system is just not designed for this. One thing I tell patients is our healthcare system, it's the same system my grandfather had. You go in, you got a problem with doctor, give you something to go on. It's like, well, that was a great one

in a box revolutionary and vaccines were revolutionary. We're now where cancer is exploding. One out of two adults will get cancer in their lifetime. When half our country's diabetic or pre-diabetic, you know, one in 12 adults has an all immune disease in our country, right? We need to change our model. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you said so many, you made so many amazing points. One, I want to point out that I find so interesting what you said earlier is that often these pioneers in medicine, when they're first coming out with stuff, they're mocked, they're ridiculed. Sometimes their licenses are revoked because people don't either want to accept that this is actually the reality of it or they just dismiss it as, you know, oh, this is wrong. And then generally we find out later that these people were actually spot on.

And it's interesting to see kind of how it's funny because I find in the medical community that we often forget that science is ever evolving. Like we kind of get stuck on this one theory and we forget it's a theory. And once it's disproven and we found new evidence to show that there's actually something else here or we need to treat something differently. We seem to be so stuck. And I think that's what's happening right now in our current medical model is that we're so stuck on these old foundations and that we're not able to see like, okay, well, science is evolving. We could have been wrong about this one thing, but I'm so grateful for people like you that are like, Hey, let's look at these different models. Like, let's look at these different ways of caring and treating for people or treating people. And another great point is the silos.

Like, it's funny because we treat, when you go into the doctor, it's like, okay, well, you just go to the cardiologist and they're just going to look at the heart, but we forget that the body is all connected, right? And so we're putting, you know, all these different silos, like, okay, you know, you go to one doctor for this and another doctor for that. And we're forgetting to zoom out and look at the whole picture and see what is affecting what and kind of how the body works in sync with each other. Well, I think according to kind of play off what you said about this whole idea of science, you know, people, I think, miscontrue science as this monolith. And

I kind of go back to my Greek studies back in the 7th and 8th century BC. One of the philosophies was all is water. And the idea was reality is this fluid thing that's a river. The river, the structure is solid. The banks are well marked. They're not going anywhere, right? But you never stick your toe in the same river twice and that's kind of how science is like the way in which we learn is very set in stone right where westerners we think west like western thoughts is our scientific method but the actual substance is ever-changing never moving and you have to realize that that's when we talk about the science that's what we're talking about we're talking not talking about a a we're talking about something that's ever-changing. It's not truth that never changes. It's facts that are ever-changing.

Yeah, yeah. And I think it's more important than ever, just with everything going on right now, that we really need to be open to new science that's emerging so that we can really tackle this on all fronts. Yeah. Actually, so I want to ask you if you're comfortable with this, because I saw that you are treating people with long COVID. What are some of the ways that you're treating people with long COVID? Are there ways to avoid it? Do we know if there's ways to avoid long COVID? Okay.

Well, I think long COVID is not, the concept is not new. It's like the whole idea of the river I was talking about. Like, you know, the virus is new, right? You know, SARS-CoV-2, the novel thing. But the idea of an acute viral infection, okay, that can cause problems, or that acute viral infection that can lead into chronic post-infectious inflammation is old. I mean, actually, we have data from the Spanish flu in the late 1800s, increased Parkinson's and neurological diseases after that. You know, we have the same thing for flu. You know, those people get chronic fatigue and fibro after mono, right? We have a whole host of examples of viral infections inducing other chronic issues.

So what we do in functional medicine is we take those examples like, you know, oh, my gosh, we have no idea what to do with this virus. Like, well, it's not that different than other viruses. We have to find nuances about it. But let's say with functional medicine, we do that all the time. And so we've learned, I suspected that vitamin D would make a big difference. I suspected that we'd find some antiparasitics

that make a big difference. I suspected that C and zinc, because they work in acetylcysteine, NAC, would work. And lo and behold, we now have all this data that says these things work. I didn't wait for articles to tell me what to do. You know, that's the practice of medicine. I use my clinical expertise, therapies that are pretty safe, right? And what's the harm for C and zinc, you know? And lo and behold, data came out months and months later. So that's kind of how we've looked at stuff. As far as COVID itself, some nuances with it and months later. So that's kind of how we've looked at stuff. As far as COVID itself, some nuances with it I'm learning is that a lot of my long COVID patients actually have mold issues.

You know, they appear to be healthy, but their house actually had some mold, caused some low-grade inflammation, little allergies. They had no idea. And then the spark was this virus. Or hypermobility, you know, the young, healthy athletes or hypermobility you know the young healthy athletes that look pretty fit you know and you look at them and they have long faces you know um i always use um michael phelps's example because you know you know the most amazing swimmer like in the history of the universe right but you've seen a picture of him dislocating his shoulder you know i can't get my arm back that far he's like straight up you know right you got a picture yeah yeah and the and there's there's

pictures popping up of him during the olympics and you see like his he has a very narrow dental arch he's probably hypermobile and that makes you more athletic and more competitive but also makes you more permanent inflammation and have an increased need for trace minerals like zinc and selenium and vitamin c and certain proteins what What is hypermobility? Sorry, just for the listeners. Okay, hypermobility, you know, there's extremes. So you have Ehlers-Danlos, which a lot of people are familiar with,

which is a severe degree of soft tissue elasticity, so bad that you can have aneurysms, you can have joint dislocations, et cetera. But one in 30 Americans are hypermobile. So what that means is they're a little more limber, but they don't actually have Ehlers-Danlos or Marfan syndrome is another example of this hypermobility, usually in males. But a lot of soccer players, volleyball players, gymnasts, swimmers are hypermobile. Sports that actually make, that require the extra inch you

get can make the difference between first place and last place you know and so certain sports attract people that are a little more limber the issue is in today's world with toxins chemicals poor nutritional status these people also are set up for certain nutrient deficiencies that they get covid and all of a sudden now their spiral starts you know i've also also a lot of these patients are more prone to mild degrees of sleep apnea because of the facial features, you know? And so these are things I've been kind of picking up on as I've been seeing more and more along COVID patients and noticing waistline. You had gut issues before you had, you know, IBS, you know, no one, no one say anything about, because it was just your, your nervous stomach actually was SIBO or dysbiosis,

which now we know from literature from last summer that the gut bacteria in kids, the diversity is one of the reasons why they don't get as bad of COVID as adults. And so if you already had gut issues beforehand, that could set you up for this whole infectious process with COVID. So one of the things I've been doing the last year is just, as I'm seeing these patients, connecting the dots, because that's one of the things that like integrated functional medicine do. Some people call it translational medicine, where you take the bench research with our clinical expertise, and then we try to connect those dots. And so it's been really interesting to do that over the last year and actually have things that actually are helping people. Yeah. I mean, I'm so grateful for people working in the functional and integrative space because like you said, you're really able to zoom out and connect the dots. I also think you,

you made a very, very important point that I want people to understand. There's so much conversation this last year and a half, like, well, what about long haulers? Like this is one of our biggest concerns. And I think it's so important for people to hear that, that this is not the first time that we've ever had a virus that, that shows long hauler symptoms. I have two girlfriends that have had long hauler symptoms from viruses they got, you know, five, 10 years ago. So this is nothing new. It's more, more than ever now, it's important that we're getting down to these like other health issues that are going on. And what I'm seeing is a massive theme in all of COVID is that even if you thought you were healthy before, if you get affected by COVID in some way

or another, whether you end up hospitalized, which hopefully that doesn't happen, or if you end up with long haulers syndrome afterwards, it usually means that there's something else going on in the body that needs to be addressed. I mean, Courtney, you're, you're, so that's spot on with what you said. And that's where like, when I see someone who's had severe COVID, you know, or long haulers, you're 87% of people who die with this have low vitamin D level, 40% of people, if you have your levels or your zinc is low, you have a 40% increased risk for hospitalization.

There's like that superficial nutrient stuff going on. Then there's like some deeper things like the gut and the environment, hypermobility, sleep apnea. And then there's the fact that half of our country is diabetic or pre-diabetic. Half of our country is automatically set up for increased inflammation. I mean, how can you say, that just boggles my mind. and you look at 30 of us are obese 10 of americans have fatty liver disease your liver enzymes are off a little bit 30 of the world's population has fatty liver disease okay it's more common in certain third world countries and so all of a sudden like you start connecting these dots and saying how can i deal with these parts of

inflammation in your liver or in your your gut in wherever. And you're, you're, you're right to the point where when people I see as people with long COVID it's there's other things going on. It just takes a little digging to find those, but that takes time. You know, it takes, I do have like my intake is about two hours, you know, that's been talking with someone going through the history. It's not a 12 minute, how you doing? You're tired. You're fatigued. Your blood pressure's off from COVID, you know,

take some Pepsi and have a good day. It's more in depth than that. Yeah. And this is another important point about functional and integrative medicine is that if you're just seeing a conventional allopathic doctor, like you said, you generally have like 10 to 12 minutes with them. But if you're seeing a functional integrative doctor, you spend an hour, two hours. Every single session that I have with my integrative doctor is at least an hour because you need time to really dig into it. And I can't remember who it was. I was listening to something recently and I heard this doctor say, he goes, if I get enough time with my patient, they generally tell me what is like, what the problem is without actually knowing that they told me. But it's like, if you start digging into things and you ask questions and you find out

about their lifestyle, where they're living, if there's possible mold in the house, how they're eating, whatever it is, like generally the patient will tell you, you just have to have time to dig into it. I mean, I was taught in medical school that 80% of the diagnosis is from your history and physical. But now we're looking at, you know, we want to have this flip where people like what's the test that proves that. And so we're looking for technology and tests and we've in the data gathering has become less important. And now we're using, we're focused on technology, CT scans, lab tests.

And the reality is, is that if you can get 80% of the diagnoses with just your history and physical, maybe that should be the focus 80% of diagnoses with just your history and physical, maybe that should be the focus. And then the question you asked a little bit ago, part of the reason the system is the way it is, the insurance model doesn't pay for cognitive thinking. I used to tell people, we used to admit patients to the ICU and the hospital. I'd manage my patients in the ICU. I'd walk across the street, spend 45 minutes in the ICU, come back to the hospital, go back to my office, get calls from the specialists, get night calls. And I got $75 from insurance for all that time. And it's like, but if you come to the office and I do a skin

biopsy on you, which is a procedure, I get $82. That takes three minutes. Our system is skewed towards procedures and technology, not towards cognitive thinking. And in our world of mass information, we need a lot of thinkers in medicine. We need people who can think and analyze, not people that are quick to, I call them cowboys, quick to shoot, quick to do lab tests and imaging tests. But that's not how you make really good diagnoses, clinical evaluations. And that's not how you treat people. It's still the practice of medicine. I'm still practicing after 20 years. Yeah. Well, it's because unfortunately we have a for-profit medical system because unfortunately it's just the reality is that there's more money in people that are chronically

sick than people that were able to send on their way without medications and healthy. So this, there's like a real disconnect here with how we're trying to give people real care, but then also the insurance and the hospitals and the doctors all need to make money. Yeah. There's just, there's just so many competing and I'm kind of, I struggle with it because I'm all about, you know, I want to make money in my work, but I wouldn't have time. I wouldn't have time to take care of people. You know, if I feel like you need an extra 15, 20 minutes with me, I shouldn't have to get on the phone for an hour to convince your insurance that I need the extra time, you know? And that's kind of where there's so many competing interests that

how do we really fix the system? And do you want the government to fix it for us? Or do you want people to rise up and demand a different system and i'm kind of more of a bottom up kind of guy than a top down kind of guy yeah i feel like if we've learned anything last year is that i don't think the um a top-down approach really works that well no i don't think so either well because anytime that there's any sort of power and money involved things are going to get skewed and they're not always going to be in the best interest of, of everyone. You know, it's going to be in the best interest of, of the, the bottom line of the dollar. And so I, I fully agree with you. I think people need to be, um, we need to demand more. I don't know if you have the answer to this, but how do we make functional and integrative medicine more accessible? Because

this is a huge problem. You know, anytime I talk about this on my Instagram or on my podcast, I'll get messages from people that say, you know, I really wish I could go see a functional medicine doctor or an integrative medicine doctor, but it's really expensive. It's not often taken by insurance. And it's really, it's, it's a, it's a hard place we're in right now with that. I think the, I think it's, it's almost like the, the, the argument that real food is expensive. I with that. I think it's almost like the argument that real food is expensive. I'm like, well, it's not expensive. You know, processed foods, government subsidized.

Yeah. It's not the same thing. And so when you talk about the expense of functional medicine, it's that, you know, I went to my foot doctor for a 15 minute visit as my insurance paid $250 for 15 minutes of his time to look at an ankle sprain. Like reimburse me at the

rate of a foot guy now we'll do functional medicine all day long right it's just like you know i'm saying it's like it's like like in primary care people we kind of realize we need more well-trained uber generalists someone who does a little bit of everything and has a deep knowledge of a lot of things but our system again, again, doesn't pay for that. And that's where if the system just changed the reimbursement model that I could actually pay a little, I could, you come to see me, I'll charge you for an hour of time and I get paid for an hour versus I charge you for an hour and get paid 15 minutes. That's where I think the big sticking point is our system. It's really interesting. You look at Europe versus the United States, 75% of physicians in Europe are generalists versus the United States, 75% of physicians in Europe are generalists.

The United States, 75% of physicians are specialists. Our system is just geared more towards technology and doing things to people, not doing things for people. That's where I think if we could just change that reimbursement system. It's really funny. I routinely see patients. I've got a patient right now with rheumatoid arthritis. She saw multiple specialists.

And the drugs for that are crazy expensive. And she's been seeing me for about two and a half years. She saw all of her medications. Insurance was paying $60,000 a year for a meds. Oh, my God. It's expensive. These things are expensive. And so she's paying for all of her supplements to see me.

She's paying for all of her labs. You put all that together, she's spending about $8,000 to $10,000 a year. Her insurance company is saving so much money by me seeing her, but it's all coming out of her pocket. And that's where I think we can somehow bridge that gap. The people that are willing to do the hard work, maybe they get a different insurance or something like that that actually enables them to use it for their health. And that's where it's just hard. How do we navigate that? And that's where I's just hard. Like, how do we navigate that? And that's why I think the reimbursement system is part of all the money.

I mean, the reimbursement system is part of the reason we have the system we have today is because the way you get the outcomes you pay for, you know, and so we're kind of have a system that encourages excess in that way. And that's how do you change that policy wise, state wise, I almost feel like it has to be state by state, region by region. You know, the person you're talking to, they kind of, you know, setting up HSAs, you know, finding alternative forms of healthcare, you know. Ultimately, the system will follow, you know, the economics will follow with the consumer

demands. Yeah. Yeah. And we need to demand more preventative care because really that's what's happening is that our health care system does not recognize preventative health care as a part of their model, a part of their system. It's more like, oh, we're just going to let you continue doing what you're doing until you hit the point where then you need surgery or you need medicine and then we'll we'll intervene and provide the money for it. But, um, we need to get to a place where our insurance is recognizing that preventative care is really, I mean, it's the solution to all of this. It's how we get out of all of this medical debt that we're in, in our country right now. It's how we get our citizens actually truly healthy. Um, and it's how

we make all of this more affordable because if, cause you know, I tell people this all the time, I'm like, you're either going to pay for this at the cash register at the grocery store. So either you're going to pay upfront for your food and your supplements and whatever, or you're going to pay a lot more later in surgeries, medication, you know, the prescription drugs and all that. I also think there's also the messaging, like even COVID has been a great example. I mean, how long did it take for us to hear from um higher ops that vitamin d was helpful I mean it was like half a year into it right you know I've been checking vitamin d levels on patients since 2004 you know

so I kind of joke with patients like I've been prepping you for COVID for the last 10 years and it's really cool to watch those levels kind of go up. I've still had patients that's taken eight years to get their D from seven to 50. It's taken a bit. It takes a while for some people, you know? And so it's just, you know, that knowledge, that's where I think, again, you know, people know, have a basic understanding of food is eating rights, the right thing. Nutrition is important it's just the the top-down education top-down messaging um is inhibiting that kind of stuff that's where i think just getting really good having lots of information lots of podcasts lots of resources out there that's one of the things that concerns me a little bit about some of the um the censorship not allowing good information

to get out there and basing it based on your who what's your on what your title is and who approves of you, who your followers are, determines the quality of your information. I'm kind of like, that's not a good place to be or be going. And that's kind of a concern I have with the way things are right now as of recording this podcast. I know. I mean, that's the beauty of the podcast and why I've been leaning more into my podcast this last year, as opposed to my Instagram, because I'm not getting censored on here. I mean, that's the beauty of the podcast and why I've been leaning more into my podcast this last year, as opposed to my Instagram, because I'm not getting censored on here. I mean, I noticed the very beginning of this pandemic, uh, I started getting really concerned because like you, you're saying, you know, vitamin C, vitamin D, zinc, the very beginning of all this,

I started talking about vitamin D, C, zinc, quercetin, all this stuff on my Instagram. And I was getting censored. I believe I could be wrong. I think this is the hashtag that was, I know that there was a hashtag that got banned last year. And I believe it was hashtag sunlight because they didn't want to encourage people to go outside and get vitamin D from the sun. And the irony of all of this is like you said, we weren't hearing any of our higher ups talking about this at all. But then I saw a clip of Dr. Fauci. And this wasn't anywhere on mainstream media. It was just kind of thrown on like, I don't remember what show he was on. But he admitted that he was this whole year taking vitamin D, vitamin C, and zinc. But where did he talk about that on CNN in the

press conferences, like there was no conversation about this at all. And this is life-saving information. It's really infuriating. Well, it's interesting because mid last summer, I pay attention to lots of going Europe and the UK and they actually, Ireland perhaps put out like their national kind of thing for their healthcare system, which I realize is a little different

than the main UK system, but basically showing the importance of vitamin D. And the UK actually started sending in the mail vitamin D to the high-risk elderly with cystic fibrosis, COPD, and bronchiectasis. In the UK, the government was sending vitamin D to those high-risk people. And then our side of the pond, we're like, it doesn't make a difference. And so that's where, again, getting information that's accessible to people, finding reliable sources. And that's one of the things I try to do with my social media and the stuff I do is just give people decent information

from hopefully a reliable source. And that's ultimately all you can do is educate, educate, educate. Repetition is the mother. One of the things I learned in medical school, repetition is the mother of all learning. So it's got to keep on, keep the message out there and keep it going. Yeah. Well, okay. So let's talk about this a little bit for people listening so they can get a greater understanding of what, so outside of like vitamin D, C, zinc, stuff that are really good, we know for our immune system.

Let's talk about the importance of real food. I saw a quote of yours that said, food is information for your body, so don't misinform it. So how can we inform our body with real food? Okay. I love, okay. I love the science because the science, it's like this deep hole that has no end, right? So I'm going to get, I'm going to geek out on you a little bit. Hopefully your listeners appreciate it. So, okay. There's these things called micro RNA. Okay. There it's actually, you know, your DNA makes RNA, right? RNA makes mRNA, tRNA. It goes to ribosomes and it basically makes proteins, right? When you eat living plants, you actually get plant micro RNA into your stomach and it actually programs part of your, your response to the food you eat. So there's actually literally RNA bits of information in spinach and kale and these living organisms that you eat that then starts to program your immune system and your GI tract. So you've got that information. Then you've got the phytochemicals, which are what give plants their color. And those phytochemicals actually are a prebiotic or something that feeds the bacteria in your gut. And if you know about the whole microbiome thing, the gut bacteria in your GI tract make neurotransmitters,

they make immune modulators, they make nutrients. And then all of a sudden, the plant chemicals feed those healthy bacteria. They provide information that then program your ribosomes to do stuff for a short period of time. It's really kind of interesting. You can see a bump, a change in your DNA expression in your um for eight hours after eating broccoli it's just the data is so cool so yeah so it's just like now it was really interesting i was just once i was looking at you eat a hamburger right and you have these things called um lipopolysaccharides your pipe it's like basically a endotoxin your gi tract goes up for about 12 hours okay so and before it goes back down now if you eat rosemary with that hamburger it goes up for six or six hours before it comes back down

so literally having that plant with that burger lowers the inflammatory effect of that on your system like this and we're just scraping the surface of what this stuff actually means but for me it's just like really cool cool. Like food is, it's not just medicine, it's information that feeds your gut. It does all these really amazing things. And it's, that was when with our daughter, when we started the journey, the way we started with the food, you know, the very first thing we did is change her diet. We started feeding her real food. We started, we stopped giving her, you know, formula with my son when we adopted him he's our third child he had eczema and asthma and all stuff and he he actually wheezed so bad um when we first got in

my wife was scared he like would stop breathing in his sleep so she actually slept with him at six months on her chest that's all gone now you know it's been for him it's been exclusive yeah a couple supplements here and there but it's's 95% food. People just forget the power of basic real food on their health. It's information. I can ramble on about microRNA and the epigenetic expression of the phytochemicals. The point is real food is super powerful. Yeah. I mean, you brought up so many amazing points. I love that you said food is not only medicine, but it's also information. I mean, it's, it's literally information for ourselves. And it's such a shame because we really haven't been focused on food for so long. I feel like people

are now waking up to it, but I remember, you know, growing up as a kid, there was no conversation with me about how important the food was that I was putting in my mouth and how it expressed everything in my body. You know, like if you think about it, we are, our cells are literally built off of whatever we put in our mouth. No, it's just why, and this is aging, this is dating me a little bit. And this might, you know, people just by personal experience, but I, well, growing up as a kid, I was a big Arnold Schwarzenegger fans, a kid growing up. for some reason your your eye his youtube thing popped up whatever for pumping on him right so i'm like looking at this this is like a couple like a couple months ago

and in the 70s he's talking about his diet he eats no sugars no carbs he's clean meat like how healthy is the top bodybuilder in the world at that point in time is like super on target for his diet and i was in medical school in 1996 70 80 90 almost 20 years later i was told your diet didn't make a difference for heart disease and that's where sometimes that's what's kind of got me down this another rabbit hole looking at elite athletes you're tom brady's you know what are these guys doing they're doing interval fasting they're doing timed eating they're doing high intensity interval training they're doing all these things that like basically these are these are not expensive things that actually change their metabolism and change their microbiome you know timed eating there's 40 years of literature on that which is interval fasting how it affects

insulin sensitivity affects your risk for cancers and so i'm just learning again and again, that so many of these ideas are actually decades old, you know, and that's what kind of just bothers my mind, how much I'm relearning that someone else learned that was forgotten. I'm just pulling out of the, you know, these old books, you know, and just how do I apply this to patients now, you know? Yeah. Wow. That's so, it's so interesting. I, I just, I don't know, it boggles my mind to hear someone say that your diet has nothing to do with heart disease or, you know, I mean, if we look at, you brought this up earlier. I mean, I think it's like 10% of our population now is metabolically healthy, which means that everyone else is either pre-diabetic on their way or already diabetic. And we look, I mean,

we don't have to even look that far around to notice like we're being infiltrated with all these processed foods. Um, we're also, we have toxins in our water and our air, and we could go down that rabbit hole if we wanted to, but there's so much that, that we could so easily fix with all that right now, but we're not even recognizing in, you know, just the allopathic medicine community that food really has any sort of impact. Are you seeing that change at all though? Are medical doctors starting to wake up to that more? I mean, people are like, we're getting aware, we're getting aware of the concepts about these things, but how do you treat a patient like again

we're stuck in our model so in my practice we've got a bunch of doctors we have 10 practitioners in my practice and they're all kind of they think what i'm doing is cool and they kind of have like buy-in but in order to learn not just the probiotics can be helpful in foods medicine like how do you actually use this to help people that requires a totally different structure of your business uh structure how people come in how people find you and so i think people are getting educated about oh yeah yeah it helps but the actual change is slow that's where a lot of alternative practitioners you know health coaches nutritionists acupuncturists you know um one of the people in my community we have that

helps with us she's actually a natural food chef nutritionist i'm like well i didn't even know existed you know and it's so cool for her insight her perspective because she's a food preparation expert and oh by the way this helps with this you know so that's where i feel like having a whole different whole bunch of different practitioners and experts in different fields because now i mean your acupuncture is actually you know our local va here one of my my colleagues he's actually an acupuncturist, he's a pain medicine specialist, physiatrist doing acupuncture in the VA. Cool. That's kind of, so it's there, it's just slow. It's going to take a while.

Yeah, and it's so frustrating because it's such an, I mean, I want to say it's an easy solution. It is in the sense that what we really need to be doing is just getting back to eating real food and starting to recognize the importance of our food and the role that it plays in our health. And in that sense, it's easy, but it's hard because, uh, you know, we're so we're addicted to processed foods. There's so much misinformation surrounding all this. Everyone's really confused because, you know, you're, you're hearing on one end of the spectrum, like, oh, eat this. I don't know. Like, I just think about all the like diet products that are, you know, come in boxes and, and we're, I find that many people are getting confused saying like, oh, if I eat these like

meal bars and I eat this like processed, whatever crap, like I'm going to find health in that. And I get it. Everyone's confused. We make it really hard to eat healthy in this country, you know? And we have accessibility issues and all that. And, but I really, you said this earlier, and the most important thing is educate, educate, educate. And we just need people to understand the importance of real food. And I'm just, I'm a numbers guy. You know, there's 50%, sometimes data blows my way. 50% of all all chronic disease in our country can be directly attributed to eating processed food. Half everything I see can be directly attributed to processed food. This is Harvard School of Public Health.

Walter Willett, one of the top epidemiologists in the country. 80% of heart disease and 70% of cancer can be prevented by diet and lifestyle alone. So it's like 80% of the number one killer, 70% of number two killer, 50% of everything is lifestyle medicine, right? It's not fancy medications. And that's where I feel like people cognitively get that. They don't get it in their heart. They don't get it enough to actually change their lifestyle, to change their activities,

to change how they, you know, who sits down and has dinner with their family anymore, right? Who prepares their own breakfast and lunch and dinner? You know, we're so, our society is so geared around immediacy and convenience, you know, it's hard to, real food takes a little bit of time to learn how to cook and prep. And you have to have that value that you value that enough that you actually will do that. Yeah, you're absolutely right. And I found that a lot of our population is programmed to think like, Oh, I have this issue. There's a pill to match the issue. And we need to kind of unwire that and recognize that it actually starts before that. And if we're able to get off the processed food, lower our sugar intake, you know, prioritize exercise, these little things really do add up. And then you can get to a point

where you don't really need that medication unless if it's a more dire situation. Even in my functional medicine clinic, I see people with like Hashimoto's and multiple sclerosis and all kinds of, you know, long COVID and chronic fatigue and all kinds of stuff. It's like the things that people get stuck on are the, what's called in the functional medicine world, the foundations of functional medicine, which are diet, lifestyle, exercise, stretch, reduction, sleep, and relationship. Like these foundational things. That's where most of us get stuck or get our trip over.

It's not, you write me a prescription, I won't take the pill. It's like these foundational things. And so I tell people supplement, supplement, they supplement what medications assist. They assist what they assist these foundational things. And so just hammering out diet, lifestyle, exercise, sleep, you know, relationships, these are the things that kind of make us human, but also establish our health. You look at blue zones, which are places in the world where people live to be a hundred more than they place else, right? Some of the places they smoke, some of the places they drink alcohol,

but these foundational things exist in all those places. Yeah. Yeah, the blue zones are really cool. And some of the common themes are, at least for me, I found a little bit shocking, but now that I know more about health, I was like, oh, it makes so much sense. But a lot of the common themes are, they eat meals together. They stay very social, even well into their older, you know, the older they are. And I do my hit in the morning, whatever. But then when I got this, I realized that, wait a second, if I just do yard work for

two hours, I hit 15,000 steps, no problem. Wow. Just being outside and doing yard work, it's like, for the week, it just blows me off the chart for my activity level. And it's like, those are places where they don't have gyms. They don't have saunas. They don't have fitness clubs. They don't have hospitals.

They don't have access to healthcare. They work outside. They use their bodies. They move. They have support systems. They eat real food. They go to bed close to when the sun goes down. They get up close to when it rises. They follow these natural circadian patterns and rhythm. They follow the rhythms of nature. They follow their natural rhythms. They don't try to break these cycles. They try to align their lives as close to these cycles as they can, and they live to be really long and healthy. Well, there's a common theme in that too, is that the further away we get from nature, the closer we get to disease. The more we're able to lean into nature and how our bodies

were designed to live, like you were saying, the circadian rhythm, waking up at the sun, going to sleep when the sun goes down, eating foods that the earth provides for us, not made in a lab. I mean, there's something to be said about that. Nature was perfectly designed and we're kind of working against her right now. And when are we going to wake up and learn that we need to work with nature, not against her? One of the things that like all these drugs we have, people don't realize 90, over 90% of them all come from some natural source. And so people are like, you know, you know, cyclosporine, which is a, is an immunosuppressant for organ transplant,

comes from a fungus from South America, you know, penicillin from mold, you know, oh yeah, digitoxin for heart, it actually comes with digitalis plant. I mean, most of our stuff actually comes from something in nature. And then we're trying to break away from that and then pharmaceuticalize these things when we've detached ourselves from these natural rhythms. It's definitely a disconnect. There is. And when you think about it, we've only had these harsher pharmaceutical drugs for, I don't, maybe the last hundred years. Think about how many thousands of years, give or take, right? Yeah, yeah.

I mean, penicillin was, you know, they just go up. So like 20s, 30s, you know, some chemotherapy in the 50s, you know. So that's probably, you know, 100 years plus or minus. So you're at the ballpark. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And you think about how many thousands of years humans have been on this planet using plants, herbs, all this other stuff, food as medicine. It really does make you think like we got here this far, you know, and look, I, I always am very careful to say I am not, I'm not bastardizing conventional medicine. I do believe that we need it. There's a time and place for it. I just think that we have gotten to a place where we've gotten too comfortable and we're overusing it, that we're forgetting about the more natural ways that we can treat things. I mean, two of my children wouldn't

be alive without the modern healthcare, having access to neonatal intensive care. My father and father-in-law wouldn't be alive without being able to do surgical procedures to save their lives. We need it for this acute care stuff, for care but for acute care for the chronic that's where we need to focus on all this other stuff and our system is it's the foundation is acute care system and we're trying to force chronic care into this acute care mode and that's where i think we need that's part of the disconnect yeah that's very important we need, that's part of the disconnect. Yeah, that's very important. We need to focus more on preventative and then, cause you know, one of the biggest problems is with the acute care of this chronic disease system that we have is that, you know, if you go in and see your

doctor and like, let's just say, I'll use like diabetes too, as an example, if you're starting to show the signs of being pre-diabetic, generally your doctor will just say like, oh, well, you know, just, just come back and we'll check it again. And there's not really any sort of care or treatment to prevent you from going over the edge. It's kind of like, well, we're not going to really do anything and we're just going to kind of monitor it. And then when you go over the edge, then they're like, okay, now we're going to put you on meds or we're going to do this treatment instead of saying like, wait, wait, wait, let's back it up here. We see the numbers going in a certain direction. Let's do things to mitigate that and try to keep you from going into

this place. Well, that requires time. I have to talk with the patient and they have to buy in. We have to have a trust in the relationship. They have to believe that if I say I need to cut out the Diet Coke, Diet Coke can increase your risk for diabetes. Artificial sweeteners, low-calorie sweeteners, artificial fats increase your risk for diabetes. There has to be that belief. And it takes time to get that buy-in from the patient. And again, 12-minute time slots. It's, you know, for someone who smokes, if it takes seven attempts of me talking about, if you do try to quit smoking once, and you have to try it multiple times, that's a process. And so our system just doesn't allow time for that relationship building with patients and the process of changing habits.

Yeah. So for people listening, so we can kind of leave them with some tips. If someone, let's say that someone listening is either just hoping to keep away a chronic disease or just trying to stay as healthy as they can, or maybe someone already is dealing with chronic pain or some sort of chronic illness, how would you, what tips would you give them to start kind of looking into and things that they can start changing today? I mean, I think, you know, the foundational things are foundational. So diet wise, you know, starting with clean, healthy orals, removing all the processed orals. It's amazing how much inflammation is caused by canola oil and, you know, genetically modified soy oil and these vegetable oils. Just get

the fake fats out. Removing sugar. There's so much that was sugar causing inflammation. And then the processed food. That's like, I think that if you do that through diet, you'll get 89% of all the stuff in the diet world. Exercise, movement. Exercise does not have to be a gym. That'll point my, or what my story was, exercise can just be doing yard work, going for a walk. Physical movement outside for an hour a day.

You know, sleep. As Americans, we sleep six and a half hours on average a night. We slept eight and a half hours on average a night. We slept eight and a half hours on average back in the 1800s. Sleep is such an important part of our health. So the diet, movement, sleep, stress reduction. Oh my gosh. Like who's not stressed right now? How do you work on that? How do you self-regulate? How do you do that? Do you get away from technology? Do you pray? Do you meditate? Do you use exercise as a stress reduction? And then relationship aspect. It's interesting how

COVID has affected all of those. It's affected how we deal with each other's relationships. It's affected exercise. It's affected food access, all these things. So there's five foundational things that we're focused on at different levels. And that'd be my 10,000-foot overview. And then as people walk through theirs, they it you know what does it mean to remove the bad fats what are what are super healthy fats like your omega-3s and sixes right like you're using extra virgin olive oil which actually will change the bacteria composition in your gut you know and then kind of fine-tuning those basics um and then after that you know if you still have issues or you're not where you want to be find a practitioner or someone that can work with you and do testing or other things to kind of get

to some root causes, if you have any, which we all kind of sort of do actually. Especially I feel like after this last year with all the stress and everything that's going on. Yeah. Those are really great tips. Hopefully people listening can find either a functional or integrative doctor that will work with them that they can afford or just find a doctor that really listens to you. Because I found that's another huge issue, you know, just through my own experience and people coming to me asking, you know, I fear that I have this. And I say, OK, we'll go to your doctor and ask for this test or, you know, whatever it is. And they'll come back to me often and say, oh, my doctor just dismissed me. And they said, like, I don't need it or not to do it.

And I'm like, well, then get a new doctor, get someone that listens to you, you know, is willing to work with you. Yeah, I mean, you got it. It's a relationship. It's a partnership. It's not, you know, me telling you what to do. It's back and forth. And that's kind of finding the best thing for you based on your understanding, your

history, your ethnicity, all those things playing to how you respond to health care. So I ask everyone this question before we go. What are, no matter how busy you are throughout the day, what are some of your health non-negotiables? So that means that no matter what, no matter how crazy your day gets, you prioritize these things for your own health. Yeah, I mean, my profession, I drink lots of water. I'm always hydrated. I drink lots of water. I got to, right?

That can also help with your hunger, your hunger pangs if you miss a meal, right? Even if I miss a meal, I'm eating real food and I'm trying to get my sleep, you know? And what that means, some days I work all the way till I go to bed you know but those are my non-negotiables food sleep um and um what was the other one I said uh was it exercise yeah yeah I mean because like the exercise I only I only work out twice a week these days but you know I do a hit. We have a little farm, so I'm always outside doing farm work. Yeah, I mean, well, like you said, the yard work is a great way to get your steps in.

And you get vitamin D from the sun, too, from being outside. So is there anything else that we didn't cover that you feel is really important for people to hear? I think just reiterating, food has changed the trajectory of my family's health. It's changed my career. It's not the only thing, but it's the main thing. If you're not eating real food, if you're a diabetic, you're not going to get your diabetes under control. If you have high cholesterol, it's not going to come down unless you change the foundational stuff. Food to release medicine, it's information, it's changed my family's life. It's changed my career. And I would just say that you can spend, you know, there's people whose whole career is just learning how to eat real food and how to prepare it and how to teach

other people how to do it. So it's something we all used to be able to do, make food and cook meals a hundred years ago. And now it's a lost art, you know, cooking and self-preps. I would just say, you know, go back to the basics, you know, because they're the basics for a reason, you know. I'm so happy to hear an MD say that and talk about the importance of real food because it really is. It's the foundation of our health. Yeah, agreed. Cool. Okay, so for everyone listening, where can they find you? They can find me at richmondfunctionalmedicine.com is my practice website. I'm also richmondfunction Medicine on Instagram and Facebook. But my website is like my launch place that has like podcast information, has blogs, it has our community,

our online community, which is a place we put together for people to have access to a team of integrated practitioners and information educational classes. So I tell people to go to my website because that's like my platform for everything, which is rich from functionalmedicine.com. Awesome. And we'll leave that in the show notes so that people can check it out. I think I gave you a little thing as well. You can put in an e-book actually that goes through. It's called Roadmap to Resilience, but it's actually the foundations of functional medicine is what it is. It's just I made it sound modernized, right?

Yeah. No, it's great. And I hope people will check it out. We're going to leave that link in the show notes too. So it's really good. Cool. Thank you so much. Today has been really fun. Well, thanks for having me. I really, really appreciate it. Thanks for listening to today's episode of the real foodology podcast. If you liked this episode, please leave a review in your podcast app to let me know. This is a resident media production produced by Drake Peterson and edited by Chris McCone. The theme song is called Heaven by the amazing singer Georgie, spelled with a J. Love you guys so much. See you next week. Outro Music Bye.