Is Functional Medicine Hurting Or Helping? | Webinar

[Music] what's up guys welcome back to another episode of Integrative you radio and I am very excited about this topic today mainly because you'll probably hear me get pretty fired up so I'm going to preface with this this topic was provoked based off of two things that I saw on social media one was a text based post and it was more like a chart actually and it had three categories and it had your conventional doctor functional medicine in the middle and then it had your health and wellness influencer and essentially what it was encompassing was is that your conventional doctor is saying toxins aren't real parasites aren't real infections aren't real you know your blood work looks great you must be depressed and anxious and that's why you don't feel well so complete gaslighting you know telling you that what you feel is irrelevant and it's in your head and then on the other end of the spectrum we have health and wellness influencers you know perusing around your social platforms that are like if you eat meat you die if you eat vegetables you die if you you know use these personal products your hormones are screwed and you die and it's like these two extremes and clearly this was written by a functional practitioner because you know they said in the middle is functional medicine but I am actually here to challenge that idea and and to be Advocate and part of it is that I feel that with the the way that functional medicine has gone and integrative medicine has gone over the years because I've been doing this literally 13 years 14 years almost and I remember when we first got started you know we were the weirdos this was not a thing you know functional medicine was just becoming a little bit known Integrative Medicine was like what what is that what are you talking about but you know we dealt with a lot of skepticism a lot of push back you know a lot of people telling us that we're crazy and irrelevant and we do Voodoo weird [ __ ] we're rich doctors you know you you name it we heard it but we weathered the storm and and now the market is very very saturated and it's a mixed [ __ ] bag guys it you know there's a lot of mixed information even when it comes to functional Integrative Medicine I feel like a lot of people came to functional medicine in order to get the truth and get answers and get clarity and to be validated that their symptoms are real but there's so many people that are breaking into the industry that shouldn't be in the [ __ ] industry so that's that's a topic you know they they're essentially medical doctors at heart but they recommend vitamin D or they recommend supplements and we're even putting things like bioidentical hormones into the category of functional medicine that ain't functional medicine the whole point is that your body knows what to do sometimes it just needs a facilitator it needs a little support So if you're using Pharmaceuticals you're not [ __ ] functional medicine you're not integrative medicine that's not how it works and I think that you know the people that have been on the journey and they've been failed over and over again they realize that what's moving the needle the most for them is working on their mind working on controlling their stress you know trying to eat food that has less [ __ ] poison in it and also trying to to just work on minimal foundational things but that's not to be worked on forever it's just how can I stabilize this thing that wasn't stable and so it's like less is more is really what it comes down to and we're finding that the the strong you know Pharmaceuticals and the surgeries are the things that actually created the setbacks so if you really know what you're doing in the functional and Integrative Medicine space you do not need to ever dabble in Pharmaceuticals you don't need to dabble in any of that surgeries obviously has its time and place you know if somebody's arm is dangling off their body you know you need surgery it's like that's that's a no-brainer but there's a lot of surgeries being done for chronic pain and chronic conditions that are not actually benefiting the person or they're benefiting only shortterm so I derail as as I do per usual so going back to the reason why I'm doing this is one the post I just described the second one was a video and I understand that this video was probably well I hope for comedic purposes and also you know to have a video that was going to draw in an audience get more followers Etc you know people tend to do extreme things on social for those purposes because we're in an we've been programmed for entertainment I get it I couldn't help but feel tadle enraged when I watched it and it was a woman who was getting her hair done and she was very big into Health and Wellness in her you know as she states in her video and she's been working on her hormones and so she was like oh can you please not use that cream on my hair because you know how many chemicals are in there that will disrupt your hormones and then she proceeded to okay now they're washing her hair oh can you please use my shampoo because I've been working on my hormones and you know all the chemicals in these products are going to mess up my and I was just like oh my God I really hope this is for comedic purposes and so the point of this podcast is is functional medicine integrative medicine and functional medicine influencers or health and wellness influencers creating mental illness for the general population and my answer as you may think is yes and I'm gonna tell you a story that I think is going to really help as you guys know I love to tell stories but in my early days of getting into this industry of you know functional Integrative Medicine I will tell you straight up I was not in a place to explore my mental and emotional limit limitations because I was still using my mental and emotional limitations let me explain when you go through [ __ ] as a kid and you persevere past it you know you use your will in order to to surpass big challenges to surpass poverty to surpass abuse to surpass you know really shitty situations you can use that as your drive you use it as your motivator and I'm saying motivator very specifically because it's not an in Inspiration or an Inspire it's a motivator you can use it as a motivator to create a certain level of quote unquote success in your life I say quote unquote success just because everyone's definition of that is very different that could be money it could be Freedom it could be a house it could be a car it could be a family it could be whatever so I was using my past challenges to create a successful career for myself and you know I used it in the sense of when [ __ ] got hard in business things got scary of can I even pay my overhead for this crazy business that I just built or I just got destroyed by some customer through writing a re review on every review platform known to man you know things like that that really hurt as an entrepreneur I was able to push past it because in my brain failure was not an option because I wasn't going back to that old life I wasn't going back to the life of my parents where they were just controlled by their nine-to-five and life was about survival and they were barely making ends meet and you know we were we could barely pay for the house that we lived in and you know we had to eat really shitty food because we couldn't afford quality food we couldn't go out to dinner Etc like I wasn't going to that life so I used those experiences in order to persevere and say no one's [ __ ] taking me down I'm going to I'm gonna do this and for those of you listening think about it maybe that has been something that has created a certain level of of success in your life a certain level of achievement but the thing that happens is that you hit a plateau and you start to realize that using your will as a motivating factor to to persevere can only get you so far because it's really not about that it's not just about hustle and overcome it's about alignment starting to make decisions that are more aligned that are rooted in inspiration for you to be the person you're meant to be so how does this correlate to the original topic so in the beginning of getting into integrative functional medicine as a practitioner I was very focused on the tangible things the science you can call it and it was this person has these biochemical imbalances based on their blood work they have these symptoms have these physical issues from scar tissue to Old injuries to surgeries that are creating certain nerve blockages etc etc and so I worked in that model I worked in that model of being able to hone in on the things that were they were scientifically valid they were proven through labs they were proven through a physical exam and then worked on that and and then when we wanted to explain why these things were happening for people you know why were they having gut issues why were they having liver issues or high cholesterol or heart conditions and certain diagnoses and you know it came down to oh well it's because you were poisoned from the old profession that you were in you were you were a mechanic you were a hair stylist you know you worked in engineering you were exposed to chemicals oh you don't eat organic oh you had a vaccine injury oh you had a physical trauma like a really bad car accident oh you had four C-sections like there were all of these reasons why they had what they had oh you have parasites like oh you know so on and so forth and so working out of that model it you know it made sense it was like here was the cause and here was the problem based off of that but of course you naturally see that certain people will get better and then there's a boatload of people that don't and you start to ask questions of okay well if this is the presumed root cause and I've been addressing it you know why is this person not getting better you know if their if their issues are they have biochemical imbalances you know they have low vitamin D they have high cholesterol and if we're working on addressing those why are they not getting better why are the levels not changing and really what it comes down to is that there's so much more there's so much [ __ ] more to it and so in my own journey I was a I I I had that experience I had that experience that I was doing parasite protocols liver protocols I was doing hormone balancing protocols I was doing all of these protocols and you know obviously would see results at times and then other times just felt like how have I been working on my liver for three years and my liver still has abnormal Labs like what the [ __ ] is going on this is exhausting you know how much money and time have I wasted you know what what's the issue here and when you keep asking better questions you come across answers and those answers are not necessarily always in alignment with your current level of Consciousness your current level of understanding your current level of say level but your current belief systems so when I started to realize that maybe the things that have been a driver for me the things that I endured in my past maybe they're now holding me back maybe it's time for me to stop using these biochemical and physical strategies and maybe it's more about digging a little bit deeper maybe it's about a a very foundational program belief system limiting belief system trauma that's holding me [ __ ] back and that was a really hard pill to swallow and I know know that this for a long time is was a really hard pill to swallow for a lot of people and for some it still is but I do think that there is a little bit more talk now especially postco of how significant stress is on the body on your health how significant it is when you live in fear you live in anxiety and how it feels really hard to get ahead in your health get ahead in your job get ahead as a parent get ahead in anything so one of my biggest points here is that we need one if you are you know an individual who's not a practitioner don't [ __ ] work with those people don't work with the people that when you sit down for your review of findings they give you like the the the horror story of how you [ __ ] yourself up and everything you do is p and everything you do was harmful and you know like you need to eliminate eliminate eliminate and change everything about your entire lifestyle because if you don't you're [ __ ] and you're going to be sick forever like that's not how it works and this is one of the reasons why when you look at other cultures you know people always make comments about people in Italy Where I Live Now people in France and and they don't they don't ever go past the surface they say why can French people eat cheese and smoke cigarettes and drink wine and and be skinny and be healthy and you know in Italy how does everyone just eat pasta and bread and drink wine and they're healthy and in America you know you have all these people doing these Trend diets restricted diets taking vitamins and supplements you can't even get vitamins in Italy I literally have to like smuggle [ __ ] in from the US like I can't even get things here it is a it's wild experience but like it people don't take them because they actually get nutrients from their food that's a whole Topic in itself but if you look past the surface of these other cultures that have blue zones which are you know Health people are so healthy that they live past 100 centurions and you just you look at just generally the statis St istics of of health and disease in these countries they're significantly lower than the US and the reason being is because they are less stressed than us they don't live in fear PE like that is something that I have observed for the past year that I've been here is like you do not see people running around with anxiety like it's so funny to me because where we live there are tiny ass streets like like I'm talking that you are in in a a like a Volkswagen Bug and you have about a centimeter on each side of your car because that's how narrow the road is and I'm not talking like there's like guard rails we're talking like stone walls it's intense to drive here and guess what those skinny streets are two-way streets so when depending on the position whoever is closer to a driveway or something that person has to back up and get out of the other person's way oh it's wild but still to this day when we're driving and I will be like gripping the sides of you know the the car the door and I always notice that the Italian that you know is driving and we we you know end up Bumper to Bumper and like somebody's got to back up they never even Flinch like they're not like like that doesn't happen and I'm always like damn like these Italians are just so [ __ ] chill like how are they so relaxed all the time you know people drive vas and scooters around here and they drive crazy they split Lanes like they're on highways and again you you know a car you see a car switch lanes and like almost clip a scooter and they still they don't panic they they just look at them and they keep going and it's just it's so interesting because it shows me that their nervous systems are so much more stable they're not wired in fight ORF flight the way so many Americans are you know when I was in America like my kid is he's he's a super freak he can he knows how to swim he he was climbing stairs at like a little over one we just let him do his thing because we know that one we we taught him you want to go upstairs you know how to go downstairs we taught him how hold on to certain things when you're doing hard stuff like his agility is insane but he scares the [ __ ] out of people but what's comical is when we were in the US like we would like if we were out in public and he did something like that jumped you know climbed Etc there would be random strangers like moms or dads running over thinking like he's gonna die and I'm just sitting there I'm like he's fine and it does that doesn't happen here in Italy because they're just like like clearly like one their mentality is more like if his parents think he's going to get hurt the parents are going to do something and number two kids get hurt sometimes like you know they'll be fine so the the point is is that these cultures that we deem healthy the root of their health is less stress less hustle bustle less go go go go go go go and less [ __ ] pressure on themselves of you need to do you need to go you need to earn you need to be successful you need to reach a certain level of status in your life in your neighborhood in your job in your family Etc like those pressures don't exist in a lot of other places and I have a whole theory on some of the root roots of that but again that's a pretty loaded topic but I think it's actually a very interesting topic so maybe I'll bring that to you in the next podcast so essentially what I'm trying to say here is that there are people that are living their lives not thinking twice about what they eat again other countries food is significantly less poisoned and there is you know there's no use of certain pesticides and acaricides that are allowed in the US so yes we have that layer of course but is it perfect do they not use any level of chemicals no that's not true they definitely do but they're smoking people smoke like fraking chimneys here like smoking cigarettes drinking wine yes the wine is more pure it has less preservative sulfites All That Jazz yes of course but they're doing a lot of these things that have been deemed super unhealthy but somehow they are healthier and we can't just say oh it's less chemicals it's a it's the lifestyle it's the less stress it's the fact that these people are not in fight or flight they are not anxious they are not running on empty they're not burnt out they have more balance built into their culture and they don't have to fight for time off from their job they don't have to fight for those things because they're built in to the culture I'm living in the sento area right now you know fortunately unfortunately but for me this is not going to be a place that I can stay long term because literally three months from December actually four months December January February March everything is like most of everything is closed and it's because these people here in this area because it's a tourist area they work their butts off in the quote unquote season The Season's very long here because of the weather know where're all the when all the tourists are here but then they all go to Thailand I don't want to say all but like literally a large portion of the people that live here they all go to Thailand for anywhere between a month to four months and then they come back and they work again like like you could never ask for that in the US I'm gonna go away for four months or even if you own a business you like everyone would be like oh they closed like it's not it's not common that people would go away and like if I had my integrated Wellness Group still in belmare if I closed for four months I would be almost rebuilding my business when I got back because it's not normal like people would be like I'm finding another doctor so you know there there's a lot of reasons for this but overall I do think that we need to get away from this this [ __ ] of oh if you're not so strict and on an Elimination Diet and you've cleaned everything bad out of your personal products your makeup your body wash and you haven't you know replaced every single type of cleaner in your house oh and also you should do a bunch of remediations in your house because you need to get rid of you know old things that might have asbest you need to get rid of any lead paint you need to get rid of the spray foam insulation because that off gases oh and you got to get your house checked for mold oh and then you need a full water purification system you know listen do I own almost all of those things I have water purifications water distillation I have air purifiers I have all of that stuff I I you know I'm still very particular on what I eat but I find it so interesting that I'm living in a place where I'm You See You observe people that don't have any of those things and are significantly healthier and again you can say oh less toxins in other countries but is it really just that so the big point that I want to drive home in podcast is are we subscribing to this idea that all of this happened to us I'm chronically ill because I was poisoned by the government and the the food industry and I was also given too many shots as a kid and then I was recommended Pharmaceuticals from my doctor that had side effects and then I was given a bad surgery and then also all of the you know Monsanto putting all the GMOs in my food and you know all the personal products that I I've used that also put chemicals in there that harmed me are we just falling into being a victim a victim of our choices knowingly or unknowingly because if you want to get into the science of guilt shame victimization it is the lowest frequency lowest vibration emotions that exist and what that means is that if you're going to live in that place of a low vibration you're GNA stay in fight ORF flight you're gonna have abnormal cellular function in your body you're going to have pain and inflammation you're going to have a lack of Serotonin and dopamine so is this really benefiting us these you know influencers these doctors that are telling us like you have you've been a victim of poisoning and toxicity and our conventional medical system and this and that and you know if you just cut all of this stuff out you'll be fine because what if you're not because there's a strong probability you're not gonna be because I've seen it I've seen it a million times I've seen people go to the [ __ ] deep end oh I I I got my house checked for mold they did remediate like hundreds of thousands of dollars remediation taking 45 supplements I got my air purifier my water purification I got all my stuff oh I only eat raw vegan oh I only eat carnivore and I get my meat flu in from Japan and you know like and I'm just like well how how you doing and I'm and I'm like based off of everything you just described you're you have to be in a level of psychosis because it's almost like neuro to go to those extremes and we could call it type A personality we can call it all these things you your nervous system is [ __ ] like you you can't operate that way in a calm nervous system because a calm nervous system pauses it pauses to make strategic and aligned decisions it doesn't make decisions out of emotion it doesn't make decisions out of fear it doesn't make decisions out of anxiety so we have to really think about what one what are we looking at on social two are we working with a practitioner a coach a doctor a nutritionist a dietician that is of that extreme personality of that extreme of you know don't do all these things and life will be better are you also working with a practitioner that says oh this is a lifelong journey you know you need to be super strict for the rest of your life that's the only way you're healthy you know some people like for me I I'll take supplements probably every day for the rest of my life like I I just will I I I find benefit in them they you know I I'm able to get nutrients that I'm not getting from certain things that I eat yeah it's it's a it's a thing for me but it also it's aligned for me it's not like anxiety inducing or I don't want to do this but I have to do it like I do it because I want to do it and so when you're doing a bunch of things that you don't want to do like you know you got to way out the the pros and cons you know the the risks to the benefits because when you're constantly doing things you don't want to do you constantly keep yourself in a bad mental emotional vibrational State hence again some people that get crazy diagnoses like you know they they get told you only have three months to live you only have six months to live you only have a year to live and these people say it I'm gonna go I'm going to go live my best life somewhere and I'm going to drink and eat and I'm going to laugh and I'm going to enjoy and I'm I'm going to say [ __ ] it I'm going to spend all my money and then they live past their their prognosis because they just finally calm their nervous system down so you know this whole idea of placebo effect you know we've heard of it it it exists for a reason placebo effect is just they always test a medication even a supplement against a placebo and the placebo is that they never they never gave you the medication they never gave you the intervention they just gave you the idea of it they gave you a sugar pill and said this pill is going to change your life and you took it and your life was changed and it's because you believed that it would it's not because of the biochemical change it's not because of the effect of the actual pill it's because you thought that it would work that alone should be a huge huge light bulb for you how do you think about your health how do you think about your life how do you think about yourself and if you think in a state of anxiety Then what is it be what is that being influenced by is it being influenced by the [ __ ] you see on social media is it being influenced by the practitioners that you choose to work with and so if you if you change your mind if you change your belief systems if you surpass past your old programs that have been running in the background holding you back there's a lot of Magic on the other side [Music] oh [Music]