Normal Labs, Sh*t Life
Your "normal" lab results might be hiding a life of misery. Discover how conventional medicine's definition of "normal" is manipulated and why your symptoms are often dismissed, leaving you feeling stuck and unwell.
00:00 Introduction to Integrative Medicine and AI
02:54 Challenging the Concept of 'Normal' Health
05:59 The Manipulation of Health Ranges
08:46 The Importance of Comprehensive Health Assessments
12:01 Understanding Symptoms vs. Lab Results
15:00 The Role of Critical Thinking in Medicine
18:00 Building a Strong Health Foundation
21:00 Leveraging Technology for Personalized Health
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Topics: health, normal, life, medicine, integrativeyou, https, foundation, stuck
Key takeaways from this episode
- Your "normal" lab results might be hiding a life of misery. Discover how conventional medicine's definition of "normal" is manipulated and why your symptoms are often dismissed, leaving you feeling stuck and unwell.
- :00 Introduction to Integrative Medicine and AI
- :54 Challenging the Concept of 'Normal' Health
- :59 The Manipulation of Health Ranges
- :46 The Importance of Comprehensive Health Assessments
Pull quotes
Nicole (00:01) Hello everyone, welcome back to another episode of Integrative You Radio.
Nick puts on these glasses for every podcast, video cast, and it's a full transformation in my opinion.
So we're diving into a topic that we've definitely talked about plenty of times, but we're going to give you a fiery spin on it.
Transcript
Dr. Nicole (00:01)
Hello everyone, welcome back to another episode of Integrative You Radio. We have Clark Kent here with me. The joke will never get old. For those of you on YouTube, Dr. Nick puts on these glasses for every podcast, video cast, and it's a full transformation in my opinion.
Dr. Nick (00:17)
And that's it. That's it.
I go from being just an average Joe to incredibly, geniusly smart. It's wonderful. Yep. Just for you.
Dr. Nicole (00:29)
yes. Full transformation just for the podcast. Just
for you. So we're diving into a topic that we've definitely talked about plenty of times, but we're going to give you a fiery spin on it. And, you know, if you've been to our new website, integrativeyou.health, you've seen that one of the catalysts to the creation of some of our new products that are integrative medicine focused with a little sprinkle of AI
is that there's just too many damn people that are walking around feeling like shit, normalizing this low quality health, low quality life, low quality experience because they're being told your labs look normal. So, sorry, we don't know what to tell you. This must be anxiety or depression or just solely in your head. And there's a couple of like points we want to drill.
here, we want to do a drill down of some of these major points because this is something that one, most people don't know and two, this is something that a lot of doctors don't know. So if you are here as a practitioner because you're looking to break into functional medicine, integrative medicine, or you're just looking for the reason why you keep getting stuck with your clients, this is going to be a great episode for you.
And for those of you that are just looking for answers, you're gonna have some clarity as to why your labs keep coming back normal, but you know intuitively something is off.
Dr. Nick (02:06)
I hate the word normal. I mean, when you think about it, like that's the foundation of the new look of our branding of our website and everything is the black sheep because normal is the white sheep and the white sheep's life. Let's just not lie about it. It f and sucks. It's it's it's the average, you know, it's just everybody's if you stop and take a look around like what's normal normals, normals divorce.
Dr. Nicole (02:08)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
that is normal.
Dr. Nick (02:36)
Normal's overweight or obese. Normal's depression and anxiety. And, you know, I'll let you take the role in this, but normal is your average and your average is what? In blood work.
Dr. Nicole (02:52)
Tell me. I never know what angle you're taking here.
Dr. Nick (02:54)
It's the range. Its average is the
range that the markers are set. So if you're in range for, oh, your labs are normal, well guess what? Your life sucks. Not that intense. Not that intense.
Dr. Nicole (03:09)
Tuesday.
Two things. One of the things that I was thinking about, someone asked me, at this point in your life, why are you doing what you're doing? Why did you create all these new products? You already had a great integrative medicine private practice. And I said, this is partly from my own journey, but I just don't want people to feel stuck in a life that they really don't want.
And that's the same for being stuck in a body that you don't want, being stuck in a mind that you don't want, being stuck in a mediocre life that gets deemed normal because everyone's stressed out and everybody has to hustle for money and everybody is struggling with their weight and everybody is struggling with their health and bad things happen to good people, so on and so forth. So I wanna preface with that is,
Stop feeling like you are required to be stuck in a life that you're not enjoying, that you don't want.
Dr. Nick (04:19)
Well, the normal
is people settling, you know, it's, they're told that this is normal part of aging. This is a normal part of life. And guess what? Buckle up buttercup. This is, this is it. This is your reality. And the black sheep says, no, thank you. I'm going to create my reality. I'm not going to let you tell me how I'm supposed to live my life.
Dr. Nicole (04:45)
Well, when going back to these ranges, let's be real. One, you look at the ranges nowadays and there's huge gaps. If we're looking for actual health, someone that is feeling good every day, thriving, know, not aging at a rapid rate, not, know, the littlest thing is tipping them off to spiral out of control mentally.
The ranges should be a lot more narrow. But when you look at the average ranges of what your cholesterol should be, what your blood sugar should be, what your insulin should be, et cetera, these ranges have gotten bigger and bigger and bigger. And then the other thing is why? Why have these ranges changed over time? And I'm not even talking about, they changed everything a couple of years ago. They're changing constantly.
And the reason is because if you have people falling out of range, what do they get recommended? Medication.
Dr. Nick (05:56)
Big Pharma.
Big Pharma.
Dr. Nicole (05:59)
and who is behind the research that gets put out to then dictate the fucking ranges is the pharmaceutical companies. So, you know, there are more and more people, when you look at the statistics of people that are on cholesterol medication alone, the number is massive. And the reason is, is because they've modified the ranges many times over. And the thing that kills me,
especially about cholesterol, is that cholesterol is necessary for your brain function and for your hormones. And how many people are struggling with brain fog, memory issues, living in fear of dementia and Alzheimer's, or almost feeling like they're like joking, like, do I have dementia? I'm 25 years old because they can't fucking remember anything.
Dr. Nick (06:55)
they're coming out with new neurological diseases every year and it's just like let's just pause and take a bird's-eye view of what's what's changed in the past five ten years
Dr. Nicole (07:06)
Yeah, and then you want
to talk about how many people are on these new drugs, the GLP drugs, which is a topic in itself, but what is that doing? It is manipulating insulin, which is a hormone, and what did I just say? That cholesterol is a precursor to hormones. So this is estrogen and progesterone and insulin and a variety of other hormones. So how many people are struggling with hormonal issues?
Women are struggling with hormonal issues. There is a massive rise in infertility. Then we have all these men that are like, I need to get on testosterone. I got on testosterone. I felt so much better. The point is, we can, those are all separate topics we can go deeper into. But the point that we're driving home here is that these ranges have been manipulated. They've been manipulated to sell drugs. And there is more to the story when it comes to the side effects of these drugs.
or the ramifications of having too low of cholesterol because someone told you that it's better to be low than anything else. I get very concerned when I see a woman with low cholesterol because I'm like, this is a brewing ground for hormonal fucking disaster. And then like, I do have this, this and this when it comes to hormones and PCOS and everything else. So I can't lose weight, that's because your insulin is off. So at the end of the day, we need to be conscious that
One, blood work shouldn't be the only piece of data that you're looking at. And number two, these ranges have been manipulated over time and they're actually not even providing quality information when you're getting your labs done in the first place.
Dr. Nick (08:46)
Well, I would say jumping off of what you just said there is like, it's, we've been programmed that the blood CBC is like the gold standard. And we have many podcasts talking about how there's, sometimes not always correct information coming out of that, but at the same time, there's, you know, nothing is a hundred percent perfect. So we don't put all of our trust and nobody should put all of your trust and
One thing. So when we look at that, it's more of. I always come back to this. The quality of your life is dictated by the quality of the questions you ask. So it's like, well, let's just start asking more questions to gather more data. And once we get more data, we can see what's a line, what's not a line, what might be accurate, what might not be accurate, and then compare that data to actually. Your symptoms, how are you feeling? And let's put all the pieces of the puzzle together.
Dr. Nicole (09:16)
to one data point.
Dr. Nick (09:44)
Cause like one of the crazy things is we're taught to ignore symptoms and to look at data. You know, it's just like, this is why people go crazy in the first place is like, your lab's normal. But I feel like shit. I've got anxiety or I've got depression or look at me. I'm like, I'm obese, but my labs are normal. Like, come on now. Like let's just think a little bit. And this is the.
Dr. Nicole (10:02)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
especially the
people that are overweight that are not, their lifestyle is not congruent with that. Because we've worked with a lot of those people is that they're not, you know, going through McDonald's drive through in the middle of the night. They're not, you know, eating and overabundance of sweets. They're just like, I'm leading a pretty healthy lifestyle. And you know, am I perfect? No. Do I have a wine here or there? Yes. Do I have sweets here or there? Yes. But you know, I'm active. I work out.
this isn't adding up and it's because of this massive physiological disarray and if you don't run the right markers and you don't have the right data, you're gonna easily just bypass that and say, well, we have no idea why this has happened.
Dr. Nick (10:57)
the system's like, well, you just need to wait till your labs are finally out of range and we'll do something. Like, how long is that going to take?
Dr. Nicole (11:05)
which is after the fact,
when people come to us, and I know the two of the standard liver markers is like AST and ALT. By the time those become out of range, you have such severe liver dysfunction and liver inflammation, possibly fatty liver, it's already been going on for three years, five years, some people even 10 years. And like you said, is that
there were different symptoms that you just were told, you know, that happens to everybody. It's normal. So disregard, disregard, disregard. Or we also live in a model where, I got some pain. my stomach is off. And you take the Tums, you take the Pepto-Bismol, you take a Tylenol, you take an Ibuprofen. We have a lot of things to keep dampening the feedback system.
You know, I think about that a lot, that how many people take something like a Tylenol, Ibuprofen, acetaminophen every day, every week, and I'm like, gosh, your body is screaming, telling you to do something, and you're taking this because they told you it's benign, it's no big deal, you know, it's okay to take these things this often, and now you're gonna be what, in your 30s and 40s, and you're gonna feel like you're fucking 80 years old.
And then they're gonna say, it's because of some random ass disease that we just discovered. And it's like, no, was the facts that your body was trying to tell you something. And then you covered it up with painkillers. And also those painkillers had a massive amount of side effects that shut down your liver function.
Dr. Nick (12:47)
So if blood work is, quote unquote, normal, but now looking to understand it's just a piece of the puzzle, it's just a snippet of the story or the movie, how does one figure out?
Dr. Nicole (13:00)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Nick (13:02)
how to actually watch the entire movie, how to step back and say like, okay, like this might be normal and that's actually great, it's normal, but what's abnormal and how can I figure that out?
Dr. Nicole (13:16)
Two things that I wanna drive home. One, the information you can provide again with the guidance of the right questions is actually more valuable than the blood work. And this is something that I found myself on repeat when I was teaching. I would say to these doctors, I would say, you should have such a thorough and investigative
intake process, consultation process, assessment process, that you are 99.9 % sure that you know exactly what is going on with that client. You're asking questions about their health, you're asking questions about their birth, their childhood, you're asking questions about their mind, their mental status, their stress, their relationships. You are asking questions of all the buckets of life.
and you're taking a very, very, very deep dive into the entire timeline of their health and their wellbeing. You need that information and that information as a person who's just looking for answers is, you have to understand that is quality, that is gold. If you're not going through a proper intake process, a proper consultation process, a long fucking list of questions through your assessment, you already should be,
out the door in that doctor's office. Because that is 100 % necessary.
Dr. Nick (14:43)
Well, you know,
what's wild is and two parts of this, and I don't want to take this on too long, but it's like the let's just call it traditional doctor. is their systems are set up in such a way that they can't do that. They, they, don't, they can't spend the time and it's just, you know, it's a business. they can't the second part of that, which is even.
Dr. Nicole (15:00)
Yeah, 100%.
Dr. Nick (15:12)
I think even crazier and I understand it because, you know, it doesn't matter if you're medical school or a naturopath or chiropractic it like schools intense, like it's intense. Like I cried multiple times thinking that I'm not smart enough to do this. And I actually still don't know how I got through it, but Hey, it's pretty crazy. But in school.
Dr. Nicole (15:24)
you
Dr. Nick (15:42)
And I don't think for the most part it matters. You're not taught how to think. You're, you're taught what to think you're taught what to learn. And you have to do that because you have to pass a standardized test boards. And if you don't pass the boards, you don't get your doctorate degree and you can't help people. The joke about that is you can't help people if you don't know how to think because then you're, you are dictated by.
or the labs are normal. And I and personally, you don't know how to help the person because you were never trained. You never learned how to think of how can I help this person? They don't feel good. My only tools are, well, the labs are normal. I don't know what to do. You're normal. And that's the shitty part about it is it's not necessarily these doctors fault. It's just that they've actually never learned how to think because
Dr. Nicole (16:13)
You get put in a bath.
Dr. Nick (16:40)
Many reasons I'm not going to go into that right now, but it blows my mind that you take, you know, both of those systems together and the majority of people are being let down. And that that's, that's very sad.
Dr. Nicole (16:55)
I think a lot of it is taking away the critical thinking and...
I think that this is just my personal thought process. It's just sick people are profitable. So, if you train most practitioners to keep people dangling in the threshold of I'm a little healthy, but I can easily fall back into being sick, then you keep a profitable system going. And for us, I always said to clients,
I don't want you to be here long-term. If you find value in this because we're doing a lot of mindset work and you're using us as a board of advisors in order to grow yourself and have us on call when you need us, great, I'm happy to do that. But I sure as hell don't want you working with us because you haven't progressed to the point that your body is resilient. The point of the work is to do the foundational work.
so that your body is in a place, your mind is in a place that you're living your life, you're enjoying your life, you're present in your life. And yeah, sometimes we have things that come up that make us fall back, but to be able to bounce back really quickly, because one, you have a stronger foundation, and two, you potentially have us on that board of advisors to help you, which is what we do in our private concierge practice.
Dr. Nick (18:22)
Well, that's...
Well, that's, mean, in our private concierge, I mean, we get really intense. It's probably more than what most people want to do.
Dr. Nicole (18:33)
Well, because we
become life coaches and because we're entrepreneurs and I have two business degrees. I do a lot of business coaching. Then we do a lot of mindset coaching with the Demartini work that you have trained in. So we have done all of this work in order to not be stuck in our lives. And now we just share it with other people.
Dr. Nick (18:55)
fun part about is I kind of do in full circle is that, you know, you were questioned. have a great concierge private practice. Like why, like why spend as many hours as you are with sometimes breakdowns and tears behind a computer trying to put this. Intellectual property ran through an AI system for the many and
Dr. Nicole (19:22)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Nick (19:24)
What was interesting is you kept, mean, if we could replay it, but it's like, you said the word foundation foundation foundation. And that's actually what you named our kind of foundational program. And it gives you all of everything you need to be resilient and that resilience. Like you said, it's like the foundation of that information is
Dr. Nicole (19:30)
Mm-hmm.
foundational program.
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Nick (19:53)
The questionnaire is the symptom intake and it's all those things.
Dr. Nicole (19:55)
Well, it gives you answers and
it gives you solutions that are not just focused on your health, but it's, that's not true. It's your health, but it's the health of your mind and body integrated together. And there is even a sprinkle of helping you understand relationship dynamics as well, because that's a huge part of life. And if you don't have relationships and community, then you feel isolated and sad and depressed and anxious and everything else. So foundation is huge for that.
Dr. Nick (20:21)
Well, mean,
foundation is it's all that, but it's even more. I you have, forget the title of it, but it's like the, environmental aspect. You can put in your zip code and you can see the health of your water. Is the water you drinking making you sick? Is the air you're breathing making you sick? you need
Dr. Nicole (20:40)
Well, it's a series
of tools that we've used with our private clients. Now we're just making it more accessible to other people so that they can have clarity. Because if you have clarity, then you can make better choices. But if you don't have clarity, and you don't have information, and you don't have data, then you're going to constantly hit a roadblock.
Dr. Nick (21:00)
And it's what I love is that, I mean, it drives me a little crazy sometimes create some gray hair, but you don't settle. Yeah. You, you are the queen black sheep because you have your questionnaire that you created and all this, but it's like, that's foundation. And then you have, okay, well, understanding that everything is constantly giving us a feedback, you know,
Dr. Nicole (21:08)
B?
Dr. Nick (21:27)
Your dreams are your subconsciousness trying while you sleep to make sense of your perceptions throughout the day. And dreams work in symbolism. So a lot of times it doesn't make sense when thinking about it, but you even created a dream analysis that can help people interpret the symbolism of their dreams. And what's fun about that is it's all compounded because AI knows
Dr. Nicole (21:32)
process.
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Nick (21:55)
already has the questionnaires, the symptoms, the everything that it's learned about you. And it's just taking that symbolism and matching that with who you are, you know, new dramatic medicine, the Demartini method, Louise Hayes stuff. Like it's taking so much data to help you learn yourself. And that's, that's what it all comes back to is, you know, normal is not knowing who you are. And not normal.
Dr. Nicole (22:14)
Yeah.
Yeah, sadly.
Dr. Nick (22:25)
Being empowered goes back to know thyself. And when you know yourself, you can serve yourself, you can love yourself, you can help yourself. But if you don't know yourself, and if you don't have the data to know yourself, you're going to be disempowered. And disempowerment is just pain and suffering.
Dr. Nicole (22:43)
Yeah, no, 100%. So for those of you that are like, what is he talking about? All this stuff is wrapped up together. Essentially what we did was we created some programs that were very accessible and affordable based off of all of our 15 years of experience in integrative medicine, all of our intellectual property. As we mentioned, we've done trainings in energy medicine. We've done trainings with Dee Martini, human behavior expert.
We've done trainings in integrative medicine, functional medicine, business coaching. I have two business degrees. And we essentially took everything and wrapped it up and helped use AI to then create a personalized experience for people that's way, way more accessible than working with us privately. And then one of the things that we knew was a limiting factor is like, okay, people are gonna have all this great information and they're gonna get these customized reports and know exactly what's going on.
and have a series of, here's what to do to improve the quality of your health, improve the quality of your mind, but how do we make it super, super easy for people to implement this? And we created an app for that. And so what Nick was talking about with the dream analysis and the clean living hub, meditations, journaling, different mindset courses, all of this lives inside of the app. So you can use the app.
without getting your personalized reports. But when you get your personalized reports, they actually then populate into the app and they highlight like, here's the meditations you should listen to. Here's the course you should focus on. Here's the journaling prompts that you should journal on every day. It literally tells you everything that you should use inside of the app.
Dr. Nick (24:28)
Here's the type
of exercises that are gonna be best for your nervous system and your hormone system right now. Yeah.
Dr. Nicole (24:31)
Here's your AI chef with your customized diet.
So it's pretty fucking cool overall. The last thing that I want to drive home as we're wrapping this up is one of the things that was really, really interesting in our clinical practice over the years is we've always done shit the black sheep way. And so, you know, we had such a mixed bag of clients and we had some people that were really into it. And then we had people that were
really rooted in conventional medicine and came to us more so out of desperation of, know, I've been on a million drugs and I've been failed over and over, they've taken organs out and I need another option. And in reality, that wasn't necessarily the best mindset for the work that we did, because the work that we did was very intense. And also we did things very differently. So yes, we always ran blood work and urine testing, but we lost trust in it.
So we figured out we had to have other data points. And one of the things we started leveraging was DNA, not genetics. This isn't 23andMe. Sometimes we look at that information to mainly see like, do you have high functioning detox pathways or are your detox pathways slower? We use it for that purpose. We don't use it as a death sentence or, you know, like this is your fate, you're screwed. But the DNA essentially was looking at
Where is your body at? Is there certain organs that are inflamed or stressed? And then what is the reason why those organs are stressed? And these are things that were often missed by blood because this type of testing was looking at things that were subtle changes in the DNA before they became full-blown disease. So I remember, you know, very interesting situations where people were like,
This is bullshit. Like you don't know what you're talking about. You know, you're a fraud. You're this, you're that. This technology sucks. You don't know what you're talking about. Blah, blah, blah. I'm going to go to my real doctor. And of course they ran bare minimum and they're like, you don't have this going on with your liver. You don't have this. You don't have that. And we had some people come back years later and they're like, you told me that this, I had the early stages of X.
And then I got it three years later, four years later. And so, you know, I'm sure that possibly happened in other people that had too big of an ego to come back and say that. But, you know, there were people that just, what we did was new. They didn't have full trust in it. And they were scared. I get it. You know, it's, we always try to help people feel empowered. Nothing,
There's nothing your body can't recover from. There's nothing your mind can't recover from. But everyone has to be ready when they're ready. And the DNA testing is something that we still offer with all of our private clients. It's really foundational. But it's also something that we're offering in the DNA Precision Program as well. Because we want people, we know that there are people out there that...
They want that data. They want that extra layer of data to say, what's underneath the hood that the labs keep missing? That's not necessarily just dictated by these quality questions and what we extract out of understanding your mind-body connection. But what's also being picked up that are these subtle changes in the DNA?
And we really wanted to make sure that we brought people that extra layer of information and that's in that program.
Dr. Nick (28:23)
Let's and not necessarily they
want more, but they're ready for more because it's DNA is not, it's not for your intro black sheep, person development. You know, it's, somebody that's already done a lot of those things that, mean, yeah, I still, I, you know, primarily created all the meditations and I still use them to help myself, but the, DNA is just allowing you to build upon that.
Dr. Nicole (28:26)
They're ready. You're right. Yes. 100%.
Dr. Nick (28:52)
to get more awareness and hence awarenesses, especially reflective awareness is the highest form of awareness, which know thyself, which creates the empowerment, which creates the authenticity, which creates the alignment, which decreases the stress response, which allows you to instantaneously heal and experience gratitude.
Dr. Nicole (29:12)
Yeah, 100%. For those of you that are lost, but that's okay. So wrapping this up, for those of you that your labs are not telling you anything, understand that there's more to the story and sure as hell do not let that allow you to settle for a life that you feel stuck in, for a body or a mind you feel stuck in.
Dr. Nick (29:19)
There's a reason she doesn't let me talk very much.
Dr. Nicole (29:41)
There is always more to the story. It's just a matter of asking the right questions and having the right data points. So we really hope you take an opportunity to take a look at some of these amazing opportunities that you can dig deeper and get to know yourself more and really understand what has the labs been missing all along.
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About Integrative You Radio
Integrative You Radio is a root cause medicine and integrative medicine podcast hosted by Dr. Nicole Rivera and Dr. Nick Carruthers — two integrative doctors who build personalized wellness protocols from your DNA, minerals, hormones, gut, and nervous system rather than from a population template. Looking for an integrative doctor who reads your labs together instead of in isolation? This is the show.
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