Apr 30 2021 18 mins 7
Note: The following is the output of a transcription from the video above. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.
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Hey Dr. Rutherford here today and I’m going to be a little jacked up because this is going to be a little bit of a venting for me so the title today is stop chasing symptoms now a lot of you have probably figured that out at least you think um a while ago i mean that’s that’s that’s been the whole medical world for as long as i could remember and and and frankly i’ve been thinking about this a lot in the medical world was correct for a long period of time when i look at things now and i look i i sat there last night and i was looking through google i was looking through functional medicine i was looking through thyroid i was looking through leaky gut and i’m looking at stuff and i’m going this is not for today’s present population of chronic condition patients what do you mean dr rutherford i mean i mean you know i mean you know you’ve been talking about leaky gut since the day you were functional medicine practitioner i mean what do you mean about that what do you mean sibo you’ve talked about sibo i do but i talk about it in a certain context of an entire frame of reference that’s called functional medicine and functional medicine is no longer about chasing symptoms and that’s what the medical profession has been about and then you know to their defense they were about fixing broken legs and then having heroic surgeries and heart transplants and then making drugs that got rid of symptoms because nobody knew any different but when you really look at it the healthcare system the alternative healthcare system has as a lot of it has followed that model when i look online and i look at certain well-known websites which i was looking at last night it’s like magnesium here’s the 12 things you can do for me that magnesium does and the next thing you do is you can take that magnesium it’s going to work and it does for most people for just a short period of time and when i say most people i’m talking about the patients who walk in here and i’m talking about the patients who are looking online today because those patients are like they’re they’re the chronic mystery patients there i i looked at three histories this morning i uh something happened and i put on i put on what was 80 pounds in three months how do you put on 80 pounds in three months i know okay and it ain’t gonna and and just like and the doctors told me it’s my thyroid not to worry about it they told me not to worry about it because it’s easy to take care of so they’re taking the medication it’s not working they’re taking the pills it’s not working it’s not gonna work so a new model was made it’s called functional medicine which is another whole thing because not everybody out there is pregnant a classic functional medicine model everybody’s got their own take on it because it’s not a regulated discipline and so you know you can go down the street somebody can rub your knees somebody can rub your back and give you a couple of pills and go i’m a functional medicine practitioner literally you can do that in in like most of the states so this is what i have to deal with so people coming in and they have like fibromyalgia peripherally chronic fatigue they got a bad gut they they can’t they either can’t get away from the bathroom you know for more than an hour or they can’t go for a week and and all this type of stuff and and they come in with bags of supplements okay and and and they push those bags at me and i look at them and i go don’t you shop to me don’t even come to me because that’s not the model the model that was uh produced was based on the fact that we have a new patient population i go back that you’re looking at google you’re look to me 80 of stuff i looked at last night online is not relevant to the present patient population and why is that because auto immunity has changed the rules of the game big time the the the doctors don’t know what to do with it yet the medical doctors don’t know what to do with that because their model which was appropriate at a time before autoimmunity when the person would come in with a flu or a cold or a stomachache or or an earache or you know they were chickenpox or something like that that was their world that’s how it developed but that world’s past them now this is now i’m not saying i’m not saying medicine’s not relevant i’m just saying for the chronic condition patient that is not that is not the the the best model and substituting a supplement for a pill for a symptom okay is not the right model it can give you temporary lease yes am i okay with that of course who doesn’t want temporary relief but when you come to me i’m into more than temporary relief look it’s genetics it’s it’s it’s the person living an unhealthy lifestyle whether they knew it or not do i drink coffee do i not drink coffee do i take salt away not take salt sugar batter sugar not that and i i is is out oh i drink one alcohol a day it’s good too alcohol bad no three alcohol i mean like it’s confusing so you could be uh following an unhealthy lifestyle not even knowing it and and either way it’s an unhealthy lifestyle the next thing you know your systems start breaking down and now the way it’s happening is once that gut breaks down the next thing you know you start getting you can start getting chemical sensitivities the next thing you know you are now open to getting autoimmunity the next thing you know you have a stress has anybody here been stressed in the last year i get a little stress you get a little like maybe get an argument and your stress is already up because your presidential guy lost their one or whatever or you’re or we got coveted you’ve been sitting in your house for six months which is not natural for us as human beings to have to do that type of stuff i don’t think that’s like like a controversial thing and so the next thing you know you have a trigger um you have an overwhelming infection you get copied i think a lot of these coveted people are getting it and they have these mystery symptoms later i think you’re going to find out those mystery symptoms are they had a genetic propensity develop autoimmunity and now here it is this is a new development in our society and frankly i treat people from all over the country and all over the world it’s everywhere it’s not just here okay so now this person comes to us and we have spent years years and years just trying to figure out how do we get that under control and i think we’ve got a pretty good model going and the model is not based on on symptoms the understanding of the case is based on symptoms i give out a close to 300 question questionnaire to my patients to fill out by the time that question is filled out a pretty good idea what’s going wrong with them and it’s it’s it’s it’s it’s it’s and it’s all symptoms however those symptoms lead us to understand what systems have collapsed because these systems these these autoimmune problems they are not going away they’re getting more i’m seeing them in three and four and five-year-olds now you can’t cure at least not right now nobody’s come up with a cure now and um and and so basically you have to dampen it you have to get you have to do your best to get that person out of a uh out of a flare um some people have been on a flare for like 10 years okay and you have to get them out of that you have to get them in you have to try to get them in remission and show them how to stay that way we have we have done that we do that pretty well not everybody’s a candidate i’d say 80 people who call here are candidates and i’d say 20 for a variety of about 20 reasons just are not going to respond to this model of care now i said all that to say this so we get into the model we start treating people and and the person starts getting better and then maybe we switch into so basically the way it works is you’ve heard me say this if you watch this for a long time there’s a hierarchy to treatment we figure out what systems there are how do we get the immune system under control dampen the most it’s going to be lifestyle changes it’s going to be nutraceuticals it’s going to be it’s going to be a chemical toxicities it’s going to be triggers that we have to get rid of dietary changes with the uh that are going to help to get rid of strains and we have a very organized way of going about it and we do it in stages and you maybe maybe you know maybe you could do first stage one and also versus doing a lot better and then and then maybe in stage two i’m talking about not standard stages i’m talking about in that person’s particular case and now maybe you find that there’s a liver that’s not you know playing ball with us so maybe we have to go in there a little harder next thing you know you give a person an extra set of vitamins i’m not going to talk to them again for two or three weeks the next thing you know they’re not feeling good for three or four or five or six or seven days so what do they do they go back to dr google they go back to the model that’s failed they go back to the model of i’m going to go home and i’m going to go and i’m going to take this because this has helped me in the past in the context of what i do that’s not a good thing because what we’re doing is is changing physiology and physiology is very very uh communicative to the person who is doing classic functional medicine and if that’s and and it might be that that physiology is good because finally that organ is starting to like be demanded upon to get better and and and and so in the end that that person just kind of has to let me know send me an email do something say you know what i’ve had i’ve had some discomfort for the last three days and um i think i’m gonna take you know these five pills because they’ve helped me in the past and uh what do you think about that and then i would look at the five pills and go probably not a good idea you know or i might say you know one of those might be a good idea that might be the next thing but why don’t we wait a week why don’t we let because the whole idea is to get your physiology working as much as possible online now i have adopted an approach of more supplements in the beginning and tapering them down and tapering them down tapering down as the body heals but see people come in here you got they got like problems for 10 or 20 years you think it and and and we’re trained i take the drug and it either makes me feel better or makes me feel yucky and i tell the doctor he’s an idiot okay so but so so we have that model so so it’s we’re so like about the symptom and and and we’re so like to put band-aids on thing but in the framework of unraveling your physiology of getting these these multiple vicious cycles under control to start synchronizing tierra i mean you know i might have a patient who has doesn’t have constipation develop constipation that tells me something i might have a patient who has alternating constipation diarrhea go away like in a day it might take three weeks it depends on that case as to what’s normal for that and and so i i just there’s there’s a couple of things that really really make it difficult when you’re dealing with a functional medicine practitioner so i’m so i’m kind of like this is like my my my anthem for you for all of the functional medicine practitioners who are actually practicing functional medicine you give them if give them uh you know give them all the data that you can but don’t switch from one model to the next model in the middle don’t go from fixing systems getting your whole body to start working in sync again getting your gut under control and all of a sudden the endotoxins go away and next thing you know your joint pain goes away but now you’re going to the next step and the next step starts getting toxins out of your fat cells and now your joint pain comes back so now you go back to taking your your your magic you know whatever urban botanical gets rid of the joint thing which is fine but it takes away the markers that the functional medicine person needs to know what is the next something what is the next what is the next step so i mean in the end it’s it’s it’s you have to i mean like you have to when you go into functional medicine if you go to a practitioner that you feel confident in that has a plan that is an organization that talks the way we talk that then then you have to work with their model you can’t and again the people who have a lot of knowledge of um of what’s on the internet and and and and people who maybe don’t know how to read maybe maybe think they know how to read blood panels but they don’t i’m thinking largely of like one particular patient who has massive blood sugar problems but her blood tests are normal and then and i’m hearing like no i don’t have a blood sugar problem well we can’t go forward with this you can have you can have pre-diabetes for 10 years before it shows up on the blood pound you have to trust your doctor on that that’s what functional medicine is about it’s about catching all of these cycles and all of these systems that aren’t functioning properly before they get to the point where they show up on the blood test to where your f where your doctor when you read your blood test and he goes like that he goes oh yeah your a1c is up so we need to give you metformin we need to fix that long before that happens and your symptoms are telling us about that we understand that so when we say look i know your glucose is normal and i know your hba1c is normal for those of you are not aware those are two common but not always comprehensive blood markers um if they can be totally normal on your test and you can have you can have high or low blood sugar okay and and and you’re gonna allow your doctor to go with that so i mean this is a new world and it’s and and the thing is that you can’t you can’t chase you cannot chase symptoms and you cannot strictly chase blood markers and you have to and and and if my when my patients are you know what drives me crazy is is is i’ll be treating and and the person will be getting better then all sudden i’ll get an assessment form and it’s totally off the off the charts um then you know i’ll be waiting for the next time that i talk to them and then i understand and then they start telling me about about well you know i had this so i went back and i took this this uh this particular product because that made me move my boss three years ago but it’s not making me move my bowels now and or or i took i took a product and i felt good for like three days i started sleep again everything was wonderful now i’m doing it and and and now i’m back to where i was and and and i’ve stopped that product but it hasn’t changed anything that’s what functional medicine spent years years and some some of those brilliant people on this planet who had the courage to go ahead years and light years ahead of time getting their teeth kicked in getting getting criticized getting uh getting getting told that they were doctor wannabes and believe me being on this side at that point in time is not fun but they need to get that patient and what do they do they they call you and they say like it’s not working no no it it is working you’re not working your your decision to go back to another model is not working and so you have so either like decide to do your functional medicine practitioner do what they tell you to do or don’t do it is like is like my it’s like my advice i definitely am on a rant right now and so uh but but i’m i’m you know what i want my patients to get better oh and the other thing is they’ll go like i’m not i’m not i’m not uh i’m not getting better i have to go through their whole file make sure i’m not missing anything make sure i’m not losing my mind and then i’ll schedule an appointment to uh to to discuss the whole thing with them and say look here you know like what i’m telling you right now so maybe i’ll be able to use this and just tell them look on youtube for my rant and uh and and then have that conversation then they’re upset because i charge you for a console you know it’s like well i wouldn’t have to charge for the console if you just did what i tell you to do what i asked you to do because i’m going to ask you to do something it’s going to go better or it’s going to go worse if it goes worse that tells us something that is diagnostic that is functional medicine if you and it’s either a supplement or you got off of your diet or you were stressed that day which one was it oh it could be all of those things yes it could be all of those things a lot of times when people call me after they’ve been out of here for just that one last night and the young man was just phenomenal when he left and all of a sudden he’s starting to have symptoms again we talked for like 15 minutes he was stressed he was stressed at work that was it stress through off his blood sugar blood sugar thrown off his sleep what is he doing he’s taking supplements for each one of those things okay this is what i’m talking about all right and he’s delightful just in case you’re watching you know who you are he’s absolutely delightful and and and truly it was it was it was a cool thing because he he did call and he grasped it right away okay and he kind of felt sheepish because i had already given him what to do if something like that happened he goes oh i should have done this i go it’s okay next time do that you won’t have to call me and pay me for a consul and then yell at me because you’re paying me for a console so that’s my rant for today i don’t even remember what the name of the topic was it was but that’s my rant for today look this is a new world if you have these chronic conditions you’ve been to the doctor they don’t know what’s going on with you you’re taking the medications it’s not working you’re coming in here to me with three bags of supplements that’s not working you don’t want to go back to those two models when we’re in the middle of doing what we’re doing when any functional medicine practitioner you know oh the functional medicine practitioner well you know there’s good and bad functional medicine practitioners like everything else on planet earth okay it still gives them the best shot of helping you if you don’t if you resist the temptation to go back to that model and honestly if if if it’s going to be we have signs around this office it says we didn’t say it was going to be easy we said it was going to be worth it i mean because we know there’s going to be tough days when people are getting through that we tell them that in the beginning but that seems to like be forgotten sometimes you know so i’m not talking the vast majority of my patients but i’m talking to a percentage and i don’t like when my patients don’t get better because they’re shooting themselves in the foot and then they shoot themselves on the foot and maybe they even blame me but either way i don’t like that i don’t like that they’re not getting better because they could be getting better if they weren’t continuing going back to that model so so it’s not about it’s not about symptoms it’s about correcting the system it’s about correcting the vicious cycles it’s about correcting the inner twining as my mentor would say intertwining webs of of of conditions that that all come together to create these these chronic symptoms and and it’s it’s a whole different animal and it’s and it’s a whole different model so that’s my rant i’ll be interested to hear what anybody thinks about this one and i’ll be okay with whatever you throw at me and uh and so i’ll be with you again next time with uh uh hopefully is equally illuminating but maybe less controversial subject you – Hey, Dr.
Rutherford here today. And I’m gonna be a little jacked up, because this is gonna be a little bit of a venting (laughs) for me. So, the title today is “Stop Chasing Symptoms.” Now, a lot of you have probably figured that out, at least you think (laughs) a while ago.
I mean, that’s been the whole medical world for as long as I can remember. And frankly, I’ve been thinking about this a lot, the medical world was correct, for a long period of time. But when I look at things now, and I look at.
.. I sat there last night, and I was looking through Google, I was looking through functional medicine, I was looking through thyroid, I was looking through leaky gut, and I’m looking at stuff and I’m going, “This is not for today’s present population of chronic condition patients.
” Well, what do you mean Dr. Rutherford? I mean, you know…. I mean, you know, you’ve been talking about leaky gut since the day you were functional medicine practitioner. I mean, what do you mean about that? What do you mean CBO? You’ve talked about CBO.
I do, but I talk about it in a certain context of an entire frame of reference that’s called functional medicine. And functional medicine is no longer about chasing symptoms, and that’s what the medical profession has been about.
And then, you know, to their defense, they were about fixing broken legs, and then having heroic surgeries, and heart transplants, and then making drugs that got rid of symptoms, just because nobody knew any different.
But when you really look at it, the healthcare system, the alternative healthcare system, a lot of it has followed that model. When I look online and I look at certain well-known websites, which I was looking at last night, it’s like magnesium.
“Here’s the 12 things you can do for that… Magnesium does.” And then next thing you knew, is you can take that magnesium, it’s gonna work. And it does, for most people, for just a short period of time.
And when I say most people, I’m talking about the patients who walk in here, and I’m talking about the patients who are looking online today, because those patients are like, they’re the chronic mystery patients.
I looked at three histories this morning. Something happened and I put on, I put on, what was it? 80 pounds in three months. How do you put on 80 pounds at three months? I know. Okay. And it ain’t gonna.
.. And she’s like, “And the doctors told me is my thyroid not to worry about it. They told me not to worry about it because it’s easy to take care of.” So, they’re taking a medication, it’s not working, they’re taking the pills, it’s not working, it’s not gonna work.
So, a new model was made, it’s called functional medicine, which is another whole thing, because not everybody out there is a practitioner, and got a classic functional medicine model. Everybody’s got their own take on it because it’s not a regulated discipline.
And so, now you can go down the street, somebody can rub your knees, somebody can rub your back and give you a couple of pills and go, “I’m a functional medicine practitioner.” Literally, you can do that in like most of the States.
So, this is what I have to deal with. (laughs) So, people are coming in, and they have like fibromyalgia, peripheral neuropathy, chronic fatigue, they got a bad gut. They either can’t get away from the bathroom, you know, for more than an hour, or they can’t go for a week, and all this type of stuff.
And they come in with bags of supplements. Okay? And they push those bags at me, and I look at ’em and I go, “Don’t you show ’em to me. Don’t you show ’em to me because that’s not the model.
” The model that was produced, was based on the fact that we have a new patient population. I go back to you’re looking at Google, you’re looking… To me, 80% of stuff I looked at last night, online, is not relevant to present patient population.
And why is that? Because auto immunity has changed the rules of the game, big time. The doctors don’t know what to do with it yet, the medical doctors don’t know what to do with it, ’cause their model, which was appropriate at a time before auto-immunity, when the person would come in with a flu, or a cold, or a stomach ache, or an earache, or, you know, we got the chickenpox or something like that, that was their world, that’s how it developed, but that world’s past them now.
This is now, I’m not saying medicine’s not relevant, I’m just saying for the chronic condition patient, that is not the best model. And substituting a supplement for a pill for a symptom, okay, is not the right model.
That, it kinda gives you a temporary relief. Yes. Am I okay with that? Of course, who doesn’t want it temporarily relief. But when you come to me, (laughs) I’m into more than temporary relief.
Look, it’s genetics, it’s the person living an unhealthy lifestyle, whether they knew it or not. Do I drink coffee? Do we not drink coffee? Do I take salt, do I not take salt? Is sugar bad, is sugar not bad? Is alcohol.
I drink one alcohol a day, it’s good, two alcohol bad, or three alcohol? I mean, like it’s confusing. So, you could be falling in an unhealthy lifestyle not even knowing it. And either way, it’s an unhealthy lifestyle.
And next thing you know, your system started breaking down, and now the way it’s happening, is once I got breaks down, the next thing you know, You can start getting chemical sensitivities, the next thing you know, you are now open to getting auto-immunity, the next thing you know, you have a stress.
Has anybody here had been stressed in the last year or so? A little stress, a little… Maybe you get in an argument and your stress is already up because you’re presidential guy lost or won, or whatever, or we got COVID, and you’ve been sitting in your house for six months, which is not natural for us as human beings, to have to do that type of stuff.
I don’t think that’s like a controversial thing. And so, the next thing you know, you have a trigger, you have an overwhelming infection, you get COVID, I think a lot of these COVID people are getting it, and they have these mystery symptoms later.
I think they’re gonna find out those mystery symptoms are, they had a genetic propensity develop auto-immunity, and now it is. This is a new development in our society. And frankly, I treat people from all over the country and all over the world, it’s everywhere, it’s not just here, okay? So, now this person comes to us and we have spent years, years, and years, just trying to figure out how do we get that under control? And I think we’ve got a pretty good model going.
And the model is not based on symptoms. (chuckles) The understanding of the case is based on symptoms. I give out at close to 300 question, questionnaire to my patients to fill out. And by the time that question is filled out, I’ve pretty good idea what’s going wrong with them, and it’s all symptoms.
However, those symptoms lead us to understand what systems have collapsed, because these systems, these auto-immune problems, they’re not going away, they’re getting more, I’m seeing them in three, and four, and five-year-olds now.
You can’t cure, at least not right now, nobody’s come up with a cure now. And so, basically, you have to dampen it, you have to get… You have to do your best to get that person out of a flare.
Some people have been on a flare for like 10 years. Okay. And you have to get them out of that, you have to get them… You have to try to get them into remission, and show ’em how they can stay that way.
We have done that, we do that pretty well. Not everybody’s a candidate, I’d say 80% of people who call here are candidates. And I’d say 20% for a variety of about 20 reasons, just are not gonna respond to this model of cure.
Now, I said all that to say this. (laughs) So, we get into the model, we start treating people, and the person starts getting better, and then, maybe we switch ’em to… So, basically, the way it works, is you’ve heard me say this, if you watch this for a long time, there’s a hierarchy to treatment, we figure out what systems they are.
How do we get the immune system under control, dampen the most, it’s gonna be lifestyle changes, it’s gonna be nutraceuticals, it’s gonna be a chemical toxicities, it’s gonna be triggers that we have to get rid of, dietary changes that are gonna help to get rid of, treat.
And we have a very organized way of going about it, and we do it in stages. Maybe you could do first stage one, and all of a sudden the person’s doing a lot better. And then maybe you get to stage two.
I’m talking about not standard stages, I’m talking about in that person’s particular case. And now, maybe you find that there’s a liver that’s not, you know, playing ball with this.
So, maybe we have to go in there a little harder, the next thing you know, you give a person the XR starter vitamins. I’m not gonna talk to them again for two or three weeks, the next thing you know, they’re not feeling good for three or four, or five, or six, or seven days.
So, what do they do? They go back to Dr. Google, they go back to the model that’s failed, they go back to the model of I’m gonna go home and I’m gonna go, and I’m gonna take this, because this has helped me in the past.
In the context of what I do, that’s not a good thing, because what we’re doing is changing physiology. And physiology is very, very communicative to the person who is doing classic functional medicine.
And it might be that, that physiology is good, because finally, that organ is starting to like be demanded upon to get better, and so, in the end, that person just kinda has to let me know. (laughs) Send me an email, do something, say, “You know what? I’ve had some discomfort for the last three days, And I think I’m gonna take, you know, these five pills because they’ve helped me in the past.
And what do you think about that?” And then, I would look at the five pills and go, “Probably, not a good idea.” You know? Or I might say, “You know, one of those might be a good idea.
That might be the next thing, but why don’t we wait a week?” Why don’t we let? ‘Cause the whole idea is to get your physiology working as much as possible online. Now, I have adopted an approach of more supplements in the beginning, and tapering them down, and tapering them down, and tapering down as the body heals.
But see people come in here, they got the problems for 10 or 20 years, and we’re trained. I take the drug and it either makes me feel better, or it makes me feel yucky, and I tell the doctor he’s an idiot.
Okay? So we have that model. So, we’re so like about the symptom, and we’re so like put the band-aids on things, but in the framework of unraveling your physiology of getting these multiple vicious cycles under control to start synchronizing to you.
I mean, you know, I might have a patient who doesn’t have constipation, develop constipation, that tells me something. I might have a patient who has alternating constipation, diarrhea go away (snaps) like in a day, it might take three weeks.
It depends on that case as to what’s normal for that. And so, there’s a couple of things that really, really make it difficult when you’re dealing with a functional medicine practitioner. So, I’m kinda like, this like my anthem for you, for all of the functional medicine practitioners, who are actually practicing functional medicine.
You know give them all the data that you can, but don’t switch from one model to the next model in the middle. Don’t go from fixing systems, getting your whole body to start working in-sync again, getting your gut under control, and all of a sudden, the endotoxins go away, and the next thing you know, your joint pain goes away.
But now, you go onto the next step, and the next step starts getting toxins out of your fat cells, and now, your joint pain comes back, so now, you go back to taking your magic, you know, whatever urban botanical gets rid of the joint thing.
Which is fine, but it takes away the markers that the functional medicine person needs to know, what is the next step? So, I mean, in the end, it’s, you have to… I mean, like you have the… When you go in the functional medicine, if you go to a practitioner that you feel confident in, that has a plan, that as an organization, that talks the way we talk, then you have to work with their model.
You can’t… And again, the people who have a lot of knowledge of what’s on the internet, and people who maybe don’t know how to read, maybe think they know how to read blood panels but they don’t.
I’m thinking largely of like one particular patient who has massive blood sugar problems but their blood tests are normal. And I’m hearing like, “No, I don’t have a blood sugar problem.
” We can’t go forward with this. You can have pre-diabetes for 10 years before it shows up on the blood panel, you have to trust your doctor on that, that’s what functional medicine is about.
It’s about catching all of these cycles and all of these systems that aren’t functioning properly, before they get to the point where they show up on the blood test, to where your doctor, when he reads your blood test, and he goes like that, and goes, “Yeah, your A1C is up, so we need to give you Metformin.
” We need to fix that long before that happens. And your symptoms are telling us about that, we understand that. So, when we say, “Look, I know your glucose is normal, and I know your HbA1C is normal.
” For those of you aren’t aware, those are two common, but not always comprehensive blood markers. They can be totally normal on your test and you’re gonna have high or low blood sugar. Okay? And you’re gonna allow your doctor to go with that.
So, I mean, this is a new world and it’s, and the thing is that you can’t chase, you cannot chase symptoms, and you cannot strictly chase blood markers, and you have to… When my patients are, you know, what drives me crazy, is I’ll be treating, and the person will be getting better.
And then all of a sudden, I’ll get an assessment for ’em, and it’s totally off the charts. Then, you know, I’ll be waiting for the next time that I talked to them, and then I understand, and then they start telling me about, “Well, you know, I had this, so I went back and I took this particular product because that made me move my bowels three years ago but it’s not making me move my bowels now.
” Or, “I took a product and I felt good for like three days. I started sleeping again, everything was wonderful, but now I’m doing it, and now I’m back to where I was. and I stopped that product but it hasn’t changed anything.
” That’s what functional medicine spent years, years. And some of those brilliant people on this planet who had the courage to go ahead years, and light years ahead of time, getting their teeth kicked in, getting criticized, getting told that they were Dr.
Wannabes. And believe me, being on this side, at that point in time, is not fun. But they gonna get that patient, and what do they do? They call you and they say like, it’s not working. (laughs) No, no, it is working, (chuckles) you’re not working.
Your decision to go back to another model is not working. And so, you ha… So, either like decide that your functional medicine practitioner do what they tell you to do, or don’t do it. Is like my (laughs) advice.
I definitely, am on a ramp right now. And so… You know what? I want my patients to get better. And the other thing is they’ll go like, “I’m not getting better.” I have to go through their whole file, make sure I’m not missing anything, make sure I’m not losing my mind.
And then I’ll schedule an appointment to discuss the whole thing with them and say, “Look, here, you know, like what I’m telling you right now.” So, maybe I’ll be able to use this and just tell them, look on YouTube for my rant.
And then have that conversation, and then they’re upset because I charged them for a consult. You know, it’s like, why wouldn’t I have to charge you for the consult? If you just did what I tell you to do, what I asked you to do, because I’m gonna ask you to do something, it’s gonna go better, or it’s gonna go worse.
If it goes worse that tells us something, that is diagnostic, that is functional medicine. And it’s either a supplement, or you got off of your diet, or you were stressed that day, which one was it? It could be all of those things.
Yes, it could be all of those things. A lot of times when people call me after they’ve been out of here for… I just had one last night. And the young man who was just phenomenal when he left, and all of a sudden, he’s starting to have symptoms again, we talked for like 15 minutes.
He was stressed, he was stressed at work. That was it, stress threw off his blood sugar, blood, sugar throwing off his sleep. What is he doing? He’s taking supplements for each one of those things.
Okay. This is what I’m talking about. All right. And he’s delightful, just in case you’re watching, you know who you are. (laughs) He’s absolutely delightful. And truly, it was a cool thing, because he did call, and he grasped it right away.
Okay. And he kinda felt sheepish, because I had already given him what to do. If something like that happened, he goes, “I should’ve done this.” I go, “It’s okay, next time do that.
You’ll have to call me and pay me for a consult, and then yell at me because you pay me for or consult.” So, that’s my rant for today. I don’t even remember what the name of the topic was, it was.
(laughs) But that’s my rant for today. Look, this is a new world. If you have these chronic conditions, you’ve been to the doctor, they don’t know what’s going on with you. You’re taking the medications, it’s not working.
You’re coming in here to me with three bags of supplements, that’s not working, you don’t wanna go back to those two models, when we’re in the middle of doing what we’re doing. When any functional medicine practice.
.. (mumbles) “You know, it was a functional medicine practitioner,” they went, “Well, you know, there’s good and bad functional medicine practitioners like everything else on planet earth, okay?” It still gives them the best shot of helping you, if you don’t, if you resist the temptation to go back to that model.
And honestly, if it’s gonna be, we have signs around this office, it says, “We didn’t say it was gonna be easy, we said it was gonna be worth it.” I mean, ’cause we know there’s gonna be tough days when people are getting through that.
And we tell ’em that in the beginning, but that seems to like be forgotten sometimes. You know? So, I’m not talking to the vast majority my patients, but I’m talking to a percentage, and I don’t like when my patients don’t get better, because they’re shooting themselves in the foot.
And then they shoot themselves in the foot, and maybe they even blame me. But either way, I don’t like that. I don’t like that they’re not getting better, because they could be getting better if they weren’t continuing going back to that model.
So, it’s not about symptoms, it’s about correcting the system. It’s about correcting the vicious cycles, it’s about correcting the inner twining. As my mentor would say, “Intertwining webs of conditions that all come together to create these chronic symptoms.
” And it’s a whole different animal, and it’s a whole different model. So, that’s my rant. I’ll be interested to hear what anybody thinks about this one, and I’ll be okay with whatever you throw at me.
And so, I’ll be with you again next time with… hopefully, as equally illuminating, (laughs) but maybe less controversial subject.
