Nothing Is Wrong or Everything Is Missed? – The System Failure Behind Chronic Illness with Dr. Aaron Hartman | Gut | E113

This month we'll be doing things a little differently and actually sharing chapters from my book with you on the Monday podcasts. This is from Hopeless Diagnosis to Defying All Odds. Hope you really enjoy this, and if you enjoy the chapters we share here, you can get the entire book either on Amazon or on Audible. You'll find links to that in the show notes below. Hope you enjoy.

Three Blind Spots Our current healthcare system is failing all of us. It didn't just fail my daughter, it has failed every patient who walks into my clinic today. That's why they come to see me. A typical patient I see has been to multiple specialists, sometimes even at major university medical centers. They have a litany of unrelated symptoms that to date, no other medical doctor has been able to adequately interpret and address. And They've been told 1 of 3 There's nothing wrong with them. They can't be helped with their autoimmune, inflammatory gut or neurological condition, or worst of all, it's all in your head. They are gas lit, made to believe their suffering is just anxiety or stress. And then, exhausted and desperate, they come to me. I listen. I connect the dots. I'd like to introduce you to one of my patients, Sarah. She's 35, works in marketing and thought she was doing everything right, eating well, exercising and getting regular checkups. But then out of nowhere, she started feeling awful. Her symptoms were extreme fatigue, brain fog, and aches all over her body. Her doctors ran tests, they gave her medications, but nothing helped. In fact, she felt worse. Sarah isn't an anomaly. She's a typical patient that comes to my clinic and this should be a wake up call for the entire medical community. Even with all our advanced medicine, treatments, studies, research, medication options and expertise, there are still massive blind spots. Patients for whom the system simply doesn't work, where people like Sarah slip through the cracks. So what was my diagnosis? What was the root cause of Sarah's illness? It wasn't just random bad luck. It was something deeper, something that conventional medicine overlooked. Nutrient deficiencies, toxins in her environment, or maybe the mold exposure from her college dorm. It could have been chronic stress or an undiagnosed gut issue, but no one bothered to check. I spent over two hours talking to Sarah about her symptoms, her environment, her lifestyle, and her habits in my office. The initial intake visit is two to two and a half hours after our visit. I uncovered the real culprits behind her ongoing mold exposure in her home and chronic gut dysfunction. Advanced stool testing and inflammatory markers revealed she had small intestinal bacterial overgrowth SIBO and chronic Inflammatory response syndrome, both triggered by mold exposure in her home. By healing her gut and removing her from the toxic environment, everything changed. Her symptoms faded, her health rebounded, and the following year she and her husband's dream finally came true. She got pregnant. Stories like Sarah's aren't rare for me. I see them routinely, patients who are overlooked by the system and who finally find hope and healing. When we dare to look deeper, I will go more in depth into Sarah's diagnosis and recovery later the Gut the blind spot that took 4,500 years to recognize it's mind blowing to think that even in the year 2024, mainstream medicine laughed at the idea of a leaky gut or the gut being linked to chronic illness. Leaky gut, also called increased intestinal permeability, is a condition where the lining of the small intestine becomes more permeable than normal, allowing substances like bacteria and toxins to pass into the bloodstream. Intestinal permeability disturbances causes diseases and therapy Makura et al. 2024 as of this writing, McGill University, also known as the Harvard of Canada, still thinks this is not scientific and is more of an Alice in Wonderland phenomena. You probably don't have leaky gut, Jerry 2024. Yet traditional Chinese medicine recognized this over 4,500 years ago, teaching that death begins in the bowels. Ayurvedic medicine from India said the same. Even Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine, stated in the 5th century BC that death begins in the gut. For decades, conventional medicine ignored these ancient truths and ridiculed those who treated leaky gut as unscientific quacks. But I would say that gut health is finally gaining recognition as the root cause of countless health conditions in many medical communities, intestinal permeability disturbances causes, diseases and therapy Makira et al. 2024. Yet somehow, despite our understanding of the diet and digestion link and the popularity of alternative treatment methods, our current healthcare system still lacks the tools to properly address our problems with gut health. Even today, GI doctors in my local community dismiss concepts like dysbiosis, an imbalance in the composition or function of the gut's natural bacteria, fungi and viruses, and leaky gut ethics as pseudoscience. But can I really blame the medical community? Insurance doesn't cover the necessary testing. Gut health is not featured in the medical journals, all publications that are heavily influenced by pharmaceutical advertising. And as specialists, their compensation is tied to performing procedures, not spending time investigating root causes of disease and symptoms with their patients. In reality, the system itself dictates how medical care is delivered. Prioritizing interventions over true healing. There's no prescription drug for healing a damaged gut. No one size fits all antibiotic to fix gut permeability. So the system pretends that gut health is not a real problem, or it just ignores it as a problem until a pharmaceutical company creates a drug to treat it. It's backwards, upside down and inside out. More missing pieces in medicine When I first saw Sarah and ran lab tests on her, she also had positive thyroid antibodies, leading to a diagnosis of Hashimoto's thyroiditis. No other medical doctor had bothered to do that testing on her either, even though autoimmune thyroid issues are incredibly common. And she's not alone. Roughly 38% of women and 30% of men in the United States have a positive autoantibody, meaning they're already on the path toward autoimmune disease but just don't know it yet. Autoantibodies associated with connective tissue diseases Didier et al. So why isn't our system screening for this? Because unless the symptoms are screaming and meet a diagnostic checkbox, the system does nothing. No diagnosis, no treatment, just watchful waiting while the disease progresses quietly beneath the surface. Autoimmune diseases don't just happen. They follow a pattern. By definition, four key factors must be vaccines and autoimmunity. Schoenfeld et al. Wiley Blackwell, 20151 a genetic predisposition 2 a triggering event 3 increased gut permeability. Remember the thing that doesn't exist? 4 a chronic infection or colonization. For Sarah, two of these were leaky gut and an underlying chronic infection. Her sibo Addressing these didn't just help her feel better. It also halted the progression of her previously undiagnosed autoimmune condition. Yet conventional medicine rarely looks at these root causes. These factors are often ignored unless a patient finds their way to a functional medicine clinic. The silent epidemic lurking in plain Sleep deprivation Our healthcare system continues to overlook one of the most fundamental pillars of sleep. Yet sleep deprivation remains a silent epidemic, quietly affecting millions without the attention it deserves. The average American today sleeps about six hours per night. Are Americans sleeping less than they used to? Lauderdale, 2015 Just 150 years ago, we averaged eight and a half hours per night. CDC, 2024 Medical experts know that sleep is medicine for the brain, a time for healing, immune restoration, and cellular repair. And yet most of us are chronically sleep deprived. School schedules force kids to wake up too early. College students are exhausted. The average adult has lost 25% of their sleep compared to previous generations. This isn't just a personal problem. It's a missing diagnosis, a blind spot in our healthcare system. Despite mountains of research linking poor sleep to everything from metabolic disorders to cognitive decline, most doctors barely ask about it. No one is screening for chronic sleep deprivation. There's no routine sleep assessment during annual checkups. Instead, patients who complain of fatigue are handed prescriptions for stimulants, sleep aids, antidepressants, or are told it's just stress. Quick side note here. There was a big push to treat insomnia, a particular type of loss of sleep, in the 1990s when Ambien first came to the market. It took about 15 years to discover that chronic Ambien use actually increases all cause mortality, that is Dying for any reason and other medications used for sleep adversely affect memory, increase the risk of falling, and actually don't improve sleep quality. Effect of anxiolytic and hypnotic drug prescriptions on mortality hazards Retrospective cohort study Scott et al. 2014. The side effects became so well known that there was even a TV episode of CSI in which Ambien use was part of the crime scene. That short burst of medical interest in treating insomnia has since puttered out. But the impact of lost sleep is massive. It weakens the immune system, disrupts hormones, and accelerates aging, sleep, sleep disorders and immune function tan et al. 2019. It's a root cause of chronic disease that most of the medical world completely ignores. Poor sleep alters immune cells, increasing risk for inflammatory diseases lam 2025. And yet, it's one of the easiest causes of poor health to fix from a functional medicine perspective. If only the system recognized it as a real problem. This is just one more example of how modern medicine overlooks the most basic foundations of health. Another blind spot if we truly want to heal, we need to start addressing the blind spots that are hiding in plain sight. The Problem with our Healthcare System Our healthcare system does not have answers for many health problems. Think about that for a moment, then consider the the system still functions the same way it did for my grandfather in the 1950s and 1960s. It's based on an outdated model. 1. You develop an acute illness. 2. You. You see a doctor. 3. They diagnose you in one visit. 4. They prescribe medication. 5. You move on. This model worked when strep throat used to cause heart disease, tuberculosis was commonplace, a cancer diagnosis was a certain death sentence, and surgical procedures were life threatening. When something as simple as removing an appendix could kill you, medicine was revolutionized by hand Washington, clean water, advanced surgical procedures, antibiotics and vaccinations. Now, chronic diseases like heart disease and cancer are the most common causes of death in the US not infections like it was in my grandfather's time. CDC 2024 and medical errors, which we will discuss later, are the third most common cause of death in our country. Unbelievable, I know. Just suspend your disbelief for a few chapters and be ready to have your mind blown. But we are still practicing medicine today as if we're stuck in that era. It's time for an upgrade. We need a new way to look at health. A new way to understand the complex systems of the human body. A new way to help the body do what it was designed to self heal and self repair. Failure isn't an option. Every story has a hero and a villain. In my family's story, the antagonist wasn't one person, it was the entire system. It's not that there were insufficient treatment options. It's that we weren't receiving adequate treatment. These included the GI doctor who wanted to cut a hole in my daughter's stomach because they misdiagnosed her slow growth as failure to thrive. The orthopedic surgeon who wanted to cut her heel cords because that was the only option they had for her feet to fully touch the floor. The second opinion we sought from another institution. After refusing to cut her heel cords to install a Baclofen pump into her back to treat her muscle spasticity, they couldn't decide which was best. The ophthalmologist who wanted to cut her eye muscles because that was the standard of care for her eye condition. The physiatrist who wanted to cut parts of her spinal cord nerves in a procedure known as dorsal rhizotomy. We fought against this system, we struggled and ultimately we overcame it. If the saying is fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Categorize me as someone who refused to be fooled at all. When it came to my daughter, the consequences of failure were just too great. And my fight for her inspired and informed my fight for my patients. This journey to find the right treatment plan for Anna changed how I practiced medicine for my patients. Doctors are trained to believe they have all the answers, that we are the experts and know everything. But I've learned an undeniable truth. Patients have invaluable insights, experience and and their own expertise. A patient in one of our first online communities introduced me to a neuromuscular stimulation device, revative, that transformed my daughter's muscle tone. I had never heard of it before. But after using it for six months, most of the tension in my daughter's calves and hamstring muscles was gone, and she could stand up straight without assistance. No surgery specialist could promise me this dramatic outcome. But if I had dismissed her suggestion because she wasn't an expert, I never would have tried it with my daughter. Five years later, Anna still uses Revitiv every day. It has profoundly impacted her leg tone, calf strength and ability to stand. So the failure in healthcare is not just because of shortcomings in the system. And it's not just the blind spots in medical care. We are also failing because we aren't listening to the patients we are supposed to be caring for. Your turn spotting your blind spots. Now it's time to take action. Grab a notebook. Write down three times you dealt with the healthcare system, good or bad. For each one, ask yourself, how did I feel? What worked? What didn't? Did they listen to all my concerns? Did I feel heard? Did I later find out something was missed, overlooked, ignored? Or I figured it out on my own. This simple act of asking yourself how the care you are receiving makes you feel reveals patterns you may have missed. Maybe you always feel rushed. Maybe you never question your doctor's recommendations. Maybe you've been given medications without anyone asking why you got sick in the first place. And what if you are prescribed something in error? What if your doctor makes a mistake? The stakes are too great for you not to be involved in your own healthcare. Once you identify these blind spots, you can start asking better questions of your providers, questions that will help you take charge of your health. The future of healthcare starts with you. Hippocrates once said, it is more important to know what sort of person has a disease than to know what sort of disease a person has. Your health is more than just symptoms. It's your body, mind, environment and experiences. By learning to recognize and address healthcare's blind spots, you become an active participant in your healing, a collaborator in your care. You develop the confidence to demand care that sees all of you, not just your symptoms. In doing so, you unlock your health potential and feel better than you ever thought possible. Your journey to better health starts now. It's time to see beyond the blind spots. But where do you start? Let's go with the gut.

Have you ever lost trust in your own body? Or in the doctors who were supposed to help you heal? It happens to millions of people who are stuck in the cycle of prescriptions, tests and and more questions than answers. That's why Dr. Aaron Hartman wrote his new book Uncurable. As a physician and a parent, he's lived through the pain of being told there's nothing more we can do. But instead of accepting that, he built a new path, one that combines traditional and functional medicine to uncover what's really driving illness. Uncurable is more than a book. It's a roadmap to help you find the root causes your doctor might have missed. The Reactivate your body's natural healing systems and finally believe in what's possible again. If you've lost hope or trust in the system, this book will help you take back control. Go to UncurableBook.com and grab your copy along with Dr. Hartman's free resources to help you start your healing journey today.

Four Meals Can Heal like so many pivotal changes in my life over the past 24 years, this journey began with my wife, Becky. She has always been the catalyst. Whether bringing Anna into our lives, nudging me towards starting a functional medicine practice, or challenging how we nourished our family, Becky has an uncanny ability to see the big picture before I do. And this time was no different. It all started with a book, Animal, Vegetable Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. This story of a family living off the land eating only what was available seasonally fascinated Becky. Each family member allowed themselves one cheat food, but otherwise they committed to growing and sourcing food locally. One evening, as she closed the book, Becky turned to me and said, maybe we should consider doing something similar. Maybe we should get into eating real food. At the time, I shrugged. It sounded intriguing, but frankly, I wasn't ready for a massive lifestyle overhaul. What I didn't realize was that this seemingly small conversation would alter the trajectory of our lives and my medical practice forever. My reluctant start in 2008-2009, I wasn't thinking about food as medicine. I had not yet grasped Hippocrates wisdom of Let food be thy medicine. Nor had I connected gut health to chronic illness. I saw food as fuel, nothing more. I resisted at first. I liked my neatly manicured lawn and didn't want to give up weed preventers or insecticides. The thought of swapping out my favorite processed snacks for something closer to the earth didn't excite me. But Becky, persistent as ever, started making small shifts in our home. She swapped out prepackaged foods for fresh, local produce. She experimented with homemade sourdough bread. And slowly, despite my reluctance, I found myself coming along for the ride. One moment stands out vividly. I was researching how environmental toxins affect health, and I stumbled upon something alarming. The Very chemicals I was using to keep my lawn pristine. Herbicides, pesticides and glyphosate Roundup were deeply linked to chronic disease. Worse, these chemicals were likely affecting not just my health, but Anna's healing journey. Effects of Glyphosate Exposure on Human Health Insights from Epidemiological and in Vitro studies Agostini et al. 2020. That realization hit me like a ton of bricks. What if my stubborn attachment to convenience and a pristine yard was making things worse for my daughter? The Soil Health Connection Once we committed to this path, I became fascinated by compost and dirt. Soil and Health by Sir Albert Howard opened my eyes to something I had never considered. The quality of our soil directly influences human health. Howard observed this phenomenon nearly a century ago in India. Healthy soil produced robust crops and in turn, healthier animals and people. If the bacteria, ph balance and micronutrients in soil determined the vitality of plants, then it made perfect sense that our bodies, fueled by those plants, relied on that same balance. This concept made me look differently at everything from the food on our plates to the way we treated illness. And it led me down another rabbit hole, one that changed how we cared for our children. My curiosity soon brought me to Weston A. Price, a dentist from the early 20th century whose personal tragedy turned into a global mission. He lost his son to a dental abscess. He couldn't fathom how in such a modern age, a child could die from something so preventable, something that should never have been life threatening in the first place. Fueled by grief and a relentless need for answers, he traveled the world studying isolated communities, from the Maasai in Africa to the Swiss in the Lochental Valley. What he uncovered was striking. These communities, untouched by processed foods, had virtually no cavities or chronic illness. Their diets were rich in nutrient dense animal products, high vitamin butter, fermented foods, and unrefined ingredients that resonated deeply, especially with Anna, who had been exposed to crystal meth in utero. Children in her situation often suffer from weak enamel and are prone to frequent dental issues. At first I thought fluoride would help. I didn't just try it, I overdid it. I supplemented her with fluoride, believing it would protect her vulnerable teeth. Becky, however, already knew better. She warned me gently but persistently that fluoride could be harmful, that it was a known neurotoxin linked to IQ reduction and abnormal teeth development. Fluoride exposure and children's IQ scores Taylor, Ph.D. et al. 2025 association between maternal fluoride exposure during pregnancy and IQ scores in offspring in Canada Green et al. I dismissed her concerns and went forward with it for a full year. Looking back, I can admit not my finest parenting moment, but thankfully she was patient and eventually I listened. Weston A. Price's work was an important part of that journey for me. Remarkably, as of the writing of this chapter, the US Secretary of Health has recommended that the CDC reconsider fluoride levels in our drinking water. The reason? Emerging research links fluoride consumption with lowered IQ scores in children and identifies it as a potential endocrine disruptor affecting hormonal systems. National Research Council, 2006. Is this yet another blind spot in public health policy? It certainly appears so. While the scientific and regulatory communities are just beginning to acknowledge these concerns, our family made this connection and removed fluoride from our water supply 15 years ago, well ahead of official recognition. This pattern of institutional delay in responding to evidence is precisely what drives many families to take health matters into their own hands rather than waiting for consensus to catch up with reality. After studying Price's tome Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, I learned about the healing power of nutrient dense food, particularly high vitamin butter and cod liver oil. We began using those with our children, and the results in our family were profound. Anna, now 19, has never had a cavity. Neither has our daughter, Abigail. Kahlil only developed cavities after forming a habit of drinking lemon juice through a straw. Once he stopped, the cavities stopped. But the benefits went far beyond teeth. Anna has only been on antibiotics once since we've had her. That's it. Khalil and Abigail. Between the three of them, our children have needed antibiotics just twice in their entire lives. That's nearly unheard of today. It wasn't magic. It was food. It was the soil. It was learning to trust in nature's design and stepping away from synthetic fixes that only mask the real issues. And this wasn't just about teeth. It was about the bigger picture. What if more families had access to this kind of information? What if we stopped viewing nutrition as supplementary and started seeing it as foundational? What began as curiosity turned into conviction, and that conviction changed the health of our entire family. A quick note about my family I don't talk much about my other two adopted children in this book, Abigail and Khalil. They both have equally amazing stories, having come from similarly hard places as Anna. But Anna's story is the most illustrative of how our lives and my career changed. So she became the thread that weaves through these pages. I want you to know though that Anna's remarkable outcomes aren't unique. In our family, both Abigail and Khalil have experienced similar transformations using these same principles. And as I write this today, thousands of patients in my practice have achieved results that once seemed impossible. So while Anna's story anchors this book, she represents something much larger proof that this approach works consistently across different conditions, different ages, and different starting points. Her journey isn't an anomaly, it's a blueprint. But I'll let you be the judge of that. From Nutrition to Farming eventually, we considered taking things a step further. What if we started our own homestead? I wanted to understand the entire food chain, because healthy cows produce healthy meat and milk. And to grow healthy cows, they need the right nutrition. Enter Joel Saletin, the rebellious farmer and author of Folks this Ain't Normal. His philosophy further cemented what I was learning. Soil health dictates animal health and in turn, human health. Our modern food system strips away vital nutrients, leaving us nutritionally bankrupt. One of Salatin's stories that he told me in person stuck with me. Conventional cattle feed lacked critical trace minerals iodine, selenium, magnesium leading to weak cows plagued with chronic issues. When Saletin supplemented his cows with kelp, a natural trace mineral source, something remarkable happened. The cows health transformed. Infections disappeared, and they no longer needed antibiotics. This reminds me of a landmark study from China that revolutionized our understanding of viral induced heart disease and selenium's protective role. While a US Pharmaceutical company was developing an expensive vaccine to prevent the viral infection causing heart disease, researchers discovered something far simpler and more profound. Selenium deficiency was actually enabling the virus to mutate into more virulent forms. An original discovery Selenium deficiency and ketchin disease Children who received basic selenium supplementation showed complete protection against the disease. Their bodies naturally resisted the virus when properly nourished. The results were so definitive that the vaccine development was abandoned in favor of addressing the underlying nutritional deficiency. Instead, selenium was distributed throughout the affected regions, effectively eliminating a disease that conventional medicine had approached as a vaccination challenge rather than a nutritional one. This case perfectly illustrates a powerful small targeted micronutrient. Interventions can have massive public health implications, often more effectively than complex medical interventions. The Wisdom in our Environment As a result of our family's move to a farm, much of what we have learned about health didn't come from medical textbooks. It came from nature. Within the confines of our own family experience, we explored principles that shaped our understanding of true wellness. Part of our journey was homesteading with our own farm Animals, great. But I realized I didn't want my cows dying. So I had to learn all I could about raising healthy cows. That meant diving deep into the principles of regenerative agriculture, studying the intricate relationships between soil microbes, forage quality, and animal vitality. We learned how to raise our own food, understanding the deep connections between soil health, animal husbandry and human nutrition. Our children have thrived in this environment. They wanted to be outside, to push themselves harder, to engage with the world in a way that built resilience and grit. This took about two years of reading, hands on research and trial and error. But the result has been thriving, healthy farm animals and a family more deeply connected to the source of their food. One of our children became fascinated with mushrooms. He went foraging, studied them, and uncovered their incredible benefits for immune health, cognitive function and overall vitality. That led us to other discoveries. Raising our own chickens and learning how eggs rich in phospholipids are essential for brain and nervous system function. And guess what? Mainstream medicine is starting to catch up with what our family discovered over 15 years ago. This past year, a research article was published showing how healthy fats in eggs can prevent Alzheimer's disease. Eating just one egg a week can lower the risk for this disease by 47%. And an egg a day can lower the odds of dementia by 78%. Association of Egg intake with Alzheimer's Dementia risk in older adults the Rush Memory and Aging Project pan et al. 2024. Association between egg consumption and dementia in Chinese igbinigy et al. 2024. Just another example of how the wisdom in nature that's been around for thousands of years is finally being discovered by modern medicine. We started drinking raw milk, making homemade yogurt and kefir, and only later did we realize how profoundly these fermented foods support gut health and immune function. I remember reading Soil and Health by Sir Albert Howard and having a breakthrough moment. The health of the soil dictates the health of the plants that grow in it, which dictates the health of the animals that eat the plants and ultimately of those who eat both us. I had never heard of this in medical school, yet this book was written in 1947, over 75 years ago. Then I learned something even more astonishing. When a breastfeeding mother pulls plants from her garden, then eats those plants, the bacteria on those plants transfer to her gut, then into her breast milk, directly influencing her baby's gut and immune system. You cannot make this up. The complexity is astounding. It's almost as if nature is designed to help us heal if we just pay attention. The Nutritional Deficiency Epidemic all my research raised a burning could our national health crisis be largely due to nutritional deficiencies? Well fed but undernourished? An American epidemic Kresser 2018 the more I researched, the clearer it became. 50% of Americans do not get enough magnesium. Half of Americans do not get enough magnesium. Alison 2025 More than 90% are potassium deficient. 98% of American diets potassium deficient. Gregor 20 to 40% have deficiencies in at least 1B vitamin factors contributing to the high prevalence of vitamin B6 deficiency in US Tang et al. Is this yet another blind spot? In our current healthcare system, these deficiencies have devastating consequences. Low magnesium and potassium contribute to high blood pressure, insulin resistance and diabetes. B vitamin deficiencies are linked to neurological issues, fatigue and chronic disease. Vitamin B12 status are genetics a driving factor. Why? Because processed food has stripped away nearly everything our bodies need. When grains are refined, 80% of their nutrients vanish. The FDA mandates adding back a few synthetic B vitamins just to prevent diseases like pellagra and beriberi, but it's still not enough. That's where the term enriched comes from, in foods like conventional bread. Connecting these dots changed how I practiced medicine. More importantly, it profoundly shaped my children's health. You've heard a lot about Anna, but let me introduce you to our son, Khalil. He also had a lot of early health challenges, and his story underscores everything we've learned about total Health. When we brought Khalil home at 6 months of age, he had debilitating asthma and eczema. Becky slept with him on her chest every night for the first week he was in our care, terrified he would stop breathing. At night, his skin was covered in red, inflamed eczema patches. He needed formula, but Becky refused commercial options filled with synthetic ingredients. Instead, she researched and made a homemade formula herself. Within two weeks, his breathing improved. Within six weeks, his skin cleared. Within a year, his asthma and eczema had disappeared. Today, at 14, he rarely wheezes and has never needed antibiotics or steroids for his asthma and eczema, ever. The only time he gets sick after church camp, where he eats processed food or has similar exposures. The same is true for Anna. One round of antibiotics in 19 years. That's it. And Abigail? None. The final piece? Collagen, bone broth and connective tissue. One of my later discoveries was the power of bone broth. Packed with collagen and trace minerals, it's a lost staple that once played a vital role in human health. Before the 1950s, a lot of meat consumption in the US came from organ meats rich in these same trace nutrients. Today, hardly anyone eats organ meats, and bone broth has all but disappeared from our diets. Why don't Americans eat Organ Meats? Zhang 2024. Could this be contributing to modern chronic illness? I believe so. The Bigger Picture A single book recommendation from Becky set all of this in motion. One small step led to a series of realizations, transformations and near miraculous health changes for our children. Today, I apply these principles in my clinic daily and continue to be amazed by the profound results in my patients. But as I dug deeper, another question emerged. If the evidence is so clear, why aren't more doctors seeing this? That's what we'll explore next. The broken medical education system that keeps doctors trapped in outdated thinking. Becky put together an incredible resource that has transformed how our patients approach food and I want you to have distills my six core real food principles into a practical, easy to follow food sourcing guide. No matter where you live in the US this guide will help you navigate the overwhelming world of food choices with confidence. It took our family two years to figure out how to source the cleanest, most nutrient dense foods. This guide will fast track that process for you. And the best part? You can share it with your family and friends, empowering them to take control of their health too. Also, I have a reading list on my website of over 70 books. Aaronhartmanmd.com I had over a thousand book recommendations given to me. I read over 400 of them and narrowed the list down to those that I think have the most value for patients. I've made this list readily available to the public. I'm not a gatekeeper. I want you to win. I know you have a lot of questions and I'll answer a few of the most common ones in the next chapter.

If you've lost trust in your body or in the system that was supposed to heal you, don't give up. Dr. Aaron Hartman's book Uncurable will help you rediscover what's truly possible. Visit UncurableBook.com to get your copy and start your healing journey today.