#63 Investigating Underlying Causes to Identify Solutions – with Reed Davis

The information provided in this podcast is educational and not intended to diagnose or treat medical conditions.

Dr. Donnie Wilson struggled for decades to solve her numerous health issues and heal her body. But with focused determination, she healed herself. And in doing so, she discovered the Dr. Donnie stress recovery Protocol. On this show, you're going to hear from doctors, nutritionists, and Experts along with Dr. Donnie, who will give practical advice and wisdom to help heal your body. This is how humans heal.

Hi. I am so excited to introduce you to Reid Davis today. He is the founder of Functional Diagnostic Nutrition, which is a certification course for health coaches. But I really feel like it is beyond that and more in terms of training practitioners in the functional medicine realm on how to help people with their health. Thank you so much for joining me, Reid. I am glad to get to have this conversation with you.

Yeah, you too, Donny. It's been too long since we've seen each other.

Physically, but it's great to see you virtually nonetheless.

Thank you. And what you've done in creating fdn, as it's known as fdn, as a training program for health coaches and practitioners, really, it's really profound because you've. How many people have you trained since you started it?

Well, I gave up counting at around 3,000.

Okay. It's a lot. It's a lot and it's. And it's been a number of years. How. Remind me how long this has been.

Yeah. I started teaching in 2008. That was after spending 10 years in a clinic sort of developing the systems that we use. So it's really quite an interesting journey in history. But here we are. We've got my army of these very well trained health coaches.

They're in 50 countries and we have an association membership. We have a lot of support for each other. It's not just a training program that you would take and learn some things which would be good enough. You also apply it to yourself and you walk the talk. So we have everyone who goes through the program, run the labs and use the protocols for their own health journey. That would be worth the price also. But the fact that you become a member of this amazing community of worldwide helper people, we just want everyone to get healthy and be happy. And that is our mission. And it has been that way since. Well, I started in 1998 practicing and learned a lot, and then developed a training program by 10 years later. And now I have been doing that since 2008. So it is. It's really reached a lot of folks and helped a lot of People and we're just going to keep going at it. And I met you at of course Mindshare, which is a group of like minded, you know, do gooders, doctors and non licensed professionals. And it's been great to know you and I hope I can help your audience to some degree.

Well, thank you. And I think that it's, I mean for some people they might be just becoming aware of this whole kind of world of, of natural approaches to health and to know that this is something that for example, with you and for me we've been living this for quite a long time as a naturopathic doctor. And I graduated from Bastyr University in the year 2000. So we have a parallel timeframe of really getting to observe the evolution and growth of awareness of alternative approaches to health. And.

For naturopathic medicine, I mean there's, I think probably, I don't know, maybe about 5,000 naturopathic doctors in the United States. And it's limited, right, because as naturopathic doctors, of course we can serve so many people. But when we bring in this ability to also have FDN trained health coaches be able to also help people and support naturopathic doctors and other more functional medicine practitioners, it really makes a bigger reach for us. We can reach so many more people with these approaches. It is really exciting to think of it as how we are working together to really change medicine over time. It's exciting.

Well, it's really exciting. I'm glad to be part of it.

It's evolving too. It's never a static thing. I remember when, at least in California, naturopathic physicians weren't licensed, you know, they were just kind of out there as well. I'm a naturopath, you know, I just, I just help people whatever way they were trained to do that. At best year one of the top places on the planet for naturopathic training you went to and yeah, that's. Those are the same times. Around 2000 or just before that I was getting my training. Mine was more in the trenches. You know, I just spent 10 years running thousands of labs on thousands of people and making my own observations. I had great training like you from some of the lab directors and some of my own mentors, you know, naturopaths and osteopaths and medical doctors and chiropractors and acupuncturists. And so I had an amazing group and team at the wellness center where I worked for 10 years. But also I made again, I was the guy running the labs and making my own Observations. So I was able to fill in some pieces of the puzzle that had yet not been filled in. And not only with the types of labs that we use, but with the protocols, the directions that we give our clients or patients of the clinic. And that was an amazing part of the journey, too, where I didn't have. I couldn't get right out a prescription for a drug or agent. I mean, we had supplements, but that wasn't working. So we not only codified or systematized the investigation with these functional labs, we run five on every person and to get the complete picture and then the protocols. I learned very early on at the office there that, you know, Mrs. Smith, it's not what you do in the office that matters. You coming in for your chiropractic and your acupuncture and whatever, it's what you do at home between visits that matters the most. And so that's how we came up with the system of natural protocols, things to follow. Now, back then, they didn't call it health coaching. We just called it go do this, and we would help them. But now health coaches have come along to assist with the difficulties people have in following a protocol.

It's such a common challenge I see with my patients, too. And what I love about the systems that you created, the tests that you suggest is the funny thing to me is I'm over here, you know, with my training and seeing patients on, in my end of the world. And I too, kind of. I think you and I have a similar way of thinking about things in our minds. You know, like, I also really found that I wanted objective information. It's one thing to get some subjective, and there's different ways we can gather information from the body. But when there's something that happens for the practitioner and for the patient, when they have some, what we call objective information, which means when we run a test, whether that's a saliva test or a urine test or a stool test or a blood test, but we run tests to learn information, actual information from the body. Then there's something that happens, because now the practitioner has an opportunity to understand what's going on for this individual and how to tailor and individualize their protocol. But also the patient gets to understand their body better. They get to. Instead of being lost in the confusion of the usual medical process, the patient gets to go, oh, this is what's happening in my body. Because a lot of times it doesn't show in the regular blood work to see tests that actually say, here's what needs to be addressed. Can make a huge difference. When I met you and heard about everything you're doing, I'm like, oh my gosh, that this totally aligns with the way I think about it and what I've seen be successful for people as well. And so it's like to be able to. For us to come together and go, oh my gosh, there's two of us at least, who came at it from different ways and said, hey, let's help people get information about their body and then help them with a system so they can be successful. Because I think a lot of times, right, even if sometimes people get tests done, but if there's not a system for implementing, just goes by the wayside and they never get the total benefit. Right. It's so frustrating to see that.

Exactly.

Unfortunately, with conventional medicine, which is very important because there are emergent conditions, that there's a downward spiral working really fast against the person. And so that's where intervention would be very important. So we try to have everybody on the same playing field. There's been a lot of sort of my backyard versus your backyard, between natural medicine and standard medicine. But really we're all on the same playing field and we need to hand off the ball to whoever's court it needs to be in, so to speak. And I find that a lot of people have been turned away by standard medicine. And so what you were saying, they've run tests and said, you look fine to me. You know, well, maybe it's all in your head. People know it's not in their head. They know that there's something wrong because they don't feel. So we would just say, well, the doctor has ruled out emergent conditions. There's nothing that's going to kill you right now. And so, you know, now you are on the same playing field, you know, because it's all about health. But let's look at these other labs. What are some of the indicators upstream, some of the objective criteria upstream? And so that's where FDN comes in. We've codified that to some extent. We always look in six places. The hormones, the immune system, digestion, detoxification, energy production, and the nervous system, you know, the autonomic balance.

So, and my research over all those 10 years, thousands of labs on thousands of people, that's the pattern that emerged. No matter what someone's problem is, whether it was fibromyalgia or chronic fatigue, or the hives or brain fog or overweight, or you just keep going down the list of the common chronic stress Related disorders. Well, at the root of all of them were these six main factors. Hormone, immune digestion, detoxification, energy production, nervous system. Well, that spells hidden, by the way.

H, I, T, E, N. And these are often the hidden causes of why.

Yeah, it just turned out that way magically. And I like acronyms that make it easier for me to remember everything, but. So.

We have labs at our disposal. They're functional labs. They're not like your standard blood work, which can be important. So can CT scans and the things that physicians do. Boy, they can identify a tumor that I wouldn't see, you know, in my lab. So you got to be on the same playing field together. Now, once we identify the healing opportunities. Again, we're not diagnosing and treating specific things. That's reductionism. That's the. Another problem with standard medicine is everything but. He's got their specialty. And you might go to a gastroenterologist and he says, well, here's what we do. And your gut, you know, he might get rid of some diarrhea or something. But then, oh, for your low sex drive and can't build muscle. Oh, we're gonna send you to an endocrinologist.

They like the body to all these. Then it.

Yeah, and that's not how the body works.

It's not at all.

Right.

So people are coming to us and they've. They're caught in the cycle of trial and error. They've been going from one practitioner to the next one says, well, I just work on this, and I just work on this, and I just will really. Someone needs to be sort of triaging a very holistic approach. And so that's what FDN is. We look at all those points you were talking about, you mentioned, the objective criteria. And what we would say is those are the dots. And we. Our job is to connect the dots. So we're looking at the entire. We're not passing off this dot. Oh, that's the intra gastroenterology. Although that marker. Oh, that's your endocrinology. We're saying we can take all those, connect those dots, and the client, as you really appropriately pointed out, goes, no wonder I feel so crappy.

They're finally getting some answers to their why. I want to know why I'm overweight and feel sad and cold or numb extremities or constipation or swelling ankles or, you know, you just name it, you know, so all the things. So we're really looking at that constellation of data, the dots, and connecting it for persons so that we're able to then apply instead of treating one thing with an agent or something, or cutting the part out. That's a big part of standard medicine too. We are able to apply the general principles of health building. This is ancient stuff. This is not something we had to invent. We just had to codify it and systematize it so that people know that. The next acronym to learn is Dress for Health Success. D, R, E, S, S that encompasses your entire lifestyle. D is obviously the diet. We metabolically type people get their genetic requirements minus their food sensitivities and everyone gets tested. Then of course R is rest, which includes sleep. But also when you're not asleep, you can rest, you can rest your emotions, you can give yourself a break, you can do fun things. That's part of that. Then of course E is exercise. So diet, rest, exercise, different program for different people. The two S's are stress reduction. You've heard that word, stress before, right?

Yes.

And then lastly is supplementation. Because food needs to be supplemented. There's not enough goodness in food. Plus it can be very therapeutic if you have the data. So we look for the data, those objective criteria found in the hidden areas. We run five labs on every person, do really good history taking and then we, through the DRESS program, drss, we apply all the principles of health building to that person no matter what their diagnosis was. We're not interested. Doctors can have a whole monopoly on diagnosis and treatment. We just want to know what are all that constellation of healing opportunities. Work on that. And that diagnosis just usually disappears. Yeah, no, like hypothyroid or chronic fatigue or fibromyalgia or you know, all these things, they just simply disappear as the person gets healthier.

I completely agree. And a lot of times the thing that can happen with a diagnosis, I mean I a lot of times tell people it's really just for. A lot of it is for insurance billing. You know, they have to give it a name and a code in order to bill to insurance. But it doesn't necessarily help with the resolving the health issue. Because really ultimately with a health issue, you want them to go away. You don't want to be identified with that health issue. You want to be figuring out what's out of balance, get it addressed and move on with your life. And so it's. I think it's really important to be mindful of that. As a patient is always be mindful that any name of a health issue is just really to me we only do that if it can help Us understand the cause and how to solve doesn't really help if you're going to become identified with it and then stuck with it. Because I think a lot of times people's experience in the conventional medical system is they end up with a diagnosis and then they feel like that's the rest of their life. They're supposed to accept that that's the, that's going to be what the rest of their life is. And you and I are saying, hey, it doesn't necessarily have to be that way. If we can understand what needs to be addressed, what's out of balance, what, what nutrients may be depleted or which systems, you know, is there need help with, with detoxification or rebalancing, like you said, like the vagal, the autonomic nervous system and vagal nerve or the HPA system. If we can address these things and the body can heal, a lot of times our bodies can heal with the right support and like you said, the right kind of consistency day to day of taking care of ourselves. A lot of times health issues resolve and then hopefully you won't need to be sort of attached to a diagnosis or having to take a certain prescription for the rest of your life.

Yeah, you touched on several critical factors there. One is the diagnosis and treatment of specific things which again, pretty much it might give even, even the patient some relief. They, oh, I finally been diagnosed, you know. But that's not all of it. It never can be because the causal factors are upstream and there's multiple causal factors and then those causal factors interact with each other. And so some of the measurements we do, Donni, as you well know, or indirect measurements. So physicians want a direct measurement. Oh, your T4 and T3 are low and your TSH is high. You are hypothyroid and here's your medication. We'll get those numbers on the paper right where we want them. People actually might feel a little bit better, but they haven't addressed any of the causal factors of why the thyroid is underactive. There's hardly ever anything wrong with your thyroid. It's just not producing. Why? Well, they say it's idiopathic. We don't know why, but we do know why. People have been doing the homework on the why for decades and decades, and not just me, but hundreds of other naturopathic minded practitioners. So there's all of these causal factors and again, they're interacting with each other. So there may be not a direct measurement. So we need a constellation and then again we can connect those dots and give People things to do. They generally have lived themselves into their problems.

That's a good way to say it.

They're going to have to live themselves out of those problems and that requires behavior change, which is what coaches are all about, right?

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And it's tough, you know, I mean sometimes we, you know, we tend to, it's hard to sometimes look at ourselves and be like what behavior have I been choosing that may have led to this health issue? Sometimes we have resistance about that and of course we don't want to be hard on. It's not about judgment or being negative on yourself. It's about finding a place where you can from a place of self acceptance. Right. And desire to be your own health advocate that you say hey, what maybe have I been eating or doing in my day to day activities or toxin exposure that may have had influence, for example on my thyroid function and then I can choose differently. So there's a lot of more like self acceptance and compassion that leads down this path. And I think sometimes that's important for people to hear too because a lot of times we've grown up in a lot of conditionality and judgment, right. And expectation. And of course that just leads to more stress and more health issues. So I think you're making a really good point about how to just be willing to also then ask for help and realize, hey, there's practitioners and health coaches out there who, who can help, who are there to help you. So you don't have to be on your own with your health issue either. You can work with people who, and as you described the people who go through your program have done this for their own health. And usually what I find is when someone chooses to be a naturopathic doctor or an FDN trained health coach, they've been through their own health struggle. So they have this compassion and passion to help others because of that. And so you're to choose to work with someone like that to help you just increases your likelihood of success.

Yeah, absolutely. There's a couple again, you keep making numerous great points, you know, so I have to kind of pick and choose which one.

One of the things that you said was the self acceptance. I was with our training try to, we try to have self examination.

You know, instead of self acceptance self examination. Some philosopher somewhere said something about the tragedy of an unexamined life. Oh yes, the people who just were, this is how my dad did it and this is how his dad did it or mom, you know, and so this is how I'm doing it. And that's just the way it is. That would be self acceptance. We're just.

You know, fat or whatever, you know, that's just how we are.

So this, the self examination becomes a critical component. You know, I can run the labs, we can, we can give you the design, a customized protocol for your entire lifestyle that's going to have very reasonable expectations. You're going to get better if you do this. But getting the person to do it, that next step, the coaching step, is about self examination.

And saying, well, just because my dad had it or my mom had it doesn't mean I have to go that way. Right? I mean with abuse and with abuse of the body and the diet and all the things, A tragedy is that we're passing on these bad genes. Now. You're kind of. This generation of kids today will be the, the first one in the history of the planet that didn't live longer than their parents. So we've gone, I mean we could take this down so many rabbit holes, but we've gone from, you know, pre industrialization was very poor health. People didn't live that long. They got sick and died a lot. Their teeth fell out and they couldn't eat and they start whatever the hell it is. You know, they just. Now with industrialization and technology and modernization, we got to know things a little bit better and we were able to help with medicine and to increase longevity. But now that same industrialization, commercialization and.

The forces that are at work now we've got kids who are being born into obesity and diabetes. So the curve is we've hit a top. And now I think it's going the other way. It's going to take a lot of cooperation between, let's say, modern medicine and naturopathy. And what we do in FDN certainly fits into the ladder to get on the same playing field. And we're going to come up against a lot of challenges because.

Of the forces of market forces. People like being told it's not their fault and they suffer from that unexamined life.

Yeah, no, I think it's a really good point. Thank you for clarifying that, Reid. That it's not about just being resolved and kind of like, this is just the way it is. Sometimes people. You mentioned stress earlier. Some people feel that way about stress. Like, oh, it's just everybody stressed. And that's just the way it is. Right. It's like. Or this is the health issues that happened in my family or the diagnosis I got. And that's just the way it is. Right. That kind of like unexamined or resolved or, you know, following the same pattern. But to really shift our health, not just our individual health, but like, you're mentioning the health of the community and worldwide, it's going to require that we examine and stop for a minute and say, hey, is this really just the way it has to be? Is this just. Do we really just follow in the same footsteps, or is there some way that we can think about this and do this differently that's going to lead to a different outcome? And as you and I know from reading studies and observing with patients, we get to see right in front of us, if a person follows these ways of eating and.

Activities in their life, we can see the increased likelihood of the conditions you're mentioning, everything from diabetes and dementia and cancer and so on. Then it's on us to go, hey, we can see this. How do we help people to then choose differently and stop and kind of say, hey, I'm not just going to make kind of a quick fix. Right. Because this is not a.

There's no.

It's not a quick fix. It's not about that. It's about how do I shift the way that I'm thinking about my health and the way I'm doing my life to create a different outcome for myself and for my. For my children. Right. And my family. And it has this ripple effect out.

Yeah. I suppose the challenge is getting people to, again, examine why they make certain choices and to give them other choices. And there's a lot of that going on because.

The choices people are making are pretty subconscious. You've been bombarded your whole life with pop Tarts are good for you. They've got enriched with vitamin C. Whatever it is, they get some way of selling it to you and it's actually bad for you. They sell it to you like this is good for you. I had a, I tell this story all the time, but real quickly. So one of our patients in the clinic, long time ago, was a, she was a principal school, an elementary school principal and she had five schools. She, it was charter schools. And so she started asking. She would, she would go to one school each day of the week. She had five schools. So Monday through Friday she's visiting her schools and she would sometimes sit in on disciplinary meetings between parent, teacher, parent teacher, kid, kids misbehaving kids not complying and not fitting in. They're calling, you know, they can label that a bunch of different ways. But this principal reported to me that she was starting to ask all of these disruptive kids, what did you have for breakfast?

What percentage do you think ate crap? Yeah, like total junk food crap for breakfast. What percentage do you think a high, I'll just tell you was 100%. 100% of these disruptive kids were eating junk. Just colorful, you know, you're talking about sugar, food coloring, but enriched with, you know, vitamins, calcium, you know, like, or something, you know, like, oh, it's, it's good for you. And so that's complete nonsense. And that's what we're up against, you know, like. And so we, that's why I'm an educator. I just consider myself to be teach. I teach, I teach, I teach and let the chips fall where they may.

We're making a dent. You know, people are becoming more back to the self awareness the examined. The tragedy of an unexamined life has a ripple effect. That is why this generation today is not going to live as long as mine. My mom, I'm going to see her next week, Donnie. She's 91 and kicking. If you ask her the secret to her health as she does yoga almost every day, she reads, she writes poetry, she's on her fifth or sixth poetry book. She does all this stuff, sings in the choir stuff. At 91 she goes, no sugar. I don't eat any sugar.

I haven't never eaten sugar.

But simple things matter, you know. She also has done a lot of other things, but she attributes it to.

That, you know, home cooking sugar definitely.

Oh my gosh. As you know, we know causes so much trouble. So it's, she's smart to just be like. She just Made a boundary. She's like, no sugar. That's it. And then probably leads her to choose other healthy things, too.

Yes. She's 91. Good thing my dad, he left her enough money live to be 103.

She's gonna have to go after that. You know.

Mom gonna push you down the stairs at 103.

But you make good point with the children, because it's like what we call the children who are disturbing the classroom. Really probably those are children who don't, you know, they feel anxious or they feel distracted or they feel fatigued, or they feel, you know, like it's because those children are having symptoms. So of course they can't just sit in a classroom and learn. But it's. What if we say, why? Like, I liked how you said that earlier. It's about asking why more. Why is it that they feel anxious or distracted or fatigued or, you know. Well, it's because maybe they've been getting this sugar that your mom doesn't want to eat. You know, they've been getting too much sugar or not enough of other nutrients. They're going to help their bodies function. And it's to be able to realize that and go, wait a minute, how do we. Now sometimes that's also because parents are overwhelmed, and maybe they don't. They don't know what to choose, what to offer and how to help their kids get food in the morning. So also having resources for parents to help them be able to go, hey, how do we help our children be most successful and feel their best? And so again, it has these ripples of awareness, and then what can we. From the examination. Awareness. And then how do we choose differently and offer the support that would help people? And, you know, like you, I mean, I'm so excited that you've been training these. These coaches to be able to reach people.

Yeah. We have a simple philosophy, you know, and again, it goes back to the. The fact that you have a certain amount of genetic potential. And there is. You receive signaling. So you have these genes, and they receive signals from the environment and from your lifestyle. And so then genetic expression goes the way it goes, and so you have the genetic potential. That's about. I've been told by different doctors, 8 or maybe 9 or 10% of your health, very low. The other 90 or 92% is the signaling from the environment and your lifestyle. That's what determines your health. So that's a simple truth. It's a fact. And we operate on, well, then what can we do about the lifestyle we're not going to intervene once you're sick. But unfortunately, that's when people come to you, is when they're sick. So they've already. They're already in some kind of downward spiral. So not only do you have to teach them all the things to do to be really healthy, you have to reverse the damage that's been done. And it could be. I love talking about the kids. We were just on that for a moment there. So this was really early on. This is 20 years ago. A lady who was coming in the clinic for her chiropractic mostly and some nutrition counseling from me said, do you work with kids? And I said, well, I love kids. You know, I have football. I've been coaching football for 15 years. Youth. And yeah, I love kids. Yeah, I can work with kids. And well, my son. What's the problem? So my son Billy, he's in school, he's nine. And the teachers are telling me he needs to be on drugs, that we should get him diagnosed with ADD or ADHD and put him on Ritalin back then. Now it's, I think Adderall or something they're doing. And I said, well, do you think your Billy suffers from a drug deficiency?

And she said, there's no such thing as a drug deficiency. I said, ah.

Definitely he doesn't have a drug deficiency. So that's probably not the right solution from our point of view. What can I do about it? We ran some. This is why I run labs. Our whole thing depends on lift. We just ran two labs on the young man. Required a little blood draw, but we got enough blood, did some testing and found out that he had a lot of sensitivities to things in his environment and lifestyle, that the signaling was wrong for him and it was some of those bad things. And so the moment we got him off that stuff, his behavior, I didn't give him any extra nutrition, no supplements, no nothing. Just get him off of this crap. And in three weeks, the principal of the school tracked me down through the mom and got me on the phone and asked me, what did you put Billy on?

He's so much better, huh?

We didn't put him on anything. Well, he's a new kid. He's a completely different boy. I said, all we did is get him off. Get him off of the neurotoxins and other. The chemical sensitivities that he had. Food and things in the other things in the environment, cleaning products and personal care products loom very large in that type of an assessment along with foods and other things. No, you could also have pathogens. It could also be other things you're sensitive to. But the bottom line is that we didn't put them on anything.

Just what you got them off. Yeah, it's so. I love, and I love to see that with my patients, too. It's so. That's the thing is it can be so rewarding to be able to help people in that way and eye opening for others to observe. Like this principal's calling you, saying, what did you do? Because it's like they realize, what if all the other children could benefit from the same thing? And I completely agree with you with the testing. I always.

Work with my patients as well to say, hey, instead of just guessing, for example, which dietary changes to make, let's actually do some testing that's going to help us know exactly what diet changes are going to benefit your body. And you can be so much more successful when you have specific information to work with. I think that's one thing you and I have in common is just that desire to be strategic and efficient and effective. You know, it's like, because otherwise you're just spinning so much of the time. I hear from people, right, if they don't have that detailed information, they're just kind of. They're trying, but they may be just spinning and circling and not getting as much improvement as they would like. And when we can get some information from testing, then we're like, oh, here's the food that, you know, maybe you thought was even healthy for you, right? Like a person who maybe is. Maybe they're sensitive or reacting to, let's say, some almonds or something, that would be. They would think, oh, almonds are healthy. But we find out that almonds for their body is inflammatory. They need to avoid it to feel better. So it can be those kind of changes that even a person who thinks they're doing healthy stuff but isn't feeling good, that's especially when these kind of tests can really give us the information we need. And again, it's. It's not usually tests you're going to find at the regular. It's not going to happen with the primary care doctor. It's not going to happen at the hospital. It's not going to happen. A lot of times insurance is not going to cover it. Most times it's going to be out of pocket. But at a certain point, your health is that important to invest in it and pay for it.

Well, you just mentioned the expense side again, I could choose so many things that you. Let's talk about that to go down. But the fact is that FDN practitioners are cash. They're paid. You pay us. You hire us to be your health detective. You pay us and you spend some money on some lab work that doctors don't offer. A lot of. It's still considered research use only. I've been using some labs for 20 years. They're still considered research use only. They're not in vitro or diagnostic tests. So doctors really don't use them because they need that. That dot, you know, that says you have this. And here's your diagnosis. Why? Because it's the only way they can get paid. So with an fdn, we're responsible to our clients to help them get the results that they hardest to get. When you go to a physician, he's responsible to a whole different algorithm that includes the board, which is, you know about the diagnosis codes, and then the insurance company, which sort of dictates the CPT or payment codes, what you get paid for. And so you have.

None of those people are the boss of me. Like the pace is the boss.

Me neither.

Yeah, exactly, because we have cash practices and people are caught up in. Well, does my insurance pay for this? No, because that's not getting you anywhere. That's where.

The practitioner is responsible more to the insurance company. And those gatekeepers are responsible to who? Their shareholders. So you have a completely different dynamic. I'm responsible to you, Mrs. Smith. Your physician is responsible to you in a way. But he's also got these other intermediaries, the insurance companies and his board, who have him pretty much handcuffed to act within a certain algorithm. So we call that an algorithm. And we're not in that algorithm. We're completely. We're beyond the algorithm practice.

No, and I think this is.

So.

Thank you so much for explaining that, Reed, because I think it's a lot of times people aren't aware of the big picture of how these algorithms work. And to start to think about, hey, here's my practitioner, but what other.

Interests are they catering to besides just me? And to just have that in mind, there's also liability insurance companies that doctors have to be in thinking of also. So a lot of times what you're receiving in your care or what you're hearing from your practitioner, and I think those practitioners would definitely want to share that with you, you know, and say, yeah, I have to be thinking about all these other people who are influencing me at this moment. And that may influence what they can offer you and what they can say to you or even how much time they can spend with you. Whereas if you find yourself in that position where you're like, I mean, of course we're going to. If you have insurance, you want to get the type of care you can get with your insurance, but also be aware that it's limited by these factors. And if you're finding yourself like, hey, wait a minute, are there some other options? Are there some other tests that aren't getting done? Are there some other practitioners who could help me in a different way? The answer is yes. It's just in this other realm that's not going to be covered by insurance. But in some ways you're glad it's not. Because the point you're making, you would rather work with someone who's totally invested in you and that's their focus and.

They'Re going to be able to help.

You in this other way.

Absolutely. We just don't have the same type of handcuffs. So it's a different.

We still are bound to ethics and code of conduct and morality and legal, legal consideration, things like that. We do no harm and we don't diagnose or treat anything specifically, but that's emancipating. It's freedom. So we've actually had physicians take the FDN course and drop their licenses. Wow. And boy, I wish I knew about you before. You're like a master's or doctorate course. The level of our training, the anatomy, the physiology, the biochemistry, and it's very robust. And it's an amazing reminder to a lot of these physicians of how the body really works. Because what they actually studied is disease, not health. They study the. And how to intervene on disease. And our. None of our courses are sponsored by any drug companies or anyone. It's an arm's length transaction. You pay me, I teach you what I know. And then you go out and you say to your clients or prospective clients, you pay me, I teach you what I know. Because all of our practitioners are in essence, teachers, which by the way, the word doctors, root, Latin, root, means to teach docer, isn't that right?

Yes, it is.

Correct. Yeah.

So it's fascinating to be in this world and get up every day and be able to live a lifestyle that's in a sense, walking the talk. Setting an example for others. Not just in your dress, diet, rest, exercise, stress reduction, supplementation, but somewhere in that stress reduction is the mental attitude that's required. It's the positive psychology, if you want, but just positive outlook. I'll mention my Mother, one last time. Positive outlook. Besides no sugar.

Besides, that is she gets up every day and seems to be a happy person. You know, she was sitting in the car last fall, I went back there. I live in California, she lives in Ohio. So I went back last fall and she's sitting in the driveway at my sister's house and my brother in law is checking the air in her tires. You know, her name's Lois, his name is Ernie. So he says, hey, Lois, let me check the air in your tires before you leave, okay? Sure, Ernie. And he's checking the air and.

The windows are rolled down. And she goes, hey, Ernie, who's going to check the air in my chairs when you're gone?

She was 90 and.

He'S about my age, you know, late 60s. And that's point of view. That's like, who's going to check their.

Kick? She's a real kick, huh?

No sugar. Positive attitude. Has done well by some people.

I love that.

And I mean, I don't know how to say enough times how much I appreciate the program you created and the FDNs that you've trained. Because I mean, I hire FDNs to help in my practice, to help with my patients. So that's how much I believe in your program and appreciate what you do. Because I really do see that it's, you know, the people you're training are able to work in line with me and to help my patients, and that makes a big difference. So that we, you know, I could reach more people. And I think that anyone who's listening, who maybe has ever thought about becoming a health coach or even just if you want to be able to go through the program to learn more for yourself and then see where that leads you. I mean, I definitely recommend that you get in touch with Reid and his staff and find out more. And I know you offer ways for people to get to know and learn a little bit more even before they decide to take your program.

Yeah, they could go to FDN.

With one L1S that's named after you, Donnie.

Oh, look at that.

So fdn, like Functional Diagnostic Nutrition. FDN today, Wilson. And find out more is all. You know, there's no pressure to do this, but as you said, the requisites for our course, most health coaches have some kind of cause degree, a bachelor's or something, and most of them have a couple certificates in nutrition or training or what have you. You know, the, the allied practices around health, and a lot of them have quite a bit of experience. Too. But when they come to my course and they really get into the how, it's a very robust course. It's a lot to learn. But like you said earlier, most of them also have some kind of condition that they're dealing with, and they want to overcome that. They're willing to walk the talk. So if you want to help others, you're willing to walk the talk, and you have a positive attitude. That's very important, then we can teach you how to do this for yourself, for your family, and even to make it into a profession where you could be an independent health coach, have your own business, work out of your home like I do for less, 13 or 14 years, and then at the same time, you could go get a job with wonderful doctors like Dr. Donnie and have a happy life.

Yeah.

Yes.

Thank you. Thank you. And again, I'm so glad to get to. Oh, my gosh, delve into all these different topics with you today and help people to feel inspired. Right. I hope we anytime, you know, just get to look at things differently and see what other possibilities are out there.

So. Yeah.

Thank you, Reid.

Well, keep up the amazing work you're doing, Dr. Donnie and I look forward to the next time we get together. Maybe it'll be live coming up pretty soon. Who knows?

I hope so. Maybe I'll get to come to California. I always enjoy that.

I'm gonna stay in the casita.

Okay. Very good. Thank you so much. We'll talk soon.

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