Ep 12: WTH ?!? Integrative Medicine with Dr Scott Resnick

Dr. Scott Resnick explains his systems-based approach to medicine, focusing on nutrition, hormone balance, and inflammation rather than isolated symptoms. He emphasizes knowing your sources online, reducing stress, and eating whole foods. Modern healthcare's short visits and misaligned incentives leave patients responsible for their own education.
Questions this video answers
scottresnickmd.com (ScottResnickMD).
A4M fellowship (American Academy of Anti-Aging/Integrative Medicine).
Chapters
Howdy. Howdy.
Hey, Cameron, how are you?
Good, how are you?
All right. Hey, I've got my esteemed colleague and guest here, Dr. Reznik, on. We're doing it in the office. How's this sounds? How's it sound?
You sound good. Let me hear from Dr. Resnik.
Here I am right next door.
So I should say right next door. Sounds good to me.
Right next door. Awesome. I'm going to bring this in a little bit.
Perfect. You want to pass me a water and I'll set it off to the side?
Water over there? Yeah. Don't spill it on the computer. Perfect. Yeah.
No drinking in the studio.
Like the good old days, eh?
Yep.
Well, I'll pull the scotch out here in a second.
Okay. Sounds good.
Right.
Let'S see here. So, perfect. And then I've got your thing here. We got second. This is the precision medicine component of where we're going.
Right. I'm going to call that.
Second part is precision.
Right.
First part is know your source maybe.
Right.
Know your source.
And also I think what an important thing that's important about this is I think that. That the general public can be educated to what we. What we know. Yeah. What we understand. I mean, you know, the amount that you'll understand it is a direct function of how much time and energy you want to put into read and studying.
Right.
I've often said that a trained chimp could go through medical school.
Yes.
You could just train him to sit down long enough and review the same things over and over again. It's not that hard. It's that much. And I think what's interesting is I think there's an ability for people to kind of distill down what's important. Yeah. I mean, I don't need to know what the fifth branch of the radial nerve is, but that's the stuff we memorize in our anatomy. Yeah. Back in the days of medical school. So I think you can kind of distill down health into some more critical components. I think that can be taught.
And that's this third part, though, your metabolic system.
And that's kind of the. That's. I mean, I think we need to start asking different questions about how we approach health. Love it. And what we can do is we can take it, you know, looking at how, you know, maybe how I was trained, and I'm kind of curious as to how you were trained as well.
Yeah.
What you're, you know, your approaches are, and then let's see if there's a way that we can Maybe blend in. Kind of what I call sort of a system space approach.
Sure.
And it really kind of comes down to generalizing.
Did you go through any of the Institute for Functional Medicine training?
No, but I did the whole fellowship for a 4M. Oh, yeah.
A 4M.
So I've done the fellow I'm boarded and fellowship. You know, at the time, I think the A4M, I think, was probably better training, I thought, than the ifm.
Yeah. Well, I just want.
Because they really focus in on the systems component. They do, but I don't. I find it still a little scattershot.
Yeah.
You know, is this gonna wiggle things? If we're reaching the. We're gonna do that so we can.
See a little bit better. So, you know, basically we'll usually there's just, you know, you'd be. If you were at home, you'd be over there. This thing would be above.
So.
So we'll include. That's who we're talking to. Just imagine that's Cameron's eyeball right there. Hi, Cameron.
Hello. The All Seeing Eye.
The All Seeing Eye. We'll talk to you and. Or you know that consumer that you're like, hey, this is how I see it as the doc out here and what's happening.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The lighting looks good, so I'll give.
You a little bit. You. Where did you graduate from?
University of Colorado.
Oh, yeah.
And then I did two years of general surgical residency and then four years of obgyn. So it was kind of a glutton for punishment.
Two years general surgery in obstetric, and.
Then four of ob gyn.
Wow. Wow. And then what I'll do, I'll ask you how you got into this, more into the functional medicine. Like, what. What was the tipping point for you? And then kind of your, you know, what you. What you were doing in Tennessee and you did that somewhere else too. Yes or.
Well, we worked. We went from University of Colorado to Taos, New Mexico. We were there for 13 years. My. My wife and I had a medical practice together.
Okay.
And it's hard when you're an OBGYN doctor with your wife.
Right? Yeah.
Yeah. In other words, we took care of everybody.
You're seeing everybody. Right.
We took care of all the induction. You're hearing all of it, all the surgeries.
Yeah.
Right.
Wow.
I mean, you know, you work with your life.
Yes.
Really good.
Right. Like, yeah, we need some space. Right?
Yeah.
And two books. What is your. What's your.
What are your two books? I have an ebook on my website. Oh, yeah, the Scott Resnick md. And then the second one is really kind of like my, you know, my opus magnus of what I'm working on, which is really trying to get this whole concept of addressing the body as set systems. So, I mean, I was working on it this morning. Cool. Set systems.
Are you calling that metabolic?
I would just say it's a systems based approach. Okay, perfect. And so what I've done is I've really kind of retrained myself to look at the body and as a series of systems. You know, for example, like the system of our body needs energy.
Yes.
So energy is thyroid and pancreas and adrenal glands, you know, so those need to work in concert with one another.
Yeah.
Cool. So if I'm explaining something with that. Am I talking to these guys? Am I talking to you?
Yeah, talk to them.
Okay.
Yeah.
Why don't you just talk with each other?
Just like this.
That's not.
Yeah, yeah, talk to each other. Because otherwise you're talking to people and people want to be just listening to a conversation.
Listening in. Okay, we'll just talk like that.
So we'll just have a conversation with each other. Don't try and project to the audience. Just talk to each other.
All right, we'll just talk to each other. I'm going to crane my neck here, though. Cameron, is that all right? Yeah, yeah.
Oh, yeah. I can kick my knee or anything like that.
How's that?
That's good.
That's good. All right, good.
That's good.
Yeah, you're fine.
You have to come through the computer camera and intervene, all right?
Just as long as you're both on camera, you're fine.
Okay, good. Right.
I don't think it would come to blast.
Yeah. Standby.
Here we go.
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Welcome to what the Health an independent approach to your health span. Have you noticed how our healthcare system may not have your best interest in mind?
Join Dr. Eckel in this fun and.
Sometimes disturbing exploration of the state of healthcare and what it means for you. Now, here's your host, Dr. Eckel.
All right, welcome back, everybody. I'm Dr. Greg Eckel and this is my esteemed guest, Dr. Scott Reznik. And we are going to be talking about the healthcare system and this is truly integrative medicine happening right in front of your eyes. So I've got. Dr. Reznik is just relocated into Portland, Oregon. He comes to us from Chattanooga, Tennessee via New Mexico, I believe before that, somewhat indirect, indirect pathway to make it up into the Northwest. And we went out to lunch this last week and had a great time and basically invited him on because it was such a fascinating conversation. He's got a wealth of knowledge and experience. OB GYN trained for four years, two years before that, general surgery, a glutton for punishment and a very well educated physician here, folks. And, you know, he's got a certain passion and pizzazz for functional medicine, which is really exciting. You know, we have a lot of common ground and we're going to put it all together and don't really know where the conversation will lead, but we got three facets that we're going to talk about here in a moment, But I want to, you know, give you a little bit more background. Right. So Dr. Reznik had a very successful functional medicine practice in the south in Chattanooga, Tennessee. We're psyched to have them in the Portland community as well.
I'm psyched to be here.
Welcome aboard. Maybe a little introduction from you on maybe your books. You have the two books that you told me about. And also let's announce where people can find out a little bit more about you.
Okay, well, why don't we start with that just so we don't forget about it. My name is Scott Resnick. I am a medical doctor. You can find out a little more about sort of my thought at Scott. SCOTT Resnick, MD So that's S C O T T R E S N I C K M D dot com. So what that does is I took really one of the, probably the more common clinical complaint that I see in my practice, which is fatigue. And I kind of ran it through sort of like a different way of approaching it. And so, I mean, I think if you were to, if you were to go to your primary care doctor and say, doc, I'm fatigued.
Right.
What would they.
Which is a super common complaint.
I mean, absolutely. Wouldn't you say that that's one of the more common things?
It's one of. Yes, one of the top Complaints for our patients.
So what does the primary conventionally trained doctor do? Scratch their head. Maybe they'll put you on an antidepressant medication. Maybe they'll put you on another medication.
Give you a little more energy, rule out anemia and thyroid.
Of course, we're assuming you're gonna rule out anemia, infection, all those other things, but that's a pretty fair assumption because there are plenty of people that go to their doctors and have thyroid panels drawn, as you've seen, that you or I would look at and say this is a wholly dysfunctional thyroid pattern.
Yes.
Yet sort of like in mainstream medicine with sort of a paucity or a limited number of data points, they say, oh, your TSH of 4 is right in the normal range.
Right. And that's all that they're running.
And that's all that they're running. They're getting a tsh. I mean, I know in my practice I'd like to look at TSH, free T3, free T4, reverse T3. You can measure other things like iodine levels.
Yeah, for sure. Well, but you've got this functional background, so. All right, so we got your, we got your ebook on fatigue and system. So we're jumping the gun because that's the third part of our discussion today. We're gonna get into that. I know that that's the exciting part, but we're gonna lead up to that. So we're gonna slowly take them down this journey together. And so then you have another one in the works you said you were writing this morning, so which is on this systems based component, the thinking process. And that is the part that I'm super excited to jam on here today. Our first part though, where we got to basically after our lunch and what I wanted to include the, what the health listeners in on is this kind of, you know, wild west of the Internet and information. Right. And as we were kind of prepping, just kind of, you know, shooting the breeze, getting ready for our show, you're basically saying what we're seeing, it is consumer beware. So what's your thoughts on that as you're looking out there as conventionally trained? And then also with the functional medicine overlay of seeing kind of the bigger picture for folks, what do you see when you look on the Internet when your patients are coming in? I mean, it's got its pluses and it's minuses.
Right. And that's how brows can start with saying it's a two sided saber. I mean, I think there are incredible resources that are available to us through the Internet. So really the more esoteric topic that one would want to explore, it's pretty amazing to be able to type in whatever's on your mind and have the Google give you some recommendations as to where you can find that. Now, when it comes to looking at research, as I'm sure that both of us do, with some frequency, if you just type in the search terms, it's kind of nice to be brought to the stacks to the, to the clinical research study.
Right into PubMed.
Right into PubMed. You put PubMed in a search NCBI after a search that's going to bring you right to the papers.
Right.
So here's this wealth of information that we can really drill down deep.
Yeah.
But when there's this huge wealth of information, there's a lot of, you know, what's the expression separating the wheat from the, from the, from the chafe.
Oh, yes, yes.
So there's a lot of chaff out there.
Yes.
It's hard to know for the, for I'd say, you know, general public to know who, who is your source?
Yeah.
What is your source? What is the authenticity of the source?
Right.
Is it going to offer something that's going to be beneficial to me or is it potentially going to offer something that might be detrimental, share problems that there's not a real way to understand that and.
Right. And you know, I think it goes even one step further as we're now knowing, as Google is changing algorithms as well, they're really directing what you get served up as well.
Right.
So that's a whole nother layer on this discussion around, you know, as I was mentioning, I had, you know, seven providers in the stable here at Nature Cures Clinic and you know, sending providers out to the latest and greatest research, which is awesome. Right. Everybody's got to get their continuing education. And then we've got, we do have then good studies and maybe not in clinical realms. Right. They're looking to move the needle on say a natural statin like red yeast rice. And moving the needle on just one marker on a lab.
Right.
And then how does that fit into like the living laboratory of life? Right. So we would run, you know, here, oh, you know, we found this new study on, you know, grapeseed extract and we want to run this on, you know, 100 patients and we get, it's like crickets, like no changes happen. And so when we look at the component of information for information's sake, it's the application and the knowledge and practicality use of what actually Gets results for people, which is maybe the fourth layer on our discussion. So first is the paucity of there's so much info. Know your source. So. And then how to read the source.
Right.
And then the application of the therapeutic that you're researching. Right, Right.
So it's not so easy. So I think it's easier for someone to kind of get online and say, why am I so tired? And then the sponsored ad that is the company out in California that sells their detox cleanse kit pops up and you go, wow, I can detox myself for only $300 a month for the next 17 months.
Yeah. Right.
And you click on the buy button. Yeah. The problem is that I don't think that that is necessarily good information for people.
Right.
It might be that their protocols or their policies really have some application, might be really useful. But I think it's really easy for us to want to find, like, the easy fix, you know, to kind of look and say, all I need to do is click this button and my fatigue is going to go away.
Yeah.
But as you and I know, there are so many other different layers that need to get addressed.
Oh, my gosh. Yeah.
And what I found in my practice is that is the way to do this. And again, this is what we're saving for part three.
Right.
Is the fact that these layers need to be addressed systematically. Because I really think, like, with anything, as you try to fix something, you need to begin at the beginning. So let's just say you get out on a cold, snowy Portland day. You really don't have a lot of them here.
They happen. They happen.
They happen. And you try to start your car. Right.
Yeah.
Doesn't start. You're not gonna say, let's just put in a new engine. You're probably not gonna say, let's change the tires. Because that's not an intuitive approach to the systems that are required for a car to start. So let's see. It's been 10 DE the last few days. Cold front's coming through. First thing I might think about might be the battery. So you'd say, let's think about maybe the electrical system. Yeah. And you determine that the battery's working.
Okay.
Then you go, oh, let's just see if there might be fuel in the tank.
Sure.
Which might be another systematic way of going about this. Yeah. But if you start and say, I'm just gonna put in a new engine, you're really putting the cart in front of the horse.
Totally. Yeah. And, you know, I guess one old saying that I think about is the fool has themselves as their own physician. Right. But it puts folks in a box because I know, you know, basically there's not, you know, the system is broke and there's not a lot of time. Like, to actually spend time with your patients is a luxury that I find, you know, in a functional medicine practice, we have that luxury because that's really how you get to build rapport. Listen, and get to know what. What system do you start with?
Right. I mean, I think you and I could both think of any number of patients who have come into the office and have taught us something.
Oh, my gosh.
I think that's a good point probably for your, you know, for your viewers. You've got a provider who was saying, teach me. What did you learn about yourself? What do you think is going on?
Yeah.
How can we collectively work on getting you better?
Yeah.
You're already off to a good start. And I think that one of the shortcomings, and I know you talked about a lot in this program with modern medicine is a couple of things.
Yeah.
One is this concept that the doctors are smarter than the patients.
Right.
The only difference between a doctor and a patient is he or she sat on her butt for, you know, years and in a repeated sense, learn the material. Right. But really, anyone who's out there is as smart as any one of their doctors.
Well, the information is definitely there.
The information is there.
Yeah.
So part of the problem is if one is a conventionally trained doctor, you've got on your roller skates and you're going between your four exam rooms and you're trying to get in your, you know, 40 patients, you're trying to see in the course of the day, you may not have the opportunity to really take the time to listen to something. Think what, you know, ask them what might be going on.
I'm wondering. So in that scenario, Right. Which is not ideal for patient care, there is a demand, like, you gotta see so many people in a day. Right. Because there's a. The overhead is such that you've got a. You're carrying a big load. So I'm just wondering, like, in that. I'm wondering if you. If you see a way to help change the system. Do you think that is that. I know I'm springing that on you right out of the top of the gate. But, you know, on changing, you know, obviously this is, you know, there are many brilliant minds working on changing healthcare, but, you know, when we look at how much we are spending on healthcare per capita in The United States and our health status is dead last of developed nations. You know, I think that's why you popped off into functional medicine would be my guess. And so maybe I'll back off of that question right now and ask you, how did you jettison out of that system? Is it because of stuff like that?
In part. I mean, I think that was one of the factors where I got tired as a surgeon of the rigamarole that was required to get somebody from, you know, who needed a surgical procedure into the operating room. There are layers and layers of pre approval and authorizations. And you have to have tried this type of therapy before. Blue Cross Blue Shield says we will pony up, allow for that, and pay for this procedure.
Got it.
But on the flip side, what happened was that over the course of my practice, I found that I was utilizing therapies that really had not been talked to me in sort of conventional medical training that really benefited people. And these are things that, to you and me now, are just absolutely basic.
Yeah.
Like diet.
Yeah. How did you get turned on to that, though? Was it like patients coming in saying, I tried this, or it just dawned on you?
Well, I think. I think you mentioned in my introduction that I lived in Taos, New Mexico for 13 years. So that's a fairly progressive community as a whole. I mean, you've got a lot of the indigenous communities there, which are the Native Americans who shared for a thousand years. The Hispanics came in maybe 400 years ago. And with both of those cultures are ingrained, really, indigenous therapies that have been utilized for a long time. And maybe it's the use of a curandero or curandera with the Hispanic communities, or maybe it's the use of an herb or. Or a different food that might be present in the Native American community. So in living in Taos, I found myself kind of imbued in these different experiences and started to think about some of these things. It's also probably one of the more funky and liberal communities out there. So what I found is I found that in approaching patients care that I was remiss with my patients if I was not considering other factors. Again, to you and me today, seem pretty basic.
Sure.
Things like diet, things like stress and the ability to relax, or the way that stress really drives every single physiologic system in the body, from the way that our brain works to the way that our heart beats to the way that we digest our food. All these things really relate to stress, which is adrenals and cortisol. Adrenaline. Right. And then what I found is I found that I was actually getting people better by utilizing some of these therapies. So I'd say one of my specialties as a gynecologist was in pelvic pain. The typical paradigm in our specialty is if a woman has pelvic pain, you do a surgical procedure, you look in there and you cut out the scar tissue, you excise the ovary, whatever you think might be getting people better. And I found that in my practice that maybe 5% of my pelvic pain patients had to go to surgery because I found that working on their stress, working on their diet, working on their bowel function, and working on their myofascial health as well. And I know you do a lot of manipulative medicine. I mean, how much of the referred pain patterns in our muscles do we see expressed somewhere else? How many people have you taken care of who've gone down the rabbit hole of migraine? Yeah. And you reach over and you squeeze on their trapezius, and they go, ah, doc. Yeah, there's my migraine. How did you make it happen?
Yeah, totally.
So if you never look for those things, you're never gonna see them. And what's interesting is we're trained, at least in my medical training, to kind of put on our blinders. And part of those blinders actually kind of dovetails nicely to what you were talking about, which is, what do we do about it? I mean, part of the problem is that the entire medical community is in bed with the pharmaceutical companies. Yeah. So that even goes back even farther discussion to how do you fund a study to look at the benefits of red yeast rice or grapeseed extract or ginkgo biloba when these are natural substances and they can't be patented?
Yeah.
So, yeah. What's interesting is that, I mean, so many medicines that we use in conventional medicine, and, you know, you've got the same ability to prescribe drugs that I do. Yeah, yeah. Is they come from natural sources. So it's aspirin in the. And the market of the willow tree.
Right.
You know, it's taxol and the yew tree digitalis and the foxglove plant.
Right.
These are natural sources. And what's happened historically is that the pharmaceutical companies have taken a molecule, they add a carbon molecule, they add an oxygen.
Proprietary blend for a proprietary blend.
Yeah. And then what you can do, then you can jack up the prices. So let's. We're kind of like stacking up all these things we have on the app.
That's good.
Yeah. But one of the things is, I think one of the problems with medicine which makes it so hard to reconcile is it's multifactorial in terms of there are so many different factors that are at play. Whether it's financial, whether it's political, whether it's cultural, whether it's regional or just good old fashioned autonomy. I mean, you and I know that if you decide to sit down and eat a dozen donuts every day, you're not going to be healthy after a period of time. So when in this whole conundrum of fixing healthcare in the country, where does personal responsibility come in? Oh, yeah, And I know, I'm guessing that the people that are watching this, this is a self selecting population.
It truly is. Yeah. And you know, honestly, that's been some of the complaints for some of my friends that are internists. They're like, yeah, that's really great, Dr. Eckel, but, you know, you're cherry picking the most motivated patients. The retort to that though is, you know, I find, you know, the root word of doctor is dossier or teacher. And as we educate adults on what their choices are and our inherent wisdom of our bodies, I mean, you know, willpower, you're gonna lose the game every day. What I see like, well, we know rationally this is the right choice to make. I need more vegetables. Right. The answer coming from the naturopath eats your vegetables. But if you, if you educate folks like, it's okay. Like, people are amazed when, you know, I'll do a diet diary with all new patients.
Right.
Because that is that foundational work of. Of course diet affects our health. Right. And it's not, that's not really taught in conventional world unless you have diabetes. Right. And so it's like, well, how, how insane is that? Right.
Or even you look at the current diabetic recommendations and I read that this is crazy.
Yeah.
The number of grams of carbohydrates they're recommending that you can't do it, Right? Do it. No, I think that the diabetics, well, I take this with a grain of salt, but they should almost be on a carbohydrate free diet. You know that that's what's driving the insulin.
Yeah, it's. Well, yeah, I mean, they're in the diabetes solution. Dr. Berenstein, he's a type 1 diabetic medical doctor, he says 15 grams or less carbs a day, which is an insanely small amount of carbohydrates. But you know, on that one you know, it's like that is, you know, that those basic tenets of, well, of course, you know, yeah, you're gonna have some sweets here and there. Right. You know, it's just. It's got to be a sustainable diet to expect yourself or patients to, you know, just go on willpower or rational thought. You know, we're way more dynamic beings than that. So to just. On the education component, I think coming across with compassion and educating them so on, you know, on personal responsibility, that is a big piece. But then you look at the whole food industry is stacked against us. Right?
Exactly. I mean, they're well aware of the fact that MSG that are put in Doritos to consume more. To consume more. This isn't by accident. You know, these molecules have been fastidiously studied in humans and lab animals.
Yes.
So it's no accident that if you open a bag of Doritos or the old expression with the lay's potato chips, you know, no one can eat just one.
Right, Right. Yeah. It's right in the market. We're gonna be right up front with it.
They're just telling you right over there.
Yes, you're gonna eat the bag.
You're gonna eat the bag. So that's where you can maybe start to intervene to patients. You're gonna eat a bag. Get a small bag. Don't get the party size bag. Because if you're gonna eat a bag.
Of potato chips, you know, just one aside on that, a beautiful concept that was just given to me was around, like, every time you sit down to eat your meal, there's three varieties that it could be. One is nutrition. Right. We know that's the broccoli and vegetable. Then there's entertainment. Maybe that's the bacon cheeseburger with the blue cheese. Right. And then there's the addiction.
Or the curly fries.
Or the curly fries. Right. That's an entertainment meal. Right. That's allowed. And then there is the addictive component. Like, you know, you're gonna have the full pint of Ben and Jerry's or whatever it is, but as long as you're consciously, you know, asking the plate of food, what are you in front of me? What you'll see through time is you will consciously start choosing, I need better, I need more salad, I need more vegetable. So just being aware of what is going down the tube is a huge win for so many people.
And that goes back to the absolute most fundamental, important thing in terms of what you're trying to do with this radio show is get people Educated. I mean people don't know. And still to this day you can go to the store and see like a whole box of cookies that says no fat, organic, organic, no fat, vegan. You think, oh these are great.
Gluten free.
There we go. Vegan, gluten free, non fat and organic.
Must be health food.
We should get a box. But then you look at the fine.
Print and you realize that two of.
Those cookies are 340 calories.
Yeah.
So. So part of the problem is that is I think that it's education and I think we're all kind of doing our best to get people educated. I mean that's my mission in life. Yeah, I know that's yours.
Yeah.
Because I think that that's an absolute, absolute fundamental part of the whole picture.
Yeah.
Because if you don't get people educated, then the commercial entities, the food processing plants, all that stuff are going to continue to, to provide what they do.
And it seems, I mean it is true and it seems like there is an awakening happening where, you know, we're seeing in with a global climate crisis basically and people are starting to wake up to say, wait a minute, maybe, maybe we're purchasing the wrong stuff here.
Right.
And we are, our energy flows in that fashion and we do have that amount of power if we just take it back for ourselves. All right, so that part one, I think we've done a good job. Know your source, right?
Know your source.
Know your source on where your food's coming from, but also information that you are consuming and how you're implementing it.
That's right.
Do you have trusted guides along the way or is it, you know, like you were saying on some detox thing that you're sending, you know, your lock of hair down to California for detox and like who actually is sitting behind the computer? What is their, you know, what, you know, where's their intent? Their intent is probably to help. But is that really the best thing for you at this current moment in time? And how does that fit together?
Let's put our minds together here because I think this is important because this is an important question. How does the consuming public that is subjected to the incredible forces of marketing and food technologists and all these other things? Yeah. How does that individual make a good, a good decision? How do you know if you get online this is a trusted source? Sure.
Well, you, I mean, I guess you look at what are they selling you?
Right?
Right. I mean, what is the product? Right? Is it your transformation and your well being and then what are the sources that they're using to support that claim. Right.
I would say that the length of the initial sales page is inversely the degree of expertise behind it.
Perhaps that's a good way of looking at that.
In other words, if you have to read 15 scroll down through 15 pages of this miracle drug is going to take away your fill in the blank. It's probably something that's maybe not there.
Actually I did that once for tinnitus. If you come across anything for tinnitus, I have it. So many people suffer with it, but I haven't found anything to really work for it. Came across this miracle cure so I figured I went down the rabbit hole to see. It's like, oh man, this is just not, you know, what are we doing?
Right.
You know, I'm never getting that half.
Hour back in my life.
Right, right. So that's good. Yeah. Inversely related. I like it. Alright, so second part, and this is on, you know, really where you know, you, you had this kind of community that educated you and you were, you know, to serve them well. You broaden your horizons. You actually got a fellowship from A4M which is an awesome training organization of integrative care providers. They do awesome conferences, great information, great tracks of expertise across the board. So now we're talking about this blending of systems of an integrative functional or now precision medicine. And there are a couple different terms associated with this and I do it as well, I call it functional because a lot of people know what functional medicine is. I'm a naturopathic doctor and I have a master's of science in Oriental medicine. Right. So on the platform that I use is really I use a blended of the naturopathic and Chinese medicine. I use the Chinese medicine just because it has been around for so long. And what I like about it is it's more landscape oriented. Right. Rather than a pieces and parts. There's no word for mind body medicine for instance. Right. It's all heart based medicine and the heart is the emperor. And so we blend it that way of looking what I call the Zheng of the formula direction. There's an emperor Empress and generals and assistants. Everybody lines up to move in a certain direction. So in a systems approach. Right. Very systematic approach. Different systems though.
Right. Well, this is actually interesting because sort of the way that I've designed out my system, so to speak. Yeah. Is almost sort of sequential. I mean if you can build magic, kind of like a pyramid or something, you're kind of stacking different systems on top of one Another. Yeah, really what's at the very top of the pyramid is really the Emperor.
Yeah.
It's the heart. Because I mean, there are a lot of different ways that we can die. Yeah. The one method that kills us all is our heart stops being there.
Right.
I don't care if it's because you've had a heart attack, stroke, or you've got cancer or, or you're nutritionally depleted, or you're drowning or something like that. Really the end process that stops all life is the heart stops beating. So with reason to think that all of our body systems are geared around keeping our heart beating. And it sounds to me that when you talk about your systems being directed around the Emperor or the Empress, that that is keeping the heart alive. Totally. So it's just interesting that this has sort of been a sort of a thematic approach to health. Yeah. It's not new.
Right.
So.
Lovely. Awesome. So, okay, that's the overlap. That's part three though, because we keep jumping again so on the precision medicine and on this functional component and bringing it together. Right. You're talking about, you know, I like to say my tagline for nature cures clinic is where east meets west naturally. Right. So my bias at 18 years into practice is if we don't have to go the big pharma route, well, let's not. Right. And if we can have the body and its inherent wisdom heal itself, that's another basic tenet of naturopathic medicine is the body can heal itself. So I think there's a philosophical difference, just maybe semantics. But I find it's a different thinking process. When I've just talked to conventional physicians without the functional medicine or without that component of like wait a minute, there are all of these other things that there's actually some great supported evidence that it's evidence based medicine that actually this stuff works. And so that semantics component around treating people and not conditions or symptoms. Right.
And you brought up an interesting point. I just want to comment on that. And that is that so much of medicine is determined by established metrics.
Yes.
In other words, if your hemoglobin A1C is 5.7, your pre diabetic.
Right.
If it's 6.4, I think you're going into diabetes, you're full on diabetic. Well, what happens to the person who's got a hemoglobin A1C of 5.6?
Yeah.
Well, they're not pre diabetic, so.
Yeah.
Come back next year.
Right. Wait until you get there.
Wait, wait until you get There.
Right.
And I think what's interesting is we're recognizing that in some of the testing that we might do. Yeah. And some of the even baseline metrics, like take your pulse.
Yeah.
What's your pulse? Yeah. If your resting pulse is 94, there's something going on in your body that didn't cost anything. But it really gives us a lot of information in terms of what's going on. So one of the problems with conventional medicine is it uses established metrics as opposed to saying, let's look at life and health on a continuum. And I think that's something that a functional medicine doctor does. And certainly in talking to you, I mean, sort of inherent in your training, probably more than our training, like wait until you get your hemoglobin A1C of 6.2.
Right.
Now you're diabetic. Now you get on it. Now you get on it. Yeah. I'll give you an interesting. There's a great study that was published by Kaiser Permanente out in California. They've got millions of people in their insurance policies and this was absolutely elegant. What they did is they did nothing but look at a group of patients fasting blood sugar. And they looked at something like 40 or 50,000 people at time zero fasting blood sugar. And then they said, in 10 years, based on that one piece of information, what is the risk of developing diabetes? Oh, wow. So this is useful because what they found is they found that for every point over a fasting blood sugar of 85, a person's 10 year diabetes risk increased by 6%.
For every point.
Every point. But if you look on your Quest Labs range of normal fasting blood sugar, It's, I don't know, 75 to 95.
Yeah.
Well, if you have a fasting blood sugar of 95, that's 10 points over 85. 10 times 6 is 60, 60%. You've got a 60% chance risk over 10 years. Over 10 year, 10 year period. So when you talk about what, you know, some of the problems that are, that are present in our country. Yeah. I mean, there is a, I mean, how many patients come in having had a metabolic panel.
Yeah.
Fasting your blood sugar. It's a $6 test.
Right.
Everyone gets it. Yeah.
It's a standard of care.
Every doctor in this country can take a look, take one moment to say, wow, this person's fasting blood sugar is 92.
Right.
Let's @ least think about that because you know so much of what's killing.
Well, the range right now is 100 under 100 is normal, quote, unquote.
So let's do the math.
Right.
So let's see. 85 to 100 is 15. Yeah. 15 times 6 is 90.
90% chance. Right, right. So that you're. You're gonna get. You're gonna have diabetes.
Right. Or you're gonna be well on that path.
Right.
To develop them.
Yeah.
So that's. I found that interesting because, you know, I think conventional medical doctors are trained to say, we need to address a certain metric.
Yeah.
The ovary gets bigger than this. We have to take it out.
Yeah.
The menstrual cycle lasts more than this number of days. Your blood pressure is greater than 140 over 90.
Yeah.
Oh, it's 138 over 88. That's too high.
Yeah.
So that's where you or I would start saying, okay, let's start to look at some of these different things. One we can measure and two, interventions that we can take to get. To get.
To get in there. Right. How about the differentiation? So on this more functional integrative care, we address people in multiple systems rather than a lot of complaints that folks that I see that haven't accessed this type of care yet or, well, I got to go see this specialist, then my primary's gonna refer me over here. And none of the docs have time to talk to each other and coordinate care. And, you know, it's like, oh, in particular, let's talk orthopedic pain. I got knee pain, and the knee pain doc won't talk about my back pain or my hip pain. It's like, oh, my gosh. We've gotten so niched in and specialized that, you know, clearly there was a song in kindergarten that said, the knee bones connected to the hip bone. Right. So we learned that early on in our upbringing. What happened that medicine got so niche like that and fractionated?
I'm not sure.
Yeah. So that reduction component. So I think there's this renaissance coming back, which I'm super excited because I think it's going to help so many more people. Is this more of the systems approach that you're going to elegantly bring up here? I want to give a quick station break. This is what the health. I'm Dr. Greg Eckel, and I've got Dr. Scott Bresnik here today, and we're talking about integrative functional medicine, precision medicine, and how that applies to, you know, knowing there's so much information out there and really, how do you apply it for yourself to actually be. Well. Right. The whole premise of what the health is to have a healthcare system that promotes thriving. And in that aspect, like I think we can, you know, with the artificial intelligence and other processes coming on board. Like, I love that Kaiser study that you brought up because, you know, the data points that they had over a 10 year period really do make a difference. Right now we're going to have these neural networks and basically all of these metrics that we can like wear on our aura ring or certain devices we'll put on measuring our blood sugars. Those have their pluses and minuses. But before even getting into a tech overlay, anything else on the precision medicine that you want to bring up?
Well, I think that when I was making a few notes to you earlier, I said, you don't want to throw out the baby with the bathwater. In other words, I think a lot of what's happening with modern conventional mainstream medicine is pretty amazing.
Oh my gosh.
That someone who can. We'll go back to the orthodox. That someone who has a hip that's fully degenerated, can have a new hip, put in 15 years of whatever bike riding functionality that if you're in a bad car wreck, you can be brought into the emergency department, kept alive. So I think that the medicine of the future is really going to be an amalgam of these different styles of medicines. And ideally not waiting until the 11th hour and waiting until that person's hemoglobin A1C is 6.8 over the line. Right. In truth, if that person came into my practice, I might have a discussion with them about getting on a, you know, insulin sensitizing medication, something to bring that number down. I would be, I would be remiss with that patient if I didn't say, okay, we're gonna do this. This is the short term thing.
Yeah.
Let's look at your long term plan.
Yeah.
Because I believe with the use of diet and behavior and optimizing different body systems, working with the gut, working with stress, that we can reverse these diseases.
Oh my gosh.
And we see it. We see autoimmunity go away, we see aches and pains go away. I mean, how many? I would imagine you've had hundreds of people who go back to the joint pain. Here's two potential paths. Yeah. You go to the family doc, he doesn't have time, she doesn't have time to see you, send you to the orthopedist. Orthopedist runs in and said, let's put a scope in that knee and take a look at things.
Yeah.
How about that other. The other path, which might be the. The patient that goes to the naturopathic doctor who says, well, let's kind of think about what might be contributing to your knee pain. Let me just look at the mechanics of how you walk or sit. Let's think about what you're eating. Oh, you're on the four bagels a day diet. Let's pull gluten out of your diet and see how you do. Because each of us has seen any number of patients who. You pull them off whatever the foods are that they're sensitive to, and their back pain, their hair loss, their energy.
I mean, across the board. Right. Food is our best medicine. And you got. It's not the causative agent, but it definitely. That is a cornerstone of care.
Right, right.
I mean, it's information going in and circulating in our blood. How could it not be related to everything going on with your health?
It is. And when you've done, like, a functional or a precision medicine for long enough, you've seen amazing turnarounds with people who get off of a food that's been causing them some problems. I mean, it changes people's lives.
Yeah.
People lose weight, their thinking is clear, their sleeping is better, their skin feels better. What did you do? Oh, you pulled potatoes out of their diet. You got them off of milk. Basic stuff like that. So I think that when I was saying don't throw out the baby with the bathwater, I think there's a lot of incredible opportunities that are available to us through conventional mainstream medicine. The problem is it's not the end all for chronic conditions, and it's not working.
Yeah. Right.
Because it's a reactive form of medicine as opposed to something which is proactive.
It's waiting. Yeah. It's kind of waiting for kind of the iceberg effect, for the iceberg to kind of poke up out of the water. And it's not addressing anything underlying that. Right. That's still.
That same iceberg that only sticks up 6 inches out of the water can still sink your ship.
Right.
And I think that's where we have the opportunity to start looking at things like metrics or measurements of inflation. Inflammation.
Yeah.
Measurements of nutritional status.
Yeah.
And then when you start getting into things like the gut.
Yeah.
And what. I'm sure you've had discussions on this, you know, before with, you know, what we're learning about the vagus nerve, the microbiome, and the way that it might be that some of our neurotransmitters like GABA might be made in the gut, the bacteria that live there.
Right.
And then transported up to the brain.
Totally. And I mean. I mean, yeah, that just opens the whole thing up around toxicity. Toxicity and glyphosate, say, killing the gut bugs. And then we're having brain degeneration as a result. Right. So that is so. I mean, of course, one of the reasons why I've got these walls as yellow in the clinic and you can see them here right behind us. That is the spleen and stomach camp in Chinese medicine. So herbally, these are my herbal teachers, come from the spleen and stomach camp, which is the color yellow. That's the overlap for in naturopathic medicine is food is our best medicine. So those systems come together along those lines. So I love that. I like that we're talking diet as a basis and backbone. But then it gets a little bit more nuanced and advanced as well. We can go even further up. I'm wondering, how about in the genetics? Did you bring that into your practice at all?
Well, I kind of figured that our genetics are our genetics.
Yeah.
I mean, what you're born with is what you're. You're born with.
Right.
What's interesting is that current science has shown that we can modify the way that those genetics are basically read off of our genes. So in answer to your first question, I wouldn't say specifically I get into the genetics, but I think that we're learning that there are a lot of different factors that actually influence the way that our genetics are read. I like to use just a really simple example. And that is to say, imagine there's a couple of twin sisters. Genetics. Identical twins. Yeah. And they're born in the middle of the country, let's say Kansas. And one is spirited off to one family, and she grows up in Duluth area, and another moves out to Southern California, and the first goes and works at the mall of America, and she eats Krispy Kremes all day long, smokes cigarettes. She's gonna have a different manifestation of her genetics relative to the genetically identical sister who moves out to Southern California, eats vegetarian avocados.
Avocados.
Does yogurt.
Healthy lifestyle.
As a healthy lifestyle.
Yeah.
So I know. I don't know that anyone's actually done those studies, but I think that just intuitively we know if you separated a couple people and expose their genetics to vastly different exposures. So that's the environment. Yeah. So what happens is when you take time to talk to a patient and get to know them. Yeah. You can kind of learn what environment are they being. Are they bathing their genetics in? Sure. Yeah. And I've had patients, because I take a lot of time, you know, sitting with them. I've had a number of patients who come in and they take their cell phone and they set it on the table, and we start our interview, and five minutes into it, she's checking it.
Yeah.
And it buzzes. And I see that every six minutes or 30 seconds, you're getting that hit that's affecting your dopamine. It's affecting your limbic system. It's affecting all these different things because you're constantly being distracted by the phone.
Right.
Maybe that's a really simple intervention.
Yeah.
I mean, I've had interviews with patients who are spending their money. I pay for my time to work with them, and half their time is spent looking at their phone or taking a phone call. So that's a really simple environmental change that you can recommend to somebody.
That's awesome. One point I want to bring back to when we were talking about the testing. I find a lot of folks will treat tests and treat numbers on tests rather than really acknowledging and addressing the dynamic being in front of them. And oftentimes I'm seeing, you know, patients from other clinics where it's like, well, you know, they come in with their stack of tests and with circles of saying, this is an ideal number and this is where we want it, versus, you know, because it's easier, I think, to treat a number on a piece of paper rather than treating people.
Right. Well, that goes back to that. Hemoglobin A1C.
Yeah.
It's easy to say, oh, your hemoglobin A1C is 6.7. Let's put you on metformin in januvia.
Right, Right.
Okay. We're done thinking. Yeah. They're gonna be on those medications for three months, and they're gonna come back and their numbers probably gonna be lower. Yeah. But have you mitigated any of the risks, really?
Possibly lower or possibly lower. Right. Because we see that tends to, you know, it doesn't stem the tide for super long. Right.
So that's part of the problem with, you know, that I think that we need to address as we ask the question, what can we do with. With mainstream medicine is we need to try to move away from just that one simple diagnosis driven. You know, you go in to see your family, doc, it's like, I'm concerned about my weight, my energy, my rectal function.
You got one issue.
What do you got? We got 10 minutes.
Yeah.
We're going to address one of those things.
Well, and a lot of them, I mean, I think a lot of clinics are set up. You can only really have one issue per visit. And then you got to come back. Right. Because we got to get, keep the numbers up and the flow. There's a volume component which is, that's an issue. Right. And that's why it's broken, why I think folks are frustrated and making these other choices, going online, looking for the self proclaimed experts and then kind of falling into some of these traps that aren't necessarily getting them where they need to be either.
Exactly.
Alright, so coming down, let's talk systems. So I want, we've kind of brought that in a little bit. I brought it in on the, on the Chinese medicine. But this is your, you know, you're kind of your, your book is going to be coming out and you've put a lot of thought into this. It's basically your whole thinking process around health. I'm just lobbing that to you.
Okay, thanks. You threw me a softball. So what I try to do in my practice is start to examine the body in terms of sort of collective systems that work together. So I think probably the most fundamental system to keep our body alive is nutrition. And it's pretty simple. I mean our body needs basic nutrients, we need amino acids. And of those amino acids, nine are essential. Meaning you got to get them in your diet. If you don't get them in your diet, you don't got them. They're not there. Body can't manufacture these things. The same thing applies to some of the healthy oils as well, like omega 3 fats. Our body can reluctantly make omega 3 fats. We'd rather not have to do that. And it's really a pretty energy expensive proposition to have to do that. So we need to be thinking about getting those, you know, getting those fats into our diet. So when I think about nutrition, I think about all the different things that our body needs to really work. Well, you know, we need fats, we need, we need proteins, we need minerals. You know, we need, you know, some of these phytochemicals and phytonutrients that our body uses to help offset this, this concept of inflammation. And as you know, inflammation is not necessarily a, I mean it's not necessarily a pathological state. I mean, our body makes inflammation just by using oxygen.
Sure.
To turn the gears.
It's not always a bad thing, it's just when it's unrelenting.
When it's unrelenting.
Exactly.
So if Your body's working well and you've got the nice appropriate nutritional component to be able to offset the inflammation that's being created. Your body does great. We need inflammation. We need it to be able to fight off infections and to really kind of buffer the way that our mitochondrial work. You know, one of the chief byproducts of mitochondrial function is inflammation. So we need to be able to buffer that. So our body needs nutrients. And some of those nutrients you can look at. I mean, some you can look at clinically, you know, you can look at others, you know, in terms of laboratory testing and just try to get a sense of is that person, what's the status? What's that status? Yeah, sort of the next system that I look at with people is what I to refer, refer to as energetics. So if you think about it, the body needs energy to be able to work. We need to extract that energy out of our environment. And that's in the form of food, right? Yeah. And then what we need to do is we need to make some decisions about what we do with that energy. So I think for a well functioning human body, you're balancing a little bit of storage and a little bit of use. So you're taking your glucose, you're taking your sugars, and you're filling up your glycogen reserves in your liver and in your muscles, but you don't want to have too much of it. So I think that what happens is one of the biggest things that's affecting health in this country is imbalanced energetics. And I mentioned before the show that there are three systems that I like to look at that all work collectively, together to help balance our energy. And the first is the thyroid. So thyroid is our thermostat. And it makes sense that if you're a human animal that will go through periods of feast and famine, when you're able to, you're able to feast, you're gonna want to store away some of that energy because you never know when it's gonna be a long winter or you don't kill the bison or the crop doesn't come in. So over the, you know, the millions of years that humans have been on the surf is we've actually worked our bodies, developed ways to kind of manage. So that's what I think the thyroid does. Yeah. Is that. Thyroid's our thermostat. In other words, when the getting's good, you know, we have plenty of energy. The corn crops are coming in, staying active. We can burn the furnaces a Little hotter. Right? Yeah. But what happens is just imagine the person who's under the stress of starvation, you know, hanging out in their cave. They didn't have enough food. You know, the. The groundhog showed his head, and it's gonna be another six weeks of winter.
Sure.
That human body might want to get into a conservative approach with its energy. And I believe that the thyroid gland is really the sort of the master switch that allows us to burn hot or burn cold. Because what happens when someone gets under a lot of stress? They become relatively hypothyroid.
Right.
We see that all the time.
Yeah.
So maybe the hypothyroidism, which is critical for managing energy might be linked to some other. Maybe it's linked to that cell phone.
Right. That's in constant stress. Cortisol dump.
Cortisol dump. So it makes sense. And so that's one third of the kind of the energetic system that I look at. The other is cortisol is. Cortisol is king in the way that I look at things. Cortisol is the hormone that drives everything else in our body. If you open your biochemistry book and go back your chapter on cortisol, the very first sentence says, cortisol's job is to raise our body's blood sugar. At the end of the day, if you can't raise your blood sugar to keep your brain and your heart alive, you're kind of nearing the end. So cortisol's primary job is to raise our blood sugar. Yeah, it gets us away from a threat. So you got a tiger that jumps out from when you're walking through the mountain path. You don't want to have low blood pressure, low pulse and blood sugar. No. Cortisol kind of kicks in to raise all those different hormones or, I'm sorry, different components of our physiology. Sure. So cortisol drives the bus. But we know that cortisol directly affects insulin. Right. As a matter of fact, they call insulin is. Cortisol and adrenaline are what we call counter regulatory hormones.
Yes.
In other words, cortisol raises the blood sugar, insulin lowers the blood sugar.
Yeah.
So they're almost kind of like a yin yang, the way that they work with one another. So if someone's cortisol is entirely dysfunction, you can bet that their insulin is not going to be working well. And we know that high cortisol starts to affect the insulin receptor.
Oh, yeah.
Affects the permeability of the gut, affects blood flow through the gut, affects all these different things, and ultimately change the way that our body reconciles Blood sugar. Right. So cortisol is king. Cortisol affects our sex hormones through. You've heard about the pregnant steel. So if your body's making cortisol, you're making less of the sex hormones. So it makes sense that if someone's under a lot of stress, if you're a female animal and you're huddling in your cave hoping to make it through the winter, that's not a time to have a menstrual cycle. So we know that high stress, hypoglycemia, low sugar can actually be associated with menstrual dysfunctions. Same thing happens with men. When I see men that have really, really, really high stress levels, I'm not surprised at all to see that their testosterone is low. And the last hormone that's associated with energetics is insulin, for all the reasons that we've just talked about, cortisol. So when the getting is good, insulin is a growth hormone. So we want to be able to utilize our growth hormone. I mean, when you measure growth hormone in the body, what do you like? You measure insulin, like growth factor. Growth hormone and insulin cause tissues to grow. So when the getting is good and there's a lot of food, we want to pack on the extra meat, extra muscle, in anticipation of the time in the future when things are going to be a little more challenging in the future, when everything kind of falls apart, is when we're under a state of high cortisol, high caloric intake.
Yeah.
That's when our system was.
Sounds like life.
Sounds like life. So that's the next system.
Yeah.
I'm looking at the body and saying, where is this, this individual in terms of managing their energy? Because if their cortisol is high, their insulin is not going to be working. Well, I'm not going to be surprised to see a fasting blood sugar, which is high in the morning. I'm not going to be surprised to see menstrual or, you know, like testosterone abnormalities.
Yeah.
So the next system that I like to look at is sort of the system of barriers. And so what's interesting is that the human animal needs to interface with our environment. It just so happens that we interface with our environment with a whole cadre of microscopic viruses and bacteria, yeast, helmets, parasites that we can't see. So we need to have a way to be able to interface with our environment across this barrier of our body. So we have different barriers. We've got our skin.
Yeah.
Right. We've got our gut, and we also have our lungs. So what I do Is. I think that's an important system to consider is what is the integrity of these different barriers? I mean, if someone's breathing intoxicants all the time, that's going to disrupt their barrier between their lungs and their bloodstream. Right. What about someone who's got a dysfunctional gut and they're on the proton pump and it. If they're drinking too much alcohol and they're smoking, we start to see breakdowns in that barrier. With a lot of the stuff that you studied in terms of neurodegeneration, this whole concept of the blood brain barrier in the brain is critical. So our body needs to maintain barriers. And the barriers of the skin and the gut, really along with that is the production of our neurotransmitters, because really that comes down to gut as well. Next system I'd like looking at is this concept of detoxification. All right. And I don't mean like, yeah, man, detox, you know.
Right.
You know, take. Take the herb, blow out, have your colonic and do that. No, I mean, our body is in an active state of detoxifying itself.
Yeah.
We have to detoxify from our mitochondrial energetics we were alluding to before with the information we need to detoxify from our hormones that we make, you know.
Sure.
Detox pathways in terms of estrogen metabolism. So in order to detox, we need to be able to make sure that all those systems are working well. And then the last system is really hormones because at the end of the day, the human animal needs to reproduce. If you think of everything that we're on the planet to do is to pass on.
I was thinking copulation.
Oh, I think it's certainly a little more enjoyable, but that's it. In other words, the end of the line when you're nutritionally sound, your gut's working well, your energetically well, your barriers aren't being threatened, you're hormonally sound.
I like it.
And that keeps our species going.
Yeah. Oh, that's awesome. That's really cool. Thank you for laying that out. Yeah.
And then it's all underlined by this concept of inflammation. And the more inflamed we get, the more these systems fall apart.
Wow.
Wow.
I love it. That's a great way. When you brought up barriers, I think about in integrity of the vessel, of the being. Right. On all of those levels where you got the skin and the gut. That's really cool you've put that together over your years of clinical practice.
It seems to work to kind of Break these things down.
I look forward to the book.
I'm working on it. I was writing it this morning and came in here. Awesome. Continue to do something. Yeah.
Cool. Well, all right. So we're wrapping up. Wrapping up what? The health. I'm wondering for what do you do personally just to remain in an optimal state. You have like, what's the biggest lever mover for you on a day to day basis?
I'm going to say two lever movers. The first is managing my stress. I know myself well enough that I can read something at 11 at night and still be diving into the Internet rabbit hole studying some kind of some studies at 1:30. It's hard for me to shut that stuff off. So I think that one of the biggest interventions that's kept me healthy over the years is really developing a meditative practice. And sometimes that's taking a little walk in the forest, sometimes it's putting on some earbuds, sometimes it's doing yoga.
Awesome.
The other thing that I think is so critical is diet. And I'm of the do as I do not as I say type philosophy. So I've got an Instagram site which is Scott ResnickMD and I just take photos of what I'm eating. There's a little blurb about why I think it's valuable, why I think it's helpful. So I've told my patients over the years, look, go to the Instagram site and this happens over time. I'm planning my diet around what you're having. You haven't posted for two days.
Yeah. What's going on? We don't know what to eat.
Yeah, I love it. I think the two biggest things that I would send to your viewers is take home messages. I'll say this to the camera. Think about stress reduction. Think about things you can do to maybe disconnect from that cell phone from a period of time. What can you do to diffuse challenges you have with your boss? What are some ways that you can find some time to let your body settle down? Because cortisol is the king of the hormones. And when cortisol gets out of whack, remember, it's keeping us alive. It's willing to say, hey, I'll let him be diabetic, hypertensive and have no sex hormones because I want to stay alive. But if that's always just driving you, that's a problem. The next thing is eat good food. I mean, we are blessed to live in a country. The vast majority of us can have access to good foods. Take a little more time out of your day to prepare the food, to think about eating, to utilize food, because that's what's going to get you healthy.
Awesome. Yeah. Thank you so much. Food is medicine. Food is our best medicine. I love it. Great take home. All right, everybody, thanks for tuning in to what the health is. Dr. Greg Eckel, Dr. Scott Reznik. Come back every Tuesday, 2 to 3. Share this with loved ones. We want to get the word out on how to stay well in this sometimes crazy world.
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