Beyond Symptom Management: The Power of Functional Medicine with Dr. Jeffrey Bland

Foreign.

Hey girlfriend, it's Dr. Anna Kabeca here. You know I love a good deal. If there's a sale, I'm already clicking add to cart. Look, I don't like to buy things full price. So if you're like me, this is your moment. The holidays are here and yes, chaos is knocking, but I've got your back. Sign up@dranna.com deals to get early access to my biggest celebration of the year and a little wellness gift from me to you.

You know, we all kind of make a decision each day as to how we want to be seen in the world in which we're living and what advocacy we want to support and to put our energy into. And there are many, many ways that people can do that. I think we're at a time, a nexus in society in which we're asking people to step up and. And to be present for a world that they would want their children and grandchildren to live in. And how does that manifest itself? With caring, compassion, understanding, acceptance. A belief that posterity is important. A sense that the stewardship of the earth, of which we are a species that can alter the whole surface of the earth. So we have a certain responsibility. How do we become part of the solution and not this part of either the criticism or the problem?

Girl, you've got questions. Questions about your body and how to feel good in it. About your hormones and how to keep them in check. Questions about your sex life and your whole health. Can you imagine having a best girlfriend who was also a triple board certified ob gyn? A girlfriend doctor. You could call and ask or tell her anything. Someone who could show you how to live any stage of life before, during, during or after menopause in a big, bold and beautiful way. Well, friends, I'm your girlfriend doctor. I believe you are meant to flourish and shine, to embrace life and awaken to all its possibilities. Let's get there together. Welcome to our show. Hello everyone. Dr. Anna Kubeca here. I am thrilled to be here with you and I have last been live with you with. When I was in Mexico, I was in the jungles of Mexico in Tulum. And I was having an amazing time doing nothing, doing nothing. No phones, no wi fi, no TVs. It was really, really good. I did swim every morning, every afternoon, did long walks in the jungle. Did a long 20 kilometer bike ride which, you know, maybe I'm still a little sore from. It's been a long time since I've ridden a bike that long and especially over bumpy terrain. And you Know, had a, had a, you know, quite, quite the journey, quite the experience. It was amazing. So today I have one of my mentors, one of the leaders in medicine, in biology, in physiology in the world, one of the most highly respected men. I hope one day to see him receive a Nobel prize. And he has been so influential in my life and in the lives of thousands of physicians and hundreds of thousands of people around the world. And I'm going to share with you some of my background story that led me to discover what's called functional medicine and the father again of functional medicine. And this is Dr. Jeffrey Bland, a PhD, a scientist on a world renowned researcher who looked at personalized medicine, looked at the root cause, looked at what are the underlying ways we can improve the outcome of the human. Not just to get numbers looking better, but to get people feeling better. And it is profound and is never more needed than it is today in our environment. Our medical system over the past hundred years has changed dramatically to be one from the clinician's perspective, to be into the objective laboratory value and pharma perspective now labs can help us in so many ways. But our current standard lab profiles only show signs of alarm or abnormalities or outliers where, when things have been going wrong for a very, very long time. And we know that because our labs can look normal, look optimal and we can feel terrible or all of a sudden you've been feeling great or getting along and then you get diagnosed with cancer. But all your labs were normal for how many years? And this reminds me of when I had a, I was listening to a lecture, urologist, Dr. Paul Thompson, and he was, you know, an, and is a urologist. And he said I was practicing the way I was taught to practice. I would see patients do their prostate exams, look at their PSAs and so the prostate specific antigen. And when that would in, you know, we'd watch it and evaluate. And then he said I was taking care of this one patient for 15 years and I diagnosed his prostate cancer. His wife came into the follow up visit to talk about treatments and the cancer surgery and she looked at him and said Dr. Thompson, what have you been doing all these years? What have you been doing all these years? My husband came and saw you every year and now you diagnose cancer. And that brings back to a very old wise saying that the good physician will treat disease, the great physician will prevent it. Right, will prevent it. So what are the underlying reasons? What creates this inflammation, hormone imbalance that leads to disease in medicine? We're not taught that we're taught to find a diagnosis, a myriad of diagnosis. But when we go to the underlying root cause, when we look at the underlying root cause, we can heal from a myriad of diagnoses. And me and my lifestyle and my train of thinking and my personality, I want to do the smallest thing that gets the biggest results. If you agree with me, let me know, send me a comment and say, yes, I want to make the small. I want to make the smallest change that's going to give me the biggest result. And that's when we affect the cells at the cellular level from cell to cell communication. If we can improve that, get that fluid and good communicators like you have good neighbors, man, so much improves. So much improved. You know how it is when you have a bad neighbor and you're not communicating and their dog's in your yard or whatever, and before you know it, someone's shooting someone's dog. Okay, maybe that just happens in South Georgia. But anyway, that can happen and that's bad neighbors. So that's how malignancies occur. That's a malignant relationship. When cells don't communicate well, we have malignancy. Well, without further ado, let me bring on the father of functional medicine, the dear colleague and friend, you know, again, mentor to thousands and thousands of physicians around the world, Dr. Jeffrey Bland. Hello, Dr. Bland.

Good to see you. What a pleasure. And I'm sorry for the technical problems, but thanks for wishing me up. I appreciate it.

Perfect. Perfect timing. Perfect timing. It's really great. I wonder. I was saying, telling our audience. Well, I was going to tell my audience that I first came across your applying functional medicine and clinical practice way back in 2004. I brought my son, he was breastfeeding at the time, a few months old. And I sat at the back of the conference room in San Diego at that conference and he was maybe a year old and I breastfed him in the back and you know, then gave him to my husband and his sisters and came to every meeting. That week long meeting that really was like, that's why I went to medical school. This is why I went to medical school. And I've heard that from physician after physician after physician. So I'd love to tell, I'd love you to tell your journey and your evolution. That was 20 years ago when I first met you. So there's been so much that has, has gone on since then. I would love you to share a little bit of your journey and your mission.

Well, thank you. And you know, you are absolutely the simplified person for which we started the functional medicine movement in 1991. I was hopeful that we would be able to find people like you with that level of dedication, that level of patient centered focus that would be interested in learning about systems approaches to healthcare, kind of upstream medicine. And I was told by my colleagues that I was being an idealist, that that would never really happen because once doctors get out of school, the last thing they want to do is go back and have to restudy more stuff and learn new things and even open up books that they didn't even like the first time through, that they survived through like biochemistry and cell biology and so forth. But I was pretty dedicated that I, I felt that there were people like you that would be willing, because they're so committed to patient outcome, to swim upstream, to do upstream based medicine. And you're an example of the fact that I've been proven right over the last 30 some years and we now have had nearly, I think it's more than actually 200,000 practitioners go through the functional medicine courses in the last 32 years. And the statistics I think are quite interesting because over two thirds of those are medical doctors or osteopathic physicians. And of those more than half of them are women physicians. So I think that this is, we'd like to think this is a sign of the times that we're moving to a kind of a different cadre of committed healthcare providers that are bringing a different texture into medicine in which they're interested in knowing why a person gets sick as much as what they have. What we have as an illness is one part of the story, but way before that is why we might get, as you said earlier, later stage disease. And it's more than prevention. I have somewhat now turn to be a critic of the word prevention because prevention ties us back to the disease care model. We're preventing heart disease, we're preventing cancer, we're preventing dementia, we're preventing. Those are all meritorious objectives. But if you ask a person earlier in their life, what are the reasons that they're really interested in health, it's not actually. To prevent the absence of a disease is to function at high level, to think well, to move well, to be well, to wake with high energy, to be clear in thought, to pursue the things they want to do without limitation, to enjoy the multiple things that life now provides without being obstructed physically, emotionally, mentally or metabolically. Those are not necessarily prevention. Those are functional characteristics of a life well lived. And so I think we chose the word functional Medicine to kind of depart from the view of health is not just the absence of disease. Health is a fully capable ability to address what you would like to in your life and have the resources and resilience to do that.

I love that. Health is not just the absence of disease. And I think that's exactly right. We started looking at it as what disease you're at risk for and what steps do we need to take to prevent that disease versus looking at, you know, head to toe model. What are the multiple things that are affecting you and how can we optimize your vitality, your energy? So then what does good health look like?

Oh, so when we started down this path, I think there was a legitimate criticism because people said, okay, Jeff, philosophically I might support what your objective is. So, you know, in theory it sounds good, but in actual fact, we don't have any way to really quantify how a person's wellness really is influencing their life. We can quantify disease because we have, as you said earlier, all these diagnostic criteria. We've got CAT scans, we've got X rays, we've got blood chemistries, we've got immune diagnostics, all these tools to define disease. But we really don't have a way of quantifying wellness. So wellness is kind of soft and kind of not able to be well understood. So I think when we first started this concept back to me, that was true. We didn't have tools. But that's changed. Now we have tools that allow us to define physical function, metabolic function, cognitive function, and behavioral function. Those are the four quadrants that define our overall body function. And by using those tools, the things that you do every day in your practice, the skill you have as a practitioner to evaluate your patient using both pen and paper, type of evaluations, using questionnaires, different ways of using blood, urine analysis, different ways of using the tools of today, even biometrics. I look at myself and I. I have these three different biometric devices, wearable devices that are telling me things about my body that no human being ever in the history of the human species has ever had access to until recently. With these wearable devices, when our information goes to the cloud, it's computed. It comes back to us saying, hey, you didn't sleep that well last night. What this could mean about your function is tomorrow. You need to be more restful and be more mindful. All of these things are part of changing our whole way of thinking about wellness, not just the absence of disease. And we're able to now, for the first time have numbers or quantitation to say, hey, we're moving in the right direction. Oh gee, my numbers are not looking too good. Just as if we were to be diagnosing a disease. Now we're assessing, well, the four ways.

Physiologic, behavioral, metabolic and.

Physical function.

Your physical and physiological. Okay, got it.

Things like your blood sugar and your blood fats and your inflammatory signaling and those kind of things we can measure in the laboratory.

Well, what have you seen? So functional medicine, not without controversy, right? Do you want to speak to any of the controversy? I mean there are some medical schools and systems that are recognizing functional medicine, incorporating into the programs and then there's been quite a bit of resistance. Can you address why? I mean we're all in like, we think we're all in this together to heal the body, heal the mind, heal the family, heal the relationship. Like keep people out of hospitals and off of drugs. I mean, isn't that the goal?

Well, I mean, certainly yes. I mean I. Who could really contradict that as a goal? However, and you know this, I know this, and most people know this, in between the cup and the lips is the slip called the financial incentive system. And the financial incentive system for medicine is intervention. It's expensive therapies, it's what can we do to generate more dollars. And it is unfortunately, even in the well mindedness and the objective of doctors, often subverted into how can we turn that person into a patient? Because a patient is a lot more generating of economic value to the disease care system than is a wellness person. And so I know this sounds very like soured in philosophy, but there are so many ways within our present disease care system where the dollars are spent on people making a good living at other people's expense and their health. And that's a sad thing to say, but, but it is true. For instance, if we were just to deploy the knowledge we have today, things that you do every day in your practice about how a person could reduce their incidence of blood sugar irregularities that cause the most prevalent rising concern in our culture, which is diabetes. If we were just able to deploy that knowledge that we have today across the full spectrum of health care providers, we would not have the need for so many hospital beds. We not have the need for people that are in the heroic ends of their life under tragedies, prematurely being shortened. We would not have the need actually for 14 different anti diabetic drugs that have all come onto the market because we have such a burgeoning population of people that are ill because they don't get the right information and they can't implement it in their lives. They eat the wrong. Right minds. There's programs that are not necessary. Stressful world.

Yeah. And, and it's so important. But you're saying that like if we were able to just control blood sugar, just control that, just to opt, I mean not even optimize it to the optimum, but just to normalize it. Let's say if we could control blood sugars, we would be getting rid of 11 different medications and probably half the precursor cause to every disease that we know. Pretty much, yes.

So let's go back to your question that I thought was a really important question. So why is functional medicine so controversial if what we just said sounds reasonable? My dad used to say rule of reasonableness. What? Jeff? He said guide your life on rules of reasonableness. Okay, so if what we said is reasonable, then why are we having the problem? So the conclusion I'm now coming to and communicating when people ask me this question. Well, if you Google functional medicine, it looks like it's. There's a mixed bag on how people are reviewing it. And here's my point. So this year, 2023, the Institute for Functional Medicine has been accredited by the American College of Continuing Medical Education to have a meritorious certification of it as a provider of Category 1 medical education for physicians. We're the only organization in the country that has gotten that accreditation with merit as a consequence of teaching a curriculum about health and not just a curriculum about disease. And so that's number one. Number two, we are the only organization that has clinical research and clinical outreach occurring at arguably one of the top centers of medicine in the country, maybe the world. The Cleveland Clinic. The center for Functional Medicine is the only center of its type in a major medical center that is supported by that institution and has just been reaccredited for three more years as a viable center for the treatment of people across general practice using the functional medicine model. And we're doing research and publishing that in top tier medical journals comparing head on head outcome of traditional intervention, which is working by the way, versus the functional medicine intervention, which is working better. So it's not that one is bad and one is good. They're both good, but one is better. That's the functional medicine model.

Absolutely. I mean we, we've seen it improve. We've seen it improve in my life. And I always think, I wish I knew then what I know now. Right. It could have helped so many more people. And that's why I'm so passionate about getting this information out. And it is like the resistance. And you just like, for me, it's that. I hate to be so cynical, but I mean, really, like, money means that much to people. I know that's like, probably the most naive statement someone could hear. Do you guys. You think that's a naive statement? You're listening, let me know. But really, like, like, over health, like, and I think about things that are happening now and policies that are being made and, and, you know, forced procedures. And I think that, you know, really that's. That, you know, especially when it comes to obstetrics and generational health, I'm seeing and hearing about more obstetric trauma, childbirth consequences, pregnancy, increased risk factors and, and childhood diseases that I, you know, I trained at one of the biggest inner city hospitals in the world, at Grady Hospital in Atlanta. And we didn't see stuff like we're seeing today. So, you know, it's, it's distressing. And, and so, like, from that, you know, one big platform that you look at is, number one is personalized medicine. And you have the, you know, this personalized medicine institute. I want you to talk about that. But also the big Bold Health brand, Big Bold Health and supporting immune system. I also, I don't know if you can type in the chat the link to your immunity summit that you have, because so much good information in that summit, and gosh, the best of the best, really. So well done.

Well, thank you. I, you know, we all kind of make a decision each day as to how we want to be seen in the world in which we're living and what advocacy we want to support and to put our energy into. And there are many, many ways that people can do that. I think we're at a time, a nexus in society in which we're asking people to step up and to be present for a world that they would want their children and grandchildren to live in. And how does that manifest itself? With caring, compassion, understanding, acceptance, a belief that posterity is important, a sense of the stewardship of the earth, of which we are a species that can alter the whole surface of the earth. So we have a certain responsibility. How do we become part of the solution and not just part of either the criticism or the problem. I think that the functional medicine movement is part of the broader movement of enlightenment, of people like yourself that are saying, we can only claim that this world is not as we want it to be if we're not doing all we can to make it better. And so the concept that I'M seeing right now within the functional medicine movement are individuals that have come not because they are so disillusioned with medicine that they want to give it up, but they're recognizing that the tools that they had and the expectations that they had when they went into medicine and to really be healers and to really be helpers and to really be problem facilitators to solve these problems, are being subordinated to reimbursement services to like, become skilled detail salespeople for drug companies, like giving prescriptions like, hold on. I didn't go to all these years of training this way. I learned how to sell some of these products. I went here to try to help people really get better. And I think that that construct is now a demanding construct that is changing people's attitudes as to how they want to use their lives of service. And why can't our jobs be in line with our general service as a human being that we are purposefully living to live and be present in ways that are going to make a difference not only for ourselves, but those that we touch. And that's a, you know, it's a big philosophical kind of objective, maybe sounds a little blue skyish. But I just heard a talk in a meeting I was attending last week. It was very motivating for me. It was a talk by two brothers, Korean brothers, both very, very dedicated, smart, intelligent guys that got the sense after they had developed some really great software and they become financially very successful, that they could take their software and they could redeploy it, re engineer it into helping people to measure and to manage their health. So they came out with a second company that then led them eventually to be successful enough that they decided they were going to buy a hospital system to test this out in the commerce of health care and disease care. And they said the watchword of the whole system. The only principle that they were enlisting as a driving force for the business plan is that love had to supersede everything else.

Wow.

Every decision they made had to be on the basis of how would we want our parents to be treated with love and respect. How would we want our children to be treated with love and respect? So if it ever came to a decision of conscience where we had to make a decision of either going right to left or the decision as to what was the most loving thing to do would be our determinant that was baked into our business plan. And they were recounting this extraordinary success they've had in recruiting the right kind of people that want to Live under that, in that system, and the right kind of patients that want to be in that system and the right kind of service that they're providing, which has made everybody's life better, and people can hardly wait to get to work. So, you know, these are models that derive out of motivations as to what we want to do as a human being and how we see it to be consistent with our daily activities and that it's possible.

Oh, my goodness. I want to hear more about that. Tell me where to look up that hospital system. And, boy, I mean, I think that's what I keep thinking. If I can create a couple things I still want to create, you know, our resort retreat ranch and housing for single moms with their kids to support them, and a medical retreat center versus a hospital system to help restore health, to help optimize health. And so with this, some of the biomarkers that are, like, cutting edge, that you're like, oh, we got to look at this every day. What are some of these biomarkers that, you know, that you like to look at?

Well, you know, I think one of the very exciting advancements has been made in the last few years in health and wellness is a better understanding of the immune system. That's why we got involved with big bone health and the immune system, Because I recognize that the immune system is working for us 24 7, 365. It's not just there to defend us against viruses and bacteria. It does all sorts of good in every tissue and every organ of our body to regenerate cells, to regenerate tissue harmony and to provide a resilience so that we can manage the unexpected and without ending up in a. In a pit or into a disease state. And so when I started thinking about the immune system, it's interesting because I guess I knew this academically, but I hadn't really thought about it deeply, that the immune system regenerates itself about every 90 days, about every three months. The cells that make up our immune system, those go away, and they're replaced by new ones. And so then the question is, are the new ones good? Are they as good as the ones they're replacing? Are they worse or are they better? And I think most people would say, gee, I'd like my cells are replaced to be better. Well, what's happening in our society is our immune system tends to run out of gas as we get older. That's called immune senescence. And so the cells that replace the previous cells are not as good as the one they're Running out of their ability to do the job. That's why people say that when we had SARS COV2 that the older age population was the most susceptible because their immune system was the least active against the virus. So is that a one way street? Is that just inevitable? The aging of the immune system Age in birthdays is certainly, even if we cheat on our age, it still happens. Time moves in the direction. But our age of our immune system, we have found is actually not directly tied to our age of birthdays. That you actually can reverse the age of your immune system, we call that immune rejuvenation. And so we got very committed to saying let's see if we can't make this more usable to the average person. All these things that are happening in the immune research field, some of those can be reapplied and redirected towards people in their daily lives so that they can benefit on these discoveries we're making about how to reverse immune aging. So that became big bold health. We thought it was a pretty big and bold concept. And I'm happy to say that we're getting some traction. People are involved now with our Immunity plus program and they're starting to use tools that will actually help to rejuvenate the immune system and, and turn back the clock of aging of the immune system. So I don't want to over promise and say that you know, if you're 70, you're going to be 30. But I can tell you from my own personal experience, I'm 77. That on the program that we are using that I'm committed to that I was able to turn back my immune system age by over 10 years over the course of course of about a year. So I think that these things are real, they're not just artifacts. But it does require commitment and it requires engagement. We're not asking somebody else to do it for us, we're doing it for ourselves.

No, I love it. 10 years younger. 10 years younger. I can't believe you're 77. I've known you 20 years, you haven't aged a day. So I would say 20 years. And I think that's just so, I mean that is so amazing. And committed to continue to do more. I would say there's no retirement in the Bible. And when you, you love what you do, it's not work, right? And so look at yourself.

You could use that 20 years yourself. You're, you're a model in the way you're living your lives and projecting to your constituents and you know I, this concept of retirement, I've made a kind of a joke out of it. So I am retired, I'm retiring, I'm putting new tread on my tires so I can roll some more miles down the road of life. That's my retirement.

I love it. I love that play on words. So retiring. And I put some links here, the immunity solution.com and there's actually a woman who came into my community and I, I felt really disconnect, you know, we can use AI and you know, Internet and two years of, of you know, maybe working from home, et cetera. And so a lot of disconnect for me especially, you know, your business grows and people take over pieces and you know, I, I was less connected and so I've started doing my welcome calls and welcome to my community and just very small new people to my list get an invitation. And so there were five, five, six women on my call last night and one of them came to me through the Immunity Solutions summit she heard me on. JEFF Bland Summit the Immunity Solution and this young woman, she's a 30 year old woman from Canada, Toronto. She can't leave the house, Jeff, because she has severe sun allergy, her body breaks into a rash, she has eczema, psoriasis, multiple, you know, systemic inflammatory conditions. She's been through the Toronto health system and she's like lost, looking for stuff. And this is so severe. I mean I never used to hear about these cases. But she's not alone. What, like what, how would you, how do you approach someone like this? How do you approach the situation? And why is, why are we seeing more and more, you know, hyper, whatever you call hyper inflammatory systemic diseases? I don't know what we call it.

It's actually being called pre autoimmunity. And why is it that we're seeing more of this condition and we're seeing more of that condition? It's not because women have defective immune systems. It's because women's immune systems are hyper functioning, capable of walking through the most challenging immune thing you'll ever experience, which is having another person live in your body. And it might even be a different sex. Like if a woman's having a male, just think of what her immune system has to do to accommodate a foreigner living for nine months with her intimately. And so women's immune systems are very, very sophisticated and they have of control points that are very sensitive to the outside world. I think men's immune systems, because of their not having to have those kinds of adjustments to immune accommodation, have a different Threshold. So we might consider women to be more yellow canaries in which they are sensitive to certain environmental agents and certain changes in the nature of how their immune system is responding to change. And I think when we look at things like thyroiditis and systemic lupus erythematosis and myasthenia grievous and multiple sclerosis, and I mean, the list goes on. There are 88 different diagnosis for autoimmune disease. The majority of people who have those conditions are females, particularly in the preclinical state, because they're exposed to things that are not usual and customary to their immune system. So we've junked our environment. We're living stressful lives, we're eating foods that are highly processed, ultra processed foods. And then we're asking this immune system to be able to be more resilient in a time where it's burdened with all sorts of information that it has to accommodate. And the most sensitive individuals are the women who have the more sophisticated immune system. And in fact, I always find it interesting that we tend to think of, oh, that woman is she has a defective immune system? No, she may have a hyper functioning immune system that maybe in her genetic lineage gave rise for her genes to survive, or another person that didn't have that sensitivity didn't survive. So what was a value at one point, Maybe come now because of all the 50,000 new chemicals in our environment and all the way that we're living our lives now, it's overly sensitive to that environment, which then the solution is not to give her immune suppressing drugs. The solution is to take away the stuff that her body sees as a foreigner and give her the things that normalizes her immune system's function. That's why immunorejuvenation and what we're doing at Big Bold Health is so important and why people are saying, yeah, you know, you're right. Once I got in this program, all these kind of symptoms I had of pre autoimmunity are resolving. I don't need those medications.

I think that's a huge concept. Rather than suppressing, suppressing the immune system, you know, eliminating, it's like, you know, eliminating what's bogging it down. It's that layers. I always like to give my daughters the example. Okay, one time you do this, it's just one rub, like, I don't know if you did this in school where you had the erasers, do they use erasers anymore? And you rub on your skin and you get this red mark, this red welt from Rubbing on the eraser, but a little bit. You're not gonna, you know, I'm not gonna have any problem here, but if I keep, keep doing this, it's going to be that rub that rubs you raw. And that's the layering of the many drugs starting in utero. Starting in utero and I think. So like in this situation we're saying eliminate. And, and there's a saying in functional medicine. I don't know who came up with it, but. So it says that you can't get well in the same environment you got sick in.

Yeah, that was Sydney Baker, Dr. Sydney Baker. And he has these, these rules that the whole of medicine is to take away the things you don't need and give plenty of the things you do need. That's the magic of good medicine. And because your body has a recovery, recuperative capability when it gets unburdened from the things that are injuring it and it gives, it's been given the things that it needs for regeneration, rejuvenation.

What are some of those things? So elimination, right? Elimination is, is one of the first steps getting to the root cause. What are some of the, of the key supplements? I mean we talk in the girlfriend doctor community about, you know, you have to move well, think well, sleep well, feel well, eat well, drink well, feel well, to be well. So all of those things. So in this, sometimes it's that, okay, well her, she's so hyper responsive. How do you like douse the fire of that inflammation? What are things that we can support like the crush crutches in the meantime?

Well, where I would start, because it's a big, big tuning knob, is where the immune system is clustered. 80% of the immune system is clustered around our intestinal tract and therefore it's speaking all the time to the living critters in our intestinal tract. The microbiome. So if we eat bad, we have a faulty microbiome and we have what's called dysbiosis, which then has an adverse effect on our gut immune system, which then signals to the rest of our body body. Foreigners on board do battle and now we're in a state of inflammation. So I would start with a very good dietary approach. There's my microbiome, prebiotics, probiotics. We actually at Bigwell Health have a new product I'm excited about called Microbiome Rejuvenate. That's really all related to these healthy factors that re establish proper gut immune function. And those are things that if you do that first, then you get a lot of positive benefit really quickly. Within a period of a month, people can start saying, whoa, I'm coming out of the clouds. I didn't realize that those things were having that adverse effect. So I would start with the gut.

Yeah, I think like, you know, as a gynecologist, it is, it is so true. I would tell my client, I can't get you healthy until I get your gut healthy. And so there's that, you know, like if you don't have a healthy gut, no amount of hormones that I give you is really going to help you. And so, and especially transdermally like that concept that this is something I recognized in clinical practice. I don't really understand too much why except that it relates to this, you know, the skin and the, our cell, cell function. But it's that when I use transdermal hormones, that patient that I couldn't get well, or they weren't absorbing the transdermal hormones had for sure gut dysbiosis. When I clean up the gut dysbiosis, they could absorb and, and use the hormones.

Absolutely. I think you said it. And it changes our whole detoxification ability by getting the microbiome to be our friend and not our foe. So yeah, I think it's a great place to start down the pathway to high level wellness. I totally agree. By the way, I'm going to have to break off here because I know I've got some stuff I need to get to, but this has been a really hugely fun conversation. I'd love to continue it on with you at another time.

I, I love it. I could talk to you forever. There's so much to continue to talk about and have this discussion and really grateful for the programs you've created. Functional Medicine Institute of Functional Medicine.org ifm.org is where we send clients to look for a functional medicine trained doctor. Your big bold health.com and@big Bold Health on Instagram also, you guys will find more of Dr. Jeffrey Bland there as well. How can people connect with you, Dr. Bland?

Well, they can either go to the big old health site or they can go to jeffreybland.com and you know, we have a pretty robust list of things that we've been doing over the last 30 years that people can sort through and see if there's something that would be of interest to them.

Thank you so much. Thank you for your time today. I appreciate you and I look forward to having many more discussions with you in the future. And I'm really grateful for everything you've done and the sacrifices that you've made and the battles that you fought. On behalf of all of us, I appreciate that. I honor that. God bless you and thank you.

That's how I feel about you as well. And let's, let's keep up the work. It's a lot of good things ahead of us for all.

I look forward to it. I look forward to it. Take care and see you next time. Thank you everyone for being here today on the Girlfriend Doctor show and enjoying this live with Dr. Jeffrey Bland and me. So much more information to come. And again, your re you're sharing this information helps us reach more people. So be sure to share this episode, share it now and share it when it comes out on podcast as well. And take one next right step from what you've heard today, to implement a observation you've made in yourself, a realization and help spread, you know, and make that change. Make that next right step. Just takes one one at a time. All right, everyone, till next time. Thank you. And before I forget, don't you forget to sign up@dranna.com deals so you don't miss out on the best deals of the season. And as always, join me in sipping on Mighty Maca. Plus, it helps you keep your mind, your gut, your hormones in check. It is that clean energy and willpower that you need. I call it my healing journey in a jar. Drink it hot or cold. It is delicious. Wrap those hands around your mug and cheers, my fellow friends. Here's to staying grounded, glowing and gorgeous this holiday season.

Sam.