Stop Chasing Diagnoses and Start Fixing the Root Cause with Reed Davis

Hey, welcome back, breastie. Today's guest is someone who doesn't just question the healthcare system, he flat out refuses to play by its rules. Reed Davis is the founder of FDN Functional Diagnostic Nutrition and one of the loudest voices saying what most practitioners are afraid to admit: your labs aren't normal, your symptoms aren't random, and your body isn't broken. It's responding exactly as designed. Reed has trained thousands of practitioners to stop chasing diagnoses and start chasing the why. He's controversial, he's direct, and he's not here to make anyone comfortable. He's here to make people better. If you've been told everything looks fine while you feel anything but fine, this conversation is for you. So sit down and tune in to this week's Keeping abreast. So, Reid, welcome. I'm so happy to have you here.

Dr. Jenn Simmons, my pleasure. Thanks for having me.

I've been wanting to talk to you for a while because you're really an outside of the box thinker. Some would call you provocative. I like thinking—

or worse.

Or worse. That's okay. That's okay. I mean, I think that any disruptor needs to be okay with disruption, right?

Yeah.

It's not so much what people think about us, but the fact that we get people thinking, right? Yeah. Yeah, you can use that. So give us your origin story. I mean, you know, how did you, how did you get to become such a disruptor?

Well, thanks. If I am, it's came completely honestly, you know, just almost by mistake or providence or something like that. Because I was actually in another field, environmental law, saving the whole planet, air, birds, water, trees, bees, recycling, you know, all that sort of stuff. And a number of things occurred that led me to change professions and get into the wellness side of things. The two main things were a good friend of mine's dad, who I was very close to, just passed away suddenly. And everyone said, oh, he was perfectly healthy, perfectly healthy, perfectly healthy, but perfectly healthy people don't just drop dead. And so something had to be wrong. And I always wondered, seeing all these dead fish and birds, you know, the environment cleaning up. What's it doing to people? I always thought of that. And then also I was taking my son into this wellness center. He was a high school athlete in 1999, top of the class. And so I was getting him chiropractic and things to keep him in shape. And I love the way the doctors talk there. They just were talking about innate intelligence and the body wants to be healthy. And, you know, Everything should be all natural. I'd never really been to the doctor except for sports injuries and dumb things. So I just asked for a job.

What do you mean by that? You didn't doctor growing up?

No, no, I, I never really, other than dental work, you know, I've been to the dentist and I've been for a few sports injuries and I had a, have a very well-used body, but no, I'd never been for any illness or anything like that.

So even as a very young child, like you weren't immunized or anything like that?

You know, we got, we got some, I remember Dr. Adanson, this, you're talking '65 years ago. I'm 72 years old. So yeah, everyone went and got a couple shots for this or that.

Yeah.

You know, the needle. We, you know, my brother and I went and did what we had to do, but no, I was perfectly healthy. Yeah. Outside all the time playing hockey and things. Grew up hunting and fishing outdoors and stuff. No, I never had any—

Where'd you grow up?

Just outside of Toronto, Canada. Wow.

Okay.

I'm American now. I'm American. I've been American for a long time.

Yeah.

But so yeah, just never really had no clue what the Western medicine was about. But I changed jobs. I wanted to work at this clinic where my son was getting chiropractic and stuff. And he got, by the way, 7 varsity letters in 4 different sports.

That's amazing.

Super, super. Went on to win a college championship. And things like that. Believe it or not, by that time it was cheerleading. He would switch from football. I think he liked the girls, to tell you the truth. But yeah, he just, he said, Dad, I'm not going to play football in college. What?

He goes, I have a football player.

He goes, he goes, I'm joining the cheer team. It's like, wait, it's harder. It's the 2 a days for cheerleading. He said it was harder than football. And they, Yeah. So he was just kind of a perfectionist kid.

What position did he play? Cause I have a linebacker.

He was a running back.

I can't imagine there being something physically harder. I mean, my poor kid by the end of the season is beat up.

Yes. And you know, the truth is my son is 43 now going on 44 and he's going to need hip surgery because of the the beating, you know, he didn't just do foot— he did track and wrestling and one other sport, but, you know, it's very hard on their bodies. Yeah. It's not, it's not worth it. I mean, he was a, he was in the paper every weekend, all this, all that. And it just wasn't worth it. As I look back, you know, and I was a football coach for 15 years, not his coach, but, but we were really hard on the kids. And I'm kind of not sorry, but I'd handle it differently today, just a little bit, if I ever retire and go back to coaching. So I'm at this clinic now because I talked my way into a job. And within a few weeks—

So what were you doing for them as I'm assuming that you had no medical background?

Zero medical background, never even been to a doctor, but you know, I've been through college and post-grad in law and, uh, yeah, I knew I knew a few things and I knew how to study. So this is the way I put that. You'll like this. I had a lot to learn, but I had nothing to unlearn.

Well, that, that's very interesting, right? Because as a conventionally trained doctor who made a transition into functional medicine at the age of 50, I had a lot to unlearn.

Yes. Yes. So I didn't—

medical school. Does not do us a great amount of justice. Actually, it—

Yeah, I mean, you know, we need doctors who are trained in what they're trained in and stuff. I never try to replace a doctor when a doctor's called for. And that, I think there's a good integration. But at the time, it was just alternative and traditional or standard, whatever you want to call that. So we were on the, definitely on the outside. And I'm happy about that. It was a blessing for me because as I started working there, I really got hired to run the place. I said, I can help you build your business. And, but within a few weeks, I fell in love with the anatomy, the physiology, the biochemistry, working with the doctors there and the lab guys. And the owner said, hey, Reed, if you want to, I'm going to go get my diplomat in nutrition. And if you want to go with me, you can work on the patients between your classes, which was just too good of an opportunity. I was in my 40s and I had lots of energy and stuff. And yeah, I'm changing careers and I'd done really well in the other business. So I wasn't concerned about money too much, although I still ended up making a really great business out of it. Um, I fell in love with the face-to-face with the patients. Fell in love with it. Like, I couldn't believe I got to work with people instead of fish and the California fairy shrimp. And, you know, I can tell you some stories about ridiculous things in the environmental field, but I just really fell in love with it. And so I made that my world, just trying to find out what's really wrong with people. Because the doctors would never stop reminding me that you can't diagnose, you can't treat anything, you know, you're not a doctor, You're not licensed. You're going to have— and some laughed and said, actually, Reed, we're on your side. If you can find out what's really wrong with people and help them fix it, you know, that'll be kind of a miracle. So I spent the next 10 years there, 10 full years running— and this is the big thing— I was able to run the labs, the alternative labs at the time, you know, the saliva testing, the urine testing, the stool testing, all that stuff back then. You can't be as old as you say you are, but you might remember some of that stuff. And the alternative labs, I just became an expert at that. I ran thousands of labs on thousands of people. I can tell you how I built the business and got the customers, but it was a remarkable thing. And I recognized some patterns. This is where the FDN on my shirt comes from. You know, you're somebody when you have, you know, a shirt with your company logo on it.

For sure.

And so, so I recognized some patterns. Came up with a system that just seemed to work. And then everybody started telling me I should be teaching. I never had the intention to be. We have 5,000 students in 50 countries now. So I never thought I'd be teaching, but they pushed me towards it because the system was really good at figuring out underlying. It was a step-by-step. Here's the investigative process you have to go through to figure this out. And then here's the lifestyle medicine. You know, it's all epigenetics, right? So everybody knows that now, but I was, when you say disruptor, I don't know about that, but I was just building our business, building the clinic in just one shop in Poway, California, outside San Diego. And, um, but when I started teaching, I realized then the effect it could have. That's kind of where the disruption comes in, if there's any. I think I'm just teaching people what they need to know, and a lot of people really love it. First, I'll just stop here and say the first class I had was 19 people and they wouldn't go away.

They just wanted more and more.

I said, here, okay, now you're trained. You know, it was a 2-day workshop and now it's a 10-month program to learn because I gave, here's what I do, you know, and go, go forth, multiply. Good luck with that. And that wasn't, that wasn't going to get it. So now we have the whole community and the company and the training program. 50 people work for me. So, uh, and we're all over the world and it's, it's an amazing thing.

It really is.

It's a, it's, yeah, it's just an amazing thing.

Yeah. My coaches go through your program.

Oh, fantastic.

And it is amazing. It is amazing.

Wonderful.

So I wanna go back to two things. You started off by saying that what are the doctors really treating? Because you weren't allowed to diagnose and treat, right?

Yeah.

Yes. So what, what, what are, what are the doctors really treating?

Well, you know, a typical person might come in and they have a cluster of symptoms. What I always refute is what I call the sounds like method. So they come in with this, you know what the symptoms are, and they, and it sounds like thyroid. I have fatigue, constipated, hair falling out, you know, got a little few pounds you can't lose it, and you're sad too much of the time. So, oh, sounds like thyroid. So you test the thyroid. Yep. And I always tell them, don't break your wrist, you know, patting yourself on the back because they may have low thyroid. But you, you know, if you just treat the paper, if you just give that person some agent to change the numbers, that's not fixing, that's not fixing them. You know, because you're not even looking for the underlying reasons. And thyroid's pretty easy to figure out from, from my perspective. So aside from the autoimmune and that. So there's always a reason. And first of all, I wasn't allowed to diagnose. None of the patients coming in wanted another diagnosis. I'm so tired of this diagnosis and that diagnosis. Whoever I go to, I get these different diagnoses. Some had been to 6 or 10 different practitioners and knew something was really wrong, something else. It's not that. And so I think that's the difference is we don't diagnose specifics like that. We actually can have an effect on— so I've said it this way, we don't diagnose or treat anything specifically, we treat that person non-specifically. Like every cell, every tissue, organ, and system can be affected by the right epigenetic forces, which we codified into DRESS. So you know this, if you have some of your coaches going through our program, they learn to investigate HIDDEN and then they apply the principles of healing in DRESS. Diet, rest, exercise, stress reduction, supplementation affects everything, every cell. So that way we're not diagnosing and treating a disease. We're just figuring out where improvements need to be made. I call them healing opportunities. That's a huge, huge phrase, healing opportunities. So much better than trying to diagnose a disease. What are the healing opportunities? And I found that in at least the people coming in our office who are all, you know, your typical stress-related downward spiraling complaints, they all had the same common, I'll call it a constellation of healing opportunities. Hormone, immune, digestion, detoxification, energy production, nervous system balance. You know, so, so it's a mouthful and it didn't occur to me all overnight, but I had some really good mentors, some of these science guys with the labs who, they also often weren't doctors. They weren't into diagnosing and treating. They wanted to know what's going on with the pathways or the balance between certain hormones or whatever it might be. What doctors do is, and they're fantastic by the way, at relieving pain and symptoms. You know, if there's something about the way you look or feel that you don't like, you can go to a doctor and say, you know, I don't like the way I look, or I don't like the way I feel, and they'll maybe even quickly diagnose a cluster of symptoms or as something and then prescribe agents to relieve that. And that's not a bad thing. I'm okay with that. But if that's, if you end there, then you're just in that cycle of the next thing and the next thing.

But that is where it ends. That is where it ends in conventional medicine. And you know that.

Well, you know, I don't want to be too harsh because if someone you know, is a victim of a drive-by shooting, they're not gonna call their nutritionist, you know, they're gonna go get urgent—

No, of course. There's a time and a place. And I think in conventional medicine, we're not throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Yes.

Right? That if you're shot, you need a trauma surgeon. If you have a ruptured diverticulum in your colon, you need a colorectal surgeon. If you have a ruptured appendix, you need a general surgeon. If you have a broken femur, you need an orthopedic surgeon, right? If you have a retinal detachment, you need an ocular surgeon. But if you just don't feel well, different story, right? Those same doctors and professions can't— well, they can help you temporarily by suppressing the symptom, but they're not ever helping you get to the root cause.

They're not even looking for it. You're right. And that's what bothered me. Even my very first training, I said I got invited to go to this nutrition program. I got my certified nutritional therapist. You know what it was? Supplement salesman. That's really what it ended up being. And people would, this is what frustrated me and why the labs became so important, you know, looking for the underlying causes because you can pretty much find a supplement that'll have an effect maybe if you take it enough and you take it for long enough. So people, would start a supplement regimen and stay with it for a month, maybe two. And then if they felt better, oh yeah, they think they were fixed. You're like, oh, that cured me or something. And if it didn't help, then they quit taking them because they're not cheap and they're all out of pocket. And so I learned quickly that just trying to supplement your way to health wasn't going to work. And again, that's where the labs came in. So So big.

Yeah. So you said something else. You said that perfectly healthy, healthy people don't just drop dead. And this is the cognitive dissonance that is happening all day, every day. The, the percentage of women that come to me with a breast cancer diagnosis and their opening line to me is I'm healthy, except I have breast cancer. Right. But this is, this is honestly what's happening every single day is that we have become so totally disconnected from our health.

Totally.

We don't even know what it means.

Yeah. People are walking around just with so much accumulated stress burden and they think it's normal and they're self-medicating like crazy. You know, this is why I guess that's why I drink coffee in the morning, but you know, let's not diss coffee. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not dissing coffee.

If I have to get rid of my coffee, I don't even know what I'll do with myself.

That's my vitamin C, coffee.

Yeah. Yeah. It's my favorite part of the day.

But in this sense, you know, we're—

My coffee does have medicinal mushrooms in it, not psilocybin. I'm not tripping every day.

Reishi mushrooms. Yes.

Reishi mushrooms. For sure.

I just got my mom, my mom's 95 and, um, she read somewhere that she should be doing lion's mane mushrooms for something, whatever she just heard.

Cognition.

I went and, I went and Bought her a bunch of it. Here, Mom, 95. Funny, funny as heck. But yeah, so people are finding out about that stuff, and that's a good thing, I think, as long as you're not being taken advantage of, which is the other side of it. But no, I'm with you. So we self-medicate, and we think that the amount of stress we're under, a lot of mental, emotional, but also chemical and psychospiritual kind of, and then aches and pains. You know, my thing is the wounds. Can really flare up and be painful. So that's stress. Body responds the same way, right? Cortisol and adrenaline. You don't have enough DHEA to balance it out. You get catabolic and that breaks down the sex hormones and the immune system. And then digestion goes and then next thing you know, you're, you're a mess. So what we call that in FDN world is metabolic chaos. That's our one diagnosis. Well, you have multiple stressors, all these. These influences, contributors to metabolic chaos, and they, in every person it's different, you know, just because of, we're all so different, you know, the metabolic pathways, and weak links and those kinds of things. So the same stressors can affect and will affect two people two different ways. One ends up with cancer, one ends up with irritable bowel disease, you know, maybe not so bad, but, but, yeah, so that's our one or heart disease or diabetes or dementia or, right? Like, yeah. Yeah.

It's just different versions of the same song.

Metabolic chaos. And it's, so we try to sort that out. That's our job. Just sort out as many of the influences as possible. You can, the beauty is these labs that will tell us, you can sort of track the way dominoes are falling and then come up with lifestyle or, you know, I don't think epigenetics has a better friend than FDN. You know, we, we, that's our—

Can you say more about what that word means in case people aren't familiar with it? What are you talking about when you're talking about epigenetics?

So you can't change who your parents were. You know, that's where your genes come from, about half from your mom and half from your dad, but they got them the same way. So you have 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great-grandparents, 16 great-great-grandparents. So you can go back as many generations as you want in that that inverse, you know, triangle would, or pyramid would just get bigger and bigger. Just think about 500 generations ago, you know? And so anyway, so you've got all these genes that just come from that place and you can't do anything about them except you can identify a lot of them. That's a good thing. You can map, I think, was there 30,000 genes or something?

Yeah, but only 100 of them are actionable.

Yes. So we have and that the force or the, that action would be called epigenetics. Just what can you do about it? A perfect example is my dad died of colon cancer or complications thereof. His dad died from colon cancer. So you can probably guess that Reid here has the genes for colon cancer and I tested and I do. So there's things that would, you know, I don't know if it's even accurate anymore to say turn on those genes or turn off those genes. But certainly that's called epigenetics, trying to influence. And so I don't eat any nitrites or nitrates and the kind of things that are known to affect, you know, flare that up or make it happen, you know, turn it on if you want. So yeah, that's epigenetics. And so what that tells us, I think for people who are being told it's your genetics, they're kind of being fibbed to, you know, that's not you know, you can't, if someone says, you know, you're pre-diabetic, but it runs in your family, you, you can't accept that as an answer, right? You know, it's like, you can't say, well, my mom had breast cancer.

I hope not. But yet there are people in authority positions. And I can't remember right now the name of the Harvard doctor who said that obesity is genetics. And that, that is the reason why essentially anyone who comes from an obese family is going to need a GLP-1 because there's nothing that they can do in order to not be obese. And this is a narrative that we have been suffering under for decades because that is exactly the narrative that the pharmaceutical industry wants us to adopt and believe.

Yeah. I love it. Because that's exactly what. What'd I figure? Exactly like that. If I could tell a hopefully quick, real quick story. Genetics matter, but epigenetics matter more. So my cousin, Chris Davis, up in Canada, he was a priest, looking priest. So he's married with kids. For some reason, all of a sudden he gets shipped up north to Northern Canada. He must have been a bad priest or something.

No, is he a close cousin of yours?

Yeah, my dad's brother's kid. And so, so anyway, so cousin Chris gets shipped up to like almost Eskimo land. You know, it's not quite Eskimo. It's just below that. And it was his, his parishes were two Cree Indian villages right on Hudson's Bay. Like it's cold and snowy. And so I was talking to him once and I said, hey, what, what do your village parishioners do for like, do they see a medicine man? Is that their? Kind of medicine? He goes, well, I'm their medicine man. Like he's the priest, the leader. All the weddings, all the deaths, all the births, all the everything, including a lot of suicide, by the way. He goes, I'm their medicine man. I go, no, when they get sick, what do they, what do they do? He goes, oh, they're all sick. They're all sick. They're all going to the government clinic because they're all pre-diabetic or diabetic and definitely like the highest rate of alcoholism and suicide. In all of Canada and maybe even all of the world. Why? Epigenetics, in my opinion, because instead of eating, and he said the caribou were so abundant, it would take an hour for the herd to cross the road when you're trying to leave the village or go into the village. And the rivers were still full of salmon and other fish that they should be eating. And that's all they should be eating.

What are they eating? They're eating spaghetti, aside from being vitamin D deficient, right? That's definitely, that's for sure.

Which is where the salmon and the eggs, salmon eggs and things would come in naturally. No, they're eating spaghetti and Tim Hortons donuts and fried chicken because when the Europeans came in, they went up there and they started mining. So the industry went from fur trapping and stuff. And the Cree Indians were, if you look back through the literature, Farley Mallett wrote about it. They would like run over rocks and ice for 10 hours straight and not get beat tired. They had the most abundant energy and vitality. And yeah, knowing the Cree Indians were known as, you know, tough people, but now they're warriors killing themselves and stuff. And it's because of their diet, because when Europeans went in copper mines, gold mines, they brought their food with them. And they brought government programs and things. You know, my point was just that epigenetics. So is that genetic that they're all? Yes, it is in a sense, but it's more epigenetic. It's epigenetic that the reason. Yeah.

Well, you know, it's the same thing that we see with obese families here. It's not the genetics. It's that if you're raised in the house with them and you live in the environment with them, you eat in the same way they do. You move in the same way they do. You sleep in the same way they do. And so you're doing the same things and creating the same environment. And the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome. So if you wanna break the cycle, you have to break the cycle. I mean, I come from generations of obesity, but I've never been obese because I eat different. Sorry, Mom. I'm sorry, Mom. But I eat differently than my mother. I think differently than my mother. And as a result, I look differently than my mother. Sorry, Mom. I love you.

Yeah. Yeah. That's wonderful. You're, you're taking care of yourself and it's epigenetics. You have different epigenetic factors. You're not getting that same cluster of, I, or I kind of call it a constellation of dysfunction. We can measure those healing opportunities. What do you think, if I could ask you, preemptive or the prophylactic breast removal because your mom had Breast cancer.

Yeah. It's a hard no for me.

Okay. Would be for me too, I think.

But I, I don't, I don't even think the data is there to support it in people who have a no— we, we don't have a mutation in my family despite the number of women in my family that have had breast cancer. And most of them have died of breast cancer. So it's not, it's not as if we get curable breast cancer in my family. We tend to have very aggressive breast cancers in my family. But even there, even in, in the BRCA mutation population, there, we are no longer as a profession advising for a prophylactic mastectomy because there does not seem to be a survival advantage. And at the end of the day, from my perspective, that's the only thing that matters. And when we do things like prophylactic mastectomy, we are permanently changing that woman and not for the better.

Yes.

Right. Like in the thinking that you're gonna prevent a breast cancer diagnosis or not prevent, but significantly decrease the risk of a breast cancer diagnosis, you're not taking into account the trauma that comes along with breast removal because that those scars run so deep and that woman questions things that are not taken into account when a woman gets counseled to have a prophylactic mastectomy. Is she still a woman? What will she feel like? Will she have pain? You know, will there ever come a day for the rest of her life where she won't remember that trauma? And so the long-term ramifications of prophylactic mastectomy are highly, highly, highly underestimated. And when you have a wound like that, that festers, and I don't, I'm not talking about like an infection. I'm talking about it festering here in your psyche. Right. And when you have a wound like that, that festers for decades, it takes its toll. It absolutely positively takes its toll and it negates the benefits of prophylactically removing the breast. So I don't, I don't believe in it. I would never choose it for me. I don't recommend it for my patients, but I do recommend changing the environment that your breasts are living in.

Yeah, good one. I mean, that's so great. I'm happy to hear that. And, and it's how I feel, you know, having been put in that situation. Nobody I, well, one, one gal I know did that, and then I heard one on TV. We could take this into some different directions here, but the idea is that it's epigenetics, not genetics. Yeah. You can, like, again, myself personally with the, with the colon cancer, you know, my dad, Lived to 85 and he, he, but the surgery, he never woke up from all the cutting that out of his guts, you know, the colon cancer. It was really, yeah, he didn't wake up. He just didn't wake up. I had to go pull the plug on him.

Oh, that's horrible.

Yeah, it was, you know, it was not pleasant, but that's why epigenetics are so important, man. I'm not eating any of the stuff that's known to influence the genesis of colon cancer or any other kind of cancer for that matter. You know, to the point of what we teach in FDN. It's, uh, because we don't do drugs, we don't do surgery. They're all natural, drug-free epigenetic programs, including diet. And it's actually possible to figure out the right diet for an individual. There's no one diet for everybody. Um, I'm not going to sell anything here, but rest is also highly individualized. Not just sleep, sleep's important, but resting properly, exercise. At 72, trust me, I'm not doing what I did. Even at 50, I was still doing jiu-jitsu and kickboxing. And I have, to your point earlier, you mentioned orthopedic surgery. I got to get my right hip done because of a torn labrum. You know, I spent $25,000 on stem cells, didn't, didn't help. So I'm getting hip surgery, but diet, rest, exercise, highly individualized. If you don't believe me, talk to the women who were sent to our office. This is back in the 25 years ago. There's a personal trainer down the street at the women's only gym. And she kept referring her training clients to us. They were coming in and, oh, you know, so-and-so sent me down with my back or my arm. And then, you know, after a long time, I talked to this personal trainer. Like, she goes, don't you love all those patients I'm sending? I go, I go, you know, that's not the point. What are you doing to these people? Why do you keep hurting your clients? Because you're down the street and you can fix them up. I go, no, no. I also was a personal trainer and said, no, you can't be hurting your— so exercise is absolutely not the same for everybody. Diet, rest, exercise, and the two S's in our Dress for Health success are stress reduction, which we could spend 3 shows on, just the stress reduction.

Yeah.

And then supplementation, which I know a few things about. You know, having been recommending them for over 25 years for specific purposes, of course. So I'm tickled to say that is an epigenetic program. And look, you can still get hit by a bus, right? But man, you could also—

But if I get hit by a bus, I'm going to be in good shape.

Yeah. Well, you know, was it? Yes, absolutely. So with my surgery coming up, you know, I'm working with the Pilates teacher doing— I bought a reformer, it's in the garage. I'm doing very specific things so that when I, go to recover from the hip surgery, I'll already be like halfway there, sort of. But you can think of it that way.

So is it because of your hip that you're not doing what you were doing in your 50s? Because I gotta tell you, I'm headed towards the end of my 50s and I'm still doing what I was doing in my 30s and I plan to be doing it in my 70s.

I, God bless you. Yeah, that's the right attitude. It's just that, you know, I, I weigh like over 200 pounds. I'm kind of a big guy. And in the gym on the mat, you know, it's all ages and everyone would admit that my nickname at the wrestling gym, at the jiu-jitsu gym, was Bad Santa because I was just so strong and you couldn't— there's guys with better technique, but they couldn't muscle me.

Oh God, I hope that's why, because are you familiar with that movie?

Yeah, yeah. And I don't— I guess I look a little bit like Bad Santa.

He's at the gym and Nevermind. I went to a very dark place with that.

No, the young guys, they thought it was funny. They really, they really liked me because, yeah, it was just tough old guy, right? But, but we were doing some exercises and there's a 23-year-old young lady in there and we're doing drills and I wouldn't let her throw me. I just, no way can she throw me, right? And I would just squat down and she couldn't budge me. And the instructor says, let her throw you. So I let her throw me and my back has never been the same again because I'm big and I hit my back the wrong way and that's probably my own fault. They taught us how to land and 100 times, but no. So to your point, you asked me, why don't you do that anymore? Because I keep getting hurt, you know? Yeah. Yeah. So it depends, you know, I don't do that anymore. I don't do that.

No one's throwing me. So, you know, I'm playing some tennis and lifting weights.

Yeah. I'd still like to play hockey. I was a good hockey player, skater. I could still skate and all that, but when I get my hip fixed in March, going in for that, and then I'll be back to all the stuff.

Yeah, that'll be good. I mean, you know, I love JJ Virgin's mindset where her whole goal is to be relevant at 100, right?

Yes.

And she's doing the things that are gonna keep her relevant at 100.

Yeah. We're buds.

Yeah, I know you are.

Yeah. I got her in my, I can text her anytime, ask her some mean question.

I hope not.

Just teasing.

So I was thinking a little bit about that opening statement that perfectly healthy people don't just drop dead. Do you think that's still true post-COVID vaccine?

No, I don't think that's true anymore. I think otherwise perfectly healthy people are dropping dead and it's because probably the spike proteins have done something and again, metabolic chaos and a lot of it hasn't been sorted out yet, but it will be. There's really smart people. I follow Robert Malone and some other guys like that that are really dialing this in. He invented the technology behind the mRNA. And so we'll sort it out, but no, I didn't get the jab, you know, no way. Putting anything in my body against my will.

Oh, you didn't want to be part of the greatest scientific experiment of all time that no one consented to?

You know, I thought about it for a billionth of a second.

That long?

No, I didn't really even consider it, but, but, you know, I thought it'd be nice. No, just, there's so much wrong with that.

Well, I think we're just starting to see really what's unfolding. I mean, I know in my, in my world, even though many, many people deny it, we are definitely seeing younger, more aggressive cancers. And I don't have another explanation. Can I prove it? No, obviously I can't prove it because I don't have enough time to remember to call my kids every day, let alone go about proving that the jab led to all of these turbo cancers. But I am in agreement with you that there are smarter, more capable people than me, than I, that are going to figure this out.

Yeah, they're working on it. And, um, but there's correlation. I mean, you can look at numbers. Numbers are real. And if you can get the real numbers, death rates are much higher in all age— different ages that they just shouldn't be. And one thing in common is the jab, of course. So it'll get sorted out. But no, I'm not for forced anything. Just I actually belong to the National Health Federation on their advisory board. They've been around for 70 years fighting for medical freedom, you know, the right for us to choose our own medical care.

Isn't that a novel concept? Medical sovereignty? Wow.

Benjamin Franklin's doctor, whose name was Benjamin something, recommended, highly stressed, tried to get the medical freedom into the Constitution and didn't, didn't end up in there. And he predicted that, well, if you don't, they'll end up being monopolies in that field. And that's exactly what we have is monopolies. So the, there's actually the National Health Federation anyway, and there's people in it much better connected than I, but they're fighting for the 28th Amendment would be the Medical Freedom Act. So just for any listeners who, if you have any curiosity about that, they have a magazine, Health Freedom News. It's really good. I advertise in it. I've, I've published some articles in there, Health Freedom News. It's about health freedom. It's about never again can anyone make us do anything like that or shut down schools or, you know, all the things that were done. Not to mention the death. I mean, you know, besides, you know, you didn't get to go to school, people died.

Yeah, a lot.

Depending on your situation.

And a lot of them died unnecessarily, and a lot of them died, and their deaths were attributed to something else.

Yes. Or just that they had COVID. And there's a difference between dying with COVID and dying from COVID Yes. I think that's what I kept thinking. And I remember the beginning of 2020, I'd actually just gotten married and my wife had to go back to England for visa reasons. And she couldn't come back. They shut down the airlines. Oh yeah.

Yeah.

So I went 7 months. I'd only been married for 2 months. And it went 7 months. And I finally just got her into Mexico. So I got a, you know, condo down in Mexico for 2 years while she worked on her visa and stuff like that during that COVID period. Wonderful period of our lives. I could go there or not go there. Right now we're just too busy trying to build the tribe. Like, you know, thank you for hiring some FDNs. A lot of them aren't cut up. We teach them, the model was my model where I was also in business for myself. I'm just, had years of being in business. I was already a good businessman before I became a health practitioner. These people, most of them are younger and they don't have that experience. They need, they need to work somewhere. Don't even try to start your own business. It's a pain in the ass, but you can certainly work at wonderful offices like yours and Tracy Gappens and lots of other doctors are hiring FTNs now, my graduates, because we know a thing or two.

Yeah, because you've seen a thing or two. It's a great commercial.

We can help, like, if a person has a medical condition, see a doctor, and then work around the edges of it with what you can do yourself, the epigenetic program that we do. So, and sometimes that medical, I've seen diagnosed conditions permanently just disappear by just getting healthier.

Yep.

And you know that's true.

Absolutely.

Yeah, doctors do. And then there's what they do that you need to see them for. You know, at 72, I do. You know, there's just certain things you can't, again, sort of supplement your way out of. Right.

Like you need a hip or a labrum repair.

And I tried. I tried. I know, again, it was a degenerative torn labrum from kickboxing. But I exacerbated it in Mexico running, doing a steep run up a hill, jumping over cactus, and my wife thought I was crazy.

I think you're crazy. Who jumps over cactus?

Well, just things that are in the way.

If you miss, there's a lot of downside there.

Well, I mean, anyway, I'm paying, but I, instead of just going and getting the surgery, you know, I've been messing around with every kind of alternative first. I always—

I did the same thing with— I actually, I guess it's like 3 or 4 years ago now. I finally had spine surgery. I had a—

oh yeah.

I had a spondylolithesis and I tried everything. I went to the chiropractor, I had acupuncture, I had stem cells, I did all the things.

Yep.

And when my leg was numb and atrophied, I was like, this is not working.

That's right. So did, and you did have the surgery and how do you—

I did. I did. And I have an L4-L5 fusion and, you know, I mean, it is what it is. Like I have hardware and that's not gonna change.

And yeah, well, you do have the—

but I don't have pain and I can do everything I did before except for maybe I'm not quite as flexible. I don't touch my toes.

But yeah, well, it's one of the things you gave up, but now you're out of pain.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. That's huge. That's huge. That's a better lifestyle. I feel you on that. I'm going to sound so doofus, but you know, I can't even go Walmart. Well, one of my wife calls it mall walking.

That's a problem.

You know, I get, I get 10 stores down and I'm like, oh, my hip, you know?

Yeah.

No, and I had the PRP and the, prolotherapy and the stem cells. They take them out of your pelvis, you know, or—

Yeah.

They can take them from adipose. I never had that done, but yeah. And then the exosomes and, you know, all this stuff. Hey, doctors are good. Surgery, I'm getting mine. My mother, again, 95, I'm telling her this story about all this stuff. She goes, she's a little bitty little English lady, and she goes, she goes, just get it done. The old buggers around here do it all the time. No, it's true.

And there is a time and a place, right? But going back to what we were talking about with health freedom, and you mentioned Health Freedom News, I just can't help but think about the fact that women still every single day, and this has been going on for decades, are forced to get mammograms, like literally forced to get mammograms, despite the fact that there has never been a study that showed that mammograms improve survival. Never.

Yeah.

They are forced. And if they go in and want to have an ultrasound, they're told, no, you can't have an ultrasound until you have a mammogram. And if they want to go see someone about an issue that they're having, they're told, no, unless you have a mammogram. And they are literally being forced. Literally. It's horrible.

It's horrible. It's again, this is a medical freedom thing. That's— you're right. So what about thermography? Do you think there's much? Is that okay? Or—

I mean, it's okay in that it's, it's not dangerous and no one is going to harm themselves with thermography except for the harm that comes from a false negative.

Yeah.

And thermography, just like mammogram, is notorious for false negatives. So people are lulled into this false sense of security because they had a negative thermography or they had a negative mammogram. Yeah. And even though thermography won't hurt them because it's just looking for a heat signal and it's not, it's not a radiation exposure, but that false negative leads people to exhale and maybe not be as conscientious about their health as they need to be. Now, a false negative from a mammographic standpoint is a huge problem from my, from my standpoint because These people are actually harmed. So it's more than just the false negative. It's the fact that they have been and continue to be repeatedly exposed to radiation, which in and of itself causes breast cancer. So we're using a test that causes breast cancer to screen for breast cancer. And with each test, we are increasing that individual's risk of getting breast cancer.

Yes, that, that's an interesting dichotomy, of course, and it happens all over the medical field. But, you know, back to what you were saying, this idea that we're not sure of all the harm that came from the COVID era, from COVID and the vaccine. It's doctors who will figure it out. You know, the people in the trenches who actually—

The scientists, yeah.

Yeah, you know, but doctors can make observations and they could tell if they've been around. If their, let's say their young patients are dying at a higher rate, they would know, or they should know. And they should ask questions. They gotta ask questions about why. Why are 35, 45, and 55-year-olds dying at the rate they are now versus the previous rate, the pre-COVID rate? Well, there's an answer, and you know, there's correlation, and science will follow. So yeah, we can make observations that are key and bring about that awareness. Again, the National Health Federation is some cool people. They're a little political, you know, they're super maha. And that's a good thing because there's some good coming from some of these movements. It's all about freedom, right? So, so I think it's, I'm down.

But what the amazing part to me is how maha became political. In that, why should exposing our children to an inordinate amount of vaccines be political? Why should whether or not there are preservatives and food dye in our food supply be political? Why should highly processed food be subsidized be political? Why should turning our food pyramid upside down be political. I don't understand why these things are political when they are so clearly there for the— and the reason that we're talking about them is for the purposes of public health.

Yes. Yeah. I wrote about this. We call it the FDN approach to the upside-down food pyramid. And it's got some— it shouldn't be political. Well, matter of fact, we've been talking about it for how, you know, long as I've been in the business, over 26 years now. And so it's not supposed to be. But because of the way, what do you call it, the capture of our politics by commercial interests who want monopolies, there's a capture. And that's why it's political, because they can't, what do they capture? They capture the people who set policy and the laws of the land. And it's largely a captured industry, if you will. So I think that's, that's my answer. Why is it so political? Because those who would have monopolies capture the people who make up the rules.

So the policy goes to the highest bidder. I get that.

Yeah. Or most consistent.

Why is that political in that? I just don't understand why it goes to one side or the other, why both sides aren't equally as concerned about the welfare of our citizens, why both sides aren't equally as concerned that our food supply is utterly tainted with glyphosate, why both sides aren't equally concerned that the products that we manufacture in this country are of lesser quality than the products that we manufacture for other countries.

Yes.

Why aren't both sides equally concerned with that?

You know, that's a really good question. I don't know that you would find, let's say, a mother in the suburbs who's got 3 kids is any less concerned about glyphosate in the food than someone else, someone in my position who has to advise people and teach people about these things. So I think, I think there's a lot of concern. I lean conservative, but I have lots of, um, who lean the other way. They're equally concerned. We all hate glyphosate. So the capture isn't one party or the other. It's both parties. It's everybody. They can't get a vote right now on certain things that just make the most common sense on the planet. Even this morning, I'm in my car, I was driving somewhere and radio, you know, and the nonsense and, and it was just how dumb can we get? In Congress and the Senate.

We've gotten dumb.

How dumb can we get? You know, how captured, it's how captured, dumb can we get, it's how captured are we, in my opinion, you know, like that you can't pass really easy things.

Yeah. What should be no-brainer legislation.

Yes. Um, um, depends how you feel about it, I guess. There's just influence. The one this morning, it was on the, uh, Voter ID. My dad moved us from Canada to the United States and we were foreigners and I got treated badly in junior high school when we moved here, like as a foreigner. I was actually the only kid in the school with pressed pants. No one had ever seen pants. My mom would press my pants and she'd put a crease down the middle. No one had ever seen that before in this small town in the South where we moved. I know what it's like to be a foreigner, but I also, you know, watched like you know, 50 episodes of Gunsmoke and I'm American now, you know. I mean, like, it's a hell of a rite of passage. Yeah, you know, I mean, that's if you— that's what I think all people come here from another country should watch, at least 50 episodes of Gunsmoke, and then you'll know what America is all about, you know.

And it's very funny.

And so, but, um, So anyway, so I'm solid American and, uh, you know, I see the capture and I see the things and I just keep working every day. Still 72, still working. What do you think? You know, and I, and it's not for the money because that's, you know, I've kind of got all the toys I need, cool stuff. I really love it. I love my tribe. I love my people. And, uh, really happy, Dr. Jenn, you had me on today.

I was so happy to have you. I just, let's, let's just close with what you think the future of our healthcare system looks like and what, what should it look like? Where do we need to change, shift? Do we need to start? Do we need to? You think?

No, I think it's recoverable, you know, and I think that it's the people and education and it's just happening so slowly. And again, those who would have monopolies are also very, very powerful. But, you know, we have our own lobbyists now. And so like the NHF, we, we have a full-time lobbyist in Washington. And, you know, there's, there's supplement companies that have full-time lobbyists in Washington and wherever else. We send a guy every year to Codex to make sure that our voice is heard there, that vitamins shouldn't be available by prescription only and stuff like that. So it's really where I see Healthcare depends on if we can exercise our rights or not. People want to be healthy, you know, and I don't want to be a conspiracy theorist, but there's people that don't give a crap if you're healthy or not, as long as you're consuming what they're selling. So, you know, awareness and things. I'm just about to invest in some land that will be converted. It's a farm that's going to be converted to organic. And so it takes 3 years to convert any farm that's worth anything to organic. Well, that's, that's a people and there's, you know, capitalistic, but there's money to be made there. So it's good for everybody, you know, and you spread that around, you have to have to give and all that sort of stuff. So I think, I think I'm not nailing it here for you, but the idea of if we can maintain our rights, then health, the health industry will go our way. You know, it'll be back to as close as possible to nature, eating real food, like the HHS Secretary says, just eat real food, you know, and it means something. So there could be gardens in every city that people just tend, and I know it sounds so idealistic when I say it, but there's truth to it. We gotta get real food and, you know, information to the people, and there's I have some faith in that.

What do you think our biggest obstacle is to health?

It's greed. It's greed.

It's those corporate greed.

Yeah. You know, it comes down to individuals. Corporates, corporations aren't people. They're run by people.

Well, but the food industry and the pharmaceutical industry and the medical complex, I mean, these aren't so much individuals and I don't, I don't know that they're driven by individuals anymore in that there, there is, there is an overall sentiment and, and narrative that they all share. And it's very implicit in that.

Yes.

The, the pharmaceutical industry very much wants us to eat processed foods because that's what gets them their seat at the table. And then the medical system is entirely built on people getting sick. Right now, there's no way for doctors to make money if we're healthy. Whether, whether they, whether they consciously realize this or not, there is no role for medicine with a healthy society right now until we do something as a society to reward health and, you know, to have, have an aspect of medicine that is promoting health and that the, the doctors that deal with dysfunction are, you know, a separate kind of specialty. But right now, the only way doctors get paid, the only way hospitals get paid is when you're sick.

You know, that's a good point. And I might just say on the— I'm a, I'm a cautious optimist. And I'll say that if you went to a gastroenterologist convention 30 years ago, there would not be one probiotic distributor 30 years ago. If you go today to a gastro, there's 40 of them. That's because doctors in that way that you're talking about, they're market followers. They're market followers. They're not market leaders. They're not creating health. You know, they're finding ways to, to help people. It's, there's commercial interest, of course. So the people need to be thinking and leading themselves and have, have true leaders, which you're one. I hope to think I'm one. So they need leadership that will create a different marketplace where we don't want to get sick care anymore. We want wellness care. We want to know what can we do to stay healthy and live vibrant lives. So I think that the marketplace is still a place to go to look for the answers to that question. And if people are not dumbed down as I think a lot of them are becoming. I think you know where I'm going with that. You know, we need to get them—

Wellness care right now is not happening within the medical system. It's happening outside of it. It's happening with the practitioners that you're training.

And the doctors will follow. See, they'll follow eventually, I think. There's always going to be a need. It needs to become— maybe the future is where there's mutual respect for each other's backyard. Again, if you get off a plane from West Africa, your temperature's 104 and you're bleeding from your eyeballs, you're not going to call your nutritionist.

No, agreed.

Okay, so there has to be a way to have both without, you know, one trying to overpower the other. I'm not trying to put any doctor out of business. They can be very, rest assured of that. I'd like to change the way they operate. I'd like to put some of my graduates in every office, you know, to coach the people and teach the people. Listen, and this happened to me 26 or 27 years ago now. I was in the office and I would notice people coming in a lot for their therapies and whatever they're getting. And I would say, you know, how's that working for you? Well, it's okay. I'm hopeful. You know, it's, it's, I feel better. And I started asking, you know, that they're saying, you know, coming in the office isn't what's going to make you well. The doctors hated me for that. Don't tell them that. No, they need to know what to do at home. Yes. That's what they need to know. I say every day, health happens at home with the things that you do every day. So that's, and that's where the DRESS program came from and the investigation we do, everything like that. It's what you do at home. And so it'll change to the degree that leaders like yourself and me maybe are emphasizing that and teaching that.

You're very humble, but you've, you've built an empire. It's really impressive.

Yeah.

I know virtually everyone in my space knows exactly what an FDN is, but remind us again and tell people who are listening, because what happens a lot of the time, and certainly with one of my health coaches, is that they get sick, they come to me, I get them better, and then they want to give back. They want to do more. They feel so invested in this whole process that they've just been through for the last 2 or 3 years that they want to pay it forward. And so they go and become an FDN and then they work for me or people like me. And so tell people just a little bit about this process and how they can learn more.

So FDN is just a name that I came up with, I had to name my first class. I didn't know what to call it. I was really a nutritionist, personal trainer, body worker who ran labs. And I developed over 10 years.

That was like a little bit too long a title though.

It was just so, so, yeah, so what are you going to call your, you know, okay, I'll make a class up. Assuming this is merging onto the long-form podcast now. One of the lab directors called me up and he goes, who the hell are you? I'm Reid. You know, he goes, he goes, no, no. He goes, how is it you run more than our top 5 doctors combined. I said, I don't know. It was a shock to me. I go, what do you mean? He goes, he goes, our best 5 doctors combined don't run as many labs as you, a nutritionist working out of a wellness center. I said, I just love doing it. And anyway, it came to, you better be teaching. You better start teaching what you're doing. So again, the first class, I had to call it something. So I called it Functional Diagnostic Nutrition because I couldn't think of a longer name. And, uh, And so I just got stuck with it. FDN, FDN. So it's very affectionately called FDN, FDNers. I'm an FDN and that, and it's, it's a beautiful thing. And so if you're part of the audience and you wanna, you can hire an FDN or you can become an FDN cuz it's designed that the course, it's very robust. It's, it's, you know, master's degree level teaching anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, but you'll love it cuz I, I make it fun. And it's how I learned and it's very creative and good storytelling and things like that. And you can get through it. I can teach you in 10 months what it took me 10 years to learn. And so, and there's help, there's, we have customer service, all that crap. So stuff, wonderful stuff. And so we make it fun, enjoyable, and you can become an FDN or you can just hire an FDN and you could go to fdntraining.com/keepingabreast, right?

Yep.

Yeah. Keeping abreast. So it's fdntraining.com/keepingabreast and breast like what's on your front of your body. So that's a good thing. And I really appreciate the opportunity to share that.

Absolutely. Well, it was wonderful having you and talking to you. Yeah, thanks. I'm so glad I could share this with my audience. And it was wonderful being with all of you today. And if this conversation resonated with you or you want to share it with someone, Or send me a question or a comment. We'd love to hear from you and know that I will be back next week, same time, same place. It's Dr. Jenn. Bye for now.