76% of Americans Are Sick: Exposing Modern Medicine’s Blind Spots—and How to Finally Take Control of Your Healing | Dr. Chris Turnpaugh

Welcome back to Everyday Ancestral, the podcast where ancient wisdom meets modern healing through food, health, and human connection. I'm your host, James Barry. True healing requires us to look beyond the surface and listen to the deeper story the body is telling. That embodies my next guest, Dr. Chris Turnpaw, a leader in functional neurology, And systems-based medicine. In this episode, we explore what's broken in the modern medical model and what actually works for people with complex chronic conditions. This is a rich episode, and I hope you enjoy it. You really kind of bring a refreshing, in my mind, different perspective than what we're experiencing with the general medical industry. And I'm really hoping in this episode that I can really support our listeners in better understanding Not only their body, but how to kind of filter out all this noise. You know, you specialize in helping patients with mystery illnesses, for example, and Lyme and mold and toxicity, MCAS, long-haul infections, et cetera. But, and they're all skyrocketing, right? But most doctors aren't even looking for these things when people go in. So a lot of illnesses are just kind of continuing and people are kind of like, Trying everything. It's like Russian roulette here, and they're just trying everything they can. And then only after a long time of spinning their wheels do they finally learn, oh, it's, it's probably something that Dr. Turnpaw would have figured out within his first, first few sessions with you. But why is it like these are getting missed or dismissed even by mainstream medicine?

Well, I think if we go back in time, the medical profession is excellent at single-cause infections. We go back decades and decades where you had a single bacteria and that was infecting you and overburning the immune system, and we had a simple answer for it. And part of it is we throw shade a lot of times on the medical profession, but they haven't been trained really to understand these complex, newer environmental, we'll call it, environment is what you're exposed to, your thoughts, your chemicals, your foods, all that. They haven't really been trained on that. So, it's kind of an unfair ask for them to understand those mechanisms. They haven't been trained in it. So, they're good at treating symptoms. So, if you have pain, they're able to give you something for pain, but they're not really trained to why do you have the pain, or if you have something where you don't feel good or multifaceted, multi-system involvement, which is really how the body works. It's not really isolated. We're not just the sum of our parts, and they're not really trained in— they're really good at the silos, right? have the specialists that are good in neurology or nephrology or cardiology, but understanding how we got to that point, they're great in their silos. And that's acute, it's really acute care. And they're great at acute care, but they're not really trained at this chronic disease that we're seeing. I think I saw a stat yesterday that's greater than 76% of Americans suffer from a chronic disease or chronic illness. So that's 3 out of every 4 people in America in a system that wasn't trained for chronic disease and chronic illness. So, you know, I want to be compassionate. It's an unfair ask of a profession that wasn't trained to deal with the chronicity of the issues that we're having. And I think that's a blind spot. So when it gets to the house is on fire, they can bring the fire hose, but they're not really good at, hey, your house is smoldering, something's It's going to happen. You're about to fall off the cliff. Well, I get frustrated and through 30 years, I've, I've hopefully matured a little bit where I used to be frustrated with the medical profession. Now I'm compassionate to them. They're not the best at correcting the direction you're heading.

So where should someone go when something pops up, when a symptom pops up? Because I think that's really changed as well. Like I think about my mom's generation, they went to their doctor for everything. Everything and anything. And now what's happening is certain people are maintaining that mentality and then they go to their doctor and then they're just getting provided a pharmaceutical for something that probably didn't need it.

Well, I think, I think that patients more than ever unfortunately need to be their own advocates. If the house is on fire, you need a fire truck. And that unfortunately is the tipping point for many people to seek help or seek care. And that's okay to bring the fire truck when the house is on fire, but to take responsibility and accountability for our families or our loved ones or ourselves is a next step because we're not just relying on somebody else to tell us what to do. And that starts with asking the question of themselves and whomever they're seeing is, how did I get here and how do I not wind up here again? So just really taking that leap forward and saying, you know, I had XYZ and choose something simple like My child gets strep throat every year. Okay, so they may need some pharmaceutical intervention for that strep throat, but then asking the question, why is my son so compromised that they get strep throat every year? That's going to be the onus of us or someone they seek out who is willing to ask that question. And that's probably not your standard allopathic doctor, because they're doing their job of, well, I'm here to treat the acute problem. I'm not really trained into how do I build this body to be healthier long-term. And again, we're seeing that as evidence where I think it's 1 out of 3 child are diabetics or pre-diabetics. So if you're a pre-diabetic as a 14-year-old, you really don't have a disease. You have risk factors that are going to lead to diseases. So if you go to a regular allopathic healthcare provider and say, hey, I'm at risk. They're going to say, well, come back when your risk is really manifest. And so, they're not going to get into how do we get a population over the past 30 years that went from healthy to unhealthy and how do we change that? Again, not to throw statistics out, but 8 out of every 10 children won't qualify for the military. We have 1 in 3 children, at least 1 in 3 children are pre-diabetic or diabetic. 76% of the population has a chronic disease. So, this is a tipping point in healthcare in a system that hasn't been adequately trained in how to deal with these problems. So we're retrofitting patchwork and plugging holes in the dam, and that's an overwhelming ask to a healthcare profession that hasn't been equipped with these tools.

Where should people though start, you think? I mean, obviously it's hard to just say, well, only see a holistic practitioner? Because that's obviously, you can't just be black or white about it because not everyone in every field is equal and/or thinking the same. But are there certain questions or certain qualities that people should be looking for, asking when they reach out for help?

First, I would say, are you of the mindset as the patient to make change? Are you willing to do the work that is required? And we have been trained, like you said, your mother's generation was really trained to go to the doctor to take a pill for an ill. And the first thing is to say, am I willing to do the work that it takes to get healthy before you seek out a provider who's going to give you advice about what to do? And secondly, we have to be fair. And there are so many people claiming to do this work because it's the Wild West. There's really no governing board, if you will, of holistic or functional medicine or Medicine 3.0 or whatever you want to call these terms. There's really no guidelines. It's kind of buyer beware. So, I think it's really important to seek out someone who is compassionate, It's very opportunistic in our world for people to prey on people that are suffering. So somebody who has some training and some track record or has good reviews from other patients who have sought them out, I think there's a lot of ways to do that. I think just seeking somebody who has had some kind of training or is reputable or has a good reputation, it's really hard to seek out someone Because it's literally everywhere. You could, you could literally have no training and become famous on Instagram and people will seek you out and spend tens of thousands of dollars. And the only to find out that what was their background? What was their training? And that becomes frustrating because that puts a black eye on our entire profession that is trying to do this. So it is a bit challenging. And there's now more and more information coming out, and it's again, more and more incumbent upon the patient or the caregiver to seek out proper advice. But there's certain foundations that are going to be universal to all patients suffering from chronic disease. You know, we talk a lot about inflammation is at a core, lifestyle is at a core, finding somebody who's willing to listen to you and take inventory And I like to say we like to be learn-it-alls rather than know-it-alls. So when a patient comes in, we have 20 providers. And so the providers, I try to teach them it's okay to say, I'm going to figure this out even if I don't know today. So someone that's willing to work for you, one of the things we say in the office is we work for you. Like, you're our boss. The patient is the boss. And that's also lost in the allopathic model is you listen to your doctor and do what you're told as opposed to Can we have a dialogue? Can we actually talk about who I am as a person, as a patient, what I'm willing to do, what I'm not willing to do? Are there different ways to get to the same point? And so, seeking someone that's willing to have a relationship with you rather than a template is, this is how I treat everybody. And so, how does it make it really, you know, the buzz is personalized lifestyle medicine and personalized lifestyle medicine starts with personalized. So, if somebody comes in and says, this is what we do with everybody, this is how we start, Well, there are certain benefits to— everybody can clean up their lifestyle. Everybody can exercise a little bit better. Everybody can sleep a little bit better, but how does that really fit in with you? So someone that's willing to have a relationship with you and be compassionate with you, I think is important. And someone who's smart and educated, but humble. So the arrogance piece, you get a little bit of my bias in our profession. The people that are like, I am the greatest and I have it all figured out. Those are the people I typically run from as opposed to, you know, I've been doing this for a while. I kind of know what I'm doing. I'm willing to learn every day. And more importantly, am I willing to individualize it to you? So it's finding somebody that's compassionate, caring, smart, and willing to have a relationship with you and honor your wishes.

I think you're making a huge point. Not a lot of people think about but that the healing begins when a patient feels heard. That is a part of the healing process as well, not just you dispelling, you know, any, you know, well, this is what I would recommend, or this is what you should do based off of the testing. It's like, just hear the person out. And I know that's what you guys do.

Yeah. It's so important. For example, our first visit is really 2 visits, which are 3 hours, you know, an hour with a certified health coach and 2 hours with a provider. And that's super important. We teach to providers like advanced immunology, fancy schmancy stuff. And we talk about how you can change how the immune system functions just by caring. Like that actually is not, I say it's not happy talk and psychobabble. It really changes the immune system. And they've documented this. You can see how when your provider cares about you, it causes an immune shift. And so if you go into somebody and they say, well, I'm just a technician and I'm going to tighten this bolt and loosen that and open this valve. And you don't get that caring piece. You're missing the possibility to evoke a change in the immune system to help that patient recover. It's not that hard to care. It doesn't cost anything, but it, it's So powerful for the healing process, just to care.

What do you think the body remembers that the modern medical system forgets? Then this is one I'm kind of more and more exploring is, is more and more plant medicine gets explored and talked about. There's this concept that, uh, at least from this book, The Cosmic Serpent, that this scientist went into the rainforest. He was going to study something specific, but then through meeting the shamans, he pivoted to researching the ayahuasca plant. And the shamans talked about concepts that science had sort of a gauge on, but they used different language. And he's like, how do you know such sophisticated concepts? And they said, well, the plant told us. So I've been really curious to start exploring, like, well, if a plant can hold knowledge, then do our bodies hold that knowledge? Does our body know what it needs and wants. And I know there's different faiths that follow that concept, like Christian Science does. There's many Buddhism. I mean, many that follow that through calming the body down, focusing inward, the answers on what's going on outwardly will come.

I think that that is very true. And again, if we layer that on the noise that we have, so I would say that if someone was in the rainforest without distractions and in tune with themselves, not to get super spiritual, but if they're in tune with themselves, they would seek out and they'd be guided towards what might help them. And then there's wisdom of generations past, which is why shaman or medicine healers, you know, they have the wisdom we want to learn from previous generations. But in today's modern society, there's so much noise that if your body says something like, I need protein, it might be misinterpreted as I need food, and that food might be a Twinkie. And so they're not able to hear the noise correctly because there's so much noise. So your body is telling you that it needs something, and it gets kind of translated by all the modern noise I see it actually, the noise gets cleared up more in my experience when women are pregnant, because women who are pregnant tend to have cravings that are appropriate for what their body needs. So when they're hyper-focused on, I have a child growing inside me with needs. Now they're not thinking this to their forebrain, but they'll have cravings. And those cravings actually mean something They're more apt to listen to them during pregnancy than when they're working a 12-hour day, trying to get the kids out to school, not getting enough sleep. That's what interferes with that message of what is actually my body telling me to do. Very commonly, we'll share with patients, if a dog is tired, what does it do? It lays down and takes a nap. If we're tired, what do we do? We reach for, you know, some kind of stimulant, like a cup of coffee or something like that. And it's true too, of if, if I'm in an environment which is unhealthy and I'm a dog, I leave the environment. And here we say, well, what pill can I take to make me feel better in that environment? So with modern society, we've kind of moved away from listening to what our body is telling us, what we call the innate intelligence. We just know, you know, your body doesn't have to go to school to heal a cut. Your body doesn't have to go to school to know how to do simple basic physiology. And that message has been ingrained in us and we override it with modern society and all the background noise that fills what we're supposed to do.

It's so true. You know, it's funny. I think about water. You know, we grew up where we drank from the tap. Well, that's how it was when we were younger. And then I distinctly remember when bottled water came out and there was a transition period at first where people were like, well, that's just expensive water in there. It's a trick and yada yada. And then now we're at a place where people are scared to drink anything but bottled water or filtered water. And so in a sense, this marketing machine, this modern society, it's not only controlling our choices, it's directing our choices, but it's also instilling this, this kind of fear base of just being in sync with nature in many ways.

Well, and a lot of these things are poo-pooed by scientists, such as, pick on an easy one, earthing or grounding. Oh, that's crazy.

Is it?

Because we've done it for thousands of years. Like, really, this is what our bodies have done. Why is it crazy to think that my foot touching the earth is wacko when that's how we got where we are? And how is it that I had a homeostatic relationship with my environment for all this time and now we have to be afraid of it? And there's some wisdom in that because we've destroyed a lot of our environment, but simple concepts that really make sense if you boil them down to what's going on, that aren't expensive, that you can do, Which is how we survived as a species for thousands of years. And now we're told, well, that's crazy. That's just crazy. So if we can get back to listening to that inner voice, that innate intelligence, and do what our bodies are listening to do without all the background noise, that's really the foundation. So a foundation again is what is your environment and is your environment emotionally toxic? is your environment. The number one environmental thing you can do other than breathe the air is the food you put in your body. So, I think we have to start asking the questions, what am I exposing myself to? You brought up mold and Lyme. Those are exposures, and they're traumatic exposures that the body has a difficult time with. But, the number one exposure we have is the air that we breathe. And, the second exposure we have is the food that we eat. And, leap over those and look for what pill can I take for the symptom. And that kind of goes back to what are you willing to do? What steps are you willing to do to right the ship? And if that ship went off course, I do this with patients. If the ship goes off course at age 4 and we're talking to you at age 44, you're further from, it's a longer road to get back. If you go off course at 44 and you come in at 44 and a half, you have less Time to come back. So allowing the body to recover with the amount of time of the exposure insult is also important and giving the patients permission to heal over a period of time. So a phrase I use a lot is we have to be directionally correct, even if incomplete. So if you're out here and we change direction, we're directionally correct. We're not complete until we get back on the road. But changing that direction, and that comes with subtle changes, little pivot points, allowing the body the time to heal and giving the permission to the patient and being fair and honest with them. This isn't going to get better in 2 weeks. This isn't like an antibiotic for strep throat. This is, this is a chronic insult that's taken a long time to get to this point. And yes, we want to see objective data, blood work, labs, things like that improve. And subjective data. We want to see the patient improving, but laying it out honestly that this is going to take some time and to get you back to righting the ship and addressing how you got to this point. And then reinstilling in the patient that when that background noise is cleared up, those instincts are more accurate. You have a more accurate compass when you can listen to what your body needs. So. You know, there's a lot of concepts out there, such as like, I should fast. I should eat 6 times a day. I should do this. I should do that. That's again, noise to the body, telling it what to do, as opposed to honoring the body saying, well, let's get to the point where you can tell me what you're experiencing. Children do it all the time. They chew on the wall because they have mineral deficiencies. So all your kids are eating everything. They're eating everything. Because instinctively, they haven't had that background noise for 40 years to tell them you shouldn't eat paint off the wall. But what they're doing is they're craving minerals. Pica, you know, in the South when they would eat like dirt pies, because they needed the minerals, that wasn't some medical research paper. That was pregnant women craving minerals. So, they would eat dirt pies.

It is. It's really fascinating because a lot of times in the primal or carnivore or animal-based Sys— you know, communities, they'll compare the diet to, well, this is how an animal, a predator in the wild would eat. So they're comparing it. But I look at my dog, for example, we feed her raw food. Okay. But when she's out for a walk, she's looking for specific grasses to chew on. She's searching for certain minerals and nutrients. She sometimes does like dig at the dirt and eat some of it. Well, what does that tell you then about the human body that in terms of what is our ideal diet?

The ideal diet is specific to the patient, right? So, it's not like there is an ideal diet. There are certain generalizations, but an ideal diet is different when you're on the path. An ideal diet is different when you're off the path. So, is your diet for recovery? Is your diet for healing? Is your diet for optimal performance? I think those are not all one and the same. And I think To your point, every vet knows that when your dog eats grass, there's something going on. And usually it's the, usually the dog is fighting something or looking for something or trying to heal something, but that dog hasn't had all the background noise of, oh, run to the vet and take a pill. It doesn't have that information. So I would say to answer your question in a roundabout way, what's the ideal diet depends on the patient. So, or I could generalize what's the ideal diet for a healthy person? What's the ideal diet for a sick person? What's the ideal diet for someone from Scandinavia? What's the ideal diet from someone from Africa? I think there are differences. And, you know, these different types of ancestral backgrounds have some commonalities and have some differences. You know, we talk a lot about, for example, like lentils and things like that that are really from Africa and they've incorporated into our diet. And if you're from Scandinavia ancestrally, you haven't seen that for thousand years. So, we say, oh, these are good for you. Are they good for everybody? I think there's some common ground amongst all races and all backgrounds and all ancestry, but I don't think I would be one that says this is the optimal diet for everybody in every condition. I think there's times and places where you have additional needs for this type of protein, carbohydrate, fat, And that will vary based on who are you walking into my office. So what state of health are you in? What's your body? If you've been deficient in something for 25 years, you might have a different diet than somebody who has been, you know, somewhat optimal for 25 years.

It all makes sense. And yet it really is confusing when you lay it all out, if you think about it, because with globalization, with, with industrialization, We are exposed to, as you mentioned, foods from all over the world, out-of-season foods. And then technically my genes are, you know, I'm a white European mutt, but I live in Massachusetts right now. Right. So where do you recommend the person start with the idea that we are completely out of junction with probably how we should be eating ancestrally? So where do we start in this? current society?

You know, I'm going to give you what I said I don't like, which is a template. I think it's important to get the concept of meats, fruits, and vegetables. And if a patient is used to eating McDonald's 3 times a day, that is such a cognitive shift to say you're going to eat meats, fruits, and vegetables. I like to take it to the next level. Is it clean meats, fruits, and vegetables? Is it the meat you're eating? Are you eating, you know, grass-fed, organic, happy cows? Are you eating nose to tail? Are your fruits organic? Which fruits are they? If you're living in Massachusetts, why would you be eating tropical fruit every day? That doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I think that if you're eating a broad array of vegetables and bitter foods and quick diatribe, I'll give you 2 concepts. We digest our meat first, right? So, people say we should never eat a salad before we eat our meat. The order's backwards. We should be eating the salad at the end of the meal. But, if we go back 500 years, the salad was bitter. It was bitter leaf and bitter lettuce. So, you're actually— your salad is really getting your herbal bitters in, which jumpstarts the digestive process. But, if you're eating iceberg lettuce with some high sugary salad dressing, yeah, that's not the way to start your meal. But, if you're eating some bitter lettuce in a small amount of it, you're getting your herbal bitters before you eat your meat, which jumpstarts the digestive process. So again, the concepts have really been lost and we refine it down to where you should eat your protein first before you eat your leafy lettuce. That makes some sense. But, if you say, let's broaden out, well, what if I eat a small bitter salad with bitter leaves in it, what would that do? That would gimme my bitters before I had my meat. So, I think meats, fruits, and vegetables is where I would start as a concept. I think those meats, fruits, and vegetables should be clean. I think your meats should include not just the same cut of meat all the time. Meat will concentrate toxins 11 times greater than the plant. So, a lot of people eat plant-based because it's a lower toxin burden. And I don't think that's correct because that is going to deprive them of all the healthy nutrition of the meat. But, if you're eating a meat and it's not clean, you have to also realize you're putting a toxic burden on the body. So, that's where clean meats, clean fruits, clean vegetables, how you're getting them. Are you eating tropical fruit living in the north when it's not too hot? Watermelon grows in the summertime. It's a high sugar, high water food. That may make sense if it's 100 degrees outside. If it's -5 degrees in Massachusetts, should you be eating watermelon in February where you're not burning that information off and you're not even expending that much water and sweating? Because that's what would happen on July 4th when you're eating watermelon.

You mentioned earlier that there are some basic low-cost things people could do that are in alignment or closer to ancestral concepts that will help to kind of help offset that, the modern society impacts. I would love to hear some thoughts because, because that is one concern I have is that, that there is this prevalent kind of message that we're getting, particularly from biohacking communities, from influencer communities, without them saying it, but ultimately they're saying to be healthy, you have to be wealthy because they're suggesting so many expensive protein powders and pills and so many devices. And it just, at the end of the day, it's just very expensive. So what are some things that are low cost that people can do to help to realign?

I think that if we go with the concepts of meats, fruits, and vegetables, and you can get them locally grown, and it may cost you a little bit more to get organic, I think, you know, a common thing we talk about is the Dirty Dozen versus the Clean 15 from Environmental Working Group. So, the Clean 15, they're fruits and vegetables you could buy that don't have to have the additional cost of organic. I think some things are very important, like strawberries and blueberries, that they're organic. And I also think that not everything has to be super expensive, and it may cost you a little bit more, but what is the cost of being sick? What is the cost of not feeling well? What's the cost of what they call presenteeism, where you're not really present as much as you could be, and illness? If we're going to save for our 401s in retirement that a lot of people do, are we willing to invest that today so we can enjoy that? One of the statements that I'll make to a patient is I say, if you're not willing to do some of these things and spend a little bit more, we're not talking about you have to be wealthy to do this, but If you're not willing to sacrifice a little bit more now, don't put money in your 401 because you're not going to be enjoying it when you retire. People say, I can't afford anything but ramen noodles, but you have a $400 a month cell phone bill. So what are you prioritizing? You know, convenience over health. How important is your health to you? And so I do think it's not terribly expensive to get a good night's rest. It's not terribly expensive to put your feet on the earth. It's not terribly expensive to go for a walk or move. Those are all free. And it's not terribly expensive to cut out highly processed refined foods and go back to meats, fruits, and vegetables and focus on what's cleaner than not cleaner. I think that you could go to a butcher or an organic butcher and get the bones that nobody wants and make your own bone broth for low cost. Like, so I say yes, if you want to go out and purchase the ultra-healthy things in pills, potions, or lotions, it is discriminatory towards the poor. If you put a little bit of effort in, which puts the onus back on the patient, what are you willing to do? It can be done relatively inexpensive and directionally correct, but incomplete. It costs a lot of money to go to McDonald's 3 times a day. Can you start to prepare your meals at home? And so, if you're feeding a family of 4 or 6 on fast food or dining out, can you do that at home? Can you put a little bit more effort into home, your home cooking where you know the ingredients, you know what's going into it, and are you willing to save money by not going out? And then, your grocery bill may go up a little bit, but your overall household income may go, or expenditure may go down because you're not eating out. Those are the pivot points. So, if you focus on meats, fruits, and vegetables, cleaner is better. Eat out less, you know, instead of meeting people out for dinner, invite them over to your house. Then you get community socialization. I think there are some simple concepts that if we take them at the minutia level, then they're going to be expensive. You have to live this way and buy these things and take these potions and eat this certain protein powder. Okay. But can we do it a different way? You know, we're at the wealthiest point we've ever been in our lives. in history. But how did it happen 100 years ago, 200 years ago, 300 years ago, 500 years ago? So, it wasn't cost prohibitive to eat healthy 500 years ago because pretty much everything you did was eat healthy because you ate meats, fruits, and vegetables. You ate fresh, you ate what was in season. You didn't throw away pieces of the animal that, you know, well, I'm only going to eat the loins, the tenderloins. I'm going to actually eat everything. And then you don't have to focus as much on what's missing in my diet. Well, it was all provided to you in nature, but we stopped listening to that message and we're not listening to nature. So, you know, all the way down to boiling the bones and getting some bone broth and getting the marrow out of that. And, you know, you didn't just eat the really great cuts of meat, you ate them all. And you probably pivoted sometimes because, you know, you go back a couple thousand years, maybe you didn't kill an animal that day. So how did you exist? So you have metabolic flexibility to sometimes eat certain foods, sometimes these other foods. So getting back to ancestral diets to me is you probably wouldn't be eating something that hasn't been ripe for 5 months and eating that. What stores, you know, what we could store long would be, again, your proteins, you could store a little bit easier. You could either smoke 'em or cook 'em or dry 'em or salt 'em. You could do a lot of things with it, but you weren't eating a watermelon in February. That was never the case.

Right. And to your point, you weren't, you weren't always eating ribeye. You know, you were eating the whole animal, the organs, the bones, the, yeah, you were utilizing the whole animal. You have a very unique perspective that I don't know if everyone is aware of, but you serve A lot of the Amish country, and I know that came about during COVID because they didn't have the resources that everyone else did because the hospitals weren't serving them. You created programs to support them, and now you're more and more working with them. What I find so fascinating about the Amish community, though, is that they do seem closer to ancestral concepts and nature. So what are you seeing? Would you say that they are closer to nature in kind of simpler times? And then The second part of that question is, what are you seeing health-wise in them that, that's different from other people that are not Amish?

Yes, they are closer to nature for sure. And 2, we, we exploded seeing them over COVID, but we've served the population since the early 2000s.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, we really worked with the, the plain community, we'll call it Amish, Mennonite, River Brethren, German Brethren, the plain community. For a long period of time. And there, they all have their own gardens. They typically have someone in their community that raises their meat. And we saw a shift in the, probably 15 years ago where some went more chemical and some stayed traditional.

Chemical in what way? Like agriculture-wise or what do you mean?

Yeah. Agrochemical. So, instead of furrowing the fields, they were spraying the fields and some stayed true to tradition and some didn't. And we saw like this really two-tiered system and they're pivoting back largely because they were aware of the health was suffering from all the agribusiness and agrochemicals that were being used. You know, it's not a perfect system, but they get up, they move, they work, they eat real food. I had a patient a couple years ago and she canned 141 cans of ham and bean soup. And I said, wow, what are you going to do with that? She goes, well, that's what I'm going to eat all winter. Like that's, that was their food. So one of the things that was kind of fascinating, if there's a food shortage, they're not going to have a food shortage because they're still growing their food in their backyard and they have basements with their canned food in them. Now they also love their desserts, love their baked goods. They're famous for shoofly pie. So it doesn't come without the taste buds have kind of won a little bit of the war because they always have a baked good or a dessert to go with it. It's less problematic because they do work hard and they're spending the energy. They're not known for desk jobs. They're known for farming and carpentry and working jobs. So, I think if you look at the whole 360 view, they'll say— one of the questions they say is, how's your energy? And, I have a 62-year-old Amish woman in particular. She goes, well, I'm kind of tired. I said, well, tell me about your day. Well, I get up at 4:30 and I do all of this work and by 9:30 I'm tired. I'm like, well, that's, that's a normal physiology. Yes. You're really working hard. So kind of putting it all together. And again, not to get too esoteric, but they're in touch with the earth. They grow their own food, so they move well. They are typically exhausted from the work they do, which is normal. So they sleep pretty well. So they sleep well, move well, and eat well, which are core concepts. They have community, whether you like it or not. They have their form of community. They have zero nursing homes. They don't pay Social Security because they prove to the government they don't need Social Security because they take care of their own. Nobody dies alone. Everybody, whether they're a single female who's 50 or 60, they're all taken care of. So there's a sense of community. The Amish haven't really quote unquote evolved like modern society. Well, there's a lot of benefit to that. There's some drawbacks, you know, it's, you know, if they're going 12 miles away from their home on a horse and buggy, it's an hour where we would think it's 5 minutes. So there are some, okay, conveniences, but they've chosen to say, we're going to stay as true as we can to ancestral ways. And we see much lower chronicity. Or chronic health conditions in that population. Do they exist? Of course they do. Do they have some challenges with marrying their first cousins, second cousins? Of course we do. There is some genetic uniqueness because it's not a population-wide concept. It's a community-wide concept. So they have some uniqueness to them, but we're not seeing in those communities the same chronic diseases that we're seeing population-wide.

Yeah, it's fascinating having your foot in both worlds. I really do think that you're privy to a perspective that most, most don't have. Now you still do, of course, lab testing, but you use them differently than conventional medicine does. How do you balance data with the deeper story behind someone's illness?

Well, one of the challenges I do have is I do have a foot in both worlds, right? So we, We're not the office that won't prescribe a medication. There's a time and a place where we'll prescribe medications because again, the house is on fire. So we call the fire department. That's a medication. So we do use medications. And I know some in the holistic world, they reel against that, but there are times and places for extreme intervention in acute crisis that is necessary. And I, frequently say there's a little hospital down the street you may have heard of called Johns Hopkins. So, so I need, I can't just be all out in left field. I need to substantiate what I'm doing. So we'll use quite a few laboratory findings and objective data to really pivot our direction of care and substantiate improvement. 2 things have to happen in our office. The patient needs to feel better. And the markers need to improve. If the patient feels better, but the markers don't improve, it's going to come back. And if the markers improve and the patient doesn't feel better, they don't care. They're here to feel better. So if we have to co-manage, which we do a lot of the, we'll call them the regular population, and they're seen at a facility such as a Johns Hopkins, we need to be able to have dialogue for the best interest of the patient. So we can say we ran a these markers, and a lot of times markers are run that are confirmatory. So you run a marker to confirm there's a disease. And there's a lot of times markers are run as predictive markers as to what's going to come. Allopathic medicine is not the best at predictive markers because they're trained to treat conditions, not potential conditions for the most part. And so we're using these markers as predictive markers as to what may be coming down the street. And that we cast a very wide net, run an awful lot of markers to see what might be coming down the road and take interventions to prevent you from going over the cliff. Another phrase we use is it's much easier to stop you from going over the cliff than it is to pull you back after you've fallen over the cliff. So the lab markers will tell us, help us to predict, are you close to a cliff? Are you headed towards a cliff? Is something coming? Is the train coming? Do you only jump off the track once you get hit by the train, or do you see the train coming and say, I should probably do something about it before the train hits me? So yeah, we're very lab heavy. We do a lot of labs to kind of use as confirmatory as to what's going on with our suspicion, predictive to see what might be coming. And then objectively, are we making improvements in ways that maybe the patient doesn't feel right away? But we know we're on the right track.

Given that part of this conversation is supporting people before there's, you know, a fire. And as you mentioned earlier, it's really challenging because most people wait to get help until it's at that point. So how do we help people deal with things before they're truly an issue? Is part of it like, is there a standard kind of like, hey, every year you should be getting tested and what tests should you be doing? Like, you know, we live in this society where there could be stuff going on and you, you just, it's subtle sometimes. You know, the inflammation shows up. Sometimes it's neuroinflammation, right?

Right.

So sometimes you don't even realize that, hey, this is something that could become something. Like a lot of people don't recognize, oh, skin issues, for example, are an indication that something else is going on. They just think, oh, well, this is normal. You know, they, they, they've normalized chronic illness, right?

Right.

The mentality of it. So how does someone get out of that thinking and what should they be doing to kinda stay on top of it?

Well, to circle back to even our original part of this dialogue was if there's so much background noise, are you really aware of what's going on with you? Right. So I'm getting a little bit tired or I'm a little bit older. You have patients come in and, well, I'm not as young as I used to be and they're 32. I'm like, well, or I had a patient once I said, do you get headaches? She goes, not more than usual. I'm like, how many is that? She goes, about 5 a week. I'm like, you've become normal to that. I said, I haven't had 5 in my lifetime. And so we normal, we do normalize because Because it becomes our norm. So, optimal wellness, I think we've lost touch with what that really is. I do think my children all get labs at least once a year. I'm going to say twice a year. I'm weird because I have phlebotomists on staff. I run my labs every single month, and that's excessive. It's excessive. I know it's excessive. I tell patients, some guys like to tinker with cars and fix cars. And so, they— I like to tinker with physiology. So, I get my labs Every single month. And I try to check them, but I do think it's wise if you don't have complete awareness of yourself, which I would argue that very few, if any of us do, is there another way to look at that? And it could be something as simple as if your spouse is with you, I asked the spouse some questions because maybe the spouse is seeing something that the patient isn't seeing. And the same is true of lab work. You weren't aware of this, but I can see it coming. One of the aha moments is people aren't aware many times that they have cancer until the cancer becomes symptomatic, but it's been brewing. It didn't start as a bump in the night. It's been coming on for periods of time. And how do we predict that? How do we look for diseases that are coming? We do regular maintenance on our teeth, on our cars, And we're not even looking for potential problems in our physiology. And if 3 out of 4 Americans have a chronic illness, then yeah, I would say at best, at best, which I would disagree with, the 25% that don't should still be looking for it. But certainly the 75% of Americans need to be taking preemptive steps and looking at what might be coming down the road before it gets to a full disease state. So, I'm a big fan. Here we have a program called Livegevity instead of longevity. It's how well you're living. And those are patients that, again, I think I'm doing pretty good, but I want to make— get a baseline of what's going on. And so we do that all the way down to people that come in very sick, 13-year-old in a wheelchair that nobody's figured out. And there are different levels of concern, but we still want to evaluate someone who thinks they're doing well. So, do we have optimal movement, optimal sleep, optimal nutrition, optimal blood markers, looking at what might be coming down the road? Heart disease is another one, right? Starts in your 30s and kills you in your 50s and 60s. Well, if you could identify that at 35, it's a much easier recovery. And you're not going to have a symptom, early coronary artery disease, until it becomes an issue. 40% of the time, the first sign or symptom of a heart attack is death. Well, let's not wait for that symptom to come on. Let's do something about it.

So blood tests would be the test you would recommend if at minimum once a year.

It's the easiest entry point. If you do expanded blood work and you have insurance, it's typically covered. So it's a low threshold to entry. There are great tests that are specialty tests that can be done, whether they be stool or saliva or specialty labs that run specialty things. They're more out-of-pocket, but at the very least, a standard yearly checkup of generally accepted inside-the-box insurance-covered labs should be expanded greatly, in my opinion, on what your average physician does. They're not looking at inflammatory markers. They typically look at maybe your blood sugar, maybe your A1C, maybe your cholesterol, but they're not looking at other physiology. And they're also not interpreting those with risk factors of 30-year risk factors versus 5-year risk factors. So, you can get a blood test back and typically they've done it, your 5-year risk factor is low. But if you extrapolate that out to your 30-year risk factor is incredibly high, and if you're 30, well, it matters. You know, if you're 90, it may not matter as much, but if you're 30, it matters. So, I think a wider net of predictive markers to allow the patient, give the patient the option to pivot back towards a healthier physiology and lifestyle is important. And I would say at least once a year. Many of my patients, even when I say, you know, I've been doing this 30 years, so I'll say to a patient, all right, you're great. Let's check you in a year. And many times they'll come back and say, Do you mind if we check in in 6 months? I just want to make sure. And I'm like, sure. I want to be ethical. If I don't need to see you in 6 months, I'll see you in a year. But a lot of times the patients will choose because they've been educated. I like to take a look at what's going on. And many times I'm an adjunct to their primary care provider. So sometimes I work well with them. Sometimes they don't like me at all. I don't care because I work for a patient. I don't work for the other doctor. So, I would encourage everybody to take inventory of what they're doing in their life, how they can improve the things that are free, and cast a wide net on some markers that are low cost to entry. You know, your insurance typically covers them, and see what's coming down the road.

And, you know, you could argue too that, you know, you get tested, you do all these things, and the doctor says, okay, I'll see you in a year. And your instinct is, you know, let's do 6 months. That instinct is part of your journey and your process of getting more in tune with your own needs. And sometimes we don't need to know why we're asking for it. We just need to listen to that instinct.

True. You're saying, well, I know you tell me I'm fine, but I don't feel perfect. And one of the two things is maybe I'll catch it in 6 months that I could do. The other one is, Maybe the doctor wasn't in tune with you and didn't even run the right test or didn't take the opportunity to go a little bit deeper into that. I think both of those are true. I think that one of the things that is like nails on a chalkboard to me is if you go to a regular PCP, allopathic, and you have 2 complaints, I got a headache and my foot hurts. They're trained now in the, in the insurance model. That's 2 visits. I can't talk to you about 2 things on the same visit. So if you come in and said, yeah, I went and my shoulder was really killing me. And by the way, I have some bladder issues. I'm not like, well, that's 2 visits. So you have to make another appointment to talk to me about that. I'm like, that's such a disconnect. You know, we're not the sum of the parts. They just look at individualized pieces and they're certainly related. The body keeps the score as far as if this is upset over here, it's affecting this over here. They're not individualized compartments. And so It's again, a flawed system when you say, I can only talk to you about one complaint. What if your complaint is, I generally don't feel good? Instead of saying my foot hurts, I'm inflamed. Where? All over. Well, now you, now they're like, I don't know what to do because now there's so many different complaints. So I think that listening to your body, becoming more aware of your body, and then the person that is interpreting what you're saying, i.e., the provider, the physician, having a wide enough net and willing to go deeper, willing to work for the patient to say, the test that I did didn't capture that. Is there nothing there? Or did I not look under the right rock? Am I willing to go deeper? Am I willing to look at what might be going on? Am I willing to be vulnerable and say, I don't know about this. Let me look into it. Let me go a little bit deeper. Let me look and see if you're having a reaction to something that isn't really something I was— are you having a food reaction? Which 20 years ago, everybody thought was crazy and now is becoming more accepted. So.

All right. Last question, and then I'll release you. I know you're busy. If you could wave a magic wand and bring one ancestral principle back into modern healthcare, what would it be and why?

Ooh. If I could change one thing. Well, if I kept it in vein with the conversation and I'll, I'll try and dialogue a little deeper. Is, can we develop that listening skill to our body the way that it was generations ago, where you can become more aware to interpret, I need to do this, I need to sleep, I need rest, I need to eat this type of food. I know that's kind of a very broad rainbow wish, but If we could listen to what our body is telling us to do, I think we would go so far in what should I eat? When should I sleep? How should I move? When should I move? Should I interact with people? Should I socialize? This is mental health. This is physical health. This is, you know, getting back to all those things. So I wouldn't be wearing a dress shirt, right? I wouldn't wear a tie. I would listen to my body and say, it wants to move. When it wants to move, I would move. When it wants to sleep, I would sleep. When it wants to eat, can I listen to that voice and say, I'm hungry, what should I eat? A great example, and I could spend all day with you, but a great example is someone says, I'm hungry. And if you give them a food, like, I'm not hungry for that. Well, then you're really not hungry. You're craving something, but you're not hungry. If you give a starving child food, they will eat it. Be more self-aware. And that's really challenging to do in today's society when we're bombarded, where, you know, you're attached to everything every minute. So kind of stepping away and taking pause. If I could choose one thing, it would be become more aware of the information that our body is processing to make better decisions about what we could do.

I'm laughing because we say that to our daughters all the time. Like, They say, oh, I'm thirsty, or I'm hungry. And I say, okay, here, here, here, drink this. Like, well, no, I'm not hungry or thirsty for that. I'm like, well, then you are not hungry and thirsty.

And I do it in my household too. I'm hungry. I'm like, here, have this. They're like, I don't want that. I'm like, well, a starving child would want that. So, if you're really hungry, is it a hunger or is it a craving? And then I'll say, if it's a craving, what are you craving and why? Like, I'm craving this. So, are you craving carbohydrates because your serotonin is low? Are you craving fats because your dopamine is low?

I know my kids think become crazy.

Are you craving this because you're craving minerals? Are you craving this because you want protein? And again, I see that commonly in pregnant women because they're more in tune with what they want. And the other thing is we use the word need in my household. I may have told you this before, but I need this. I'm like, you don't need that. Starving children need food. You don't know what need is. And if you became more in tune, you would say, what's a want? What's a need? What's a hunger? What's a craving? And so, yeah.

Thank you so much for your time. I know you have a book coming out. When is that coming out? Next year or this year?

Hopefully. I have a little booklet I'll call. It's called The Handbook of Health. And, it's just the basic principles because I was lecturing one time, like, if you have a hand, you can understand health. It's how, when you eat, how, when you sleep, how, when you move, what's your stress levels, what you can do to support or supplement that. And then, it's also a hand because I think community is important. So, it's the hand that reaches out when you need help, It's also the hand that reaches out to give help. That's a little booklet, but there's a book. It's more scientific that I've been writing for 12 years now. And hopefully in the next few months, I'll have that out. And I have a term that I've been using forever, so I hope nobody steals it. It's called I don't feel good-itis. So it's not really a diagnostic code, but people say, what do you do? I say, well, I work with patients who have I don't feel good-itis. And like, what's that? It really is any reason why you're not feeling optimal. And so we go through in the book a lot of basic concepts and how you got off the path of feeling optimal and returning from I don't feel good-itis to I feel good. The challenge for me is, as I try to be a learn-it-all, it never stops. So every time I think I'm done, I'm like, oh, I just have to add one more thing. So my staff is like, just be done with that part and write another book. So I have to finish it and say that was good enough. And Yeah.

Yeah. You got to get that out there. Your, your, your information is crucial and needed. So anything you can to get, just get it out there is going to be important and everyone would be better for it. Are people able to work with you all virtually?

Yes. A couple caveats we say is if you're out of state, we can't prescribe because the license doesn't allow us to prescribe over a state line. A prescription drug, but everything else we can do across the state line. So, we have patients in every state and 13 countries around the world that we'll work with through telehealth. We have a secure telehealth portal. So, we work with patients all over the country and actually most of the world.

Fantastic. And anyone watching or listening, if you do have that kind of mystery thing going on that no one's been able to solve, I highly recommend you reach out. To Dr. Chris Turnpaw. He's fantastic. And he's our go-to when we have those questions. Thank you again, Dr. Turnpaw. Really do appreciate your time. We'll put all any, any links in this, in the show notes. And yeah, just, just keep on keeping on. You're, you're, I know. Well, actually I should say, I should have a caveat because I know since we know each other, I know that your Achilles heel is that you work A lot. So I shouldn't say keep on keeping on. I hope you are able to take some time off yourself and create a little space between work and play so that you can endure for as long as you can.

I would be remiss if I didn't say I'm aware and I don't always listen to the voice. So I know I need to get out of the office and I know I need to do more physical exercise. I need to be more integrated with my family and do things. So, sometimes you hear the message and you tell it to shut up. So, awareness but rejection. So, I'm a patient as well. So, one of the things is you can't just supplement your way into good health. I eat very well, but it goes, I have to eat well, sleep well, move well. And, one of my holes in my care is moving well. I move, but I'm a weekend warrior, so I'll overdo it on the weekend. So, it's a message that I can relate to patients. Just because I live this and I'm very aware and I do everything that I can doesn't mean I'm perfect, but really good also isn't the enemy of perfect. So yes, you keep on keeping on would be keep on keeping on better. Yeah.

All right. Well, be well. I look forward to seeing you again soon. And thank you again. Take care.

Thanks so much for having me.

Thank you so much for joining me. Thank you for joining me on Everyday Ancestral. If you enjoyed this episode, hit subscribe so you don't miss the next one. You can find the show notes, links, and resources mentioned at eatpluck.com. That's eatpluck.com. And hey, if you know someone who'd get something out of this, share it with them too. Stay curious, live well, and keep it ancestral.