SHARP Method Live!

Jocelyn, Janine, Aaliyah, Penelope. Thank y'all for hopping on, it's awesome. Appreciate y'all. All right, we've had a busy day here, but we're just gonna keep it rolling. All right, today we're going to talk about the Sharp Method. It's our proprietary methodology for surgical preparation and recovery using genetics, functional medicine, nutritional support, sleep hygiene, all the things that everybody hears about, reads about, learns about on whatever, uh, sources they use, uh, to educate themselves. Can everybody hear me okay? Let me know in the chat if you can hear me okay. Thank you, appreciate y'all. How about on Instagram, can you hear me okay? Somebody get in the comments and tell me if you can hear me. Thank you, Jeannie Beanie, or Janine Beanie. Thanks, Christy. Awesome. So now I just need to know— oh, awesome, Kim Stevenson can hear me on Facebook. Awesome. Yeah, so I get asked a lot about the Sharp Method, and, um, we can give you a little tease. I'm going to do a webinar on the 25th with Kashif Khan about breast implant illness. And one of the reasons we developed the Sharp Method was basically when you think back historically and how I went about through education. I grew up at a time during the '80s when HIV and AIDS was a big issue. And when I was in university or going to college, I was very interested in genetics and virology, partly because of what was going on with that. And so I studied viruses and did research both in, uh, Well, mainly in medical school about the retrovirus, and I always thought I would do infectious disease, and it ultimately became clear that I should be a surgeon. That didn't change my fascination with genetics, having taken genetics in college, and then as it progressed through medical school, the Genome Project finally got done. And so we learned more and more about genes. Documentaries came out like Decoding Annie Parker about BRCA. There are all sorts of mutations associated with breast cancer that are important. My sister died from breast cancer, and although she didn't have a genetic form of breast cancer, it was very near and dear to me. So basically, the mutation that made the biggest difference to me as a microsurgeon was MTHFR. Of the newer things that were looked at. Obviously, we knew about things like antiphospholipid syndrome, protocNS deficiencies, things that were known, but MTHFR as a, a problem associated with potentially clotting in microsurgery was not known. And I think the more we learn about those and other single nucleotide polymorphisms The more we understand better how, uh, patients behave, how they detox, how they recover. And basically, as I shifted into solo private practice, I became more and more interested in not just genetics but nutrition. And not nutrition in the sense of, uh, critical care nutrition, which I knew from surgical training and from caring for cancer patients, burn patients, transplant patients. All that was part of my, my training, just more about nutrition and functional nutrition and trying to look at testing and look at food sensitivity testing, gut testing. And then really the thing that rounded out more of what I was interested in was toxicity burden testing. And so Those issues really led to looking at the Sharp Method and applying it, you know, for our patients who are recovering from different types of surgery. Mostly I do explant surgery now, so you'll see a lot of work about breast implant removals or explant surgery or breast implant illness or fat transfers or fat transfers. And simultaneous removals or lifts or, or things of that nature. Um, the methodology is really meant to prepare patients rather than react to what's going on. So if you prepare patients with, uh, proper sleep hygiene, so following like a, either a tracker or something so you know you're getting 7 to 9 hours of sleep, you want to get the depth and quality you need. So I use a Whoop. I also have an Ultrahuman ring. There's all sorts of tracking devices, and you don't need tracking anxiety. But if you say you sleep really well and you come in, you have a lot of problems with chronic inflammation, I'm gonna ask you, how do you know you sleep really well? So one of the things that affects you when you sleep is drinking alcohol before you go to sleep or eating late. Both those things affect your HRV, which is your basic heart rate variability, helps with measuring your recovery. The, you know, morning routine, you've already fasted, you know, I agree with, uh, Mini that you get up, you have fluids, uh, that's fine to take electrolytes at that time, and then give yourself maybe 90 minutes before you do any of the coffee, get your circadian rhythm reset, go outside, ground, get light exposure, that helps you. And then it's about, for my patients, leveling up with protein. I'm not going to be sticky about what type of protein. I just need a good quality source of protein, whether it be animal, plant, uh, whatever your source is fine with me. Ours is a vegan-based pea protein so that everybody's, you know, happy for the most part if they don't have an allergy or sensitivity to that. I think you're trying to get 100, 150 grams a day, certainly as we prepare for and go through the process of recovery. And so it's all about prep, all about getting ready, all about lowering inflammation before you ever roll in the operating room. That's the Sharp Method. That's what I wrote the book about. That's what we practice. We have a surgery center coming online to further improve the patient experience for our patients undergoing any type of surgical procedures. So we have all the prep work, then you come to Austin. We obviously see everybody pre-op. We get them even further, you know, you know, ingrained in our system, if you will. And then preoperatively, our patients all run an ERAS, but not an ERAS in the traditional sense. We start the night before. In addition to the ERAS, the day of surgery, after I mark somebody, they have an ultrasound-guided regional, typically nerve block, and that's meant to really diminish the signaling back to the brain to reduce the stimulation, if you will, at the surgical site. And then once I work on an area, if we can expose that area and see it clearly, we're gonna add more local anesthetic, short-acting, long-acting, Our long-acting works about a week. And then once we're done, our patients are usually, I would say, very comfortable. Once they are discharged from the surgery center, they go back to their homes if they're local to us in Austin. I typically have them stay if they're not in Austin, if they're in, you know, proximity to us, at least overnight, and then they can drive back and forth. If you're coming in from out of town or out of state or out of the country, then you're gonna be at a hotel, Airbnb, whatever is your preferred way to get set up. And then you're gonna come back to my office the next day because we have a whole program set up for recovery. We have one of the few human regenerators. Look that up, the human regenerator. It's really great for lowering sympathetic activation, getting you in a more parasympathetic state, which is rest and digest and heal and recovery. We use lymphatic massage with Lopresso from New Zealand. We combine that with NanoV therapy at the same time. Gotta improve lymphatic drainage all the time. We do hyperbaric oxygen therapy in our office using a vertical hyperbaric chamber because my patients are having chest surgery, chest wall surgery. And then, uh, we round it out with a, uh, Juve Red Light treatment. So everybody's here the next day getting everything done, and we feel that's the best way to move forward. So once again, to summarize, genetic testing, functional medicine testing, toxicity testing, hormone testing, gut testing, food sensitivity testing, all pre-op. Adjust your diet, get your sleep hygiene in order, proper supplementation. We, we prefer our inflammation support bundle, and that's pretty much what I want everybody on because I operate on supplements. I don't stop them. So we use liposomal D3K2, vitamin C, methylated B, glutathione, some mag, and some carnitine. And that's what we go with. Post-op, we can add and change some things. And that's the, that's the program. Now, in terms of follow-ups, in-person or virtual is at the discretion of the patients. I always like to see folks in person if I can. Fat transfers in particular, but everybody's got different timing and schedules and that's obviously fine. But it runs virtual or in person at a week, a month, 3, 6, 9, 12 months. And we have a surgical follow-up plan ran by our nurse practitioner. And then we have a specialized functional medicine detox program ran by my nursing staff and Sharp team. So they run together but in, uh, parallel. And that's our commitment to everybody for the year. We're taking care of them. Now, many people extend beyond that, especially with the Sharp Method. They want more care. So that can be accommodated. SHARP is used not only for my patients in terms of surgical preparation recovery, you can use it as a healthspan tool, or if you think of just lowering inflammation as a way to improve lifespan, you can think of it in that way as well. So what I'll do is I'll take a couple questions off of everybody, um, who's online. I'll try to get Everybody answered who has a question across all the platforms. I just gotta double-check. There's a question: Do I have suggestions on how to implement sunlight exposure for inpatient hospital staff? Uh, No, I do not. Other than on your break, go outside. Uh, hi Lola from Italy! That's awesome, thank you for hopping on. I do this at this time frame so that people from other countries can hop on, so that's awesome. Where are you in Italy? Napoli, great club, awesome, rich history, Maradona's club. All right, later this afternoon I am leaving to go to the West Coast to see the U.S. men's national team play Paraguay on Friday, taking my family on a bucket list trip for me. Very excited. All right, what do we have here? If a person has eczema, hay fever, allergies to animals, are they very likely develop more BII? Um, I think that's concerning. You may have a problem with MCAS. So I did a show with Dr. Tony Dempsey on MCAS recently. Should I would say reference that show, and that's a consideration. Test of a plastic surgeon. Um, can I talk about MTHFR and how it relates to breast cancer? No, I can't. Um, I don't have data on that. Can't talk about that. So MTHR for us, when you look at our patients, 83% have single nucleotide polymorphisms or SNPs. And that is a, a big indicator to me that people are gonna have, uh, more trouble. And then when I was talking to Dr. Dempsey about MCAS, she feels like that is yet another, um, big driver of chronic inflammatory, you know, symptoms, which I totally agree with. I see more and more people with MCAS, especially since the pandemic. Has anybody been told on the live that they have MCAS? Is that a problem? Yeah, I'm going to try to be as helpful and educational as I can. So just, this is for y'all. I'm doing this, um, and then we're going to go into the circle and I'll answer some more questions. But, um, Just waiting to see what other questions there are. Yeah, you know, Tess, having antiphospholipid syndrome is, is it a contraindication? Really depends on what you want to do, but you want to avoid obviously clotting issues, and if you've had clots, then that puts you at a more high-risk situation. They have a risk stratification model, the Caprini model. So your plastic surgeon will have to go through that with you. All right, we're going to head into the circle. I'm going to shut these down. Thank y'all for hopping on.