Optimized Health: Integrative Strategies with Biohacker and Health Futurist Steve Stavs

Welcome to Integrative Medicine with Dr. Leland Stillman, the podcast where we explore the best of East and West, old and new, conventional and unconventional, in search of answers to medicine's toughest cases and most difficult problems. This podcast is for informational purposes only. Diagnostics and therapeutics discussed on this podcast may or may not be right for you, so talk to a qualified practitioner before taking action based on what you learn here. If you'd like to become a patient at my practice, go to stillmanmd.com to schedule a complimentary discovery call. Thank you for listening and welcome to today's episode. Hello everyone. Dr. Stillman here. Today, I am excited to be joined by my good friend Steve Stavs. Steve is Africa's leading professional biohacker and health futurist. He has an undergraduate degree in science with certifications in functional medicine and Chinese medicine. He combines many disciplines of medicine to offer clients a bespoke master plan for their wellness. This has led to thousands of testimonials and happy clients over his transformative process over the last 24 years. Steve, thank you for joining us today. I'm excited to interview you.

Absolute pleasure, Dr. Stillman. You're a health legend, and what a privilege to be on the show and, and really colleagues all over the world that we can connect with and collaborate with, because I think that's truly, really important.

It is, absolutely, which is why I decided to start this podcast where I interview my friends and colleagues. So I like to start with the origin story. Who is Steve Stavs? Where is he from? And how did he get into health and wellness?

Great start. Yeah, I'm a Cypriot immigrant to this country, South Africa, where I live and been here. And my parents came from Cyprus. And so, yeah, I started as a Greek little boy in Africa who didn't speak the language. And yeah, it was a tough, tough start to my journey, my childhood. Actually, my mother passed away about 2 weeks ago and I was just telling the story at the funeral and I really had a tough childhood. And so, yeah, as Greeks, we went to food, I became overweight, and I was a good sportsman, but it really hampered my ability and my performance. And I really just went through high school and I played good rugby and I played provincial tennis. In fact, I had a scholarship to go to America and play tennis at one of the colleges there. But I went to medical school to study physical therapy to start and looking at becoming a medical doctor possibly afterwards. And we were doing the VO2 max test and I'm running and my VO2 max really sucked compared to one of my my colleagues. He was in incredible shape. I was carrying probably about 20 kgs overweight, and I just said to myself then, I have to make a change. And it wasn't through my culture. I love being Greek, but when we, when we sad, we eat. When we happy, we eat, and we eat over periods. So I don't know if that's unique to the Greeks, by the way.

I'm pretty sure you share that with a lot of other cultures. But I want to unpack a little bit of what you just said. There's got to be a good story. As to why a family from Cyprus, the island in the Mediterranean, right?

Yeah.

Decided to move to South Africa of all places.

Yeah, well, post-Second World War, my dad was there and it was really tough, you know. It was destitute, there wasn't much of an economy. The gold rush was hitting in South Africa, so, you know, my, my dad had a lot of family here and they were growing businesses and they were all merchants and traders. So came out here and did exceptionally well business-wise. And so, yeah, but I was a different person in the environment here and only started speaking English when I was 6. So it was, it was a difficult journey. And through that pain, I realized I went to food. And so I put the weight on. I was always interested in sports and I tried to make it as best as I could in sports and I couldn't. So I thought, yeah, let me become a sports doc or and become a sports physical therapist or, you know, travel with a team. And I went to that road and I then looked at this whole process in the physiology lab and said, hang on, I've got to make a change here. Really, I've got to make a change. And I looked at the sort of long-term views of being overweight and studying the physiology, realized that I had to make changes. And I started using heart rates and I started running and I started seeing what happened at night with my heart rate on. And I had a heart chest strap then and I started using data and realized, oh, when I ate late, my heart rate was high.

Yeah.

And, you know, I didn't get exercise in the morning my heart rate was higher in the day. So I really took it to that level. And the physiology lab at the University of Advartesgrond was incredible.

Say that a little slower for those of us who speak American English, and I didn't understand that word. What was that? University of what?

So University of Advartesgrond is, uh, the university that I went to, the medical school. And when I was there—

is that a Dutch or a Boer name.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a Dutch— yeah. And, um, actually medical school, the best medical school in the world in the early '90s and '80s, rated number one in terms of its research, post-academic qualifications.

Yeah, I'm curious a little bit more though. What was it? Was there a big Greek expat community in South Africa?

There's about 120,000 in the '80s and early '90s, but half of them have immigrated back Cyprus and Greece because of the environment and the crime. A lot of them were in supermarkets and in cash businesses. And in the late '80s, with the difficult things in South Africa, a lot of them went back just because it was just so dangerous. So incredible country, but you've got to have your wits about you and you've got to dodge bullets. And if you don't dodge bullets, it gets a bit rough.

No kidding. You're not speaking in hyperbole at all.

No. Yeah, look, it is a, it is a tough situation. But there's a, there's a strength in the shadow side of that, Dr. Stillman, because South Africans are street smart. I think they're strong, they're adaptable, they're resilient. We've been through a lot in this country and we've managed to come out through the apartheid system and it's been an incredible journey. But Yeah, it's a, it's a tough environment. And looking at health, that's causing a lot more issues, as you know, with the sympathetic overdrive. So yeah, that was my story. And then I lost the weight and I became a lot leaner in university, and I decided to do the physical therapy and not become a medical doctor and go into Chinese medicine, which I then studied acupuncture and Chinese medicine and natural medicine. And then I registered as a doctor of Chinese medicine. And then that was my start.

I want to go back quickly to the, the moment that you decided to make a change. You said you were 24 kilos overweight and you got on the VO2 max machine with a colleague. Was it a colleague, a friend?

Uh, yeah, one of the guys that was in my class.

Yeah, but what was it that drew you to health initially, to be even in the physio lab?

Well, what happened was we were studying and I was in second year university, you know, in the physiology lab, and there was two of us who were trying this thing and One person was performing and one person was struggling.

Got it.

So yeah, this is part of your, your regular undergraduate work, correct? Yeah. And I just realized then things had to change, you know, and V2 Max was a big indicator of health, you know.

I know. What did it feel like, that moment where you, you, you saw the numbers in front of you on the, on the data readout? I don't know what it was to look like, but what was that feeling you got that galvanized you to take action?

I think it's the same feeling of, you know, on the Enneagram, I'm like an 8 and a 3, so I'm highly achievement orientated and someone was whipping my ass there. And so, you know, it was a real problem because I just realized I wasn't at the potential that I could be and I was carrying this weight. So I think it was a thing of, hang on, I can do better than this. And, you know, coming to this country and just having potential and not exercising it was probably a huge disappointment to myself and my family because we had such difficult circumstances living in this country, being very different. And so, yeah, I just said, hang on, you know, there's potential here and I'm not activating. And it was very difficult because food became a real wiring in terms of when you in distress, where you go to and how you deal with life. And so, yeah, but I managed to subdue that amygdala and that, that subconscious place of rushing to food. And, and it's been a journey and it's still a battle because I just realized as you grow up, the way you deal with distress and adrenaline and cortisol is key to developing the habits long term. You know, I really think that's important.

24 kilos, I believe, is about 53 pounds. So I'd love it if you'd talk us through what was your strategy for losing 53 pounds? How did you— how did it go? Give us the play-by-play.

Yeah, look, it's been a long journey of play-by-play. I mean, initially it was just like really, um, take it a point where I was when I was 19 years old, and I don't know how many years ago that is, but I just ran more and I fasted at night especially. I can remember medical school, so I would do a lot of running at night and I'd go to bed on a— in a fasted state. And I think that was a big, big part of it. And I checked my heart rate and I'd use heart rate, and, and I think what happened was I was able to move more changed my diet a little bit. And I mean, the traditional sort of refined carbohydrates I got out quickly. And I think I had a strategy which I've kept up is 2 meals a week. Generally, I let my hair down. I think that was important in terms of trying to manage that process. Yeah, and the weight fell off and the fat fell off. And look, now I've got a lot more. I was 66 kilograms before I was doing a lot of long-distance running. I'm now up to 76, but with my DEXA scan and, you know, with my body composition, that's improved dramatically. So when I was at school, I was like 90, 90 kgs, 90 kgs. Yeah. Got it.

If you were to go back and talk your younger self through this, what would— what advice would you give him that you didn't get that you wish you'd had?

Before, when I was overweight at school and beginning of varsity, because I'm sure, you know, you gave a very—

I mean, that's a very typical story for a 20-something-year-old. I assume you were in that age range, or maybe late teens, you know, fast, go to the gym. One of the things we see is that a lot of people have those tools in their toolbox, but they're trying to do it at 40, 50, 60. The same hormones, neurotransmitters that they had at 18, 19, 20 are not around. Their mitochondria are not what they were. And I find that, you know, certainly for me, the strategies I would share with someone now are ever so much more refined and sophisticated than what I would have shared with them when I was that age, right? Even though I was in health and wellness at that time as well. So what would you— what advice would you go back and give your younger self about all that?

That's a fantastic question because I've got a 20-year-old son. And so I've tried to just lead him along the things that, you know, I didn't get. And I think the biggest thing is how you deal with trauma and how you deal with suffering and how you deal with distress, because where you go to when that happens, not if, when that happens, is going to be a key. So I've tried to encourage my son's— Mark, and I've tried to encourage him. How do you— what do you— when you, when you hold that in your heart and there's pain and there's disappointment and there's offense and maybe there's you know, like there's a lot of injustice in South Africa. So he's a very good tennis player, but he had the wrong color skin. And so he never got into a provincial team or he never got into, call it, a state team because of the color of his skin. What do you do with this? So there's like a reverse, like, apartheid system. So you can be the best tennis player, but you don't get picked for the team because they need to have a quota on how many like non-white players there are. So they're trying to equalize it, which, you know, we could sit and debate that. I think there's merit to it. But on the other hand, if you're caught on the wrong side of that equation, it's not great because tennis is a very definitive game where I either beat the person or I don't beat the person.

Sure.

You know, it's not like football or something like that where there's a subjective amount. So he had this pain, and I'm trying to say to him spiritually, how are you going to address that? Instead of rushing to food or, you know, online or a dopamine hit from social media, how are you going to address that spiritually and physically? And two things. I think his spiritual health was good, which I think is key to deal with trauma. And then secondly, his physical— what he did physically to deal with those disappointments. And I think he's in great shape and he's a bit of a mini biohacker and he's part of Made to Thrive and he's part of my sort of selling a lot of the products and that because he lives it. Uh, but how you deal with trauma and pain and suffering this side of eternity, I think, is fundamentally important.

Amen to that. Yes, we totally agree on that. I'd love to dig more into that as we go. Yeah, but I also want to get back to your story. So you, you doing this physiology lab work at the university? I don't know how detailed or, or how in-depth that was. Um, tell us, what was your undergraduate career like?

That was great. It was 4 years, an honors degree in physical therapy or physiotherapy. The first 2 years were exactly the same as, as the medical degree. So you could go into third year medicine or afterwards you could go and become a medical doctor. So it was a great time because I learned a lot and I learned a lot about myself in terms of the tools to use them correctly. And I think I just had a nose for functional medicine, looking at the root causes because I just saw a lot of people struggling to adopt habits. And so I used data then from back then and it was, it was good for me. And I just, I always liked numbers and I've always liked mathematics and algorithms and models and structures and frameworks. And so that was a good thing for me to start. And actually what led me to Chinese medicine and functional medicine. I remember doing my first lecture on vitamin D in 2003, you know, 17 years before COVID hit, talking about the benefits of vitamin D then.

Yes.

So yeah, it just worked well and I enjoyed it. Um, and then just went into natural medicine and the Chinese medicine.

Great. Coming out of your initial degree, I'm curious, were there a lot of people like-minded in your program or were you sort of unusual in that you were interested in root cause thinking and more sophisticated? Cuz that's from what you've said, you know, in the United States, physical therapy or physiotherapy, really those, that can be a very narrow wheelhouse or, or niche. Where people are really focused on biomechanics. But you were obviously very curious about more than just how does the body— how is the body put together, how does it move. Uh, were you— did you feel like you were, you know, alone in that, or did you feel like you had a lot of like-minded colleagues in, uh, South Africa?

I mean, I think there were a few colleagues, but it sort of— it moved from physical therapy to acupuncture. That was the first step. So doctors of Chinese medicine used to pay them when you were well. They used to come around, you know, check that you were healthy, eating the right foods, doing the tai chi, the qigong, and you stopped paying them when you were unhealthy. So the model was reversed. And so as I adopted that as well, that made a lot more sense. And then, you know, did you actually adopt that economic model in your practice? I'd love to say no, no, I haven't adopted that model yet. I mean, that's something that I'd have to work out, but I just—

I was— I would be very impressed because I have thought about that. Yeah, but we switched to a membership model a couple years ago and haven't looked back because it is so freeing to have people who are proactive, people who are invested in their health, people who are not looking at the doctor as I go there when I am broken and, and mired in dysfunction, uh, you know, when the wheels are coming off the bus and the engine is smoking, uh, then, you know, having people come in and say, you know, fix me, I'm broken. Right? And getting to know the same people and working with them year after year. You know, we have dozens of patients who I've been taking care of for over 2 years now, and the rest have really jumped on board in the last year. We just shut off, um, new patients to the practice because we're booked out for the next few months. Uh, it's really freeing to know that I can just get to focus on those people and really keeping them well, um, which I, I don't know why that's so freeing and so healthy it feels for me as a clinician, but Would love to get your thoughts on that.

Yeah, look, I think in South Africa it might be different, it might not be different, but the medical insurers don't pay for you adopting sort of that type of model and that type of structure. So from a practice clinic perspective, it's not going to work out really financially for, for people to adopt that. So that's difficult. I'm not saying it's impossible, but the clientele in South Africa, I mean, South Africa's GDP is smaller than the state of Atlanta, you know, I mean, the city of Atlanta. So yeah, it's a tiny, tiny place. And to get people to pay and afford your services is not easy. The corporate wellness business that I've moved into, that could be a model because there's a little bit of liquid and extra cash. But even then, it's difficult for people to change this mindset of paying someone monthly to keep them well instead of getting back from the insurers. Now, I'm not saying it's impossible, but no one's really running that show here that I know of.

We've found, and I've been actually quite surprised by the number of colleagues who are doing it here and doing it well, but I, I do find that it requires a fair amount of— they have to draw really clear boundaries, otherwise the cost, you know, the consultative fee, the monthly membership fee, becomes quickly becomes extremely high. You know, it's one thing if your doctor is your, uh, you know, not only dispensing medications and hormones and managing blood pressure and vital signs, but also is giving you diet and lifestyle recommendations. And the lower end of the memberships, people are going to that doctor, uh, and, and lower end I mean of the cost per month, that doctor is solely focused on medications and maybe some supplements and some advanced testing. But any questions about diet and lifestyle, they refer out immediately to personal trainers, nutritionists, coaches, which actually creates a really wonderful organic ecosystem where everyone is working within their own zone of genius. But it also means that if you want sort of a full-spectrum functional medicine approach, you wind up, you know, spending the same amount of money because it's X for the doctor or the PA or the nurse practitioner, and then it's Y for the personal trainer or the coach, and then it's Z for the nutritionist, not to mention, right, the supplements and lab testing and all that that goes along with it. So it comes out as sort of a wash, but it is catching on here. It's what we're, we're doing. We're very happy to be offering it.

So Oh great, maybe I can get some tips from you because I think the landscape maybe in the future will be changing because people are tired of the sick care model and they really want to look at the healthcare model. So absolutely, yeah, yes.

But back to you, tell us, tell me about the transition into traditional Chinese medicine. What was that like coming from a traditional Western medical science background?

Yeah, I think it was incredible, just in the story I told, you know, with regards to staying healthy and paying a practitioner. And so I think it appealed to me. And if you sort of summarize who I am, it's a word, freedom. And I think it's just something that I've held on to is just freedom from disease and sickness and freedom from enslavement. And that sort of, sort of echoes the kingdom of breaking free from a lot of things. So yes. Yeah, that's freedom. Yeah.

Yeah.

And so that's what it is. It's about giving people freedom and freedom from, you know, and if I look at crypto and I look at big banks and big agriculture and big food and big pharma. It's— we don't want to get enslaved to any of these systems. And so yeah, that's what I'm— that's how it happened. And I think I've always been one to have a look at— I don't want to actually give any control or any authority over my health or my finances to anyone. And so yeah, it started from that, that birth of freedom.

One of the things that fascinates me about Chinese medicine is it's it's very— it's so different from the reductionistic Western medical scientific mindset and the mechanism that we're so— you know, the mechanistic approach is so ingrained in Western science and medicine now, which I think is a shame. And it's not that it's— there's certainly vitalistic, and for people who don't know what these words mean, you know, basically in the Western scientific culture, if you will, really people became enamored of reductionism. We're going to change one variable and see what that does. And that's great if you're asking very specific questions like, how much potassium should we put on the corn to make it grow taller? Or, you know, what type of fuel additive should we put in the diesel engine to make it run cleaner? But, you know, I had a residency— a teacher in residency who said, people are messy. And what he meant by that was that you cannot control all these variables, you know, that life is an incredibly dynamic system. And one of the best books on Chinese medicine I've ever read, The Web That Has No Weaver by Ted Kaptchick. Yeah, he impresses in the first section of the book on how the Chinese view of health is much more like looking at a landscape. You can't reduce the landscape. I got interested in Chinese medicine coming out of environmental health and medicine in my undergraduate studies I took ecology by accident, and I think it was absolute destiny because ecology changed the way I looked at health and wellness forever and gave me some foundational lessons that ended up shaping the way that I look at health and disease and my clinical practice. But one of the things that they impress upon you is you can't look at these variables in isolation because there's synergy and antagonism and there's complex dynamics that giving someone vitamin C, magnesium, and ashwagandha all at the same time is not the same as giving them each individually, right? And it really defies any attempt at reductionism. So when I say reductionistic and mechanistic, that is what I'm really talking about, this attempt to try and modify or shape one variable at a time, whereas vitalism is much more about, and really a non-reductionistic way of thinking, a holistic way of thinking, is much more about, well, We can't view these things in isolation, so why bother? What works in this, in, in its totality, if we do it all at the same time? So anyway, that's some background for listeners who may not be deep into this. But Steve, I'm really curious to, to hear what your experiences were with Chinese medicine and what you found so helpful about it.

Yeah, I think there's so many tenets to Chinese medicine, and we could run, you know, numerous classes and podcasts on this. But I think for me, the greatest thing, if you just had to sort of summarize it, is this thing of homeostasis before I even studied functional medicine. And so there's just so many different parts of balance, balancing the system. And like you said, it's not just one variable, it's multiple variables in terms of how it works. So before I even knew about functional medicine, I've always looked at balancing the organism, you know, in all different areas, whether it's the liver, whether it's the kidney, and knowing the difference between liver yin and how important that is and where it opens up in. So someone who's got— let's just take a simple example, dry eyes. And so you look at a root cause and look at the liver and how important that is. So it was this balancing of the system that made me a lot more aware and how these internal pathways and external pathways— so someone gets angry and it affects the liver, which affects your eyes. There's just so many different ways you can have disharmony in the system. And so it's this emotional, mental, spiritual, and physical world that are totally meshed, that are separate, but connected. And I think that was, that was fundamentally important for me. You know, we saw in Western medicine, we talk, or in Western culture, we talk about someone who's hotheaded. Well, what does that mean? That means that comes from too much heat in the system. And where's that heat coming from? Is it coming from heart fire or liver fire? How do we get that down? What is causing the fire? Is it coming from lack of moisture? So it's this interconnectedness of trying to work out where the instabilities are, where the imbalances are. And to strengthen those systems as best we can. And so, you know, that's, that's what I've loved, you know, and even using Western modalities to help me improve. Let's talk about Yin, the Yin, which can be moisture in oil and, and water. And how do we do that? So like we spoke previously on the podcast about omega-3s, omega-3s for me have been real quality, have been incredible for someone who's Yin deficient. Incredible. It's changed my practice, my patients, my clients, the right dosage, because when they've got a liver yin deficiency and I can improve that, I can improve that with Chinese medicine. I can improve that with Western supplements. So you start making these connections in all the different places, which I think has been really, really helpful for me to take Chinese medicine and use it in combination with functional medicine.

I'm very curious. Um, can you share a story with us of someone where everything you just said sort of came together in a real case? Obviously don't share any personal details, but I'm sure there's a case that sort of stands out in your mind of the power that this brought to your practice.

Yeah, I'll give you one. Recently, there's a lady who came into me and she'd been suffering probably for about 10 years with dry skin, eczema, psoriasis, burning eyes, dry mouth, burning mouth syndrome. And without making it very sort of reductionist in the thinking, I was the 7th doctor that, that she had seen. And we looked at her omega-3 index and we did a whole bunch of things. And we did amino acid testing and we looked at her food intolerance testing and we did full labs and that.

And we had some genetics for that in South Africa, by the way.

Pardon?

Which lab company do you use in South Africa? Is it local or do you send out?

We send out and we use local. So for the labs, we use local. For the food intolerance, we use local. For the omega-3 index, we use international. For the amino acid test, we use a university here about an hour away. Great. And genetics, yeah, we use local here. So came in, we did the— probably, I think, had a 100 to 1 ratio of omega-6 to omega-3. Was—

that's extreme.

Yeah, Indian in our culture, we had never seen it. And really, really high levels of omega-6, high levels of linoleic acid, like, couldn't believe.

And what was the root cause of that?

Well, a lot of their cooking, I think, uh, had a lot of corn oil and soybean oil and canola oil.

Yikes.

Yeah. So came in with that omega-3 index was probably about 2%, and so it was really, really low.

And that's vanishingly low.

Yeah. And so we changed the diet, but gave her— eventually we had to get to about 6 grams of EPA/DHA, about 6,000 milligrams of EPA/DHA. And the psoriasis went, her burning mouth went, her burning eyes went, her dry eyes went. And I mean, one can never say it was totally that, but I think when we relooked at the data again and the testing was so much better, she's like, I've been to, I don't know how many dermatologists. I've been to so many ophthalmologists. They say my eyes are fine. And I mean, we gave her like blue-blocking glasses as well because the light— I mean, she came in with sunglasses into my medical rooms here. She couldn't do any single light. She was highly sensitive. And so, yeah, that was incredible for me. But we had to take it, you know, we normally get 1440 EPA, DHA. Sometimes I give 2 grams.. But this one, she had to go to 5, 6 grams and then we retested and really got out a lot of the linoleic acid out of her. We retested that as well. And that made a massive, massive difference. And I think all her cell membranes were really hammered with oxidative stress and didn't have these essential fatty acids that she needed. And we just speak about Paul Harris and this is an incredible story. And I think I only realized that after doing— I think I might have done maybe 1,200 essential fatty acid tests now. And I think for some people it's, it's fundamentally important. For other people, I don't think it's that important. And I think Chinese medicine has taught me that is sometimes there's enough yin and there's enough moisture, but there's too much heat and dryness. And for others, that yin is so low, if you just get that up, you, you can change, you know, a lot of people's lives. And even with hormones, I find if you don't have the correct essential fatty acids balancing people's hormones becomes even quite difficult for some people.

I couldn't agree more. I've seen people also go the opposite direction with the omega-3 index. We had a recent case of a gentleman with an autoimmune issue with his thyroid who, uh, I run an omega-3 panel on pretty much everyone, uh, depending upon the acuity and severity and their curiosity and level of interest in lab testing and His level came back almost in the optimal range. His ratio was something like 7.23, which is still on the low side of what we— what the lab considers optimal. And I have questions about that that I won't get into here. But he also had a high level of mercury, and it came out in consultation that he liked to eat at high-end restaurants and eat very carnivorous fish. And he's not the first person where I've seen a high mercury load because of those— that fish intake. I'd be curious if you have that ever happen to you in South Africa. You're right on the Southern Ocean, very deep, very cold water. I'm sure you've got great fisheries, so you've got some great seafood that must be very delicious. But I did find that I backed him off the fish, added more land animals, and that was because, you know, we see this antagonism between the heavy metals and the nutritive elements, particularly zinc. And the more someone skews towards the sea creatures, the— generally speaking, the less zinc they're getting in. And then I have curiosity, or I've— I am curious about the contaminants in things like shellfish, like, um, mussels and oysters, where there's a very— an abundance of things like zinc, and, and but also of copper and manganese and, and potentially heavy metals. But I've seen that go both ways, just like you said. It can be more important for some people than for others. It's why getting the level can be so valuable. And we have a number of different things we recommend to people aside from fish oil to try and normalize them, especially like you mentioned, the cessation of, of cooking with high omega-6 oils, which really have no place in cooking. I don't know about you, but I stopped really dealing with any kind of nuts or seeds that were not fresh, soaked, used in pretty short order. I don't like to leave them lying around because they are oxidizing all the time. But I also don't go as extreme as some people to say, well, no nuts, no seeds because of the PUFAs and omega-6s. I still eat tree nuts, I still eat seeds. I particularly lean on chia and flax seeds because of the mineral content. I'm curious what you do in your practice around those issues.

No, look, I think the heavy metal issue is a real problem, and I think a lot of people that are having way too much fish get, I think, more issues. And this is where I say I think supplementation is better than going the food route, and I do take a little bit of flak for it, but I just find the contamination in, in the fish is a real, real problem, and I think you can get into trouble. And so finding a good quality supplement or program, the way you want to do this, is fundamentally important, you know. So I think that's the first thing. And then having done the HTMA testing and that, I think that's also been helpful to pick up these heavy metals. And sometimes we pick it up as well with an OTE test as well. But yeah, I, I think there's very, very few people that struggle in my practice taking a really, really good quality omega-3 supplement. And I think it's got more reward than risk. So I err on that side unless someone has got a lot of damp in their body according to Chinese medicine. So they might have damp heat, and that damp heat can cause— if you give them omega-3s, make them even more fatty and more oily, and that can cause significant issues. So I do put that through the frame there. In terms of the— I've got a similar process to you. Um, I think most people can deal with the nuts and the seeds if they're good quality, number one and they're not overdoing it. I find that people aren't taking the refined carbohydrates, but then having way too many nuts and way too many seeds. And I think, yes, that's problematic. So yeah, it is the balance there. And I think it's very specific in terms of people's, you know, needs and the bespoke plan that we put together. But I think the refined— what you've said, the refined oils that are made, the canola, the soybeans, and looking at marinades and basting, so all these and sunflower oil. I think that's more important than someone really, you know, not eating the nuts and the seeds for my patients. And I do use coaches, like you've said, because I think they can spend the time really looking at the diet very carefully in terms of people, you know, what they're using. And then we've got this famous company here, chicken and peri-peri chicken called Nando's, and a huge company all over the world. But in there, in their peri-peri sauce is sunflower oil. And yeah, you're having bucketloads of that, I think that's going to be more problematic than having chia and flax.

Yeah, absolutely, I agree. Yeah, and I, I couldn't agree more. It's so important, and we do the same thing with coaching because I just found that so many patients were missing fundamental health and wellness knowledge, partly because there's so much noise out there in the health and wellness info space, and a lot of it is A lot of it is very problem-focused. You know, I found in my own thinking, in my own practice, I had to shift away from being problem-focused. And for people who don't know what problem-focused versus solutions-focused thinking is, problem-focused thinking is really looking at, okay, so we're going to study everything about this problem, say gout or liver disease. You're going to list all the different things you see on a pathology slide and in biochemistry. Assays that you may run on the blood or the serum or the urine, and you, you study the problem in detail. And there's a time and a place for that, but at the end of the day, I see way too many people remaining mired in the problem and not actually giving people clear action that they can take. Sometimes I find the actions people are handed, um, by influencers don't have the appropriate caveats. Like, we just talked about how there's, there's these caveats to eating fish or eating nuts and seeds. These little things that when people don't do them correctly, uh, can really, really undermine their health despite sometimes really great medical care. So I integrated coaches into what we do so that we would try to catch all of those little things that sometimes would make what we were doing, you know, say pharmacologically or with bioidentical hormones or with supplements, um, much less effective or even, you know, fruitless.

Yeah, and I absolutely agree. And I think that's the biggest chasm out there is between the doctor and the patient and the time that is needed to really get to know someone, their family situation, their kids, the pressures that they have at work, instead of putting this idealistic equation into their lives, which is just not sustainable in the long term. And when they sit, they do it for 3 months, they feel a bit better, sleep improves, exercise, and then 6 months later they're in the same place. So we talk about sustainable transformation, and I think that's a a key term that we've gone, and that's where I think data is really helpful. It is a two-edged sword where some people might battle, you know, becoming so data-centric. But I think for most people are not aware, and if they can hold on to a number, you know, Aristotle said we are teleological beings, that we really like goals and we like this telos. And so I think that's important for most, probably 80% of my patients and clients, is giving them a goal, giving them a number. It worked with me, it doesn't work with everyone, And so when we take a corporate team, like we've got the biggest bank now, the COO and the CIO and the executive, and we run this, probably 80% really love the data-centric model. They love it. They love the heart rate variability. But there's this 20% of people that don't. And so you've got to cater the coach to those people. And I think that's really important. And those often are people that like to do things in a group. So if they can join a club or a community or group of people that can help them, that becomes the greatest tool for transformation and not the data.

Very interesting. Very interesting, yes. Yeah, I can see exactly what you mean by that. The data-centric model is a bit much for people, but I think a lot of it is, are you picking the right data to track? So you got from Chinese medicine, you also studied functional medicine? What was the evolution of your career?

Oh look, I think I, uh, I went Chinese medicine. A big part of it was regenerative medicine, so I started doing prolotherapy and using dextrose, and the Chinese were injecting platelets.

Thumbnail on what prolotherapy is for people who don't know.

Prolotherapy stands for proliferation therapy. It's an injection therapy, and you use a substance or a solution that creates microinflammation microbleeding to an area that attracts a lot of growth factors and that can regenerate ligaments and capsules and tendons. A lot of the white tissue that is difficult to shorten and strengthen because of damage, trauma, or genetic factors like joint hypermobility syndrome or Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. And so I started this technique and treatment in 2007 and then moved on to platelet-rich plasma, PRP as it's known.. And so now we're doing lipoaspirate as well. We're injecting stem cells, stem cells from fat. And so I started doing this, and at the same time, when I started using functional medicine, I realized I'm injecting someone's knee, but they've got high levels of uric acid, their vitamin D is rock bottom low, their magnesium is nowhere. And so when I started doing it, it just started coming together. And then I started, you know, getting rid of someone's heart fire or liver fire with Chinese medicine. And then I just realized Oh, I'm using— and then we got into Unani-Tib, which is an incredible medicine that I'm just starting to really understand. And it's been pretty, pretty interesting medicine. And so combining the natural medicine and an IV clinic here and then using some Unani-Tib, this Persian medicine, and then using functional medicine and understanding the supplementation there. Yeah, it was, it was pretty powerful. My patients that had chronic pain, and so probably 50% of my patients now are chronic pain patients, and then probably the rest are functional medicine and Chinese medicine and those that we run a data-centric model with. So yeah, that was the evolution of trying to incorporate functional medicine principles to help my patients.

That's basically what happened to me, except I never got into invasive procedures I don't know what it is about me, but I just love thinking, and I love leaving the procedures to people who love procedures. Yeah, it's possible one day I'll get into procedures. Not anytime soon from what I can tell, but that's one of the biggest things I think people miss about procedures. It's funny, I actually shared a patient with your friend, and I think you would call him a mentor.

Yeah, he's my main doctor.

Yeah, Dr. Hauser here in Southwest Florida. He, um, he and I shared a patient this, this summer, and I was just chatting with her maybe a couple weeks ago, and she said it was so helpful, the injections that he did along the lines of what you were explaining. He has his practice in Fort Myers, and but also having the support from us for coaching and nutrition because You know, what I've seen happen in a lot of those practices, and I don't know, I'm not saying this about him, but I've seen it happen in a lot of practices, is that when you're focused on procedures and when the patients are focused on procedures, it can be very hard to also build in the time to do the coaching, the nutritional counseling, tailor-make their supplementation protocol so that it really works for them. And she's feeling worlds better even though she was truly in a very difficult place 4 or 5 months ago when we met her. And she credited this joint approach, as well as some, you know, manual therapies, uh, the name of which escaped me right now, with the degree of her improvement. And just like you said, you know, you start doing procedures on people whose— I look at it as the terrain of the body, which is very much a Chinese medicine idea. You know, I mentioned Ted Kaptchuk's, you know, his first chapter of his book It literally is about a painting, you know, in a traditional Chinese, uh, um, style. And that's the way that they approach medicine. And if you don't have the right terrain upon which your procedure can act, you're going to have a much higher failure rate. So I think it's so important for people to get that, whether they're people like me who just refer to proceduralists, or they're proceduralists who are actually, you know, doing the procedures themselves because it's the, it's the way to get better results, happier patients. You end up with better networks of colleagues who you know how to refer to, they know how to refer to you. And for patients to know this is critical because the number of people who've come to me, you know, I'll never forget this conversation I had with a gentleman who called me and he just spent $5,000 on stem cells for his knee and he was 6 months post-procedure, it hadn't worked. And I was very early in my career and I said, well, the first consult with me is, you know, $250 for an hour and I'm happy to talk to you about how we can get the weight off so that 'Your knee is no longer in this position.' And he said, 'That's expensive.' And I thought, 'Hang on a minute, you just spent 200x the 1-hour consult with me on your knee and it didn't work, which is why you're on the phone with me.' And I respect that that hourly is a lot to you, but at the same time, there's something obviously not working here in your terrain, otherwise the stem cell procedure might have given you the results that you were looking for.

Exactly. And, you know, it's— I think of you because of, you know, the vagus nerve, and I've learned so much about the vagus nerve I had Neil Nathan, I interviewed him. I don't know if you've had him on the podcast, but he's an incredible, incredible medical doctor speaking about mast cell activation syndrome, speaking about just the vagus system, speaking about the limbic system. He's got a brilliant book, The Patient's Guide to Healing, Sensitive Patient's Guide to Healing. Incredible book. And he puts these experts in. But we're just talking about just treating the vagus nerve in the cervical spine, treating the vagus nerve and its relation to the head and neck and the TMJ and having just looking at the alignment and how important that is. So you treat IBS, you treat gut, you treat IBD, you give supplements, you do procedures. And actually it's all coming from this hypersensitivity and irritability on the vagus nerve. There are a million causes there with the vagus nerve. But I've had so many patients come from functional medicine doctors and I'm talking hundreds, if not thousands. I could be mistaken on the thousands, but that I do injections to the cervical spine and we correct the structure. The vagus nerve absolutely gets some stability. It doesn't become so sensitized and we reduce the central sensitization and the stomach issues go, the gut issues go, the IBS goes, anxiety goes. And then we track this vagus nerve and we use injection therapy, we use ozone and injecting ozone and running ozone drips and hydrogen peroxide. And then we treat this, this vagus nerve and the heart rate variability improves. So they've been 5 years, 7 years, sometimes 10 years trying to improve heart rate variability with breathwork and nutrition and seeing a functional medicine doc. Yes, grounding, and they're getting sunlight. And then after 2, 3 sessions in the cervical spine, we absolutely change their whole neural system. And that blew my mind to such a large degree that the structure there can have such a big impact on the entire body.

It absolutely can, yes. And it's, it's so interesting you say that because I'm— we're 80 to 90% virtual, which means that what I can do physically for patients is very limited. And so the things we've shared with people over the years— first of all, Jim Laird, our strength and conditioning coach, has a world of, of knowledge about this topic because he's been through, you know, quite a journey. We've covered that on the podcast. We've got another episode with him coming up. You know, he was very much that switched-on person, can't shut off. And, and, you know, he, he's constantly explaining to patients it's really hard when you're stuck in that mode and you've been stuck in that mode to get unstuck from that mode. And sometimes it is best, you know, we've certainly found to do something like you're, you're discussing, but we don't have a lot of skilled operators who can do what you're talking about all over the world, right? It's a pretty rare skill set, I would say. And so what we've found that's helpful is, first of all, most people's breathing mechanics are not optimized, and they're not even close to optimized. I'm curious how much you spend of your time going over respiratory rate data. But when we see a respiratory rate in the practice that's 15, 16, 17, let alone 19 or 20, we know that person is revved up and we know that we can bring them down and help them relax because optimized to us is really more of a 12 to 14 respiratory rate. And that's certain amount of breathwork, but then the, uh, the supplements sometimes have a significant impact And then as well, things like float tank where you have to stop, you have to rest. And also, you know, Jim has pointed this out to me that it, it forces your skeleton into a different position because you're lying there for up to an hour or more in the float tank and your body relaxes and your, your rib cage and your pelvis can get into the proper alignment, which can have a very profound impact on the nervous system. You know, I've seen my HRV double after float tank sessions. So, and it's, it's so important because it will get people on a weekly schedule if they're open to it and they have the time. And all of a sudden, a lot of the things that they've been doing for a long time that weren't working will suddenly take because their nervous system is ready to actually incorporate the changes.

Incredible. Now, breathwork is a big part of my coaches that, that use it. We, we look at that. So then you've got breathwork, at the same time we're using infrared over the head and neck, which has been incredible. Then we're using a product called Apollo by Dr. David Rabin. You should have him on your podcast. Absolutely incredible. Then it's Dr. Patrick Porter's work on BrainTap. That's a huge, huge part of my practice, especially my corporate executives, and having a look at changing the brain state. So these people that are in beta or high beta and dropping them down into alpha and theta, BrainTap has been the number one most friendly user modality that we use because it goes everywhere. When you travel, you can do it at night, you can do it in the morning. Apollo is also very, very good for teenagers, adolescents, children. You can just strap it on, sends a frequency, helps that heart rate variability, just drops that cortisol and adrenaline. So there's a lot of these modalities. If I just think of the patient that recently came to me who was having such anxiety and being on multiple antidepressants, anti-anxieties, we used infrared, we used prototherapy into the neck and the jaw. We used the Apollo, we used BrainTap, we used hyperbaric, and we ran a hydrogen peroxide drip and a hydrogen peroxide nebulization because— and I can tell you, the hydrogen peroxide nebulization has helped so many people with their breathwork, so many people with their nasal passages. And it is so important for the nervous system in this area. Put that all together. 3 months later, this person who was really, really struggling with anxiety is now anxiety-free, off their medications, is done exceptionally well. So this is multi-modality, multi-use, of coming from different angles to use different things, and very, very powerful.

It is. I couldn't agree more. I just had a consult with a gentleman struggling with anxiety this morning, and, you know, he's had some success with some of the things that he's done, but there's so much that we can do in order to correct the nervous system's imbalances, so many of which I think are rooted in, you know, long-term toxic exposures that cause the brain to, uh, essentially get stuck in patterns that are not optimal. And I shouldn't even say not optimal because there's a time and a place for every brain pattern or type of wave on the EEG, but people will get stuck in one state And that's not healthy. Is any of what you just alluded to— I mean, the Apollo Neuro, I'm familiar with. BrainTap, I'm not. But is BrainTap at all related to EEG, or I shouldn't say EEG, neurofeedback specifically?

No, it's a passive tool, and it's a modality that you just listen to an audio track, and then basically you've got lights over your eyes and on your ears, and it sends in through these frequencies of light and sound, and he's got a lot of research. Dr. Patrick Port, I can connect you guys because I'm sure he'd be great on the podcast.

And I would love that.

He's growing significantly in the States and that and abroad. So we're trying to pioneer that in Africa. And the reason I say that there's a lot of these tools to help heart rate variability in the nervous system, I've just found this has been the most popular. There's so many different tracks. Our friend Ben Greenfield put his tracks together as well so his clients and patients can get on and listen to his voice with the binaural beats in the background. So yeah, I'm pretty convinced that different people have different entry points. So my wife likes music and she likes dance to help her nervous system. My running and my exercise is something that really helps my nervous system. BrainTap has been brilliant for me and we just got to find the tools that really, really work well. My head coach loves doing flotation once a week, once every 2 weeks. Really worked well there. So I do think— and that's where Chinese medicine and African medicine is like, what are the things that help this nervous system? Like, my daughter is now 8. Storytelling for her is one of the most important things we can do for. So we tell stories and then she tells the next part of the story. And I can just see her system just loves it. And then you've got the music and you've got the movement, which can include dance. And so there are 5 now. There are 5. So we've said music, movement, there's storytelling, breathwork, and then silence and solitude. So being something that's crucially important to adopt. So those are the 5 things I often speak about as well when it comes to rounding out a lot of people's treatment programs.

Excellent. Steve, thanks for joining us today. It's been a pleasure.

Thank you, Dr. Stillman. I think you're an incredible human being and we share a lot of common values in terms of the kingdom and setting people free and, and helping people just become free of disease. You know, I tell people, 25 years of practice, I've had to see a psychologist and a counselor in the last 2 years because of compassion fatigue, seeing the teenagers and seeing children with chronic disease like never, ever before. Yes. And so as practitioners, we, we are the wounded healers.. And we do need to look after ourselves as well. But we've got to come together and set people free from chronic disease. Otherwise, the next generations are— it's going to be crazy. I mean, the podcast with Dr. Gaeta, he's a pediatrician, integrative pediatrician. Have him on the podcast. 50% of children in America have a chronic disease. 50%. I know. And it's just— we can't— we cannot carry on with this type of trajectory. With regards to disease.

We can't, no. And that's why I love podcasting. The reality is that the, the— I think a lot of our compassion fatigue, and I, I sympathize with you, you know, I've, I've cut my practice back at times over the last couple years just because the weight of the, the cases— they were not simple cases. I was not the first doctor consulted. They were not simple fixes. They were complex, in-depth high stakes, you know, you— I mean, you know, you, you either get the patient out of their current straits or they die type of cases. And that is a— it was so different when I was in the ICU because if patients were to pass, you know, I didn't get to know them very well. And there was an acuity and a severity that, um, it was just, what are the numbers? Let's treat the numbers. Let's get them out of the ICU, get them out of the hospital, and and move on. But when you're taking care of someone for years, you know, you really do get to know them. It's a much different level of connection.

Absolutely.

And so with that comes a different level of compassion fatigue, I found. But we have to innovate new ways to reach people, to galvanize them to take action, to take charge of their health, and to understand sort of the battlefield, if you will, because it really does feel like a battle. I don't like to make that analogy because I don't want to make it overly militaristic, but at the end of the day, there are, there are real bad actors in the system who are, um, who are creating disease shamelessly and, um, unrepentantly. And that makes it a lot more of a— seem a lot more like a war to me than I thought it was growing up. So we've gotta get people to take action. And so subscribe to the podcast, go subscribe to what Steve is doing. He's doing amazing work. I love connecting with you. And again, thank you for joining us.

Pleasure. Thank you.