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Facilitated
Functional Medicine Stories, Strategies, and Science from The Facility. ||
Get the inside scoop on functional medicine with real patient cases, expert insights, and practical strategies to take charge of your health. Hosted by a functional medicine doctor and nutritionist, Facilitated unpacks lab testing, cutting-edge treatments, and wellness trends—no fluff, just the good stuff. Whether you’re a patient, practitioner, or just health-curious, we’ll help you connect the dots and make functional medicine make sense.
Facilitated
21| Rocky Mountain Conference Recap: Dr. Silverman's Functional Medicine Wisdom
2025 Rocky Mountain Conference sponsored by NutriDyn Recap!
When we reflect on last weekend's seminar with Dr. Rob Silverman, we're excited to share valuable insights on how gut health connects to brain function, mitochondrial health, and simplified patient care protocols.
• The enteric nervous system is the largest nervous system in the body
• Simplified nutrition protocols like GPS (gluten, processed foods, sugar) and DNA (dairy, nicotine, alcohol) increase patient compliance
• 90% of individuals with autism spectrum disorders have gut dysfunction
• Mitochondrial dysfunction increases likelihood of bacterial overgrowth
• Choline downregulates neuroinflammation by affecting microglia polarization
• Egg yolks are the best dietary source of choline
• Heat and cold exposure recommendations should be personalized for safety and effectiveness
• Creatine degrades in hot water - don't mix it in coffee
• GLP-1 medications provide "too much" stimulation with significant side effects
• Testing for APOE2 may help personalize prevention strategies for dementia
• Patient accountability is crucial - partial compliance leads to partial results
• Food sensitivity testing has pros and cons worth considering
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Stay curious, stay proactive, and we’ll catch you next time!
Welcome to Facilitated, where we bring you real stories, strategies and science from the world of functional medicine. I'm Dr Mitchell Rasmussen, a functional medicine practitioner.
Speaker 2:And I'm Kate Daugherty, a certified nutritionist. We are the owners of the Facility, a functional medicine clinic here in Denver, Colorado.
Speaker 1:We help people improve their biology and get out of their own way. We help people improve their biology and get out of their own way. In my view, our work is about getting to know the person with the condition much more than it's about understanding which condition the person has. As I always say, diagnose the biology, not the disease.
Speaker 3:On this podcast, we break down complex health topics.
Speaker 2:Share real patient cases anonymized of course and explore cutting-edge wellness strategies so you can make informed decisions about your health. Quick heads up before we dive in this podcast is for education and general information only. We're here to share insights, not to diagnose or treat. So if you're dealing with a health issue, chat with a qualified healthcare provider before making any changes. All right, let's get into it.
Speaker 1:Did you get chills? Yeah. My singing gave you chills. Well, a little change up here. Recording on a Monday.
Speaker 2:It's crazy.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:We were just so excited to get in here.
Speaker 1:We figure we got a little time here between patients, so why not break into some of the learnings from this past weekend?
Speaker 2:Yeah, a little recap, a little takeaways, a little what do we like, what do we not like, as always, what did we do this weekend? So we are just coming off of a weekend seminar hosted by Nutridyne with Dr Rob Silverman, who's our main speaker. It's a Saturday conference up in North Glen, always a good time. We go every year, and yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I always say with these day-long things that if I can even just take away a few key points two or three that I'll be. It was well worth my time. And I say that not because I think I know everything, but because a lot of times with these single-day seminars there's not a ton of depth that gets investigated because they're speaking to a Right, I was going to say it's the audience.
Speaker 2:It's a challenging audience. Some people are there just to have a warm body in the room and get their CEs. Some people actually want to learn. So tailoring your talk to that breadth of people is challenging for anyone.
Speaker 1:And it's good for me, as somebody who wants to be in that room teaching, to notice that I can't speak, maybe in the most technical terms all the time, because it will overwhelm people. I also am always reminded that we're on a really good path when we go to these things because we get an idea of where other practitioners are at in their journey of trying to understand. You know, as Dr Silverman says, root solutions over root causes. So I think that's always a great reminder that we're really I would say ahead of the curve in this field.
Speaker 1:Always more to learn, which is the exciting and challenging part, but also just reflecting on how far we've come is always so helpful for me.
Speaker 2:I got a trivia question for you.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:What is the largest nervous system in the body?
Speaker 1:The enteric nervous system. Where's the enter largest nervous system in the body, the enteric nervous?
Speaker 2:system? Where's the enteric nervous system?
Speaker 1:Somewhere. No, it's in the gut.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean I would say a main theme of his talk was gut health and nervous system health, but specifically went into a lot of the enteric nervous system and an interplay with the central nervous system enteric nervous system and interplay with the central nervous system.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Dr Silverman's been practicing over 20 years and he's become actually a friend and mentor of mine. He was supposed to be here Friday for my birthday dinner but his flight got delayed.
Speaker 2:It's true, we went to dinner without him.
Speaker 1:Even though we had that set up.
Speaker 2:but that's okay it was still a good time.
Speaker 1:But one thing that he said at lunch was one of our issues right now is we are we probably give way too much detail about marching orders and interventions and we try to make every nutritional suggestion to be very personalized and but we're hitting a wall. It's just the time that it takes that people don't see, like the time that we take after visits. That is our time with family and friends and loved ones that we pour into our patients that's never really noticed or seen, is starting to really wear us out right.
Speaker 1:And one thing he said is getting bigger general suggestions right away will actually not just save you time but will make the person in front of you much more likely to follow it, because it's not so much change right away.
Speaker 2:And he loves his acronyms which one you got for me.
Speaker 1:Well, you said GPS and DNA, which I'd like to talk about, the N and DNA.
Speaker 2:I agree, yeah, so GPS gluten processed foods. Processed food sugar.
Speaker 1:Pull those out right away. And again, what we're thinking about with people in front of us is how do we make the biggest change in the health picture right away, and it's always about what are you?
Speaker 1:putting in your GI tract, knowing that the enteric nervous system is the largest nervous system in the body, the connection between the gut and the brain. I believe the brain has more connections to the GI tract than to any other place in the body combined. So there's that massive gut-brain-brain-gut connection that we talk so much about. So, yeah, taking out general categories of foods might not be the long-term solution, but let's try to make headway right away. So GPS and then DNA, dairy, nicotine, alcohol and what I would say and it was funny because I have one of my friends who's an ER physician that I met a guy from Salt Lake. Met him last year and we had a good time. We I asked him well, what are your thoughts on nicotine?
Speaker 1:And then he put a nicotine gum in his mouth right after that, um, and I would say it's say it's not all bad and not all good with nicotine. I mean I find some benefits with Focus Way less side effects than the ADHD medications that have been offered to me that I refuse to take. We know that it enhances cognitive performance, there's some aspects of neuroprotection, even mood benefits, and when you think about nicotine generally, taking out what Dr Silverman's talking about is well, it increases vasoconstriction and it raises heart rate and blood pressure. So that might be antithetical to the stressed-out person in front of me. My nuance with it is, it's all, context dependent. Don't smoke cigarettes with the hundreds of other chemicals, but nicotine used strategically, has for many people, not for everyone, but it has some pretty nice benefits including for me.
Speaker 1:But alcohol no benefits. But alcohol no benefits, right, as they say, when you're drinking, you you take tomorrow's happiness for today. And have you met anyone in the last year who sleeps better with alcohol? When they actually reflect or track it. Yeah, like we just had someone an hour ago. Yeah Like, oh, wow, look at your blood sugar that night when you had a, even like it was like a healthy drink One ounce.
Speaker 2:It was one ounce cocktail.
Speaker 1:Yeah, A tiny lady. Maybe that was why, but um but, I, think generally yeah, this idea about the GPS DNA you know it's about acronyms and making it easily digestible for people in front of you so that they can take something home with them, versus your 16-chapter novel that you give them after the first visit.
Speaker 2:It's a resource guide.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 2:You have another one or you want one from me.
Speaker 1:Go ahead.
Speaker 2:What do you think about APOE2 testing? Should we be testing it more? Go ahead. What do you think about APOE2 testing?
Speaker 1:Should we be testing it more? I mean, we are not testing it on everybody because it is $60 and we're constantly cost-conscious for our consumers.
Speaker 2:And considering what does it add to now?
Speaker 1:Right and well aware of the fact that a certain phenotype makes it nearly impossible to get Alzheimer's or dementia. And then other phenotypes, which are much more common, can either have a neutral risk or a much greater risk, up to maybe an 80% increased risk of dementia. And how I analyze that is well, I can't change my genes, but I can change my epigenetic expression. I can't change my genes, but I can change my epigenetic expression. If I have an APOE phenotype that's more likely to get dementia, I better make sure that I don't develop metabolic syndrome, that I exercise, that I manage. It's all the things I want you to do anyway, exactly, but now it's pretty much life or death.
Speaker 1:One thing that I'm going to change after this weekend is anybody with the ApoE phenotype expression that is much more likely to get dementia. I think we really need to consider omega-3 status much more strongly in them. It's no longer about can you eat fish, it's. Your future depends on your ability to get that omega-3 ratio into a balanced state, which the average American consumes. For every one gram of omega-3s, they consume 20 to 40 grams of omega-6s, which goes into the seed oil conversation.
Speaker 2:I know you want to have that conversation.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm not. It's all nuance man. You know, there's a lot of literature that shows that omega-6s have anti-inflammatory properties. But one thing we know that we get plenty of them in our diet, right? You don't have to try for that, yeah? So let's seek out threes and when we have control over it, like, I think olive oil tastes better than canola oil, you know, I mean, I think avocado oil works just great as a monounsaturated fat. So I think it is about let's not demonize a single food like that, but let's consider the balance in the diet there. Is that where you're at?
Speaker 2:yeah, same what did we learn about mitochondrial dysfunction?
Speaker 1:Oh, it's not relevant.
Speaker 3:What.
Speaker 1:What did you learn? I mean, I think, as Dr Silverman says, it's the incisive conversation of the last 10 years. Everyone's obsessed with mitochondrial function. Everyone's obsessed with mitochondrial function. One thing that probably does nothing to change my clinical outcomes for people, but that steroid hormones are made in the inner membrane space of the mitochondria, which I thought was really interesting along the endoplasmic reticulum and the inner membrane space, and we always think, I guess generally like, oh, when mitochondria fail, we start to have oxidative changes, because mitochondria are massive sources of oxidative stress. You know, we always look at mitochondrial dysfunction as kind of a driver of aging, a driver of organ damage and things like that. But now, even thinking more directly how oxidative stress damages mitochondrial dna, as we've talked about a couple podcasts ago on my little diatribe about sperm, even thinking about hormone dysfunction, I'm always, you know, liver stress, zinc status, alcohol consumption, but now it's like, well, no, we could actually attack the mitochondria support there to help improve steroid hormone output, which was a new thing I learned.
Speaker 2:I learned about mitochondrial dysfunction, as people with mitochondrial dysfunction are more likely to have bacterial overgrowth. So here's our gut, brainbrain-energy powerhouse of the cell connection.
Speaker 1:And keep in mind, the mitochondria are a massive source of free radical production, right, it's like burning gasoline in a car you get a ton of exhaust, right? So it's totally normal to create oxidation within the mitochondria. That's how it works. Exercise drives oxidation, but it's this hormetic effect where there's actually an improvement in mitochondrial function, because you're getting a dose of stress similar to heat shock, which, by the way, I didn't know this until this weekend and I dug in while sitting there because I was like, is that true? A sauna above 200 degrees? There's some data to show that that actually can increase blood brain barrier permeability.
Speaker 2:It can lead to leaking brain In a negative way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know so I've never been into a sauna that hot. I always stay away from the coil because it gets a lot cooler on the other side of the room. But really that what like 145 to 170 or so is probably the sweet spot.
Speaker 2:And probably shorter duration than most people think too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Especially if you've just exercised he talked a lot about that If you've just exercised. We just want to get that hyperthermic state. We want to achieve that elevated body temperature, but we don't want to cause too much stress on the system by staying in there too long or too hot.
Speaker 2:We learned a little bit about cold as well. There's some discussion around that. I think we learned more actually from our side discussion with the ER doc. You mentioned Dr Earl and he was talking about with his patients. His protocol is less about full body cold and more about localized cold exposure. He'll use ice packs chest, back of the neck, abdomen, maybe low back as well, forehead enough to induce a shiver, and that could be two to four minutes maximum and you'll get 85% of the benefit of full body cold. But it's so much more tolerable for a patient and then you can stack that over multiple days.
Speaker 1:I love the way he said it too. Can I get most of the benefit that I can stack multiple days in a row without the side effects? And because I'll push back on those of you who are obsessed with cold exposure. I mean I worry about coronary vessel constriction. You know, the blood vessels that serve your heart can become constricted with that full body cold. It could make you more anxious and stressed. Is it the dopamine? Is it the stress response? I don't really know, but I generally don't like the advice for everyone to go in cold. And now we got a little nuance around that dr earl. I mean I'm hoping our friendship blossoms and I can get him on the show because he is a wealth of knowledge. I mean working in the er for 20 years and then leaving it to focus on personalized lifestyle medicine. I really respect that because he took a massive risk and pay cut to get out of the system to create his own brand of personalized medicine and I mean he's a difference maker. So sidebar, yeah.
Speaker 2:Beep boop nerd alert. Long science monologue coming up next.
Speaker 1:Something else that I learned was talking about microglia. So our microglia are our resident macrophages within our brain. So they're part of our immune system. They help with immune function and inflammatory balance and burden. And one thing we know are compounds like BDNF and NGF, so brain-derived neurotrophic factor and nerve growth factor. They help with microglia to be in a resting state.
Speaker 1:One thing I didn't know is how choline comes into play, which we learned a lot about this weekend. So we have this balance in our microglia and our brain between an M1 and an M2 state. So when we think about the M1 state, it's more of this pro-inflammatory state and then the M2 is more of a reparative and anti-inflammatory state. This transformation between the two has significant implications for our brain, brain for degenerative disease and even when we think about baby brain development. What I didn't know was that choline we and we know it's a methyl donor right, and we use choline for liver health people with fatty liver, we use it. We just say generally for childhood brain development during pregnancy. Choline is so important but because of its ability to act as a methyl donor, meaning it helps balance out homocysteine, which is an inflammatory molecule, we show it now has been shown that choline actually will upregulate this M2 polarization, meaning it downregulates the M1 polarization.
Speaker 1:M1 is associated with inflammation with things like TNF-alpha. We know that choline is a precursor to acetylcholine. What I didn't realize was that our microglia actually express these nicotinic acetylcholine receptors. So as we up-regulate choline in the body, yes, we're going to get feeding the vagus nerve, because that's the currency that it uses, right? We've got the adrenergic system that uses adrenaline the fight or flight and we've got the cholinergic system that uses choline in the vagus nerve.
Speaker 1:But what I guess I didn't realize is that microglia express these nicotinic receptors and when we bind acetylcholine to that receptor it actually turns off NF-kappa B, which, as we've talked about in the past, nf-kappa B is I call it, the kindling of inflammation. Nf-kappa B is a series of transcription factors that drives further downstream inflammatory cytokine production. So now we understand that by using choline we bind that receptor that actually shuts off NF-kappa B, which. We've got enough things in our world that drive NF-kappa B, so anything we can do to push back on that will be a benefit.
Speaker 1:One thing that we knew previously was how, when our microglia are active in that pro-inflammatory state the literature says this they will go after stressed but viable neurons. So, quite literally, having body and brain inflammation not only upregulates stress chemistry in the brain, which reinforces inflammation, which we've talked so much about, but it actually will go after neurons. That might just be a little bit hypoxic, because you're iron deficient or you're B vitamin deficient or you live at altitude and those things drive the destruction of neurons that are actually still alive. Now, knowing that I can drive this anti-inflammatory state simply by upregulating choline is another reason for us to eat our eggs.
Speaker 2:I was going to say, okay, a lot of science there, but the real-world takeaway here best source of choline in our diet is egg yolks. Not egg whites but egg yolks, so eating the whole egg as a source of nutrition.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and the more I can polarize my microglia toward the M2, the less oxidative damage I'll have within neurons. And I'm not even going to talk about TLR signaling because, if you thought that was too much, I think TLR. Yeah, yeah. Okay, nope, nope, fair. Here's what I want you to know. Choline helps with neuroinflammation, helps with fetal brain development, cognition and mood, and it quite literally helps downregulate inflammation. Eat your choline, get out of here with your egg white omelet.
Speaker 2:Yeah, um, I wrote down a really fun quote that dr silverman said, but it was actually a quote from somebody else, but I don't know who it was. He said it was one of his. He said your job as a provider is to facilitate. It was a real quote I wrote. I loved it.
Speaker 1:I know that kind of woke me up too. I took a few notes here. There's some new resources on vagus nerve training that we're excited to look into. I'm not ready to talk about yet because I need to try it. The elite was the one. Training like stimulation, yeah, I think it's has to do with some biofeedback. One thing that makes sense is but I guess I never put this together that with our clients with chronic viral infections, chronic viral, that leaning into some doses of heat could actually help stimulate an immune response toward that viral burden to kind of push it back into the periphery.
Speaker 2:Speaking of heat, creatine degrades in hot water, so don't put your creatine in your coffee. Collagen is fine. You can put collagen in coffee. It won't degrade, but creatine needs to be mixed into cold beverages.
Speaker 1:I actually thought of it yesterday leaving the gym. My water in my car was so hot and I have a cooler because I bring a bunch of pineapple and bananas and stuff for after my workout and I keep my protein, creatine, glutamine, fiber in the cooler. But my water was hot and I was literally thinking about Dr Silverman as I was drinking hot liquid but I was like it was mixed for like 30 seconds because I chugged it. I'd rather ignore my rule about not chugging to make sure I could get some of my creatine. But yeah, that was interesting and I've always said don't mix up creatine and liquid because of its solubility and let it sit too long, like if you make a smoothie the night before, mix it in right before you drink it. But now, knowing that heat degrades it even quicker is, I think that was a good piece of information. You just can't shove everything in your coffee quicker is, I think that was a good piece of information.
Speaker 2:You just can't shove everything in your coffee. No, uh, we. There was a lot of education about the gut and autism connection. It's not new to me. A lot of the research he was sharing was 2024, 2025, which was cool. But did you know? I actually wrote my undergraduate thesis on gluten-free, casein-free diet in autism spectrum disorders.
Speaker 1:I didn't know that, yeah 2013,.
Speaker 2:My degree in neuroscience. That was my thesis. So good foreboding for my career now that I had no idea I was going to go into nutrition. But that's what I chose to write a whole thesis on go into nutrition.
Speaker 1:But that's what I chose to write a whole thesis on. Well, and just thinking about, with autism spectrum disorders, I think he said that about 90% of those individuals have gut dysfunction, which we see. Yeah, it's very common for individuals on the autism spectrum to have chronic diarrhea, chronic dairy cravings yeah, and that's what I was going to say is a lot of it.
Speaker 2:it's psychological and it becomes chicken or egg. Is it their food choices that are driving the gut dysfunction? Or is it the gut dysfunction or gut bacterial balance that's driving some of their food cravings, choices, even aversions?
Speaker 1:And it's so true what Dr Silverman said Is it gut to brain? Is it brain to gut? Is it brain to gut to brain? Is it gut to brain to gut? It doesn't matter, it's all of it. And treating top down and bottom up yields the best outcomes. And we see this clinically when we work with individuals on the autism spectrum. If we can work on GI inflammation, these individuals tend to express less OCD tendencies, less anxiety tendencies, and I mean that's such an amazing win for these individuals. I think so often these people who are on the autism spectrum, they get a lot of therapy right and it's about understanding social cues and like how to essentially essentially fit in in a world that maybe they don't have the same sensory understanding of. And to me that's missing the boat. It's like can I work on these people's biology, intrinsic to their state, to help calm the system down? I mean, as you go back to what's the largest nervous system in the body, the enteric nervous system down.
Speaker 1:I mean as you go back to what's the largest nervous system in the body, the enteric nervous system. You know so many neurons down there and that connection is through the vagus nerves, right. Right 90% from gut to brain, only 10% brain to gut which is I always think about that Like the brain is kind of like oh, okay, that's what you're up to. I got no say but okay, cool, that's what you're up to. All right, thanks for letting me know. Yeah, your gut feelings.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. What did he say? Men call it a gut feeling, women call it intuition, um, uh. But we know that the more you know, you have this constant sampling. The nervous system and the immune system are playing together within the GI tract and you have this constant sampling of the milieu and if there's a lot of bacterial endotoxin within those spaces, those absorptive surfaces, you are going to change what's on the other side of the gut. Remember?
Speaker 1:He talked a lot about that. He even said it took years to get to the point of thinking, yeah, the gut, the gut, but what is on the other side of the gut tissue? If you breach the barrier, right, we've got. Our first line of defense is our barriers. It's our lung barrier and our blood-brain barrier and our gi barrier and all of these, our skin. But then beyond that innate immune system and then beyond that is the adaptive system, and it was. It was good for me, with someone who has been really interested in the immune part, to know that even this guy that I look up to so much he's been doing this a long time. It took him years to realize where, where am I failing with certain outcomes, with people, and it's oh, I gotta go on the other side of the gut barrier, right, that's back to the chicken or the egg is like is it all about leaky gut or is it more about what's stimulating the immune system beyond the barrier system, which I think we're pretty good on top of, pretty well, on top of, yeah.
Speaker 2:We've got our seven hour protocol we can put in place.
Speaker 1:We were laughing. We're like every year there's another hour. We said the next year it'll be the 8R, it'll be re-talks.
Speaker 2:We thought of at least four more R's we could add.
Speaker 1:Re-test, re-talks, Re-assess. You said well, you can pretty much put re in front of it in any word and make it another R. And what we're talking about is Remember that. There you go. What we're talking about is, you know, in functional medicine it used to be like the 4R right, and the whole idea is like remove foods that are irritating, rebalance the microbiome.
Speaker 2:Repair the leaky gut Re-inoculate.
Speaker 1:And now, slowly, there's more and more of ours. I want you to talk about his list of 11.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, his longevity hacks. There's actually 14.
Speaker 1:oh, why did I think it was 11?
Speaker 2:see, I wrote down right here rob's longevity hacks, 1 through 11, and then I wrote them down from the slides and there's 14. Oh, but wait till you hear them, because some of them are the same. Because number one is nutrition, but number two is dramatically reduce sugar, starch and ultra processed foods, which I would argue is nutrition. Number three exercise, specifically increasing resistance training. Number four sleep. Wait till you hear. Number five Health detectables. What do you think about that?
Speaker 1:Well, I push back on that. I know I yelled out, that's an osteosarcoma fertilizer device number six meditate number seven intermittent fasting which he gave a lot of nuance there, talked a lot about. What did he say? Women from 12 to 52 from puberty to menopause especially there might be certain times in a menstrual cycle that it works. But so I appreciated that, because I don't like that general recommendation. And he did. He actually found probably 20 minutes talking about the nuance there.
Speaker 2:Number eight is breath work, which I would yeah, uh, number nine we love purpose, mission and community. Then we have number 10, hormesis, which is hot and cold exposure. Number 11 was supplements. Number 12 was methylation Address with supplements, all right. Number 13, intact gut barrier and remove food sensitivities, which I would say is number one nutrition. And then number 14 was GLP-1 balanced signaling. Big discussion about GLP-1s and the simplest way he put it to answer a question from the audience was GLP-1s are Goldilocks? Answer? A question from the audience was GLP-1s are Goldilocks, the GLP-1 drugs, the injectables of Zempik, munjaro, etc. It's just such a mega dose on the far end of the spectrum, so too much.
Speaker 1:And it agonizes GLP-1 for way too long. Yes, which is what you know. You get a dose once a week typically. That should tell you that there's not going to be a normal pattern of release here.
Speaker 2:So he talks a lot about how natural GLP one inducers would say are more suited to that natural rhythm at a more appropriate dose.
Speaker 1:It's just a few hours of action less intense, but then, as with most things in natural medicine, less side effects. What did you say? I think 36% of people get diarrhea from them.
Speaker 2:Nausea is the top symptom. It was 36%. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I think think was it 15 to 20 percent of people I don't remember the number, but it was a significant amount end up stopping them only because of the side effects, and they don't work beyond 12 months, right, right. But then we talked a lot about because, hey look, a lot of the people we work with are on them. So what do we do? What do you say? You can intervene during to help with minerals and bioflow, things like that. You help after, or?
Speaker 2:before avoid and before before and avoid yeah you know, and.
Speaker 1:but the point being is, let's not shame these individuals who have struggled with weight loss, because we know that having excessive weight will lead to increased inflammation in the body, more likely to get pretty much every chronic disease. We know that the GLP-1s and you talked a lot about this is it quiets that voice of wanting to eat and I think there's a massive benefit there for the right person. But the problem is you're going to these health spas and you're getting compounded forms that are not regulated.
Speaker 2:Which means so compounded, meaning they could be added several additives in them, and the pharmacist in the audience talked about that a little bit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they'll add certain herbs and certain vitamins and synthetic forms and really high doses, and it's these people pretty much just experimenting, you know, within these I mean, we see it within these like health spas. They do Botox and GLP ones like well, okay, has anyone talked about your community, your gratitude, your hormesis, your exercise, or is it just? Oh, I can make eleven hundred dollars a month on this supplement, and how about that? The cost cost? Yeah, it was like the uk and germany, canada can. Well, canada was like 151 a month and in the? U? Well, canada was like $151 a month and in the US it was like $1,300. Which is mind-boggling to me that we can get away with that in our country.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, we have to talk about food sensitivity, food sensitivity testing. Dr Rob loves it. My understanding is that every patient undergoes food sensitivity testing in his practice. I can definitely see both sides of it, but I just don't feel like it's a necessary thing.
Speaker 1:Well, and he you know a lot of. He acknowledges that a lot of companies are not testing enough subclasses of IgG right, he talks a lot about we want to test four different subclasses of IgG and we also want to test for complement activation to see if there's that extra step of immune activation that's happening. So I do understand, and his perspective is we take these things out for maybe 12 weeks while we work on everything else, and the body can typically tolerate more of these foods, and that's what I mean. Dr Sam Yannick, he's a genius guy I look up to so much. I mean he's big on that kind of stuff. But it's as a temporary removal of obvious inflammatory drivers before you add things back in, I mean what? But we're kind of against them, kind of.
Speaker 2:I think they create too restrictive of a diet and we're thinking about patient compliance, getting getting some wins. Sometimes seeing that list is overwhelming. Okay, well, I can't eat anything. Here's my list of things to avoid. I can't eat anything and it's too big of a change. I also don't know if we need to see it on paper to tell someone to avoid gluten or dairy or soy.
Speaker 1:The obvious ones. Yes, and I understand the ones that he runs. They look at food additives which can be helpful, but I mean, we're typically telling people try to eliminate those generally anyway. Right, and we totally understand.
Speaker 1:I think he was talking to more of a general swath of practitioners that don't work with an expert nutritionist, like I get to, and because we're well aware that the window is 72 hours after a food to maybe a reaction, and your reaction might be subtle, like a headache, right, or some increased joint pain or something like that, but we're well aware of that. So maybe for the practitioner that doesn't have a partner and is just trying to make broad stroke changes right away, it might help guide some things. But we're just, we're well aware of what food reactions can do to a person. Yeah, I agree, it's expensive. I would much rather we're going to look at the gut. I'd rather do a stool test and then pull out, you know, dairy eggs, wheat and soy for a little bit and then and then if let's say, someone still struggles, we've gone on a migraine diet, we've really worked on the skin and we're still getting there. It's like that that I want to look at hormones.
Speaker 1:You know I want to look at stress I don't know, I'm, yeah, I spent a lot of time thinking about that since then and it's like he knows a lot, super smart guy, a lot of experience. There's gotta be something there. I just don't know if it's for us.
Speaker 2:I know I'm still kind of out he did say and I knew this, but he, he reiterated it how long do you have to be gluten free to be symptom free? You know what it is months 90 days. Yeah, yeah, so your whole 30 might not be cutting it, yeah yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:And then he made a comment. He goes if you're still putting lipstick on, you're not gluten free Toothpaste. Yeah, because we asked. You know, the problem with a lot of these seminars is if you don't have any experience, you leave that. It's like that Dunning-Kruger effect you know a little bit and you think it's easy, and then you've been doing it for 10 years, you're like well, that didn't work. Now what? Right? So much of what we have to do for people they've seen so many providers who have tried all these things is we need to understand what to do when things don't go well. And that was a question I asked him and it was more asking it for everyone, everyone to hear like, look, it's not this easy. Um, cause I can make a seminar right now with all of our, you know, first try wins. But and he made the comment he goes. Well, that's when you either do more testing, use more time, or you really dial into. Okay, I wrote this script.
Speaker 2:You know? Are you holding up your side of the agreement, which I love.
Speaker 1:We don't do that enough. He's like well, I gave you a month of this and there's half a bottle left a month later. So what's up? Yeah, he's like. Well, I gave you a month of this and there's half a bottle left a month later. So, what's up? Yeah, and kind of holding people's feet to the fire, which I really appreciated.
Speaker 2:More patient accountability. If I tell you to be gluten-free, dairy-free, and you sort of did it, how is that my fault that you're not getting the outcome you expect?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that was good reiteration that we dive in deeper. Yeah, and that was good reiteration that we dive in deeper. We step back and reassess or we really challenge the person in front of us to think is my effort commensurate with my goals? And then, yeah, he was like you put lipstick on, you're not gluten-free, I don't care, like fair enough, and I mean that's true. I had a. I had a client years ago before we worked together who was a chef and she developed celiac and she even found that breathing in flour caused a docking on of that material within her lung tissue and that drove a gluten-free chef. But anyway, I love that really. You know, being willing to not absorb, I guess blame, if you will, for a lack of outcomes if the compliance was not up, and really being confident enough to challenge the effort being given. I think that was good for me to hear, because you know me, I tend to always blame myself of course what am I failing?
Speaker 1:what am I missing? You know how am I not doing my end of the deal to get people better? And now it's allowed me to like hey look, you can always be better. You're trying to be better, but you can also challenge the person in front of you.
Speaker 2:Watch out patients who are coming in this week you're trying to be better, but you can also challenge the person in front of you. Watch out patients who are coming in this week.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the blame game. No, it's about the balance Overall. I mean, I always leave these weekends reinvigorated, excited, willing to simplify certain things, which I got again this weekend. It's always good to learn from people that are in a place that we hope to be someday, so it's just as inspired as always.
Speaker 2:So thank you to Neutrodine Todd for hosting, putting everything together, and thank you to Dr Rob for traveling from New York to do this. It means a lot to us and, yeah, we'll be back.
Speaker 1:Thank you.
Speaker 3:For more about what we do at the facility, check out our website, wwwthefacilitydenvercom. You can also follow us on Instagram at the facility Denver for extra tips behind the scenes, fun and updates on new episodes. Thanks for listening. Now go facilitate your own health and we'll see you next time.