Let me go ahead and start our panelist.
First I'm going to ask Ms. Dr. Christina Kerman to please join us.
As you know, she's an IMA Senior Fellow, Nutritional and Holistic Health.
Yesterday she won an award, so she's an author of many of the IMA guidelines, I mean all
of those guys that you see on nutrition and stuff like that that you keep on getting,
keep on getting them more, that's what she does.
The next one is Dr. Adil Varun.
Before I bring her in, remember we're transparent in this organization.
She's my daughter, so that's the transparency part.
Adil is a doctor of Chinese medicine.
It's funny that I actually have to see all the stuff that she has on, but let me tell
you, she has more letters after her name than I do. She has lectured both nationally and
internationally on some of these things. And one of the nice things is that in our practice
we basically share patients. And whenever I get stuck with a patient I just give it
to her and hope that she will do her thing and she does well.
And last I want to introduce Chris Jackman. He's the Chief Operating Officer for the Carolina
He's a practice partner with IMA Senior Fellow, Dr. JP Salidi.
He used to work at the Cleveland Clinic in cardiopharastic surgery
and then he saw the light and he is a pretty interesting gentleman.
So today we're going to have a very interesting conversation.
Mostly we're going to talk about the approach to whole body health.
And, you know, again, I'm telling you what we do in my practice,
but not too many people do that,
and that's why they are independent practitioners
like you guys that are out there.
So, Christina, why don't we start with you.
Why don't you tell us a little bit about your practice
so that people get a little bit of an idea of what you do,
how you do it, and how can people reach you
and how do they even know about you?
Okay, so I practiced independently.
Basically, it's my own company, my own business.
I'm a naturopathic doctor.
I did all of my training abroad and overseas, so in the UK
and in the South East Asia, so a very strong sort
of Eastern medicine influence, which we have a lot
in common about that.
But my undergrad and bachelors is in nutrition therapy,
so I'm very nutrition focused.
I will say that most people will come to me
after they've seen several other clinicians.
And I practice a little bit differently.
I usually have an hour to an hour and a quarter with my patients.
I take a big intake.
I take a food diary, which is very important to me,
and sometimes several food diaries.
And we go through a whole health history and we go right down to childhood
and birth and birth story and family health history.
And that's how I kind of build my cases around complexity,
around sometimes they're simple cases, sometimes not.
And I am also very, very aware that there is a limit
to my scope of practice, partly because I am a naturopathic doctor
and there is this like, even my parents have called me there
like you're in woo-woo medicine.
You know, this is the truth.
So there is still that, you know, like maybe a little chip
on my shoulder from that perspective that there I have
to be a bit humble about my scope of practice.
And I think this is really important, maybe even for all of us as clinicians to remember
that there is a limit to what we can do.
And I had an amazing conversation this morning about how I am seeing a lot of these patients
that are vaccine injured, that have been fobbed off by many clinicians, many sort of allopathic
clinicians, and they still have these massive symptoms.
I need to know that I have a referral network of people that I can refer these patients
to because there is only a limit to what I can do.
Some of the symptoms to me are really big red flag symptoms.
So I need to know that I have this gorgeous network of people that I can recommend these
patients to, and that's really important.
And I think that's the part where we need to remember that we can't be everything to
our patients all the time.
And that's part of our duty of care.
So that's very much how I practice.
I use a lot of nutraceuticals and complementary therapies.
I will refer to acupuncturists.
I use a lot of red light therapy treatments and peptide therapies
and all sorts of different amazing things in my practice,
but even beyond that I know that that's maybe a limit.
So that's where the referrals come in
and that's very much how I practice.
And I will continue to.
No, but that's great and you just brought up an important part
and that's what Jeff was talking about earlier, you know.
We need that network of trusted healthcare professionals.
I mean a network that doesn't exist.
I mean, you go up and you look at an insurance company,
which is what most of us end up doing.
Who can I send this patient to?
I mean, they're not trusted, especially if they're hired by insurance.
But having said that, it's so important that you trust somebody.
And I'm happy that you do the, you call it voodoo medicine.
When I first started to let Adil work with us,
I kept on calling it hocus pocus medicine.
So it's very, very clear, but actually, as Adil will tell you,
she actually gets more information out of my patients than what I do.
So Adil, how do you go about your patients?
Absolutely.
I'm going to kind of echo what Dr. Carmen said.
I spend at least an hour to an hour and a half
with my patients the first time they come in.
So to give you guys a little perspective, I am a doctor
of traditional Chinese medicine.
I got all of my training in Austin, Texas.
I went to AOMA, the Graduate School of Integrative Medicine,
got a master's, pursued the doctorate of Chinese medicine,
and became a licensed acupuncturist and also a doctor
of traditional Chinese medicine.
I had moved my practice to Houston in 2018, and this is pre-pandemic
and actually Varun and I, and I'm going to reference his as Varun
and not dad on stage.
So we were actually planning on creating an integrative hospital.
That was our goal.
I had moved to Houston where we were going to do this,
and then the whole 2020 happened, and it was just not feasible.
So within the parameters that were given to us,
we started noticing, hey, there's got to be something else out there.
What are they doing in China treating their patients
with what is accessible to them?
And we started seeing all the research.
we actually wrote a paper in the beginning of the pandemic
about how we can use this herbal medicine to treat the virus.
And it was very well taken, very well received.
And then we started seeing patients coming saying, hey,
I've been to 20, 25 doctors, they can't help me.
And traditional Chinese medicine,
what some of you might reference to as acupuncture,
was really giving us answers because the one being one
of the traditional texts is solely, it solely treats epidemics.
So this medicine is not anything new.
This medicine has been around for thousands of years
and it's had answers that conventional medicine,
western medicine did not.
So I was able to give a different perspective
in our office providing answers
that you didn't necessarily have answers to.
And, I'm sorry, it's really hard
to be on stage with your father, your husband, and your mother staring at you, and maintaining
a three-year-old, too.
But I digress.
So yeah, just being able to give a different perspective, which we'll talk about throughout
this panel.
But yes, I typically spend a long time getting to know my patients, getting all of the information
possible, not only of what the body tells me, but what the voice, the sound, and I'm
sure you observe this as well.
You can only tell your doctor so much by your body just looking at you, and something one
of my professors always said, you will never look at people the same way.
You will always find something wrong, but you will also always find something very beautiful.
And I find this conference, and thank you for having me here, it is lovely, and I look
forward to hearing all of our perspectives. Chris, you also saw the light like I said earlier.
Tell us a little bit about your transformation. Sure. So, you know, I was trained very traditionally
in Western medicine. I worked in an ICU. I worked in an operating room. I became a nurse practitioner,
went to the Cleveland Clinic and worked in cardiac surgery and just followed the guidelines,
the traditional guidelines that I was told to follow.
And at some point, early on in the pandemic,
started realizing that, you know,
patients just weren't doing well.
So we made a move from Cleveland, Ohio to Charleston.
And I told my wife, I can't go back into these hospitals
and continue to harm patients the way we were.
And we were doing great things, operating and saving lives.
But it was the post-op care that was really upsetting to me.
you know, prescribing all the statins and the medications
and things like that.
So, found Dr. Salibi, took his class,
the Priority Health Academy course,
the first graduate of the Priority Health Academy,
and was just amazed by what he was able to do
in finding different reasons and different ways
to fix people without using the traditional route,
using alternative medicine, using off-label medicines,
using herbals, using supplements.
So it opened my eyes.
I love going into work.
I love being able to talk to patients
like we've mentioned for an hour, hour and a half,
get to know them, get to know their families,
get to know their true history.
And through this process of the new leadership we have
in Washington in the Make America Healthy Again initiative
And we're also doing something similar in South Carolina with the Make South Carolina
Healthy Again initiative.
You know, our goal is give patients choices.
Let patients decide what they want to do.
Do not force them into doing what is mandated by the government.
And that's been our big push is tell them their options.
In functional medicine, we feel like we have a foot in each area.
We have a foot in Western medicine, we have a foot in Eastern medicine.
And we sometimes give patients options of the traditional Western medicine treatment
for certain disease processes, but then we also give them the Eastern option, or we also
give them the nutraceutical or the lifestyle option.
And the ability to have a group of like-minded people around you, like the people up here
with me today, is very important because patients don't want to come to see us and then have
to go be referred to a GI specialist for their gut issues.
They want to go see somebody who thinks like us, things like them,
and will kind of follow the same path that we're trying
to build this parallel healthcare system.
Excellent.
Well, I want to ask specific questions to each one of you just
because those are things that have been in my mind.
In your case, Christina, there are a lot of nutraceuticals out there.
There are a lot of things that you can do.
The question that my patients always ask me in the office is,
how do I know which one is good?
I mean, how do you choose the best agent and, you know,
that is pure or at least, so what do you do?
I mean, this is what you do day in and day out.
Yes. So I will, I research supplements and herbs and I have
for years and years and years because it matters to me so much.
It's not necessarily just taking something
because that's just replacing a pill for every ill.
So we have to look at supplements in the same way.
They can be incredibly powerful
and they can really shift movement in a body.
And there's massive contraindications with taking herbs,
added pharmaceuticals, and there's depletions in, you know,
certain nutrients from taking medication.
And, you know, there's adverse side effects.
We have to really explore this.
I will say I'm very careful with the supplements that I choose
and I urge all of you guys to do the same,
because a lot of the supplement companies are now actually owned
by pharmaceutical companies.
So they've basically taken these formulations.
They're like, oh, well, something works here.
It's working here.
This is a huge amount of money that people are spending on products,
and they've just basically taken that over.
So I would argue that actually it affects the efficacy of the product.
So, and I understand this is very,
very difficult to kind of go through.
But I, one of the sort of passion pieces for me as a clinician
and very much as an educator is one thing that I would really
like to work on is building coursework so that
as clinicians you guys have options on taking, you know,
some further education around how
to appropriately supplement alongside a medical setting.
So that's really something that I'm quite passionate about.
And then also looking at functional ranges
from our lab pathology.
So I think that's, these are kind of areas
that I'm really, really focusing on and working on.
I think my takeaway from this is just really do your research as much
as you can, and if you don't feel comfortable fully recommending
something, then don't recommend it.
Send the patient or refer the patient to somebody else.
I'll add to that is when I first moved to Charleston,
South Carolina three years ago from the UK, and we left very much
because of the pandemic, because of awful, awful in England,
I wrote to Dr. Salibi's office, and I said, look,
I'm a naturopathic doctor.
I train with ISM in functional medicine.
This is who I am.
I've been really interested in, you know,
knowing what this space looks like here in South Carolina.
And he very quickly responded, and most doctors,
I wrote to a lot of doctors, he was the only one that responded,
said, oh, interesting, let's go out for a coffee.
So I met with Dr. Salibi and his wife, and we went, he bought me lunch,
And it was like a really lovely, lovely experience.
But I was interviewed essentially by this lovely doctor.
And then he said, you know what,
come and do some job shadow days in my clinic.
And I will say this, this is really interesting
because we both practice very similarly
as far as how long we see our patients and what we recommend.
I don't recommend, I don't prescribe pharma.
That's obviously behind, beyond my scope of practice.
That's where I would refer.
But the referral network has become actually really quite
lovely between our practices.
Even though we practice very similarly, there is obviously,
beyond my remit where I can recommend, I will refer to Dr. Salini's
to Carolina Holistic Medicine and then vice versa when it comes to nutrition
and sort of those dietary and lifestyle interventions.
So it can be very complimentary even though we practice very similarly.
So I think that's what I would like to leave just to add on there.
But coming back to your point, sorry guys, this is what happens.
I get talking and then forget it.
Do your research when it comes to nutraceuticals and watch the space
because we really would like to work on some more sort
of continuing education when it comes to how
to properly recommend and dose.
That's awesome.
Adil, what is the number one limitation, other than cost,
that you see the patients complain about when they come to you?
I mean, do they say, hey, you know, needles hurt or, you know,
that just doesn't sound right or I don't want to smell
that moxa when you're doing moxibustion.
What is the number one limitation that you see among people
and how can we overcome such limitation?
Education and educate.
I think a lot of people just don't know.
They're not versed in this world.
They have their doctor telling them, oh no, it's not going to work.
I think that educating not only the patients
but also practitioners will open those doors for us as practitioners
but also as patients to get the care that they need.
And that's one of the things
that the IMA has been actively doing.
So we're trying to integrate these two worlds,
which is really one world.
I mean, we're just utilizing the different tools or weapons
that we need in order to fight disease.
And more than to fight disease, I want to say that one
of the things that you all do is you prevent disease.
Isn't that true, Chris?
I mean, isn't prevention like your primary thing?
That was the goal, and that's where our practice began,
was trying to get to know people.
And something very interesting is if you walk
into a traditional Western medicine PCP and you tell them,
you're doing well, I'm happy, I'm healthy, I feel good,
you know, that's going to be a very short visit.
It's probably going to be 30 to 45 seconds, and you're going
to be right out that door, and they're going to say,
wonderful to see you in a year, right? So what we try to do differently is we try
to, even when they're feeling great, let's try to deep dive and see where areas
that we can make sure that we can make you not only just good or great but
optimal so that way we can protect your health and keep you healthy so that way
when things do come up your body's ready to handle them. So it's not so much that
we're looking for problems but we're looking for where is the patient not
optimal? Where do you have deficiencies? Are you sleeping well? Are you stressed?
It's amazing when you talk to patients and they'll say, I feel great, I have no
real concerns, and then you start asking them questions and you're like, well how
is your sleep? And like, well I wake up off a night all night and what's your
stress level like? Well, you know, my my kids in college and I'm always nervous
about them away at college. Then you start uncovering issues that they really
have but they just don't think of telling you because that's just not the
way things were done traditionally.
The doctor typically doesn't want to hear about that stuff.
So being able to dive deeply into their life and have the time to do
that uncovers things that we're able
to fix before they even know their problems.
Excellent.
Now Christina, going back to you, one of the things
that we get all the time people are asking if you were
to choose one vitamin that you would take?
Not a bunch.
I mean, this is a question that I get.
Doctor, I don't want to take all of those.
I just want to take one.
You are the expert.
Which one of all the vitamins out there is like the number one
that you would want to take?
This is your question.
This is my question.
I can't pick one, I'm afraid.
I have three, though.
Okay? Okay, well, at least she's trying to compromise.
I'm trying to compromise, okay?
Okay, so we're talking adults here.
I would look at creatine, but you didn't think I was going to say that,
incredible for your brain, incredible for your bones,
incredible for all stages of life to preserve our muscle health.
And when we know that muscle is much more metabolically healthy,
we have that on our bodies, so obviously this comes
in with movement as well.
But the creatine, if you look at the research, is really phenomenal.
Then I would look at vitamin D and I will go as far as saying,
looking at vitamin D with K2 because we want to make sure
that we're actually pushing the vitamin D where it needs to.
A lot of us have issues with how we absorb
and metabolize vitamin D.
I do a lot of genetic testing or genomic testing
and we can see people have issues with transport
and utilization of vitamin D.
And this is when we see where our patients are
on high dose vitamin D and there's no movement
with their serum levels when we're testing them.
and often it's the cofactors.
So it's never really just one nutrient, guys.
I think that's a really important one to look at.
A lot of them work synergistically together.
Then in addition to that, I would probably look at magnesium
because of its unbelievable abilities to cofactor
with so many different enzymatic functions in our bodies.
So those would kind of be my top three.
And I think we are also very suboptimally deficient
in magnesium simply because of our soil depletion
and toxin exposure and all the things that are coming
at us constantly, and magnesium plays a huge role
in how our liver detoxifies.
It's a precursor to many of our sort of, you know, phase one,
phase two liver detoxification pathways.
So we need this very, very much.
It has a huge, huge, huge support when it comes
to glucose tolerance and glucose support as well.
So that's another one that we look at.
So those would kind of be my top three.
But there are others, I'm afraid.
Well, let me then go to the Chinese medicine department
and ask the same question.
Clearly with the international Chinese medicine you don't give
like a prescription for vitamin C or vitamin D or D plus K2,
but you guys use a lot of herbal medicines.
Is there any preventive or anything that you would tell everybody
that is right here in the audience,
you guys should be taking this every day?
So I'm not sponsored by anyone.
I'm here on my own accord.
So there is, and if you've watched our webinars together,
there is a formula that serves almost like an herbal ivermectin.
It does have its contraindications,
so this is not my suggestion for all of you to take it.
But I would say the golden flower oregano oil prescription is
fantastic because not only is it oregano,
it is blended with three herbs, shijunsa, huanglian, and wumi.
These are three different herbs.
I'm not going to even try to butcher the Latin for you right now.
But they blend beautifully with the oregano oil to serve
as an anti-parasitic, anti-fungal, anti-bacterial and anti-viral.
This is something I commonly prescribe to my patients that don't want
to take the ivermectin prescription that you give them.
And they respond very well.
They respond very well.
It also can be used as a topical for any sort of infection, rash, bug bite.
It's a fantastic all-around all-in-one, kind of how we used
to use Vic's papal rump growing up.
Mom would put it on our feet to get our fever to go down.
I kind of do the same with my son, but with the oregano oil,
and it works phenomenally.
I also use it for detoxing.
So I'm sure that everybody's writing down, you know, it's okay,
so oregano oil, we need our vitamin D.
But I do need to stress,
this specific brand has three other herbal components in it.
So it's not just your regular oregano oil that you're picking
up at the grocery store because you have to be very,
very careful just to kind of echo what we were saying is
that these products, these herbal natural products can be
incredibly dangerous can have very harsh adverse effects
if you're on any other medications,
pharmacology, pharma medications.
We have to be very careful what we prescribe and that's why
on these platforms I always have to urge, please consult
with your herbalist because they can have interactions.
And that's one thing that a lot of people forget.
I mean, we do look a lot into the drug-drug interactions
and even these other natural products or interactions.
Yes, you?
I will say one thing to this, and I know you agree with me on this one.
When we're putting in any kind of anti-parasitic,
and I would argue this with ironectin as well, because it has to come
and metabolize through the body, you have to ask your patients
if they have regular bowel movements every day.
Because if they're not going to the toilet and they're holding that in,
and a regular bowel movement is a daily bowel movement.
Anyone that says otherwise isn't really understanding the mechanism
of how we digest food.
Really important that they're having at least one daily bowel movement.
Anything beyond that I start to really question whether what's going
on because we need to make sure that the body is actually able
to excrete whatever you're trying to bind.
And that's what anti-parasitics do and that's what anti-liprobials do.
Not everyone tolerate them well and this is why I'm saying please just
proceed with caution and understanding of where you're going with this
because they can be really powerful
and people will have massive herccyber symptoms, reactions,
if you put it in very strong.
So also look at the person's terrain.
Are they the kind of person and even the constitution
that can tolerate and handle this well?
Maybe you have to do a little bit of like free work first to kind
of clean up that terrain first before you put
in something really strong.
And yeah, that's all I've got to say on that one.
Be very careful.
Chris, can you tell us what do you guys supplement other
than the ones that have been mentioned?
Yeah, so one thing I would add that with my cardiac background,
I always match it, is omega-3.
And I think they would probably agree.
Like Christina said, the list is long.
But with omega-3s, which is interesting,
something I learned just over the past three, four years,
is that omega-3 fish oil, you know, if you get 100 barrels
of fish oil from the sea, about 90% of that is terrible and not useful
and that's what goes to Costco and that's what goes to, you know,
Harris Teeter and Publix.
So when you're buying your omega-3s from these general stores,
you're taking it and I'll have patients come in
and we'll check their omega-3 levels and they're terrible
and they'll say I take two a day and I have for five years and,
you know, why is this the case?
So you really have to know that you're getting it
from a trusted source.
You're getting that, you know, top 10 barrels
that are actually good omega-3 fish oils.
And I think it was mentioned yesterday and worth repeating,
when it comes to vitamins, when it comes to nutrients,
when it comes to what your body needs, it's very important
to not just take vitamin D because you think you need it
or B12 or folate because you need it.
you really should be tested
and be taking what you're deficient in
because there's many people who come in
and you cannot really tell by looking at them
what their deficiencies are or talking to them.
Sometimes you really do need to check the blood work
and some patients will come in and I'll be shocked
because their B12 levels are 200
and we're shooting for a B12 level of 700 or more
or the vitamin D level is 15
and we're shooting for 50, 60, 70.
And you, so they may be, you know, you come in
and you're taking vitamin D thinking you're doing the right thing,
but you're actually very deficient in B12 and folate.
So it's important to not just take things because you read, you know,
a guy on Instagram says everyone should take methylfolate,
so everyone takes methylfolate.
So don't just listen to, you know,
the influencers telling you what to take.
Talk to somebody, get tested, and take what your body needs
because that's really what is important.
Now, and this is a question to the three of you,
and I don't know how many of you do see children.
But, you know, a lot of people ask me, what about my child?
I mean, are you guys supplementing children?
And I'm not talking about the Flintstone little gummies, okay?
I'm talking about, are you supplementing children?
Yes?
Yes, I will.
So we are seeing some top deficiencies in kids.
So vitamin D is a big one.
And maybe Liz will agree with me on this one
because she sees lots of kids and maybe even Katherine.
Iron is a really big one.
It's a difficult one to test on kids, but we do see that.
And I'm looking at their B vitamins.
So those are tends to be big deficiencies in kids
because they're just not getting the fresh fruits and veggies.
And I often see magnesium.
So those would be my big ones.
I will really stress that if you're working with children,
please look at their diet and talk to the families
about how they're eating in the home.
It's really, really tricky, like a kid turns two
and suddenly this like beautiful angel child becomes this little
like monster and doesn't like anything.
And anything that you prepare becomes like,
I'm not going to eat that.
I'm not going to eat that.
I think as parents, I know we're really exhausted as parents.
You have to continue to persevere as much as you can
so that these children know that these foods are meant
to be on their plate and that allow them to be part of the,
sort of the cooking process.
I know that sounds scarier.
than it is.
And trust me, I have two boys, so it's scary.
Well, it was.
They're now teenagers.
But it's, you know, the children can chop vegetables,
and they're more likely to try things
if they're doing it themselves.
And if they have some ownership over the doing themselves.
You know, children don't inherently in themselves want
to starve themselves of good things.
But if we talk about it even in the family unit,
and I think that's a really important piece.
So really look at the diet and the hydration and the sleep first,
and then look at the supplementation with kids.
It is a little bit, there's some nuance there.
You do have to kind of supplement based on their age
and their weight when they're really young children.
As they get older, you can, and they start to mature,
you can treat them much more like adults.
But again, have a little bit more, I would have experience
in education around, but those would be my top ones
that we look at with kids supplement wise.
Awesome. So on the next 10 minutes,
And please remember you guys have the Slido app, so go ahead
and send us your questions.
We have a few questions, so I'm going to start with them.
And the first one is for you, Christina,
and the question is what educational resources do you use
to identify proper laboratory testing for your patients?
Okay, so I did a lot of my training within functional medicine,
and then part of my naturopathy training we looked very,
very closely into functional lab testing.
So, we're looking at not from a normal range perspective,
which is obviously set as guidelines,
but very much from an optimum range.
I work very much in preventative care, so it's very different,
obviously, to obviously acute and sort of when we're looking
at it from that perspective, okay?
So, can I say, is there a definitive resource
that I can go online and find this?
No, not necessarily.
It is a very much passionate piece for me and something
that I'd really like to work on and maybe collaborate
with other doctors here on how we can even work with pathology
and say, look, here are the normal ranges,
but here is also optimum.
I had a lovely conversation with someone about this last night,
maybe something that we could work on.
So it's a tricky one, guys, because there isn't really,
you know, open resource when it comes to that.
It's more just your further training.
Excellent.
Now, Adil, can you recommend how or where to find information
about herbal treatments that you use in complementary care or PCM?
So that would depend on where you're located.
That's a really interesting question.
I've never really thought about it, to be honest.
I usually just reach out to a colleague and ask them.
And then for sure, whoever is asking that question to me to said colleague.
And I guess the question mostly is like, you know, is there any website,
any place that you reach out where you do these things?
I mean.
I like American Dragon for references.
American Dragon, there's also a TCM wiki, which is a lot of fun
to play with, but between American Dragon
and Yangyang House is also very good,
but American Dragon is most reliable.
Okay. Let's do Chris.
Patients on cancer chemotherapy, they're usually told
to stop the vitamins, especially vitamin D, iron, all that stuff,
because quote unquote, they can interfere with drugs.
I mean, do you guys see such harm?
Do you guys stop it?
So no, we don't.
We are told that patients will come in and tell us that they were told
to stop all supplements, all herbals that they're taking.
And there are times where we do stop some of them, but we tend
to actually almost support more in that situation.
You know, we'll increase the vitamin D,
we'll increase the vitamin support.
We'll start people on things like ivermectin and fembendazole
and methylene blue and all these great both prescription
over-the-counter herbal treatment protocols
that we're able to do.
I mean, we, the amount of cancer we are seeing
in our practice has skyrocketed over the past year.
And I think it's obviously because of the pandemic
and turbo cancers from mostly the vaccine,
but also people are realizing that when you go see
a traditional oncologist that the goal is to try
to kill the cancer as much as possible
before the patient dies themself.
And it's just not a great way to spend your last year,
two years, three years, four years.
So not only do we help support their bodies to heal
and actually increase on the support,
but we're trying to offset a lot of the things
that are done by the oncology team
so that way the patients can feel good,
they can thrive, they can still function
as a heavy person during the treatment protocols.
Thank you, Chris.
And I just to remind you guys yesterday,
Dr. Madick actually showed a very interesting study
that showed that if you have high levels of vitamin D,
your chances of the cancer will be less out there.
So, I mean, for those of you who are looking into that,
it's important.
Now, I have a good one for you, Christina.
Do you recommend fasting and keto to people of a normal BMI?
And again, BMI in and by itself has its issues, as well as obese
and diabetics, because I know you like the fasting
and the intermittent fasting and the keto and all that stuff.
So, high level, yes to fasting.
Okay? High level.
Now, it's important to define when we're talking what is intermittent
fasting and how it is appropriate.
I will say women don't do as well on very aggressive fasts,
particularly cycling women because it's a stress on the body
and the way that our hormonal sort of scenario fluctuates,
we're very, very susceptible to peaks and troughs and cortisol, okay?
So we don't do as women that well on very long-term fasts.
But that doesn't mean a woman can't fast.
When we're looking at fasting, again,
this is where the definition is really important.
Are we looking at a 16-8 or long-term or like, you know, five-day, two?
Like, you know, there's lots of different ways
that we can approach fasting and it needs to be clinically relevant
to that person and to their lifestyle.
But a 12-hour window where you have an eating window and a 12-hour
where you're not eating is also intermittent fasting.
So, again, this is where the definition, and most people,
irrelevant of where they are from a physical perspective,
and even, you know, according to disease perspective,
can achieve that, okay?
So, that's where maybe the nuance comes in is that we need
to define what that means,
and it's really specific to the person.
Chris, are you guys using intermittent fasting
in your practice?
Oh, absolutely.
Yeah, absolutely, especially for patients
with long COVID vaccine injury, cancer, is yeah,
we use intermittent fasting.
But I always tell people, if you feel
like you're not tolerating the fast, don't continue to fast.
Talk to us before you continue, because it isn't for everybody,
just like none of the stuff that we're talking about is
for everybody, is no blanket treatment.
So absolutely use intermittent fasting,
but it's very individualized, and it really isn't for everybody.
So you should talk to someone before you.
you can stress out your adrenals,
you can cause hormonal disruption.
There's lots of issues that can come from doing that unsafe.
Thanks.
Any specific courses or training programs
so that people can expand their knowledge
on how to use herbal remedies and maybe nutraceuticals?
Cool.
Again, depends where you are,
but I would search out certifications in herbal medicine.
there are many across the board, wherever you are,
that even I believe in like community colleges,
you can go in and take courses
and be certified in herbal medicine.
Which again, I stress that when you find your practitioner
that you find out that they have the right credentialing
because some people, I hate to say this,
don't take it as serious as they should
and they're just going into that paper.
So again, knowing where your practitioner comes from
what credentialing, what training they've had is very,
very detrimental when being prescribed.
And again, one more reason why the IMA is trying
to put this network of trusted healthcare providers.
I mean, that's extremely important.
And to be honest with you, that should be like to go to situation.
Once we have that database fully assembled, I mean,
we at least will have people that we have met and we know
that they are trusted and they're good at what they do.
Because unfortunately, with alternative practices,
there are so many thieves and stuff like that.
I mean, people will, and you know, the problem is that they use
or they take these patients, all these patients that you guys see,
the lung COVID, the backs related injuries,
these people are desperate.
They are what I call an easy prey.
If you tell them that you're going to give them holy water IV,
they'll pay whatever it is.
And there are a lot of thieves out there that aren't doing that.
I mean, I see it every day.
I mean, you have some therapies that you say, what the hell is this?
It has no scientific basis.
But having said that, people will go for it.
So that's why we need this network of trusted providers.
That's very, very important.
Yeah.
I wouldn't be allowed back into Charleston
if I didn't say this, Dr. Salibi would kick me out.
But Dr. Sleavy has his own educational platform that I was trained through,
like I said, the Priority Health Academy, Priority slash Health dot US.
And he trains both nurse practitioners, physician assistants, nurses,
and doctors on functional medicine.
And you can learn both sides of the aisle, learn about vaccine injury.
There's, you know, weekly webinars.
There's Q&A sessions.
There's lots and lots of videos.
And so, you know, Dr. Salibi, it's been a passion of his
for about 20 years and we continue to build that program
and develop it so that way we can try
to create this parallel healthcare system
that he talks constantly about that we have
to give patients options.
So, you know, if that is something you're interested
in, Dr. Salibi runs a great course and it's something
that, you know, you can find online and look into
and we'd be happy to help you guys.
Awesome. Thank you.
And lastly, we're going to ask the last question.
You guys, each one will have 30 seconds to answer the question.
What role do each one of you see in the optimization of hormones
in your practices, and tell us how you do it in your own world?
Okay.
So my perspective very much is hormones are
like canaries in a coal mine.
They're very, very receptive to the environment.
So often when we look from not just the hormones,
but we look upstream to see what's going on.
So looking at the gut, the gut microbiome, that plays a huge role
in how we metabolize and detoxify our hormonal system.
Look at that.
Look at their diet.
Look at their sleep.
Look at their movement.
And often we can support that hormone, the hormone pathway.
We also need to define, obviously,
what hormones we're looking at here, okay,
because there's so many different ones.
But yes, it plays a huge role in optimization,
but it's a bigger picture.
So I would look very much upstream
to see what else is going on in the body.
And what might be driving some of that imbalance.
So traditional Chinese medicine in 30 seconds.
The hormones in traditional Chinese medicine are reflected
through the kidneys.
This is not your biological kidneys in your body.
This is through the kidney channel in Chinese medicine.
Our body is composed of several meridians and the energy,
our circulation, our essence in our body are reflected
through, especially through the kidneys.
I know I probably lost about half of you when I said this.
But we utilize acupuncture, and it's been proven
for hormone regulation.
We utilize herbs.
We really like shooty juan, if you're familiar with that.
We utilize herbs, we utilize acupuncture.
Moxibustion, as Verona had mentioned previously,
is something I love using.
It is a, it's mugwort, it's a burning technique.
We nourish the body, we bring the energy back into the body
in order for the hormones to regulate, in a nutshell.
Yeah, and so as you guys know,
every time Adil is burning mugwort in my office,
it smells like we're having some kind
of a very interesting 1970s party, okay?
So as you guys, yeah, and the patient's coming
and says, oh, this is the office.
That's why we want to come here.
Yeah, so just briefly, I think the big thing about hormones are they lead you towards whether
the patient is improving or declining.
So when you check hormones, the patient may feel well, but if you see a change in their
hormone pattern, you know, okay, something may be on the horizon.
If you see their hormones are improving but the patient doesn't feel like they're improving,
you can usually tell them, look, your hormones are moving in the right direction, you probably
will start to feel the benefits soon.
So we use bioidentical hormones, we use herbals, we use lifestyle.
But we really like to use hormone testing as a way to tell whether our patients are
moving in the right direction or wrong direction so we can know whether we need to be more
aggressive.
Awesome.
Well, I want to thank you guys for participating.
I want to give a big applause to our speakers.
Music
