#164 Healing Through Functional Medicine: A Holistic Approach

Has modern medicine drifted toward "symptom relief" rather than addressing core health issues? Do quick fixes overshadow and prevent true healing — masking the problem without truly resolving it?

Join Josh Bellieu and Adam Payne as they welcome Tiffany Richey, a nurse practitioner from Oklahoma City, for an enlightening conversation on functional medicine, patient-centered care, and addressing chronic health issues and finding their causes. Tiffany shares her journey from ICU nursing to exploring alternative treatments and her approach to understanding root causes, including diet, environment, and genetics. 

Dive into discussions about chronic inflammatory response syndrome (CIRS) and the impact of mold exposure. Discover the transformative potential of personalized health interventions and the importance of listening to patients' histories and needs.

Listen hear or watch the full episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/BGWTK1Pwtzo

Visit UltraBotanica.com to learn more about us and how you can get a free sample of our products.

Transcript

0:00:00 - (Tiffany Richey): And I think that's what medicine has gotten away from. We've gotten away from pathophysiology and understanding the molecular science of how the body works. I 100% believe that God gave us everything we need on this green earth to heal the body. And so we become disillusioned with going to the doctor and I have a cold, I have an ache, I have a pain, I have inflammation. And the doctor has five minutes to spend with you, gets out his prescription pad and your symptoms are decreased. But is that a fix or is that just symptom relief?

0:00:34 - (Tiffany Richey): And so with this, for lack of a better word, brainwashing, that we've kind of gone through this evolution of change in the healthcare system, trying to go back to the basics is really hard to undo some of that.

0:00:58 - (Josh Bellieu): Welcome to Ultra Life today we have a really interesting show for you. You know Adam Payne, by the way. Hey, what's up? I love to bring local people into the mix that I think are really important to the community that are really important to bringing health to people on a local level.

0:01:22 - (Adam Payne): And so I think you need to introduce her too.

0:01:26 - (Josh Bellieu): Without any further ado, Tiffany Richie, welcome to Ultra Life today.

0:01:31 - (Tiffany Richey): Thank you.

0:01:31 - (Adam Payne): Yeah, I'm really, I'm really excited about having her here.

0:01:34 - (Josh Bellieu): So I've got to share a little bit of a anecdote. I actually know Tiffany's mother in law who drew the or who did the most beautiful watercolor for one of my babies when they were born. What, way back.

0:01:50 - (Adam Payne): That's such a random connection.

0:01:52 - (Josh Bellieu): Oh yeah. And I swear if she had a website I would announce it because she does watercolors that are brilliant, especially of children and babies.

0:02:01 - (Adam Payne): Is she still, still doing that?

0:02:03 - (Tiffany Richey): She actually is. She was hired recently from someone to do the exact same thing. Yeah.

0:02:07 - (Josh Bellieu): Wow, that's a rare.

0:02:09 - (Adam Payne): Watercolors I think are just a rare talent.

0:02:13 - (Josh Bellieu): So we met Tiffany through Keith Bishop at one of the original health meetups almost seven and a half years ago.

0:02:20 - (Tiffany Richey): Oh my gosh.

0:02:20 - (Josh Bellieu): Can you believe that?

0:02:22 - (Adam Payne): Really?

0:02:22 - (Josh Bellieu): You look really young. You look older. I look older.

0:02:25 - (Tiffany Richey): So there's something to this anti aging stuff.

0:02:29 - (Tiffany Richey): Yeah.

0:02:29 - (Josh Bellieu): Ye like what you're doing, you're going to tell us about that. So Tiffany, give us a little bit of your background, your street cred, your credentials and what you do here in Oklahoma City.

0:02:41 - (Tiffany Richey): So I started studying functional medicine about like you said, eight, nine years ago. I started as an ICU nurse and.

0:02:49 - (Tiffany Richey): Saw there's a big disconnect in, you know, lifestyle and diet and what's happening in the population and so I got an opportunity to follow another provider here in the city, which was incredible, and learned that there are alternative ways to treating health.

0:03:06 - (Josh Bellieu): Did you, you, you almost make that sound like it was an accident that you.

0:03:11 - (Tiffany Richey): It kind of was kind of washed.

0:03:14 - (Tiffany Richey): Yeah, so. And you know, my mother in law, who is a very precious human being, her daughter. So my sister in law, at the age of 20, was diagnosed with a neural autoimmune disease.

0:03:27 - (Adam Payne): Oh, wow.

0:03:27 - (Tiffany Richey): And she had atrophy of her cerebellum, lost her ability to walk and has some Parkinsonian symptoms, Ms. symptoms, and was misdiagnosed because of the inability for coordination. And so was passed through the traditional trajectory, through the Mayo Clinic, all these places. And basically it's on symptomatic treatment. And so I knew there had to be something else. I've always been interested in medicine, but you know, when you're in the system, you don't realize that there's something outside of the system.

0:04:03 - (Tiffany Richey): Yes, you get the tunnel vision, we call it looking through binoculars. Yeah, binoculars. Through the opposite lens, if you will. And so there was something always tugging at me. And when I was in the icu, I knew I didn't want to be in that system anymore. And so I thought, well, let's take it a step further where I feel like I have more participation making decisions in patients life. And that's when I decided to go further into the nurse practitioner. But then during my clinical rounds, I was following colds and flus. And I remember going into a patient because we learn in nursing, nursing school to take care of the patient through lifestyle and diet. But when you get out in the real world, you don't get to hear it very much. So I was going back into the patient's rooms with my preceptor at the time and we were talking to a diabetic patient and I said, well, I want to teach him about diet.

0:04:59 - (Tiffany Richey): And so I went in there and oh, I was gung ho, you know, I had all of the, reducing the carbs, the macros, all of the things, and we walked out and he was like, that was great, but you know, he's not going to go home and do that. So next time maybe just instead of telling him to eat a whole other food other than the pizza, maybe do take one topping off the pizza, start there, you know, and it was a little discouraging.

0:05:26 - (Josh Bellieu): So yeah, I was gonna say, are you a tough woman? Because that, that first experience getting out there and saying, hey, this is it, and having all the people working around you go, yeah, don't.

0:05:37 - (Tiffany Richey): Don't share that.

0:05:39 - (Adam Payne): Well, it's like, don't waste your time, right?

0:05:40 - (Tiffany Richey): Yeah, don't waste your time because he's not gonna listen. Well, how much opportunity has he been given to listen? I mean, I didn't know that patient. Maybe he had a much longer history with him, you know, if truth maybe.

0:05:51 - (Adam Payne): You know, but some of these people, they've never heard this information.

0:05:54 - (Tiffany Richey): No.

0:05:55 - (Adam Payne): And so somebody like you coming and saying, hey, I have a path to wellness for you, some people are going to take hold of that. You know, there's a certain percentage of people that are out there that are just sick and tired of kind of being stuck in diabetes or whatever inflammation syndrome that they got going on. It's just they don't see a way out. And they need an intervention, like a comprehensive metabolic intervention, like different food, different exercise and stuff like that. They just don't know what to do.

0:06:31 - (Adam Payne): And then they maybe attach themselves to an app on their phone or some weird diet that they subscribe to. You've seen it.

0:06:42 - (Tiffany Richey): I do. And it's hard when you're in this community because there's all kinds of wellness out there. And I still get bombarded with the calories in, calories out situation. And I come in, no, it's inflammation in, inflammation out. It's not that simple. There's hormones involved. There's a whole endocrine system that you're ignoring. There's underlying inflammation, there's environmental triggers. And so, you know, unless the patient is willing and wants to make some disciplinary and changes, you know, you're going to fall right back into old patterns.

0:07:15 - (Josh Bellieu): So this may be a tough question for you, or maybe not, but rewind. Eight years ago, when you started doing this, what were your expectations as it relates to your typical patient? I mean, obviously your heart has this compassionate note to it. Your family member with this horrible neurodegenerative disease.

0:07:38 - (Adam Payne): Did they ever give a name to the disease or what was going on?

0:07:41 - (Tiffany Richey): They said something like it was a neural Hashimoto's.

0:07:46 - (Adam Payne): Oh, wow.

0:07:47 - (Tiffany Richey): Yeah. There was really no name for it.

0:07:50 - (Adam Payne): But it was simply an autoimmune condition. An autoimmune attacking the brain tissue.

0:07:55 - (Tiffany Richey): Right.

0:07:56 - (Adam Payne): Wow.

0:07:57 - (Tiffany Richey): Right. And eventually, you know, they put her on enough steroids and maybe methotrexate. I don't remember what drug they put her on to kind of to stop the process of it, but, you know, what was her quality of life after that?

0:08:12 - (Adam Payne): Meh. Yeah, Sorry, Josh.

0:08:15 - (Josh Bellieu): No, no.

0:08:15 - (Adam Payne): I derailed the direction you're going no.

0:08:17 - (Josh Bellieu): And that's okay because you yourself have a really difficult thing that you deal with on a daily basis. So when she mentioned her relative, I saw your radar just go, yeah, well.

0:08:28 - (Adam Payne): I mean, there's so many people that deal with Hashimoto's or these other autoimmune conditions, and we have so many challenges in our community. Not only is I think there's a rise in these autoimmune diseases, but we've been seeing just a lot of cancer happening in the last year. And I don't know if we want to touch on that. It's kind of a. You know, I do want to bring.

0:08:57 - (Josh Bellieu): That back around in a little bit, but I have to go back eight years ago when you were just getting into this, Tiffany, what were your expectations for seeing a patient and how you were going to take them through your process versus now? You know, because you've learned a lot.

0:09:13 - (Tiffany Richey): I have learned a lot.

0:09:14 - (Josh Bellieu): And you've been in so many learning settings over the years.

0:09:17 - (Tiffany Richey): A lot of trial and error, and it's sometimes hard to not get discouraged or calloused to what you're really trying to do, which is teach the basics again. And I think that's what medicine has gotten away from. We've gotten away from pathophysiology and understanding the molecular science of how the body works. I 100% believe that God gave us everything we need on this green earth to heal the body. And so we become disillusioned with going to the doctor and I have a cold, I have an ache, I have a pain, I have inflammation.

0:09:52 - (Tiffany Richey): And the doctor has five minutes to spend with you, gets out his prescription pad and your symptoms are decreased. But is that a fix or is that just symptom relief? And so with this, for lack of a better word, brainwashing, that we've kind of gone through this evolution of change in the healthcare system, trying to go back to the basics is really hard to undo some of that.

0:10:16 - (Adam Payne): The tripod of the integrated physician is like nothing. We have eight pillars. And so Bargis was like going, so where do you go?

0:10:24 - (Tiffany Richey): I have five.

0:10:25 - (Adam Payne): Five.

0:10:25 - (Tiffany Richey): Okay. Yeah. So I'm a little bit. And you could probably make 100 if you really wanted to.

0:10:30 - (Adam Payne): Are these five that you've come up with?

0:10:33 - (Tiffany Richey): Five that I've adopted. Adopted.

0:10:36 - (Adam Payne): Okay. I'm really curious.

0:10:38 - (Tiffany Richey): Well, first we see the patient do a consultation, you know, and I will tell you that I think you know, so when you're talking about your tool, your tricks in your tool bag, like, the first is listening to Your patient. So one, you have to hear what they have to say and most of the time they're going to tell you they know why they're sick, they know when it started. So listening to that and making sure that you're paying attention because most of.

0:11:00 - (Adam Payne): The time there's a lot of physicians. Don't look at that, don't care.

0:11:04 - (Tiffany Richey): No, no, because it's about the diagnosis.

0:11:06 - (Adam Payne): Right, right. You're right.

0:11:07 - (Tiffany Richey): Yeah, yeah, it's about the diagnosis. Because once you get a diagnosis, the ICD9 code. Yes, there's an ICD9 code that then gives us a treatment plan.

0:11:15 - (Adam Payne): Understood.

0:11:16 - (Tiffany Richey): So we listen to our patients and then when they come back, we have an hour long lab review. So an hour long consultation.

0:11:23 - (Josh Bellieu): Hour.

0:11:24 - (Tiffany Richey): Wow. And then an hour long lab review.

0:11:27 - (Josh Bellieu): Ooh. They actually get to know you, don't they?

0:11:29 - (Tiffany Richey): They do. That can be fortunate. Unfortunate. In fact, one of my patients, I think it's a good thing I told her doing today. So I was a little bit nervous. She goes, tiffany, just don't cuss and be professional. And I was like, okay. So apparently I've got a little bit of a. Yeah, you and my wife get along?

0:11:46 - (Adam Payne): You got some.

0:11:47 - (Tiffany Richey): A little bit. Well, when I get excited about things, sometimes I get a little passionate.

0:11:52 - (Adam Payne): It's okay.

0:11:53 - (Josh Bellieu): Expletives.

0:11:54 - (Adam Payne): You're our kind of person a little bit. Yeah, we get that way.

0:11:57 - (Tiffany Richey): But on the lab review, I try to teach them about, you know, what their body needs to function appropriately and my five pillars of inflammation. So we're talking about.

0:12:08 - (Josh Bellieu): So this is good. We've got a couple of minutes left in this segment, so give us your five and then we'll move into the next one.

0:12:14 - (Tiffany Richey): So the toxic burden is what we're always looking at and decreasing the inflammation burden on the body because we know that we're burdened every day. So these are the things that I want patients to evaluate when they go home. Number one is always diet. What we put in our body is what we get out. Number two, and none of these are in any specific order. Just, you know, what I've done. No, these are good environment.

0:12:38 - (Tiffany Richey): The things that we're exposed to. Are we being exposed to toxic mold? Toxic mold, all of the things, parasites.

0:12:46 - (Josh Bellieu): All the good stuff.

0:12:46 - (Tiffany Richey): Yes. Number three is stress. And I always tell them that's the number one underestimated toxic mold.

0:12:53 - (Adam Payne): That's a good one. That's awesome because, you know, it does affect people.

0:12:58 - (Tiffany Richey): Ptsd, you know, all of the things.

0:13:00 - (Tiffany Richey): The chemical cascade that happens from the.

0:13:03 - (Josh Bellieu): Am I allowed to do this trauma.

0:13:06 - (Tiffany Richey): Yes, please do.

0:13:07 - (Adam Payne): What are you doing?

0:13:08 - (Tiffany Richey): We all need to be doing deep breathing.

0:13:10 - (Josh Bellieu): Wim HOF method. Let's do this. All right.

0:13:13 - (Tiffany Richey): Sleep, obviously, that's when our body resets, recovers and regenerates.

0:13:17 - (Tiffany Richey): And then number five is genetics.

0:13:20 - (Adam Payne): Interesting. So that's like kind of the background milieu on which we have.

0:13:23 - (Tiffany Richey): My palate.

0:13:24 - (Adam Payne): The palate, yes. And yeah.

0:13:26 - (Josh Bellieu): Before we go to this break, with 25 seconds left in this segment, I got to ask you, you mentioned genetics as number five. Do you almost feel because Adam and I have adopted some philosophies related to a lot of diseases being metabolic in nature. Do you put genetics kind of way back there?

0:13:46 - (Tiffany Richey): I used to, but it's coming more to the forefront.

0:13:50 - (Josh Bellieu): Well, we'll talk about this in the next segment. This is Ultra Life Today. I'm Josh Bail, you Adam Payne sitting over here, the CEO of Ultra Botanic Elite inventor Hanging out technology. We have Tiffany Richie right in the middle. We're not letting her escape.

0:14:03 - (Adam Payne): It's so, so great.

0:14:04 - (Josh Bellieu): She's going to give us. Yeah, she's going to give us some great information in our next segment.

0:14:11 - (Adam Payne): Our mission is to take nature's most beloved botanicals and enhance them with our liquid protein scaffold technology. This helps it reach your cells faster and better with exponentially enhanced bioavailability. You'll feel better every day. Ultra Botanica, the Feel Good curcumin.

0:14:39 - (Josh Bellieu): Hey, it's Ultra Life today. Welcome back. Thanks for hanging with us today. We've got a really cool guest. Tiffany Richie, nurse practitioner here in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. And I'm hanging out with this guy.

0:14:52 - (Adam Payne): In the, Adam Payne here and chief inventor of the Ultracur technology. And I am so grateful, Tiffany, that you're joining us. Josh, where were we going? You have a plan? You want to take us on a journey now?

0:15:05 - (Josh Bellieu): Yeah, we're gonna, we're gonna go in this segment and continue to talk about Tiffany's patient process. But then we're going to introduce a four letter acronym, C I R S that I had never heard of until Tiffany and I were talking and she just. Chronic inflammatory response syndrome. And it so ties into everything she was talking about in her five points. Environmental exposure, toxins, things like that. So we're going to get there. I don't want to go there yet. But yeah, we're going to, we're going to dial into that later, but let's.

0:15:37 - (Josh Bellieu): It seems like there's a new disease invented every minute. Tiffany. Right. Anyway, so you were moving into your five points. You'd covered a couple of things with us.

0:15:48 - (Adam Payne): Genetics being the last.

0:15:50 - (Josh Bellieu): Genetics being the last. When somebody comes to see you, what's the first thing you do? And I know you listen and that's the coolest thing ever, that you literally sit and listen to a history.

0:16:00 - (Tiffany Richey): Yes, we do. And I have a very. I'm sure they don't appreciate my questionnaire process, but there's quite a few questionnaires that they fill out prior to coming to see me. And then we look through those and that kind of help guides them the conversation of what their chief complaints are and where they could have possibly accrued these problems over and inflammatory triggers over their lifespan.

0:16:26 - (Adam Payne): So these manifestations of illness don't just come out of the blue. There's a whole number of factors that manifest. That's so true.

0:16:35 - (Tiffany Richey): Yeah. Most of the time now, I mean, there are certain situations, like Lyme, for example, you know, they get a tick and get the disease, but most of the time it's a slow progress until they wake up and they're exactly like you said, I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired. And they decide that this is not the way that life was supposed to be. And their fear of what that future looks like sometimes brings them in or looks for alternative ways of dealing with it.

0:17:02 - (Adam Payne): Typically it's the general practitioner who's failed them or even a specialist. They're getting into a narrow trough of here's your steroids or here's your opiates or here's your other disease modifying antirheumatic drug and it just doesn't do it right. That's treating a mechanism of a disease but not necessarily getting at the root cause. The root cause. So you're offering people hope.

0:17:33 - (Tiffany Richey): I hope so. I really do. And that was a fear of mine when I first started was, is this really going to work? Because I'm a skeptic at heart.

0:17:42 - (Adam Payne): Are you surprised? Like we are sometimes?

0:17:43 - (Tiffany Richey): Yes, absolutely.

0:17:45 - (Adam Payne): Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, I mean, I can't tell you how many times early on in the days of ultra, we would have people call us and say, wow, I don't have knee pain anymore, or you know, my dog. We were going to take them to that last ride to the vet and they're up and running around with the other pets and you know, and I would be like astonished, kind of like, wow, it's working.

0:18:09 - (Josh Bellieu): It's still working.

0:18:10 - (Tiffany Richey): It's still working.

0:18:11 - (Adam Payne): It's still. I mean, these are kind of not miraculous. Some of them are kind of miraculous very much, yeah. I mean, but it's. I, I still get. I know the power of the LPS technology, the stuff that we've created, but we're not in the front lines dealing with the patients on a daily basis.

0:18:32 - (Tiffany Richey): I'll tell you, I have a patient that stands out in my mind. And it was one of my.

0:18:37 - (Josh Bellieu): I was so hoping you were going to give us a use case just.

0:18:40 - (Tiffany Richey): Because I was going to ask. I will. Because she. She took it and you. And I think you might even know her. But she started with me. She had gone the traditional route, had open heart surgery had been diagnosed, I believe. I mean, it's been years ago now, but some sort of arthritis and just her quality of life was going down, down, down. And she had not heard about cbd, you know, much about it. And so I put her on the ultra hemp and she, I mean, along with dietary changes, lifestyle changes, getting her nutrients balanced, she believed that product changed and saved her life. In fact, I think you all have met with her, but she has her own facility now where she's teaching health and wellness in other parts of the state. And I'm just so proud of her because, you know, I'd like to think I had a little something to do with it, but what I gives me so much, they start learning and taking the ball and going much further. But she took it even further than any of my other patients have by, you know, starting her own cbd.

0:20:00 - (Josh Bellieu): So rewinding the tape.

0:20:01 - (Adam Payne): Yeah, that's a big step, rewinding the tape.

0:20:04 - (Josh Bellieu): When we first started talking today, you mentioned hormones and hormone replacement therapy. Can I call it hrt?

0:20:12 - (Tiffany Richey): Is that okay?

0:20:13 - (Josh Bellieu): So what happens when someone shows up, a male or a female, and I guess you have a sense almost at times that that's probably what the problem is. But you have to do some diagnostic testing, right?

0:20:27 - (Tiffany Richey): So we do lots of testing at that first appointment. So we listen to them, and then the last part, they go to the lab and we do a lot of testing. Now, sometimes, because it is such overwhelming material, you know, sometimes I want to do a stool test or I want to check organic acids or I want to do those things.

0:20:45 - (Josh Bellieu): And that scares the life out of people that have only gone to conventional doctors.

0:20:49 - (Tiffany Richey): Right?

0:20:49 - (Josh Bellieu): It's like a friend of a friend told me about Tiffany, and so she's going to ask for a stool test.

0:20:54 - (Tiffany Richey): Yes, cleaning your poop is always fun.

0:20:57 - (Tiffany Richey): But, you know, giving them little bites at a time and helping guide them through it. But we still, even with my smaller baseline panels, they're Much more comprehensive than what we've seen in the past. You know, with checking a thyroid, for example, you know, we're used to looking at the TSH because that's what we're taught in school. You know, that's how we learn to diagnose hypothyroidism.

0:21:20 - (Josh Bellieu): But we know that thyroid completely neglects other panels that need to be done.

0:21:25 - (Tiffany Richey): Other panels and other parts of the thyroid where there may be issues. And so like you said, the patient will be referred from another patient. And will you put them on thyroid? And so I know my thyroid must be off, but when you can look at it from a bird's eye view comprehensively, you can see well, it's not just this that we've got XYZ that's also contributing to the problem.

0:21:48 - (Adam Payne): So the picture is bigger than just the thyroid.

0:21:52 - (Tiffany Richey): We're not hyper focused.

0:21:53 - (Adam Payne): Right. We're not fixing. We're looking at a patient who has a thyroid that might be out of balance or could be out of balance. But there are other contributing factors that lead up to this. Your five pillars. Right. So give us an example. I mean, we have the CBD example or the hemp gal. How profound are the transformations that you're seeing? Is it, are people making big jumps or do you see people making little jumps?

0:22:25 - (Adam Payne): I can imagine some people. There are a lot of people that go gung ho and they come and they're like, I'm going to, you know, come and we're going to change the world. And then you like, where are they? They fall off the face of the earth sometimes. But what's, what's the typical experience that people are getting, Tiffany?

0:22:42 - (Tiffany Richey): Well, I would say that one, it depends on the patient, their knowledge base, which is why I think education is the most important in educating them as best that I can on what's going on.

0:22:54 - (Adam Payne): So that's why you're spending time with them?

0:22:55 - (Tiffany Richey): Yes.

0:22:56 - (Adam Payne): Yeah.

0:22:56 - (Tiffany Richey): And I wish I had three hours with them because I could talk the entire time for three hours. I talk very fast in the appointments to try to get through every single body process I'm looking at because I don't just go over the things that are out of order or imbalanced. I go over everything.

0:23:15 - (Adam Payne): Wow.

0:23:15 - (Tiffany Richey): So. And I tell them there are things that in this labs that do look good. But I'm still going to teach you about the process of dysfunction in this body system because you're doing something right. And I want you to keep doing that thing right.

0:23:28 - (Adam Payne): Oh, that's interesting.

0:23:29 - (Tiffany Richey): So we are preventative because it's much better to be proactive than reactive.

0:23:34 - (Adam Payne): My wife is a pa. Right. And one of the things that she tells me about the difference between getting into your five minute doctor visit to an intervention with a nurse practitioner or a PA is she says, we do a better job. We do a better job because we really get interested in the patient and we're doing a comprehensive walkthrough with them. Are your patients surprised at the amount of time that you're spending with them?

0:24:06 - (Tiffany Richey): I would say I've not had anybody not be surprised.

0:24:11 - (Josh Bellieu): They probably wanted to leave long before.

0:24:15 - (Tiffany Richey): But I just would not shut up. They're like. And sometimes they roll. Okay, I get it. You know, because I do repeat myself a lot.

0:24:22 - (Adam Payne): That's good.

0:24:22 - (Tiffany Richey): Yeah. Intentionally. I mean, the more they hear it, the more it's going to stay.

0:24:25 - (Adam Payne): And do they get like a plan when, when they come back?

0:24:28 - (Tiffany Richey): Oh, yes, they get.

0:24:29 - (Adam Payne): Yeah, it's like, here's, here's the thing.

0:24:30 - (Tiffany Richey): Big folder with.

0:24:31 - (Adam Payne): Oh my gosh.

0:24:32 - (Tiffany Richey): Yeah, big folder with all handouts that I've created to help reinforce and help them implement some of the things we're dealing with.

0:24:40 - (Adam Payne): The organic acid thing, I think, you know, we know Dr. You know Dr. Deanna Windham. Have you met her? Oh boy, you're in for a treat. She moved here from think California, Port Beach. Oh, yeah. Whitaker Clinic. She worked for 25 years.

0:24:57 - (Josh Bellieu): She worked in Whitaker for 14 years.

0:24:59 - (Adam Payne): Yeah. And now she's practicing here in Oklahoma. And you're talking her language, organic acids, her population.

0:25:09 - (Josh Bellieu): One of them is organic acids. She said the environmental toxins, the mold exposure is so off the charts and.

0:25:17 - (Adam Payne): You'Re not going to see it. But do you see it in the organic acids?

0:25:20 - (Tiffany Richey): Yes.

0:25:20 - (Adam Payne): Can you help us understand? Because I think it's important for our listeners to really understand what is an organic acid test and what kind of insights the practitioner can get from that.

0:25:33 - (Tiffany Richey): So an organic acid test is a urine test that looks at the byproducts of some of the metabolic activities that's going on in the body. So if you have an overgrowth of yeast or mold, you're going to see the residual byproduct of that in the urine. So you're not directly testing the mold or the yeast. So.

0:25:53 - (Adam Payne): But you're seeing those metabolic byproducts.

0:25:55 - (Tiffany Richey): Exactly, exactly. And so the higher the value, the more likely they have a systemic problem.

0:26:00 - (Adam Payne): Is, is, are these things really visible?

0:26:04 - (Josh Bellieu): How common is that? I have to ask you, if you have 10 patients and you do an organic acids test, how Many of them are going to actually have a struggle there.

0:26:14 - (Tiffany Richey): So here's. Here's the thing.

0:26:17 - (Tiffany Richey): Okay, so here we go.

0:26:18 - (Josh Bellieu): Open it.

0:26:19 - (Adam Payne): Here we go.

0:26:19 - (Tiffany Richey): So there are some functional physicians out there, Amy Myers, for example, who I have great respect for. She's someone I followed and learned from.

0:26:29 - (Adam Payne): She's not local.

0:26:30 - (Tiffany Richey): No, she's in Austin, Texas.

0:26:32 - (Adam Payne): Okay.

0:26:32 - (Tiffany Richey): I've never heard the name, but she. When someone comes to see her, you know, and this is, you know, what I've heard through the grapevine, because one of my other friends used to work for her. But she said that every patient that went through her practice had to do all of these tests before they even got to meet with her. So they already came with an organic acid test, a stool test, all of the food tests, things like that. So me, I do things a little bit differently because I don't see any need to do a test that the patient may not find value in.

0:27:06 - (Tiffany Richey): So I cherry pick those patients, depending on do they struggle with what I suspect to be.

0:27:13 - (Josh Bellieu): Do you learn a lot from your questionnaires that allows you to make a decision about the testing you want to do?

0:27:18 - (Tiffany Richey): Absolutely. That's why sometimes at that initial appointment in my mind, I want to do a stool test or an organic acid test. And I know at some point I will eventually recommend it, but I may not recommend all of them at the same time.

0:27:30 - (Adam Payne): I'm sure you're thinking we can learn so much about what's going on here.

0:27:34 - (Tiffany Richey): Yes.

0:27:34 - (Tiffany Richey): If we could do it.

0:27:35 - (Adam Payne): All right.

0:27:36 - (Tiffany Richey): But who has the time? And a lot of, you know.

0:27:39 - (Josh Bellieu): And there's out of pocket expense.

0:27:40 - (Tiffany Richey): Exactly. That's exactly what it is.

0:27:44 - (Adam Payne): It's not that big of a deal. Oh, come on.

0:27:46 - (Tiffany Richey): Well, it isn't. To those of us that value our health. Right. Health and wellness. We would spend all kinds of money to find out what is wrong, especially.

0:27:55 - (Adam Payne): If we can get real concrete insights about what's going on with me. Or with me.

0:28:01 - (Tiffany Richey): Yeah, the evidence.

0:28:02 - (Adam Payne): Yeah.

0:28:02 - (Tiffany Richey): Right. But if you have someone who's used to having everything run through insurance and these labs are not covered by insurance, then they may say, well, let's do that next time.

0:28:15 - (Adam Payne): Dang you, insurance.

0:28:17 - (Tiffany Richey): Yeah. Once again. Again. But I would say back to your question is that I do see a lot of yeast overgrowth. I do see a lot of mold overgrowth in the patients that I test for.

0:28:27 - (Adam Payne): It is Oklahoma.

0:28:29 - (Tiffany Richey): It is Oklahoma.

0:28:30 - (Josh Bellieu): Is most of that related to diet or is a lot of that. These days we're learning more and more because of my own bad experience with Mold exposure because of a water event in a home. I lived. Josh, you were toxic all of a sudden.

0:28:46 - (Adam Payne): I mean, literally, this guy went from healthy, robust, vibrant, to on the couch with excruciating headaches week after week after week.

0:28:56 - (Tiffany Richey): Yeah, yeah.

0:28:57 - (Josh Bellieu): Long, long time. And it was so crazy. And yet I thought you.

0:29:01 - (Adam Payne): Josh, honestly, I thought you were dying from cancer or something like that. Literally, you were sick. You had these awful, prolonged illnesses, and it was mold.

0:29:12 - (Josh Bellieu): Yeah.

0:29:13 - (Tiffany Richey): Did anybody ever tell you that it wasn't mold? That. That's just.

0:29:17 - (Josh Bellieu): Well, that's. Now that. Now this is going to get into a weird place with me, because the table. I trust myself more than I do practitioners. Although now that I've met so many good practitioners like yourself, I do go see a couple of those. You know, I see Brian Frank, and. And he will order these tests that give me real insight into my health.

0:29:41 - (Adam Payne): How long? John, I know we weren't planning on going down the. Josh was toxic with black mold, but how long did it take for you to get a recovery plan?

0:29:52 - (Josh Bellieu): Well, Adam, I want to say something here. And that's where I was going with Tiffany. Tiffany, I really believe that so many people are being exposed to mold, even within their homes or their work environments, and they have no clue that they're being exposed. More family members I meet, after what I went through, I can almost say, yep, you've been exposed. You've been exposed. Do you think am I wrong?

0:30:20 - (Tiffany Richey): No, I think every. I think a lot of people want that diagnosis. And when you told them, you know, they want that ICD10, whether they think they do or they don't, because it gives them some sense of security, knowing I have this. But when you mention mold, that's such an abstract thing for that. And what do you do about it? You know, it's not as commonplace as diabetes where you take insulin or.

0:30:44 - (Josh Bellieu): Right, right. Okay, we're rolling out of this segment. We went a little bit over. This is Ultralife Today. I'm Josh Bellew hanging out with Tiffany Richie, nurse practitioner, and Adam Payne over here.

0:30:56 - (Adam Payne): Thanks for joining us.