There seems to be a war between traditional and faith based modalities like Acupuncture, and the AMA style acute care industry.
Yet neither modality offers perfect solutions, and Integrative Medicine is booming as these two fields start to understand each other better.
Chances are, you have strong opinions one way or the other. But listen in to this forthright conversation to see if some of your own beliefs aren't challenged, and hopefully improved, from this conversation. With Dr. Joe Kepo'o.
See all episode artwork, links and notes at:
https://blog.dirobi.com
This show is for informational purposes only.
None of the information in this podcast should be construed as dispensing medical advice.
These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
Find episode links, notes and artwork at:
https://blog.dirobi.com
This show is for informational purposes only.
None of the information in this podcast should be construed as dispensing medical advice.
These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
There seems to be a war between traditional and faith based modalities like Acupuncture, and the AMA style acute care industry.
Yet neither modality offers perfect solutions, and Integrative Medicine is booming as these two fields start to understand each other better.
Chances are, you have strong opinions one way or the other. But listen in to this forthright conversation to see if some of your own beliefs aren't challenged, and hopefully improved, from this conversation. With Dr. Joe Kepo'o.
See all episode artwork, links and notes at:
https://blog.dirobi.com
This show is for informational purposes only.
None of the information in this podcast should be construed as dispensing medical advice.
These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
Find episode links, notes and artwork at:
https://blog.dirobi.com
This show is for informational purposes only.
None of the information in this podcast should be construed as dispensing medical advice.
These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
[inaudible]
Speaker 2:welcome to the show. I got a freebie for you today. Before we jump into the episode, we've created a mini course called nutrition and fitness for busy professionals. Chances are that's you. And one of the challenges we all have in our health and fitness journey right now is life is super busy and complicated, and oftentimes we want to work out what to eat right, but it just takes time. It takes time to learn how to do that. It takes time to hit the gym. It takes time to do everything. In this mini course, really, we'll tackle three of the biggest areas that keep busy professionals from reaching their fitness goals. And it includes the three steps of fix, a broken diet, how to stay in shape when you're busy, including a really sweet minimalist workout. And finally, the all important power of sleep and important tips on how to get more sleep. We all know that that's kind of the, um, overlooked secret of health. A lot of people ignore to their peril. So go to[inaudible] dot com it's advertised right there on the homepage and get the mini course. I think you'll really like it. It won't take very long to read and yet it is packed with really great actionable information. And now on with the show, hello and welcome to the dire OB health show. I've got a really interesting topic. One of my favorite things to talk about as a matter of fact, and that is evidence-based nutrition and medicine versus integrative or the faith based type of medicine. And it's something I talk a lot about on the show. It's something I'm very interested in. I love to discuss and learn about both sides of that. And both areas are fascinating to me and yet I want in this episode to be able to help you, the listener navigate this world because I believe there are problems on both sides. I believe there are opportunities on both sides. I don't believe anyone has all the answers and in the end what we all want is vibrant, great health. We want to be strong, we want to be flexible, we want to live a long time, we want to be disease free. And the path to that could involve a lot of different things, a lot of different expertise, a lot of different knowledge. And yet the fact is we also can all be dead wrong about certain elements of health. And so I've invited an expert that I know loves the topic and is deeply immersed in the topic. He's been on the show before. His name is dr Joel Kapoho. He was on episode 63 where he taught the simplified Wim Hof method, something I'm still using and I highly recommend I spent just 30 seconds in absolutely freezing cold water in my shower just this morning, which may sound ridiculous, but I gotta tell ya. I love it. It's a great thing. And dr Joe, thank you so much for taking the time to discuss all these things with me.
Speaker 3:Yes, thank you for having me on the show again. I absolutely love this show, so thank you.
Speaker 2:Well thank you, I appreciate it. And the last one was a lot of fun. And this one is a topic that you and I have talked about many times and I know you have expertise in it. For those of you listening, just as a reminder, dr Joe has an undergraduate degree in exercise physiology. He's a doctor of chiropractic. And then dr Joe, tell us some of the other certifications that you have in the health arena.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so some of the other certifications I have go from a nae T, phone number, Japan allergy elimination technique. It's a technique where you can help take care of allergies, but you actually use the energetics as a body to take care of that. Also, some other certifications I have have to do with the emotion code body code, which is another energetic medicine technique that you use to help with like, uh, releasing emotions for people, helping to balance out the energetic system of people. Just within the last year I got my certification for acupuncture, which again is another energy modally but it, it also has a physical component to it. Uh, and then a lot of the technology that I use in my office, uh, has you have seen it has a lot to do with the energetic body balancing out the energy systems. Um, and also is really focused in on that. I have a certification with the amen clinic and that's focused on brain balance and brain health. And so a lot of my, uh, techniques and, and knowledge has to do with getting the brain balanced out, getting the brain to optimize and work as the best it can. So that's, that's the basis of my, with my background.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And full disclosure here, dr Joe is my chiropractor and as you can tell already, he, he, he works in the physical world and the world of energy on a regular basis. He has helped me through multiple physical injuries, shoulders, knee, hip, and a variety of other things including a tennis elbow. I'll talk about that one in just a minute. So on the one hand, he's working very closely with the actual mechanics of the body. On the other hand, he's also working with the energy systems of the body. And so in my opinion, from all the conversations we had, he's very fair and understanding of both sides of these issues. Now, interestingly on this podcast, we're, we do not have a goal of being authoritative or of trying to convince anybody. I told dr as we prepped this, this, uh, episode that, you know, basically I think w we would be, uh, highly what pompous or arrogant to assume we had all the answers in this world where so many people are just barely figuring this stuff out. There are a lot of people out there who have a lot of questions and few answers and there's also a bunch of people out there that seem to have a lot of answers and very few questions. They seem to really get, have it all figured out. And I just think that for those of us who are really interested in our own health, at the end of the day, what we really want to know is how do we cure ourselves from illness and injury the best possible way and the fastest possible timeline. And for the longest period of time. How do you remain strong, flexible, as healthy as possible throughout our lives using the methods that are available to us now integrative medicine is an up and coming field for sure. The world health organization who defines health as a state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing, not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. That's important. A dr Joe because there certainly are people out there in the medical field that believe that if you are absent of disease or infirmity, that's the definition of health. So, uh, do you agree with that?
Speaker 3:I don't. I've, uh, and my 13 years of practice I have found over and over and over again, there's a lot of people that come in and they don't have what are called, you know, diseases and so forth, but they can't do something simple like bend over and pick up the pickup there. They're, uh, infant child, uh, you know, they, they can't do certain daily activities just because, you know, like you were saying, they're not, they're not flexible or, um, you know, they can't think of certain things to, to build, to help out their family. You know, they, they just have this brain fog issue or they've, they're just not clear mentally. And so they might not have an actual names disease, but they, you know, their brain isn't optimized. They're not being able to be in that optimized state of health. And so I think that's, that's one of the things that we're missing with healthcare today is that word optimization, you know, just because someone isn't or is a disease free doesn't mean that they're optimizing their life and that they're living it to the fullest.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. And I, because of the way we're framing this episode and because we're not trying to answer things but more give people tools and things to think about. I'm going to throw out a few things from both sides of the aisle on this issue. And, uh, first of all, my, my daughter was in the kitchen near me recently and on her phone, uh, which was really unusual. Um, sorry, this little joke. She's a college student. She's staring at her phone. But anyways, I digress. Burst out laughing and I said, what's so funny? He said, look at this meme. And I looked in, someone had made this little meme and it said, allow your children to believe in Santa Claus. You still believe in essential oils. And no one's taking that away from you. And I thought, okay, that's pretty funny.[inaudible] probably hits too close to home for some people, but it points out the dilemma that we're dealing with. And that is when we move towards energetic healing or faith-based healing, we are now also firmly in the realm of
Speaker 4:charlatans
Speaker 2:because a person who is absolutely not a gifted healer can pretend to be and people will pay money and some people will even have a placebo effect and have a healing, um, uh, experience. And then others might pay the charlatan money. And so this is, this is where the evidence based side has somewhat of a Trump card to say, well, you know, if there's no evidence to support this modality, then how do you protect yourself from being taken advantage of? How do you know it works? So let me start with that and get your thoughts on, on that and that issue of if it's, if it's not an evidence based healing modality, how do we protect ourselves from charlatans?
Speaker 3:I know it's, it's funny you bring this up because when I was in chiropractic college, one of the things that I was heavy into was research. Looking at the research, looking at the evidence, what are the people saying that are expert in these, these different fields? And as I started to do that, I soon found out that evidence based medicine really is not as evidence based as you think it is. Um, I had many a debate with, uh, with many of my professors at chiropractic college in relation to different techniques that I was looking up. And I hadn't gotten into energy medicine at this point yet in my career. But, uh, I was really heavily drawn towards this particular technique called chiropractic biophysics and chiropractic biophysics. The, I would, in my opinion, there are one of the most researched evidence-based chiropractic techniques that you will find out there. And the guys who do the research are very meticulous about what, how they do their research and gathered their data. And these guys are some really smart people. But then when I would, when I would share this with some of my professors, they would poop who the whole idea of that their evidence was wrong, their evidence is bad. Um, their research methods are bad. And then they would come back to me with research they had done showing that the chiropractic biophysics technique was a hoax and it was junk and it doesn't have any validation to it. And I started to realize that, Holy cow, you know, it, it really doesn't matter what evidence you have, there's always going to be counter evidence out there. And, and so for me, the biggest thing that I have found is that the evidence comes when you start actually applying the particular process or technique or
Speaker 4:principals, whatever you want to call it,
Speaker 3:to your own life. And is it working for you?
Speaker 2:Okay, good point. Now, now I'm going to, in some people's mind, I'm about to reverse myself on the joke I made about essential oils. So again, we're trying to just explore the conversation, right? We're not trying to provide answers or be authoritative. We're exploring. So let me carry on down the rabbit hole. I, I have no dog in the fight on essential oils. Uh, there's a few that I like and, and yet I'm not all in. I'm not like sold that essential oils are the solution to life, the universe and everything. But one day when my children were younger, our daughter got a beasting on her eyelid. I mean, talk about one of the most sensitive areas of, uh, of your body. She was in our neighbor's yard who was a distributor in a network marketing company for essential oils. Okay. So she comes home screaming her head off her eye has swollen to the size of a golf ball in just a few seconds. Swollen shot, very big. She's so upset as you can imagine. I believe she might've been six or seven, I don't remember exactly, but about that age and my neighbor who had witnessed the whole thing because our daughter was playing with her children in their front yard, came running across the yard shortly behind her and w had an essential oil in her hand and she said, Hey, I saw what happened. She got a beasting on her eyelid and, and, and sure enough, we could see the little red jab where the bee had got her, the stinger wasn't in there anymore, but you could see the little red, uh, area. And she took this essential oil and she applied a drop to that and I kid you not, it was somewhat magical. Like the pain started to subside and the swelling surfaces side pretty quick. And it really seemed like from the minute she put this on, it started to have a positive effect. I should keep track and be able to tell you what that essential oil was. It shows you how much I'm not into essential oils that I didn't even remember what oil she put on there. But it was quite a thing to witness along the lines of what you just said. Now, did it make me believe that all essential oils are great and I had a join her company and I ought to put off all other forms of medicine and become an essential oil junkie. Uh, it, it didn't, but it didn't press me that this was a, a natural treatment that helped my daughter. So yeah,
Speaker 3:that that's,
Speaker 2:there you go. Leave
Speaker 3:that in that, that I think that's where a lot of people kind of they get mixed up with, with, um, when, you know, when it comes to, should I, is this a good thing or is this not a good thing is that if they have a good experience in one area, they think that it, it translates to everything being good in that area. And even in the same, the same flip side, if they have a bad experience with something, they think it translates to everything within that area. And it just, it's not that cut and cut and dry when it comes to medicine, whether it's energy medicine or whether it's Western medicine that you, you can't make a decision based on one experience with one thing, just like what you had there with the essential oils. Right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly. So let me throw out another thought here. This is by Dr. Frank Lipman. This is a great quote. We'll put this on the blog by the way. All the uh, notes links, some of these quotes will be on blogged at[inaudible] dot com and uh, this one is when a plant's leaves are turning Brown. You don't paint the leaves green. You look at the cause of the problem. If only we treated our bodies the same way. Again, that's by Dr. Frank Lipman. So this is kind of a dig at the medical industry and the treatments that we get that are like a spray painting, Brown leaves on a plant or I've used the metaphor before of of spray painting arrestee old car. Uh, you're not going to restore an old rusty car by just putting a coat of spray paint over it that Russell come right through. And so this is one of the biggest complaints of the natural or integrative side of medicine with the other side, right, is treating the symptoms and not, not the causes.
Speaker 3:Right. And you won't hear this very often from the alternative or the integrative side, but the same thing happens on that side too. I have found that they, people think, um, that or they don't, they don't keep that same, excuse me, I need to re let me re rehash my thoughts. A lot of people who are in the alternative side of medicine still have that idea that um, you know, if the, if the leaf is turns Brown, Oh I just need to paint it green with my essential oil or I need to paint it green with my, my energy work cause I have found it there. Sometimes essential oils or energy work will actually cover the underlying issue. It doesn't always take care of the underlying issue. So that same mentality that a lot of alternative people complain about when it comes to like Western medicine. And I find that a lot happens within the editor integrative medicine realm.
Speaker 2:Well that's interesting. I'd never even thought about that. Can you give us some examples? The type of care or some symptoms that might be treated that way?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'll, I'll use essential oils and I, in full disclosure, I love essential oils. We use this oil all the time in my health. We've got diffusers going on in our house probably, uh, you know, pretty much every single day. It's like I really love essential oils, but I have seen that there is in that realm with essential oils. Some people think that essential oils are the end all for everything. When you realize, wait a minute, if that person's issue has to do with the mineral deficiency, you're not going to remedy that with an essential oil. No, the oil is not going to give that person a particular mineral, so if there are issues in mineral decisions, so you need to give them better food or give them a mineral supplement to be able to take care of that issue that the essential oils not going to take care of it. The essential oil might actually help out in the short time and you know like let's say for a skin issue, the skin issues coming from the mineral deficiency, you might be able to put the essential oil on the skin and then see it improve, but it masks the real underlying issue of a mineral deficiency. Is that makes sense.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. That makes sense. And I'd never really thought about that because we always assumed that the medical community are the ones that are treating symptoms, not causes. And so that's interesting. I'd never thought about it in reverse.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Happens, happens all the time. That was something I ran into very early on in practice was that I found that sometimes I would use some of my alternative medicine and I was actually covering the real cause for the person. And so that's why I have so much technology in my office now that allows me to really zone in on what the core issue is so that I don't fall into that, that gambit of thinking, Oh, you just need, you know, this thing and this and that thing when really essentially they needed something else.
Speaker 2:Ah, and so one of the takeaways there that I, I take out of this is that just because sometimes we feel better out after a treatment, does it mean we are better? And so we need to be careful that we're working on the causes and not just the, uh, symptoms.
Speaker 3:Correct. Yup. Every single time.
Speaker 2:Okay. Let me jump into another direction. This a as a little story I want to tell everybody and that is that earlier this year I started to get pain in my elbow. I was heavy into my precision nutrition ProCoach workouts, introducing our transformation program and doing it myself. So I was super excited about it, very much into this looking forward to helping a lot of other people do this program. And yet unfortunately I was developing a pain that kept growing and I, and, and no matter what I did, um, I tried to take it easy and it still hurt and, and then I'd have a really great workout and it didn't bother me and the pain would come and go. And finally though, it really flared up and I was doing so well with the whole program. I was gaining strength. I was doing some fairly heavy weight training as part of this, but finally it just flared up and I had to leave halfway through a workout, go home from the gym and, uh, and then the pain just didn't subside. I, I had the golf season. It started. And, and so now I was having pain every time I hit the ball and actually couldn't golf anymore either. So couldn't lift weights, couldn't golf, and a first world problems. Life was really hard if I can't work out and golf. Uh, so I, uh, I got a diagnosis and I had a serious case of tennis, uh, being the person that I am, I did a bunch of research and I found a really great, incredible study about tennis elbow done in, in England with hundreds of subjects. And, um, what they did is they studied, uh, one group had a cortisone shot in therapy. The other group had no cortisone, cortisone shot and therapy, and the other group had no treatment at all. Uh, the group with cortisone therapy had less pain for the first six weeks, more pain after six weeks and were not fully healed for one year. The second group without cortisone had more pain in the first six weeks, less pain. So in other words, the cortisone shot only postponed the pain. They had less pain after the six weeks in the cortisone group, but were not healed fully. For one year. The third group did absolutely nothing and had, uh, diminishing pain through the entire time and were fully healed after one year. So in the end, this very large study found that basically the cortisone was only masking the symptoms and the therapy wasn't speeding up because remember the first two groups both had therapy. So it really kind of, you drew from the conclusion and the conclusion the researchers drew was tennis elbow sucks and it's going to take a year to go away. It's a bottom line. And, and I also learned in my research that the cortisone shot, um, may not be the best thing because if you have more than one cortisone shot in an area, those ligaments can turn, uh, get brittle and can cause longterm damage. I didn't want that. So I also didn't want to not work out for a year. And so I came to see you, dr Joe, I'm sure you remember this whole story and you started working on it and, and um, what you told me is I'll treat you and you can keep exercising through this. Now take it easy for two weeks. I think is what you said, and you started treating me and uh, uh, first of all, you, you gave me a shot. You'll have to describe what that was to people. It was extremely painful. I never want to go through it again, but I'm glad I did because it really helped. Uh, and you gave me acupuncture and you adjusted my elbow. Now would you just describe that process of, of what you did on, on my elbow? Well, first of all, what was the shot?
Speaker 3:So the shot was the homeopathic remedies. It's actually something I make in my own office and uh, we just create this homeopathic remedy that has to do with bringing down inflammation, helping to get rid of scar tissue, help the tissues to heal, bring circulation to that area. And I did, we ended up doing three shots on your elbow.
Speaker 2:Yes, we did.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think we, that's usual I end up having to do, so there's usually about three different shots that have to do. And then generally after that, most of the inflammation should be down on a lot of the scar tissue should be gone. That could, that will help. That delays the healing. Um, so we get rid of the scar tissue and then we also, it's also meant to make sure that we have good circulation to the area. So you're getting good blood flow to that area to help it continue to heal, to heal. So that was the first part of the treatment. And then the chiropractic, obviously if you're, if your elbow is at a place, then the mechanics of the muscles are going to be wrong. So that can be causing some of the tendinitis is that your muscles just aren't working. They're not flowing properly through the different channels that you haven't said. Your elbow, who made sure that your elbow was in good alignment. And then the acupuncture, the acupuncture had a twofold thing to it. One was to bring circulation, so bring blood to that area again because blood is going to help it heal. The other thing too is that a lot of times tennis elbow develops because the little energy channels that run through that part of your body, they can get blocked or a, or maybe they're running too much. And so the energy is not getting to where it needs to for your muscles and bones and so forth. So we did acupuncture around your wrist and around your, your elbow specifically to make sure that the energy system was flowing properly to the area so that it would heal. Okay. And long story short, it flat out worked. Uh, the needle was kind of painful cause it's long and, and he, he had to stick it in a long way and uh, so that, that was painful. But three times I've put up with a painful needle, I could handle that. And for two weeks I did an exercise and then when I did start exercising, it never got badly inflamed again. The pain was, I don't remember exactly when the pain was completely gone, but this was not a one year process for me. My elbow has been completely healed and symptom free for, um, of months. Uh, maybe the symptoms lasted six weeks, if I remember right. And so we used a combination there of physical treatment and energy work and I'm a believer, right. And, and it was really cool to have that experience after reading these studies. Cause like I said, they studied hundreds of people and every one of them had symptoms for about 12 months. And so to use this combination of physical treatment and uh, and the energetic work and far exceed the results of what the medical based community would expect was really a cool thing. Right.
Speaker 3:Yeah. A lot of fun to watch that. And it's the, and it's a reproducible thing too. That's, you know, I don't, I don't think there's any studies out there, at least I haven't done any research on that. And so there's really no evidence to prove that that process is a good thing. But we've got the evidence with your case has been really good. There's been evidence of other patients cases in my office has been really good. So that that's, you know, that's why I tell people, try not to rely too heavily on evidence based medicine because sometimes it will lead you away and you just realize, Oh, I read this study, the evidence shows that nothing can help. So I'm just gonna, I'm just not going to work out for a year. Well, that would be horrible. I would, I don't know what I'd do with myself. I couldn't work out for a year. So, but if you look at the evidence with your case, it shows that Hey, there's a possibility of having relief within just within several months and then get back to regular activity.
Speaker 2:Okay. So now let's talk about, and switch gears again and talk about evidence and these studies. Now, one of the things I've learned about studies is there, you know, we're all familiar with the concept of lying with statistics right now. Oh yes. Studies can be, can have their own inherent problems. I like studies. I'm very interested them. It's really fun for me. You know, I'm a little bit of a science geek and so when I hear that a large study was done that determined this or that or the other thing, I like that it's interesting to me, but I've also learned that people have agendas and you have to follow the money. If you look at the history of studies in the United States, for example, back in the 50s when doctors smoked, there were studies that made smoking look like it was okay and not the cause of cancer. Now that may seem like a very long time ago to, to some of you, but guess what? There are still studies that are used and manipulated. So either the study was done by a large company that was invested in the results. Now, what happens in that case is that some studies are not necessarily inaccurate, but what happens is if, if a large company does, let's say five studies and three of them show that their product is not effective, but two of them show that it has some effect, guess what happens to those three? They go in the trash, right? It's dishonest essentially, but they're not going to publish the results that don't make them look good. Only those ones that do look good. So that's the first thing you have to understand about studies is that the ones that make things look that make the, the whoever paid for it is not going to publish a study that doesn't give the result they want. Any thoughts on that, dr Kapow?
Speaker 3:That's, that's exactly what I have found with studies is that it's whoever is paying for the study really is the one who determines what the study outcome is going to be. So unfortunately there's not a lot of good studies out there. Some, some people would probably argue with me on that one. You know, they even talk about, well what about, it's like a double blind placebo, a study. No one knew what was going to happen and no one knew. You know what the outcome was going to be. But unfortunately the people who paid for the study, they pay for it because they want a certain outcome. And even if the outcome that they want is that they just want to know is this a positive thing or a negative thing, they, they, they still are going to, you know, influence how the study is going to be. In fact, talking about influencing a study, there's a, there's a book out there and I'm drawing a blank on it. I apologize, I'll find it. So we can put it in the, in the notes, the show notes. But there was a, the book has the talked about how they found studies would be simply influenced by, by the people thought in that particular study. So this takes us more into this energy realm again. Right? But they found that the different studies would be influenced, determined by what, what they were hoping to have come out. And so the study would, the study results would actually change. So if they were hoping for a certain outcome, that's usually the outcome that was found. And if they did the same exact study but reversed the hope of what they would say would have come out with the, with the study, they would get that outcome. So it was the exact same study, exact same subjects, exact the exact same process that they used, but yet, because at the very beginning they set up particular outcome, they were hoping to find they got that outcome at the end. Does that make sense?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. That does make sense. And so, and so that's another problem with the studies. Um, so let's move on to the second problem that I've seen with, with studies of those studies that are well done and that there are many experts out there that agree on the way the study was conducted and they're pure reviewed and the emerge, uh, involve large amounts of people. Sometimes we hear about those studies through the biased lens of a person who has an, a vested interest. The best example I know of for that one is from a documentary called forks over knives. Some of you may have seen that show after watching that show. You're absolutely convinced you should never eat a piece of meat again in your life. If you watch it with your kids, they'll probably be growing grossed up by meat, uh, forever. Uh, more now what we found out is that study was well conducted. There was a lot of good research in that study. There's a lot of good takeaways. As a matter of fact, I am a fan of, of mostly plant based eating. And so those were elements that were brought out in that study. But when I had a doctor, Renee Thomas, who's an MD and a researcher in Loma Linda, California, one of the blue zones, episode 116 we talked about this, this because it's been somewhat debunked because, so the study, the, the actual study was done fairly well. The problem is that people who are interpreting it had their own agenda. So we have to be careful that whoever is telling us about the study isn't trying to give us their own opinions about it. So one of the things she pointed out is that an evidence based nutrition, one of the things that her and other researchers like her look for is, has this study been replicated and do the replicated studies show the same thing? And so if a, if a study is very large, that doesn't necessarily mean it's accurate unless it's replicated multiple times. And so she says there is hope in this field because what's happening is there's now enough money and enough time and enough interest that and enough sharing of information around the globe that a lot of the evidence, evidence-based nutrition for example, can be backed up by multiple other studies. And so this combination of many large studies, some of which replicate exactly the same results in different cultures at different times and, and eliminate some of this bias. So that's one of the things we can use to determine whether the studies are actually relevant. And according to her, we're making great progress in the Serena and we're going to have more credible studies that are going to actually help us and show us how we can improve our health because they back each other up. So removing the biases of the people who are telling us about the study is the bottom line of that whole story of, of what I'm what I'm saying there. Any, any thoughts on that one, dr Joe?
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's a, that's an important one because like I said, and when I was in chiropractic college, I would have, I would read these studies of how great the chiropractic bias is. IX was, which I still really, that's one of my favorite techniques. So I swayed more towards their research. But when I had the other doctors, the other professors tell me how bad and how bogus the research was. And then I looked at their research. They, again, it was a, it was a perception and interpretation thing. They would look at the same exact set of information that I would look at and they would, they would take it in a completely different way. So then therefore you would get different information from them. So therefore, when I would look at it and I would study it, I would come out with the conclusion, okay, their studies, this is a good technique for helping with scoliosis and so forth. Whereas my professors would look at that information and then their perception and their interpretation was this is not a good technique. This technique can hurt people, therefore we shouldn't be letting people know about it. So it really comes down to the person's interpretation of what the study is.
Speaker 2:Okay, excellent. Here's the next point I want to make about studies. And this one is kind of obvious but really important to point out and that is that the study was not done on you. So the studies, uh, for example, the China study was obviously done in China. Chinese people have different genetics than Western European people. For example. Japanese people have different, a different gut microbiome than Russians for another example. And so when someone says, well, this large study was done, we need to know on what population was it done? And, and then there are so as such a massive can of worms, it's opened up because they not only have different genetics have different lifestyle, they have different social patterns, they have different stressors, they work different amounts of hours, they have different family situations, they have different religious beliefs. And so the fact is most of these studies are done on other people. So just because a large study comes out that says that generally across 100,000 people, it's better to not do X. That absolutely does not mean it applies to you at all. And, uh, and one simple thing to be aware of is that each of us has a different body type. Uh, broadly speaking, those are broken down into endomorph, ectomorph and mesomorph. And those different body types all respond very differently to different types of exercise and different types of nutrition. And so in the end, the only reason these studies are of interest to any of us is if they actually apply to us and we'll make our own lives different. And so that's another problem with these studies. So over to you, dr Joe, thoughts on that one?
Speaker 3:Yeah. And that's where it comes down to being a really good at experimenting with your life. And now just, just because you hear there's a big study on this new nutritional supplement, you now you need to start taking it cause you're going to feel great. Well you have to experiment. You know, you have to either, um, the experimentation could be simply, do you have a family members that are doing the same thing? They have the same genetics, similar lifestyle, similar work situation. You know, just like what you were talking about. And if they're getting great results, well then you've done your research, most likely it's going to work really well for you. Or the other side of things with the experiment is that you've got it by the product and you've got to start taking it and trying it and you've to give it some time. You know? So I tell most people that you need to give when it, when it comes to nutrition anyways, you need to give it at least three months chance to see if it's gonna work out for you or not. And, and we need to be willing to experiment and we need to be willing to be patient with our own experiment. Cause a lot of the research out there that we get these days, it took them, it took them years to be able to develop their, their outcomes and their decisions and so forth about what they were researching. And so for, for your own body to take three months to experiment and see what works for you. That's nothing compared to what, what they're doing out there with these big, these big, uh, uh, studies. So take the time, take the time to, uh, use your body, use your mind as a, as a place to experiment. Obviously there be safe about it. It's always good to have a, uh, professional watching over you and helping you out. You know, that's why I encourage people to find a really good, uh, doctor, whether it's a, it could even be a good medical doctor, a good chiropractor, but someone that you trust, someone that you know, has access to a lot of information, not just one side is a, but you want someone that can really help you through this experiment and experimentation process of your own body. So then you can really find what works out. And you're like, like you mentioned the Wim Hof thing, you're taking your 32nd cold showers every morning. Now, I, I took that challenge three years ago now is when I started the Wim Hof, uh, uh, uh, method in my life and I used my own body as an experiment and I found that the Wim Hof method is excellent from my body, from my body type and so forth. I've had some patients who've gone, uh, and experimented with Wim Hof method. It didn't do much for them, um, or it was actually something that they absolutely just, it did not do well for them, so they stopped doing it. That just shows me over and over and over again. Just be willing to experiment with your own body, be willing to be open, be willing to work with somebody who can help you through the process so that you can find out what's gonna work for you and your individual situation.
Speaker 2:I love that and that really summarizes the entire point of this whole episode. In the end, you have to be your own greatest science experiment. And so I loved that. That was a great segment right there. For those of you listening, you could probably stop right now and be totally satisfied. But I do have one more point if you want to keep on listening. And that is a another point on studies and that is they tend to overreach. This is back to what dr capo said about the researchers being somewhat biased. Nali they're biased. This is their work. When someone spends years doing a large study, guess how many people they want to have hear about it. The answer is as many as possible. This is something they're proud of. They've got grants of millions of dollars in many cases, they've done all this work. They've come up with some great research and they want the world to know. Let me give you one example that has gone the rounds of last couple of years from a, a company or a, an outfit that I really respect in this John Hopkins, um, a hospital and on their website right now. And some of you will have heard of this study that there is no benefit from multivitamins and it's a large study and it sounds very conclusive. But let me go through it and I think you'll see where I'm going very quickly. But they determined that that uh, ha, uh, 70% of Americans over 65 take a multivitamin. It's a$12 billion a year industry and they decided to study this. And in the end, their editorial in the journal of journal annals of internal medicine was titled enough is enough. Stop wasting money on vitamin and mineral supplements. And this is John Hopkins researchers. This is, these are very well respected people. The analysis involve 450,000 people, very, very large. And it said multivitamins did not reduce the risk for heart disease or cancer. Wow, that sounds like we should stop taking multivitamins. Secondly, a study that tracks the mental functioning and multivitamin use of 5,900 men for 12 years found that multivitamins had not reduced risk for mental declines. Okay. And lastly, a study of 1,708 heart attack survivors who took a high dose multivitamin or placebo for up to 55 months. Rates of later heart attacks, uh, were um, negligible between the two groups. Conclusion. Don't take a multivitamin now. Uh, multiple problems here with this study. Number one, who was a study conducted on, did you catch that bit? About 65 and older. Yeah. Yeah. Next. Exactly. What multivitamin did you give them? Because this is where the overreach is huge because, and I've reached out to them and I've asked them, Hey, I saw your research on these 450,000 people. Please provide me the information on their demographic and the vitamin that you gave them. Crickets. I've tried multiple times to get anyone who was involved in that study to tell me who the study was done on and what multivitamin they were given. And they won't answer the question because they did not conclude that that multivitamin is ineffective. They concluded that all multivitamins are ineffective. Do you see the problem now? This is, it's a big deal and it's another way that we're led astray. Did you also note that the heart, the, the, the, the other group that was tested were heart attack survivors? Well, I'm sorry if you're a heart attack survivor listening, I hope you don't take this as being offensive, but the problem is people who have suffered a heart attack are already at a low level of health and so it's less likely that they would respond as well, uh, to a new healthy habit as, as would a healthy population. So who the study is conducted on exactly what products did they use? We don't know. This is what I know is we have a multivitamin, so I'm obviously pretty biased in this regard. I take that multivitamin every single day. We took two years working on it because we actually do agree with some of the premise of this. First of all, if the voltage item you're taking is a little white capsule that has 50 ingredients, I can promise you that will not work because ours only contains 12 ingredients and takes three fairly large capsules to give you what you need in the correct daily doses of just those 12 elements. And so there's a major problem with simple amounts of, of the vitamins. Secondly, there's multiple problems with combining multiple vitamins. The whole point of a multi can be destroyed. For example, if you put magnesium along with zinc, they will effectively cancel each other out. You can't take your magnesium at the same time as zinc. Many people have learned this. I take magnesium as a spray, I put it on my thighs. If you take it at night, it's relaxing, helps you sleep, but you it, you should not be taking it in internally. And if you take large doses internally, well you know that's how you give yourself the runs, right? So there's a lot that goes into this and in our case, our Mimi's miracle[inaudible] is designed to overcome some of the difficulties with low quality multis only give you those things you're likely deficient in. And if you will have your own blood tested, you can determine your levels of vitamin D, zinc, chromium, see exactly where you're at. Take a multi for 90 days and have another test. And that test is more important than any 450,000 person test out there. Because the test I just described is done on yourself. And I've actually done dr Joe, you've helped me with us. You did a nutritional panel on me, which was really interesting. So again, the major point I'm making about this is, is that, um, this last point on, on these studies as they tend to overreach because these people have been paid millions of dollars, they want to share it with the whole world. And sometimes they state stuff they shouldn't say. Instead of saying, we tested this multivitamin on this many people and it didn't help them improve their health, I could live with that. But when they won't even tell me what multivitamin they used and how much of each element was in it and what elements were in it, then the red flags go off all over the place. Thoughts.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly. Was it, was it a Centrum that they gave everyone? And you know, I, I'm going to beat up on Centrum right now cause that's the one of the most commonly used multivitamins out there. And it is a horrible multivitamin. It does nothing for your body. And uh, and that's probably what they used in the study. You know, something simple like that. And so the one thing we need to get really good at is when we see these studies come out, we just don't take the headline and then go full force with it. We need to look at this study itself. We need to go in, open up the study and see, okay, did they say what, what nutrient did they use in this particular study? Or what technique was used in this study and what group of people was it that they studied on and how long was the study and um, and all that. And what kind of conclusions or the making at the end of the study are they saying that energy healing is bunk because this particular acupuncture point they studied didn't work well, just don't use that acupuncture point but don't, don't refer that to the rest of energy healing or in relation to like this multivitamin study, you know, they, like you said, if they would have said this multivitamin that we use showed that it was bad and now we conclude that we need to do more studies on more multivitamins to see if different multivitamins do different responses. That would be awesome to see them say that. But they didn't say that. And that's, that's another thing else that you want to look for in studies, and I'll kind of take a tangent here, is that if at the end of the study, if they mentioned that Hey, this study shows that this particular technique nutrient or what have you isn't good for people and we can include now that there's more studies need to be done to um, you know, see if this responds different with different people or maybe it responds different with different timeframes. Can now that's a good study because they're realizing K, even though this, we've found that this doesn't work in this situation and we still need to study it in different situations. That's really good. If they say something like energy medicine is horrible, multivitamins are no good. Um, you know, when they make one settled statement at the end of their study, you know that it's a bunk study.
Speaker 2:Okay. Excellent. And so with that, I got some concluding thoughts and then I'd like to hear your concluding thoughts. So one of them you've touched on a few times and I just want to reiterate it and that is imagine in my story if, if dr Joe had done the acupuncture and it didn't work, let me tell you something that's interesting about human nature. People tend to have a somewhat immature view of how things work. Uh, when we're children, uh, we see the whole world is revolving around ourselves. It takes us a long time to mature, to the point that we understand that other people are having completely unique experiences and are completely different than us, but some grownups never completely outgrow that sense of being the center of the world in some way or another. Myself included all of us as just part of human nature. And so what they do is they tend to think globally that things work or don't work. If it works on them, it works. If it doesn't work on them, it doesn't work. So let's say the acupuncture didn't work and, and I decided to tell my friends, Oh, by the way, I tried acupuncture. It doesn't work. That would simply be an immature view of reality in the world. And this happens all the time. Uh, we see this in reviews on Amazon. Uh, if it didn't work for me, it doesn't work. Uh, this is, this is how re people review things. I tried this for two weeks. It didn't work on me. It's no good. Save your money. We see those types of reviews and people have a very difficult time understanding that they are unique. And that they could well be right. I'm not trying to justify a lousy product on Amazon, uh, but if, if, uh, 90% of people are saying this product is absolutely junk, then find let, let's believe that if we got hundreds of people saying it, but if 80% of people are saying this is really awesome and 20% are saying, I tried it, it's junk, don't bother. That is actually them being a little bit immature and understanding that it just didn't work on them. The next thing I want to reiterate is that this aspect of being our own personal best health experiment, there's nothing like getting your own blood nutritional blood panel to determine what you're deficient on. There's nothing like experimenting with multiple types of foods to find out which healthy foods make you thrive and feel the best. There's nothing like figuring out who you really are to know your body type. Go online and Google what I said about being an endomorph, ectomorph or mesomorph. Do you know which one you are? Because that one little bit of science could really help you because it'll deter help you determine your ratio. For example, of carbs, fats and protein. Did you know those are different for those three body types could help you to figure out why you like or don't like meat or dairy products for example. So this being your own experiment, learning who you really are, learning what works for you and what doesn't work for you and understanding that that can be completely different for your children or for your spouse or significant other or for anyone else is a sign of not only maturity but of also developing your own premises for being the best version of yourself. And then another takeaway I have is, is it, studies are fine. I still like them, I understand a lot of the flaws, but I still pay attention. I still want to know because there's a lot of value we can glean from these with all the negative things we've said about studies, that doesn't mean we throw them all in the garbage when when the studies are all start agreeing with each other and we find basic commonalities. And we're, we're determining that there's some really great value from multiple different people, multiple different countries. There's all kinds of great stuff we can learn from well done studies. We just have to be able to read between the lines, understand and follow the money and, and the, and remember we're our own best science experiment. So those are my kind of concluding thoughts. Dr Joe over to you.
Speaker 3:I'll say amen to everything you said. Amen on a Friday morning.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:I, I, I have to agree with you on that. It's just everything you said there that, you know, we, we did say some negative things about, you know, studies and researchers and all that kind of stuff. That doesn't mean that we think all studies and all researchers are these horrible people out there just to try to make themselves look good. No, there's a lot of good research out there. There's a lot of good, uh, studies that have been put together really well and they're, they're showing us some really good information out there. And so don't throw studies away, but just be careful when you see a study. Your first response shouldn't be, Ooh, you know, here's some new information. I need to share this on Facebook. Your first response should be, I'm going to look into this and see what kind of study is this? Is this a, is this a study that actually even applies to me in my situation? Is this a study that has been done, um, for the purpose of helping us out? You know, uh, is this a, is this a study that now it looks like it's got some good clout to it? Because there's a lot of other studies that say the exact same thing that should be our response. So the response should be asking questions about the studies, asking questions about the testimonials that we hear from other people. You know, cause there's a lot of testimonials of things that aren't good or that are good. We need to look into why is this person giving this testimonial? Why didn't it work for them? Is this, are they in the same situation as me? So that, that, that's my concluding thought at the end of the day is that we really need to be better at asking more questions about the different things that we're seeing come up for us with our health and with our, uh, our mind and so forth. Rather than being so quick to just share or to throw into the garbage whenever something comes up for us. So ask more questions and be willing to experiment.
Speaker 2:Awesome. And you've triggered one more and I got a, I got to share it cause it's been so valuable for myself and that is there's a Buddhist principle called attachment and learning, this principle has been really helpful for me because I tend to have a personality that gets attached to things. I get attached my own ideas. I get attached to things I believe. And if you look around the world at all the different things you can believe, uh, from religion to health, right? Our own human beliefs get in our own way. And if you really are introspective, what you'll find is that you adopted many of your beliefs very, very quickly, probably from childhood. And we are as human beings, very quick to adopt a belief and very slow to let it go. So for example, if you're in the medical community, you believe that all chiropractors are charlatans. That's a belief you hold. You can't necessarily back it up with evidence. And maybe you could really use a chiropractor and your gun around with that sore back for five years because of the stupid belief you hold, right? And so it's the same as it true in reverse. I know people who are raised by parents who don't believe in going to doctors. It's a belief. And so imagine if you were raised with that and you break your arm and your parents won't take you to the doctor. There's nowhere. I'd rather be with a broken arm than in an emergency room in the United States of America or Canada or England or any first world country, right? So this, this understanding of how our beliefs and so how our beliefs affect us often negatively, sometimes positively, it's why we have them, but there's great value and becoming less attached to our beliefs and understanding that we have these beliefs. We sometimes don't even know where we got them from. And sometimes we got to Canada, shake them up a little bit and be able to step back and go, why do I feel so adamantly against this principle? Why do I feel so strongly for this other principal? And if we can step back and break that attachment to our own ideas and our own beliefs, it's amazing how that opens up the world to new thoughts and new possibilities. Cause this entire conversation we just had is evolving and growing. We don't have all the answers to everything. And so we just have a lot of questions and we have some answers of which we kind of have our beliefs in them and yet we still have to be humble and try to not be too attached to those beliefs. So dr Joe, this has been fun. I've, I'm glad to have you on and have this conversation.
Speaker 3:Yes. Thank you so much. I really enjoy it. I really enjoy the, the time we get to talk about these things.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And, uh, do you have any, any, any closing thoughts or any last ideas you want to share before we end this podcast?
Speaker 3:No, I think the only, the only thing I'd want to say is that, you know, keep listening to this podcast. It's a great podcast. You're going to keep getting wonderful ideas to keep you open, flexible for your health and for your family.
Speaker 2:I love that. So be very attached to this podcast. Other things we shouldn't be so attached to, but this one keep a strong attachment. I like that. Well dr Joe, how do people learn about you? You, you treat people remotely and so, uh, they don't have to just come to your clinic. How do they contact you?
Speaker 3:No, you can go to our website and our West lights, WW dot Ohana chiropractor, that's N O R at the end, Ohana, chiropractor.com. And there's actually a button there that you can click on. You can schedule an appointment and we do consultations over the phone. And because I'm huge into energy medicine and I, we can even do remote sessions like you're saying, so it doesn't matter where you are in the world, we can actually take a look at your house and see what may be some help you might need.
Speaker 2:And I highly recommend dr Joe. He's been, uh, my go to guy for years and has helped me through multiple injuries and various situations, my family as well. We're big fans. Dr Joe, thank you so much and thank you for coming on the podcast.
Speaker 3:Thank you. It was a pleasure.
Speaker 2:And for those of you listening, this is Dave Sherwin wishing you health and success. Well, thanks again for listening. I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did. And just reminder that that course, the mini course health and fitness for busy professionals is available for free download at[inaudible] dot com so check that out. D I R O B[inaudible] dot com we'll see you next time.