The Berman Method
The Berman Method
Episode #168: Things Your Doctor Told You That Aren't Always True
Jenny Berman's pregnancy isn't just about expecting a new family member – it's a lens through which we examine the immense influence of corporate medicine on our health. Inspired by figures like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., we take you on a journey through the labyrinth of big pharma and insurance companies, questioning their motives and revealing the unsettling truth about American food regulations. Imagine discovering that your morning bowl of Froot Loops might contain ingredients banned in other countries. We tackle medical misconceptions with a focus on knee arthritis and surgeries, showing how personalized advice is crucial in navigating the healthcare maze.
As the conversation shifts, we shine a spotlight on a critical, often overlooked element of healthcare: nutrition. Many medical professionals lack formal nutritional training, and we explore why seeking advice from integrative or functional medicine practitioners might be the key to achieving your personal health goals. The struggles faced by in-network providers are real and impact the quality of care, making a case for considering out-of-pocket options for more personalized treatment. Amidst discussions on mental health challenges in the medical community, we also share the joys and trials of parenting, preparing for Baby Berman number three, and reflect on the spirited antics of children like Vera, with humor and sincerity.
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This is the Berman Method podcast, featuring Dr Jake Berman and physician assistant Jenny Berman. We are here to treat problems and not symptoms. Disclaimer this podcast is for entertainment purposes only and not to treat anyone or to give medical advice. If you are interested in any information that we are giving and would like to use this for yourself, we recommend that you contact your primary care physician or reach out to us and ask us questions about yourself specifically. Enjoy.
Speaker 2:And we are rolling baby, Baby, baby, baby, baby. Jenny, you're doing so well right now with that baby busting at the seams the Berman Method podcast. Dr Jake Berman here with my very pregnant beautiful wife.
Speaker 1:Jenny Berman, physician assistant you are a champ.
Speaker 2:You're an absolute champ. You are over it. You put up the eviction notice this past weekend. You said all right, that's it, Get out.
Speaker 1:Anytime is fine, we will manage the rest. Just come on. Oh man, In the grand scheme we're doing all right.
Speaker 2:I'm not complaining too much, am I? No, you're under complaining. I mean, think about it. We know a lot of people that over complain. You are definitely under complaining. I mean, think about it. We know a lot of people that over complain. You're definitely under complaining.
Speaker 1:I think I complain the most when I have to lay in bed and roll over or when I constantly have a knee or a foot in my right rib constantly. Those are my two biggest complaints right now.
Speaker 2:Just last night you took my hand and you put it on that rib right there and then just below it and you go. Do you feel that this thing is going to break my rib before this is done with?
Speaker 1:So here's the funny part. I guess it's funny, I don't know, but it kind of puts it into perspective of how there's not much room in there. This baby's femurs constantly measure a week and a half ahead of schedule. So when they measure the length of the femur, the length it is measuring a week and a half ahead of what my gestational age is, but the head and the abdomen measure a week and a half behind. So it's really a long little being in there with not enough room, which is why I constantly feel like I have a knee or a foot in my rib. So there you go, there's the stats.
Speaker 2:Oh, and rolling over is the worst I can't roll over from right side, left side, it's like, oh yeah, and every time I try to be your cheerleader, you're doing so great mama we're managing, we're almost there anyway, moving on moving on, shedding the light on some misconceptions.
Speaker 2:Today we are David against Goliath, going against the corporate medical system. We do not believe that corporate medicine, big pharma or the insurance companies have your best interests in mind, and this is not a political statement at all, it just is what it is. With the recent presidential election and RFK, robert Kennedy, he's going to have a major, major voice, which he's been trying to have, to make America healthy again. So one of Kennedy's big motives is to shed light on what is happening right now with our food, with GMOs and all of the crap, the poison, the things that are literally outlawed everywhere else in this world except for the United States of America. Like, how is that possible?
Speaker 1:Right, right, the fact that your ketchup bottle has 12 ingredients on it, as opposed to the three that it had on it 20 years ago.
Speaker 2:Fruit Loops, for example, there's Kellogg's. Is Kellogg's who makes Fruit Loops? Kellogg's makes two different versions of Fruit Loops, one for America, one for the rest of the world. Literally, you drive across the border to Canada. You get a box of Froot Loops. It doesn't have the poison that we have in our boxes here in America. Right, right, voices getting more heard of different experts from different fields spreading the good word that we are literally being poisoned in this country and it's nowhere else in the world. Every other country in the world has extreme, explicit bans banning the ingredients we have in our foods here.
Speaker 1:Right, For sure.
Speaker 2:So, now that I got that off my chest, I wanted to take this time to do a simple podcast, because Jenny is busting at the seams and we're trying to not make her work harder than we need to, and let's do a very you make it sound like I'm like really struggling over here.
Speaker 1:No, I just struggle yeah.
Speaker 2:Any day now, right, I wanted to go over some misconceptions, some things that are not always true, that your doctors are telling you. Now notice I said not always true versus never true. I'm not straight up saying your doctors are lying. I'm not straight up saying that your surgeons are telling you false information. What I am saying is it's not always true.
Speaker 1:And it may not always be true for your case versus your friend's case.
Speaker 2:That's what I'm going at right there. It could be very true for your friend.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:But it's not true for you. So it's not a one size fits all model, right, good.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Can I start? Sure, I want to start with the simplest one, and this is one of the things that occurred to me in Jacksonville I believe I talked about it a hundred podcasts ago and it's about knees, specifically knee arthritis or bone on bone, and this happened to me while I was working in Jacksonville. We got quite a bit of post-operative total knee replacements in our clinic there. We had a surgeon that referred to us, so we saw a lot of post-op knee replacements up there and I remember this happening over and over again where I'd be talking with somebody that I was working with in their first week of rehab, physical therapy after having a knee replacement, and the first week is the worst week and let's say, it's their right knee there. They had their right knee replaced four days ago. We're going through the motions and it's brutal and they mentioned regularly.
Speaker 2:I am not looking forward to having the other knee replaced and I just you know being curious, asking questions. I would say why are you having the other knee replaced? And this was a very consistent answer. Well, on x-ray, the left knee was worse than the right knee. There's no cartilage left in the left knee. It is 100% bone on bone. I'm like, okay, why'd you replace the right knee? Well, the right knee hurt more.
Speaker 2:I'm like, okay, and this just happened over and over and over again, where I'm going wait a minute the left knee was worse than the right knee on x-ray. Left knee was worse than the right knee on x-ray, but the left knee didn't hurt, so this was another part of it. So I would ask more questions after they told me this. I'd say, okay, so the left knee was worse on x-ray, but the right knee was the one that hurt. Then I'd say explicitly did your left knee hurt at all? Does it hurt at all? And the most common answer I got was no, or occasionally and I'm going wait a minute. On x-ray, your left knee is bone on bone, no cartilage left. Looks horrible, but it doesn't hurt.
Speaker 1:But yet we need knee replacements when our knees are bone on bone.
Speaker 2:Correct.
Speaker 1:Or that's what we're told.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So my point of this is you can not say that bone on bone causes knee pain. You cannot say it because I've seen it with my own eyes on my own treatment table, unsolicited from random, controlled blind studies, if you will Many, many people over years telling me that their x-ray was horrible bone on bone, but they don't have knee pain. So you cannot tell me that bone on bone causes knee pain and you cannot tell me that the reason why you have to have a knee replacement is because your knee is bone on bone Right. You can say it's correlated. You can say knee pain is correlated with bone on bone, but you can not say it causes it. And real quick, not to go into the weeds too much, what I can say with 100% certainty is that 99% of knee pain comes from the surrounding soft tissues, not the joint itself. It is so rare that the joint itself is what causes knee pain. Because here's more icing on the cake. How many people do you know that had a knee replacement and still have?
Speaker 1:knee pain. Right, right, that's a very common thing that you see is post-ops coming into you after they've finished their physical therapy somewhere else, coming in and still having knee pain, despite having both knees replaced at this point.
Speaker 2:Exactly so. There's no joint in there, it's literally metal and plastic Right. So you can't say that the pain is coming from the joint, From the joint right, it's the soft tissue surrounding the joint, the muscles, tendons and ligaments. When those things get pissed off that causes pain. And here's the kicker when the soft tissues around your knee joint get pissed off, it is almost always because something above or below is not doing its job. So the hip or the ankle, so the glutes or something going on in the ankle.
Speaker 1:Right or the foot.
Speaker 2:Or the foot yeah.
Speaker 1:The foot not moving appropriately. And people think I'm crazy. My clients will think I'm crazy when they tell me about their knee pain and I'm like, well, it's probably either your hip or your feet, so we need to go downstairs and have this looked at. And they're like no, but yes, then it is.
Speaker 2:Exactly A little shameless plug. Shockwave is working wonders for our people that actually do have really degenerated joints in their knees. So helping us calm down the soft tissue surrounding the joint, it is working wonders. So if your knee is pissed off, let's shockwave it.
Speaker 1:Perfect.
Speaker 2:Your turn.
Speaker 1:My turn. So this is actually something that I was just talking. I did a seminar where I went to a community and spoke last week and was talking to one of the members after the seminar, talking to me about her restless leg syndrome, and she was telling me how she's been through to tons of different specialists and has been seeing the vein doctors and now has been going through procedures for her varicose veins for the last six months and with these procedures she's like my veins look better, but my legs don't feel better. My restless leg syndrome has not gone away. I don't feel better and I'm saying okay. So let me understand this You've been seeing tons of different specialists, tons of different vein doctors, and they told you that your varicose veins were causing the pain and restlessness that you were having in your legs. So to have this very expensive procedure done that takes months at a time to get rid of the varicose veins yes, now your legs look better, but they don't feel better, Correct.
Speaker 1:So then I start asking a little bit deeper questions about having certain blood tests done how much water she's drinking? Are you getting electrolytes? What does your blood sugar look like? Asking her different questions on the associations of restless leg syndrome and none of it has been checked. What the ferritin level, the magnesium red blood cell level, her insulin level, the A1C, which is the average of the glucose? Over 90 days? These lab tests had not been done.
Speaker 1:She has not been drinking electrolytes, really had no idea how much water she's been drinking, although she's been told, yes, you need to drink more water, but had no idea how many ounces she was drinking in a day. So all of these different factors going into why she's having restless leg syndrome and muscle cramps, which, by the way, are only occurring at night. If it was due to varicose veins, why wouldn't it be occurring during the day? Why wouldn't it occur while you're sitting on the couch, while you're at rest during the day, sitting in a chair? Why aren't you getting the restless legs or the muscle cramps which would be associated more with a true vein, varicose vein issue?
Speaker 1:So again, she's been told that these varicose veins are causing her problem, which for some people they probably do. They probably do cause the pain, but again, it is more common that the pain and the restlessness and the cramps from varicose veins are going to happen throughout the entire day, not just at night when you're sleeping and, furthermore, if you're going to go through with having these procedures done like a knee replacement right, make sure you're looking at the other tests first. Let's look a little bit deeper into your body. Let's look at your vitamin levels, let's look at your ferritin level and make sure that they're actually optimal and that that's not a simpler fix for you than going through these thousands of dollars and months and months of procedures.
Speaker 2:Wouldn't that require time though?
Speaker 1:Not, probably not as much time as months of surgeries and rehabs.
Speaker 2:I was being rhetorical there. Wouldn't that require her doctor spending more time? Oh to her doctor. Her doctor's time, not her time, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And education probably. I mean, how many physicians it's kind of sad how many physicians don't know that low ferritin levels can cause restless leg syndrome? I have tons of clients that have come to me with restless leg syndrome and they're like why didn't my doctor ever look at that blood test? And I'm like, well, either they don't know or they don't want to know. Those are the two problems.
Speaker 2:This is one of the things that Jenny tells me off the record regularly because, jenny, she works with a ton of physicians locally and nationally, so getting people nationally all over the country right now where some very high level sought out physicians or surgeons and physicians and cardiac specialists and just you name it specialists across the board, you've been working with a ton of very high-level, sophisticated, successful career surgeons, doctors, and the amount of times that you mention something that should be really, really basic, low-level, known across the board, and they're going what?
Speaker 1:Yeah, they have no idea Like it's amazing and I always say I'm sure you already know this, but I'm going to educate you anyways. And then they come back and they're like no, I didn't know that, so please talk to me like I'm a regular human being and not a physician, just because I assume that they know things like this. But it's just. The functional perspective is different. It's focused, it's more focused. The functional perspective is more focused on the body, what's happening physiologically, internally, as opposed to their specialty.
Speaker 2:Or functional medicine is focused on the problem versus Western medicine is focused on symptoms. Yes, and this is no secret and this is one of the things that I was alluding to in the first couple of minutes of this episode was so many voices are getting louder exposing what the American medical system, the American medical education system, is doing, where the whole entire eight years a doctor is learning how to treat symptoms the whole entire eight years. 90% of medical schools don't even have one required class on nutrition. 80% of medical school's curriculum revolves around pharmacology.
Speaker 1:Right, I was just talking with a client about these stats just last week too, and actually she's you know, yeah, anyways, it's just crazy. And it's not just with MD schools, I mean, it's with PA schools, it's with physical therapy. How many nutrition classes did you guys have in PT school?
Speaker 2:Oh man, I don't know that we had any.
Speaker 1:Okay, but it's still important. From the physical therapy aspect, you have to be treating the whole body. I mean, how much does inflammation come from the food that we're eating?
Speaker 2:Yeah, touche.
Speaker 1:And there's no education in PT schools on nutrition.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I didn't even think about that.
Speaker 1:We had one alternative medicine class in PA school which talked about nutrition for two out of the six weeks. It was a six-week class, super short, talked about nutrition for maybe two out of the six weeks. Anyways, we're getting on a tangent here. Let's come back to the point of this conversation was what you're being told is not always true in your case.
Speaker 2:Yes, it's not always true and it really comes back to the basic, simple thought process of you have to understand who you're getting advice from. How many times have I said this over the past 10 episodes? I mean, you have to understand that if you're trying to avoid a knee replacement, it might not be the best idea to take advice from somebody who specializes in knee replacements. Like, maybe you should take advice from somebody that specializes in helping you avoid knee replacements.
Speaker 1:Right. Right, if you're not willing to take a medication for your diabetes, going to an endocrinologist is probably not the best place for you to be. See a functional nutritionist, see a functional medicine doctor, a holistic, integrative medicine, somebody who still knows about medicine and still knows about diabetes and knows about the diagnosis the endocrinology diagnosis but is willing to take a different approach for you.
Speaker 2:I think that we need to get even more explicit than that, because I think right now we're in a pivotal, pivotal moment in American history as far as medicine goes. I truly believe that 50 years from now, we're going to look back on this and it's going to be like holy cow. This was the great awakening. What in the world was happening since the 80s, 90s and early 2000s? And then it just the curtains get pulled back, everything gets exposed, and what I mean by that is I truly believe that you should be spending your own money on your advice. Spend money on a concierge doctor. Spend money on a functional medicine doctor. Quit going to in-network providers because they're handcuffed right now. They are literally handcuffed.
Speaker 2:There's another massive, massive decrease in reimbursement that's happening this year from Medicare I'm in, where Jenny and I are both in this massive mastermind group with 250 other business owners around the world not just physical therapy, but functional medicine, chiropractic all of the things that should keep us moving and grooving and the pain that some of these clinics are feeling right now because reimbursements going down. Something has to give. Quality care is what gives Okay. Well, I used to get paid $100 for this hour. Now I'm getting paid $75. That means I have to see more patients per hour or the doors close. 275, that means I have to see more patients per hour or the doors close.
Speaker 2:It's simple business 101. So you really need to start paying out of your pocket for some quality care. Your insurance is not going to cover it. Your in-network doctors they are struggling. Here's another thing that I didn't even realize. This is a true, true stat that the in-network doctors have one of the highest rates of suicide.
Speaker 1:We've actually known a few in this community that have committed suicide over the last nine years that we've lived here.
Speaker 2:That was the biggest slap in the face. I just opened up, just opened up and I had a friend that I went to high school with that worked for one of the biggest names in town I'm not going to go down any other directions to respect privacy. And this was the only doctor in town that took a chance on me, took a chance and actually referred patients to me Because when I first opened out of network, none of the other doctors wanted to refer to me. This one referred to me because I was. When I first opened out of network, nobody none of the other doctors wanted to refer to me. This one referred to me. A year later he commits suicide. It just shocked me and I'm going well, how does this happen? He was one of the nicest, happiest guys never in a million years. So there's a reason why this is happening. They know the system's broken.
Speaker 2:This is a problem right right this is a major problem, so sorry to end on doom and gloom it's kind of a sad ending. Well, let's not end there. Baby berman, number three, might be here before the next episode drops.
Speaker 1:Might be here before this episode drops maybe we'll see, we'll see any minute now we keep thinking that, but then this might be the one that makes it to the end. We've never made it to the end before.
Speaker 2:But number three might be the one this one might be the most stubborn of all, don.
Speaker 1:Don't, don't even say that. Nobody, no one can be more strong-willed than Vera Kay.
Speaker 2:Oh my goodness.
Speaker 1:If so, we're in trouble.
Speaker 2:These past two weeks have really really tested your patience. Mine too, but really your patience yes.
Speaker 1:Well, because she only wants me. So it makes it challenging to keep my cool all the time when I'm like go to your dad for five minutes, five minutes, just go.
Speaker 2:She's really cute when she wants to be, oh my goodness, the cutest thing in the world when she wants to be.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but she's very strong-willed. Well, I just am getting my payback to my mom and dad all those years, this was you. She is me.
Speaker 2:Reincarnated yeah.