The Berman Method
The Berman Method
Episode #175: One Guarantee plus a HUGE Announcement!!!
Ever wondered why the corporate medical system seems to prioritize profits over people? We're pulling back the curtain on this issue, revealing how health insurance companies often put business needs ahead of patient care. As Dr. Jake Berman and physician assistant Jenny Berman, we share our hands-on approach at Berman Health and Wellness and Berman Physical Therapy, where we strive for a harmonious balance between profitability and patient well-being. Expect to hear personal experiences and insights into why taking proactive health measures is essential for better health outcomes and longevity.
Falls are a part of aging that we can't avoid, but the extent of injury is often within our control. We discuss how maintaining physical resilience can aid recovery, especially for those dealing with diabetes or unstable blood sugar levels. Discover how staying active can turn you into a more "anti-fragile" version of yourself, ready to face life's physical hurdles. Plus, get a sneak peek into an upcoming event with Dr. Carolyn Sederquist that focuses on enhancing sleep, energy, and weight management, alongside tips for gut health and anti-aging. Join us as we equip you with the knowledge to better navigate the medical system and take charge of your health journey.
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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're rolling, baby rolling, rolling, rolling, with a baby in Jenny's arms. The Berman Method Podcast. Dr Jake Berman, here with Jenny Berman, physician assistant. And Walker Ryan sitting there, laying there so precious right now.
Speaker 1:He is, isn't he? He's so precious.
Speaker 2:He's growing way faster than the girls grew.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he's definitely bigger than them at this age, although he's still under the 15th percentile.
Speaker 2:He's massive for a Berman baby.
Speaker 1:That's true.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, good morning or afternoon. Hopefully this is Monday morning that you're listening to this the first thing to start your week off the right way with us. We are, david, going against Goliath, goliath being the corporate medical system. We do not believe that Western medicine, big pharma or health insurance companies have your best interests in mind. They will choose profits over patient outcomes every single time. And you know I was talking about this last week, where we're in seminar season right now. So January, february, march is seminar season for myself and Jenny.
Speaker 2:We go out to the various country clubs in the community and we do PSA, public service announcements, essentially trying to spread the word as much as we possibly can to whoever will listen to us. And one of the things that was brought up in one of my talks at I believe it's Esplanade, I think it was we were talking about health insurance companies and why they don't pay for what we know and believe is medically necessary to get you to where you need to be, and one person voiced up saying it's because they're greedy and I'm like. Well, you know, I really don't like health insurance companies, but I don't want to use the word greedy because that has a negative emotional connotation and I don't believe it's greed as much as it's straight up business. It is a business and businesses have to be profitable. Right, this isn't Canada, this isn't Russia or China. Somebody's got to pay for it. You know the government's not paying for them to stay in operation.
Speaker 2:Well, I guess we could argue that a little bit. But at the end of the day, insurance companies are businesses. Look at the homeowners insurance companies in Florida after Hurricane Ian completely devastated the state of Florida. How many homeowners insurances completely pulled out of the state because they were literally going out of business. So at the end of the day, it's a business. I don't know that it's so much greed as much as you do have to make a profit to stay in business. Jake and Jenny have to make a profit to stay in business, but at the same time you can choose who you do business with.
Speaker 1:Right, and there's a difference in making profit and making a difference in someone's life versus not.
Speaker 2:Oh, good point. Yeah, touche, touche.
Speaker 1:Because we, yes, have to make a profit to stay in business, but we are making a difference in someone's life, making their life longer, healthier, more longevity, showing value for the money they're spending, as opposed to just taking money from you and then being like, oh sorry, not going to cover that, now you owe five more grand.
Speaker 2:Exactly so. Health insurance companies choose profits over patient outcomes versus Berman Inc. Berman Health and Wellness, berman Physical Therapy. We choose both. We got to have a profit to stay in business, but that profit is going to revolve around your outcome.
Speaker 1:Right, right your longevity.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Speaking of longevity, that's something that I wanted to bring up today because another hot topic in my seminars this year. This is the first time that I brought this up in my seminars, so I brought up the fact that I'm presenting in this particular seminar I believe it was Royal Palm was the first time that I brought up this topic in this way. So I'm talking to the audience and it popped into my head and I go okay, this is what I'm going to say. To try to get your attention. To try to get your attention 100% of you in this room right now are going to fall at some point in the future. Like this is non-negotiable. Every single one of you in this room is going to fall at some point in time in the future. It just happens we fall.
Speaker 1:Yes, we're younger, healthier individuals when we fall. Yeah, everybody is going to fall.
Speaker 2:Everybody is At some point yeah, it's going to happen. Now the extent of how extreme the damage is is completely up to you, and that was the first time that I've ever said it that way and you could see in the audience that it really resonated. So it went from 75% of the people being really engaged to that last little 25% that was kind of there was like oh wow.
Speaker 1:It's up to me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I didn't think about it that way, way. So there's no doubt you're going to fall, unless you live in a bubble, unless you furniture walk and use your hands on the the walls, even then you're still gonna fall right, even those who use a cane or a walker have falls.
Speaker 1:Yeah, even those that have assistance, you're gonna fall, majority of the time in the middle of the night.
Speaker 2:Exactly so. The extent of how damaging it is is completely up to you. Now let's take this to younger people. Let's go to 30-year-olds, 40-year-olds, and say you're going to fall. It's the same thing. The extent of how damaging it is is completely up to you. I want to use myself for an example.
Speaker 2:So we brought the boat home one day. We usually keep our boat on a lift down on Marco and I put it on a trailer to bring it home and service it. So I brought it home three months ago I think it was two months ago to do a routine service on it. And I'm up on the boat, it's on the trailer, I'm washing it and the week before it had just gotten waxed and I'm like man, this boat is so pretty, man, it's shining, nice and smooth 25-old boats looking brand new and washing it.
Speaker 2:And I go to step off the back and it's got a bracket. So I go to step on the bracket to jump off the back of the boat and I'm wearing my Crocs that I've been wearing for years Jenny loves my Crocs and I step my foot right on the edge of the bracket because my plan is to step on the bracket and then jump off the boat because this thing is brand new or recently waxed. As soon as I put my foot on the edge, it slips off and we're talking. It's a good five feet up in the air from the ground.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm, because it's on the trailer, because it's on the trailer.
Speaker 2:So my foot slips off and there is no stopping me. I go straight to the ground, landing on my right shoulder, and somehow I don't know how I did this, but I just reacted and I, just as soon as I hit the ground, I rolled and I got up and I'm going, holy cow. What is broken? Something has to be broken, because there was no stopping me. It's straight up four and a half five feet straight down to the ground and the only thing that happened was I skinned my shin.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you came in with a bloody shin and I was like, what did you do?
Speaker 2:And I'm going. I should have broke my shoulder. I should have broke my wrist. I should have broke my elbow. I should have something should have happened, falling five feet down straight onto your shoulder. I should have broke my wrist. I should have broke my elbow.
Speaker 1:Something should have happened, falling five feet down straight onto your shoulder.
Speaker 2:Straight to the ground. It was not bouncy, it was hard ground and it's gravel ground, it's not even grass yeah, it's not grass, it's not dirt, it's gravel. And I'm going. I cannot believe that nothing serious just happened Now. If I didn't wake up at four o'clock every single morning, work out six days a week, if I wasn't in the shape that I'm in, if I was thinner, petite or heavier and weaker. I don't think it would have been the same outcome.
Speaker 1:For sure, even those of us who are exercising regularly, like you said. I mean, how many times in the last five years have I fallen, running Like out for exercise, running and I've fallen, which is oftentimes a sign to me that my hips aren't doing what they're supposed to be doing. I frequently will trip and fall if my left hip is, you know, acting up a bit just because my stride is different. But I have fallen, and there are times that I've fallen within the first three quarters of a mile of my run and have been able to get up and finish the six mile run that I went out to do, because we are trained to fall.
Speaker 1:More resilient, stronger, flexible.
Speaker 2:The body is more resistant to trauma because of how healthy it is.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:It's that simple. Because we torture ourself every single day, we are harder to kill. It's that simple, if you want to look at it that way.
Speaker 1:Torture is a strong word. Day we are harder to kill. It's that simple. If you want to look at it that way, torture is a strong word. We're sitting here trying to encourage people to exercise and we're like go torture yourself. It's not that bad Gracious.
Speaker 2:It's true, though I mean think about a really bad trauma though. So one of the most common things that I see in my world is a 60 to 70 year old, fairly active adult falls and fractures the head of their humerus, so their shoulder. They fracture their shoulder. Now I've seen both ends of the spectrum on how grueling the rehab can be. I've worked with some people where it takes six months, 12 months, 18 months, just to get back to 70%. But then I've worked with other people where after three months we're at 75%, after six months we're at 90%, after a year we're at 100%, and the most explicit difference between the two is how much in shape, or how in shape, how healthy, your body was physically pre-injury.
Speaker 1:Well, the reason to that to go a little bit deeper is it's more than just the physical strength. If your body is physically strong meaning you have the musculature, you have the tone, you have the strength and flexibility you also have healthier internal cellular function, which is where the immune system is actually responding for you to heal appropriately. Nobody realizes how much blood sugar plays into the immune system and healing. If your blood sugar is unstable, it doesn't mean it's high, it doesn't mean that you wake up with a fasting blood sugar of over 100. You could have a totally normal fasting blood sugar. But if your 24-hour blood sugar stability meaning how it's rising and falling throughout the day, your 90-day average of your blood sugar, if those things are unstable or elevated, that is going to significantly impact the healing process in your immune system which is going to play into the repercussion of the fall.
Speaker 2:Exactly the easiest way to look at it is an older person who has diabetes. When they have a wound, a skin wound, it takes forever to heal.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:One of our clients had an open wound on his lower shin. For over a year it kept getting staph and infected and the thing just would not heal. Because of his diabetes, his blood sugar instability, he couldn't heal. Now think about what's happening on the internal side of things. That's external, your skin's external, you can see it. The same thing is true internally. You have a trauma, you fall, you break's. External, you can see it. The same thing is true internally. You have a trauma, you fall, you break a bone. You still have to heal, but if your blood sugar is unstable, it's going to take forever.
Speaker 1:Right, and that's where it goes, along with having knee replacements and having hip replacements or, just like you said, healing from a fracture. The healing process is the same whether it's internal or external. It's going to take longer if the blood sugar is unstable. So, to come back to what you were saying, we were talking about needing and the necessity of physical strength, the flexibility, the balance, the musculature, the tone, but that's impacting your internal ability to heal as well. But that's impacting your internal ability to heal as well.
Speaker 2:Yes, it all plays into itself and again, I could not believe it. My personal experience. When I fell off the boat a couple of months ago onto gravel, I thought for sure. Even I thought I might've been in shock for the first couple of minutes. Afterwards I'm assessing my body and I'm going nothing's broken, nothing even hurts. Right now I must be in shock. Tomorrow I'm going to be in a lot of pain. I'm going to wake up stiff. Sure enough, the next morning I pop up out of bed and I assess everything again. I move around. I'm going, nothing hurts. The only thing that happened was I skinned my shin.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm, I've thought about that a few times. When you're roughhousing with Yeti running down the grass canal behind our house and have taken tumbles playing with them, Yeti's our dog and they will roughhouse and run and juke and they're like playing football together. But without a football Yeti's just playing attack and you have fallen several times doing that.
Speaker 2:I have eaten it to where I'm like.
Speaker 1:Oh boy, you have to use your hands for your daily living, so please don't break a wrist.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I'm kind of boasting a little bit because I'll be 40 this year and I know you know most of the people in my age group a lot of my friends there's. There's some of them that if they would have went down like I went, I there's no doubt in my mind that something more severe would have happened, and it's just the sheer fact that they just don't train their body as much as I do I. They may not eat or have the diet, they may not have Jenny in their kitchen like I do. And again, this is boasting just a little bit, but it is reality Because you will fall again.
Speaker 2:Every single one of you listening right now. You're going to fall at some point in the future. It's a 100% guarantee that you will fall. The extent of how severe it is is completely up to you. So there's a lot of people listening to this right now thinking of their parents knowing that they're getting older, frailer, weaker, poor balance, really worried about them walking to the bathroom in the middle of the night. They know that they're going to fall again. The extent of how severe it is is completely up to them. If they are just giving up saying that I'm old, this is just what I have to live with, then it's more likely that it's going to be a more significant result when they fall versus.
Speaker 2:The vast majority of our clients are spending thousands and thousands of dollars to become more resilient, and the word that I like to use a lot in the office is essentially, get anti-fragile, and that's how I describe what happened with me falling off the boat. Had I been more fragile, that would have been a much bigger deal. I probably would have called you from the ground if my phone was in my pocket. Jenny, take me to the er, take me, call 9-1-1. This is not good, but I did it. I popped right back up and finished cleaning the boat. I went into the barn and I got a paper towel and I duct taped it to my shin I didn't duct tape, but I used painter's tape.
Speaker 2:So blue painter's tape, yeah, and I just kept doing what I needed to do and finished all my chores. It's completely up to you how severe, how significant it's going to be when you fall again. It's going to happen. What are you doing about it?
Speaker 1:Right, what's your day-to-day look like? And also, speaking of longevity, we're having actually a longevity event. What? Unlocking better sleep, energy and helping you to reach your goal weight A big event, february the 15th, 10 am is the start time, so you actually need to arrive a little bit early, like 9.30, to get checked in.
Speaker 1:It's going to be at the Hyatt House of Naples, downtown, and we are going to have a huge keynote speaker, dr Carolyn Sederquist, institute of Functional Medicine board certified physician. She is the name behind the MD factor, so really understanding metabolic dysfunction and getting the metabolism where it should be as we're aging, so essentially anti-aging. She's going to be our big keynote speaker. I am going to do a smaller presentation on gut health and, again, unlocking the anti-aging aspect from a gut health perspective. We're going to have a question and answer session for the entire audience to be able to ask questions and get awesome answers from a panel of four functional providers, including Dr Carolyn Sederquist and myself and two other functional providers from in town. So this is a big, big event that we want everybody to be able to join and really ask the questions, really understand how you can improve energy, sleep, the metabolism, your weight, your gut health and really get to know Dr Carolyn Sederquist, who is a board certified functional medicine provider.
Speaker 2:Yes, and just to be 100% clear, that is who is your mentor. That is who you learned functional medicine from. Dr Cedarquist is who was running the Cedarquist Wellness Center that you left corporate medicine orthopedics, peds, ortho to go work with and that's what completely changed everything.
Speaker 1:It did. Yeah, she was actually the one that helped us to initially unlock my gut issues and my fertility problem. I started talking with her very closely about the fertility issues that we had been going through when I started working with her and she really did a lot of research for me more research than the IVF doctors that I was seeing for the last two years prior to meeting Dr Cedarquist. She did so much research for me and really helped us walk through this journey together. But, yes, she trained me, has taught me all the ropes, so she's an amazing individual, very, very smart. I'm really looking forward to her being able to present to a group for us.
Speaker 1:In the show notes we'll post the link to be able to buy the tickets for the event. It is a ticketed event. You have to have a ticket to come. You can't just show up. We will have beverages. We will have hors d'oeuvres being served and passed. There's going to be some grab bags there, some discounts and raffles for you to win items at the event as well. So a lot of exciting things. It is February the 15th. You need to arrive around 930. The event starts promptly at 10 and we will go from there.
Speaker 2:Saturday February 15th.
Speaker 1:Saturday, february 15th 2025.
Speaker 2:The day after the Hallmark holiday, so you should be nice and rested coming. One of my favorite things about this event is how eloquent of a speaker that Dr Cedarquist is. She's not a boring, dull doctor. She's exciting, full of energy. Love listening to her talk. She's passionate about it. She's currently retired. However, her passion has not lessened at all. Every time she talks about it it's just full of passion, full of excitement, easy to understand, very enjoyable. Not a boring presentation. This is going to be awesome. We are super excited about this, so tell your friends. And this is going to be a limited event. There's only 50 tickets available.
Speaker 1:That's it.
Speaker 2:The first 50 people you are in. We are not letting this go any bigger. This needs to remain as intimate as possible so that we can maintain the quality of the Q&A session, because you're going to have some really, really good questions with some really good answers. So 50 tickets first come, first serve. Sign up right here, right now. Click on the show notes. Get your tickets now. You're not going to want to miss this.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, we're excited. Happy Monday everybody.
Speaker 2:Like, subscribe, share. We appreciate you. Ciao for now.
Speaker 1:Thank you for subscribing on your social media and podcast platforms to the Berman Method Dr Jake Berman with Berman Physical Therapy and Jenny Berman, Physician Assistant with Berman Health and Wellness. You can find more information on our website wwwbermanptcom for physical therapy. Wwwbermanptcom forward slash wellness for the health and wellness. You can also find us on social media, Facebook, Instagram, and on your podcast platform, so be sure to follow us, like us, subscribe to us and, if you would like any further information, definitely visit our website and reach out to us. You may also find our free reports on the websites as well, where you can download this free information for yourself. Have a great day.