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The Berman Method
The Berman Method
Episode #215: The Right Way, Not the Easy Way: Who Should—and Shouldn’t—Choose Us
In this episode of The Berman Method Podcast, Dr. Jake Berman and physician assistant Jenni Berman pull back the curtain on what’s broken in modern healthcare—and why “normal” doesn’t always mean healthy. From insurance-driven medicine and rushed doctor visits to overlooked blood work and one-size-fits-all protocols, they explain why so many people are still struggling despite being told they’re “fine.”
The Bermans walk through the real reasons people shouldn’t come to Berman Health Club—like wanting quick fixes, relying on MRI reports as life sentences, or accepting aging as an excuse for decline. Then they flip the script and explain who should come: people looking for answers, alternatives, and a deeper understanding of their bodies.
They introduce the 10 key factors they’ve identified in thriving adults well into their 80s and 90s—five physical and five chemical markers that determine how well you move, think, sleep, and live. From balance, mobility, and strength to brain fog, sleep, medications, and gut health, this episode challenges common assumptions about aging and pain.
If you’ve been told surgery is your only option, that your labs are “normal” when you don’t feel normal, or that decline is inevitable, this episode offers a different way to think—and a different path forward.
Arrive at 80 feeling 60 starts here.
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Boom bum bum boom the Berman Method podcast treating problems and not symptoms. David going against Goliath, Goliath being the corporate medical system, big pharmaceutical companies, the health insurance companies. Health insurance is like car insurance. They're not gonna pay for you to get new brakes, they're not gonna pay for your oil change. Why in the world would they pay for you to heal your gut naturally without a pharmaceutical? Come on.
Speaker 1:It's true. Like health insurance and car insurance, they're not the car insurance is not gonna pay for your preventative, which is where we're at with health insurance, too. They may not even pay for your catastrophic surgeries that are required, but just ask Jenni. Nonetheless, they certainly won't pay for you to have a checkup or to have the important blood work done that you should have done, or to have your physical activity assessed.
Speaker:Exactly. I mean, well, proper introduction, Dr. Jake Berman here with my beautiful co-host.
Speaker 1:Jenni Berman, physician assistant.
Speaker:We are the co-owners of Berman Health Club, formerly known as Berman Physical Therapy, Berman Health and Wellness. We've combined, merged to create an all-encompassing way to arrive at 80 feeling 60.
Speaker 1:I think it's the first time you've called us co-owners.
Speaker:Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1:Or co-founders.
Speaker:Five years later.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker:You guys just heard it first.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because we all used to be separate owners, but now we are co-owners.
Speaker:We are co-owners making co-decisions. So hopefully we're still married a year from now.
Speaker 1:Oh my. I hope so.
Speaker:You just mentioned something though that's really interesting that so many people just glance over. Blood work.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker:My doctor just did my blood work and he said that I'm doing great. Well, what did he do? He looked at four things.
Speaker 1:Three, usually. That's the most common.
Speaker:He looked at three things.
Speaker 1:Four if we're really lucky.
Speaker:And you look at how many?
Speaker 1:Generally 14.
Speaker:Yeah. Okay, so your primary care physician that accepts your shitty Medicare is going to tell you that you're on track for thriving by looking at three markers in your blood work versus Jenni at Berman Health Club is going to tell you that you're on track or you're not on track because you're looking at at least 14. At least 14 different markers. I mean, come on.
Speaker 1:Right, right. The amount of times I people come to me with this whole extensive list of concerns, like true concerns, symptoms, frustrations, and they're like, but my doctor says I'm fine. And I talk about blood work. I just had labs done, and he said they're all normal. Okay, well, first of all, you had very minimal done. Secondly, it is still not normal. He told you it's normal and it's not normal.
Speaker:How many times have you heard that where it's like, whatever? This is not my scope of practice. But whatever marker comes back and it's it's obviously blatantly, objectively, obviously elevated. Right. And they tell you that it's normal, and you're going, Are you freaking kidding me?
Speaker 1:I'm like, your A1C is in the pre-diabetic range, but you're normal. That's not normal. It's normal for what he's used to seeing when he's used to seeing a bunch of type 2 diabetics in their 70s. Like, yeah, you're not a type 2 diabetic and you're 76 years old, but you're still pre-diabetic. But that's just totally looked over. Or they don't even check that marker and they just look at your blood counts and they say, Oh, your triglycerides are at 130. That's that's fine. It's not fine. So it's like your wife, when your wife tells you I'm fine, she's not fine.
Speaker:What? Wait a minute. Did you you've told me you're fine multiple times? It's fine, I'm fine. In the past week, and I believed you.
Speaker 1:That's not true. That's not true. You 100% know. If I say I'm fine, I'm not fine.
Speaker:I'm going, oh my gosh, what did I do? And I'm playing back the entire playbook and I'm going, what just happened? What did I do? What did I do not do? What did I say? What did I not say? Oh my gosh, we gotta figure this out now.
Speaker 1:It's fine, I'm fine, it's all fine.
Speaker:You're like, nope. So to get back on track here, we get a lot of questions on how we are different. And we wanted to take this episode to say or to give more clarity on why we're different. And one of the ways that we thought would be a really good way to start off this conversation is to start off with reasons why you should not come see us at Berman Health Club. What do you think?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm ready. You just had my mind like really thinking as you were commenting on that. Because people call us and they'll be like, I've already tried everything. I've already spent thousands of dollars. Why should I come spend thousands more for you? How are you gonna be different than all these other things I've already tried over the last five years? We get those questions a lot.
Speaker:Daily, at least on a daily basis. Somebody coming in for a physical concern or gut health concern, whatever it is, it's like, why are you different?
unknown:Right.
Speaker:So let's go ahead and just tell you how we're different. And the way we're gonna do it is by starting off with reasons why you should not come see us. So one of my favorite things to say on the physical side is if you like going to a physical therapist that accepts your insurance and puts you on an assembly line, hands you a sheet of paper with your stretches and your exercises on it, and then tells you to go off in the corner and do your own stretches and exercises by yourself, and occasionally a tech may come by and count reps for you. If you like that, you should not come see us.
Speaker 1:Yes. If you like going into a doctor's office and filling out a medical history form that's, you know, three, four, or five questions, and then you walk into the office, the doctor asks you the same three or four or five questions because they never looked at your medical history form. You get about four and a half minutes of their quality time, and then they walk out and you're okay with that, then you should not come see us.
Speaker:That was a good one. I really, really enjoyed that one. My turn?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker:If you like utilizing what your X-ray or your MRI says as an excuse for why you can't do XYZ, you should definitely not come see me. For example, if your x-ray says that your knee is bone on bone and your knee hurts, and you like being able to say, I can't go skiing, I can't get down on the ground, I can't play with my grandkids, I can't play tennis, I can't play golf because my knee is bone on bone, you should definitely not come to Berman Health Club.
Speaker 1:That was a good one. Touche. Like that's so true. I can't do that. My extra says I can't. My MRI said that I have a tear, so it's just not going to get better. Your turn. Yeah, okay, my turn. If you like going to a specialist and getting told that this is how it is, and this is how this particular problem needs to be treated, and there's no way around it, like this is what it is, and then you don't trust working with a functional provider who sees these problems on a daily basis and treats them according to the actual patient and not a one size fits all, but you're not gonna trust the provider to utilize their information and their knowledge, then you should not come see me. I can't do that because this is what my doctor said, and this is what I have to do. Okay, that's great. I'm not going against your doctor, and I think they are phenomenal, phenomenal at their job. However, you should consider understanding the knowledge and the information that I'm providing to you as you an individual and not a one size fits all with the protocol that your surgeon sees.
Speaker:Love that. Absolutely love it. My turn.
Speaker 1:Your turn.
Speaker:If you are looking for a quick fix and you just want the pain to go away right here, right now, you just want to get a shot. Because shots are great, because they work. You get a cortisone injection, the pain is gone immediately. If you're looking for a quick fix, you should not come see me.
Speaker 1:If you my turn, yeah. If you enjoy being on 16 medications and taking three of those medications to sleep at night, because you just you will not be able to sleep without taking them, and there's nothing that can fix that. If you enjoy being on all those medications and you don't want to come off of them, you should not come see me. My turn. Yeah.
Speaker:If you enjoy using age as an excuse for why you have to go from playing singles tennis to doubles tennis, if you want to use age as an excuse of why you have to move up tea boxes, if you want to use age as an excuse of why you need to stop playing altogether, why you need to stop gardening, why you can't play with your grandkids. If you want to use age as an excuse, you enjoy that, you should definitely not come to Berman Health Club.
Speaker 1:That's a good one on both sides, the chemical and physical side. Okay, my turn. If you don't want to actually listen and understand knowledge and trust and give the dietary changes a try to fix your hormone problems, and again, like you said, just think that you want the quick fix of taking hormones and another pill or cream or medication, then you should not come see me.
Speaker:Hopefully, people are starting to get the point.
Speaker 1:I think so.
Speaker:At the end of the day, if you're looking for quick fixes and you're looking for the easy button, you should not come to Berman Health Club because it's not easy. Nothing in life is nothing in life that's worth anything is easy.
Speaker 1:It's not easy. However, I think more importantly, for why they shouldn't come see us is they uh should understand that we will spend time with you and we will ask you questions and we will dig deeper into your life and into your medical history and really take steps of figuring out the problem from week to week to week to week. And if you're not willing to provide that information or the time or the effort to make the changes, then it's not the right fit for you.
Speaker:Yeah. So said just slightly different from what you just said, it's almost I can't remember what it is. I it's gotta be one of those movies. It's almost like the Matrix or something. I that's probably not the right term or movie, but it's almost like this saying right here in order for us to work, you must first believe that what you've been told is not true, or that there's another way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's not that's not the only way to do it. It's not a one size fits all. Like this is what my provider said, this is the only way. You can't believe that.
Speaker:Here's the best example, and I'm gonna elaborate on this example so much more in a coming episode sooner than later. It is so accepted in America that arthritis causes pain, specifically, knee arthritis causes knee pain. And it's not true. Right, it's absolutely not true. It can be correlated, but arthritis does not cause knee pain. And I'll give so much more details on this in a coming in an upcoming episode. I don't want to spend time on it now. But there's a teaser for you. If you've got knee arthritis and you have knee pain and you think that your pain's coming from arthritis, I'm telling you right now, that's not true.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker:It can be associated and correlated with it, but arthritis itself does not cause pain.
Speaker 1:It's not the cause, right? It's not the cause.
Speaker:So now let's just be a little more blunt on reasons why you should come see us. If you reasons why you should come to Berman Health and Wellness, to Berman Health Club, is because you want an alternative thought. You want a different way. You want to find a solution to a problem that you don't even know exists right now, but you know that there is one. And this is one of the most common things that I've seen in my world for the past 10 years on the PT side is so many times I get calls from people saying that I've been told that the only answer is surgery. And back pain or back surgery is the easiest one because the vast majority of people who have back issues know that back surgery is a crapshoot. It's a 50-50 outcome. 50% of the time after a back surgery, you're gonna feel better. 50% of the time you're not gonna feel better or you're gonna feel worse.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker:That is a statistical truism that it just is. So when you're forced with your surgeons telling you that the only solution left to do for your back pain is to have back surgery, I get people calling all the time saying, I'm I'm at a loss right now. I don't want to have back surgery, so I'm just trying anything. This is a Hail Mary. This is my last attempt to figure out an alternative solution because I don't want to have back surgery.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker:That's a reason why you should come see us.
Speaker 1:Right, right, for sure. And majority of the time they're successful.
Speaker:Yes, the overwhelming majority of the time.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:It's actually more rare for it to not work.
Speaker 1:Yes. Yeah, I would say maybe a couple times it didn't work. For but not because of the um process, but because of the actual pathology.
Speaker:Yeah, where there is a legitimate reason why you have to have back surgery where there's a synovial cyst that grew on your spinal cord or your spinal root, and that cyst is putting pressure on the nerve root, causing your back pain. There's no physical therapy in the world that's gonna get rid of a synovial cyst.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker:You have to go in there with a scalpel and cut it out.
Speaker 1:Yep, yep.
Speaker:That requires surgery.
Speaker 1:100% that these this is the reason to come, is that you need this other opportunity, a different approach, a different view on how to assess the situation. Yes. And the same thing goes on the chemical side. And again, where I was saying that people say all the time, I've spent so much money, I've tried so many different things, I've done this, I've done that, and I just have not been successful. How are you different? And the first thing I said about asking your medical history, we will ask you a 30-minute medical history and then spend an hour going over your medical history just so I can understand what we are working for through that has happened over the last 30, 40, 50, 60 years, and how that's impacting wherever we're going right now, between the gut health or the chemical imbalances, or the hormonal imbalances, the blood sugar instabilities. Like, how long have we been dealing with these issues and what all have we been dealing with? The amount of times that I hear, wow, doctors never asked me this, or I've never had to provide such extensive information, but now I understand why, because we're tying everything together, we're pulling it together like a bicycle wheel, where we have so many different spindles and spokes on the bicycle wheel, and we have to get them to all align appropriately. And that's the important thing behind us is we're gonna dig, we're gonna keep making changes, we're gonna make modifications, we're gonna understand and listen to figure out what is going on and thus approach it differently than what you've done before that hasn't worked.
Speaker:I think that's really important to harp on a little bit more is the biggest difference that you get from us from anybody else is that we will continue to try to figure out what the answer is if we don't get it right the first time, the second time, the third time, the 75th time. We're gonna continue trying to figure it out versus everywhere else they've got a protocol. You come in for back pain, here's what you do. Oh, that didn't work. Well, go back to your doctor, go get an injection, yeah, take more payments, rest. You're getting older, just rest.
Speaker 1:Yeah, cut back on your tennis and your pickleball, separate them by a few days because you need a few days in between to recover. That's my favorite.
Speaker:So over the years, we've really identified five commonalities or five characteristics, five um checkpoints on the physical component that lead to your body's ability to move functionally, and then five things on the chemical side that allow you to feel better, no brain fog, and actually get good sleep and feel better. So we've identified five things on both sides, so it's 10 things total, and when you get these ten things as close to optimal as possible, you feel amazing.
Speaker 1:You have the ultimate boomer-esque. Right?
Speaker:Yes, when you can check the boxes, yes, you're arriving at 80 feeling 60. Yeah, you're not saying you feel your age, or even worse, you're not saying you feel older than your age. You're doing things that your peers are not doing anymore. You're going out and you're playing with your grandkids, you're running around, you're golfing seven days in a row in Scotland, you're still playing singles, or you're like my 97 year old golfer, you're still playing tennis multiple times a week, and you're still shooting your age on a weekly basis, and you're flying down from Connecticut to come do a two day workshop with me one on one at 97 years old.
Speaker 1:Right, right.
Speaker:Because you're optimized.
Speaker 1:The the th and I like where you said you're doing things that your peers are not doing, that your peers won't even consider doing. I mean, they can't even get up without their walker, and here you are playing golf, and you're not taking any medications, only a supplement or two. You're reading and writing and playing go fish with your grandkids, right? Things that others can't do. So, what are the five physical?
Speaker:Well, before I get into the five physical, let's just use some explicit examples. So you just mentioned some things that older people can relate to, but what about you? You're 35 years old and you can still do a handstand.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker:How many other 35-year-olds do you know that can do a handstand?
Speaker 1:Well, I think that's kind of hard because if they can never do a handstand, then that's not a really fair comparison, but not many.
Speaker:There's no there's always something though. What could you do in your teens that you can no longer do in your 30s? It could be anything, a cartwheel. Pretty much everybody has done a cartwheel in childhood. I almost ripped off my freaking hamstring when I tried to do a cartwheel five or ten years ago.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Have you tried one since?
Speaker:I'm like, oh my gosh. No, I've not tried one since. No.
Speaker 1:But I can still do a cartwheel.
Speaker:Of course you can. So it's just these kind of things where it's like you're doing things, I'm doing things, our our uh clients are doing things that their peers cannot do. Right. Right? We've got multiple 80-year-olds in our world right now that are doing things that 60-year-olds are not doing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think uh something else for for our age group is so many people our age group are like, my hair's falling out. Like, this is just part of the aging. I'm gonna lose my hair. It's not part of aging, there's something going on that's making your hair fall out. Here I am, 35, as you mentioned, three kids. I'm not losing hair.
Speaker:The reason why you're losing hair is because of me. I'm ripping it out of your head.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but seriously, like that's a true chemical imbalance. If you're noticing that you're losing hair, if you're having this brain fog to where you feel like you need to take Adderall to focus, like that's a chemical imbalance. Oh, wait, I am getting ahead of myself, aren't I?
Speaker:Yes, let's let's go ahead and outline the five things on the physical side, the five things on the chemical side. So over the years, we've identified these ten things. And these ten things came from our clients that we worked with over the years that are in their 80s and even 90s that are thriving, absolutely thriving. And we're going, what do these people have in common with the other people who are not thriving? And it comes down to these five things on the physical side, these five things on the chemical side. So on the physical side, I'm just gonna breeze through them real quick. We're not gonna go through them in much detail.
Speaker 1:We will on future podcast episodes. Yes, stay tuned.
Speaker:So the five things on my side in my world are you've gotta be able to stand on one leg for at least 10 seconds. You gotta be able to balance on one leg for 10 seconds. Ideally, it should be 60 seconds. And there's so many like 60, 70, and 80 year olds that are going, 60 seconds balance on one leg for 60 seconds? That's impossible. It's not.
Speaker 1:Yeah, even some 40-year-olds, I think, would think that. Or they would say, Oh, that's easy, I can do it. And then they try it and they're like, Nope.
Speaker:Can't do it. Yeah. So balance on one leg for at least 10 seconds. Ideally, 20 seconds, and utopia would be 60 seconds. Number two is in a standing position with straight knees, bend over and touch your toes. Now, a lot of people say, I've never been able to touch my toes. Okay, well, there's no problem. Yeah, that's a problem. There's no reason why you shouldn't be able to do it now. It's because that's just a general flexibility of your entire entire neural dural system. So it's not a hamstring flexibility, it's your whole neural dural system. And again, we'll go into more detail in for future episodes. Being able to do a squat. Squats are important because you need to be able to get out of a chair. If you can't get out of a chair, you're less likely to get out of a chair because it's difficult to do, which means you're gonna spend more time in a chair, and that is the downward death spiral of seniors sitting way more as you get older.
Speaker 1:Not being able to get off the floor.
Speaker:Yep. Number four, being able to walk comfortably for an hour.
Speaker 1:One hour. Comfortably, meaning you don't have to take breaks, you don't have to come home and recover.
Speaker:Yeah. And the simplest example of this is walking around Disney with your grandkids. I mean, that's a marathon. It's seven, eight miles, seven to eight miles in a day at Disney, 12 hours, 10 hours. I'm just talking about one hour. You should be able to walk relatively comfortably for an hour. And then the last one is the most important one. And so many people underestimate this thing when you're younger and then overestimate the impossibility of it as you're older. Being able to get down on the ground and back up again without using your hands.
Speaker 1:Which is part of why we have to be able to squat.
Speaker:It is, but more importantly, it's get down on the ground and get back up again because you will fall. Here is a guaranteed statistic for 100% of the people listening to this episode. You will fall at some point in the future. You're going to fall again.
Speaker 1:The last time we said this on a podcast, which is quite a while quite a while ago now, uh, I fell right afterwards. Running. Do you remember that?
Speaker:I do remember that.
Speaker 1:Yes. We talked about that. We were like, statistically, somebody listening to this will fall in the next one week, and you will have to get yourself off the ground. And I'm running in the pitch black dark before my workout and busted it. Broke my phone. Yeah. So it does happen. Even to us in our 30s, we fall. It's gonna happen. You're gonna fall down the stairs. It's gonna happen.
Speaker:100% of you listening to this, you're going to fall again in the future. Whether or not you're able to get back up again, that's what's really important.
Speaker 1:Right. That will dictate your longevity for sure.
Speaker:So there's my five things. What's your five things?
Speaker 1:Okay. My five things. Number one is not having brain fog. If you are struggling with brain fog, specifically in the mornings or the afternoons, that is not a good sign for longevity. Number one.
Speaker:And it's not a normal part of aging.
Speaker 1:It is not a normal part of aging where so many people think it is, but it's just not. And they always will blame I'm a busy mom or I'm whatever. I'm getting older. It's not. Okay, so brain fog. Number two is taking a medication, a cholesterol medicine, a blood pressure medicine, a steroid medicine, uh nerve medicine, whatever it is. Taking a medicine is not a normal part of aging either.
Speaker:Drives me nuts how easily somebody will accept a prescription from their doctor for a blood pressure medication or a cholesterol medication because they said they needed it.
Speaker 1:Or sleep medicine, which brings me to number three, is if you're not sleeping through the night, seven to eight hours through the night, and getting restful sleep, that's a problem. And that's not a normal part of aging either. Just because you're aging doesn't mean that you're gonna wake up several times per night, or just because you're aging doesn't mean that you have to wake up at 2 a.m. Or just because you're getting older, that number that dictates your your age doesn't mean that you can only sleep three or four broken hours through the night.
Speaker:Well, I'm older, and because I'm older, I have to pee three times in the middle of the night.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's not normal. That's not it's not normal. And it's not a hormonal problem. I mean, people blame their hormones on why they can't sleep. It's not a direct hormone problem. There's something else. Again, we'll talk about way more detail. So that was three?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Brain fog, not sleeping through the night, taking medications, needing a nap in the afternoon. Feeling like you have to take a nap at two or three o'clock in the afternoon, or actually taking a nap, or if you don't take a nap and feeling like it is not a normal part of aging either. That's a problem. And then number four, number five.
Speaker:Are you experiencing brain fog?
Speaker 1:Just kidding. Um, number five is GI symptoms. So if we're struggling with constipation, diarrhea, or reflux, that is also not a normal part of aging.
Speaker:Man, we've got a lot of things to go through. So there's your five things on the chemical side, there's your five things on the physical side. We are going to go through these things in way more detail than we ever have in previous episodes. And I would be shocked if every single listener didn't find one thing that they're currently living with that they thought was normal or just a part of getting older, and then they're like, wait a minute, something can be done for that. So make sure you stay tuned for these next few episodes because we're gonna go through these things with a fine-tooth comb and just give you way simpler real life examples on what this is gonna present life. What does this look like? And what does life look like when you change these things? And it's not always these crazy changes. I mean, it could be something simple.
Speaker 1:You don't have to give up your wine.
Speaker:You don't have to give up your wine.
Speaker 1:Or your pasta.
Speaker:Nobody's telling you to give up alcohol, nobody's telling you to give up pasta. All we're saying is we gotta figure out what is the low-hanging fruit and address it.
Speaker 1:Awesome. I like it. Yes, perfect. Ciao for now.