Conversations with Reed Davis

In this episode I chat with Reed Davis. Reed is a Board Certified Holistic Health Practitioner (BCHH) and Certified Nutritional Therapist (CNT). He is the founder of Functional Diagnostic Nutrition and has decades of experience working in the field of holistic health and functional medicine.

Reed and I discuss the importance of addressing the whole person, rather than just treating individual parts or symptoms, in order to achieve optimal health, emphasizing the limitations of traditional medicine and the need for a more comprehensive understanding of the human body.

We touch on the difficulties in diagnosing and treating chronic illnesses, and the importance of tailoring nutrition and supplementation to individual needs rather than a one-size-fits-all approach

Links mentioned in this episode:
Functional Diagnostic Nutrition
MTDiet.com 

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Transcript

Peter Williams  0:03  
Well, it's a it's just going 5pm London so couldn't upside PM 530 London time. And my guest today Reed Davis. You've probably just got up Reed, haven't you what is it San Diego time.

Reed Davis  0:17  
It's 9.40 here in the morning and I've been up for quite a while. I'm an early riser, Early to bed early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise, right?

Peter Williams  0:30  
It certainly does. I wish I could follow that advice. So look let me just put a bit of background to the podcast today because. This is the first time I've I've met Reed, but I've heard his name probably, consistently, in the functional medicine wire for probably for quite a while, I'd probably say nearly 20 years. And so it was just by chance that we got the opportunity to interview him. And I just felt that it was something that I couldn't not do. So I'm going let Reed introduce himself, but also give his way always always like our guests to give us their story. But Reed runs a very successful company called Functional Diagnostics Nutrition. And I just want to give a little bit of background. So as I said, I've sort of heard Reed's name all the time, and I've heard of FDN for a while. But what what sort of ticked the box, to say I must have Reed on is that I've been mentoring a nutritional therapists, Tracy, who's going down the IFM certified pathway, which is not an easy pathway to go down. And I mentioned that we'd been approached by Reed, and we wanted to get him on. And she was like, she couldn't she couldn't sing your praises more than she did mate. She sort of said, his  stuff is amazing. His courses are amazing. You know, please, please, please get him on. So here we are with Reed, as I said to you, who's got up early in San Diego. So Reed, again, as I said to you, I mean, I've been in the Functional Medicine business for a long time now. And you've probably been in probably as long if not longer, as I say, I've heard your name a lot over the years. So I know we're going to be introducing an individual who's been seen and done it and is going to give us just a huge amount of clinical pearls with regards to some of the subjects we're going to talk about. But introduce yourself Reed, tell us your story. Because that's always great for us, for our listeners to where to get a feel for who's speaking behind the mic.

Reed Davis  2:35  
Yeah, thank you. I'm highly driven by our mission, which is to help and educate as many people as possible, so that they can go and educate and help other others as well. So it's, it's quite a mission. I've been on it since 1999. Actually, at that time, Pete I was saving the whole planet. I was in environmental law and conservation. So air, birds, water trees, bees, the mission was always to do good on the planet. And then around that time, I started thinking what about people, you know, when you work in environmental and conservation area, you see dead animals and bodies of water go on to their, you know, to hell and back. And so I started worrying about people, including me, you know, I was in good shape I was in my 40s, 50 years old almost, and I had never really been to the doctor, but except for motorcycle accidents or skiing or surfing or some kind of booboo. But I really got a concern about something sneaking up on me and what was happening to the population. You know, birds, bees, trees, bees, all fine and dandy, but so I changed jobs. I went to work in a clinic, a Wellness Centre in Southern California, which was alternative. And so people coming in that clinic were, had already been to six, eight and 10 different practitioners and weren't well yet. Now as soon as I started working there, and listening to the people coming in the door, my job was actually to run the place because I'm a good businessman. But I was amazed at their story. What do you mean you've been to six or eight or 10 practitioners and you're not better yet? I just thought surely from you know - in law we think of protection, consumer. You know there's planet protecting now and consumer protecting. What do you mean, you've seen 10 people and spent $10,000 and aren't better yet? That's a rip off? Isn't that a rip off? And people would say yeah, I feel kind of ripped off. The doctor doesn't understand or the doctor told me everything's fine. They did my blood work and said nothing's out of the normal ranges and so and yet I feel horrible, you know, with chronic sort of downward spiralling conditions. And I thought well Reed, you got a job to do here. And I started studying nutrition and body work and, you know, fitness and, and things like that. And I, I was allowed to get experience with the people in the clinic. So that was just an amazing opportunity to be able to be studying nutrition and all these things while working on/with the patients of the office at the same time. So it was a unique situation. And very fortunately, I'll say, the doctors there allowed me to run lab work saliva, urine, blood stool, these were non conventional, sort of alternative labs back then, now they call it functional medicine, which, by the way, I still don't think has arrived yet. It's still evolving, and has quite a ways to go. But it's better than the, you know, the standard, for sure. And so I was there in that clinic, and had an opportunity to work with a lot of people, Pete, I worked with 1000s of people over a 10 year period. So it wasn't a few weekend seminars, or even, you know, six or 10 or 20 months, it was 10 years of face to face with clients, patients of the office. And I never became a physician, I had every opportunity to go back to school, but I preferred the experience route. So that's my route. It was a route, as you might say, it was all experience, all hands on face-to-face, running labs. And by the way, I have to tell you, at first I put it this way, I had a lot to learn. I had nothing to unlearn. You know, it was it was a very fresh canvas, if you will. So I started running labs and looking at the person in the face. And I got this one on one, like every single person became a study of one. There's no cohorts in our business. Like like drugs, for instance, you know, well, here's your drug, because in a cohort of 50,000, or 500 people, whatever this drug worked, quote, unquote, worked. Well, it didn't work for my clients, or they wouldn't be in the office. And so they needed something different. And that's what I did for 10 years, I ran alternative labs, I made my own observations about who got better. And I recognised some patterns and I standardised it and turned it into a system, a methodology of investigation, into underlying causes and conditions. And I'll just finish that segment with saying that it was fun, I really had a ball. I didn't do it, to put myself in the position I'm in now, where I've been teaching for 15 years and have deputised 1000s of practitioners around the world. No, the only reason I did it was to make our clinic a good one, you know, to have happy customers. And so that was the motivation at first, was happy customers, people who had given up or again tried six, 8, 10 things and nothing to work. So I became a health detective ran 1000s of labs on 1000s of people, recognised patterns, systematised it. And you might say the rest is history, but happy to talk about it. And I'm still learning, by the way, as we all are.

Peter Williams  8:37  
Well I think that's the term, always in practice, aren't we? We're certainly never experts. You know, there's just i It's an ever learning process as far as I'm concerned, there's just too much to understand. And so look I would like to dig into some of the some of the some of the points you've just brought up, because for someone who has seen so much data? Can we have a conversation about why maybe more data isn't always better? And sort of what data that what data consistently, maybe comes up trumps for you? Are there set tests that you would absolutely recommend everyone or again, is it, because obviously, I think one of the key things here is that it's the pattern I'm interested in, you know, what were the patterns that you started to see and, you know, how can that apply maybe to sort of, you know, the general public listening in who may have certain conditions and you know, the there are some clear patterns that you've seen consistently over the years. That would be awesome if we could jump into that.

Reed Davis  9:54  
Wonderful. So the main pattern in terms of investigation into underlying causes I'll give you an acronym for,  its H I D D E N hidden, which is kind of cute because a lot of it's hidden, so it just works. And, but I wasn't trying to be cute. It took me actually many years to figure out that it's hormones, the immune system, digestion, detoxification, energy production and nervous system balances, that spells hidden. And it's a mouthful, there's labs, multiple labs. So data is important. But the way we look at it is different. We're trying to identify through those labs, the the hidden cluster of, of healing opportunities. And so we never diagnose, we don't provide medical diagnosis. Those are remember, I'm learning I was learning this, 20,  1989, a long time ago, almost 25 years. So, so, you know, people had already been diagnosed. And what I recognised was that they walked the client or patient, the consumer, the person suffering and walked into a doctor's office and was asked, What's your main complaint? Like, what ails you? And they would provide an answer: migraines, fatigue, can't sleep, low libido, whatever it is, can't put on muscle, overweight, name something. And the doctor might say, it sounds like this. So that's a clinical diagnosis. So if you're tired and fatigued and constipated, you know, putting on weight and you can't get rid of it and generally miserable. That describes a lot of people. But that might sound like thyroid. Oh, sounds like thyroid? Well, God forbid you test thyroid, that's data, oops, pat yourself on the back now, I found your problem, your low thyroid, your hypo thyroid. And that's your diagnosis. And then that will the the treatment is usually pharmaceutical, even if it's natural product there are things that help thyroid more naturally. But still, that's a diagnosis treatment for what it sounded like. And sometimes the symptoms might actually abate a little bit. But what about everything else that person should be working on? So you're automatically, you diagnose and treat and especially, that's the way the medical system works with specialties. I'm an endocrinologist, I work with hormones, it sounds like thyroid to me. And then you test yep, hypothyroid. Here's your dosage, frequency duration, I'll see in three months, and we'll adjust the medication to get the test results looking better. Which I always looked at, again, I wasn't trained in that system of diagnosis and treatment, or disease and things like that. So, so I wanted to go why is their thyroid underactive? But that's not really the most common question in medicine, why, we don't know why I iatrogenic and idiosyncratic type of things. So So you have a system of diagnosis and treatment that wasn't working for the people coming in our office. So I had to look, well, let's see what's really wrong. And I started recognising, I started running a lot of labs and I started recognising well, they've got hormone issues. If thyroids off, then the sex hormones are off. And that can that's based on cortisol and DHEA, you know, the the anabolic catabolic hormone. I don't want to go too far, depending down the rabbit hole, depending on the audience in their understanding, but there's a lot you can get from hormones. And oh, by the way, if your hormones are off, if you're catabolic versus anabolic, you're probably going to have an immune system that gets affected. So your Secretory IgA, it's an immune marker from the gut, which is most of your immune system. Well, it starts to go down too. Stress, is not a good thing for you. And so then what happens you end up with a dysbiosis. Well, now you've got hormone, immune, gut issues, digestion changes. With changes there, you can end up with detoxification problems, as you get the leaky gut, you know, the the downward spiral, and I could show it to you on paper with the with the test results, the series of labs. Remember, what I said is we're going to run and look for a constellation of healing opportunities. We're not going to make one not one single medical diagnosis. It's going to be here's what's wrong. Here's where you're out of balance and dysfunctional and crossed pathways and signals and things. All of it basically some form of stress and then the downward spiral and then this is the other half of FDN. So the first half is the H I D D E N, and we run series of labs. It's really just five labs. And yes, it's an investment. And most of its out of pocket because your HSA, your health. Insurance? Yeah, yeah, yeah, that doesn't pay for it much, or much of it. So it's people who really are tired of suffering and really want to get rid of it. Yeah. And willing to do the things, though, the other half of the equation was, what do I tell people - well now what? So we have some healing opportunities. Now what? We don't want to just prescribe,

Peter Williams  15:42  
Can we can we pick up? Reed, can we pick up on that, because I think one of the most difficult things that we both had to do over the years is that patients are coming in with a model of healthcare that they're used to, they're looking for a diagnosis. And as you say, that's the way the medical healthcare situation works. And of course, we're working in a situation where we're trying to look for root causes. So, so what are the difficulties that you've experienced there with regards to what you were just talking about? Because half the time for me the most difficult action is that there's a strong, you know, how strong is their belief system in,  are we going to look for a diagnosis? Or do you need to take the leap of faith and allow us to try and work to defined patterns, root causes, etc? How difficult has that been for you? Over the years.

Reed Davis  16:42  
You know, it wasn't that hard for me, just because I was in a position to investigate and explore. And I wasn't bound by any particular standard of care other than to always do good, always find out what does the customer if you will really need and then do your best to provide that. And the lab work was geared towards that, like, what's really wrong, I don't care about your diagnosis, I really didn't. Matter of fact, sometimes I didn't even know what they were talking about. Because if you want a diagnosis, trust me, there's a doctor that will give you one, you know, like that you go in for diagnosis, well, you're gonna get one. And then you're gonna get the standard of care treatment applied to it. And as to whether it helps you or not, it seems like that's no one's concern but yours. Hey, that's, that's you came in for a diagnosis, it's fibromyalgia. You know, that was really big back in the day, you remember? Yeah. Yeah. Everybody had fibromyalgia. Why? Because it's a, it's a diagnosis, explains a lot of ills. And then the treatment was mostly pharmaceutical. And so I didn't want any parts of that system. And actually, as a non licensed practitioner, I couldn't, you can't give a diagnosis. And I certainly wouldn't want to be handcuffed to the standard of care treatment for that diagnosis. And oh, by the way, these people were paying cash money for real information, not insurance for the algorithms that are in that system. And so it gets a bit convoluted, but I wanted to say the doctors aren't doing anything wrong, they're doing what they're trained to do. And it can be very relief, you can get a lot of relief from that. But you don't really get better. You don't really halt, or reverse, certainly don't reverse any downward spiral that I could show you on paper. So the labs, we didn't use the 'sounds like' method. We just said, well, we don't know what's really wrong. Here's, here's what you remind me of, you said root causes. I'm really glad to hear you say causes. Because this is what I found out. There's always multiple causal factors. Always, there's always multiple causal factors. And here's the thing you hardly hear anywhere, is there those those are creating ripples throughout the body. And they're crashing into each other in ways that there's it's very difficult to test for. There's no single measurement for if this cause is crashing into this cause. And so I gave up the term root cause for another term, I call it metabolic chaos. And that's what people are coming in the office with and it took me a long time to sort of came up come up with that concept and phraseology, but it's look, this is just it's chaotic. You've got all these things going on. You have a bad diet, you don't sleep right, you don't exercise, you have environmental, and work and all these different stressors, mental emotional psychospiritual you got trauma from aches and pains, car accidents and booboos like me, sports for sure. And then you've got the Chemical and Biochemical stressors. So those are the epigenetic factors that we're subjected to. And they create chaos in the bodies. And here's the other wild thing. Not only is there multiple causal factors crashing into each other, everybody's individual metabolism is different. So we're both individually, metabolically so different from each other, that the same stressor might not affect me very much at all. You know, I'm kind of dull witted actually, you know, I can take a lot of abuse.

Peter Williams  20:39  
So I'm interested in what you say to patients, then. I mean, how do you describe all of this? Again, you know, that you're unique? Is it that you found that patients get solace in the fact that you go, "I don't know what's going on". But we've got a methodology that allows us to try and understand a little bit more about the metabolic chaos that you're under at the moment. And here's how we do it. So how do you have that discussion with them? 

Reed Davis  21:08  
You know, it's, it's quite a frank discussion. And it's, there's a logical way to go about that. Pete, we ask people the same thing a physician might, what's your main complaint? How often does it bother you? How long has it been going on? What have you tried so far, that hasn't worked? Is it or maybe worked a little bit here and there? So you get some history? Obviously, you get to know the person. But what's more important to an FDN practitioner? Is why is this important to you? So we look for the, the mentality of, of, I want to change this, I'm willing to change it. It means a lot to me, I can't go dancing with my husband anymore or enjoy other things you might do with a spouse or my kids this or just so knowing what motivates them is really important, because we're going to have to coach them through a process. So and what are their expectations? If they just want to lose a few pounds and have more energy, that's reasonable. If they want to get rid of their migraines, or bad skin condition, that's reasonable, if given enough time, you know, if they want their size 14, they want to be in a size one bathing suit by the summer. That's not reasonable. So we have very frank conversations about the goals and what we want to achieve and why it's important. You might have to remind that person, look, remember why you came in. And that's also a way to track success. So with our there's more to it, but with the onboarding of the right people, we can get really high expectations. We have reasonable expectations, but they're all good, like, you're going to make improvements. If we can get the data that we need. Yeah, the healing opportunities hormone, immune, digestion, detoxification, and then apply the principles of healing. This is going to take time. (I think what you) Let me add one thing if you would, that explains why we're different in that it takes time to heal and to restore and repair, rebuild and revitalise all these systems that you have. And you generally should feel better. You remember, mental emotional, can always sneak in there. But it's different than, Oh, it's this, this paper's off. You This is too low, and this is too high. We need to raise that up. Here's your medication. Let's get those numbers looking good. Yeah, numbers, are a way of tracking compliance. We know if you've been doing our recommendations by retesting in some cases. But it's more, it's not treating the papers, not the same thing as just let's get that thyroid in shape. And, you know, not being so concerned about the person in their life and and who you're dealing with. So I always ask whose test results are these? If I get shown some, hey, look at this lab work. Well, who's whose lab work is it? That's what I want to know.

Peter Williams  24:22  
I think what's really interesting is that it's almost mirroring the way we treat patients. And I think maybe that's where the experience comes in. Because it's funny, we just did a webinar on goal setting and psychological stages for change. And there's a whole host yeah, there's a whole host that you've got to get. Well, you and I know that if that patient isn't ready. Well, it comes back to the we call it the good cop bad cop conversation is that you got to be brutally honest with them at the beginning about how you see this file playing out what needs to be done over what timeframe and generally that timeframe is a whole host longer than they think they're going to get. And so it's really interesting that you have that chat as well, which is, you know, the conversation I have with all my patients, tell me how you think this is going to go. Tell me how long you think it's going to need, etc? And what, what, what, so let's talk about tests again. I know Yeah. Again, this is one of your expert areas. What sort of tests would you regularly run with most patients? Is there specifics?

Reed Davis  25:36  
Yeah, these are how you doing tests, overall in different areas. And not, it sounds like thyroid, or it sounds like a parasite or it sounds like this. So let's look at overall "how are you?" a lot of functional medicine practitioners are using bloodwork and what we call the functional ranges versus the, you know, standard ranges. And so that's a good thing. And we're doing that. More specifically though, we're running saliva and urine testing and fingerstick blood for mucosal barrier and stuff. So we're looking at the hormones, we pay more attention to the catabolic/anabolic, like are your is your body building up or breaking down. You think of kids they're very anabolic, they're growing, they're very easy to work with, they'll grow out of it, most stuff. When you're older, you're not growing so much, is quite easily and most of our patients are probably more in a catabolic state where the bodies are breaking down. That's really important. That explains a lot about why their sex hormones are out of balance. Now you can look with that perspective of catabolic, anabolic, your body's breaking down, you're ageing too fast. You're getting old before your time. That explains there's so much clinical correlation there people under, they go yeah, that's how I feel. Thank you for showing me. Why doesn't, isn't everybody looking at it this way. And I don't know why. It's not what they're looking for. But so that catabolic/ anabolic will explain why your immune system nose down and you're getting sick more, or you get a dysbiosis you may not be sick, but your bacterial, your flora in the gut is going to be out of balance. Well, that sets you up for a lot of other problems. Again, the downward spiral has begun. Also, the sex hormones will be off, your progesterone to oestrogen ratio. With men it's oestrogen & testosterone, there's way too much oestrogen flying around and, and that kind of a thing. So so the whole idea of catabolic/anabolic, it's a big view, then we start with that saliva by the way we can do that easily. It's a lab that's cheap, convenient, comfort of your own home type of a thing. And then you can go to the urine and dried urine testing, which is very helpful. We would look at lipid peroxides or 8oxoDG for oxidative stress, you know your rusty basically too much oxidative stress, you got your urinary bile acids, which tells you your livers congested. Well, now you've got a detoxification area, don't you. And again, when that was the same urine test, we look at indican, which is that your you don't have enough good bacteria to break down protein, it shows up on that just like that you can just see it, oh, hey, you're eating all that good, expensive organic food, you're not breaking it down and absorbing it, you know. So the idea of digestion and assimilation is huge. And then again to detoxification is big. And then it goes on from there. But the idea of looking at these on every single person plus food sensitivities, plus pathology, we do run the stool testing for microbiome on every single person. So it would be again hormone, immune, digestive detoxification, H I D D , energy production, the nervous system is a whole other layer but but important, and we do it all. And then you can get into protocol, but only then. So I've never said to anyone, oh just take these supplements and that'll go away. ever, never said that.

Peter Williams  29:25  
Do you think there's a... because I mean, I suppose functional medicine is an unregulated term. And I think with that you're gonna have people who do it very well. You're gonna have people who don't do it so well, because as I said to you, they've you know, anyone can call themselves a functional medicine practitioner. And it's interesting because, you know, the general public we get a lot obviously a lot of enquiries and the general public think, and I would say this we've I was a early adopter of the Breseden protocol and I think, which is the the Alzheimer's research, and the amount of calls that we get, enquiries where they think it's going to be almost like the allopathic approach. You're going to do a few tests, you're going to give me some supplements, and I'm going to be, you know, I'm going to be well again is so far from the truth, isn't it? I mean, you must see that all the time.

Reed Davis  30:24  
Yes. And so remember, I was I became the the patient educator at this clinic. It's in near San Diego and still there. I haven't worked there since 2009, I guess. But because I started teaching in 2008. And now I can work from home. But the office was a beautiful place, or I had so much fun working face to face with people for 10 years. And when they asked me, if they let's say they bought into let's do some lab work, now we're going over the results and are showing them where they're off- dysfunctional. And it explains exactly why they feel the way they do. That's the real key. When when I say, Pete, that it's whose test results are these? That's what matters most because Mrs. Smith, or Mr. Jones, is going over these things. And they say, Wow, you actually are explaining exactly how I feel. You're showing me why I feel so lousy. And their next question is, obviously, what do I do about it? And so as the lead educator, I started thinking of, you know, it's not what you do in the office that matters. You're coming in for your treatments, your chiropractic, acupuncture, body, we're all kinds of things we had foot, we had a podiatrist and deal and all these people, so it's not coming in the office that matters. It's what you do at home. So it's an entire holistic lifestyle programme that developed out of that. What are you eating? You know what time you go into bed, how much exercise are you doing. So the acronym for for that is D R E S S stands for diet, rest, which has to be individualised. There's no one diet right for everybody. And then that real fast diet, rest, which is sleep plus other types of rest, diet rest exercise goes without saying. And the two s's in D R E S S is stress reduction, which is huge. You spent a whole episode on that. Yeah. And then of course, supplementation. And that's last, yeah. So I would show people my D R. E. S. S, and I'd say, you know, Mr. Smith, you see the supplements, I know, you want to know, what can you take, what can I take, but if you don't do the diet, and the rest and the exercise and the stress reduction in all its forms, then the supplements are just patchwork, that's what you've already been taking things out of a jar, or bottle, you know, and it just doesn't work well enough, on its own. Although you could put when you started looking at stem cells and peptides and, and things those are very sophisticated. In a way, suppose something you're injecting or ingesting, challenging your body, but they're still just in that category. That doesn't include the rest of the lifestyle. In my opinion.

Peter Williams  33:31  
I totally agree with you, I think the reality is as I said to you we, we almost wean them out, we have front of the house in front of house, Shelley, who's you know, you wean out the patients who think, you know, you'll do a few tests and you'll take a few supplements, and that's where you're at. And to be fair, you know, that's, that's fine, if they want to do that, but I don't think they're gonna get the results that they want. And I think as a, as a practitioner, you've got to make that very clear that they may have some benefit from them. But it's probably not the elixir of change and youth that they think they're gonna get.

Reed Davis  34:10  
So true. You know,

Peter Williams  34:11  
It's just really actually quite reassuring this conversation because it's reassuring that people who've been in the game for a long time say exactly the same things. And, you know, if you're not prepared, I don't want to say you're not prepared to put the work in. But, you know, it's not a question. I totally agree with you. It's a question of, here's what you,, this is what will make you better, but you've got to do it on a daily basis. And it's got to be what you've got to do going forward. So I totally love that dress acumen. I think that's super cool. Of course, it's always an n of one, isn't it? You know, so everyone's unique and therefore the presentations are going to be completely different regardless of whether it's the same diagnosis or disorder if you like, and, of course, we're not in the game of coming up with a diagnosis but most people arrive to see us with some degree of diagnosis. And so I wouldn't mind just getting an idea from a point of view of certainly the dietary aspect because, you know, one diet isn't going to work for everyone. And I would, I would love to hear your experiences of what you've learnt and working with patients from a point of view of again, I think a lot of our skill in this game is is to be able to understand patient biases when they come in, because usually they've got an idea of this is the diet for me. And the reality is, that just might not be the case at all. So we'd love to get your experience on that, again, diets, which so you know, if, if you were going to recommend one, what would it be? And why, etc. And I know, that's a difficult question today. But I'd love to hear some kind of just sort of, you know, your thoughts around that.

Reed Davis  35:59  
So, we both agreed earlier that there's no one diet that's right for everybody. And so what has to be realised is that it's not the food it's the person eating it. That's not an easy concept for people. There are no, there's no food, that's great for everyone. There's a few foods that are bad for everyone. Sugar, you know, and seed oils that are refined and things like that they're bad for everybody, they stink up the place. But in terms of diet, I use a system called Metabolic Typing diet, MTdiet.com is a good place to go to, to find out but but you're and everyone's kind of heard about protein types versus carb types. And there's a real science to that when you when you get into the science of it, you see that people can be very fast oxidizers they burn fuel very quickly. And so they need a lot of slow burning fuel. What makes a protein type of protein type is their oxidative rate. So the rate at which they produce energy, that's why HIDDEN - energy production is about your oxidative rate. And it's really interesting, I could give some great examples. Yeah, please. Yeah, well, so my cousin, we're by the we're from Northern England, not from where you're from. We're from north. I don't know how you say it. But so we're from Northern England. But my cousin, was a priest in in I'm talking originally, my parents. I was Canadian, now American. But my cousin was a priest up in northern Canada, where his parishes is an Anglican priest, two parishes, both of them Cree Indian villages. Now, I asked him one time, this is 20 years ago. Hey, Chris. Chris Davis. You know, what, what, what do people do for medicine up there? Do they go to the like, the village medicine man. And he's got offended. He says, Well, I'm their medicine man. Because he's their priest. I said no, like when they get sick. And here's what he said, Pete, he goes, Oh, they're all sick. Like all of these Cree Indians were are sick, they all have diabetes. Why? Because they're very fast. oxidizers, they need their native diet, they need to be eating the he said the rivers up there was still full of salmon and other fish, big coho salmon like this wonderful fishing, sturgeon and things like that. And the woods and plains were still full of caribou. He said that the caribou, the reindeer type that when the herd went across the road, you just turned your car off and park for two hours waiting for them, that's how big the herds of caribou were. But do you think that those Cree Indians were still eating and fishing? No. The Europeans basically who by the way, historically Cree Indians were known to be the most energetic enthusiastic workers on the planet. They couldn't find people more fit than these Cree Indians ever. And so but now they're all diabetic, overweight, and they just lay around and go to the government clinics for their medicine every month. Every first of the month, you get your check from the government and you get your and you go by by the way, the stores up there now are all for the miners. So they have copper mining, gold mining, and industry like that. And so the food is crap. It's not the fish and the deer that they should be eating. It's spaghetti and Tim Horton doughnuts, and, and things so they're all diabetic and are sick. Why? Because they're fast oxidizers eating very quick burning fuel. You need slow burning fuel, you need protein, you need fat, and you need it in mass amounts. So I hope I'm getting somewhere with this yes, that it's what makes a protein type a protein type is that oxidative rate and it's in your bones, you are not going to change it very much at no matter how much carbohydrates no matter how good that organic lettuce, and cabbage and whatever is, it's never going to change your oxidative rate, it doesn't work that way. No, you match your diet to your oxidative rate. And now you're going to produce energy. Remember, H I D, D, E for energy. Now you're going to produce energy at the right rate, quality and quantity on a cellular level. And the next question is Will cellular level Yeah, that makes sense. What for so that the cell can do its job? Now, do you have to teach any cells in your body what their job is? No, never.  They know what their job is. They know if their muscle cell, brain cell, adrenal cell, testicle cell, you know, they know what kind of cell they are. And they just need to be given the right amount of protein, fat and carbs to produce energy. And that's the first half of Metabolic Typing. It's, it's the macronutrient ratios, protein, fat and carbs. The next question would be which ones which ones? So I'm a I'm a, you know, Celtic, Anglo Saxon. And that's all predetermined what my right ratio is to have good energy, and on a cellualr level, which gives, you know, everything's working. Now I'm working good. And so you know, that's how it works. The other part is the micronutrients. And that's maybe too much to explain today, another time. But the micronutrients are your vitamins, minerals, essential fatty acids, antioxidants, trace elements, and phytonutrients for the most part. They're important too, we need all of these things working in the body to create the enzymes that create all the metabolic processes. And so it's that's important too, the micronutrients. But if you don't start with the good macronutrient ratios, you're lost. Last thing on that Pete I'll say, how do I know this? From being in the business and being a good observer for almost 25 years. I started out back way back in the office, I read the Atkins book on the basically meat diet. And I tried it, I thought, well, I do so much better. It worked for me, Atkins worked for me. I love the protein and fat, and just just enough carbs and really pure. I don't eat anything out of a bag or box. But the vegetables and things that grow around here is amazing. And you mix it like that you get you get the macronutrient ratios, right. It worked for me. Atkins was right. For me. Now, I started recommending to people coming in the office Atkins, Atkins, Atkins. Well, that was stupid. Because some people got benefit. Some people got no benefit. And some people got worse. On the slow oxidizers, it feels horrible on meat and, and fat, they feel horrible. It makes them worse. Which is true for any supplement. It worked for your neighbour. Right? So it's gonna work for you. Do you believe that? No, it could, it could help it could do nothing, or it could actually make it worse. Any supplement. I don't care what it is. There's no such thing as this one works great for everybody. I would say I would call baloney on that one.

Peter Williams  44:13  
So moving on to that conversation, because I think it's really interested on diet. When when people ask me is that I suppose on a on a patient to patient basis, it's very difficult to to know, what is the most appropriate. I mean, I don't I don't I have to say I don't know much about Metabolic Typing. I know it's been discussed. It's been around for a while for sure. But yeah, what I'm clear about is that when people ask it's very difficult to say what the most appropriate diet is for the most for that patient at that time. And you know, I'm a I'm a firm believer that what they might be having now may not be appropriate for them in time to come, for instance. But I would love to know, from a point of view of patients that you've worked with, when we're talking about, I mean, because, you know, let's face it, there is some degree of, I'm going to use the term green pharmacy that we use from a point of view of we sometimes do have to use supplementation as part of the strategy. And I, you know, to be fair, I mean, I mean, I will use a lot of supplementation depending on the patient, but that's done generally off of decent datasets. So can you take us through your sort of decision trees on that? And, you know, what, the use of supplementation and why you would and why you wouldn't? And, you know, what is that based off?

Reed Davis  45:58  
That's a good question and supplements. I don't have my own brand, but I know a few things about him. I used to tell people, here's what you go down to the local store and buy just write it on a piece of paper to be helpful, just to be helpful. As to why and wherefores and a strategy and things that came later. And so, because there's nothing wrong with relief care. So self treatment, with supplements is is a strategy. There's lets say parasites or bacterial overgrowth or yeast, there's, there are natural ingredients in some of these things called supplements that actually could help you self treat that (sure) you don't always need to go for the big guns, the the antibiotics, anti virals and all those things. But let's go back to the beginning and say food is the best medicine, food contains or should contain not only the macronutrients, the protein, fat, and carbs, which are for energy production, and building tissue and muscle it seems like, but it's the it's the micronutrients. Now, look at how foods grown. These days, it's very commercial. So the soils are depleted. So it's almost impossible to get all the micronutrients out of your food. And so you can get a good definition of supplement, it's really substitution for what's missing in food. 

Reed can I just take a step back on this because as an as a former environmental lawyer, you must have a really deep understanding about actually the state of the planet, what we're doing to it, the state of the soils, the state of bacteria that used to live in the soils. I mean, where are we at? Do you think?

Well, there's movements towards, you know, farmers markets and things like that here, I'm not sure how that, matter of fact, I've been to London, there is a big farmers market, there's a big huge one, a giant one that I went to, I don't know how organic you know, organic means pesticide free herbicide free, there's nothing contaminating in it, that's a good place to start, but as to what's in the soil anymore, unless they're fertilising with natural manure and compost and things like it's very hard to get all the nutrients. And so again, we could talk another whole show on farming and organic farming, which again, isn't just getting rid of the pesticides and herbicides, it's trying to get more nutrients into more minerals, and vitamins into the darn food that you're eating. And so that's not going to happen anytime soon. There's more movements all around. 

Peter Williams  48:57  
Becasue you know, I suppose this is where I've, so I've been testing people for 25 years. And like you have you seen 1000s of 1000s of patients and they go from, you know, the super healthy optimising longevity to the to the chronic disease on a spectrum. I've never in 25 years seen anyone who isn't missing something. That is, is I suppose that that means that they're not optimal. I've never seen it. And I and I get asked the question, so So this is where I was sort of trying to sort of traverse this back to the fact that I just don't know whether people understand that actually, you know, the planets probably not in a great place with regards to the resources that it used to give us I mean, is that the way you see it?

Reed Davis  49:50  
Yeah, yeah, that's exactly how I see it. Yeah, just there's, there's when you have to feed a lot of people, millions and millions, just 350 million people just in the US. How are you going to feed all those people? Well, you you go commercial, you get these big growers, and they do their own devious things, to produce a lot of food. But not, doesn't mean it's good for you. So yeah, I see it as a, it's kind of a unfortunate thing. And my wife and I actually grow our own food. So I moved out in the country, I'm just fortunate enough and that I've worked really, really hard to, you know, accrue some resources to be able to move out in the country and start growing our own food. And we buy our meat online. We eat plenty of meat? And we try to keep it as you know, green pasture raised, grain fed all that stuff? I mean, I mean, grass fed, or what have you. So you try, like hell to get good produce. But the question originally was about supplements, it was Yeah. Then what do you do? So then what do you do? Well, there's things missing. And I completely agree with you, Pete, I've never seen, first of all, I've never seen a perfectly healthy person. I've seen people on the mission, we're all on the mission, you know, we don't claim to be all super healthy can be on the path. And if people sort of if it's a stairway, I've never seen anyone at the top. And I've helped, I've worked with people who are above me on the stairway, like you said, the super fit, and you have to eat Yeah, like people. And then people sort of below you on the stairway that you want to give a hand at some education, and a hand up. So it's just it's all a continuum of knowledge and practice and living the life. But with that, the supplements can certainly substitute for what's missing in food, it just isn't grown that good anymore. And it's not like when my grandfather's in Canada both grew food. And they both use manure from the neighbours horses, mixed into the compost pile, mixed into the soil. And it was really rich, and I think I am part of part of why I'm healthy still is early, early stuff. So substitution for what's missing in food. The other thing is, though, supplements can you see your broken down a little bit, you're, you're in a sort of catabolic and body breaking down and not sure where things are going with the lab work we can point things out. And you're going to need this extra nutrition, you're going to need the support that you can get like digestive support, I help your body break down food because your guts not so good right now. Or if it's adrenal support, or whatever thyroid support you can, you can support certain organs with certain elements, whether it be glandular products, or what have you. And so there's ways so you substitute with supplements with what's missing in food, your support systems that are weak right now, you probably not always need that, then you can stimulate, like, I don't know about you, but when I travel, I take zinc and echinacea and things are going to be good for my immune system with me and I especially on the plane, you know, you're pounding, so you're stimulating the immune system. And then as I said, originally, self treatment of certain ailments is okay, it's okay to get out of pain. And there's lots of no doubt, lot's of natural anti inflammatories and things. And they're very popular by the way, the methyl sulphonyl, methane and turmeric. And all these different things, you can use,  and the peptides, which I'm just studying, and they're even more sort of broken down amino acids that can be targeted towards certain functions like gut, leaky gut or hormones, whatever it might be.

Peter Williams  53:59  
So the peptides is an interesting area I keep seeing the A4M conferences and think ooh that might be quite interesting, I think might be a step too far for me. But what's your opinion on on where we are with peptides, it seems to be pretty well developed in the US not so much in the UK? And can you just give a brief about what because we're starting to get into quite, not quite sure how to word this. It's almost like futuristic medicine, isn't it? And I don't mean that in a horrible way. And I don't mean that in a scientific way. But, you know, peptides is sort of sort of a new forefront in medicine. Can you give us an idea of what it is and where you would apply it?

Reed Davis  54:42  
I can tell you my understanding of it, which is not extensive. But me I'm a guy that likes to simplify things. I they're really just amino acid chains, so they're parts of protein. So where are we supposed to get our protein from? Food. Now, because food, you know, contains the essential amino acids that we need to build up our bodies to make enzymes and things like that. So you need protein. But they've discovered that these little segments of amino acids, just little chains of two or three or six molecules of a particular strain. And they've been used to target more specifically, dysfunction in the body. So again, there, and I can't name them all, I can actually name only a few, I've got some in my refrigerator. And basically, they're through sub q injection. So you've got to have a doctor and you suck up a little bit, and you, you stick it in your belly. And, and you see what happens, I just started a regimen. So I'm just learning about it. Because I like to be on the cutting edge. Doing this for my tribe of a few 1000 practitioners I've training, I want to I want to actually, I do everything on myself first. If it is reasonable, yeah, I'll go there. And they're, they're pretty expensive. Right now they need to bring the price way down to where a consumer average consumer could use them. But I don't think they're so it's like you said, it's kind of futuristic. Do we really need to go there? Do we really need peptides? Or shouldn't good food and good night's sleep, and good exercise and reducing stress, like getting rid of the toxins and poisons in our life? Wouldn't that be good? Along with some normal supplementation? Again, the vitamins, minerals, essential fatty acids and antioxidants? And think yes, we we can use some extra of that because the world is pretty, pretty toxic. But do we really need to go to peptides? Well, I think it's because we can and and for some people who are really struggling and need to find some little lever some little way to encourage normal function in the body. Yeah, I think they could. So I'm experimenting right now. I'm not going to in my face, or in my wiener? I'll tell you that, you know, that's something else they're doing. Yeah, they just do things? Well,

Peter Williams  57:25  
as I say, I'm not sure I would be not so sure in my wiener. So let me wait already over an hour. So I know we can talk for hours on this, I just want to I want to go back to patient sets that I see a lot, which is chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia. And it's quite interesting the definitions of of both of them, because I'm not so sure. We truly know what the definition is as how we classify them, because we're not quite sure whether, you know, I mean, they could be classed as the same thing,  long COVID, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, they're always amalgamated into the same condition. And this comes back to well, is it chronic fatigue? Or is it fibromyalgia? But we'll call it that because we're not sure what it is. But the reality is it's it's trying to get to the understanding of those underlying mechanisms that may drive them. What's your experience on that? And you must have seen loads of these patients. Oh, yes.

Reed Davis  58:30  
So that was the favourite. We used to call it a waste can you know that It's the, it's the bin diagnosis, because you don't know what to call it. So you just take that one out of the bin and call it that, you know, you that's what it was we call it a waste can diagnosis. It's if you have a certain cluster of symptoms  and people had triggered a lot of trigger points. Yeah. And they were always chronically fatigued. So they just check the box, check the box, if you check enough boxes, that's fibromyalgia. Yeah. So our concern was not the name that you would call it. It's what what was the causal factors plural in each of those boxes that you just checked? And so we found that through diet, nutrition, you know, the even some mental, emotional therapies and, and some body work, although Fibromyalgia's patient's were usually very tender. We could do some chiropractic, you know the Osteopaths in England? UK did very well with that. Their type of body work and things and getting people doing what? Eating better, going to bed on time,  exercising, you know, and it worked. Except for if there was there's always the chance that there's some little sort of brokenness, which would classify as medical. People came to us with fibromyalgia and oh, it turns out that they had their ovaries and uterus is removed. They also had hysterectomy ease. What does that tell you about them? Big hormone problems? What else do they have? They had their gallbladders removed. Okay, big digestion and bile flow problems. And I used to say, Well, whoever those doctors were, that took all those parts out because of your complaints. Don't tell them you get headaches. Right?

Peter Williams  1:00:40  
Got it, I got that one. Okay, so got gone, keep going, it's

Reed Davis  1:00:45  
good. Just don't take you don't have extra parts, you don't get extra parts to be removed, you know, so. So this fibre mat depending on the downward spiral, but if you've had your gallbladder removed, we can't replace it, you're going to have to do things to stimulate bile flow probably for the rest of your life, you know, and watch your diet more carefully, the fats aren't going to do and if you need fat in your diet, you're gonna have to find a way to do it. And, uh, neutralise the forfeit, you know, the grease shorts. effect, you know, because if you're not bringing out fat, you're gonna have problems with the secretion. It gets tricky.

Peter Williams  1:01:27  
So you would still really work through your acronym, wouldn't you hidden with both of these disorders? 

Reed Davis  1:01:35  
Yes and if parts have been removed, you work even a little bit harder. And that's where I think some of these more advanced features to therapies are coming in. It's why I'm, I'm happy to see functional medicine, which again, I don't think is fully evolved, I think you're at the cutting edge, and it will continue to evolve. But as long as it's under licensure, you're going to be subject to the standard of care and insurance payments and what they'll pay for versus what the patient really needs. So if functional medicine could go cash only practice, I think it's amazing.

Peter Williams  1:02:14  
Yeah, it's really interesting, because we've only ever been a cash cash practice.

Reed Davis  1:02:19  
And that's the only way to really be free to as long as the the insurance company is the gatekeeper of the funds. If they're the real paymaster, then that's who's going to dictate the treatment. It's like a young girl goes out shopping with their mom. And it's the mom's credit card. Guess who has the final say?

Peter Williams  1:02:39  
It's a really interesting analogy, which is just so true, actually, as well. What was just sort of what would be would have been your sort of just give me an example of some of your, I don't know, some great patient examples, you know, so and so.

Reed Davis  1:02:57  
So we had a lady coming in the office, and I could do 20 of these stories easily. Because they were very, they weren't routine 20 years ago. Now. They're kind of routine. But 20 years ago, I had a patient come in the office. And she was getting chiropractic mostly, she really wasn't my client yet, until that day, and she said, I could see she was depressed, feeling down, I asked her why. What's the problem? Oh, it's this weight Reed, I'm 40 pounds overweight, and I'm trying to butt in and give her solutions like men do. And she didn't want any parts of it. She just wanted to tell her story. So so she went on about it's so frustrating this 40 pounds, and it's because I'm on this medication that I've been taking for two years. That makes me fat. And the medications for the hives, she gets blotchy patches over her body. So the hives was the problem and she's taking medication that makes her fat. And she said that she'd just been for a checkup and told the doctor who put her on the medication, how frustrated she was with the weight going to her. He said, lady, you can be fat, you can have the hives, take your pick. And said well that's depressing. And he said, I'll be happy to write you a prescription for antidepressants. So when I finally could get a word in, Pete, and by this time I'd walked her all the way back to her treatment room and we took all our chiropractic patients and did some trigger point therapy. And then we put them on a heat heat pack on there. And they wait five minutes or so for the doctor to come and get real relaxed. So I'm going to back now in the room, and as she's telling me the story in the hallway, and I finally was able to say, Hey, first name. How come you never tried to find out why you get the hives in her head snapped around so hard Pete, I thought you wouldn't need your chiropractic treatment. It was just like, What? What do you mean? I said, yeah, there's tests we can do I go might show you why you're getting knives. She said, Gimme, gimme, gimme, you know, and that's the day she became my client. Because I sent her home some lab test kits, found out exactly why she got the hives. When nine days after her report of findings. She was off the medication.

Peter Williams  1:05:36  
What was the reason? What what did you find out?

Reed Davis  1:05:38  
First she was eating foods every single day. We also look for environmental sensitivities, her personal care products, your household cleaning products, you can test for sensitivities to these chemicals. So we did do chemical sensitivity and food sensitivity tests, and she was eating food every single day. I always think it's a combination. I never attribute it to one test, because then people, oh, I want that test. So you know, we changed some things for her. We got her on, we put her on a better diet, and so on, lifestyle. And within nine days, she's off her medication, she called her doctor and said, I'm not taking it anymore. I found out why I get the hives. What a concept. And then, of course, two weeks after that she's taking hot showers. She's working out to a sweat. Because even on the meds for two years, she hadn't had a hot shower, or worked up to a sweat because you know, the hives. And so. So I mean, that's just one story of a miraculous and and how do you think the practitioner felt? You know. really good? Yeah. Well, I actually helped somebody amazing. You know, and that's the joy of our work is that we do get to help people.

Peter Williams  1:06:52  
And that was just born from just a different question that completely changes the approach, isn't it?

Reed Davis  1:07:01  
Yes. So she went to her doctor and said, What can I take for these hives? He said, Here take this. Yeah, for two years. And it didn't even work if she took a hot shower or sweated. And so what if she had asked me, What can I take take a test, you know, take a look at your diet and your surroundings and your these, these household cleaning products and personal care products are poisonous, some of them - you can get the natural stuff

Peter Williams  1:07:34  
We've just done a podcast with an autoimmune specialist, which was just fascinating because she said, we were talking about why autoimmunity is predominantly a female condition. And she said partly because of the morning routine that women will do as far as chemicals on the skin in their etc. She said that's definitely been shown in the literature to be a, you know, a protagonist in the development of autoimmunity. It's crazy, but it's so important.

Reed Davis  1:08:08  
Yes. Absolutely. Yeah. The, you know, men soap and water. It's all you need right.

Peter Williams  1:08:16  
Yeah, it's close as we get.

Reed Davis  1:08:18  
Now we're a little smarter. I get, I get some stuff.

Peter Williams  1:08:22  
Reed give me one more. I love these little analogies. 

Reed Davis  1:08:25  
Okay,this, this lady is coming in the office and I had been helping her. She was having chiropractic, acupuncture, nutrition for me, and some body work. And she was really doing well after just a few visits and sending me on the way out the door. What do you work with kids? Yeah, I work with kids. Sure. I never really had a child as a patient. But I was a football coach for 15 years. I love kids. And I have found them very easy to work with since then. Anyway, I said why? Why would you want to do. Well, they want to send my kid home from school, if I don't put him on drugs. And the drug of choice at the time was Ritalin. So they said either you put him on something to calm him down, or we're going to have to kick him out of school. And so I said, I don't know if I could help. Let's run same labs as for the other lady. You know, you don't test hormones. And by the way, he was nine. Yeah. Can you imagine saying put your nine year old on drugs? Yeah, we're gonna kick him out. She was frustrated, you know? Anyway, so we ran some tests, we changed his diet. We changed his bedtime. We did some disciplinary things as well, but coached her up on what you can do. I never even met the young man personally. Because moms are great at getting stuff done. So she was and I got a call three weeks after Pete from the principal of the school. So this is a guy that was kicking him out of school. And he said, he will say he tracked me down through the mom, wanted to talk to me. He said, Hey, Mr. Davis. This is a different kid. He's paying attention. He's not poking the other kids. He's not outbursting in class. He, he's just a different child, which I was very happy to hear, from him. And then he really disappointed me. He said, What did you put them on? Is if it's just some one. Yeah. And I said, Well, we put him on a better diet, we put him on a better bedtime schedule, we put him on, you know, better living conditions. And he didn't want to hear that he you know, okay, thanks.

Peter Williams  1:10:56  
You know, old school thinking, Reed That's what it is. What is it? It's old school thinking, you know, I look at that is that if you've only ever, ever, if you only ever have one, you know, one paradigm of how medicine works, then it's all you can come back with and until you sort of you sort of take the blue pill and jump down that pathway. You're never gonna see the other side. And yet, but yes, I'd see.

Reed Davis  1:11:23  
Except for that I could say back again, I love conversing with you, Pete. It's been great. I know. We probably run another time, but I can do this for hours. To my left, I have a small library of real old school. So like Francis Pottenger. Weston Price. Yeah, people like that. Melvin Page. These are old school, like 1915, 1920. So they started noticing that the industrial world was killing people over 100 years ago. So a lot of what what my work is based in his old intelligence, like really old observations of, hey, you eat crap, you're gonna get crap. You know, like white bread, you know, was in America. Supposedly, bread wasn't good enough. You had to put vitamins in it. Yeah. But first, you had to bleach out all the real vitamins.

Peter Williams  1:12:18  
Yeah, it's a bit crazy, really isn't it? It's the same with what we've done with industrial oils as well. It's

Reed Davis  1:12:23  
Yeah, so I mean, read Francis Pottenger and George Watson and these guys that they knew 100 years ago, how the body really was supposed to be taken in context of a whole. In 1919, Francis Pottenger read that specialisation is going to ruin medicine. You can't just work on livers or gallbladder, you got to work on the whole person. And he was right. And that's where we have returned to.

Peter Williams  1:12:57  
Do you think do you think I don't know? What are we in our we're an hour and 20 end? So but do you? Do you think it's moving though?  Do you think conventional medicine is because I've had two situations in the last couple of months with a pulmonary specialist and a cardiologist where they're definitely coming more into the thinking of, we need more people like you to help us out as well. Are you do you find that you get approached more and more by conventional medicine?

Reed Davis  1:13:28  
Well, I'll say they're leaning more towards if conventional medicine practitioners are leaning towards functional medicine than Yes. So you know, I train practitioners, it's up to them, whether they go get a job in a doctor's office, trying to use their new skills, and the levelling of their, their game, or whether they become independent health practitioners. So I'm good with either one. You know, I was an independent health entrepreneur that worked in the clinic. But when I started teaching, that was I started my own my own business, and had my own private practice. And I realised I could well I could serve a lot more people, if I could train others to do the system. So that became my way. But as to who I've trained, many of them don't have any business skills. They're not into, they're not health entrepreneurs, they just want to help you. They don't want to get the customers and they just want to look at the labs and coach that person on what's wrong and what they can do to fix it. So there are doctors offices, there are functional medicine practitioners who have hired my graduates, and they're getting paid good money, to, of course, you have to create those relationships and things. But that might be easier for some people than being a health entrepreneur. Being a health entrepreneur and independent practice, as you well know, it's taking you 20 years to establish your practice, as you said, and it sounds like a wonderful, wonderful practice, and I think people would be lucky to find you. Because we think a lot of like, and so in answer to your questions, I'm training and training and training, you know, our course is open to, to anyone who wants to learn, whether you want to work on yourself and your family, or whether you want to become an entrepreneur, or whether you want to go get a job in a doctor's office doing that

Peter Williams  1:15:36  
I did, I did check out FDN and looked at some of the testimonials, and there's quite a lot on there from medical doctors who, you know, have gone and done your courses as well. So, as I said to you, there's definitely a groundswell for me that, you know, specialisation, you know, I suppose it lacks, it lacks integration, doesn't it? You know, and as I say, they're just just,

Reed Davis  1:16:00  
Yes, we're the David. They standard medicine are the Goliath. Yeah. And they're, they're beyond Goliath, they're behemoth. They're, they're amazing, you know, I don't know, if you're familiar with an American hero is Thomas Edison, he was is a great inventor. And in 1903, he said that the doctor of the future will not prescribe medicine, but will interest his patient in diet, and the underlying causes, and so on and so on. The exact quote is pretty well known. He was wrong. No, back then there was only nine drug companies, and maybe 40 drugs. Now, they're 900 drug companies, and four or 5000 drugs. So he was wrong about the doctor of the future, he was right about a lot of things, we wouldn't be talking to each other in this format. It was Thomas Edison, you know, he created the lightbulb and movies and all these things. But along with Tesla, of course, but but the idea is that, man, they're the behemoth. And we're not going to knock them down, all we can do is work on an individual basis, that would be great. If this individual practitioner, we start, we have lots of conventions now where there's hundreds, but they have conventions, where there's 1000s of practitioners, they have unlimited resources, like literally unlimited, you know, they can afford to get sued and lose $30 billion. And it's like a fly in the ointment, you know? So in, answer your question about, How was it gone? It's going, it's going, we're chugging away.

Speaker 1  1:16:01  
I just think, as you said to that, you know, I think they're everything has its place. And I just think more and more individuals are recognising I just think there's more recognition, I think COVID's driven this as well that I'm not going to get what I need off these people, and maybe I've got to find some somewhere else, or someone else who may be can look at me differently. And I just think as I mean as I said to yoy I just think there's much more of a groundswell for functional medicine in the UK at the moment. And, again, you know, I think careful with the terms and not just functional medicine, but I think alternatives to just a conventional approach that is just maybe not working for patients. And it's unlikely they will with very complex chronic conditions that need a big workup, like we've talked about today, or a system that we've talked about today, you know, can't just do it, you can't just do it on a sort of singular diagnostic process, it just doesn't work.

Reed Davis  1:18:53  
You're right. So modern medicine is good if you have a medical problem, you know, but most problems aren't really, truly medical, they're just dysfunctional. And that means that we can take back control the person, the individual person can be more in control of their health than they know. So that's a good spot, maybe to end on Pete is the power should be in the hands of the people (totally agree). And the first thing that I recognise was all these people coming in the office had been to up to 10 practitioners, why are you putting your health in their hands, give back control, get your health back in your own hands. And you can do that through certain systems.

Peter Williams  1:19:40  
That's a brilliant way to end so mate, listen, I I mean, that was nearly an hour and a half. Super appreciate your time. And I don't  know if you have had your breakfast yet. Yeah, I don't know whether you've eaten yet. Oh, yeah.

Reed Davis  1:19:51  
Oh, yeah. My wife and I do we have rituals. And again, it's, it's almost 11am now. Okay,

Peter Williams  1:19:59  
So we're getting on Reed (time for lunch pretty soon). Yeah, I listen, I really, really appreciate your time. I would love to have you on again, if that's all right. Yeah, we could certainly think about some subjects that you might want to talk about that you're passionate about, and slightly more specifics, but for now, and thank you so much for your time,

Reed Davis  1:20:18  
Yes sir. Thank you, Pete. I'm happy to be here. Anytime you let me know

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