Dr. Patricia Schneider - Embracing Belief Systems and Gut Health

Dr. Patricia Schneider, a nurse with 25 years of experience, specializes in psychiatric mental health. While her focus is on psych mental health, she has long been interested in nutrition and integrative therapies. Finding traditional healthcare education lacking in holistic approaches, especially using nutrition as medicine, Dr. Schneider has remained passionate about blending conventional mental health practices with innovative nutritional strategies to provide comprehensive care.

The episode explores how the body’s microbiome, gut serotonin, and factors like nutrition, sleep, and exercise impact health. Dr. Schneider shares her programs, from DIY health tips to personalized coaching and detox plans. She emphasizes the value of patient-driven care and prevention for lasting wellness.

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Takeaways

1. Trust your health intuition
2. Focus on prevention
3. Combine functional medicine and integrative therapies

Connect with Patricia Schneider:

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Transcript

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Welcome to Your Infinite Health. Are you getting older? Are you feeling it? How would you like to do that in reverse? We're your host Doctor Tripp. And Lanae. We've run an integrated medicine practice for 13 years. Together, we have 60 years of combined experience helping clients. We've helped tens of thousands achieve success in health and live longer, happier lives. In this show, we'll cover peer reviewed and evidence based integrative approaches to creating the health you've always wanted. We also share professional experience we see in the field every day. So if you're ready to feel, look, and live your best life, you're in the right place. Welcome to Eurofina Health podcast. Hey, guys. Lanae here. Thank you so much for joining today. Trip will be in shortly. You know, I'm impatient, so I wanted to get started as soon as possible. We've got a great guest for you this week. If you are interested in uncovering root causes and restoring whole health, you're gonna enjoy this episode. With over 25 years of nursing experience, doctor Patricia, a board certified psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner with a doctorate in nursing, noticed the pitfalls of overprescribing medications in mental health care. To offer a more holistic approach, she became a certified functional blood work specialist focusing on uncovering root causes rather than symptoms alone. Driven by a passion to empower patients, she utilizes personalized supplementation protocols and integrative therapies to address various health imbalances aiming to unlock vitality and resilience. Welcome, doctor Patricia. Alright. Trish, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and insights with us today. Really appreciate your time. Thank you. Happy to be here. So I kinda like to go into origin stories so that the listener can get an understanding of who you are and how you came to be passionate about functional medicine, and we're gonna get into some comprehensive lab evaluation discussions and everything. But can you tell everybody how you got to be where you are? Yes. Certainly. Just I wanna apologize for my voice. I think I'm coming down with a cold, so my voice is a little hoarse. But so I've been a nurse for 25 years, and I haven't always worked in psych mental health, although right now that's my specialty. And so I always had this interest in nutrition and alternative integrative types of approaches, but I never really knew how to go about doing this with patients. We weren't really taught, for example, how to use nutrition as medicine or things like that. That was always, like, nice to know, but it wasn't something that was really, really focused upon. And I sort of found that in my in traditional western medicine, which is can be very, very great. I mean, for acute conditions, you know, top of the line medications, treatments, wonderful, but I really found that they really lacked for helping people manage chronic condition. So you know? And I sort of, like, focused a lot of my nursing approach just by teaching and providing education and and hope that the sort of patients would would listen. And it I really became much That's key. He's just listening. That's the key. Key. I know. Even me, it sounds great. Like, get make sure you get exercise every day and all of that. And it does sound wonderful, but we know that life gets in the way, and sometimes that can be challenging. About my compliance modality later. For sure. I know. Everyone is so busy, but I really got into the functional piece of it when I became a nurse practitioner. And I'm I've been working in psych mental health for I think it's been about 15 years by now, and I work with children, adolescents, young adults in psychiatry. And I also work with adults who have all sorts of, like, health symptoms. And what really got me passionate was I became a a prescriber 3 years ago, and by working with a lot of families and parents and children trying to treat things like anxiety, depression, ADHD, I found that I really couldn't provide alternative or holistic or integrative treatments for my patients. And moms would ask me, well, what do you know about natural supplements? Because I really don't wanna do the stimulant thing right now. And I was like, gosh. I I really don't know a whole lot because that's not my training. You know? So as more and more sort of parents were were looking for that, and I found, like, there's definitely a need, and we really need to look at what else can we possibly offer to patients instead of, you know, the traditional, treatments. So I found that I really wanted to look at blood work a little bit more closely than what I had been trained in. What I had been trained in was to just memorize a bunch of values, lab values, and if they fell without the norm outside of the normal range, they would technically be flagged. And if they were flagged, really, physicians and as nurses, we weren't really taught what does this information mean. I mean, we know sort of, like, if you have a high white blood cell count that there's an infection, but I wasn't trained how to look at blood work for optimal levels, which is what the functional nutrition or functional medicine tries to do. We we try to look at the root cause of the symptom, and we really wanna look at our blood work and our nutrients to see just because it's normal, it doesn't mean that's it's an optimal range. And Yeah. Well, it's in our air plus. Yeah. So I found like it's true. You know? Just because it's normal doesn't mean that it's great because how do you explain people that say, well, I've been having sort of these, like, vague symptoms for so long, but every time I go to the doctor, every time I do blood work, it comes back normal. So maybe I'm crazy. I don't I don't know what it could be. So and I found out I found out a lot, you know, with a a lot of clients and patients and family members and even stuff like, jeez. You know? I don't know. I know that there's something going on, but I just can't quite figure it out. So, hence, the functional medicine approach and looking at labs a little better and really getting to, like, the root cause. So let's make sure that your vitamin d level is optimal because just because it's normal range, which is anywhere from, like, 30 to a100, which is a huge range. Well, I think we should talk about how the normal ranges, what that really means, you know, and how that's determined. That's a bell curve statistic based on people that may have a range of health concerns that are your age. So, you know, you wanna delve? I don't know. Would you like to? Yeah. It's almost like we look at it like a box that we're trying to make everybody fit into, like a one size fits all, and it's not that way. You know? Functional medicine and integrative approaches are very much patient centered, and, you know, we really need to take that into account that everyone presents different. Everyone has different symptoms. Just because one patient's level might be normal, it doesn't mean that they're feeling great. It might not be that might not be the case for the other patient, but that's what we don't take into account with everything's normal because we expect everyone to sort of, like, feel the same and, you know, present the same as long as they fall on this wide range. And it really, you know, it's a disservice because we approach it as a reactive approach, and, really, we should be looking it more like, proactive. You know? What can we do to make sure we're living our best now so that way we can minimize the risk of developing chronic conditions over time? And that and we don't spend really nearly enough time focusing on that aspect of Yeah. I agree. The the paradigm the current paradigm is is centered, as you said, around reacting to the problem that has become symptomatic. And reacting to the problem that, becomes symptomatic, it means that we've waited too long, and it has become symptomatic. Right? And now we put a Band Aid on it. Mhmm. Or we camouflage it. So so the symptom goes away, but the ongoing problem is never addressed. And that that's what attracted me to this, you know, this modality also. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. For sure. No. I agree because it is. It's like, okay. Well, we're putting a Band Aid on it, and it's all fine, but we're not really getting to what's really going on. People are looking for always that magic pill that's gonna just make everything great and solve everything, but it really is so much more complex than that. So we have to start with that way. Isn't that right? We've seen them with conventional medicine, reactive medicine over the last 50, 75 years. That's how we've trained since the advent of penicillin. You could go back a little further, I suppose, but the advent of the pill or or an injection, we've trained our patients over time to think just like that, and and that means the majority of the population thinks like that. So in in understanding that that's not as you're I I think you're brilliant in bringing this to light in training them to to do that. They don't recognize it. Oh, well, I've got all this reserve, and I'm just consuming it. And when the reserve is gone, boom. Then I get the symptom. So, yeah, I'm sorry I'm sorry to interrupt, but I'm No. You're right. Yeah. So really great thought process that you have. So so tell us about the tell us about the how you moved into the laboratory thing and, you know, as you saw those differences, and did you apply them in the realm of psychiatry? And and Yes. I I am applying them in the realm of psychiatry. So now when patients come to to see me for their mood or whatever is, you know, they're coming to see me about, which usually is either anxiety or depression or brain fog or can't concentrate, I look at their labs much more closely, and I've been getting labs on everyone. And what I find is I'm seeing their, like, markers in their lab work that can be the cause or contributing to their mood, like low vitamin d levels, low vitamin b levels. I've seen that. And, usually, you know, with, the psych mental health, we don't really have patients get lab work all that often unless we're putting them on a medication that is gonna cause metabolic syndrome, like increase their blood pressure, their cholesterol, and all of that. But I've been doing that already on my patients just to get a baseline, and what I find is like, wow, your vitamin d level is a 12, you know, and the normal range to 30 to 80. 30 to 80 functionally, optimal is about 80. And I'm like, wow. Maybe that's why you feel so down and exhausted and unmotivated. And maybe if I try to fix your vitamin d level first, maybe we won't need to talk about that antidepressant medication. So I'm I'm trying to this is what this is in the ideal world what, you know, what I would what I'm hoping to do. I also work with women and men who reach out to me, and they say, can you just look at my blood work? Because if everything's normal, and I can't figure out what's going on. So I I do host free live workshops, and I invite people to come on and bring their blood work. And I try to teach them, like, 5 hidden markers in their blood work that can determine whether they have an underlying infection or a virus or something like that where it's not something that's gonna be flagged in, you know, a traditional blood panel, but it's underlying, and it can still be causing some changes in the body. It can be affecting the hormones. For example, low grade viruses trigger autoimmune disease, things like that, and that people aren't really aware of that. So I do like to work with really, people of all ages. If they come and see me, I can order their blood work, and we can do, you know, a complete analysis and then look and see, yeah, this is probably what's been happening. And then we talk about treatment options as far as taking the next steps to put them on a path from being unhealthy to healthy. Absolutely. Do you get any pushback from, like, family doctors or OB GYN dinees that don't have the that are ignorant in the ways of functional approach. Do you ever run into that? Luckily, I have not. And in fact, many years ago, my primary care physician was the only and the first person that actually said, why don't you try a chiropractor? Because I have been suffering from migraines for years. I'm in my fifties now, but in my twenties, I I really had a lot of headaches. I had two sinus surgeries. I went to see an allergist, and I did allergy shots for 5 years, and I was still having these just frequent headaches. And I bought this up with my primary care physician. I said, I just really don't even know what to do. You know? And he mentioned, have you tried a chiropractor? And I'm like, what? Like, you? I'm like, doctors don't even talk about anything like that. And he said, not me. I say, hey. You know? I say it's worth a shot. And if there's anything that can help, I'm all for it. And I thought, wow. This is amazing. This is wonderful. And sure enough, that did lead me to see a chiropractor, and I've been seeing one for, I think, 13 years now, and my headaches have dramatically decreased. I still get them, but I was like, wow. You know? And I'm so grateful because I mean, I only mentioned it with him because I trusted him. But if I were to mention this to somebody else, you know, seeing a chiropractor, they would have been like, what? That's not even real. You know? And I think we do such a disservice by having this stigma, this this, you know, I don't know why. You know? Why not use every tool that we have available? Right? It's worth a shot. And I I haven't found too many people that are really opposed to it. I find it's much more accepting, and I find that you know? And the the the fact is health consumers, they're using alternative and complementary treatments. Whether they like it or not, it's you know, patients are definitely becoming advocates for themselves, and there's definitely a lot of patients that already come to the table using, you know, these other treatments. And why not? We should be encouraging people to be using these because I am a big component in if you believe you're gonna get better, and I have faith that you're gonna get better, you're gonna get better. And if that means you wanna go to a chiropractor because you really believe that that's gonna help you, I'm gonna support you in that decision or whatever else you wanna use because, you know, you you have to allow patients to be part of the whole treatment and really include what are. Yeah. Patient patient centered. And if they've been doing this is gonna be beneficial and it's important for them, you've gotta build that relationship so they can trust you, and then it really comes down to that. That correlates really well with the observer effect in quantum physics. Right? So the observer effect is that the observer of a system of of an outcome influences that outcome by the energy of their beliefs. So and been experimentally confirmed and all that in the quantum physics realms. It was theoretical physics with Einstein and Einstein and Schrodinger, but now certainly confirmed. I I actually feel like our placebo effect is a result of that observer effect. So because if you don't have a a triple blinded trial to to look at the outcome of an experimentation or clinical trial, then basically what you're doing is you're allowing the belief of the physician. And as I trained in oncology and practiced oncology for almost 30 years, you know, I would see the effect of the patient's belief in the outcome of, you know, even pain medicine. They would say, oh, this is gonna work. And, inevitably, they had pain excellent pain control, where whereas those who said, oh, no. This is never gonna work. Had miserable pain control and had, adverse outcomes like that. So, yeah, I think even though it's very difficult to control all the all the variables in that type of clinical setting, I think we're that is a huge component of outcomes, and you've just expressed it again. So allowing the patient to belief to guide therapy in well, maybe not in all domains, obviously, but it's really helpful. Yeah. So yeah. Absolute I find in the you know, why is it that people who have a spiritual belief or belief in a higher power, they are linked overall to better health outcomes, and we don't really know how or why, but the research is there that they do. You know? So having some sort of a belief system of some kind, whatever that is, is is brings benefits and and has positive, you know, effects on people over time. So I can see how that would make sense because when you have a a larger perspective than a universe or whatever, you are more inclined to have inner peace. And when you're at peace, you can't be at stress. And when you're at stress, I mean, that increases pain or whatever. Yeah. Absolutely. Increases cortisol levels. Could so I totally see how that would be how that would make sense in a medical scenario. Yeah. Okay. Well, I wanna get to because you talked about the brain gut connection. Can you expand on that and what you've seen with respect to that? Yeah. So our gut is also known as our second brain, very much connected. You know? And I have seen a lot of my patients who have psych mental health, you know, problems, mental health problems, they also experience GI symptoms, things like indigestion, acid reflux, bloating, constipation. So I see a big correlation between the GI symptoms with the psych mental health, And it does make sense because having anxiety, having depression can cause changes in our gut and the microbiome, and that alone can happen when we're exposed to stress. And, also, it has to do with some neurotransmitters or happy hormones, serotonin, dopamine. So serotonin, you know, predominantly is in our guts. And if we have an inflamed gut or we're dealing with a situation where we're not able to absorb the nutrients or produce the serotonin, it can have a direct impact on our mood. So I definitely see a connection in the psych mental health for sure with the brain and gut. And, also, there, I I've seen or I I've I know that there could be some inflammation in the biome, you know, having to do with that. And when we have inflammation in our microbiome, it can cause symptoms like anxiety, depression, even Parkinson's, and that can all be related to, like, what's going on in our gut. So it's really fascinating to me, although not surprising because when we look at anytime you've been anxious or you're really nervous about something coming up, many of us experience, like, a direct impact on our gut. We might you know, I feel I have butterflies in my stomach. I have to go to the bathroom because I'm so nervous or what have you. So it definitely is all connected. And, yeah, it's definitely one thing that I've seen a lot in the patients that are experiencing these mood disorders. They, 9 times out of 10, also have GI stuff that they're going through. And then how are you approaching that? Like, how are you treating that? Well, in my traditional role as a nurse, I don't have a whole lot of opportunity to do that, but I am branching off into my integrative psychiatry. And what I let would like to do is have this approach where I work with clients in order to, first, repair their microbiome and, put them on a protocol where, say, the 1st month, we are gonna replenish the cells. We're gonna get the cells ready. And then in month 2, for example, they're provided with medical grade supplements, and we're going to do some sort of a detox, you know, get rid of the infections, sort of cleanse everything out, and then in the 3rd month, replenish the microbiome. So in the ideal world, that's what I would like to do. 1st is to be able to help patients sort of feed all the cells in their body, sort of go through any, you know, anything that we can eliminate and get rid of that might be causing the symptoms. And when we replenish, hopefully, we can see where they're at that point. In that role of my functional, medicine role, I do work with adults, and we focus on that. So looking at their blood work, I have them fill out a patient symptom questionnaire. What are the symptoms that you're experiencing? I try to relate that to markers that I see in the blood work, and then we do come up with, you know, a a program where we can tackle some of those deficiencies that are going on in in each patient and and take that approach first. So that way it kickstarts them into the road to better health because then they're gonna start feeling much better, and then they're gonna wanna continue to feel really great. Uh-huh. So is that a nutritional and a a nutraceutical approach that you're looking at? Yeah. So I I technically do 2 things. So with the psychiatry, I like to do the integrative psychiatry where I'm using medication along with psychiatry where I'm using medication along with additional, you know, things that I could use. And then just doing the complete functional, medicine approach for people that don't want to have any medications, you know, at all integrated. So there's actually 2 populations that I can work with. But first, like mental health, it's a little bit more challenging, you know, as far as like having kids fix their guts first and, you know, all of that. But we do simple things like talk nutrition, clean up diets, just getting down to, like, healthy choices with snacks and foods, making sure they get enough sleep, enough exercise, limit screen time, you know, as much as we can, and having them go out and get some fresh air and then looking at the the vitamin deficiencies, like the vitamin d and the b 12 and all of that. Cool. Yeah. Awesome. You call it done for you programs. Can you talk a little bit about those? Yeah. So I have 4 do it yourself programs. Do it yourself. I said it back. Do it yourself. That's okay. The first DIY. Yep. The first one is my whole body healing program. It's the most popular program, and it's really for anyone that has these underlying symptoms. You know, the fatigue, maybe they've got chronic pain, they've got brain fog, They've got GI things. It's a good overall comprehensive head to toe. We're gonna revamp, the whole body system. So that's one of them. Another one that I do is a brain rejuvenation program, and what that one does is it looks at replenishing our thyroid. So we look at our thyroid markers. We look at our hormones. So we also have a 90 day do it yourself, program where we can focus on reenergizing the brain and the neurotransmitters. There's one that's like a weight release, one that we do. So, again, looking at things like adrenal fatigue, which could be the reason why, you know, no matter how much a person is exercising or eating right, they just have stubborn, you know, weight that doesn't come off. So we look at that system. And then one that's really interesting is our, mold detox. So we have this mold detox, program where we send a patient, like, a test kit just to see, you know, their level of mold toxicity, and then we look at ways in which we can try to help them improve their environment and then, go through a detox process. If we find that in their blood work, they have some toxic overload. So really interesting programs. All can be done at home 90 days. And there are some different types of programs too, one in which people will have 1 on 1 support with me. They all have access to a nutrition plan. So while we're doing all of this work, we wanna ensure that, you know, we're making the right choices. We're not causing or having anything in our nutrition that's gonna be adding inflammation, for example, or causing, you know, inflammation. So we want to do the whole approach so it can be a multifactor type of program. It depends on what the patients are looking for and how much support they want. Yeah. That was I guess that was my next question. Like, how is there any accountability in that? Any, you know, motivation or accountability measures in a do it yourself program? Yeah. I found I find sometimes 2 types of clients. 1 that one type that will want direct contact with you and email and call, and they have all these questions, which is great. And then I have another client that will say, just tell me what I need to do, and I'll reach out to you if I need it. So I like to offer a private Facebook group. I do give them, access, to, you know, my email, my phone if they wanna reach out. I like the Facebook group so that way they can kind of talk to each other and share sort of your experiences with them. We do, weekly Zoom meetings where we can just whoever is available to get on a call and they have questions or they have additional blood work that they wanna go over, we can do that. So we offer, you know, really as much support as they want and as little support as they want. So if they tell me they wanna meet with me every week, wonderful. Great. You know, we'll do that. If they say, I don't want you to reach out to me. I'll reach out to you. That's fine too. K. That's cool. Yeah. Well, what is one thing you want the listener to know? I want the listener to know that if you feel like there's something wrong and nobody is listening to you, that there are people that will and go with I'm not gonna say go with your gut, but yes. You know your body better than anybody else, And there are, you know, other, methods, other ways in which you can get your voice heard, and there are other options for you. Don't go it alone. Don't just assume everything is fine or it'll go away, or it must just be me. We definitely have, I think, in the medical world done a disservice, and we don't talk about it as much as proactive. You know? Let's do what we need to do. It's always like, once you already have the symptom, you know, here's the medicine. Here's the treatment. Here's the the whatnot. So we definitely need to be doing a lot more educating. And yeah. And I never want patients to feel like they're alone or nobody's listening because they are. They just, you know, don't they need to look for a provider that's willing to work with them and to not push their concerns aside or anything like that. Yeah. Cool. Alright. And then where can the listener find more about you and your programs? Yeah. So they can find me on whole health alternatives.com. I do host live workshops monthly. So if patients or people wanna come on and they wanna join a live workshop, they can. If they wanna sign up for 1 and they can't join live, that's okay too because they have access to the replay. So whole health alternatives.com is where they'll be able to find me. Awesome. Awesome. Well, Trisha, thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate it. It was very Thank you. And it's a it's a wonderful service you're providing and the educational that needs to get out there needs to get out there too. Yeah. Yes. Thank you. Alright, listener. Hope you found this educational, informational, somewhat entertaining, and until next time. Thanks for subscribing to your Infinite Health. I'm doctor Tripp. And I'm Lanae. Until next time. Feel it, look it, and live it.