Cycling Over Sixty
The Cycling Over Sixty Podcast is meant to provide information and inspiration for anyone wanting to get and stay fit later in life. Host Tom Butler uses his own journey toward fitness as an example of what is possible by committing to healthy lifestyle practices. After decades of inactivity and poor health choices, Tom took on a major cycling challenge at age 60. After successfully completing that challenge and seeing the impact on his health, he determined to never go back to his old way of living. Each week, Tom shares a brief update on the triumphs and challenges of his journey to live a healthy life.
Episodes feature guests who share on a variety of fitness related topics. Topics are sometimes chosen because they relate to Tom's journey and other times come from comments by the growing Cycling Over Sixty community. Because cycling is at the heart of Tom's fitness journey, he is frequently joined by guests talking about a wide variety of cycling related subjects.
Now in the third season, the podcast is focusing a three areas. First is the area of longevity. Guests this season will be asked to give their expert opinion on what it takes to have a long and healthy life. A second area of focus is how to expand the Cycling Over Sixty community so that members have more success and able to connect with other people who want to cycle later in life. And the final focus is on how Tom can expand his cycling horizons and have even bigger adventures that entice him to continue his journey.
If you're seeking motivation, expert insights, and a heartwarming story of perseverance, Cycling Over Sixty is for you. Listen in to this fitness expedition as we pedal towards better health and a stronger, fitter future!
Cycling Over Sixty
Physician Coach
Join host Tom Butler as he celebrates the success of the inaugural Cycling Over Sixty Annual Celebration of Cycling Later in Life and teases an exciting new collaboration bringing a special event next spring.
Tom then welcomes two remarkable guests who are helping to revolutionize healthcare: Dr. Audrey Falconi and Dr. Ayla Hopkins, co-founders of Physician Coach, an innovative medical clinic that places exercise at the very center of primary care.
In this inspiring conversation, discover how these forward-thinking physicians are transforming the traditional doctor-patient relationship by adopting an individualized approach to health that treats exercise as medicine. Learn about their unique treatment philosophy where doctors become coaches and patients—regardless of age—embrace their identity as athletes in training.
Whether you're over sixty or supporting someone who is, this episode offers valuable insights into a new model of healthcare that empowers people to take charge of their wellness through movement and personalized coaching. Tune in to explore how this innovative approach is creating stronger, more collaborative relationships between physicians and patients.
Perfect for cyclists, fitness enthusiasts, and anyone interested in aging actively and taking control of their health journey.
LINKS
Physician Coach Website: yourphysiciancoach.com
Cycling Over Sixty Tour de Cure Team: tour.diabetes.org/teams/CO60
Thanks for Joining Me!
Consider becoming a member of the Cycling Over Sixty Strava Club! www.strava.com/clubs/CyclingOverSixty
Cycling Over Sixty is also on Zwift. Look for our Zwift club!
Please send comments, questions and especially content suggestions to me at tom.butler@teleiomedia.com
Follow and comment on Cycling Over Sixty on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cyclingoversixty/
Show music is "Come On Out" by Dan Lebowitz. Find him here : lebomusic.com
This is the Cycling Over 60 podcast, season three, episode 37, physician Coach and I'm your host, tom Butler. On Sunday, september 14th, we launched the Cycling Over 60 Annual Celebration of Cycling. This year the celebration was simply a group ride. I really liked how the ride came together. Unfortunately, I couldn't be aggressive at promoting the ride because there ended up being a question about the route being open. We chose to do three routes and two of them went over a bridge that I thought was going to be open in August. Construction problems meant the delay of the project completion. I ended up getting confirmation that the bridge was going to be open on September 13th, but I only found that out a week before. They did end up opening the bridge earlier, but they had the official ribbon cutting on the 13th. I am so happy that the bridge was open because riders got to experience the entire Foothills Trail and the beautiful area it goes through. I know I'm biased, but I do believe the Foothills Trail is a national treasure.
Speaker 1:Even with the lack of promotion and the threat of rain, we had around 40 people show up. I somehow managed to pick the rainiest day of the week and the rainiest part of the day to schedule the ride. It reminded me of when I was growing up. Our family always seemed to end up with the rainiest days on our camping trips. The truth is, the weather was actually really tolerable. We had light rain for a little while, then it just was mostly overcast. Having a small group was actually helpful. I didn't need to get any permits or worry about a huge group on the trail and it was easy to find a place to gather afterwards. We got together afterwards at a cafe just across from the trailhead and I had a fun time getting to know people a little more. I did a drawing for a couple of gift cards and some in-store vouchers. I want to give a huge shout out to Trek Tacoma North for providing a bunch of $20 in-store credit vouchers. I accomplished the goals that I had for this first event. We tested the routes and I believe they are nearly perfect. We had three routes a metric century, about 62 miles, a 40 mile route and a 30 mile route. Now, based on some interactions I had with people as I was talking about the ride, I will add a shorter route in future events.
Speaker 1:Having this first event was really important to start the process, a dynamic annual cycling event. I've begun to talk with a few organizations about expanding what we can offer for support and for a fun post-ride event in the future. Of course, I will keep everyone posted on anything we plan the future. Of course I will keep everyone posted on anything we plan. You can find information about Cycling Over 60 events on the Strava Club and I also will add any larger events to the website. I'm also currently building an email list of people who want to get information about Cycling Over 60 events in their inbox. I won't be sending out a bunch of emails, just details about upcoming events. For now, events will mostly be in the Seattle area. However, I want to see events elsewhere as soon as it is feasible. The annual event has led to what I think is a fantastic plan for a spring Cycling Over 60 event. I do need to stay focused on the fall event, so I don't see managing all the details of a spring event.
Speaker 1:However, I had a meeting with the development manager at the Pacific Northwest chapter of the American Diabetes Association. She asked if Cycling Over 60 would put together a team for Tour de Cure in Seattle. If you listen to the podcast, you know that I'm struggling with management blood glucose. Cycling is vital for helping me to avoid the consequences of diabetes. So having the opportunity to collaborate with the American Diabetes Association Tour de Cure ride, that was something I was immediately interested in. I did form a team for the Tour de Cure in Seattle. If you are in the area, please consider joining the team and riding with us on May 2nd of next year. You can find the team at tourdiabetesorg. Forward slash teams. Forward slash CO60. I'll put that link in the show notes.
Speaker 1:I like the fact that there are Tour de Cure rides in 12 locations across the US. I would love it if the Cycling Over 60 team expanded to be represented in other regions. This is a very new collaboration with Tour de Cure, but I'm hoping to have the biggest team in the Seattle ride. We only need 50 riders to show up to be the biggest team. I think it would be absolutely awesome to make a statement about the value of cycling later in life by having the largest team in the Seattle event. And of course, the American Diabetes Association chapter here understands the value of cycling over 60 as well. There's absolutely no question that activity has a massive impact on preventing and managing diabetes. Riding the Tour de Cure allows the cycling over 60 community to have a huge positive impact as we demonstrate the bicycle as a great way to stay active and, as I like to think of it, demonstrate the value of the bicycle as a medical device. One of my big tasks in the next couple of months is to find organizations that are interested in helping support the Cycling Over 60 Tour de Cure team. In order to participate in the ride, each person needs to secure $250 of donations. My task is going to be figuring out how to get organizations and individuals to adopt Cycling Over 60 team members to make it easy to achieve $250 in donations. So stay tuned for more information on Cycling Over 60 and Tour de Cure. Like I said, if you're in Western Washington, please consider registering with our team.
Speaker 1:I'll end this update with a story of frustration and then happiness and then acceptance. After we got back from riding the Tour de Victoria, which I still need to talk about here, I couldn't find my bike computer. I looked all over and was really frustrated because I convinced myself that I left it in the hotel in Victoria, but then I remembered that I'd been thinking about replacing it with a computer that had better mapping. So I got excited to shop for a new computer and then, unfortunately, a couple days later I found my computer. The computer had slipped out of my backpack and somehow got kicked under a bookshelf, so for now I'll still be writing with a minimally viable mapping feature, but just maybe I can find a way to lose it more permanently next time.
Speaker 1:As I have thought about the concept of exercise as medicine and the bicycle as a medical device, one thing in my mind has been the thought that I would like to see a different kind of medical practice that really puts exercise at the heart of a treatment plan. I recently was on a ride around Tacoma with a group touring some of the most recent pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure projects when a business caught my eye. The name of the business is Physician Coach. I went over to the building and started looking to see if I could figure out the nature of the business. It looked like a medical practice that was inside a gym.
Speaker 1:As soon as I got home, I pulled up the website yourphysiciancoachcom to find out it was indeed the practice concept that I had been thinking about. I visited the clinic in person and asked if somebody would come on the podcast to talk about Physician Coach. I'm so happy to say that Dr Audrey Falcone and Dr Ayla Hopkins said that they would come on. Here's our conversation. I'm as excited about today's conversation as I've ever been on the podcast. Thank you, dr Audrey Falcone and Dr Ayla Hopkins, for joining me.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having us, Tom.
Speaker 1:Now, I recently rode by your clinic in Tacoma, washington, called Physician Coach, and I instantly knew that I had to get more information on what you do, and I'm so glad to have this conversation and especially that listeners get to hear from you guys. So let's start out, dr Falcone, talk about your experience as a family medicine physician. How did that shape your view about the role of a physician? And then how does your experience as a competitive athlete inform how you approach health care?
Speaker 3:I ended up thinking family medicine as I was going through my medical school and really I think what I was drawn to is the range that you get with family medicines. So I did spend a couple of times with some specialists and realized pretty quickly that I kind of enjoyed not being so hyper-focused, having the ability to help people kind of as their first approach to the medical provider and that really appealed to me with family medicine. As far as my competitive athletics, I think that the biggest thing that taught me was that how important exercise is and how irreplaceable it is to most health problems. Within the first step, always seeing. But lifestyle would be the first step. That's primary prevention, including exercise right, and it's just, I think, kind of gone by the wayside in conventional medicine. It has been one of the biggest things here that we focused on.
Speaker 1:What did you experience as far as the role of the family in health decisions? That seems paramount. Would you agree with what you saw as a family physician, that family influence or having a family that supports different behavioral choices?
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's huge, Even for my clients. Now, if the family isn't on board with their lifestyle change, especially when it comes to hey, maybe we need to remove gluten or dairy. We need you to start exercising daily and if it's not a household commitment, it is really, really hard to change a habit.
Speaker 2:You know and I'm going to keep in there really quickly I think another thing that we're constantly trying to reframe for people is this kind of adage of oh it's just my genetics. I think a lot of people hold that true to any type of health condition. Oh, it's just my genetics. I think a lot of people hold that true to any type of health condition. And, yes, genetics do play a part. But we truly believe that lifestyle can greatly alter genetic course of what you may be predisposed to, so often shifting that also, which that kind of goes along with that like family, what have you heard? What have you grown up with? What have you been inundated with? Oh it's just my genetics, it's just going to happen, versus realizing they may have a role in being able to alter that course.
Speaker 1:I already know you guys are going to say so many interesting things that I just want to take off on, so this is awesome. Now, Dr Hopkins, can you talk about your medical education and maybe help people understand what it means to attend Bastyr University? I think in the Northwest we kind of know a bit about Bastyr, but can you talk about that experience?
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, so we are so lucky to have Bastyr University kind of in our backyard and located in Kenmore, washington. It's one of the I think six or seven accredited naturopathic medical schools and that's within the United States and Canada. It's kind of on the forefront as far as being kind of science-driven, which oftentimes people sometimes equate natural medicine with not being anything science-based. So really what it is is an accredited medical school where you're learning naturopathic medicine. You come out of that education as a primary care physician. That varies state by state depending on where you end up practicing, but after you pass your board, say in Washington State, we are considered primary care physicians. So technically there may be no difference. If you decide to take insurance, you kind of get popped into the system and some people may not notice a difference between, say, a conventional doctor and a naturopathic doctor.
Speaker 2:That being said, our education is we learn the kind of standard of care right. So we learn pharmaceuticals, diagnosis, minor surgery, you know some of the primary care office type things. But our main focus is really lifestyle and natural interventions and that typically is really focusing on exercise, diet, sleep, stress management, community. You know all of those. Those quote unquote natural, natural things. So really when we see a patient we are making sure that all of those what we call foundations of health are in place if it's safe to do so, right If a patient doesn't need a higher intervention immediately really working to either kind of prevent or reverse any type of disease process.
Speaker 2:So you know, that's another thing that I've seen just time and time again where it's just truth to me as many of these chronic diseases being reversed with the right protocol for somebody and I think a lot of times that's something that you know once somebody gets the diagnosis it almost becomes an identity where it becomes hard to break free of that. But there really is a lot of hope and a lot of intervention that can happen there. So that's you know. Bastyr University has a lot of other incredible programs, but I graduated from their naturopathic medicine program, so I am a naturopathic physician here in Washington state here in Washington state.
Speaker 1:One of the things that I think is interesting is that I imagine that at Bastyr you're going to see research being done that you wouldn't find at most medical schools.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so there's a big group of us that are interested in research and maybe go into that. I think this conversation could go so deep because right now in the United States and in the general kind of conventional medical system, we heavily rely on the placebo-blinded, placebo-controlled double-blind study, which is great. It gives us this kind of capsule in order to look at something. But what it doesn't allow us to do is realize the synergistic effect of potentially 10 different interventions that may look different from patient A to patient B. So that's really difficult to study as far as naturopathic medicine goes.
Speaker 2:That being said, the amount of research that has been done in those types of trials on, say, select herbal medicines or compounds in plants which, if you look at some of the top prescribed medications, all actually derived from a plant somewhere, right? So it's, I think, naturopathic medicine. Often, if people aren't aware of our education and what we do, there's that whole snake oil thing where we're doing some crazy things and really it's just stuff that makes sense. It's really, you know, very intuitive, very, you know, patient-focused type stuff. So there's research there, but yeah, those are great comments for sure.
Speaker 1:Can both of you share what caused you to want to pursue careers in medicine? Is that an interest that began early in life?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I would say for myself not so much. I just kind of fell into medical school application. I was a chemistry major going through my undergrad and my first month, or sorry summer, of research it was hours of very, very tedious titrations in the lab and I quickly realized that that was not the life for me. And I quickly realized that that was not the life for me and I had two friends that were applying to medical school my junior year and they were like, hey, you should, you should apply with us. Like I had been taking bio classes with my electives, I just enjoyed them, really paired well with my chemistry electives. So that's kind of how I fell into medicine. I at that point had not even considered it until my junior year of college.
Speaker 2:And I'm going to pipe in there for you. I feel like Audrey has such an academic, intelligent background and people often hear that as the forefront. But since getting to know her she's just so extremely empathetic and caring and intuitive with people that I'm sure on some level that drew you to medicine too, or at least made you a good bit. That you never really say, but that's been something really special like blending that intelligence and that science kind of mind, but then also with the ability to connect with the person in front of you. I think is a really important quality.
Speaker 1:Awesome, I love it. How about you, dr Hopkins?
Speaker 2:I grew up with. So my grandfather was an immigrant here from Colombia. He was the first Spanish-speaking OBGYN in Washington in the Tri-Cities area, and he just always was so fun to hear his stories and everything that he went through in his life and I just greatly admired him that I just from the jump, wanted to be a doctor. During my undergrad I went to Western Washington University and I was majoring in kinesiology. So fitness has always kind of been an interest of mine. But I was going pre-med and I worked at a cardiovascular unit. I got a really great job and I was super excited to get all this experience for medical school.
Speaker 2:I was caring for patients straight out of open heart surgery. Although the intervention is incredible, I'm so glad we have the advances in surgery at this point for bypass surgery, but what was happening was they were getting out of this life-altering surgery and their family was bringing them a big mac and fries as a celebration. There was this really just big disconnect between either the tools that they had in their pocket for their health, the incredible procedure they just went to, and then what happens after that, and so I actually kind of put the brakes on medical school and I was like well, maybe nutrition, maybe you know, I was trying to what can have the most profound effect on health for these people and I ended up just finding Bastyr. I didn't even know about naturopathic medicine and it was just fit all the boxes that I was looking for, so that's kind of how I went down that route.
Speaker 1:I was immediately struck by the name physician coach, and so I'm really curious about how the practice was formed, like the whole message of physician coach, things like that.
Speaker 3:At the time. You know we've gone through so many evolutions of this business and what we thought it was going to be to what it is now, and we both very much connected on the fact that, yes, we were doctors, but we really believed that movement and exercise was one of the main forms of treatment and metabolic health, or the inflammation caused by metabolic health, was at the root of most diseases. And so really, I think pairing those two together and basically my pastime of you know when I'm not doing medicine is coaching. Like I fell in love with coaching at a CrossFit gym and took a bunch of, like, weightlifting and nutrition classes, I just found that, like, helping people to heal was what I wanted to do, and bringing those two names together for us was a way of like how we were going to blend and present this business.
Speaker 2:You know, in a kind of conventional system, a doctor is typically telling the patient what to do, giving them a prescription, and it's almost this one-sided relationship Not always, but it can present that way and so with the word coach in there, I feel like there's a little bit more of hey, we're partners in your health, we're going to give you our expertise, we expect you to kind of come back and show up for yourself, your health, your community and be a player in this game that we're trying to get, whatever that is longevity, wellness, fixing your knee pain, whatever that may be. So I think that also is a part of it too. We want exercise to be a prescription. We want the doctors to start really be holding that high in how powerful that medicine is, but also for our patients to want to be here, want to show up, want to like kind of put in the hard work that it takes sometimes to change habits and really get to kind of the root cause of whatever their ailment or issue is and really work to kind of unpack all that.
Speaker 1:I think it's just an awesome name. Again, walking by, I was actually riding by, but riding by and then stopping because you have a great logo too, I mean I I just like the whole presence that you guys project from your clinic there. Is it right to call it a clinic?
Speaker 3:yeah, yeah, we tend to call it a clinic okay the clinics, the space the gym.
Speaker 2:You know, we we have a lot of different names for it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but there's such an energy and just stopping. And you know you got big glass windows and you can see a bit like you kind of know a bit about what you're getting into. You know just from looking through your windows and I think that's cool. You know you can see that there's activity, you know it's meant to be a really active place and I think that's so cool to see.
Speaker 2:Thank you. It's really nice to hear that that is at least caught your eye and you definitely are somebody who would be great in our services. So it's nice that it's appealing to some people. We do have an issue. People, you know, will look in and they right, we have these boxes, we have a medical clinic and then we have a gym and the fact that they're blended is hard for people to kind of comprehend. So people peep in and they're like either that's a gym or physical therapy. You know they don't realize there's like actual physicians practicing in the back. We do have a physical therapist, who's fantastic, but it's not just a physical therapy clinic. So it's definitely a reframing for a lot of people and what it presents us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can totally see that I mean, and again there's kind of a the way that my brain's been thinking about my own health. That I think was part of what I was seeing. But again, I think you guys are doing a great job of projecting a message and I'm wondering, as it's formed and as it's grown and maybe been shaped over time, what is the need that you feel, physician coaches meeting in a unique way?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think really what we're trying to do, or I feel like what we've turned into, is medicine has gotten very compartmentalized.
Speaker 3:You know you have to see your primary care to get a referral to see an orthosurgeon, but if the orthosurgeon's like, oh, maybe it's the spine, now you're going to a neurologist, right.
Speaker 3:So it's gotten so compartmentalized that things I think are getting missed or the possible pieces are not being put together well, and so it has allowed us one to have like a more holistic approach to someone's pain or ailments or disease.
Speaker 3:And then, two, a lot of what I find is people may not necessarily know how to exercise or how to build muscle or how to recover, and so having those things here or options for people like that's easy to access or it's, you know, a place that they trust, it allows us to, I think, streamline a lot of these parts of medicine that people get very frustrated with in the conventional system Having to, you know, wait months for imaging to then finally see the surgeon who said, oh, you shouldn't have been sent to me, go back to your primary care and get another referral. You shouldn't have been sent to me, go back to your primary care and get another referral. You know, it's this kind of cycle that like people just get thrown in and can be in chronic pain for eight months before they finally get to the right person.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think I'll add in there two things that are kind of a little bit different of topics. There's a lot of overlap of folks who are members here at the gym or patients here. Whether they started at one or the other they went back forth, whatever that may be, but what has happened is we're small and we've developed this really beautiful community and I think that a big piece of medicine that nobody really talks about is community and just watching our members be there for each other, show up for each other, often doing gluten elimination together, who you are around makes a huge difference and that is often lost, say in like a large primary care clinic, potentially. So the community piece I think is a really beautiful part that we don't really ever talk about is being medicine as well. But I also want to give a kind of like a little peep about insurance. So we are a cash pay clinic.
Speaker 2:The beautiful side of that means that we don't have to abide by appointment times really short appointment times. We are able to do whatever treatment we want with folks, don't have to worry about if whether it will be covered, whether you know all of that. We can address multiple things at one time, which is another really amazing thing, because we are a holistic body and everything is working together. Not to say that, you know, there's so many folks that really rely on insurance, and I think insurance is important for a large group of people, but the amount of times that we actually see people saving money by coming to us to get everything addressed potentially in one visit, versus the time constraint and the billing constraint that often insurance can present so you know, I think that's another piece is unfortunately by not taking insurance which a lot of people find that to be a hindrance we're actually able to fill this need where we're able to do a whole lot more with people per visit.
Speaker 1:I like both of those so much and especially the community piece, both of those so much and especially the community piece. You know, I think you know, for me, you know, cycling over 60 is a community. We actually just did our first annual event to celebrate cycling later on in life and it was a great moment of community, you know, coming together and doing some rides together, then hanging out afterwards and talking about bike gears and aches and pains when cycling and all kinds of things. And I believe that some of the things that need to happen to stay healthy later in life, community is just so vital to it and that's a commitment that I have building. Cycling Over 60, is to build that community. I'd like to talk more about the concept of coach and I really what you said really resonated with me. That like there can be this really stereotypical relationship between patient and doctor and to think of it more as a coaching session, I think is a fantastic reframe and I consider it valuable to see myself as an athlete in training.
Speaker 1:When I'm walking down the street I don't think anybody's seeing me as an athlete in training, but it's like a dedication that comes with kind of having that concept in my mind that I need right now to improve my health. You know, there's just making the space to be active. Sometimes it's just super difficult. Sometimes it's just super difficult and it's one of the reasons why, you know, for like every year for 30 years my health kind of got a little bit worse, got a little bit worse, got a little bit worse because life was not immediately structured to be healthy. That people immediately understand that like that coach relationship. Do they come in, seeking that? Is that something that you kind of help them need to make? That reframe? How automatic is it that people can get that, that reframe of the physician coach?
Speaker 2:I'm actually going to start with this and then I definitely want you to take over just with a bit of a personal anecdote. I've been active my whole life, fairly focused on health, my whole life really into fitness. But really what that meant was maybe reading an article in a magazine and maybe doing a rep scheme. You know that I read about a 3x12 or something on a machine going consistently right. I loved to do my three-mile run and I would just continually do that and I felt fit and that was very healthy for me and it felt great. I started CrossFit and I was doing that really consistently and seeing results.
Speaker 2:But because I never was a competitive athlete as an adult, I never in a million years considered myself an athlete.
Speaker 2:No, not at all. I would never even consider that, nor would I think I should enlist the help of a coach to get me better. And then after I met Audrey and she just inherently has that mindset you know of like no matter who you are, everybody's an athlete and there's always room for improvement and if you want to improve you have to have a plan and typically that includes progressive overload and all of that it totally reshaped and it made me just want to kind of spread that message to everybody and anybody who like, yeah, it's maybe bit into fitness, but even if you're just starting, like getting on a plan with the coach is such an important piece that's just going to, you know, help you have better results. So I just wanted to keep that in, because I kind of started from being like a lot of people of like I'm not an athlete, even though I was probably pretty fit, you know. But as far as actually being considering an athlete and having a goal, I just know that wasn't on my on my radar.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I think the mind shift definitely happens as they come in and I think they I tell a lot of people of, hey, if you have someone that wants to come see me, or we get a phone call for a new patient. I try to get people to understand that, like this is going to be a mutual relationship. I am going to help and coach you in any way I can, but the work comes from you. Like you have to be committed to change and committed to all of the work that it takes to actually get to health with primary preventions, which is exercise, nutrition, sleep. You know as some of the cores, and so a lot of my appointments are more based on, hey, these are my nutrition guidelines, but how can we get you there? Like what can you change right now? What sounds feasible to you?
Speaker 3:So it's very much this step-by-step process and a lot of that has come with, like me understanding how hard it is for myself to change a habit, understanding that, like I may want them to do 20 different things in their life, but I have to pick one or two, because that's just reality, that's human nature. Like it's really hard to make a significant change in your life. You know, all of a sudden introducing exercise or all of a sudden saying you can't have gluten is huge. It's really, really difficult for people. That is a complete lifestyle change, not only for yourself but for your family, who is hopefully on board. Probably the majority of my encounters with people are starting to involve coaching and helping them get through life and make these changes and make them consistent changes right that are going to be with them for the long haul.
Speaker 2:And I'm going to peak Dr Peter Attia, which we really appreciate what he's doing kind of for the field right now and if you've heard of him or if you haven't, definitely look him up. But he has this idea of training, for I think he calls it the Centurion decathlon. So you know, I think some people are like, well, what am I going to train for? Or health goal, Like what? I don't know, I just want to be healthy. Or I just want to be fit because I don't have a marathon, or I don't have a CrossFit competition, right, they don't have something they're training for.
Speaker 2:But to pick what? How you want to live your life at age 80 or 90, what do you want to be doing? Do you want to be able to pick up your great grandchild? Do you want to be able? You know? So giving yourself like little goals and what you want as far as longevity goes, and almost training for that, you know it doesn't necessarily have to be training for a marathon, which is where that word athlete gets in there, but the idea of being coached and having a training program, whether that's in fitness or in your health, I think is just such a great reframe. You know, like, dream big. What do you want? Let's try to get you there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I experienced that personally. You know I started out. I made a decision that at 60, I wanted to ride Seattle to Portland for the first time.
Speaker 1:Now, the truth of the matter is I didn't think I was going to make it, you know, but I thought it was going to be really great to you know, if I made 75 miles or 50 miles, and I was really fortunate because I had some people that were working with me and encouraging me and everything but. But seeing those progressively small wins you know, I went for a 60 mile ride on my actual 60th birthday, you know, and things like that it's just that progressive thing. But again, I think it's that athlete mindset where you set a goal and you say I want to achieve this thing and I'm then seeing, you know, appreciating the small gains along the way too. On your website there's a statement and it says that, you quote recognize that health is a complex, nonlinear journey to each person. Health is a complex, nonlinear journey to each person. So this complex, nonlinear journey to each person, can you unpack that a bit?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, I think really what that boils down to is personalized medicine, and really what that means is oftentimes, through medical school, you often learn algorithms, right?
Speaker 2:A patient is this, you go this way or this way. If they're this, you go this or this way, and you just kind of get funneled into this algorithm of how to treat every single person with, say, one disease. So really what we're doing here is trying to look at every single person that walks through the door as a complex individual who has their own history, their own genetics, their own diet and lifestyle, their own traumas, their own whatever it may be, and figuring out what kind of led them to, whatever disease state they're in or whatever ailment they're dealing with, and how to kind of mediate some of those things to reverse or cure or heal whatever they have going on, and that is just can look so different person to person. And so I think really what we're getting at is just we're really trying to look at each person holistically and as their own person that may have a totally different treatment plan than the next person, even if they have this come in with the same exact diagnosis.
Speaker 1:Well, you talked earlier about time, about being able to have time. It seems like this is one of the biggest things in kind of a traditional medical reimbursement system. It just seems like there's not the space to have that kind of discussion with people. Is that a fair comment?
Speaker 3:Yes, that is a fair comment, I think a lot of times the doctors are on the front lines and they're getting blamed, but what's happening, or what maybe people don't realize, is when you are a physician working in a large corporation, they are looking at the numbers.
Speaker 3:Basically, right, it's a numbers game for the hospital to stay productive and, in the net, positive. And so what happens is and this is I kind of experienced this over in my residency was that each year we went, we got shortened down from 60 minutes to 40 minutes to 30 minutes to eventually I was cut down to 20 minute appointments, and it didn't matter how complex the patient was. They needed me to see 20 patients per day to be a viable physician for the clinic. And so when you're hitting that to the point where, like you know, sometimes your patients are waiting an hour because you got that far behind, because you had a complex patient that needed more time, it's like all of the systems that are built inside are not made to be successful, right, and a lot of it is boiling down to the hospital has to make money and it's not a well-functioning system, in my opinion, and that is what's causing that time constriction. It's not that the physician doesn't want to spend time with you, it's that they're not being allowed to have that opportunity.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you know, it's, I think, a lot of things that we state. We're often comparing to conventional medicine, and I just want to like be blatantly clear like we have so much respect for the medical system, for the doctors and the other practitioners that are out there doing this work, but there are constraints, right, and it's not that the practitioner doesn't care, it's the box that they're fitting into in our medical system today, and I think that's what we're really trying to do is like really create a shift in the medical system where we're thinking about things differently, we're structuring it differently so we can, you know, achieve real results with people and that we don't have to do any of the quick fixes which really only fit into a shorter time period, or we do have that time to talk through a diet plan that maybe, you know, a traditional doctor doesn't. So, yeah, I think that's an important piece to just note.
Speaker 1:Given that activity is at the heart of physician coach, I think that's fair to say. What do you think about the concept of exercises medicine?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think that's basically, you know, at the root of why we started this practice is like I've lived my life that way that you know exercise is keeping me healthy and the more I treat people here and we can see the effects that exercise can have in reversing chronic disease. We just believe in reversing chronic disease. We just believe in it more and more.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're huge proponents of that and I'm going to get down a little bit more in the nitty gritty of that. I feel like there's like this aerial view of it and there's also this very like minute view of it. And so the minute view is truly on a cellular level. Our mitochondria, which is our powerhouse of the cell, is so fundamental to a healthy cell and a healthy system, and mitochondrial dysfunction is often at the root of a lot of chronic diseases. I'm sure it could be tied back to nearly all of them.
Speaker 2:One of the best ways to support your mitochondria with the most effect is exercise, and different types of exercise too can really make a change there. And so I think you know, if people really understood, it's not just movement is good, it gets your heart rate, it's cardiovascular thing right. We're like truly focusing on some level on really trying to support and optimize everybody's mitochondria for a healthier system. So that's kind of that piece of it. But then, like we already touched on you know, exercise is such a huge support to our mental health and our neurotransmitters and community and breathing and taking a stress relief. You know it's just there's so many pieces of it that can be considered medicine and a very potent medicine. That that's, you know, it's kind of what we live and breathe now is yes, it is medicine. It's kind of the front line that we want to make sure that people are hitting, you know.
Speaker 1:I believe if you buy into the concept of exercise as medicine, then the bicycle is a medical device, is a medical device. I haven't approached my insurance carrier about latching onto that concept and paying for my bike, but I, you know, I do believe that bicycle is a medical device. Do you guys think that's fair?
Speaker 2:Yes, very much so I'll sign off on that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think too there's been a shift to where a gym membership is allowed to be a medical necessity. So I think you know, hopefully we're making a shift into the right direction for understanding that, like that should hopefully be something that an insurance company would be willing to pay for, in the fact that they will reduce medical costs over the long term.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and Audrey, I may be putting you on the spot with a statistic. I'm sure you've seen we do a lot of VO2 max from. I think improving it maybe just 25% in the lower profile or something like that, has a huge benefit in your longevity. So even just you know people think, oh, do I need to get to the elite level of VO2 max? No, it's just improving it from a low level to a moderately low level has exponential benefit to your overall health. So that is I always find that to be just like a really powerful thing that you know anybody can start and it have a really profound impact on our health.
Speaker 1:If we had more time, I would love to just talk about VO2 max for me. So, to me there's this you know element I really believe that in today's world, to be consistently active, you almost need to be countercultural. You know there's a lot of people within Cycling Over 60 that are cycling because they're out of the workforce, they're retired, and I experienced this myself a lot. To be active it really is a specific choice to live a different way.
Speaker 1:I'll tell you a story that was really interesting for me.
Speaker 1:I used to work in a health club, and that health club was part of the International Health and Racquet Sports Club Association. I don't know if that organization even exists anymore, but they had a program that was focused on getting compensation for gym memberships. One of the gyms that had been a leader in that movement and this is like, I'm thinking, 94 or something like that. Somewhere around that time they were sending reports every week to the insurance carrier that was compensating for these gym memberships. They met with the insurance company to talk to them about the program and how they were perceiving the program, and when they came in to meet with the insurance carrier, all the boxes that they had sent them with reports had been stacked and never opened. They were not interested at all in actually who was using the gym.
Speaker 1:Their entire philosophy was that if they were offering discounts for gym membership, they would attract a population who was more active, and that population would then be lower utilizers of healthcare services, and I just thought that was really fascinating that, you know, it was just all about knowing that people who would care about having access to a gym were lower utilizers of their other services, and I think that's one thing that when you talk about investment and one thing for me for sure is if someone comes to Christian Coach and makes that investment in themselves, I heavily believe that's going to pay off for the rest of their life. I'm sure that's something that you believe and something that you've seen.
Speaker 3:Yeah, definitely, when they invest into their health here, a lot of them are feeling better, moving better, pain is down, their labs are improving. They see those benefits and I do think that I'm very grateful for the shift that's happening over social media right now, especially towards older women and really trying to explain to them how important muscle is, because that is probably one of the largest populations that we see here is. They're coming in here because they're like, hey, I'm hearing from so-and-so that I need to get stronger because that's going to help me live longer, and so that is helping us get some of that initial buy-in that we need to then get them feeling like, okay, I need to seek this out and they're finding us and it's really great for, at least for me, I'm grateful to see that and see that shift in society and hopefully that continues to trickle through all populations, all ages.
Speaker 1:On the podcast I interviewed someone from the Behavior Change for Good Initiative at University of Pennsylvania. They're focused on how can they understand behavior change. Can they understand you know behavior change? I'm wondering, as practitioners, do you feel like we know how to get people motivated? Do you feel like basically somebody has to come in motivated or it's not going to work? Do you feel like there's a lot that we need to learn how to help people make that transition, to really be motivated to do the work that it takes to be healthy?
Speaker 3:Yeah, definitely. It's not something that we get taught. You know, motivational education it's really, really difficult. I think my first kind of awareness was that was I took a nutrition course that was called Precision Nutrition, and their whole first module was basically like teaching you how to make this attainable or change habit or create baby steps for these people so that they're stepping towards behavioral change. And I think that was a big shift for me as a physician too, because a lot of times in when I was initially trained, it'd be like, hey, you need to exercise more 150 minutes per week, like check that box, and you're good.
Speaker 3:That is so hard for someone to break down for themselves. What does that mean? Like, how do I spread that out through the week? Like, what should every day look like? And a lot of people end up doing the same exact thing, you know, multiple days a week for a couple months and then they drop off, right. So it's like understanding that.
Speaker 3:Like one, my guidance can't be too general. And two, it has to be very specific. And three, depending on the person, how motivated they are is kind of how I dictate how many times I need to check in with them, like if this is a super motivated person. It may be once every three months hey, let's just check in and see how you're doing. But other people it may be like, hey, I need to see you every two weeks because I know you're going to run into roadblocks, and it creates a way for them to have somebody holding them accountable, right? They don't want to come to their follow up appointment and tell me they didn't do anything they were supposed to do, so it helps get them to buy in.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, you know, that's something I really appreciated about my naturopathic medical school was we actually had a rotation with as counseling, so we learned motivational interviewing, different basics of, you know, cognitive behavioral therapy, because that is so integral to the work that you do with a patient. If there needs to be a referral to a trained therapist, yes, we send that. But I think part of what we can do in a longer appointment is really get to the root of why somebody is in the spot that they're in. You know everybody has different motivations, everybody has different traumas, everybody has different things that they're protecting themselves from or they're.
Speaker 2:You know there's, there's so much there to unpack and luckily we we have the time to be able to sometimes get to that root right. We call it kind of the we're trying to find the root cause of whatever it is and so really trying to give people the tools to one discover that and then that helps dictate treatment plans. Right, it's to kind of figure out that, like you said, that determines kind of the dose, the frequency, if you maybe need to address something else before you address the other, and I just think that's a little bit lost, that actual kind of therapeutic kind of discussion, when somebody is coming in with a presenting complaint.
Speaker 1:You talked about treatment plans and what does the treatment team look like? What are the different components there and different professions that you guys have on board?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So right now we have myself and Dr Hopkins as the physicians. Like she said, we brought on a physical therapy who's just been a huge advance to the clinic, I think, especially with all of the regenerative injection treatments that I do and the chronic pain that we're dealing with Myself and the PT. We both came from the military where sports medicine was huge Like that was 90% of the complaints that we were seeing, and so just the experience that came with that has and bringing that into the general population, I think it's there's a huge gap between what people think rehab or recovering from an injury should be and what it actually is when they come in here.
Speaker 3:It's a stark contrast and most people are very, very surprised by the treatment they get here. The other component that we have that when we started we definitely had no intention of starting was the actual fitness classes Because, like I said, it was really really difficult to help people realize what they should do to stay fit and healthy and, you know, making sure they get the right dose of zone two training, the right dose of strength training, the right dose of tempo and high intensity and that bred. Well, maybe we should start our own classes where we can create the programming that allows, like gives people a place where they can just come in and they're going to follow our classes and they're going to get healthier.
Speaker 2:Like she said, her and I, Dr Marlisa Overton, who's the physical therapist, and then a set of coaches who we work really closely with, which I think is part of the whole physician coach kind of mission here is really bridging that gap. You know, we find a coach in the gym is so amazing to somebody's health that they should be working with the doctor to kind of bridge that gap and get the best kind of result for the patient. So our coaches here are awesome and often involved in a lot of the things that we're doing to kind of create like a bit of an integrative scenario.
Speaker 1:I would prefer to just bicycle.
Speaker 1:Unfortunately, I got reached out to by a lot of people that have convinced me that I need to do upper body workouts as well.
Speaker 1:You know, it got to the point where okay, I can't deny that, you know. So I reached a goal this year of doing 25 weeks in a row of two days a week of upper body training, you know, and I wasn't working with a coach and it wasn't even optimized, but it was. It was more about the habit, it was more about training my body to one, except that we were doing this, but as a result, except that we were doing this, but as a result, you know, I'm 62 years old and, as a result, I saw this reshaping of my body structure, you know, and it was fantastic. It was like so encouraging and I felt a real improvement in my ability to function. I'm thinking, if I'm 62 and I'm on the bike a lot, and yet I still saw such improvement by doing this upper body work, I'm thinking that most sedentary people are going to experience that kind of difference if they commit to some consistent program.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think that really, the more sedentary you are, the greater the effect will be with consistency and it's an exponential growth, right, if I can just get someone in here to work out a couple of days a week.
Speaker 3:Even if everything is modified because they're that unfit, they're gonna see massive gains because they have so much more potential and it's almost easier or more rewarding to work with that group of people because they see all those benefits so fast and they feel so great. It's almost harder, in my opinion, to work with more elite athletes who are trying to get that last one or two percent of improvement. It's like really has to be dialed in very scientific, like you know everything, every part of their life is controlled. It's so much more difficult, I think, when you're on the higher end to see those improvements and easier to say, well, what am I doing this for? But yeah, to you know, to what you experienced. I think that's very, very common to what you experienced. I think that's very, very common and I think if people could just stay in long enough to start to see the benefit, they would grab onto it and want to continue doing it.
Speaker 2:Tom, I just have to commend you. I've known you for 45 minutes now and you are just such a cool dude. You have kind of are just preaching our mission out there without even knowing it. You're setting goals for yourself, you're kind of initiating yourself, you're into movement and learning more and just thank you for who you are, because I think everything that we're doing here and what you're doing is like how we're going to change kind of the system at large and the community at large is really kind of these smaller, grassroot type things and showing up and doing the work ourselves. So anyway, that's amazing and I just wanted to say thank you for being you.
Speaker 2:But also I wanted to highlight I think a lot of people almost feel like there's this plateau after 25 years old, right, like you can really only get these certain gains in your twenties and then that's, that's no longer the case and that is just so, so wrong. As you experienced it as we see all the time. You know there could be some barriers, but as you kind of get somebody's nutrition, movement, whatever injuries may be inhibiting them, their hormones in check, like whatever it may be, there's just so much room for gains in whatever that may be upper body strength, cardiovascular, whatever that may be, for any age, really any age.
Speaker 1:I think that's probably the most important message of cycling over 60 is that you can get stronger later on in life. I was riding Sunday with a woman who started cycling when she was 72. And she talked about the gains that she made at 72,. You know where she was climbing these hills and she lives in Tacoma and she was climbing these hills, you know, after I don't know. You know some time on the bike, but all of a sudden she's strong enough now, her legs are strong enough now that she can climb up these hills, that she just could never imagine climbing the hills, and so I think it's such an important message and I needed to learn it myself. You know I thought it was too late. So, like when I was 50, I thought it's too late for me to do Seattle to Portland, and it's been really valuable to have that experience. That it's not.
Speaker 1:I do have a couple of conditions there at the core of my health status, and you talked earlier about metabolic functioning. One is that it seems really obvious that my muscles are insulin resistant. I would love to be able to do some kind of test that really looked at that, and I wish we fully understood what happens with insulin resistance and like the role of things like glute for transport and all that stuff. But I think it's really obvious that my muscles are insulin resistant glucose tolerance and insulin response test and that seems to indicate that my pancreas is not pumping out as much insulin as optimal or even good. But these conditions aren't rare in America. I'm wondering, from the perspective of functional medicine, how does that get thought of? Is that a fair question to ask or is it just too complex to answer that?
Speaker 3:No, I think it's not too complex. It is something that we're commonly taking a look at and trying to understand better. We know now and I say we, but really in functional medicine and naturopathic medicine it is understood that, like insulin is the primary indicator even before prediabetes or diabetes ever show up. The other thing that we understand is the muscle is the first organ to break down. When we talk about insulin resistance, traditionally people expect it to be the liver, and then you know larger complications like the land, the eyesight and the kidneys. But if we can catch it when it's starting in the muscle, before it has even made it to the liver, like we are going to get way farther ahead. Reversing it becomes difficult because you're trying to reteach the muscles how to respond to insulin and, like you mentioned, the GLUT4 pathway is a way around that.
Speaker 3:So there's some things that we can use in functional medicine as well as in conventional medicine that have allowed us to start to reverse that process, as long as we can catch it before the pancreas has bottomed out. And even some of those signs will show up on a metabolic test. On a VO2 max test, I can see when someone is not processing glucose or fat well and, more specifically, it shows up on a lactate test. So there was a really great paper. I don't know if you know Anigo San Milan. He is a scientist who has also trained a Tour de France winner and mainly in light cancer research. But he did this amazing paper where he compared a professional cyclist kind of an amateur cyclist and a person with metabolic disease, showing their lactate curves, and how stark that difference was for the person in metabolic disease and how you can kind of teach their body how to recover from that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't know, tom, how much you've heard about lactate, but we love talking about it here and it's something that I wasn't really taught much in medical school. I think at that point I was taught that lactate was what caused your muscles to be sore. Is that what they used to say? Yeah, the lactic acid, yeah, but lactate is a fuel and lactate also gives us a lot of information about the metabolic system. And on the VO2 max test that we do or the graded exercise test that we do, traditionally, if you get that anywhere, they're really only doing kind of the breath analysis, where you're looking at the exchange of oxygen and CO2 and you're kind of making inferences based on carbohydrate or fat utilization, crossover points, all that stuff. But what we do here is we actually pair it with a blood lactate test throughout the test and that just gives us like an additional, really interesting insight into somebody's muscle physiology, exercise kind of physiology itself. So I really, really love the topic of lactate.
Speaker 1:Well, so I'm going to come in and see you guys and I like knew that the moment that I rode by your place.
Speaker 1:You know this is just a formality to start the process, but I'm going to come in and see you, and you know, for a couple reasons. One you told me I'm a cool dude and you guys, I think, are probably the coolest physicians in the state of Washington, maybe nationally. So that felt good. But the other thing is that I just I've not seen like this practice concept anywhere, and maybe it's just because I've not been around to see it. But but it's like exactly in line with the way that I think about what I'm doing, about my health, I'm really interested in coming in and I'm really interested to be able to communicate that process and everything with listeners. And I'm just going to remind listeners that my body's unique, the things I'm dealing with is unique. So, as I'm reporting on what I'm doing, that doesn't mean it's advice for what you did you should do, yeah, so I want to come in and get the process started and everything. How does that work? What are the? What are the steps look like to when you start? When?
Speaker 3:you bring a new patient in. Yeah, kind of like we started in the beginning. Like medicine is individualized, so there is no linear path that we follow here. It's everybody's going to come in at a certain point in their health, whether you know. For me, a lot of times it's chronic pain bringing people in to see me or something going on with their labs, or just wanting performance. So, depending on what they are very much interested in that will start. So it may start with a VO2 max test. It may start with hey, we need to do a full lab panel and see what's actually going on. Or it may start with I can't do anything until my chronic pain is gone. So let's start there right. So it's very much individualized to the person what brings them in and, depending on how their health is going, we may shift into the other things that we provide here to eventually get them to that state where they feel healthy again and feel like they have their life back heard that her PRP has really great results and they schedule because they have knee issues.
Speaker 2:So they come in, they get their PRP, they kind of realize what we're doing here and they're like, hey, now that I can move again and I'm healed, I'd love to start exercising. So then maybe they go to our fitness classes now that they can move. Or we have some people call and say I don't know, my cholesterol is out of whack, I really need some help with that. They come in we maybe do more of like a lab analysis. That then maybe leads to something else. So maybe you're not moving because you have an injury.
Speaker 2:And that's when you know Audrey would potentially do a more sportsman appointment, really wants the VO2 max test and we realize there's maybe some metabolic dysfunction and then that turns into a different appointment. So really it's. You know, we try to guide people on kind of where to start. But that can often kind of move through a lot of pieces here as it as people kind of progress as one issue gets taken care of and then they can kind of focus on something else. So yeah, it is. It definitely isn't a nonlinear thing here, for sure.
Speaker 1:Well, it sounds wonderful and I look forward to it for sure. So you'll be seeing me there, you know, at some point in person. Let me finish with this question what is your hope for the future of healthcare in the US?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think my hope is that, like I said, when we I think when medicine first started, it very much was rooted in lifestyle intervention and my hope is that, with this shift that's happening, you know, people believing that exercise and nutrition can truly heal it. We're seeing and it may be just a bias to our clinic, but we're starting to see people who are believing that they want to come off of pharmaceuticals, they want to live a healthy lifestyle. They're looking for alternative medicine because they're so frustrated with the healthcare system. So my hope is that with enough of us, you know, clinicians who have the education needed to push that and be able to provide that, and with enough of these like really great podcasters out there who are also spreading that mission of exercise as medicine, movement as medicine, muscle as medicine, that with those two things together we can hopefully change the way that we approach medicine. That's my hope. It would probably be a very long time from now.
Speaker 2:I think that my hope would be getting people to realize that they are their greatest partner in their kitchen, are right in their home, are right in their community, so more and more people understanding that. I think is just would be so, so incredible to kind of see that shift in healthcare. Audrey has this really horrible issue with curing so many people's pain that they don't book again, which is a great problem to have. But as a clinic, trying to get off the ground is also be kind of difficult. But we are very happy that people are starting to kind of learn these tools.
Speaker 2:I think doctor came from the Latin word docere, which is to teach. So you know, also shifting that as doctor as a role of really teaching their patients how to live. We don't get taught how to eat, how to nourish, how to rest, how to sleep and with all of these new things in our world electronics and whatever else may be there's just a lot of things that are working against us. But yeah, just really helping people realize how much they have in the process, how much you know they can do themselves.
Speaker 1:One thing I'm hearing that you say is something that I think is really obvious, but there's just not, again, a system that really promotes it, and that's like we're kind of used to. You got a problem, you take a medication, the problem goes away. You stop taking the medication, or you know you have an innovation intervention, you have a surgery, whatever medication. Or you know you have an innovation intervention, you have a surgery, whatever. And it's like this mindset of you do something and then you stop, but to have that shift where it's like no, it's a process, and you get into this process and continue that process, yeah, that's just that change alone, I think would be awesome. This has been so awesome. It's exactly what I was hoping it would be. You guys are awesome and I appreciate so much for you to take the time I know you've got a busy clinic going there and to take the time to get on and talk to me so I can share that with the listeners. Thank you so much for doing that.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having us. Thank you for having us and just your mission. Like I said, thank you so much for having this podcast and then also living the life that you're living, which I know kind of rubs off on all of your communities, so it's great to see.
Speaker 1:Well, that's awesome to say, so I will talk to you again sometime, for sure.
Speaker 2:We'll see you around.
Speaker 1:Yeah, all right, bye now. I don't know how many other clinics there are like Physician Coach, but I do believe there needs to be many, many more. At the core of what they do is creating an individualized program tailored to support each person's needs. That is exactly what I'm looking for, and the fact that they are looking for comprehensive solutions with exercise at the heart of it that gives me a lot of confidence in their approach. I look forward to sharing more information about my journey as I engage more with Physician Coach. I'm very excited to see the results. I'm also excited because I think my interaction with physician coach could open up some great topics to explore in the podcast.
Speaker 1:The concept of functional medicine is fascinating to me, and I'm intrigued by the thought that Dr Falcone and Dr Hopkins could be steering me to experts that can speak more about what functional medicine offers for those of us who want to remain active later in life. During the conversation, I mentioned the episode on behavior change for good. That was an interview with Sean Ellis, phd, from the Behavior Change for Good Initiative at the University of Pennsylvania. The episode was on March 21st 2024. I hope you all are experiencing the awesome effects of cycling. Maybe, like me, the bike is a way to improve, or maybe you don't need much improvement and your riding is about maintaining good health. Either way, I hope your rides are filled with joy, and remember age is just a gear change.
