How to Reverse Disease Naturally: What 100,000 Patients Taught Dr Aaron Hartman, MD

What if everything you've been told about health is wrong?

In this episode of The True Form Podcast, I sit down with Dr Aaron Hartman, a triple board-certified MD who's helped over 100,000 patients reverse diseases most doctors say are "incurable."

From saving his blind, cerebral palsy daughter to uncovering the blind spots in modern medicine, Dr Hartman reveals what really drives chronic illness—and how to fix it.

What We Cover:
• Why 80% of heart disease and 70% of cancer come down to lifestyle
• The truth about testosterone (and why most doctors get it wrong)
• How your mouth seeds your gut with 5 TRILLION bacteria daily
• Why fasting might make you feel worse (and what that means)
• The basics everyone skips: sleep, stress, and metabolic flexibility
• Medical gaslighting: when to trust your gut over test results

Dr Aaron Hartman is a functional medicine physician specialising in complex, "untreatable" cases. He's the author of UnCurable and founder of Richmond Integrative & Functional Medicine.

CONNECT WITH DR. HARTMAN:
www.AaronHartmanMD.com 

Transcript

Dr. Aaron Hartman 0:00

The impetus was my daughter Anna. My wife and I adopted her. Her birth mother had done crystal meth throughout the entire pregnancy. And she had a stroke before she was born. She was born blind. Just the expectation was we just would know what to do with her. And so one of the first things was that she had failure to thrive. But the system didn't expect much from her. The expect system basically expected her to be a kid crunched over in a wheelchair in a corner sometime, somewhere in her future life. That was as good as it got from them. And so we said no to that. Instead of having people come to me who had chronic fatigue and fibro and Lyme and mold-related illnesses and post-concussive syndrome and brain, all these weird things that there's no really good category to put them into. And people started having really good results and getting better. I mean, the basics, you know, I look at blue zone. I'm a simple guy. I keep that, I try to keep things simple, but they all eat real food. And the food they eat is vastly different, right? Environments are clean. The physical activity is a part of their lifestyle, like being physically active and moving. That we now know that sitting is a new smoking rate. Um, the angle I'll look at is listen, listen to your body, trust your body, trust your gut. If you feel like something's off, you're not thinking quite as clearly, you're having gut issues, um, you're sleeping poorly, you've got weird aches and pains, whatever the symptoms are. Like trust yourself, trust your gut. If you feel like something's off, don't let someone just because they have a bunch of certifications in the wall tell you it's all in your head, there's nothing wrong with you. Um fasting is nuanced. It's the new superfood.

Jack Graham 1:15

What's up, everybody? Welcome back to the True Form podcast. Before we dive into today's episode, I just want to thank the legends at Lumiflex for sponsoring today's episode. I'm actually blown away how this little red light therapy device is dramatically improving my health, recovery, vitality. Later on in the episode, I'll tell you how I've been using it and why you should think about getting one yourself. But first, we'll dive into today's conversation to help us, you and me, find our true form. Let's rock and roll. Let's let's rock and roll. Aaron, thanks for coming on the podcast. It's great to be here. I appreciate your time and coming on. I I I've been looking forward to this conversation. Unfortunately, we got a little bit of a mix-up and we had to reschedule. So it's been a long time coming. So I'm excited to dive into it. I want to start with what gets you excited to wake up and do the things you're doing? We'll we'll obviously dive into your story and what you're doing at the moment, but what gets you what drives you? You wake up, what do you think of, and what drives you to get through the day?

Dr. Aaron Hartman 2:22

No, it's you know, I've I've been asked that question a lot. I don't have like an emotional drive. I'm very duty-driven. It's very much that these are the things to whom much is given, much is required, kind of sort of thing. And so I've got these talent skills, things are given to me, and there's an expectation. I do enjoy learning new things. I enjoy doing hard things. I enjoy, you know, difficult cases, you know, we'll probably talk about later on. One part of my morning routine, I get up, you know, read my Bible for a little bit, and then I you know, we'll study like whatever I'm I'm just finished actually a functional dentistry certification course, right? So learning how the mouth connects with everything else in the body. And so I'll just take these deep dives, and as I'm going through stuff, uh patients, you know, pictures will pop in my head and I'll be like, ooh, and send them a note, like, hey, da-da-da. So I part of like the drive is to well, part of the drive also as well, which is interesting, is I have a mantra that I say when I drive into work every day, which is to see what can't be seen, to hear it can't be heard, and diagnose when it can't be diagnosed. And it routinely happens. So someone will come to the clinic, they came from like I'm the 15th doctor they've seen, and and I'll literally read something a week or two before that applies to them. And like when that happens enough, all of a sudden there's this like I don't know if you've got like an angst like yet. You don't go to the gym, like you get in the habit of going to the gym, right? Like, and or you get in a habit of doing whatever it is, and then you then you miss it for a week, and all of a sudden there's this angst like I haven't gone to the gym in a week, or I haven't done this for a week. And for me, there's this this angst, like if I stop learning, stop reading, stop doing new things, I get this angst like I'm like, what if? Like, what am I missing? And part of that is just knowing that people are coming to me for for a particular reason, and it's because the last five, six, seven doctors couldn't help them. And so, like, if I don't keep up that skill set, keep learning new things, there may be a point in time at which someone comes expecting something from me, and I can't, like, I won't be able to provide that to them. And it's, you know, it's just like feed-forward cycle. It's kind of once you get doing cool things and you and you see someone have a really good result, all of a sudden it kind of like, ooh, can I do that again? Ooh, can I do that again? And it almost like feeds itself.

Jack Graham 4:22

Yeah, I love that. So let's dive into your history. Where did it all start? Like you said, people come to see you now, so what are you doing now and how'd you get there?

Dr. Aaron Hartman 4:32

Well, when I am now, um, I am a um triple board certified medical doctor. Um, and my practice has evolved over the last 15 years. And the impetus was my daughter Anna. My wife and I adopted her. My wife is an occupational therapist who specialized with kids with special needs, and Anna was one of her patients. And Anna actually, um, her birth mother had done crystal meth throughout the entire pregnancy. So she had a stroke before she was born. She was born blind, just she was a mess, basically. And so when we got her to our home, the expectation was we just would know what to do with her. And so one of the first things was that she had failure to thrive, which is she was just really, really small. So we had to feed her. So we were doing the best we could. I thought she was doing good, and then she did the follow-up with the GI doctor. And the GI doctor was like, she's still failing to thrive. Let's put a feeding tube in her, pour formula in the belly to put meat on her bones, regardless of whether like that affects the ability to talk, because chewing and swallowing is important for speech development, or it affects the ability to crawl and walk because having a tube hanging out, I mean, how do you learn to crawl when you have this plastic thing hanging on your belly? But the system didn't expect much from her. The system basically expected her to be a kid crunched over in a wheelchair in a corner sometime, somewhere in her future life. That was as good as it got from them. And so we said no to that. And when we said no, we got reported child protective services from medical neglect. Had to work through that. So that was an interesting kind of like aha moment. Like the system doesn't like it when you say no. But yeah, I know. But six months later, my wife found a growth chart for kids with cerebral palsy, which the specialist had no idea this growth chart existed. And in that growth chart, my daughter was in the middle. She was normal for a kid with CP. And so, like that second aha moment was the experts don't know. And so the seeds that were planted were one, the system doesn't like it when you say no, and two, the experts don't know. And so, as a medical doctor, um, I all of a sudden I'm like, who's gonna figure this out for my new daughter? Well, it's I'm the dad, it's my responsibility. So all of a sudden, like I had this weight, like I have to start studying, have to start again before o'clock in the morning, pulling articles, following anybody who talked about any kind of neurological issues in kids, and started developing data points, learning things, getting off the beaten path. And like those seeds that I planted early on eventually started changing my daughter's trajectory. She started doing things she wasn't supposed to do, like talk and see and write. And now she's giving me a turn 20, and she's supposed to be moving out of the home here in the next month or so. So she's my first kid to move out of the house, actually. But like to have that pathway, and then as a medical doctor, starting to be like with patients coming in, oh, you've had chronic fatigue and fibro, which is a psychiatric issue back you know, 15 years ago. That was we were told it was just people with mental health issues, and me to think, I heard about this thing called yeast overgrowth syndrome. Let me give you some diflucan and see what happens. And then all of a sudden, this patient, I actually write about this one in a book, their chronic fatigue disappears for like a month or two. And started having success with patients randomly, and then just kept on evolving and eventually put up a shingle. Hey, let me see if people will come to me just for this kind of new medicine. And so having people come to me who had chronic fatigue and fibro and Lyme and mold-related illnesses and post-concussive syndrome and brain, all these weird things that there's no really good category to put them into. And people started having really good results and getting better. I had one guy who um he had head and neck cancer and started and got chemotherapy for and developed horrible nerve damage, neuropathy, which is a common side effect of chemo. Came to me, we did some things with him, did an organic acid test on him, addressed some nutritional issues. I remember seeing him back six months later, and I'm like, oh yeah, but how's your pain doing? He's like, Oh, I forgot. I guess I did have that. It's gone now. And so you see enough of those, and after a while, you're like, huh, maybe I should start doing more of this and less of that, right? And so my practice just evolved. And so now that's all I do is these complicated cases of people that have been to multiple doctors, multiple specialists, and told you there's nothing wrong with them. That's all in their head, they can't be helped, they come to see me, and then we figure out what we can do for them.

Jack Graham 8:33

We'll dive into what people should be doing for their overall health, wellness, and longevity. But let's go back. So, what it was about 20 years ago when you started transitioning into that different way of thinking, and I guess pushing back against the medical industry. What was that like? I I I asked this question from a lens of a lot of people will like hold on to who they like, who they like doctors are trained in a certain way, this is how we do it. To let go of that and start transitioning into something else is very hard. And I find a lot of people will hold on to their identity, even though that there's a better way out there and they won't accept change. So, how was it going through that? And is there any lessons that you can pass on to people that uh can see a different way of doing things but aren't ready to sort of move into it yet?

Dr. Aaron Hartman 9:24

I mean, I don't, you know, I you hear all these stories about people who tried this and the you know, they got their license pulled, or this happened to them, or that happened to them. Um, you know, my I was already practicing a practicing physician and a successful practice, working in the hospital. I'd see our special, you know, admitting patients to the ICU, admitting them through the ER, um, interacting with the specialists in a busy clinic, you know, with um four or five other doctors, grew the clinic up to ultimately our clinic was seeing over 50,000 patients a year coming through the clinic. So was able to build up the successful practice. And so I was already kind of a known entity in the local community as a smart young physician. And so as I started doing these newer things, I just kind of got this reputation of some Hartman. He, he'll, they're kind of difficult, he'll take care of them. And so for me, it was an evolution over a long period of time that got sped up by my daughter, you know, by her story, and then by and by collecting more of these complicated cases. And I also still, in the meantime, I also started a clinical research company. I think the thing for me was being good at your primary thing and and developing a patient base of people who knew your character, know the kind of person you are. And then all of a sudden when you start doing these new things, they're not going to think, you know, I'm not the weird traveling circus guy who just showed up one day and says, Hey, you know, I got these magic, magic beans that fix everything. I was a known entity. And so my clinical experience wasn't a lot of pushback in our local community because people already kind of knew who I was. And now, um, Richmond's a city of about 1.3 million people. I'll get referrals routinely from around the city, other specialists. You know, I had a urologist last week want to talk with me about one of his patients with um prostate cancer because there are things we can do to actually slow the progression and actually abate it um and slow growing cancers. And so I've kind of got the reputation, this reputation. But the thing was, I think the the take-home point was I I was really good at my basic thing before I started doing new things. I just didn't take the the shiny new object and go, hey, you functional medicine or whatever it is. Let me, peptides, stem cells, exosomes. I think that's where people get into the get off the beaten path because they don't really get good at the basics. They jump over that and go into the fancy, shiny objects. And then all of a sudden, yeah, that can sound kind of like you're not, you don't quite know what you're talking about because you don't even know the basics. So, how do you know this fancy stuff? If you know about diabetes or heart disease or reversing calcium scores or, you know, treating cancers of metabolic disease. How do you how do you know this when you can't even do like the basic stuff? And so I feel like that's you know, where people get in trouble is they kind of jump over prof becoming a master at the at the foundational stuff and they jump right to the cool stuff, which all of a sudden you're not gonna be good at the cool stuff if you haven't mastered the basics.

Jack Graham 12:01

Yeah, I was having that conversation the other day where with another guest, and it's like everybody wants to win the marathon but the first hundred meters, and they sprint to the to the hundred meters, and then they can't finish the race because they've spent their energy. And it's the same with the fitness industry. I'm a personal trainer and I've been doing this long enough now. You know, you know the basics, you know what works. There's certain things that just people just have to do to get stronger or fitter, but you always see it. New coaches come along and they jump on the new trend, and a couple of months later you don't see them anymore because they've burned through all their clients and it just doesn't work.

Dr. Aaron Hartman 12:38

I mean, it's you know, uh, you know, professional athletes, professional soccer players perfect the basics, passing basic stuff. You know, yeah, they're the cool people who do like, you know, bicycle kicks and stuff like that, but you know, it's like the basics. And so I think in any any field, people want to do the cool fancy stuff, the trending stuff, right? The things that you know trend on social media or the newest fat fad. And what happens, they go from they're like waves tossed to and fro by the sea, by the wind, right? And because they don't have a firm foundation in the foundation of me for medicine, the basic science, basic medicine, all of a sudden they don't know like the nuances of a carnivore or a keto, a vegan diet. And it's really funny, you know. My joke is like the newest keto vego, the keto vegan carnivore diet. I mean, like it's like it's whatever's trending, and you don't know. Well, there's places in the world they do this, there's places in the world they do that. And um, without this a big good foundation in nutritional medicine, environmental medicine, all this kind of stuff, it's people are literally going to be pushed around by whatever the trend, the good the current trend is.

Jack Graham 13:40

Well, let's dive into that. You've done over a hundred thousand clinical encounters. What are the basics that people should be doing to live a long, healthy life?

Dr. Aaron Hartman 13:51

I mean, the basics, you know, I look at blue zones. I'm a I'm a you know, I'm a simple guy. I keep that try to keep things simple. You know, I know it sounds silly to say that month have three board certifications. You know, 80% of heart disease and 70% of most cancer can be attributed to diet lifestyle alone. If you look at blue zones, people places that people live to be 100 more than anywhere else in the world, um, Nicoya, Costa Rica, Sardinia, Italy, Limolinda, California, Kanawa, Japan, and then um um like Okanois, uh Greek island off of Greece. Like they don't have access to fancy hospitals. They don't have they you know, they're actually very rural environments, minus Lumalinda, California, but they all eat real food, and the food they eat is vastly different, right? Environments are clean, the physical activity is a part of their lifestyle, like being physically active and moving. We now know that you know um sitting is a new smoking rate. If you if you're not physically active, um that increases your risk for all cause mortality like 80% and developing diabetes like 90% just from sitting around, right? Sitting is horrible. Movement is the new super drug, right? And they have a sense of purpose and meaning. They have close family connections, close social connections. Those are the foundations for longevity, you know? And so, yes, there's stem cells, exosomes, peptides, you know, BPC 157, you know, whatever the coolest fancy thing is, but those are supposed to be on top of perfecting the basics. And I kind of figured that out accidentally with my daughter because we focused first on food with her, activity and movement, and added all these other cool things later on. And that's one of the that's I feel like that's the foundation for why she, you know, a kid with cereal palsy, why she's beaten every odd, you know, at 20, she's not had surgery in her life, um, had antibiotics once since we've had her. Like that's these are things that are unheard of for kids with cereal palsy.

Jack Graham 15:34

We'll get back to today's episode shortly. But first, are you somebody that works out regularly, sleeps the right amount, eats all the healthy food, but you still feel like you're not getting the results you deserve? It's not some crazy workout routine, fancy new supplement or restrictive diet that is missing in your life. The thing that is missing that will help you find your true form and finally get those results that you deserve is me. Yes, me. I've been a personal trainer for about 15 years now, coming up on 300 podcast episodes where I've interviewed athletes, coaches, doctors, authors, high performers, and a bunch of other people, which means I know what we need to work on to find your true form and finally get those results you deserve. One of the biggest things I've realized over the last 15 years and 300 podcast episodes is that there's not one thing that is gonna help you get those results. Finding your true form is very individualized. And when we work together, we work on your mind, body, and your identity, which means you're gonna follow a workout program that I design around your goals, your abilities, and your lifestyle. We're gonna make sure that you're eating all the right foods and not the foods that you see on social media that you think you should be eating. We find out what works for you, and obviously you're gonna be following all those good sleeping habits, but we're also gonna work on your identity, and the identity is a big part that a lot of people are missing and is why they feel like they're not getting the results they deserve. So if you are somebody that wants to finally get those results you deserve and start living a life that is true to you, hit the link in the description. I would love to work with you and help you get there. Let's get back to the episode. So I guess it's that coming down to trying to win that race in the first hundred meters again. Everybody is jumping to the peptides or insert whatever here to try and get more. So, what's the conversation look like when you have a patient like that who wants to jump, if you get patients like that, who wants to jump straight into the finish line without doing all that hard work?

Dr. Aaron Hartman 17:33

You know, trying to meet people where they're at. The reality is if you don't give people what they want, you can't give them what they need. And so a lot of times people come to me, like, I want testosterone because my T's low. I'm like, well, yeah, your T's a little low, but you also have sleep apnea and you have metabolic syndromes. If we don't address those, then T's going to work for six months and then it's not gonna work anymore. So I will use um education, I'll use my, you know, just developing relationship to leverage it. It's almost like, you know, I cut my teeth with this back in the day with smoking. You know, when I was in the military, we'd had a smoking cessation clinic. And I learned early on, like the average patient, I would see we'd have to talk to them seven times before they and recommend them to quit smoking before they even tried once, right? And then people f fail multiple times. So it's like if you don't have that relationship with them that has longevity, you'll never get that smoker to even you'll never be there around for the first attempt or the second or third or the fourth until they have success, right? And so that's the way all this stuff is, is you have to develop the relationship so they know, like, and trust you. So when you say, you know, hey, you want your your teeth low, great, right? Let's give you a little testosterone, but but you ground your teeth at night, you've got some cracked teeth, um, you you have dental pain. I think you have sleep apnea. Let's get this tested and get this looked at. Oh, by the way, you have metabolic syndrome and your A1C's up a little bit. Okay, you know, low testosterone is a part of metabolic syndrome, so we have to start looking at other things, right? Then people will buy into that a little more if they if you have the relationship. So it's but you have to meet people where they're at, because what gets in the door many times is they want the the shiny objects, right? They want the really cool, fancy new thing. And so it's it's it's an art, it's a dance. You know, I'm not I'm not a paternalistic individual. I don't say I'm the doctor, you do what I say, that's not my style. And um, it does bite me sometimes. You know, sometimes people will go down these pathways and I kind of follow them down the wrong pathway. But throughout the whole time, we I do develop a relationship with the with patients, and I think that's where you get true change, and they know that you really I really want what's best for them, and they they know that they don't think I'm there trying to sell them something. I'm not trying to sell you supplements, I'm not trying to sell you peptides, I'm not trying to sell you anything. And um, when you give people the shiny objects they ask, they get to the point in time where they're kind of like, I think you're just selling me stuff because you kind of give me everything I want, right? So it's a give and take a little bit, but that's kind of like my personal style.

Jack Graham 19:56

So where would people I guess where I'm trying to figure out like people come in, they're sick, well they have something wrong and they don't understand why. Like what questions I'm all about curiosity. I I believe you like you need to be curious to you know your own health and figure it out as well. But obviously seeing somebody like yourself that is also curious, like you said, a big part of what drive you drives you is curiosity. So how what how should people think about their curiosity and their body? Because as as we're sort of alluding to, there's a lot of BS out there and it can be very attractive to just jump to the end. So I know it's a bit of a hard question to answer, but those people that do have something wrong, they've seen 15 other doctors before they get to you. How how should they be thinking about curiosity within their body?

Dr. Aaron Hartman 20:54

I mean, maybe I'm gonna Yeah, I'm gonna look at from a different angle, maybe. Um the angle I look at is listen listen to your body, trust your body, trust your gut. Because you know, if you feel like something's off, you're not thinking quite as clearly, you're having gut issues, um, you're sleeping poorly, you've got weird aches and pains, whatever the symptoms are, like trust yourself, trust your gut. If you feel like something's off, don't let someone just because they have a bunch of certifications on the wall tell you it's all in your head, there's nothing wrong with you. Now you might have a psychological issue, and then you definitely want to look into that, but most of the time people are getting medically gaslit. They're told nothing's wrong with them, it's all in their head. Um, there's these massive blind spots in our healthcare system. Like if something is outside of the normal specialty, the normal textbook learning, these become blind spots, you know, and long COVID's a great example. You know, we can talk about hormone hormone replacement therapy in women. We just literally said that's okay as of January of 2020. I'm sorry, November of 2025. So in the United States, it's been okay. The FDA removed the black box for like for six months, right? It might world be Do for decades, but the FDA just said it's okay. You know, fat there's another great example. The uh government reversed their um finance on fat. Fats now, fat's back in the United States. I mean, we said for over half a century fat's bad for you, right? And so there's massive blind spots. And so you have to realize that the experts don't always know, and you need to just trust your intuition, trust your gut. But I think that's also where where curiosity, maybe education, comes into play, because it's more than just a hunch. You need to educate, you need to fill it with information and knowledge. And as you do that, you will get answers, you'll find stuff. There are answers out there, you know. And and you know, one thing I tell people is if you feel like something's off, don't give up because probably something probably is off. Learn things, get more tests, find someone who'll come alongside you and walk with you, not someone who's gonna be like, okay, I'm specialist XYZ, uh, these are the five things I treat. You don't have those five things, there's nothing wrong with you. I'm like, how does that work? That's kind of how the specialty fields work. There's like five or six things a specialist do. And if what you deal is outside of that, then um there's nothing wrong with you. And in fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue, I'm not sure how Australia looks at it, but um, the UK calls it myalgic and cephalitis. And in the United States, there's still a significant number of physicians who still think it's a psychiatric issue. We now know it's a brain inflammatory condition. And 20 years ago, we told people, mainly women who suffer with this, that it was all in their head. And so that's a great example of how wrong we got something that even to this day it's still misunderstood.

Jack Graham 23:27

Yeah. It's yeah, people hold on to those beliefs for a long time, don't they? Until, I guess, like yourself, until something comes along that makes you be curious and finds the answers for yourself.

Dr. Aaron Hartman 23:41

Yeah, there's a saying that um um medicine advances one funeral at a time. And it kind of speaks to the fact that once you learn something, you tend not to change the way you think. And that's just herd mentality. It doesn't matter how smart you are, how bright you are, you know, we all have it to a certain degree. And the outliers are outliers for a reason because they think outside the box, right? And so, and that's you know, that's the the the the 20% of the 20% of the 20%, which is the top one percent. Those are the people who are way outside the box, you know, and so and unfortunately sometimes they're so outside the box that the the things they're realizing don't become standard of care for 20, 30, and sometimes 40 years, which is really interesting to think about that as well.

Jack Graham 24:21

You did touch on hormone replacement there for females. What what did you mean by that?

Dr. Aaron Hartman 24:27

Um hormone replacement. Well, um, but how much was I talking about females or males? Because I was in my mind thinking about males. But um well, go go males. Okay. Hormone, well, okay, okay, hormone replacement. So a great example is I see men who come in with low testosterone. And what's often overlooked it, well, there's if you have um there's primary and secondary. So primary, um, you know, one one type of hormone deficiency is your testicles stop making testosterone because they fail. Another one is your brain stops telling your testicles to make um to make testosterone, and they're totally different things. We and we overlook that. And so we say you have low T, here's your testosterone. But if you have low testosterone and you're overweight, you have metabolic syndrome, you have sleep apnea, chronic stress, you need to address those things if you want the testosterone to get better. Then there's athletes who can come in looking fit, you know, big, strong, and they have low testosterone. They can be overtraining. And their testosterone can be related to overtraining. It's now all of a sudden now the answer is not testosterone. It's like, look, you need to actually, you're overtraining, you need to work on you know, shorter training time. Maybe you need to start doing hyperbarics, maybe you start doing IVs or peptides or other things, or you know, doing lots of um nutritional, doing like organic acid testing and seeing where you're deficient, and then putting plugging those in so your body can actually recoup after you train, um, which is what professional, like you know, high-level professional athletes. I remember um reading about the Bulgarian weightlifting team. They'd work out for 40 minutes, take an hour off, 40 minutes, take an hour off. They weren't working out for eight hours a day. And many athletes, even somehow pro or college or even pro athletes, will overtrain. And you have to realize that that's their job. If you have a full-time job and you're all big and bulked up, you're probably overtraining because you have your job for eight hours a day and you're training. And a lot of those individuals actually will get an overtraining syndrome and develop low testosterone. So the question always is why is your testosterone low? Is it primary or secondary? So primary is like the testicle stop working secondary is the whole brain thing. If it's primary, then it's like, okay, was this a chemical exposure? Was it a trauma? You know, we're in the military, did you get chemical exposure? Blah, blah, blah. If it's secondary, it's like, okay, um, you know, why, you know, is this a pituitary tumor, blah, blah, blah, which are kind of rare, but it's usually related to some underlying inflammation, metabolic problem in the average population. And then an athlete, like, you know, weakened warriors or guys in their 40s and 50s that you know run marathons or whatever, they're usually overtraining.

Jack Graham 26:53

Stress is a big thing, like you said. Like people don't realize that exercise can just stress your body out as well.

Dr. Aaron Hartman 27:00

I mean, if you work out, this is what's crazy to think about. If you work out anywhere from and depend, obviously it depends on how hard you work out. But if you're working out for 15 minutes to 60 minutes or more a day, you're probably over-trained. Yeah, and so all of a sudden it's like, what are you doing to abate that? And if you're in that's where like one of the one of the things that people don't realize with cold plunges, you know, why co- why are cold plunges, why they become popular? You know, what I remember it was the Sochi Olympics, whenever that was, like a decade ago. You saw like they the stickers were skiing, they hop in the cold plunge. Oh, if you kill yourself and you stretch, you strain a bunch and tear a bunch of muscles down, that creates a lot of inflammation. But if you put ice on it, how do you you know her elbow, ice on it, right? If you put your whole body into it, you can block that whole inflammatory cascade from working out really, really hard, recoup, and then train again. And so they kind of figured that that actually actually can help their training. You know, that's probably one of the reasons why, you know, in a higher level athletics, they actually are doing that more because it actually allows it, it's a way, it's a biohack, a way to get to that over-training things, take a break, do your do your cold plunge, relax, do some meditation, some guided imagery, maybe some acupuncture massage, faster work, then you go back to training again, you know. But that's but you have to be that's like if that's your job. That's not the average person. That's that's it, that doing that's your job.

Jack Graham 28:18

I think that's what a lot of people don't realize, that that is their job. You can't just go and train eight hours a day after you've just worked your own job for eight hours. They're like, sleep's important. Is it the same for females? So like we just talked about how training, stress, not sleeping, food can in uh affect testosterone. Is it the same for females?

Dr. Aaron Hartman 28:42

Yeah, it's it's the same for females, and they're actually a little more sensitive to it because they're a woman's physiology is more is more nuanced. I mean, their physiology is such that their bodies are made to um to have foreign objects, you know, not just a foreign liver, not just a foreign kidney, not just a foreign brain, but a whole entire foreign person with different DNA live and grow inside their body without their body immunologically rejecting it. Like we've if we can figure out how this works, we can actually eliminate organ rejection from transplant, right? This is a really cool thing that the female body is actually wired to do that we don't quite understand it. And when you take that system and then you stress it, and and just it's it's interesting how one of the things when when young women overtrain, they've stopped cycling, they lose breast tissue, they lose fat in places that it's it's natural for a female who's fertile to have fat, like the hourglass kind of figure. And there's actually a metabolic um physique for women that you'll see where they don't have thigh muscle mass, they don't have buttocks muscle mass. And you can look at someone, and some in certain cultures are more prone to this physique. You can you can be slender, but you don't have you don't have certain muscle and fat in certain places, and you'll see it more in Indians and Asians. And we kind of call it skinny fat. That's it's it's like a metabolic quote-unquote obesity, and you check their A1C and they're pre-diabetic. And you can see a 20, 25-year-old female, attractive, slender, but they don't have that. You look at them and you kind of get developed the eye, like you don't look like you're you look at this the skinny fat and you do an A1C on them and a fasting sugar, and their sugar is like 120, and their A1C is, you know, you know, 6.1. You're like, whoa, you're pre-diabetic and you're like not overweight. So women, because of their physiology, are probably even a little more sensitive to this. And in and also because of their cycles, like the first part of your cycle, you can like, you know, during your estrogen dominant part versus your progesterone dominant part. It's like the follicular versus luteal phase. You can push it harder, you can lift heavier, you can fast, all that kind of stuff. You actually need more carbs, but you're also more sensitive to sugar fluctuations. That's not when you want to run your 20, your 20-mile week or whatever it is, right? You need to take that into account. Um, we've told women for you know decades, you're just the same as men, there's no difference in your physiology. You can do all the same thing that God does. And it's like we forgot the whole thing, like their body physiology is different, they are built different. And if you don't respect that, you can actually put women into premature ovarian failure. You can have them in the mid-30s when the hormones are whacked up and testosterone's low. It's it's amazing how many women I'm seeing now, like in the mid to late 30s, have low testosterone. Like you're like in the prime of your reproductive life, why is your testosterone undetectable? Like, oh, I'll smell libido and the losing muscle mass, and like it's just it's interesting. Well, it's more nuanced. And so the things I mentioned are even more important in the females, particularly females that are training, than it would be in a male.

Jack Graham 31:32

Can we go over a couple of trends to get your thoughts on? Sure. Just to these come up in my day-to-day work all the time because uh again, when you're in health and fitness, people obviously watch a lot of social media and they're like, I've seen this, so I'm gonna do this. And I'm like, well, hold on a second. Fasting. Can you talk about fasting and should the general public do it?

Dr. Aaron Hartman 31:58

Um fasting is nuanced, it's the new superfood. So, you know, fasting is the new superfood, which you know what do you mean by that? There's so many health benefits to fasting. Um, you know, the idea of getting into low-grade ketosis. When you fast, you're in your sleeping, for example, the um the lymphatics in your brain called the gliolymphax are actually removing more trash, more waste products from your brain. Um, fasting has a massive impact on mitochondrial um efficiency. If you're also throwing sugar down your mouth and you don't ever make your mitochondria stress, they won't function as well. So you can actually improve your energy efficiency. You know, your body's make made to work on three forms of energy um sugar, fat, and protein. And you can turn actually turn protein into sugar, and you can turn fat into um ketones. And so your body, it's like it's like you can take gas, you put gasoline, kerosene, and propane into the same car, right? Like that's where your body, or maybe electric or whatever, whatever three you like. And fasting actually stretches you across the whole spectrum of that. Okay, so it actually has a lot of health benefits. But one thing that happens when you're fasting is it actually ramps up your phase one detoxification. And so there's different types of detox phase one, phase two, and phase three. And um, phase um two detoxification requires amino acids, and then phase three usually happens in your um your gut. I won't go into detail with that. But what happens with the average American, I'm sure it's probably the same in Australia, we are we have such a toxic overload, we're so burdened with chemicals and things in the environment that when you wrap you, when you ramp up the phase two detox, you have a massive kind of die-off kind of detox kind of thing. And if you don't have adequate protein in your diet, then your body can't handle it. So all of a sudden, when people will do these, these you know, fast now, feel awful, feel terrible, you know, and you look at them like you have a you came into this with a protein-deficient diet, horrible diet, you're incredibly toxic, you know, like you need to work your way into this. And what I've found is the average American isn't healthy enough and metabolically flexible enough to fast, which is insane because we all fasted back in the day. We ran out, you know, there's this phrase, you know, pray for spring, right? Pray for rain. Why they why was that a saying? Because you ran out of food in the winter time and it's a drought, right? You literally go, come up, breeze, you know, we need food, right? And you would naturally fast seasonally, and then basically every ancient religion has fasting built into the the worship cycle. And we've gone to a place where we eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner, we snack and go eat something before we go to bed, and our bodies are so metabolically inflexible, full full of toxins, that's something as basic as fasting. A lot of people can't tolerate it. So is fasting great? It is. Do I do it? Absolutely. But it's a sad state of affairs where the average American is not healthy enough and not metabolically um flexible enough to actually go right into the fast. They need to work their way up to it, increase the protein nutrients. If your B vitamins are deficient, if your magnesium levels are efficient, which is the average person in America, you have any imbalance of your fatty acids, you actually might feel worse fasting. And so if you're someone who can't naturally fast, can't just like, you know, like I might do it when I do a fast day, I do like a 24-hour fast. Yeah, I get a little foggy in the afternoon, a little irritable, and you know, I come home from work, my kids, you know, I'm a little more irritated than usual with them, right? And all that kind of stuff. But I can do it, right? If you can't do it relatively easy, there's something else going on under the hood. So so when people say, Oh, I can't fast, I can't skip a meal, it's like, whoa, what do you mean you can't skip it? What do you mean you can't go without a day eating? You get angry, you get irritable, you're well, there's something else going on.

Jack Graham 35:32

Perfect. I love that. I'm gonna snip that and just send it off to a few clients for sure. Uh you touched on protein. Uh I see a lot like it goes back and forth on social media or in the news, on TV, protein and carbs. Some some experts are saying that there's too much protein and stop eating protein, but I'm sort of on the other end where I'd rather people eat a bit more protein because people are just over consuming carbohydrates without realizing it. Um, so where where how should people think about protein? It's essential, you need it.

Dr. Aaron Hartman 36:13

And the thing about protein that's interesting is as you get older your body recycles it less efficiently. So the average person um needs probably 200 200, you know, depending, you know, roughly one gram of protein per pound. So I weigh 180. So I need 180 to 200 grams of protein. Let me let me finish that. So don't before you start saying I don't know what I'm talking about, okay? Um, I remember Arnold Schwarzenegger, when he was in his prom, he was consuming about 250 grams a day of protein, right? He weighed about 240, right? Um, now he's a professional bodybuilder, I'm not a professional bodybuilder, but those are my needs, right? But the thing is, my body recycles it. So my body will take that 80 grams that I consume and recycle it three or four times. So my body's needs are pretty high, but because I recycle it over and over and over again, I don't actually have to consume that one gram per pound. I can consume, you know, one gram per kilogram, you know, which is you know 2.2 times less, right? And as you get old, but but as you get older, your body recycles stuff less better in general. You recycle creatine less well, you recycle cocu10, you recycle vitamin C less well. So all of a sudden, your nutrient needs as you age go up, um, particularly in women, not because you're more physically active as you get older, because you absorb it less well and you recycle it less well. And when you're younger, you can get by with eating less protein because you recycle it so well. So I think that's part of the conversation. And it all depends on where you're at on the spectrum. And then you throw in if you're a fit, if you're athlete, if you work out, then obviously your needs go up. Typically, a person is going to need at least probably one gram per kilogram of body weights. If you weigh like 70 kilograms, you'll need 70 grams. And that's like for just maintaining your body physiology. I think where people get stuck in this is they're looking at these studies and, like, you know, what's the protein source? Is this coming? Is this a plant-based protein? Is this an animal-based protein? What kind of animal? Is it a ruminator animal? Is it a chicken? Is it fish? And that's where people kind of get lost in the weeds, but the protein sources. And are you consuming a complete protein, right? But meat in general is nature's like B vitamin. When you eat meat, you're getting B vitamins, you're getting trace minerals, you're getting a lot of interesting things. Another part of the protein conversation is organ meat. In America, before 1950, if 30% of all meat consumption was organ meat, now no one eats organs anymore. And organs have more collagen in them. They have more of these trace minerals, rare earth minerals, and things like that. And then there's other parts like bone broth. You know, you need connective, you need collagen, trace minerals, rare earth minerals, these things that tend to get concentrated in collagen and connective tissue, which is part of the the craze with collagen right now. It's like we've had a you know 50 to 60 years of not eating anything with collagen and create a collagen-deficient, you know, country. And all of a sudden, like, oh, I felt so much better after my collagen peptides. It's like, you wouldn't if you were eating your bone broth and all that kind of stuff for the last 10 years. And you know, to this point, I don't know if you've heard of if you've heard of C-15. That sounds familiar. Okay, so um so about a third of Americans are C15 deficient. And C15 is an essential saturated fat. And dolphins, it's associated with early onset dementia. And actually, the C15 was actually discovered to be associated with dementia and dolphins. Some some veterinarians saw dolphins getting dementia early. Um, they realized, hey, they changed your diet, dementia went away. Come to find out they were C15 deficient. Let's check humans, and this isn't in America, and 30% of Americans are C15 deficient. Oh my gosh, and now it's a supplement, C15, and you can get it online, buy your C15 supplement. Now it's social media, blah, blah, blah, shiny thing, C15.

Jack Graham 39:52

Yeah.

Dr. Aaron Hartman 39:52

But the question is, is like, where does C15 come from? It comes from the fat and milk of ruminators. Okay. Well, we've removed all the fat, you know, low-fat milk, low-fat dairy, low-fat everything for 50, 60 years and induced this deficiency in our country. So is the answer the C15 supplement, or is the answer don't remove essential fats from our diet? And so I feel like part of these conversations of protein thing, you miss all these nuances, and some of these protein deficiencies are induced by the fact that we've been eating poor quality proteins as a culture for, at least in America, for maybe 50, 40, a long time.

Jack Graham 40:32

Yeah. I'd say Australia is very similar. And yeah, we follow uh I think we follow a lot of the trends that happen in America.

Dr. Aaron Hartman 40:40

But you have Veggie Mite there. We have some really good friends from Australia. Um, and um he introduced me to Veggie Mite a while ago, and I just don't quite get that. But um Most Australians don't get it either. Oh, they don't cycle some.

Jack Graham 40:54

I think it's like a joke. It's a joke for the rest of the world, yeah.

Dr. Aaron Hartman 40:57

A few people love it, but very few. Okay, he made it sound like this is like some amazing Australian thing. I'm like, oh my gosh. Like, what is this again? It's like the slight stuff on the slide, lime on the bottom from when they make beer. I'm like, whatever, whatever.

Jack Graham 41:11

Let's switch gears into your book. So you wrote the book because of Anna's experience? Correct. Yeah.

Dr. Aaron Hartman 41:19

How long ago was that? Um the book got published November of 2025. So it's been out maybe about five, five, six months at this stage.

Jack Graham 41:30

So what will people learn from the book? And since then, is there anything that you would have added in that you've learned?

Dr. Aaron Hartman 41:39

So that's a good question. Um basically the gist of the book is my daughter, you know, she's she's my most difficult case. Um, exposed to crystal meth her entire pregnancy, um, had a stroke before she was born, born functionally blind, um, in a drug comer for the first six months of her life. I could go on and on. Um and she's th thrived. You know, a typical kid with cereal palsy with her diagnosis has had 13 surgeries by the time they reach 20. It's really typical for kids with CP to have multiple pneumonias, multiple infections. She's had antibiotics once. Um, and even that the dental stuff, if you know anything about crystal meth exposure, people literally have their teeth follow their face. She's had no cavities. Okay. Like, you don't get these kind of out outcomes. Like, if she was a neurotypical kid, she would be my Olympic star athlete kind of thing. You know, she's just killed it. And um the point of the book is if she could do this, you can do it too. Like, no matter where you're at, like I've not I've worked with a lot of really sick people um with really crazy situations. And she has been the worst case I've worked with, and she's excelled. I've worked with other people as well. But the point of the book is like to hear her story, to hear, to hear it and realize you can do this too. No matter where you're at, you know how hard things are. Um there are answers, there are things out there that can be done. Don't ever give up, don't ever give up hope. And if you can't find the answers, you don't give up. You look for someone that can come alongside and work with you. So that's kind of the point of the book. And I give like stories of other patients um that I've worked with, um, give out a lot of free resources, free food sourcing guide, healthy building guide. A lot of people deal with mold issues, and so it's actually a guide based on the Harvard School of Public Health and their resource on like figuring out if your house is healthy or not. So we have a lot of free stuff in the book, but the the point of the book is hope and not giving up um ever on your yourself and your your or your or a loved one. Something that I would put in the book that I've that if I've thought since then. I try, you know, I wrote the book like 15 times. Like you write it and you rewrite it and you rewrite it, and it starts out like, you know, a hundred pages and blows up to 300 pages and comes down. And so um, yeah, I tried to put a lot of stuff in there, but then realized that you don't want to put too much because you don't want it to be overwhelming. So it depends on my mood. Like I did I did talk about lipid therapy a lot, which is actually using fat or different kinds of fat therapeutic, whether it's a mega. The reason I've sixes, using phospholipids, phosphatylcholine. I'm using things that clear out toxins in your brain like butyrate or TUTCA or your sodil. So I do talk about that a little bit, but I've gotten more in that recently just because I'm having more people with long COVID and neurological issues and um, you know, fatty liver is a really big thing right now. And it's amazing how well how much fatty liver is related to environmental toxins. And there's actually you know great research on in actually in Europe they'll use phosphylcholine IV to treat fatty liver disease, right? Not FDA approved in America, but it's a drug in Europe for use. So I'm doing that more of that in my clinic as well now. So I I might have given out some more air time in the book, but that's a strange question because it depends on what I'm currently. Actually, you know, right now I just finished my dental, my dentistry functional certification. That just kind of re-reminded me how ridiculously important oral health is. So I made it put a put a bigger emphasis on oral health and how like literally you swall between three and five trillion bacteria a day. So think about this for a second. Um, I'm gonna sell you, Jack, my most expensive fancy supplement. It's gonna cost you 100 bucks or whatever it's gonna cost you, and it's gonna be like 120 billion CFUs. And you'll be like, oh, I got the fancy Dr. Hartman, 120 billion. And then you hear, I swallow three to five trillion bacteria a day. And all of a sudden, like your oral hygiene, do your gums bleed? Do you have weird things on your teeth? Do you have um how do you build tartar quick? That's more important than the fanciest probiotic that I would recommend to you, right? So maybe I would put some more stuff about that into the book, you know.

Jack Graham 45:35

Don't know. Uh we'll come back to that in a second, but I just, as you were saying, sort of you went through Anna's story and a couple other stories in the book of your clients. What was the hardest thing that you had to sort of put in the book or write about?

Dr. Aaron Hartman 45:52

Hardest thing, um I mean, my daughter was probably the hardest thing. The second hardest thing may have been, I did talk about my father-in-law a little bit, father-in-law, because he's um interesting. He's someone who conventional medicine saved his life and then functional medicine's helping to thrive. He had um a liver transplant like 40 some years ago. And um it was really, really interesting because he had he had this thing called, they're not they actually may have re-redefined it. They didn't know what it was back 40 some years ago. They called it hepatitis 9A, 9B. Then got reclassified as primary billar cirrhosis, which is an autoimmune disease. And now they're not sure if that's what he even had. Um, but when he had his transplant, you know, his goal was just I just need my daughters to graduate. Like that was all he knew. And then they graduated. He's like, Oh man, I gotta keep on working, I gotta get him out of college. And that's like, crud, they're out of college, and this my daughter's got this boyfriend. Like, could I actually walk my daughter down the aisle? And it's interesting how, like, as he went out further and further, his goal points kept on going out. Because his first goalpost, I just want to live for four years and get my kids out of high school. And now he's like, you know, he's like, maybe, maybe I'll see my grandkids have kids, you know. He's like just traveling, he's like 77 now. And um, but it's interesting because he was having some liver issues and et cetera. And we started doing some of the um the lipid stuff I was talking about, and his liver enzymes are the best they've been in 30 years. And so it was just, you know, the hardness was just like there's like an emotional stuff and just some of the stuff with yeah, you know, him and you just this like he, you know, for him, he and for years he was like, I, you know, I might die next year. He was like that for decades, you know. Um, because most people, everybody in his class that got transplant, they all died within like five to 10 years. He's the only person salved now. He's actually out lasted like all his GI specialists, his surgeons, they've all retired. He's and some of them actually died. He's still going, so it's really um a testament to him, you know, him, but it's also like it's hard, you know, when you're like literally like I shouldn't be here. And it's been like that for the last, you know, 30 years, right?

Jack Graham 47:51

I've had these little red lights, the Lumiflex Body Pro for a few weeks now, and it goes with me everywhere and it goes on me everywhere. I love putting this on my belly in the morning just to help my digestion get rolling. Any little niggles I've had from training the day before goes on there a few rounds and I'm ready to jump back into the gym. It's absolutely crazy how fast you can feel the effects of this red light therapy device. It comes with these amazing little straps that you can literally strap it to any part of your body, joints, limbs, anywhere. So anywhere you need a little bit extra recovery, it can do that. A couple of rounds of the red lights, and you are good to go. And you can get access to Lumiflex Academy, where you can actually start learning about the benefits of red light therapy and how to use it properly so you can actually see the benefits in your body as well. So check out the link, lumiflex.com.au, use the code TrueForm and get 10% off your Lumiflex products. It's it's part of it, isn't it? Like we talk about all these health things, but like you said, he just had all these gold posts that sort of probably sparked him up a little bit just to want to keep going and do the things he needed to. So yeah, it's it's interesting how we can talk about all these health things and like exercise, food, all that sort of stuff. But if you don't have those goldposts or that want to do it, then it's not really gonna happen, is it?

Dr. Aaron Hartman 49:14

Yeah, well he's and for his story, he's also interesting because he's the kind of guy that like saved up all of his vacation time. You know, he saved up six weeks of vacation time so he could go get a transplant. And so he's like, well, I gotta keep getting paid and got, you know, afford my insurance. And then after that, he like he made job decisions based on life insurance, but based on health insurance, because it's like I can't go without health insurance. So he made a lot of sacrifices, made a lot of decisions solely based on his health status, because he was like, I need to do it the best of my family. And that's you know, it's sometimes it's like I can't take a Tylenol or Advil, I can't, you know, drink a glass of wine because my liver doctor said I can't do that. And you know, he made a lot of um sacrifices because he's like, I just want to be around for a couple of years, and that it's played out pretty good for him. He's been he's now been alive longer with someone else's liver than he's you know without. So it's kind of you know, when he's you know, his liver doctor, I think last year said, You're gonna you're gonna die of something else, it's not gonna be your your liver disease coming back, Jack. So just don't worry about it.

Jack Graham 50:12

That's unreal. Uh let's go back to the mouth. Like you said, it's oral health is very important. And the mouth is just so overlooked, no one really pays attention to it. So, what are some things that we can talk about there? Or people should be focusing on?

Dr. Aaron Hartman 50:31

So, oral inflammation can drive systemic inflammation. So, if you have periodontal disease and you're a female, you're more prone to premature labor, you're more prone to miscarriage, you're more prone to um gestational hypertension, small for gestational weight kid. Um, in general, you're more prone to heart disease, cardiovascular disease. All of a sudden, like people, I don't know if you've heard the term leaky gut or leaky brain or any of those terms before. There's actually a leaky mouth. And so your mouth is one that interfaces with your immune system. You've got tonsils, you've got adenoids. I mean, literally this whole upper respiratory tract filters the air, supposed to filter the air out that you breathe. Then all this saliva you swallow, you actually take your meat, your food, you you chew it up, you mix it with bacteria as well as enzymes to digest it. And if your mouth has the wrong pH, if your mouth is more acidic, you won't mineralize your teeth as well. You actually won't get the right bacterial makeup in your mouth. And so now you're seeding your whole entire GI tract all the way to your rectum or your vagina, if you're a female, is being seeded by your mouth. So if you have gut issues, IBS, you know, heart cardiovascular disease, did you hear a great fact? If you gargle with an antiseptic mouthwash, you increase your risk for diabetes and hypertension. Well, why is that? Because you're killing the healthy bacteria in your mouth that seed your gut. And part of actually making, if you ever heard the term nitric oxide, it's a stuff that helps like dilate your arteries. If you take viagra for erectile dysfunction, dilates arteries in your penis. If you take nitroglycin for your heart, your respiratory tract and your mouth actually start the process of making nitric oxide. And if you don't have um the right bacteria to mix with food, with beets or whatever you eat, when it gets to your stomach, the acid won't release nitrates and they won't turn nitrites, et cetera, et cetera. So the whole process of making nitric oxide actually is starting in your mouth. So if you have the wrong pH, the wrong bacteria, all of a sudden that can set you up for hypertension, diabetes, whole host of things. And so if someone like has your gums bruise easily, if you make a lot of tartar, if you have a bad poor smelling breath, if you actually grow stuff on your tongue, like have a hairy tongue, um, then you probably have bad oral hygiene and this this it's called dysbiosis, but it's bad bacteria in your mouth, but seeding the rest of your GI tract. And now we know there's a 100% correlation with oral health and systemic health and systemic inflammation. There's great literature on like people who've had um um carotido endarterectomies, basically you have like stroke and you have a blockage in your carotid artery, and they remove those clots, they will find oral bacteria in those clots 89% of the time. Same thing for people with aneurysms around the heart to remove those. Like the bacteria from your mouth actually seed your blood. And if you have way too much of them, you can seed it with the wrong kind of organisms that can cause vascular inflammation, which we now know the biohack for anti-aging is your arteries. You are as old as your arteries. If your arteries are 10 years younger than you are, guess what? You're 10 years younger. And people, and that's one of my, you know, my other people that call these fancy biohacks. Ultimately, if you can measure the age of your arteries and then change that, that is the anti-aging biohack that's you know, while William Osler, Silium Osler, who was the father of medicine, the modern medicine in 1893 said you a man is as old as his arteries. So this is over 100 years old, and yet we're looking for the fancy new thing. Like the fancy new thing is the old thing, you know, and so but a lot of stuff starts starts in your mouth.

Jack Graham 53:55

So what should we be doing for like taking care of our mouth and keeping it clean or healthy?

Dr. Aaron Hartman 54:02

I mean, you want to brush your teeth, you know, you want to floss. I mean, things your dentist tells you to do, you know. And then it's like, well, do your gums bleed easy? When you brush your teeth, do they bleed? When you floss, they bleed. If you do, you have gendivitis, inflammation in your gums. You probably have bad bacteria in your mouth. You can um, what's your pH of your mouth? You can buy on Amazon these pH strips by P. Hydrium from 5.5 to 8 is the pH range. And if you put spit on it, it should turn like um dark blue. It'll give you the pH range. If it's not, if your mouth is not alkaline, it's acidic. So all of a sudden now it's going to affect mineralization of your mouth, but it's also starting the whole digestive process. So, you know, bleeding gums, brush your teeth, um, but breath, and then you know, obviously brushing your tongue as well. And then if you have, and if you do all that in your mouth is fine, but you still have other issues. There's actually, you know, you won't get fancy. There's actually DNA test, testing you can do that actually will measure the DNA in your mouth and tell you like how much you have in your mouth, and then it will correlate it with what bacteria are associated with what diseases. And so you can actually see, do I have bacteria in my mouth that could be associated with different diseases? One thing that's really cool to do is also do the same thing with you, do a stool test and look for DNA, and you can test and you can match them. I've done that with patients. One of my patients, he actually a friend actually who had um collagenous colitis, which is an autoimmune gut kind of thing. It's interesting, his gut is populated with oral bacteria that are known to be related with colitis. And so all of a sudden it's like, you know, he had a bunch of bad dental issues and all this kind of stuff. It's like your mouth is part of your your non-resolving autoimmune gut issue. So um, you know, doing the basics, but also having someone I'm like, you know, having someone you can work with that is you know, we call them a biologic dentist in here in the United States that can actually understand these things and can work with you.

Jack Graham 55:51

Are there anything else like on the body that people are overlooking like that? Because again, like brushing your teeth for some people that's just crazy, and they don't actually do it, which like again, I I just find ridiculous. But uh anything else that we can pay attention to on the body? You said it the mouth is the um one of our senses to our nerve uh nerves not the nerves system, the um oh sorry, I'm blanking on what you said. But our health system in our body.

Dr. Aaron Hartman 56:26

So obviously we eat things and we experience your mouth is a window to, you know, so are your eyes, you know. Your eyes, you know, um, if you have inflammation in your eyes, um if you have, you know, your eyes are interesting, how quickly they dilate and open up. We obviously patients who have like trunk have dysautonomia or pots, which are an imbalance in their nerve, the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system. And when you shine a light in people's eyes, you'll see their eyes like constrict and then open back up really fast. So constriction is um parasympathetic and dilation is sympathetic. So it's like they come down, but they'll fight that. And you'll watch, you can actually see people's eyeballs like do this little undulation. It's like I can tell your nervous system is imbalanced. You're looking at someone's tongue, is it smooth? Is it rough? You know, you can have certain B vitamin deficiencies that will your tongue will get red and you like kind of lose the papillae, it'll be smooth. Your skin is a great thing. People's skin ages a certain range. Women, for example, who have low estrogen, will their skin will age quicker. They'll get final wrinkles at a younger age and get these like the sunspots called lentigo easier. And also certain nutrient deficiencies can make your skin age a little quicker as well. Looking at people's nails, you know how your nails grow. When you get ridging in your nails, that can be a marker for low stomach acid, as well as um low insufficient protein, and then you can get these little white spots related with zinc or slam deficiencies. It's one of those things I learned how to do physical exam in medical school, and people like you learn all these cool things, and you get to you know do your residency training and get out, and you just like, yeah, we don't want to do physical exams anymore. We used to order tests. It's like a physical exam tells you a whole, a whole lot. You know, when I do a physics, one of the things I'll do is check people's pulses when I'm listening to the heart, but I feel both both wrists. And you can actually, when you listen to the person's heart, you can hear like a gap between when their heart beats and when you feel it in the wrist. And when you're young, the gap is big, bigger, because your arteries are like a balloon that fills up and then it goes out. And so the stretchier that balloon is, the longer it takes for the pulse wave to go downstream. So if you're older and you feel people's pulses, literally the heart will beat and you feel the pulse at the exact same time, and you know, ooh, you've got like, you know, some hard arteries. Well, if you feel that in a younger person, usually it's related to sympathetic overdrive and their arteries will unnaturally kind of clamp down. And it's funny how in traditional Chinese medicine, they they they measure the pulse, but they do it and say your cheese stagnant or whatnot, which I don't quite understand that. But they kind of saw this thing, you know, three, four thousand years ago that that imbalance suggests your nervous system is imbalanced. There are so many things on a physical exam that are overlooked by doctors that can be signs of underlying deficiencies or things going on.

Jack Graham 59:02

Yeah, a hundred percent. And a lot of people just don't even pay attention to how their body looks or feels. So that is a great point and a good thing to do. I just want to touch on before we wrap up, wearables. Do they come into that as well? Like, how do you think about those?

Dr. Aaron Hartman 59:18

I personally really like wearables because they give you instant feedback. Um, everybody's got their favorite one for different reasons. I like the aura ring because I don't have to think about it. I don't have to, it's just on my hand, and it all I gotta think about is charging it up every four to five days. Um, and it gives me what I feel is the most important data. It gives me my my physical activity, how many steps I took a day. It gives me my sleep, my quality sleep, you know, how many hours of REM, how many hours of deep. Looks at my heart rate variability, which is a um great marker for actually the balance in your sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system. And um it also gives me it gives you like a vascular age, which it's really interesting. The technology it uses is plasmathography. So it's actually measuring like the when your arteries like pulse, they'll like move like this, it actually measures that. And based on your act, your chronological age, we'll say you're older or younger by a certain amount. And then throughout the day, you're if you have certain stress levels, they'll tell you look at your heart rate throughout the day and come up. So I really like it. Um the the app is pretty easy to understand. And like if I forget about it, it's I it's I use it as my wedding ring. So it's like, you know, it's not like, oh, I forgot about it, and look back and look at my dad. And it's funny when I got COVID back in 2022, I could actually watch my temperature kind of speak spike up and and and look at that and go, wow, because my temperature, I had like 103 fever for like seven days, eight days straight. So it's interesting how I could see it ramp up and down. But then using that data point when I've got hit with other viruses, you can kind of start seeing, I'm starting to get sick. Like usually 24 hours before it, you'll see your body temperature at night kind of go up. So I feel like it gives you gives me like all the major data points I want in a super simple way. And if I forget about it, you know what? It still collects the data for me. And if I won't look back at it, I can't. Everybody's got their favorite. But I like that, I like things like that. Also, if you have a poor night, because sleep is super important, right? It's also one of the ways I figured out that for me personally, I can't eat any sugar within three hours of going to sleep. Otherwise, I don't get good um rim and deep sleep. If I have any alcohol within four hours, it affects my sleep. Um, but it's also how I realized that look, look, you know, you keep out looking at your screens. I don't look at screens. I can do what I want. I'm you know doctor, I can, you know, it doesn't affect me. I can't look at screens two hours before I go to bed. Otherwise, my sleep latency is delayed and also affects my um my heart rate variability and like how much um deep sleep I'll get. It cuts into that in the first part of the night. So I think it's a good wearable that gives me what I think are the most important data points. But everybody, you know, I think they're useful because you need something immediate. Coming to see me, getting a bunch of labs done, and me calling you back two weeks later, tell you what your labs were a month ago. You're like, I don't know what's going on a month ago.

Jack Graham 1:02:02

That was gonna be my second question. Like, is it useful for doctors having that data?

Dr. Aaron Hartman 1:02:08

It's um it's more useful for the patient because it helps you like, you know, you should exercise, you should get adequate sleep, you should not stress as much, and you get, you know, all the things I'll tell you to do. It's like, how do you measure that? How do you know you're getting adequate quality sleep? How do you know you're physically active enough? How do you know what's your VO2 max? Or all these kinds of things. And you can use these devices to give you that stuff that elite athletes want, but in a way you can digest it without costing you, you know, thousands of dollars. And you get it the same day. Like if you send me a bunch of data and I look at three weeks from now, are you gonna remember what you did like a week ago? Like it's best, you know, I look at every more my dad every morning when I wake up. And um, that's what you really need, something you can look at on a daily basis. And so you get that instant, instant feedback basically. So it's more helpful, I think, for it's more helpful for the patient to have it than for the physician.

Jack Graham 1:03:02

I just have one as when we're talking about, I just got one client where she just obsesses a little bit about data. Like we've tracked the data, glucose and all that sort of stuff as well with a continuous glucose monitor. But she every time she's eaten, she's looking at the app, and I'm just like, you just need to chill and just not stress too much and just let it run, and then we'll look at the data once it's finished. Like, do you have any tips on like what what what would I say to her?

Dr. Aaron Hartman 1:03:30

You know what? I tell people routinely, if working with me, like stress is so bad for you. If working with me makes you stressed, it'd be better off if you've never met me. And so what people don't realize is all of a sudden, if if these data points become a stressor, you know, for your client, for example, if her cortisol goes up, her her glucose is going to go up. Now, I was actually doing an interview earlier on with a friend of mine on her thing, and um, she was talking about her continuous glucose monitor, like her her sugars go up when she goes in the doctor's office because she gets stressed. And so she can measure it on her CGM. And so all of a sudden, just the for her, the act of going to the doctor's office to get blood work done to talk to the doctor makes her make her numbers go up. And so if your client is getting stressed about it, it could have a negative impact on it. And then all of a sudden it's also gonna impact how you, you know, your if you your cortisol's up, you're eating a meal, it's gonna slow sugar absorption, right? So it's gonna have negative impacts metabolically. It's the technology is cool, but you really can't it can't stress you out. It can't become yeah, it can't stress you out. It can't like it can't become detrimental. If it is, then you it's probably better off not to look at it. And there are some people who will the data they want the data and it kills them. It literally makes them worse.

Jack Graham 1:04:47

Um Yeah, uh they say the bad sleep score in the morning and then they're stressed for the rest of the day.

Dr. Aaron Hartman 1:04:54

Or or they go online, they see their B12 level came back at like um you know 398, and they go find some random article on Google that says they have an increased risk for neuropathy and dementia, and they're oh my gosh, you know, I'm gonna die. I'm like, it's like you stop taking your B complex, just go back and take it, you'll be fine. You know, it's like all of a sudden they're like perseverating on this in the small thing, or my vitamin D level came back at you know 39, it's normal, but now I see it associated with an increased risk for breast and prostate cancer. I'm like, so get it up. Like, don't but they're you know, I'm saying they perseverate on that one thing that just haunts them for the next three to six months before they recheck their vitamin D level or whatever. So there are those people that the data is actually probably detrimental for, and it's just you know, that that can be difficult. Because they want it, you want to work with them, but it's like this is too much for you.

Jack Graham 1:05:42

Almost need a tracker where the coach or the doctor only sees the data and the person can't see any of the data.

Dr. Aaron Hartman 1:05:50

It's it's you know, I can look at my data and be like, yeah, my my cluster L is 240. It should be lower. My HSCRP is fine, you know, have a good diet, get good sleep. Go worry about it because you know cholesterol is not the best biomarker. Our patients who could never if they saw the cholesterol be hard, they would, it would, it would, it would wreck them, you know.

Jack Graham 1:06:11

I I'm the same, but I'm going through something similar. Like every time I go to the doctor, my blood pressure just goes through the roof. And even I can even feel it now, thinking about going to the doctor and getting my blood pressure done. I feel my blood pressure now just rising. So we're going through this whole thing of yeah, sorting out my blood pressure. So it's a it's an interesting thing. It's never happened with meat with data before, but it's just that blood pressure. It's just, yeah, it's weird. So it's fun. Um, Aaron, I appreciate you coming on the podcast. Where can people learn more about you and connect with you?

Dr. Aaron Hartman 1:06:47

Um, I have a website set up, Aaron Hartmanmd.com, and it takes people to my my practice website, to my social media, Instagram, Facebook, to my book, as well as my podcast, which is made for health. Um, so I tell people that's like the hub that takes people to all my other other stuff.

Jack Graham 1:07:06

It's morning here. The sun's just rose. If you could just leave everybody here in Melbourne with one thing that they could do today, this morning, what what would it be?

Dr. Aaron Hartman 1:07:18

You know what? I really love sitting outside with my cup of coffee and watching the sunrise and just reading, watching it rise, and just it's it's a great way to start your day. And so I think you know, starting your intention with being grateful and realizing that this world's amazing and life is a gift, and um, everything else um to a certain degree is just filler and just majoring on the majors and enjoying life. I think that'd how that'd be my thing. It sounds super simple, but um not enough us, not enough us, not not enough of us are grateful.

Jack Graham 1:07:56

100% agree. And yeah, if people just start the day off a little bit slower and just take a time to think and just be grateful for the day, it'll be a better, a better world for sure.

Dr. Aaron Hartman 1:08:06

Yeah, as an American, I feel like my the the the um the image of Australians is because my friends are from Australia, they're all super laid back. So as an American that we're like super stressful, I feel kind of weird saying it's all a bunch of Aussies, but you know, you asked, so I guess we get stressed in different ways. Okay, man. I mean everybody got met from Australia's usually super cool and super relaxed. Like, hey, no worries, buddy. I'm like, man, y'all are super like chill, man.

Jack Graham 1:08:30

It's awesome. A big thanks to Lumaflex for sponsoring today's episode. Make sure you check out the link in the description or go to lumaflex.com.au. Use the code TRUEFOM to get 10% off and start enjoying this amazing red light therapy device. You know, you'll not only be supporting your own overall health and wellness, you're supporting this show as well. So I appreciate you doing that. Appreciate your time listening to this episode, and I'll see you in the next one.