123: You Are Not Your Diagnosis: How Not To Let A Lab Report Run Your Life!

A diagnosis can land like a stamp on your forehead, and if you’re not careful, it starts running your decisions, your confidence, and even your future plans. We’re pushing back hard on that. A diagnosis is a snapshot of what’s happening right now, not a definition of who you are. When we stop treating labels as identity, we get our agency back and we can actually make better choices with less fear and more clarity.

We talk through what shifts the moment you get a diagnosis or even an early warning sign on blood work. We dig into why “passive patient” mode is so common, how to become your own advocate, and how to have real conversations with doctors that don’t end with you nodding along in a rushed ten-minute visit. We also unpack the genetics trap: family history and predisposition can matter, but lifestyle factors often decide how risk plays out. If you’ve ever thought “it runs in my family, so it’s inevitable,” this will challenge that story in a grounded way.

We also call out the age bucket problem and the bell curve mindset that normalizes decline. If your goal is health optimization, strength, mobility, and a life you actually want to live, your care needs to match that. We share practical steps like knowing what tests you’re getting, reading your lab results, researching markers, asking for deeper panels when needed, and leaning into lifestyle medicine basics like gut health, movement, and sustainable 80/20 habits.

If this hits home, subscribe, share it with someone who needs their power back, and leave a review so more people can find the conversation. What’s one health label you’re ready to stop identifying with?

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Transcript

Welcome And Core Premise

Polly Mertens 0:27

Hey, superstars. Welcome back. Polly here.

Samantha Pruitt 0:29

And Sam Pruitt. What's up, beautiful humans?

Polly Mertens 0:32

Yes, yes, yes, yes. Talking about something that has shown up in at least my life and your conversations and things that are going on with you. We're calling this episode You're not your diagnosis. Right. And you and I were just chatting before we went on air about different diagnoses we've had in our life, right? And how we handled them. And you know, you've got a recent one, and I've got one that's 30 years old, and how I would have handled it differently and stuff. And really what we want to challenge today is like, you know, the mindset of like you get a diagnosis, you know, what starts to happen and how you go into this, and just help people see um perhaps a new paradigm shift is what that's what I'm out to cause, right? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Samantha Pruitt 1:14

Yeah. And I'm up to, you know, pointing out, just question everything. Well, agree with nothing. Okay, most people who know my personality know that I'm already not a big fan of like rules and things. I mean, I like to live by structure and discipline. That's very different than um society or others, the othering coming into my world and trying to tell me who am I gonna be, what is my life gonna be, what is my body gonna look like, da-da-da-da. Like I just have a natural resistance against that and sort of always have been. So my thing is just to bring to the conversation today. Yeah, I've had several diagnoses, including uh one recently, and that's all right. It's it's just part of the fact I live in a physical body and my energetic cellular physical being, this shell that I'm walking around in, um, you know, it's human, it's made of human cells. So, and it's in an environment that is complicated, you know, our environments where we live and all of that kind of stuff. So shit's gonna happen to all of us. And so today I think we just want to talk about what happens when you get a diagnosis. How can you mentally, emotionally process that and really become empowered around that path rather than taking it on as a label or an identity and having it hold you back or restrict you from living your best life, right?

Polly Mertens 2:47

Yeah. And, you know, there's a couple of different things I want to maybe insert here as we go into this content. One is, you know, the idea that there's different phases people are at, you know, we talked about this before we went on air. So, you know, if you are pre-diagnosis, let's say, or or you know, you've got some blood work that's signaling

Root Cause Over Symptom Control

Polly Mertens 3:06

some stuff, but you don't necessarily have a you're a stage four, right? So there's varying, we we recognize that. So take this as like there's different um severity to the conversation and and the immediacy that with which you need to take action. So that aside, what we're looking for is, you know, we want you to be from passive patient to just like, oh, tell me, you know, whatever this person in the left coat in a white coat says is gospel to inform, right? And I love your word as we were talking about this idea is like getting curious. Like you said, question everything, get curious. And something I uh spoke to so 35 years ago, I think it was, you know, picture 1990-ish. Um, you know, I had a diagnosis of hypo hyperthyroidism. There was no internet, or maybe there was, but I don't think there was. You know, there was like no internet. It was like, this is your physician, this is the relationship and access to medical information.

Samantha Pruitt 4:07

The one person. Yeah, I mean, I was like, one person in the world that would be the expert.

Polly Mertens 4:12

Walk around here the library and like research, and who knows how outdated those books were. Whatever, right? So I had this diagnosis. He comes to me with you got three options, choose one, la la la, off I went, right? Didn't, you know, would today would I have done it differently? Oh hell yeah. Like I know somebody who cured her hyperthyroidism with lifestyle changes. And if I had even known that, that's where I want people to just like think outside of maybe what you have known or have grown up with or have heard in the media, or just debunk myths or you know, old paradigms to go, you know what, maybe maybe my body is a natural healing mechanism. Maybe I've just um had some influence. I've created resistance, I've created toxicity, I've created inflammation, and maybe I can also undo that, right? And so I think the core thing also that I want to point to, just at a high level, is oftentimes I see, and maybe I'll speak from my standpoint, not just everyone, is I see physicians that I talk to are not root cause-based in the Western medical system. They tend to just be like service, like you know, they're catastrophic or, you know, like symptoms management, not root cause. And I think your study of Eastern medicine and and Ayurvedic medicine is like there's something at the root of why the body's doing whatever it's doing, whether it's a rash or a disease or an inflammation or name it, name it. Um and if you don't get to that and understand it, A, you can't influence it. You can, you know, it's like taking an aspirin for a pain. Well, what's causing the pain? Right. So wanted to insert, throw all that out there into the conversation as we get started.

Samantha Pruitt 5:54

So thank you for yeah, the more severe the disease state is, depending on the diagnosis and the disease itself and the complexities and so forth, um, this is a very nuanced conversation. I mean, yeah, I've got three people that I care deeply about who are currently in cancer treatment, and they're in a very extreme state of that, and

Warning Lights And Chronic Disease Basics

Samantha Pruitt 6:13

you know, fighting for their lives, basically. So that becomes a very different conversation. But before you get to something along those lines, many, many, most of us will just go in for a regular medical or just experience something within our own body, not even in a doctor's office, you know, throughout the body, just how we feel or whatever. And so those are warning lights on the dashboard of the car that we're trying to drive 100 miles per hour down the freeway on. You know what I mean? So it's just those are warning lights. And if we can look at those as what they are, warning lights of, hey, it's time to take some action. Something within the system of this body is not functioning at its best level, disease may never set in, hopefully, right? And even there's in Western medicine, you know, uh sure, these doctors are experts in their field. They went and became educated and spent a lot of time and energy becoming an expert in whatever the thing is, right? But they can't know everything. It's impossible. And we shouldn't expect them to be an expert in everything. You know, general medicine is generalized medicine, right? They know a little bit of all the things, or a specialist is a specialist in that thing. So we should respect them for who they are and the knowledge that they do have, and then understand that it's always changing. Science is always evolving. It's mind-blowingly cool, if you're a nerd like me, to be like following any of this and see what's happening. And then when you reference like Eastern medicine or a more traditional, you know, Native American and all these different types of cultural, knowledge-based medicines, all the way back to the beginning of mankind, you know, there's ancient, brilliant wisdom within that, you know, wheelhouse, if you will. So you can, depending on your own beliefs and who you are as a human, you can exercise any and all of these things. There's a time and a place for it, right? And it's your choice.

Polly Mertens 8:10

Yeah.

Samantha Pruitt 8:11

It's your choice to decide how you want to take care of this body, this physical body, and that you're entitled to own and operate and ultimately be responsible for.

Polly Mertens 8:21

Yeah, and you said, like, it's a choice. Like uh what I'm what I'm saying in my paradigm shift is like, don't just be passive and hand it over to, okay, just tell me what to do, right? Or it's outside of my control. I wholeheartedly want to debunk that because like one of the things as you were saying something is like, you know, we we talked about um before we decided on this topic, like, should we go into mental health, you know, and like how people can, you know, take their mental health and that can get, and but we said let's stick to physical. And as I, you know, we think about diagnosis and disease, things that show up on blood work. And I, like you, I think, um, you know, if I have something out of whack in my body, I don't just let it sit there. Like, for example, this morning I was doing, I was at body pump, and like my shoulder was like my right shoulder was just like not as strong. And I was like, oh, no to self. Okay, what's going on there? And sometimes it can be like you have you twist your neck doing a hundred pull-ups, you crazy woman, right? So it's like, okay, that's just overuse. But if you notice something, like my big thing, especially from a um body functional system, you know, muscle skeletal type of thing, is uh, you know, like if I have like like I have a friend who like can't lift his arm over his shoulder, and it's like, well, how long has that been like that? You know, like I'd be like, like, hello, you know, like when you you can't lift it up, you know, you you address it sooner is what I'm saying. Like we we empower ourselves to root cause, not just like, oh, the body just doesn't, I can't just lift over my my head over my arm over my head or whatever. So looking at like, oh, I'm in, I'm in charge in this body. I thought, yeah, sure, the body's gonna have a natural breakdown, it's gonna do, and it whatever. But where am I empowered to choose differently, uh, adjust something, get some help, and like, hey, I why can't I do this? And then like I go to my physical therapist, and he goes, Well, that's because of this, and we need to like stretch this out and you know, like some fine-tuning, get to that root cause, don't just accept, like, I can't, I'll never lift my arm over my head again.

Samantha Pruitt 10:28

So oh gosh, if that were happening to me for an hour, so like for example, I couldn't turn my head for a day, you know, because I had done way too many pull-ups way too early on in my you know, coming back to fitness thing, but I was having a damn good time, okay? And so there's that. But yeah, lunacy of it all. But if I went for a week and couldn't function on this shoulder or name any body part, there would be hell to pay because I would need to get that resolved. So I would immediately start doing the research and trying to figure out you know a resolution. So that's the empowering part. But let's talk first a little bit about the fact that chronic diseases do happen. Okay. Um, again, we're human. We're not robots, we are human, right? And then additionally, we are exposed to all these things over the course of our lifetime. But many, many times, well, so the top four chronic diseases cardiovascular disease. These are the things that kill people, what they get into disease states and die from. Um, cancer, right? Uh, neurodegenerative diseases, metabolic diseases. So those are the top four diseases, and in those diseases of category is so many diseases, so many disease states. You know, so it's like if you have cardiovascular disease, there could be 30 or 40 different things that could possibly be going wrong. It's not like one disease, right? Um, but again, warning lights come on, the dashboard of your human vehicle when you feel any of these things might be within your body systems going wrong. But how many people even know what these systems are? The cardiovascular system, the metabolic system, the nervous system, the neurological system of the body. So at the root of this conversation, I can't stress enough how people should actually know how their body works, the basic systems of the body. You don't have to be a nerd like me, but you need to understand like muscles and bones and the different systems of the body and how they function in a healthy state, how they develop and function in a healthy state. And I feel like um, as a society, we do a shitty job educating children and parents and then adults as to how their bodies function. So let's just point out the obvious is these books do exist. There's a thing called science, and you can find out about these things. And now that there's the internet and YouTube, you could basically watch a couple movies and have most of this stuff down.

Polly Mertens 13:15

Totally. Okay.

Samantha Pruitt 13:16

You don't have to go back to school instead of holistic health like that.

Polly Mertens 13:21

You don't have to be forwarding one.

Samantha Pruitt 13:22

Watch a couple videos and figure that shit out. So, anyway, that will give you at least a little bit of confidence and why this is important. Confidence and agency over your own body and conversation when you go into have these blood tests or have these other tests done or have conversations with doctors and nurses or have a decision point around a treatment, a drug, or a surgery. You will feel at least like you can have the conversation. And I think that's what holds a lot of people back.

Polly Mertens 13:53

Yeah, and you, I love it. You know, I I can uh so A, I just want to add throw in YouTube and you said um internet and just AI. Like it's so sophisticated what it can, you know, help you. Like, I know don't self-diagnose and all that stuff, but like you can get very informed, you know, if you have something asking it questions, right? And I love you. Um, how many times I've heard you say you pretty much walked into the doctor with like a list of questions. Like, this is not an interrogation, but it might feel that way a little bit because like we need to, you know, because you're often on the level with them. Like you've done your research going in. It's not just, okay, doc, you tell me what's going on with me. Like you go and say, I'm I'm seeing this in my body, and what do you think about this? So you guys interact and dialogue about it, not just trust what comes over.

Samantha Pruitt 14:41

Sometimes they're not stoked about that, by the way. I have fired many, many. We have had breakups. But I would say, at least at this point, and it could be how I deliver it now or being older or whatever, the doctors I've picked, you know, is different, is different. But um they do engage in the conversation intelligently. They like it. It's really kind of fun for them to sit down and be able to talk to somebody who understands how their body works or has curiosities and real scientific-based questions about specific things.

Polly Mertens 15:11

Well, I think more people are doing what you're doing, also. They've got to get it. You just gotta get used to it. People are not, well, uh, you know, we're here to we're we're assuming that people are not, so we're saying, you know, come in doing that, but more and more people are also like there are more people that are like, I'm not just gonna accept this, I'm gonna heck yeah. And it's so at our fingertips.

Samantha Pruitt 15:31

So really so there's lots of diseases and disease states, um diagnosis versus destiny or DNA.

Polly Mertens 15:43

So this is where this whole thing gave you because you and I like we shoot back and forth in coming up with topics for our podcast. And it

Genetics Risk Versus Lifestyle Choices

Polly Mertens 15:50

was like, okay, we need to have a topic, and the problem is because someone in my life recently was like, we're working on it. Well, uh yeah, I'm on this medication and that medication, and I'm like, oh my god, I didn't know you were on those medications. What what's going on? You know, and he's like, Well, I just you know, I've got that in my genetics, you know, and it was like a high high tension, hypertension, you know, heart thing, and I think diabetes. And I was like, just just that's it, like, oh, just I and accepted it. And I was like, and this isn't a smart person. I was like, hold up. Like, and why did you, you know, so that's where this started is like, oh, I'm genetically predisposed. Predisposed, I would say inclined, but that's yeah, predisposed. So I just accept it and then take medicines for the rest of your life. So what do you have to say about that?

Samantha Pruitt 16:42

Well, what I have to say about that, yeah, scientifically, is that the diseases that I listed off or the disease categories, if you will, you know, there's a 10 to like 40 percent on the high end where the DNA and the genes are actually linked back to the disease and any kind of predisposal state might be there. Okay, so sometimes there's zero, and sometimes it's very, very low, the correlation. And then it will immediately be all the lifestyle factors as to whether this will actually engage this disease state and become a thing or not, right? So even if there is a small element of okay, my mother did die of cancer, my sister has had cancer, my grandmother has said cancer. So I have a in my family line a lot of cancer. I've been genetically tested and have zero of the genes related to any of these cancers. Go figure. Right? That's a possibility. You know, and now genetic testing is of course available. My dad died of a heart attack, doesn't mean I'm gonna have a heart attack. Like, you know, it's all of these things that we either attach ourselves to that family history and story because it gives meaning to our life in some way, in this instance, I would say, in a very negative, you know, limiting way that will restrict us from really taking responsibility of this body and this life and allowing our mental and emotional state as well to get attached to that, not just our lifestyle choices and the physical, you know, results that will manifest, but like how we feel about the world and what we can and can't do. Why would we choose that?

Polly Mertens 18:29

Well, you know, that's just the the paradigm that that person, you know. And one of the things I want to just touch upon is we're hitting upon this, is like there's research in health psychology that shows that identity-based beliefs, like how, like I'm, you know, I'm predisposed for cancer, I'm predisposed for diabetes or whatever. Not maybe don't even, not even true. Like if you had just come up with that, you're like, oh, look, because I I totally know. I remember in my 30s when I'm going to the doctor, and you know how they ask the same questions, tell us all about your family history, right? Pretty quick, I was like, I don't care what my family history is like because this is not a fact, you know, like my family was doing some, you know, alcoholism and you know, crappy hints to themselves. And I'm like, I'm not doing all of that. So like I really quickly had a different paradigm of how I saw myself. But, you know, in health psychology, they say that, you know, if you identify that, right, like as that, or you have a belief, it significantly influences your behavior and your outcomes, right? Like if you're just predisposed to it, you know, some people will just be like, well, I'll just eat all the pizza I want. I'll just you know, eat all the junk food or whatever. Like I can't outrun it or something like that. And if you see that condition is fixed, you're just not gonna take action, you're not gonna make meaningful changes, you know. And I look at this like, you know, even if you were 50% or you said 40% predisposed for that or whatever, it's like you still got a 60%, you know, you can like that's some good upgrade. 50% don't double down on it. Like, like don't exactly don't throw in your cards and like vote for it. Be like, okay, what can I do?

Samantha Pruitt 20:05

It's a vote for it. You're right. That's what it is. It's like, oh, well, it was 40% um for whatever, and these are extreme scenarios, but uh now I'm gonna do 10 more things, make sure it gets up to 80% because I want to win this thing. You're betting on the wrong horse or sorry.

Polly Mertens 20:21

Exactly. You're sitting on the wrong side of the table. That on vitality, right?

Samantha Pruitt 20:26

Yeah, yeah, totally, totally. So identity is connected. Um anyway, there's so much science around uh DNA and you know, all of this kind of stuff now in terms of any and all things that might be going on with your body and your brain and your mental and emotional state, of course, and even addiction, all that kind of stuff. So, like if you have these ideas in your head because grandma told you or your parents or a doctor told you or something like that, I would just want to encourage you to go actually research the latest science to see what is true here. And then if you choose, you can get these things tested. You know, I was supposedly not given hormones when I went through menopause because I had early menopause with my autoimmune disease, and then I had to have hysterectomy, all these things. So I was not given um hormones because my mom had cancer, had had breast cancer, and my grandmother had ovarian cancer. So there was an assumption made there, right, that I was high risk. A, that science has all changed, and we've completely debunked who and who should not get hormones and all that stuff. But I mean, I lost a good five to ten years of high-quality building of this body and this brain and my cardiovascular system, all the things I care about. I was doing the work, but I was like depleted at the same time because of that. And that's just not fair or right. And then in hindsight, to have all of these things tested now and see that I have zero genetic markers as like, what the why didn't I get tested then? If that was a supposed reason, right? Anyway, don't get me started on that's just my personal. Um, another thing is people label around age being a label related to their medical condition. So naturally age, how many doctors? Oh my God, okay, now I'm gonna rant about something else. How many doctors have you experienced that because you hit a certain age bracket, whatever. It was, this

Age Labels And The Bell Curve Trap

Samantha Pruitt 22:20

kind of started for me in my 40s. And when I went into um early menopause, I was around 40, which is really young. And so then from then up until now, like because of my age, they put me into a bucket. Right. And then they find out, oh, she's a multi-time Iron Man, ultra runner, cross, all the and they're like, what? They don't even know how to talk to me in most instances, right? But if I they didn't know all these other things about me and I didn't share them, they would just drop me into a bucket, which is kind of an abyss, and categorize me based on my age. And a lot of us go into the doctor's office and do the same thing to ourselves.

Polly Mertens 22:58

Yeah.

Samantha Pruitt 22:59

Oh, I'm just getting old now.

Polly Mertens 23:00

Well, and I'm sorry, there is a thing called a bell curve, right? And you know, you can plant yourself in the middle or on the lower percentiles of it, or you can see yourself and live into the higher percentiles. Like, yeah, you're on the you're on the you're on the lean part of the percentile, but like I'm walking in, yeah, like I absolutely walk in there like I'm fit as get out and taking good care of myself and have been, you know, sure there's things that aren't working as best as well as they did when I was a teenager, or whatever, but like, okay, but not in that, and that's where some of you know the healthcare system is like they're designed for managing symptoms. You know, they're seeing people coming in in that bell curve, and they're like, well, the majority are in here, right? Sure, they're gonna have some outliers like you, and you know, menopause early symptoms or whatever. And then the the premies, like, you know, premium taking really good care of themselves, like you have to tell them how different your lifestyle is, right? So that they can adjust that bell curve and go, oh, you're out here. Okay, yeah, you're right. I agree. So you we want to optimize our health care, right? You know, so there's the healthcare system, you know, God bless it, is largely around that middle of the bell curve. And guess what? The food system and the, you know, exercise, you know, it's it's like you got to get out where the branches are thin where you're taking great care of yourself, you're doing the exercise, you know, regularly. So you don't fall into that bell curve, and then you're just sort of like, like you said, the abyss. And, you know, are we treating, you know, or is your provider treating health? Are they helping you optimize, right? Like you are, like that's how you and I think is I'm not just trying to have a comfortable decline to the finish line. I'm like, how do I optimize and feel as good as possible? Because we got mountains to get up to.

Samantha Pruitt 24:47

Yeah, and doctors don't have time to be really digging into, you know, what's your nutrition like, how much exercise, and all these things. Hey, generally, it's not their wheelhouse of expertise. And also that science is changing all the time. But it this is the patient or the human's responsibility to understand these things. And, you know, because I've taught it for so long, it's really fun for me to like have people learn about their bodies and to see the evolution of somebody that comes in really disempowered and just not knowing, and instantly just not knowing, to coming out the other side, just like, you know, crushing it because they've just taken on, hey, this is really important to me, and I'm gonna invest in this, and I care. And we should all care. We shouldn't expect the person on the other side to care more about us than we care about ourselves. And that's nuts. They're seeing hundreds of people, okay.

Polly Mertens 25:45

Yeah, and I think the other thing, just in what you were talking about and describing, is like, do not wait for a diagnosis to do something. Right. Right. Right? Do not wait to have a surprise or a too late, or you know, like, oh, geez, you know, or if you are getting early warning signs, do something about them early, right? Or even earlier, you know, like optimize for health and well-being, right? But if nothing else, don't wait for like the wake-up call. Because you and I see it, you know, you know, we see the people who take dramatic, they take their life into their hands, their health into their hands when they but it's like, why weren't you doing that 20 years ago? You know, so like do it now when it matters, and you can you know extend that. You can have optimal health now and now and now into the future. Wait for that diagnosis to be that wake-up call for you, right?

Samantha Pruitt 26:39

Yeah, yeah, don't waste any time. Don't waste any time, right? So how can you do this? How can somebody realistically do this? Um, we can give examples of how we've done it, but we should at least give some tips on how to walk in um and advocate for yourself, how to, you know, I see this in people who are doing, you know, some kind of

Self Advocacy With Doctors And Tests

Samantha Pruitt 27:03

disease prevention or even so they're trying to get informed, you know, and get tests and things of that nature, like me trying to get the genetic, you know, test for the various cancers and all that kind of stuff, or whatever it is. We're trying to get educated and informed, we're trying to get empowered, but you know, insurance doesn't want to pay for it, and doctors don't want to write the orders for the thing. And you have to really advocate to get and sometimes fight to get what you want and what you need for yourself in terms of information, because information is really the power, the liberation of choice. If I'm not informed and I go in, I'm just gonna default to whatever comes at me, right? It will be decided for me. But if I can get some resourced information and knowledge about my body and my things that might be going on, then I have the power to influence any and all decisions, frankly, whether I choose to do whatever I do.

Polly Mertens 28:04

Absolutely. And I think the the thing I just want to so most times it's you go in and you have some blood work and then or a heart track or whatever, you know, like the the the the wake up, whether it's a small hit or a big wake-up.

Samantha Pruitt 28:19

Let's start there. You're gonna have blood work. Okay. How many people? I mean, these are funny questions because I know plenty of people in my life that don't do any work at all in this area. They won't go to the doctor for 10 years. So they go to blood work, go for blood work, for example, because it's been awarded as part of their annual exam or whatever the deal is, right? And so they go and they have blood work, have no idea what the blood work is they're actually getting done. They just go to the lab and have blood drawn. Where what in the heck is that blood draw for? They have no idea. Okay. Then they get the blood drawn and the results come back into their inbox because now we can all access our stuff, right? They don't even look at it. Okay, because their thing is, well, I wouldn't know how to interpret it, so that's a story. And then they wait until they go into the doctor's office, and the doctor's now going to tell them whether it's good, bad, or ugly, and what the next steps are. They should know, first of all, you're going in and giving blood. You're having a test, whatever the test is. Well, recently I had an echocardiogram. It was fascinating. I was such a triple nerd, dude. I was literally like, that's my heart. Oh, that's this part of the heart. What's this thing over here? Why is it going like that? And the gal that was doing it was like, Who the heck is this chick? But she totally loved me. We had this great combo this whole time. And I was like, Hey, what about this thing? And you know, she was so incredibly educated. But it was no one asks her these questions. And I was curious, that's my freaking heart. How many times in your lifetime will you get to actually see your heart, people? Come on, this is magic. That's awesome. It's on the screen. And it's like talking to me. Hey, what's up?

Polly Mertens 30:07

It was so cool. So, something I learned because of the thyroid condition that I have in years of, you know, I mean, I mean, for two to three years, and when I first had the diagnosis, I was pricked and poked um every month. I had to get blood work every month, you know. So I just got really used to that and you know, whatever. Later, I come to find out there are tests that they don't always run on thyroid that you can ask for. So some of it is, I'm not saying all blood work you need to ask for, but I I definitely probe my doctor sometimes to ask for things that he hasn't requested, right? Because they're doing whatever they whatever. So, you know, like here's here's okay, you and me and I AI, right? So I I love to, you know. So one of the things with AI, you can like ask it back, like, what did I miss? Or what could I have done differently, or whatever, right?

Samantha Pruitt 30:56

Like you can like AI because you're in relationship with AI. I know you are. You are having a love affair. I got you, girl. I got you.

Polly Mertens 31:04

It's it's uh master and student right now. It's like it's I'm learning it. I'm learning Sensei. Sensei, sensei, yes. One of the things is, you know, you ask it, like, okay, well, what could we have done differently, whatever, that kind of a thing. So, like back to your doctor. So he says, you know, order and he and they don't tell you what they're ordering. And that's what was fascinating for me is I didn't know there's like, because I I know that you and I nerd out on this stuff, right? So I'm talking to my phlebotomist who's in my doctor's office, and I'm like, so which panel did he order? And she's like, Well, he ordered this and this and this. And I go, Well, what about you know? And so just getting more educated in what got ordered, you know, and then I, you know, I read because I get blood work at least every year. He wants it every six months because of the thyroid to maintain it and stuff. Anyway, um, so you just start to like now, and like I said, as you go down sometimes a rabbit hole, if you have something that is a condition that you have, I come to find out that there's additional, you know, there's like TS um TSH, T4, T3, you know, like different ones that they can test for, and just sort of like they can test for vanilla or they can test for the rainbow, right?

Samantha Pruitt 32:07

And it's like, oh, I didn't know that, you know, and a lot of the reasoning that they're picking and ticking this box versus that one or whatever the thing is, is the Western medical system and the insurance system in particular, and what they will and will not cover and what is normal. And then they have to put a code on there, uh diagnostic code. I think this person has metabolical disease, metabolic disease, code number XYZ, and therefore I'm gonna do number one and number two, or I think this person has cardiovascular disease, and I'm gonna pick number one, two, three. So that's kind of just to give people a background how that gets determined. But remember, you're in the doctor's office talking to the doctor. So you can walk in and say, these are the things I'm experiencing, these are my concerns, these are the things I'd like to have tested.

Polly Mertens 32:58

Exactly.

Samantha Pruitt 32:59

And it could be that they don't pick one thing, they pick two or three things. Or if it's like hormones, for example, it's very complex, right? You can't just be like, oh, I'm just gonna test her estrogen today, and then we're gonna make all her life decisions for the next year plus based on that. It's complete lunacy, right? But if the patient doesn't have some basic baseline intelligence and like way to address it with the practitioner, it's gonna be hard to get these tests done. It really is.

Polly Mertens 33:30

And the second thing, like you asked, is you know, what do we do? So I get that, you know, log into your portal, you have blood results. I'm like ding ding ding, going in. I pull them out, I see if anything's abnormal. I put it into you know, Google, I go, what is abnormal this mean? This is high. What does that mean? What are some lifelything? I mean, and I do not stop at like step one, like, oh, that means like one of them is um I have this common one that shows up is my my blood platelets are large. What the hell does that mean? So like you know, like it just says like that tells you your blood platelets are large. I'm like, well, well, why would I have large platelets? Is that normal? Is that okay? Is that down the road? Mean they're gonna get stuffed up faster? Like, what does that mean? You know, so just getting curious.

Samantha Pruitt 34:15

Is that genetic?

Polly Mertens 34:16

Yeah is that you know, cause there's something I'm doing that's causing my platelet, you know, do I do I live in higher altitude or lower altitude? Is that have anything to do with it? I mean, all sorts of things. But so the first thing, anything that's I've normal, I I put it in and I find out what is what is a MSH or I'm I don't know what the letters are. You know, I know a TSH, that's thyroid, but like, what is that test? And what does high and low mean? And what are some things that what could that signal, you know? And so yeah.

Samantha Pruitt 34:43

Totally, totally. So you go in there, you know what kind of tests are being uh run. You know then how, well, first of all, how get some damn access to read your test results, read them, do some research before you go back to the doctor, which usually is weeks or months sometimes, for these results to be a conversation between the two of you. And then you can walk in with your own ideas about what you'd like to have happen next rather than default on them. Because by the way, you know, they might get 10 minutes with you and they haven't even read these results. They just don't have time. It's not reasonable to expect that when they walk in for your 10-minute session, that they're gonna be completely informed and up to speed on all things Samantha Pruitt.

Polly Mertens 35:24

Well, and the other thing is, you know, what what else in your life does the things that it signals do you need to tell them about that they probably didn't ask about or don't, you know? So, like I was chasing this whole candida thing down this rabbit hole for years, right? Yeah, and so once I knew what was the causes of candida, so I would go into the doctor and I would tell him more. I was like, hey, I'm doing this and I'm seeing this, and this is also happening, and you know, could this be a factor? So we would dialogue about it, you know, so I he I could help him know more about me to help me treat it, you know.

Samantha Pruitt 35:59

So yeah, yeah. Um, you know, I have an autoimmune disease. So like most of the doctors I see would not know that. They would it would be somewhere buried on my chart, but you know, I'm many years out of that illness down the so I'm not gonna walk in and uh put a have a badge on my shirt that says all the things going on with me, post-menopausal QR code, just you know, QR codes, get the summary. Actually, that's a freaking good idea.

Polly Mertens 36:29

That's a summary of me, Doc. The things that you need to know, just read up on me. It's like my socials, you know.

Samantha Pruitt 36:37

But then when you go in and you're having this conversation, it's not just good enough to go in and be like um, you know, again, the red light on the dashboard talking about the thing. Yes, the thing needs to be talked about, and there needs to be some resolution. You need to be empowered to know what your choices are, and then you choose, of course, right? But in addition to that, when you go in and you have these doctor practitioner patient moments, and whatever type of doctor it is, right, you should also be able to articulate what it is you are trying to accomplish. Right. So again, post-menopausal female could get put into this bucket over here that looks and sounds a certain way. And from this point on, I would be treated exactly appropriately, which would mean decline is normal and all of these things, and eventually she'll come back with some sort of disease, frail disease state, and then we'll just keep her alive as long as whatever, whatever. I have to go in and say, So this summer I'm going to hike the PC, the John Mueller Trail for 250 miles, and then in the fall I'll be running this hundred-mile rate. And you know, like I have to tell them what my life is and what my goals are so they can get behind that. Like when I had the back surgery, right? And I say to the doctor on the way literally into the surgery room, you have one thing. When I come out of here, I best be able to run again. Are we on the same page? Are we going? Are we doing this? If not, I'm backing up.

Polly Mertens 38:16

Yeah, for sure. For sure.

Samantha Pruitt 38:18

You know, or whatever. But as an example of like, here's what I want my life to look like now and moving forward. And and I want you to partner with me on helping to make that happen. Those are the resources I'm here for.

Polly Mertens 38:31

Yeah. And that's, you know, I want to say two things I hear in that is like self-care and self-advocacy, right? So it's like, you like I'm caring about myself. I'm not just like turning it over to, oh, this is the end of the line for me, you know, whatever. It's like, no, I care about myself. What how can A, because you and I both have the underlying belief and values that align with, we can optimize for as long as possible. And the, and that's in our own hands, right? So we self-advocate, right? So we ask questions, we get opinions, we engage other people to help us care for ourselves, right? Like maybe I don't see something, right? And like you said, hey, I'm going into this just so you know, like this is important to me. Like this is, you know, and not that they would not want you to have a good recovery or whatever, but you're right, like letting them know, like, you know, so I and I have friends that like they have more important things on their list, like from a hormonal standpoint. Some people's, you know, especially female hormones, some people it's you know, brain fog or central uh libido or it's tummy, big weight gain, you know, whatever your priorities are, whatever that may look like, like I have them advocate and support you in that care, that self-care, right? Yeah.

Samantha Pruitt 39:47

Um exactly. And if they can't be a resource, and you'll know right away whether they're capable of or not, it becomes really obvious when you start to have conversations. This is no judgment upon those professionals who have worked and spent years getting educated and developing themselves in their career path. They're saving lives. There's no doubt about it. They're saving lives, they're treating disease, and for many people, they're making significant changes in their trajectory moving forward, right? But for you, you don't have to settle with the end, the conversation ending there and you just moving forward on that path. You can choose to do whatever the hell you want. You can also choose to say no thank you to what they're offering. And there's there's they shouldn't be offended, right?

Polly Mertens 40:34

They shouldn't be offended. Yeah, and it's not like rebellion or distrust or whatever. It's like self-advocating, you know, it's an informed participation and you are choosing, right? Just like if you went to a buffet and you're like, which one of these do you want? Right. And I think um what I what I often see with older family members that I have, they go into the doctor. It's just like they go in, like whatever they say, you know, just sort of um not and I'm always like, wait, take your own care into your own hands. You can, like you said, have conversations around this, get curious, don't just say like diagnosis, oh well, it's over, you know. It's like depending on the stage, as we talked about, you know, you're closer to being able to have a meaningful impact and you have agency and power to do something. Later stage, okay, your options are more limited, but you still often have options, A, and how you think about it, what you know, what you and and knowing that agency is like you have a belief that your actions matter. You have that belief that I can do something about this, right? This can something can happen, I can do it, right? Um, and it directly influences your behavior and your outcomes, period. You know, going back to that set in health psychology is like, do you think this is what would change if you thought that you could do something about this or you can't? Are you gonna ask about it or are you just gonna like, okay, well, I guess there's nothing that can be done. Like I have friends with like the rheumatoid arthritis or things that are they build on each other. You know, you can reverse, you can slow down that train. And I think, and I've seen people, you know, in lots of cases, especially with the power of the mind with the Joe Dispenza work, like you can reverse disease.

Samantha Pruitt 42:14

So, but it's it's just well, let's let's say you choose to go on uh pharmaceutical, for example, or do some kind of treatment protocol because things have gotten flared up or to a certain level or whatever. You can also come off of it. It's not a death sentence or a life sentence. Maybe there is a circumstance where you need to temporarily be treated for this thing and whatever the uh you know plan is that you sign on for, that's totally fine. There's a time and a place, right? But then you should immediately get to work figuring out how do I ensure this doesn't go farther, go deeper, go further? How do I ensure that? And how can I actually get back into homeostasis so my body can hopefully do a natural protocol around this thing, whatever this thing is that's currently in disarray.

Polly Mertens 43:05

Yeah, right? And you know, like we we talked about different degrees of let's call it desperation or you know, limited options. So I remember um my mom was diagnosed with light uh diabetes, not extreme, but light diabetes. And the doctor even gave her the option that she had. She was like, Okay, well, you gotta, you know, get on this medication because you got um, you know, it's too high and whatnot. She said, Well, you could get off this um if you would just walk 30 minutes a day. Wow, good job. She never walked, but at least the doctor said, Well, you don't, I mean, the doctor knew enough to say that, and unfortunately, you know, mom didn't take that into into heart, and so she never did, and so she was on that medication for a long, long, long time, you know.

Samantha Pruitt 43:50

So and all of its and all of its side effects. Oh yeah, oh yeah. I mean, you're hitting the next nail that we need to before we wrap this thing up, is like lifestyle medicine is an actual thing. Okay, some people call it functional medicine, lifestyle medicine, longevity medicine. Call it whatever the hell you want. It's this giant bucket of things

Lifestyle Medicine And Gut Health Foundations

Samantha Pruitt 44:13

that the human can do throughout their. Day by various thoughts, choices, and actions that generate a state of health or disease, function or dysfunction. Right. So if you just want to do a little bit of research in that arena, it will blow your mind. There's just so much good science going on here. But the basics, just real foundational stuff we should touch on, obviously, are gut health and the permeable gut and all of the impacts that your gut has on the rest of the systems. Right? Like if your gut health is off, most things in the body will be off. So, I mean, you could nerd out all day long on gut microbiome and gut health, but maybe you want to touch bases on that for just a hot second.

Polly Mertens 45:06

It's one of my favorite topics. Let's nerd on that.

Samantha Pruitt 45:09

Let's talk about poop too. Wow, we're here. I mean, people aren't pooping, dude. Anyway, I digress. Talk about gut health.

Polly Mertens 45:18

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I agree. And, you know, there's um there's a guy named Dr. Dean Orish. You know, he has clinical research. We talked about one of those top ones, like cardiovascular, right? His research shows that lifestyle intervention interventions can reverse many aspects of heart disease, right? So, like challenging, challenging that it's inevitable. I just have it, whether it's genetic or you got a diagnosis. It's like, no, actually, there's probably some options, some things you could do today to reverse that. You know, don't need to be like in the hospital with a widowmaker, get a stint. I mean, everybody, you know, I've got too many friends and family and loved ones getting these stints, like, you know, just like they're handing them out like straws at a bar. It's like, I'm sorry. Like, no, like, let's get you on the treadmill, let's get you out for a walk, let's, you know, get get you off the sugar a little bit, you know, a lot of things, right? So, and gut health, yes. Like, yeah, I mean, and what what's often so there's like two things. One is, you know, A, it's identity, right? If you don't think you can do anything, or if you're just, you know, predestined or whatever, you won't take the same actions as if you did, right? And second is like, you know, knowing what to do and then doing it, right? It's not always easy in this environment that we live in with all the junk food and the choices and the stressful days, and you know, like it costs something to work out and whatnot. Like it's not always easy to live a life, a healthy lifestyle, but it is a choice that you can make, right? And so you've got to get over that inertia sometimes of like, you know, body at rest tends to stay at rest. You know, it's like, and a body in motion tends to stay in motion. Once you get on the healthy angle, it's easier to stay in that lane and in that zone, just as it is to stay out of shape, out of good health, out of, like I said, dysbiosis.

Samantha Pruitt 47:08

And you really only need to do the 80-20. If you can make the right decision, 80% of the time, you are crushing it. Okay, it doesn't mean you all of a sudden have to live this very extreme lifestyle and everything has to be perfect. That's a whole other psychological problem that we're not gonna get into in this show. But if you live the 80-20 and 20% of the time, you're kind of like, yeah, I'm not feeling it today, or I'm gonna do this other thing today. Cool. But if 80% of the time you're making the right choices, the right decisions, taking the right actions, you're gonna be fine. Yeah, you're gonna be fine.

Polly Mertens 47:40

Yeah. And you know, one of the things is just start with what you probably already know that you need to be doing. You know, if if you've got the wake-up call, or if you fear that you're close to having a wake-up call or, you know, a diagnosis or something like that, and you're like, I know I should whatever, stop having that extra glass of wine at night, or stop eating that candy bar, or stop, you know, whatever, or I know I need to walk more. Okay, well, you know it. Okay, let's do something about it. And like one of the things that I see is, especially as people, you know, age up, whatnot, is you know, one of my favorite phrases in terms of relationships is um Jim Rohn says, I'll take care of me for you, and you take care of you for me, right? Because it's this partnership, right? And it's like, I'm gonna take care of this body and myself and my well-being and being the best partner I can be because I care about you, and you do the same for me. And I see that also with families. Like people don't often see the not caring for themselves, the eventual impact that's gonna have on their loved ones. You know, it's like it's massive. Hey, you're probably paying a price also, and you're gonna ask them to pay a price in watching you whatever, uh young death, uh you know, long painful, you know, decline, whatever it is, but like taking care of you for them also.

Samantha Pruitt 49:08

100%. I mean, yeah, we could go on about this all day long, obviously.

Polly Mertens 49:14

Well, I hope, I hope, you know, my biggest thing was a friend who was like, ah, just you know, it's inevitable. I hope you've heard enough in this in the way that you and I think that if you haven't already awakened to getting

Trust Yourself And Take Action

Polly Mertens 49:27

curious, shifting your paradigm, asking more questions, feeling more empowered, taking your agency back, goddamn, then this was like, okay, click next, don't listen, keep listening to us. But that's who we see you as is somebody who wants control of their life, wants more agency in making their choices and doing something about it. So yeah.

Samantha Pruitt 49:50

I mean, it's it's not that we're saying don't trust, you know, Western medical or this or that. What we are saying is trust yourself above all. And you can trust yourself when you know yourself. The more I know what who I am and how I work and what what's good for me, what the more I know me, the more empowered I am to trust myself to make the right decisions. Yes. At whatever stage, no matter how big the crisis, no matter how small the thing is, I know the answer. And so it's that to me, like that's the take home is like, dude, know yourself and trust yourself. You're gonna be fine. Yeah. But if you somehow decided that's someone else's job, we have a problem.

Polly Mertens 50:39

Yeah, that's what we don't want to say. Yeah, and take actions. Like, like if you find out something, you have the power to not just take that as destiny, you know, like take it back into your own hands. Like uh one of my mentors says, like, you know, you you walk in and the doctor hands you a uh a diagnosis, whatever, and it's like, okay, thank you for your opinion. I will not be following, you know, that trajectory, right? It's like, okay, that's an opinion. And I'm, you know, and what do you think? What do you believe? What do you know about yourself and your ability? Because I'm sorry, if you just look, if you just search for people, there's probably every disease, including blindness and all sorts of things known to man that people have reversed. There is, there are people all over the planet. So if they can, why not you? Like you can too. So you just have to know, you know, if you if you activate that in your mind, like, well, if somebody has reversed this, I can reverse it. If there's a way to do it, I can do it, right? And then you take that power back. So this was fun. It was fun. Yeah, I like helping people remember their awesomeness, their absolute awesomeness, and take it into the world and dimension of your health. By God, right? Nothing else.

Samantha Pruitt 51:54

Because how your life feels and your body and your brain is more important than how it looks.

Polly Mertens 52:02

And every day is your opportunity to find your awesome.