Shadow Me Next!

How Functional And Integrative Medicine Restore Real Health | Dr. Aimee Duffy, MD

• Ashley Love • Season 1 • Episode 53

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Connect with Dr. Duffy at: aimeeduffymd.com

Feeling “fine” on paper but worn out in real life? We sit down to virtually shadow Dr. Amiee Duffy, a board-certified family physician and founder of Carolina Integrative Medicine. Dr. Duffy traded seven-minute visits for two-hour conversations and a root-cause approach that helps patients actually feel well. Her journey from delivering babies and teaching residents to building an integrative, functional practice reveals how time, testing, and trust can change outcomes.

We learn crucial definitions so you can navigate Medicine with clarity: what board certification means, how integrative medicine blends modalities like nutrition, PT, and talk therapy into conventional care, and why functional medicine pushes deeper to restore physiology. Dr. Duffy explains how bioidentical hormones, advanced stool and cortisol testing, and inflammation markers can uncover why “normal” labs still leave people tired, foggy, and inflamed. She shares the turning point after the Women’s Health Initiative, the pitfalls of one-size-fits-all hormone fear, and the practical safeguards that keep therapy both effective and safe.

She explains why your gut health matters. We connect microbiome balance, barrier integrity, and nutrient absorption to immune function, brain fog, insulin resistance, and hormone stability. You’ll hear how addressing the gut often unlocks better sleep, steadier mood, and true metabolic change, even when GI symptoms aren’t obvious. We also talk career flexibility for trainees and clinicians: why pre-education, structured wellness programs, and a systems approach help patients commit and thrive, and how longer visits make space for the science and the story.

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Ashley Love:

Hello and welcome to Shadow Me Next, a podcast where I take you into and behind the scenes of the medical world to provide you with a deeper understanding of the human side of medicine. I'm Ashley, a physician assistant, medical editor, clinical preceptor, and the creator of Shadow Me Next. It is my pleasure to introduce you to incredible members of the healthcare field and uncover their unique stories, the joys and challenges they face, and what drives them in their careers. It's access you want and stories you need. Whether you're a pre-health student or simply curious about the healthcare field, I invite you to join me as we take a conversational and personal look into the lives and minds of leaders in medicine. I don't want you to miss a single one of these conversations. So make sure that you subscribe to this podcast, which will automatically notify you when new episodes are dropped. And follow us on Instagram and Facebook at Shadow Me Next, where we will review highlights from this conversation and where I'll give you sneak previews of our upcoming guests. Today's guest is someone who's followed the traditional path, realized it didn't quite fit, and then had the courage to build something that finally did. Dr. Amy Duffy is a board-certified family physician who spent years delivering babies, teaching residents, and practicing conventional medicine until she realized that normal didn't feel normal for her patients anymore. And it certainly didn't feel normal for her. What I love about her story is how honest she is about that movement, the frustration of seven-minute visits, the patients who were still tired and unwell despite normal labs, and the quiet realization that medicine had to start looking deeper. In this conversation, Dr. Duffy takes us inside the world of integrative and functional medicine, the two-hour visits, the deep dive labs, the gut health revelations, and the radical shift from treating disease to restoring life. We also talk about motherhood and training, the realities of shifting career paths, and the one disease process every pre-health student should be paying close attention to. Please keep in mind that the content of this podcast is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only and should not be considered as professional medical advice. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the host and guests and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer, or company. This is Shadow Me Next with Dr. Amy Duffy. Dr. Amy Duffy, thank you so much for joining us today. We are so excited to have you on the show on Shadow Me Next. So thanks for being here. Thanks for joining us.

Dr. Aimee Duffy, MD:

Absolutely. I'm excited.

Ashley Love:

Um, if it's okay, Dr. Duffy, I'd like to do things a little bit backwards today because you have you have 20 years plus of healthcare experience. And there are so many phrases that we're hearing in medicine right now. Um, you're a board certified physician. You're also the founder of Carolina Integrative Medicine, specializing in functional and integrative healthcare. Can you for the students and for me too, can you define some of these terms, like board certified physician? What is functional medicine? What is integrative health care? What are these things?

Dr. Aimee Duffy, MD:

Well, board certified. So, you know, if you decide that you're going to go to medical school and get your MD, then you you can go to four-year med school and you have an MD at the end, but like you can't do anything with that. Um, I mean, you could go be a secretary somewhere, but like from a medical perspective, you can't. So then you need to go do at least an internship to get licensed to be a medical doctor. And there, there are occasional, you might find somebody like working in urgent care, something like that, that just did their one-year internship and has a license to practice medicine. But in order to be board certified in a specialty, so generally you're going to be board certified in family practice, internal medicine, pediatrics, surgery, you know, whatever, uh, orthopedics, OBGYN, that's a board certification that you get after you complete a residency program. And then to further define, so I am board certified in family practice or family medicine. And then um, there are uh entities out there where you can get a board certification in functional medicine or in um there's uh A4M is the American Association of the Advancement of Anti-Aging Medicine or something like that. So it goes on and on and on at multiple A's. You can be board certified in something like that, although you don't have to be to practice that type of medicine. So um integrative medicine to me, which is why I've started this and named my practice Carolina Integrative Medicine, is the idea that we can bring what we call our traditional allopathic, you know, MD medicine. So it's like, you know, you have this, we test you or or we guess, or whatever you want to call it, and here's your pill kind of thing. Um, where integrative medicine brings in other thought processes, I guess. So it's like we're we're integrating different modalities. So whether that might be accepting of massage therapy or acupuncture or you know, talk therapy or physical therapy or whatever, we're we're integrating multiple um modalities into the patient's care so that we're gonna get better results than just kind of, you know, streamline here. And often integrative and functional are somewhat mixed. And the more, you know, I opened my practice 15 years ago and it was integrative medicine, and then really I practice functional medicine now, but I just didn't change the name. So functional medicine really kind of the theory is that it digs down a little bit deeper. Like, what is the actual physiology going on? Let's let's repair the dysfunction that's happening in our body. So if somebody's having a lot of fatigue, you know, streamline can be, okay, you have a thyroid disorder and we're gonna fix that and then we're all done. But you know, you can really dig a little bit deeper. Well, why did that thyroid disorder happen? And or okay, you have fatigue, but your thyroid is normal. You don't have sleep apnea, you don't have some other things. So what, you know, what is causing that fatigue? And we really get deeper to say what's stressing out the system. And so in functional medicine, we often will do some like functional labs, like we're looking at saliva testing to look at cortisol and adrenal function and and hormones in a different way. We're looking at uh stool testing, not just like your typical stool test. If you went to the ER or something like that, would be like, do you have the bad guys? You know, is there is there E. coli or salmonella there? Right. But this really like is a very broad eight-page, you know, report of all the things that go on in your gut. And not only, you know, are the bad guys, but are there enough good guys there? And so, you know, it's it's really a detailed lab. You can look at um the you know, leaky gut, a lot of people think is is kind of a fad term, if you want to call it. But there's actually markers that you can measure for that. Um, digging a little bit deeper from a cardiovascular perspective, you can see inflammation, you can see plaque activity, you can see kind of sticky factor. So, you know, we're really looking way deeper than sort of traditional uh medicine. And not that those doctors don't know that those things are out there, but a lot of it is what what is insurance going to cover? What do we have time to talk about? Because in in you know, sort of a traditional medicine, it's like we got seven minutes to see this patient. So we don't have time to be talking about all these labs and the results, right? But you know, a new patient for me is often a two-hour visit to go, you know, through all of that stuff. So in a nutshell, there's board certified and then there's extra. And, you know, I'm not uh I have a few certifications and like hormone balancing and things like that. But I as I go through, you know, I'm just practicing in family medicine, you sort of have a pretty broad scope of what you do. And so you're not required to be board certified in, you know, something like functional or integrative to practice that. If I decided I wanted to go do surgery, then I would have to go back and get, you know, board certified to be um in compliance, you know, with host like I'm not in a hospital system, so I don't have to, you know, have certifications for doing things in the hospital or something like that. Does that make sense?

Ashley Love:

It does. That is so interesting. And thank you so much for defining those terms because I think, like you said, so many people are throwing these terms around and we're using them now colloquially and professionally. And I'm not entirely sure people fully understand exactly what they mean. Um, so so thank you so much. That is it's it's so interesting to me. And I would have, I would love to hear your story about how you transitioned from conventional medicine. So that's the allopathic medicine that we talked about. Here's your disease, here's your treatment moving along into this more really whole patient, whole health care um practice. Were you just getting, were you becoming more and more frustrated with the medicine, or were you realizing that you weren't your patients weren't getting the answers that they needed?

Dr. Aimee Duffy, MD:

Probably both. I think um, you know, I lucky for me, I'm very grateful that it happened fairly early in my practice. So um this goes way back when I was 11. I just absolutely loved babies and I wanted to hold all the babies and I had all the cabbage patch dolls and all of their accessories and everything. So I became a babysitter at 11 years old. And um, this family, I I never, you know, I was more like a family's helper. Like I just came over and played with the baby so the mom could get stuff done, basically. And and as I grew in 11, and as their family grew, I mean, by the time I was a senior in high school, I was part of their family. Her sister had babies, her friends had babies. I used to babysit all the kids and all that, and that was my job for years. And so when I was a senior in high school, um they were having uh another baby and invited me to be in the delivery room to experience it. And so um, that was my first true sort of medical, you know, experience, besides just me going to the doctor. And um, and I was just fascinated. I mean, I was kind of up, I wasn't down in the business end, I was up at the head end, so you know, I didn't see everything, but you know, babies born and put on mom's belly, and I was like, this is the coolest thing. Like, I want I want to do this. So I knew that I was gonna go to med school. I thought I talked about, I thought about PA school a little bit, that sort of thing, just because I knew I wanted to be in medicine, but I wasn't quite sure what that was until um the OB experience. So I thought I was gonna go be an O B G Y N or I was gonna be a midwife. I didn't know which one, but you know, went off to school and um and then in residency, a couple things happened. I had not residency, I'm sorry, medical school. I had a baby, my third year of resident or medical school. So baby number one came. I have four girls now. Um, I wouldn't advise that, but if it happens, you can cry because that's important to cry a lot and then realize like, you know, my my um advisor, when I went in, I was like, what am I supposed to do? Like, and he said, you know, this is not the first time this has happened, number one, and you have seven years to matriculate through medical school. So, like, you know, you can take your time, figure it out. So I actually did take a whole year off when she was born because otherwise you were just gonna be delayed and not be able to match anyway. So, like, why don't just take a break, just jump back in with the next year? That was a side of the room. Um, so when I was in medical school, going through the rotations of different specialties and family practice, like was just so calm and and everybody was just really happy. Where when you get into kind of the surgical specialties, they were all like, ah, you know, it was just like you, you know, what you imagine residency being. And I it might be better now because we have new rules, I guess, with the 80-hour work and stuff like that. So maybe more people are calm. But so what I realized is that family practice could do a lot of things and they could deliver babies, but they could also take care of the babies afterwards and be able to do more women's health and then have their own babies and seem to have a little bit more relaxed schedule. So I did family practice and I chose a residency program that's here in South Carolina because they were very heavy and obstetric. So as you go looking as a medical student and you kind of, you know, start to explore different residency programs, particularly in family medicine, they're all a little bit different. Some are bigger in uh like sports medicine if they're around a college or something like that, and others, you know, may have more um obstetrics. And so I chose a rural residency program. There's only two residents per year. I did a bigger internship at a bigger hospital farther away, and then came for my second and third year, and we're required to deliver 10 babies. And then when you're done with that, you could be done or you could do more. So out of the four residents that were, you know, in my group, none of them wanted to do babies except for me. And so once they did their 10, then I got all of them. So by the time I graduated from my residency program, I had C-section privileges. I was delivering all kinds of babies. And so that was what I was, what I was loving is being able to be part of that OB world and then take care of the babies afterwards. So I was invited to stay on as an attending physician at the residency program here. And I did that for one year. And then the OBGYN office next door said, Why don't you come be over here? We need somebody to do primary care for all the women that are coming in because we don't want to do that part. We'll share OB call and then we'll do the surgeries and it'll be a nice blend. And I did, I just jumped at that. I was like, yes, more babies, more delivery. I was so excited, and that was perfect. Um, and and the two things that changed there is that in residency, I had two weeks of a GYN rotation. So, you know, I was focused on babies and moms and whatever, and I didn't talk to anybody about hormones, you know, and menopause. And that was just not part of my world. And so as soon as I got into this OB world and I was seeing annual exams and I was primary care for all these women coming for their annuals, and like there was the hormone issue. And it, you know, for the younger people, um, back in 2002, the women's health initiative came out and basically made this huge deal about hormones bad, nobody can be on hormones kind of thing. So this was 2006, and I was right in the middle of what do we do with these women that are that are going through menopause? And I just wasn't really happy with like, you know, the lowest dose possible. We hope it doesn't, you know, cause problems 10 years down the road, but we have no way to tell. We have no, you know, risk factor modification or anything like that to give these women this medication that, you know, could be harmful, but yet they're suffering through, you know, the changes of the hormones. And so I happened upon uh a conference called Natural Hormone Balancing. And so I was like, well, let me go check that out and see what happens. That was 2008. And like it was like Alice in Wonderland going through this tiny little hole into this amazing, beautiful world of bioidentical hormones and functional medicine and sort of like digging a little bit deeper and really being able to say, okay, if this is out of balance, let's just bring it back to normal and you know, we'll feel better. And so when I started doing that, patients felt better, right? We weren't kind of weighing the odds of whether we can try this or let's just put you on an antidepressant, you know, that'll make you feel better. And like it was, you know, it was little baby band-aids that weren't really fixing the big picture. Um, so I started doing that in in that practice, and that was a private practice, all was great. Then, just like a lot of private practices come and they decide they're gonna get bought out by the big hospital system. And I knew that that was not the path for me. Um, so I amicably said, I'm gonna not continue on that path. And weirdly, had a consultant who I met at a conference. Um, they had a booth, you know, and they were like, hey, we can help you with practice management and consulting. And I ignored them because I was like, I don't need that. And, you know, call him up and be like, okay, what do I do now? And so he was like, You can do this. Like, you know, you can open your own practice, we'll help you. And so, you know, that's the start of Carolina Integrative Medicine 15 years ago, and just, you know, it's very focused on the hormones, kind of adrenal stuff, getting into thyroid a little bit. And then what I found is the patients who came in with like gut stuff, you know, they had IBS or whatever. And if we treated the gut like exponentially, everything else got better.

Ashley Love:

Incredible. It's incredible. I am so glad that you described your journey. First of all, thank you for doing that, but largely because it seems like you were really able to find what suited you. I think so often people hear, well, people a lot of the my pre-PA students will say, Well, I don't want to go into medicine. I don't want to become a medical doctor because I don't want to work in X for my whole life. I like the flexibility of being a PA. And we've mentioned this on the show before, but time and time again, we're hearing these stories about physicians, specifically MDs, really getting to explore medicine in a way that we might not realize it. So I'm so glad that you've been able to do that and find a bunch of different ways that you've been able to really feel comfortable and confident and be able to shift. I mean, we've heard about practice shifts, we heard about business model shifts and workplace shifts. Um, and then of course, you really found what you needed and you've been there for so many years. It's it's incredible. I'd like to talk a little bit about your patients. So, in in functional and integrative medicine, when your patients come in, is it a hard sale for them? Do you have to really convince them? Or are they mostly very open to what you're looking at, what you're looking for, and the next steps that you want to do?

Dr. Aimee Duffy, MD:

Yeah. Um, it's twofold. We we spend a lot of time in what that our term is called pre-education. So, you know, people are watching a lot of videos. Um, we have webinars that people come to, that sort of thing. I used to do live talks pre-COVID and um, you know, that was fine. But once COVID happened, that was that was the one thing that was good out of COVID is that we learned how to be virtual like this. And so it's like, oh, I don't want to go back to that. Um, but so a lot of our patients are um, if if somebody was just searching, you know, or or looking for something different. I mean, these terms, integrative, functional, holistic comes through a lot. Um or hormones, you know, specifically somebody looking for natural hormones, they might even not know the word bioidentical hormones, but something like that. So I would say the majority of our patients are searching for something different. They're frustrated with the typical system. You know, I go in, I have five minutes, they just want to give me another prescription and I don't feel good, and I'm on 10 prescriptions and I still don't feel good and I'm not finding the answers that I'm looking for. So generally, if they're searching, you know, it's not a hard sale because they're they're frustrated and they're there. Um, and then, you know, on the flip side, it's it's, you know, in the business world, we have to do some marketing, but I don't really like the word marketing and sales. You know, if people don't know about us, we can't help them. So to me, it's getting out there and spreading the word, just like like that's why I like doing podcasts because it's like, oh, I didn't know that was out there. Maybe I can go look for that. And then even if it's not me, but somebody else that can help this person, you know, change their life, then I've done something. So it's more about getting the word out there to let people know that there is a different model and a different way of getting, you know, taken care of and then living differently. So um, so most of our patients, I wouldn't say, you know, we're not coming in, you know, by the time they get to me, and you know, that's a whole business thing, you know, we have discovery calls that they do first, and you know, we do all this stuff. So by the time they get to me, it's not like they just picked up the phone and said, Hey, I need an appointment. You know, like there's a lot of work that goes into that. So, you know, then I'm able to explain to them what's going on with them, you know, what are their issues? Where do they want to be? Here's what your labs are telling me, and you know, here's what my plan is. And so our plans are very comprehensive. We do wellness programs, so it's not again, we're taking off this and we're saying we've got all these different pillars that we need to be addressing, and you're not gonna get to your optimal self or place unless we attack all of these different things. And so that's gonna take time, but it's gonna take some structure to get there too.

Ashley Love:

Absolutely. It's it you just answered another question that I was going to ask. And that was what does good health mean? And really, I was hoping you were gonna describe exactly that. The fact that it is just, it is not just going to see your cardiologist twice a year and making sure that your EKG and your labs look normal, right? It's not just keeping your thyroid somewhat managed for whatever the standard is. You know, what you're describing as good health is it's hormones, it's gut. You mentioned talk therapy. Um, it's it is so much more. And I'm I'm so grateful for your practice and um and the care that you're providing these patients because I think a lot of people are frustrated with medicine. Sometimes clinicians, sometimes, a lot of times clinicians are frustrated.

Dr. Aimee Duffy, MD:

Clinicians are, yeah, for sure. I mean, they're frustrated with with, you know, again, I think it takes it takes a lot. And that's what I'm saying. I I'm grateful that it happened early in my practice because I'm not sure if I was 10 years in or whatever that I, you know, I would have the capacity to, you know, take a jump and make a big change like that. So um, you know, I get it and I I hear them all the time being frustrated, you know, and and that's part of the business coaching model is that we have a lot of practitioners who are getting out of, you know, the traditional rat race of, you know, urgent care or or ER medicine and transitioning to this, you know, more functional or or integrative approach and opening their own practices. So um it's very, you know, I would say like I started this bringing life into the world with with delivering babies, and now I kind of get to restore life to those who have been, you know, sort of feeling like, is this my normal? You know, I'm I'm 48 years old, I'm 52, like I feel like I'm 80. What's wrong with me? And, you know, traditional labs look normal. You know, they can't see. Their kidneys are fine, their liver's fine, their thyroids normal, they're, you know, maybe they have a little high cholesterol or something like that, but they're not, they're not looking deep enough to be able to see, you know, what's causing that that issue to make you feel older.

Ashley Love:

It's um, it might be a sticky subject, but it almost sounds like health care as opposed to sick care, which is what right? I mean, that's really that's what you're describing, um, which is I think what a lot of people want right now. I want to go to the doctor and and I want the physician to tell me I'm healthy, goodbye, see you next time, right? But if I'm not, I don't want just a I don't want just a band-aid. I want to get to the butt to the bottom of it, like you're mentioning.

Dr. Aimee Duffy, MD:

You want to feel healthy too, not just be told you're healthy, right? But you want to feel like that. What does that mean? You know, that means I can jump up out of bed and I can do all the things that I want to do. I can get down on the floor, I can stand up, I can run if I need to, I can, you know, I can get through my day. My brain is focused. You know, we see a lot of, you know, just I my brain, you know, brain fog, you know, I can't remember things. Do I have adult onset ADD? You know, and and you know, again, there's band aids for that, but that's not that's not the reason why, you know, you you're feeling the way you feel.

Ashley Love:

So have you seen a big uptick in interest in this recently? Um, is it because people know more about it? Is it because people are frustrated? Is it because of COVID and the fact that we all now think we do have all these strange, bizarre symptoms that are happening, and we need somebody to tell us what's going on?

Dr. Aimee Duffy, MD:

I don't know if you could put a I could put a finger on exactly the why behind it, but I definitely think that it's growing. Um, you know, interestingly, like that the A4M I was telling you about, that's a conference that I attend and speak at. And last year, I think they hit a record of like 7,000, you know, attendees at this conference. It's huge.

Ashley Love:

Here on Shadow Me Next, each episode, we share a quality question, a thought-provoking prompt designed to help pre-health students reflect more deeply, strengthen their self-awareness, and prepare for professional school interviews. We did not have a chance to discuss a quality question, but Dr. Duffy has mentioned something that's impossible to ignore: the growing role of functional and integrative medicine. A question I could hear being asked on interview is this: Describe the role functional and integrative medicine play in healthcare. Now, whether you plan to go into surgery, pediatrics, cardiology, or emergency medicine, this question matters. Because the truth is, patients are showing up tired, inflamed, unwell, and unheard, and they're craving clinicians who can look beyond the quick visit or the normal lab result. So, this quality question asks you to think bigger than your future specialty. This isn't about choosing a niche, it's about understanding the full picture of a patient's health, their nutrition, their stress, their gut, their hormones, their environment, and recognizing that real health care doesn't start or stop with one organ system. Take a minute and reflect on how you define good health care. Then ask yourself, where in your future practice will you need to step back, zoom out, and think more holistically to truly care for the whole patient? Keep in mind that there's more interview prep, such as mock interviews and personal statement review, over on ShadowmeNext.com. There you'll find amazing resources to help you as you prepare to answer your own quality questions.

Dr. Aimee Duffy, MD:

They started at like 700, you know. So I mean, just over the, you know, whatever, 15 years. And that's why I was talking to somebody yesterday and they're like, so you were doing hormones, you know, bioidentical hormones in 2008. I'm like, yeah. And they're like, I didn't, you know, we didn't even really know that existed for a long time, or or you know, it's really coming out there. You know, I would say in the last five years, it's definitely growing. And I one of the things I think, I mean, just like we're doing now, right? Like these podcasts are huge. Like that is, you know, podcasts, social media, YouTube, you know, people are out there and talking about this stuff. And prior to that, like how how would we have known? You know, nobody listened to podcasts before and we didn't have YouTube videos really, um, or that wasn't the place where we would go to get information. So I think um, you know, to some degree, it's it's you know, technology that has helped us get the word out there for sure. And then, and then just again, the ability of having AI is just a whole nother thing. I mean, people are searching, but even two years ago, we didn't really know that. And so, you know, people could Google search and and I think the the algorithms for searching, you know, for information uh, you know, has improved too. So that when people search, why am I tired? You know, and you know, hopefully something in the world of functional medicine comes up for them.

Ashley Love:

Awareness is a beautiful thing. And and, you know, I think for the people that are thinking about this and thinking, well, maybe I need to go see um someone in functional or integrative medicine, but they might be, you know, a little nervous. They might be like, well, I don't know where to start. You have this fantastic book called Normal Doesn't Have Side Effects. This book explains the proven scientific methods that you, Dr. Duffy, use to reveal and treat the invisible interactions. I love that, between each patient's hormones, body systems, and food. What questions are you hoping to answer with this book?

Dr. Aimee Duffy, MD:

I think the biggest thing like I described is that is that we've got to put the blinders or take the blinders off, right? I think so many, even even in the hormone world, you know, people come in and be like, well, my hormones are off, you know, and like I do, I need to see hormone replacement, you know, whatever that might mean for them. And what I really wanted people to understand is that there are multiple things going on that that can affect how you feel. And there are things that like, again, your internal stressors of, you know, what's going on in your gut. And even if you don't have symptoms there, there can still be things that, you know, your body's job is to protect you. And if it's over here trying to protect us from all the chemicals that we're putting in our body, it's too busy defending us to be able to really do its proper job. And so I think so many people, if they don't have a true obvious symptom, when I eat this, I feel this, that they don't realize how much their food is affecting them, how much their gut health is affecting them. And then that turns into how does that affect your hormones? People come in, you know, I'm 38 years old and I'm having night sweats. Like I'm too early to have, you know, menopause. Like, what is this hormone thing about? And again, if they're all focused on hormones, they can, they can band-aid that, but they're not understanding why did you get to this place? And so I really was hoping for an easy way. There's a lot of stories in there. So hopefully it's somewhat entertaining to help people connect with the importance of managing stress, the importance of managing your gut and your food, as well as addressing, you know, some hormonal imbalances and other inflammatory things. So, you know, there's some fun patient stories in there. There's some personal stories in there. There's, you know, stories about having four babies and delivering my own baby. Wow. Um, stressors that I've had with my own kids and things that for a long time, you know, as in medical school and doctor, you know, we don't talk about our personal stuff, we don't talk about money. We don't, you know, we're just here to take care of the patient and we're we're like this, you know, we're behind this, you know, bubble or something like that. And and, you know, to be able to really have good connections with your patients and and have them trust you, number one, they're gonna be more likely to do what you say. Um from a business perspective, they're gonna be more, you know, more likely to um invest in themselves and invest in me and trust that, you know, I've been there, I've walked the walk. This is not me, you know, over here saying, you shall do this, right? It's like we we're doing this together. Um, so that was really the goal. Of that book and to help people understand, you know, the normal doesn't have side effects comes mostly from hormones when I'm trying to say, you know, if we can, your hormones are down here, and all I want to do is get them to here, and we don't, then we're not having to deal with all the scary stuff that comes from the pharmaceutical grade hormone replacement that that got such a bad rap for a long time. So we're constantly having to defend the safety of hormone replacement. Um, so that's just one step in that direction.

Ashley Love:

It's such a hot topic right now, too. My goodness. Um, it's it's an incredible book. It's a great resource for people who have questions or maybe just want to investigate, investigate a little bit more before they they dive into this world. So thank you for thank you for making that. Of course, it's available on Amazon. You can also uh go to amy duffymd.com. That's a i-m-e-e-d-u-f-f-y-md.com. Um, and if you're in South Carolina and are interested in Dr. Duffy as a patient, Carolina Integrative Medicine.com. Dr. Duffy, before we wrap up, I do have one more question for you. And this will be for our pre-health students. Even if functional or integrative medicine is not on their radar right now, you know, they have their blinders on and they're full focused on surgery. What is one topic that you are seeing so frequently in medicine that they should at least have on their radar right now?

Dr. Aimee Duffy, MD:

I think gut. I think, you know, addressing food and addressing the gut, and it's not very difficult. So anybody can do it and it shows up everywhere. So if you're gonna go into cardiology, let's make sure that this person's inflammatory, you know, response and immune system is where it needs to be. Same thing, surgery, you know. Um, you know, to me, like that's our foundation. And because I think of our our accessibility to chemicals, you know, meaning our food has changed dramatically. And and so many people have blinders on. Food is food. Why, you know, we're we're just eating. Like, really, is that food fueling our system to give it the best result? Or is it having to, you know, bring the guns out and really have to fight through what you're putting into your body? So, you know, I'm so sad, like in oncology, you know, people go in to get their chemo and there's like donuts and package snacks and sugary drinks and whatever, and like we're just feeding cancer, you know. Uh that's my opinion anyway, not a medical diagnosis, but you know, uh so, so it affects everything everywhere. So, you know, and the sad thing is that in medical school, there's zero nutrition, um, at least where I was, you know, I'm not sure how it is 20 years later, 20, 30 years later now. So paying attention to nutrition and and learning how to at least evaluate somebody for you know some gut stuff can be huge in no matter where you are.

Ashley Love:

That's a really great point. Dr. Amy Duffy, thank you so much for joining us today on Shadow Me Next. It has just been such a pleasure. So fun. Thank you so very much for listening to this episode of Shadow Me Next. If you liked this episode, or if you think it could be useful for a friend, please subscribe and invite them to join us next Monday. As always, if you have any questions, let me know on Facebook or Instagram. Access you want, stories you need, you're always invited to Shadow Me Next.

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Ashley Love

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