Facilitated

41| From Lab Rats To Lives Changed: Rethinking Medical Careers And Finding A Fit In Functional Medicine

• The Facility Denver • Episode 41

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0:00 | 23:18

We share hard-won lessons for students chasing healthcare careers, from lab benches and surgical suites to functional medicine rooms where time and systems thinking change outcomes. The heart of the conversation: slow down, test paths, and choose impact over ego.

• exploring nonlinear routes into healthcare
• seeing the gaps in insurance-based care
• functional medicine as systems biology in practice
• career experiments in labs, coaching and diagnostics
• separating ego from mission-driven choices
• managing comparison and finding support
• taking time to reduce debt and gain skills
• defining impact and collaborating with specialists


Want to take the next step with functional medicine? Learn more about our new patient process and lab testing at www.thefacilitydenver.com 

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Stay curious, stay proactive, and we’ll catch you next time!

Welcome And Mission

SPEAKER_00

Welcome to Facilitated, where we bring you real stories, strategies, and science from the world of functional medicine. I'm Dr. Mitchell Rasmussen, a functional medicine practitioner.

SPEAKER_03

And I'm Kate Darty, a certified nutritionist. We are the owners of the facility, a functional medicine clinic here in Denver, Colorado.

SPEAKER_00

We help people improve their biology and get out of their own way. In my view, our work is about getting to know the person with the condition much more than it's about understanding which condition the person has. As I always say, diagnose the biology, not the disease.

Disclaimer And Light Banter

SPEAKER_03

On this podcast, we break down complex health topics, share real patient cases, anonymized, of course, and explore cutting-edge wellness strategies so you can make informed decisions about your health. Quick heads up before we dive in. We're here to share insights, not to diagnose or treat. So if you're dealing with a health issue, chat with a qualified healthcare provider before making any changes. All right. I can't hear us.

SPEAKER_00

Put the headphones on because you know I'm not going to. Can you hear me? Yeah. Have you seen the Instagram of Stevie Got Me Rollin'? No. I think that's what it's called. This dude gets these people that have no money to sign up for like 12-year car loans. I'm sure it's just a repo guy. I'm sure, but it's so funny. Stevie got me rolling their. I understand the rolling thing. Yeah, and I see his his Instagram stuff pops up and it's just like, got this 2021 charger with$350 down. And the comments are like, yeah, an 87% interest on a 30-year car loan. And or like the repo man's taking their address, and that's when I th said rolling. That's what I pictured. Stevie got me rolling.

SPEAKER_01

Alright.

SPEAKER_00

So you don't know that reference. No. Let me explain it again. I'm just kidding. Well, what are we doing today?

Framing The Talk For Students

SPEAKER_03

Okay, I am feeling inspired, so I made you come back in the studio. And yeah. And uh I am speaking to a class from my undergraduate university tomorrow of I think they're mostly juniors and seniors in undergrad uh neuroscience majors. And it really has me thinking about us at that age group and some things that I wish more people knew. I think we have some insight to share on that. And also just dreams around that. Um so this episode is for the youths.

SPEAKER_00

For the what?

SPEAKER_03

The youths.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I thought you said the youths. The youths. That's a hard word. The youth. I think you just say it like that.

SPEAKER_03

Oh, I like the youths.

Alternatives To The Med School Track

SPEAKER_00

Okay, well. So that's the your cue to take an English class. If you think that's proper. Yeah, what are you uh what are you excited to tell them? Well, what stood out to me open your horizons like that's what I when you were taking me through all the individuals, like you can't all go to MD PhD programs.

SPEAKER_03

No.

SPEAKER_00

And you shouldn't.

SPEAKER_03

No. I am so happy I did not go straight to medical school. I'm so happy.

SPEAKER_00

Or ever.

SPEAKER_03

Well, yes. But at the time that was where every person was going in my class. Of course, my neuroscience class was a total of nine students, but now there's 30. Um that's my biggest advice is take time. There's so much you can do to explore interest before it's just such a big decision, and it's such a locked-in path. And so some of the things that well, I know what we did. You can tell me what you did. But some of the things too that I was exploring that I was like, oh, that'd be kind of cool. There's so many cool careers. Uh whether that be, oh, some of these students were working in a mic some sort of microbiome lab research. And if that's where your interest is, work for a lab company that's doing stool testing. Whether that is as a rep, as a sales rep, you get a lot of experience that way. Whether it's as someone on the like clinical education team or in probably not the clinical education, someone on the uh like social media team or development of assays. Yeah.

Research Stories And Turning Points

SPEAKER_00

Or novel bacteria to investigate. Yeah, it is like you said it's a locked-in path. You know, I mean, I was uh can exercise science pre-med. I took all of, you know, I took no exercise classes, I was the pre-med track, so it was cell biology, a lot of extra uh bio, chem, o chem physics than I would have needed just for exercise science. It was you know, all of that. And I mean I was I won a research grant through the university, which might surprise you. I applied for it, took initiative. There was no class, I just applied for it and won. It's called it was called a Europe at the time, a university research proposal. And my university was attached to a medical school, University of Minnesota at Duluth had a medical school, and I actually got to work in a in a human physiology lab within the med school helping assist with rat surgeries where we would clamp uterine vessels to essentially mimic pre-eclampsia in rats, and we had to use sterile techniques, we had to be careful because the rats had to wake up from surgery. It was the cutest little nose cones of nitrous or something we'd place on them and pull on, take a forcep on their paw or on their leg or whatever to make sure that they were asleep. But my job was essentially to watch those, I didn't really get to help, but then to take gastrocnemius, calf muscle, and homogenize it, essentially blend it up and then put it on a pipetted onto plates and then run spectroscopy to look at protein uh expressions and certain from exercise from metformin and essentially trying to figure out the mechanism by which exercise attenuates hypertension in a pre-eclamptic rat model. I remember because I presented to the American College of Sports Medicine. I was think about that, it was 2009, and I still can tell you the name of the study. You know, and it was the RUP procedure, the reduced uterine perfusion pressure. I mean, I was dialed in. I was going to go do a post-baccalaureate pre-medical master's degree because I think my college GPA was maybe 3.5. I was a football player, like I was focused on other things. It wasn't I didn't have enough time to do internships in a hospital and things. Like, yeah, my thought was I was going to be an orthopedic surgeon. You know what changed my life? Rupturing my Achilles tendon. The most jerk surgeon was so condescending and rude to me, told me I didn't need rehab after my surgery because I was young, even though I snapped my Achilles and it rolled up like a lampshade, and all I had was a chin bone once I got my dressings off two months later, rolled his eyes when I said I needed physical therapy. That changed my life. I mean, I went with my dad to go tour a DO program, Des Moines University, thought about the timeline, looked at my grades, realized what it would take, and I just looked at him and was like, it's not for me, dog. You know, so I started coaching and training. I started coaching high school football. I ran the strength conditioning for my my old high school with my little brother when he was in it, and it changed my life. I was like, I like working with people who are alive or awake. And it just, yeah, I can stop there, but one thing led to another. I became a chiropractor.

SPEAKER_01

Right.

SPEAKER_03

I also had a formative experience in the rat lab. Mine was actually a hamster lab. We were doing uh brain dissection of hamsters, which I enjoyed a lot, and then I thought, oh, I'm going I want to go into research. I want to do something like this, where I'm I like the quiet space, I like the independent nature of the lab, I like the atmosphere of it. You know what turned me off? No, no, no. When you're doing hamster brain surgery, I I had all uh deceased patients. Okay. But at some point they have to be alive. So part of my job in the lab was having to clean the hamster cages. I don't like live animals. And I was out. That turned me off.

SPEAKER_00

Really, that's what got you.

SPEAKER_03

That what got me every Friday morning. I had to go and clean the rat, clean the hamster cages.

Rethinking Identity And Impact

SPEAKER_00

I can still taste the coffee that we drink in the medical school because it was just bad coffee, black, drinking so much of it, and I like really felt like this is my life. Like I'm gonna just be addicted to coffee and go to medical school and do an orthopedic, you know, surgery residency and become an orthopedist. And oh my god, the work that would have taken. And like you said, it would have pigeonholed me down one route. Because by that point, you spend 15 years of your life down one thing, and you've you've I think you gotta do it. Besides the fact that man, I don't know if I have that steady of a hand if I'm being completely honest with myself. And you tell me nightmares of the surgeons you worked for. Yep. It's like that would have been me freaking out. But I mean chiropractic was completely random. I had no interest in you know cracking backs or anything. It was I learned what functional medicine was, and I could just get a doctorate of chiropractic and run labs and learn about things and do a ton of extra outside curriculum and biochemistry and nutrition and functional medicine. And because my ultimate goal was I want to figure out why things are going on. And it was like a perfect marriage. Uh we talk a lot, like I have regrets. I feel like part of me wants to go to medical school and do that. There's like an insecurity I have, there's a knowledge thirst, but the older you get and the more you kind of get over yourself and you see the impact you make, you realize like, man, I can refer out more. I don't need to be everyone's everything. I don't need to be anyone's everything.

SPEAKER_03

I think about the ego in in certain things, and for me, it's like it's actually business school where what would be the reason for me to go to business school? I don't know if there is one. Everything we've learned about business is by making mistakes and and going through it. I don't have any plans to sell our business and become a COO somewhere else or a CEO somewhere else. It would add nothing to our business, be a major expense.

SPEAKER_00

Well, that was like a couple years ago. I remember a few on a few days off, I'd went to a coffee shop down by uh C U Anschutz Medical School, and I was studying for the MCAT, just trying to absorb and seeing the medical students. I looked so strung out and exhausted, and I had this realization like my business partner is trying to get my business off the ground together, and I'm sitting like a selfish prick because my ego, I'm sitting studying for the MCAT at 32 years old when I want to like start a family and get married. Like, when am I gonna do that? Move somewhere random, maybe I get a residency I want. Let's be honest, I don't love germs. How is that gonna go when you do your rotation in the ER or the NICU? Or you work in a community hospital with you know all sorts of these infectious diseases. Like, how's that gonna go, Michi? But it was it was ego and insecurity, and it's I mean, Dr. Silverman, one of my mentors, like I've talked to him a lot about it because he's like so successful and brilliant and really a north star for me in so many ways, and like yeah, and he even said, like, yeah, I've there there are those thoughts early in your career, but like, what is your goal of impact in this world? And if going to medical school helps you achieve that more, fine, but if that's not a goal-based reason to go, it's a ego or insecurity, you really gotta meditate on that, man, because you're doing it for the wrong reasons. Because I would still have to have my own business anyway.

SPEAKER_03

So I was reading one of the students' personal statements, and they have a desire to be a physician because they want to see the journey of healing from problem through intervention through resolution. I don't know if I want to burst this kid's bubble, but in our current medical system, you don't see that.

SPEAKER_00

I mean, what maybe as a concierge internist?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. Outside of the medical system, outside of the insurance system. But in the insurance model, you hand them off.

SPEAKER_00

Yep. You know, you're if you're a hospital-based internist, you are overworked, overburdened, too many patients, not enough support, and then you're essentially left to refer out for so many things, and then you lose them, and then you've got eight minutes for a visit, and you're supposed to manage five medications, take a few HPIs on some new problems. It's just, it's I feel so bad for those individuals. And then if you're a specialist, you're a GI, someone's got a brain-based gluten issue, you're not seeing that through. You're gonna send her to the neurologist who says, Well, I'm not a I don't deal with gluten, that's the GI, and then you get stuck and then you realize, oh my gosh, the only way to do this is to get outside the system. Maybe you shouldn't interest them in systems biology and what we do, if that's their true goal.

SPEAKER_03

Mm-hmm. I hope I do. I didn't know about it. I mean, it wasn't the same, but I didn't know about it.

SPEAKER_00

Have you noticed lately? I'm willing, my confidence, we're I'm seeing how we're able to impact people and I make fun of myself more to pay. It's like, well, I'm just a quack, or I'm just a lowly chiropractor. Like, isn't that wild that your chiropractor is the one who figured that out and got you to the right specialist? And these other people, and it's as I think it is, it's becoming more comfortable with like, I don't I don't need to solve all your problems, I need to do my best and try super hard and listen to you and problem solve and be curious, and then do what we can and find other people for the rest. It was a I don't know, it's a chiropractor conundrum. And my algorithm is so bad right now on Instagram, people talking S about kairos, and it's like I get it.

Confidence Without The White Coat

SPEAKER_03

I have one other big message. Don't be in a rush. I didn't go to grad school, I was six years out before I started grad school.

SPEAKER_00

I was three and a half years out, I think, yeah.

Don’t Rush Your Career

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. I don't I feel like we are y actually young in our profession still. Even though we took all of that time. I am so thankful that I had a job, was able to maintain a job while going to grad school, not get buried under that debt. I'm so thankful I did it that way. So thankful I took the extra time.

SPEAKER_00

And I think I mean I am super fortunate that uh my parents never pressured me to speed up. I look back on like how, man, I was a wing nut. How are you how did you trust that I was gonna figure it out, mom and dad? Because I you know I graduated in four years and then moved out to the oil field and would come home and coach, was training, you know. My dad was coaching football in our town, and I was helping and running, like I said, the strength and conditioning. It was the most amazing two years, but it was like an agreement between my parents and I, and like, well, I'm volunteering for this job, and it's gonna be awesome. And they helped me. And how lucky am I? You know, so it's like it's also that like so recognize how fortunate I was that I I didn't have to know what I was gonna do right away. And I don't know why my parents never pressured me when I told them at like 25, like, hey, I figured out this thing, functional medicine, I'm gonna actually become a chiropractor, but I'm not gonna be a chiropractor. Who I remember my older brother said, I'd love that, and I was waiting for you to do something, like, and it was just like, Oh, you you you guys could have told me you were worried. You didn't want to burn the anxious boy. Yeah, but I I'll say that, like, I was so fortunate that came from a family of people. We we were comfortable enough where we didn't have to, I didn't have to be pressured to figure it all out right away. But like you said, you got out of school, got a job right away. It's not like you just sat around and were living off family dime, like you went and worked. So, like that's a message for these kids in the school right now, or any of you, like maybe you don't have to do it how I did, where you go volunteer for two years. Right, but you can go get a like you were a barista. How do you say that word?

SPEAKER_01

Barista.

SPEAKER_00

Barista. Really proving to yourself that you could move across the country.

Comparison Traps And Support

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, but I will be real with you. I remember I was working as a barista. I did graduate college early, and that was within the first six months of graduating. And I remember my class was graduating on time. My dad came out to visit me in Colorado, and I remember crying to him because everyone else in my class they I was looking at, oh, this person got accepted here to this medical school, this person's going to this medical school, this person's going to this PA school, this person. I was caught in a comparison trap. I was sad, and I was honestly, I was kind of embarrassed talking to my dad. I graduated, I have my neuroscience degree, and I'm a barista in a Colorado mountain town. And he said, I am so proud of you. And that meant so much to me.

SPEAKER_00

Wow, I didn't thanks for sharing that. What's coming? What are you feeling? Just gratitude?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, it him say him just saying that snapped me out of all of the comparison. That mattered so much more to me. So yeah. Can you talk about support from parents?

SPEAKER_00

I appreciate you sharing that.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. And then kept going, picked myself up, got a real job, went to grad school, started a business, look where we are. I don't regret how things played out, but I can understand that.

SPEAKER_00

I've never seen you get like that before. I know.

SPEAKER_03

My dad makes me get like that.

Gratitude For Family And Mentors

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Your dad's like so humble. You wouldn't know like how much of a badass that dude is. He's so understated. Just always in the background, supporting, building up, doing things for his family, for his employees, for his community members that he would never share with the world. He's just sneakily a savage. Yeah, I'm I'm so lucky to know him. He's understated, man. He doesn't say much. He's just consistent. And I mean, we just recently called him randomly to ask business advice. We had like a a thought we had, and it was just like immediately like, hey, I'm like, what I say, can I borrow your brain for five minutes? And just immediately snapped into it. And then, all right, guys, we'll talk to you later. You know, it goes on with this day. Doesn't mention anyone that he consulted, you know, just that's who he is.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, we're uh makes me want to be a good dad. Like looking at my dad, looking at your dad, you know, it just it really does like, damn, that impacts a child. Having a solid dad in their life. That's what I want, yeah. Thank you. Appreciate that. Yeah. I'm thankful for you too. So that's the path. Take take it in. You don't need to know everything right away. I think I mean it's in this week, I think we grew up in the best time. Graduated high school 07, college 2011, uh, before social media became so paralyzing. And toxic before everyone had cell phones everywhere and simpler times. We didn't have, I mean, I'm sure maybe they did, but we weren't going to like ACT prep courses every Saturday. And we were outside playing with our friends, playing sports. We weren't pressured to grow up fast. We've got kids now that are 14-15 years old in career tracks. You know, there's a really cool high school we go to here, but like if you zoom out, it's kind of like you gotta pick when you're 14 to go to a STEM high school now. If you want to get into the sciences or math, and it's an amazing school, but how are we putting that much pressure on children to know this now? So I think you got a big job tomorrow talking to these kids.

SPEAKER_03

Excited about it.

SPEAKER_00

Slow them down.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Cool. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02

For more about what we do at the facility, check out our website, www.thefacilitydenver.com. You can also follow us on Instagram at the facility Denver for extra tips, behind the scenes fun, and updates on new episodes. Thanks for listening. Now go facilitate your own health, and we'll see you next time.