Functional Medicine Reality Podcast

01. Kickoff Episode: Functional Medicine Reality Podcast

• Dr. Mark Su MD, Functional Medicine Practitioner for Health and Longevity • Season 1 • Episode 1

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I’m Dr. Mark Su, a conventionally trained physician, functional medicine practitioner, and lifelong student of the why behind symptoms.

This podcast was born out of real-life questions, real patient stories, and a deep sense that the healthcare conversation needs more honesty, nuance, and humanity. Not perfection. Not dogma. Just reality.

In this kickoff episode, I share three confessions, a few pivotal stories from my clinical journey, and the deeper reason this podcast exists in the first place.

Three Confessions (Right Out of the Gate)

  1. I’m not here for the reasons you think I am.
    This podcast isn’t about trends, protocols, or being “anti” anything. It’s about understanding people and physiology more deeply.
  2. This podcast is non-compliant.
    Meaning we’re willing to ask uncomfortable questions, challenge oversimplified narratives, and sit in the gray when the truth isn’t black and white.
  3. I only practice some of what I preach.
    Because I’m human too. And real healing requires honesty, not a pedestal.

The Question That Changed Everything

Early in my career, I noticed something that didn’t make sense.

Patients diagnosed with fibromyalgia would tell me that when they took antibiotics for unrelated infections, their joint pain and muscle pain improved.

That shouldn’t happen, at least not according to conventional training.

So I had to ask myself:

What am I missing?
And more importantly:

What are we missing as a system?

That question opened the door to functional medicine, chronic infections like Lyme disease, and eventually environmental factors such as mold-related illness.

From Symptoms to Root Causes

In this episode, I walk through:

  • How symptom-based diagnoses like fibromyalgia often describe what someone feels but not why
  • How functional medicine reframes chronic illness through systems biology and root-cause thinking
  • Why some patients heal dramatically when the right missing piece is identified and why others don’t yet

I also share real patient stories. These are individuals who were told their symptoms were due to aging, stress, or “nothing serious,” only to experience profound improvement when the underlying cause was finally addressed.

Why This Podcast Exists

This show is for you if:

  • You’ve been dismissed, minimized, or told “your labs are normal”
  • You feel overwhelmed by conflicting health information
  • You’re tired of binary thinking like all pharma versus no pharma or it’s all in your head versus it’s all physical
  • You want clarity, not fear
  • You believe healing is possible, even if the path isn’t linear

We’ll talk about inflammation, infections, mold, medications, supplements, environment, mindset, and the lived experience of patients and practitioners alike.

Always with nuance.
Always with compassion.
Never with guarantees.

This podcast is about education and awareness, not diagnosis or prescriptions.
My goal is to help you think more clearly, ask better questions, and feel more confident in your healthcare decisions.

Because when you understand why your body is doing what it’s doing, everything changes.

Thanks for being here at the beginning.
Let’s get real and let’s get results.

Dr. Mark Su:

I'm Dr. Mark Su and welcome to the Functional Medicine Reality Podcast. Join me and our community weekly as we bring you unfiltered health from inflation to longevity. Real stories, real people, real solutions. Experience real life health changes from both patients and practitioners, and learn how to turn cutting-edge information into real results in your own life so you can feel better, live longer, live healthier, and be confident and clear in your healthcare choices. Let's get real and get results. Hey there. I'm a conventionally trained functionally medicine practicing MD. And it's my honor to welcome you to the Functional Medicine Reality Podcast. Let's jump right in, yeah? Let's get real and let's go. So, to start, I have three confessions to make. Number one, I'm not here for the reasons you think I am. Number two, this podcast is non-compliant. And number three, I only practice some of what I preach. But before I explain those three confessions, I want to start with just two stories. So, first, I finished my residency training in 2003. And in the first couple of few years of my actual practice, let's call it 2004, 2005, I had patients who were diagnosed with fibromyalgia at the practice that I was employed at. And they had this, I had several episodes where patients would ask me, Doc, I know you're telling me this is a virus, it's a cold, and I shouldn't be given antibiotics, but I'm just telling you, every time I get antibiotics, my muscles feel better, my joints feel better, my fibromyalgia feels better. So can I get some antibiotics? And so here's the thing. Why would I be thinking the patients are trying to scam me of antibiotics? Right? There's no street value. What benefit is there? It's I didn't have a reason to disbelieve them. So I gave them the antibiotics and they would say they felt better with their joints and their muscles. So I was left with the question to myself, why does that happen? Why is that? Because other people, if they've got pneumonia, bronchitis, sinusitis, skin infections, UTIs, when I give them antibiotics, they don't say their joints and muscles feel better. So what's that about? More so, what am I missing in my training and that I need to learn in my real life practice experience to help other patients? So, fast forward, with these kinds of questions in mind, uh, with especially with these kinds of patients with fibromyalgia, but also others. In 2008 or 2009, I was introduced to my first functional medicine conference. Shout out to Kara Fitzgerald and Todd Lapine, really big experts and key opinion leaders in the functional medicine space, who were two of the three presenters for this weekend conference in Boston. And it just spoke to me. It started to answer the questions of why, like what is going on in a person's actual body, in their actual physiology, their pathology, their processes. And that led me subsequently to shout out to my nurse practitioner in the office, Michelle Nobello, who introduced me to the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society, ILADS, the national slash international organization that seeks to educate practitioners and advocate for public, the public members or public individuals who are suffering from chronic Lyme, which is not so well accepted in the conventional medicine space. But man, I learned a lot there and my eyes were opened, my mind is blown. And over the years, having learned, oh, folks who've got chronic Lyme, they've got fibromyalgia. We call it fibromyalgia in conventional medicine. We call it chronic Lyme in the functional medicine world because it explains the, in large part, the why for the symptoms they're having, which fibromyalgia just being a symptom diagnosis, it doesn't really explain why the actual cause of their symptoms. There's a match. And over the years, I've seen many, many patients, especially with joint pains, fibromyalgia, headaches, neck pains, flip the script on conventional medicine where we're told there's no such thing as chronic Lyme and heal. And I don't sometimes it's get better, get a lot better, sometimes it's heal. So an example of that would be in 2024, just last year at the time of this recording, I had a patient who came to me as a teacher, his permission to tell the story. Mark, it's June. You know how I can't really make the time to take care of myself during the school year, but it's June. It's time for me to get back in shape, get some rest, eat better, sleep better, work out. But I feel like I'm 68. I can't, I got so much ache and pain. I got to use both my hands to help lift my leg out of the car when I twist to get out of the car. I'm in so much ache and pain. I'm gonna have to, I can't exercise. I'm gonna have, I think I'm just getting older. I think I'm aging. I'm gonna have to change what I do for exercise and et cetera, et cetera. And I said, look, we can't blame this on aging, right? Let's not go down that road. That's too easy of a cop-out answer in a nice way. I didn't say cop out, but anyway, skip forward, fast forward. We were into November after treating him for Lyme disease for five months. And he says to me, almost ratum, you remember when I came and told you in June I was 58 and felt like I was 68? I feel like I'm 48. And I feel so much better. Almost all the ache and pain is gone, except for that one knee where I know it's worse off. I've seen the orthopedics. You remember that? Blah, blah, blah. But I feel so good. I'm gonna get new gym equipment and start working out at home, even though it's a school year. I literally feel like I've anti-aged 10 years. I might say 20 years if you felt like he was 68. Okay, but there you go. There's a just a it's the most recent, meaningful, almost, I might dare say, curative case of treating chronic Lyme or in conventional medicines, fibromyalgia. All right. So the moral of the story with this this first story, I learned there is a reason for the why in medicine. All right. But over time, in in the interim, there have been a lot of Lyme patients who didn't improve the same way or as much. As I said, it's not a guarantee, it's not been a batting 100 where every single patient who's got fibromyalgia makes 100% recovery. No. So it leads me to that next question. So why do some of these patients not get better? What else is going on? Or why is it not as effective? So the journey evolved. After 2008, 2009, being introduced to ILADS and around 2016, 2017, I was introduced by first a patient who asked me if I knew about this topic, and then later a conference I attended, where fortuitously, coincidentally, they led me through the overall framework of treating mold illness. All right. A lot of practitioners should just call it mold, but I'll call it mold illness. Over the years, having diagnosed and treated patients for mold illness, wow, a lot of those chronic Lyme patients, or as they like to call themselves sometimes, or sometimes in that community called Limeys, wow, they started getting, they started getting breakthroughs, right? And over the years, many patients, especially with chronic fatigue, brain fog, neuropathy, chronic sinus infections, IBS, irritable bowel syndrome, and such, they again flipped the script on conventional medicine and healed. All right. And so I just want to share another example of that story. A lady many years ago who was one of those first individuals we were, I was treating for Lyme and even with uh IV antibiotics for a period of time, right? Even with an IV at home for weeks on end. And she didn't get a whole lot better. I might dare say hardly any to my recall. Okay, certainly nothing memorable, noteworthy. When we discovered the mold illness topic, when I discovered and learned about the mold illness topic, she was one of the first people. Again, she's given me permission to share her story anonymously. She was one of the first people who we led down that road diagnostically and to treat. And holy crap, she was diagnosed by the top Boston hospital. All right, and I'll save names, but the top Boston hospital as having multiple sclerosis, even though she tells me they couldn't prove it on the MRI of her brain. And she had this chronic pain in her abdomen, and they said it's because you got this extra rib. So they surgically went in and removed that rib, and it did nothing for the pain. She couldn't walk up her second flight of stairs at home to sleep in the bedroom with her husband because she was in so much pain and the neuropathy of her leg, she had foot drop and couldn't walk up the stairs by energy or because her foot just kept clanking up the steps and she would trip and fall. After she treated the mold topic, after we got through some of that, she was able to run around the track with her kids for the first time in years. She was able to not have to put set up her bed on the first floor and actually walk up the stairs and be able to sleep upstairs with her husband, right? Life-changing, life-changing experiences. And so, further in this professional journey for me, first was the Lyme disease, second was the mold illness. And then in 2021, I was, I sought out the topic of worm parasites. And I won't go through another story there, but again, over the years since then, we've seen many patients, especially with again aeral bowel syndrome, unexplained food reactivities, a host of other symptoms, get breakthrough and heal, get much, much better, or sometimes outright heal. So this the stories here really are that over time I've been a witness to seeing patients healing in ways that were beyond conventional training. They're in ways that I didn't even realize were possible when I went through medical school and residency. And that's not a shade on the training I've done. It's just that there's more behind the curtain, there's more than meets the eye, there's more than what we're taught, there's more outside the box. And these patients healed because they had root causes to their symptoms. They had root causes to their conditions, whatever name we might have given it in conventional medicine or didn't have a name for, right? And all the frustrations and all the uh there was all the years that they've worked with other practitioners and such, whether conventionally and sometimes functionally in medicine as well, they had root causes. And I didn't learn about any of that stuff in conventional training. It was only in functional medicine training. So the second story here really is that um in 2022, I'd introduced my wife to a colleague who was starting a lab. Some of you may or may not know the name. It's called True Diagnostic. My wife is a, I will dare say and brag about her, a world-renowned researcher at Harvard in the area of metabolomics and epigenetics. I won't get into those details and what define that if you're not familiar with those terms, that's okay. But for those of you who are familiar with the anti-aging world a bit, you'll know the term biologic clock testing, right? Or our biologic clocks. And arguably that introduction between my wife and True Diagnostic led to the lab commercializing uh research work that she and her group had done over the previous number of years. And it was the basis, the initial footprint basis of the test now called TrueAge. And it arguably is the most accurate biologic clock test in the world. And they're just generating research data just out the wazoo. All right. In 2024, so just last year, I became much more knowledged in the science of longevity, largely because of her work and the request made to me by a conference, a conference planning committee, asking me to give a presentation on the intersect of chronic inflammation, bugs, and toxins on longevity and anti-aging. So I learned a lot in pretty relatively short amount of time, and I came to the understanding and the conclusion that there are a lot of similarities between chronic symptomatic inflammation, like people with the chronic Lyme, mold, parasites, et cetera, and those with asymptomatic inflammation, people who have chronic inflammation but don't have symptoms, but that inflammation leading to cellular aging and age-related diseases, as we call it, which are the common four big changers as we age. Heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson's and dementia. All right. That inflammation leads to aging of cells, which eventually leads to aging of tissues and organs. And that term is inflammaging. All right, not actually a new term, but not commonly used. Chronic inflammation that leads to cellular aging and age-related diseases. So now in the year 2025, my heart is still really with patients who endure suffering and are chronically inflamed with illness symptoms. But my mind is equally passionate about supporting patients to improve their lifespan and their health span and pursuing longevity, right? Lifespan with length of life, or health span being the quality of their lives, regardless of whether they care to live longer or not. Most people don't really care to live longer if they're going to be suffering, right? And so lifespan and health span and/or health span. Because now we can literally anti-age. And I, those who know me well know I don't, I'm selective about my words. I'm picky and choosy. I don't exaggerate. I don't like to set up false expectations. But when I say we literally can anti-age, I'm I say that legitimately, but I'm and I'm not exaggerating. But how that's done is for another time, another podcast. All right. So the connection between the two stories, you know, learning, number one, functional medicine can be powerful. It's for those of us who are might be new to functional medicine, if you're listening to this for the first time and you're not familiar with that, the definition I would briefly describe as using the same construct, basis, the construct and the same construct and basis as conventional medicine, but practically applying it to patient care where conventional medicine doesn't. All right. So that's point number one. Uh that's a preview, if you will, to the two connection points from these two stories. The first real take-home point is that indeed root causes exist behind unexplained symptoms and chronic illness, i.e., chronic inflammation. All right. Conventional care has its limitations. That it's really good at treating symptoms, really good at acute illnesses and emergencies. It's effective with that stuff. But with chronic illness, there's more meaningful limitations. All right. And I'm not throwing shade. It's just, it just is what it is. On the flip side, functional medicine, this is where functional medicine shines, is the chronic inflammatory conditions, whether it's aging or symptomatic illness. It brings out, it gives us the opportunity to explore the why behind the symptoms. And lastly, the real connecting point here is that that the additional connecting point is that that same chronic inflammation that causes unexplained illnesses and their symptoms and their conditions also in concept translates to aging. Subtly, not necessarily with symptoms, until there are more meaningful symptoms in the way of more serious consequences, cancer, dementia, heart disease, diabetes with complications, these age-related diseases. It might be a different form of inflammation, and it's certainly manifesting in a different way, but it all comes down to inflammation. And here's the thing we have so many functional medicine tools now available to us, both with diagnostic testing and with treatment, to address chronic inflammation, whatever the problems are that are manifesting from such that might be causing you and loved ones any kind of suffering, worry, or health disparities. And it's it's an exciting time, more than ever. So now back to the confection, back to the confessions. So number one, I said, I'm not here for the reasons you may think. So I might say I have an ulterior motive here. And uh so let me just pivot here and ask if you're a fan of the Spider-Man movies, you'll know the phrase that Uncle Ben says to Peter Parker, who is secretly Spider-Man. With great power comes great responsibility. Paraphrased or said different way from the Bible, Luke 12, 48, is the verse to whom much is given, much will be required. Look, I'm 51 years old at the time of this recording, chronologically. I have four kids, I don't have a healthy work-life balance, I'm overly busy. I'm really good at self-sabotaging. All right, I create work for myself in many different ways. My wife, as I said, is a world-known renowned researcher at Harvard in metabolomics in anti-aging and longevity. She's even busier than I am. I say that all the time. Despite all this crazy busyness, my ulterior motive for being here is to is a missional calling from a higher power. For me, that higher power is God to be of service to humanity on a larger scale. I'm overly busy. I don't need extra stress. I don't need extra work. And certainly I don't need to be another voice in the whole crowded jungle of the plethora of podcasts out there. But we envision a podcast that's different and unique, that brings more value than simply just providing more exciting information, okay, to stimulate our academic thinking and our just awareness. And there's two ways that this podcast is more unique. Number one, during COVID, there were so many free health webinars. And post-COVID, there's just endless blogs, podcasts, social media postings about health in general and to aging, especially this day and age. There's plenty of info now out there. There's arguably even too much info for a lot of people, right? But I've observed that a lot of individuals still are left with two questions after all this excessive information. Number one, who can help me take action on this information? And number two, how do I organize or prioritize this information? How do I make decisions that make sense for me personally, right? With all the information out there, how do I decide what has more meaning for me or doesn't? How do I make decisions with all these different options I'm given for testing or especially for treating supplements at the wazoo and red light therapy and cold plunge? And how do I compare these things and make decisions or and or just make decisions that are personal to me? So here's why, number one, here's why the Here's why the functional medicine reality podcast is unique. We are a podcast, but we're more than a typical podcast. If you need help taking action, we're connected to a practice to actually help you improve your health with professional support. I know there's a lot of people who are like DIYers and real internet diggers and real self-reliant, but there's many of us out there at some point in time along that journey who couldn't use some professional guidance. The second way in which this is a more unique podcast is the following. We're also realists. All right. Functional medicine is not a panacea. I I hate to say it. I don't mean to burst bubbles, and I'm certainly not throwing shade. But health is a super complex mystery. And with AI developing, there's more and more we're able to discern and learn, but and rec be able to pull together for information and make decisions, but it only typically leads to even more questions. All right. And no one and nothing, there's no nothing is God. I think to better to understand how the human health and the body works would be like being God. It's so complex. So despite all the emails, podcasts, social media, this and that many of us get over flooding our cell phones, our emails, et cetera, functional medicine has its limitations and certainly has its challenges. And we're going to be real about those. All right. We're going to help you discern hype versus hope. We're going to help you set proper expectations for yourself, for your practitioners that you're working with. And you're going to be able to be make better decisions that then impact your expenditure of time and money. So we're confident that you're going to find the functional medicine reality podcast to be more than different compared to other podcasts. All right. We're not here for ego. We're not here for ratings and subscriptions. We're here with a specific intention and purpose, a missional calling of service, of helping more people get better faster. If people get better faster and we don't quote unquote benefit in some way, financially or otherwise, we don't even ever know that people get better. We've done our job. That's what we care about. We care that you, your friends and your loved ones get better one way or the other. So for some, that's just simply going to be that you're getting higher-level information, helping, especially by helping differentiate hype from hope, right? And not going down rabbit trails that don't aren't predictably going to lead to benefit and helping you stay the course or be directed in ways that will bring you benefit so you get better faster sooner. And for others, you might actually be further helped by connecting with professional care to reduce suffering from chronic inflammation or to optimize longevity and wellness and increase your lifespan and your health span. So let's go to confession number two. This podcast is non-compliant. And what do I mean by that? Right off the bat, we're going I'm going off script already. We've thrown the playbook out the window. What do we mean? Conventional wisdom in the as a as an expert opinion with marketing is to determine your specific audience who are you speaking to and get really dialed in with the specifics. And I'm admitting to you now, we're doing the opposite. Marketing be damned. All right. We're helping people with both ends of the spectrum. A, people who suffer from symptoms and conditions of chronic inflammation. We're talking about people with long COVID, chronic Lyme disease, mold illness, chronic fatigue, memory loss and dementia, Parkinson's disease, chronic pain, chronic migraines and headaches, SIBO or small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, interval bowel syndrome, otherwise known as IBS, food allergies, multiple chemical sensitivity syndrome, various autoimmune conditions, lupus, Crohn's, ulcerocolitis, psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis, polymalgia, rheumatica, PMR, Hashimoto's hypothyroid, and more. At the same time, we're also here to serve and support people who are fine, right? Or as far as they believe or perceive themselves to be fine without chronic and dysfunctionally dysfunctional symptoms. But they don't want to miss out on longevity. All right. They might, A, they might specifically want to just avoid the four big game changers I mentioned: heart disease, diabetes, cancer, memory loss, and other neurodegenerative diseases. They might just want to be more aggressive in preventing and avoiding those game changers, those age-related diseases. Or B, some of you might actually really proactively want to be healthier in some way or another, whether it's you're in your lifespan and number of years chronologically, or your health span, your quality of life, and age gracefully, so to speak. Okay. Maybe you just want more optimal wellness. You want to feel stronger, feel even better, feel good about what you're doing to take care of yourself. All right. Each of those big categories has its own many specific audiences or specific marketing target communities, but that's just not who we are. All right. After 22 years of full-time practice, and that's important, all right. There's a lot of practitioners who have practiced very little, and I'm not throwing shade, but they practice very little, or they've practiced part-time and they've gone less and less as they're going more and more into whatever the projects. All right. After 22 years of full-time practice, I worked three-quarter time for a couple years when my our first out of four kids was born to enjoy appreciating fatherhood, all right, but essentially full-time practice. And the cumulative aggregate years of others' experiences who I'm privileged to work with in our practice that's connected on the back end of this podcast. We've learned too much. We've learned too much. We're not about niche audiences, target communities. We don't just in our in the office or virtual practices, we don't just treat people with only this condition or that condition, but niche into that. We are all comers, all right? And that is a huge challenge. We're not treating people just with this diagnosis or that diagnosis, or if you have this or that demographic, socially, economically, gender, what age, doesn't matter. There's too many incredible tools, there's too many awesome treatments beyond conventional medicine in the functional medicine world to keep them hidden from other people. It's just not fair, right? It just doesn't feel right. It doesn't feel just. It's almost, it's just internally conflicting. So this isn't the most business savvy thing to do, but we're here, but we're not here for business reasons. All right. We're not here to make money. We're here to fulfill a higher calling with a service to human to humanity. And we're here to do the right thing, the best thing for as many people as we can. We're not going to be perfect. We aren't perfect. We're people, all right, but we're going to do it as much as possible. So confession number three. I only practice some of what I preach. So am I a hypocrite? I say no. There's only so much health information, so many recommendations. Do this, don't do that, don't do this, do that. There's so much info out there. And the information is changing over time. Like keeping up with it, as many of us know, it's a full-time job. It's crazy. And AI helps us, but it just furthers the dig. I'm sure many of us know that. Okay. Those of us who are diggers, DIYers, do-it-yourselfers, health enthusiasts, you're educated on the latest and greatest, so to speak. You especially know what I mean. Sometimes we're just inundated with too much info and even analysis paralysis. That's something I'm pretty good at and part of my really good self-sabotage. My strong observation is this chronically and intensely sick patients, they're in greater desperation to feel better, right? They've got an incentive. Their fire is lit under the butt. They're ready to take action to go through brick walls to get a breakthrough. Less sick patients, more the, let's just say, mainstream common individual out in America, they're more apt to weigh the pros and cons of their decisions. They're not so ready to jump on things. And there's no value judgments, right or wrong, for either of these categories. Okay. There's a pro and con in both regards. But for those who are less sick, often they're going to be asking the questions how much money is it going to take? How many or which therapies should I be using? What kind of lifestyle changes, what kind of options do I have to consider? How much time and effort is going to be am I going to need to commit? What are the reasons and the predictable outcomes that you're giving me for how or why I'm going to improve and how long is it going to take? These folks are more selective. They're prioritizing their decisions. And I get that. There's only so many hours in a day, in a week, and so much energy for effort. We're living in America. It's just, it's busy as crap. Everybody's busy. That's the most common thing you hear from I hear from people. How are you doing? I'm busy. I'm busy. Jobs, kids, parents, in-laws, friends, everything and everyone is screaming for attention, right? And so we get that. We're realists. So here's the thing. I only practice some of what I preach because I've just been fortunate with my health. I deal with some chronic fatigue. I own that I don't go to sleep earlier than I should. And that's a constant habit. That's my biggest vice, if you will, or self-care negative. But high school, in our in our exchange trip, I'm falling asleep standing up in the airport. Friends keep telling me. I fall asleep easily in cars, especially if I'm not when I'm not driving, at least. Sometimes I gotta be careful even when I'm driving. My first exam, my first exam in college at Cornell University, I'm like dozing off during double checking the answers. My medical license exam, and if you're on a computer, I'm dozing off. Like these are this, that's not right. Those are situations everyone's jacked up and like frantic as crap, and I'm easily falling asleep. Something's up there, but I haven't dug further and deeper or had to meaningfully treat Lyme mold, parasite issues, immune deficiencies, et cetera. I've done some digging, but nothing's obvious has popped up. So I haven't spent the time and effort. And if we want to, if I should be criticized for not spending more effort into that, that dig, I'm open, I'm vulnerable to that criticism. But I'm a little bit of an odd duck. Many practitioners who are in the functional medicine space got there because they had to figure something out for themselves or the loved ones. And that's actually not my story. So, how did I get here? I'll be honest with you, I'm not really clear. My therapist of many years, patients, colleagues of mine, they tell me I'm gifted with deep empathy. And I don't take credit for any of that. I that's just a gift from God. It's a hard wiring. I could look at it as a gift, I could look at it as a double-edged sword. But it's just a hard wiring of who I am. My drive is to serve others who are suffering. Sometimes I honestly, there's times I wish I could reduce that or detach from that, but it's just not my makeup. Like many patients, and like many of you, I'm selected about what I take and what I do for self-care. I pick my battles, I adjust when I need to, or when I learn, when I learn new things that demand I take action. But I just can't do everything that's good for me with all the info and tools available out there at this day and age. It's impossible. And again, for those who are more chronically suffering with chronic symptoms, they're more apt to try to do more things, but they're still, they still have to be selective. They're just a lot less selective than those of us who don't have more intense and persistent symptoms. So here's the point for you. With all the info out there, I get it. I feel you. If you feel overwhelmed at times, you don't know whether you should take this or do that, take this or take that, do this or do that, you're not alone at all. You're more than seen and heard in those frustrations and confusion. If you're a health enthusiast, you it's like a double-edged sword. You love all the info, but then like you drive yourself crazy. It's a little bit self-sabotage, internal conflict, right? I get that. I have so many patients who are like that. And many times they're ordering all kinds of supplements outside of our conversations, and they come to me asking me, I've got here's all these things I'm taking. Which one should I take? And I'm like, that's a hard discussion, all right. But for another time. In the end, this is a huge mission for us is to help you cut through all the info, help you get some clarity, help you get some clarity both from the external chaos of all the massive information, but also internally within yourself. So I've made my confessions. Number one, I have an ulterior motive here for the podcast. It's to fulfill a missional calling for my life in service within the medical space. It includes helping some of you actually convert info into action by connecting you with professional support, of which I'm a part of that team. And number two, and I'm sorry, and secondly, to help hopefully all of us discern hype from hope with the reality of functional medicine within with from amongst the context of all the chaos of the information. All right. Confession number two, we're ignoring marketing rules. We're not about target audiences. Instead, we're here to help as many people as possible, including both those with chronic symptoms as well as those who are about wellness and optimization in life. It's the right thing to do. And it's and I've always been more about my professional service, my professional journey being about service, not specialization, which is why I went into family medicine to begin with. I didn't want to specialize in kidney diseases, heart diseases, women in OBJYN, kids in pediatrics or adults in internal medicine and leave out the other sectors of the breadth of humanity. It's about service, not specialization. And this only benefits you because you'll better understand the common denominator of inflammation across the spectrum. Third and lastly, with the confessions, I don't necessarily practice everything I preach, but it's only because I haven't gone through the exact same challenges as many of you. I shouldn't, I it would not make sense for me to go through things that don't match up with my issues. Right. I've picked other battles more specific to my personal health needs. But I can still be of service. Our team can still be of service to you from our professional learning and experiences. So, like many of you, I'm selective in what I do for my health. This is not hypocrisy. It's being human and practical. And we're going to bring that same mentality to this podcast and to patient care, right? We're going to help differentiate at different levels what is more meaningful for some of you and not for others, or vice versa. Because we're not all, we're not all just one and the same. We're not cookie cutter in our health profiles. So this podcast content will be uniquely valuable because we will speak to decision-making differentiating factors. Each of us is a whole person. We're not a disease without a context. We're not a disease or diagnosis without context, right? It's not a one-size-fits-all. That approach doesn't work for us, and we totally get that. So let's just talk pragmatics for a second. What can you expect from this podcast, all right? Firstly, you're going to hear real info from real people, both patients and practitioners. Number one, you're going to hear some real patient stories. And you're going to hear not from my voice, you're going to hear from the patients themselves. They'll be anonymous, but authentic. And they want to share their health journeys. They're going to share their struggles, their wins, and the reality of their journey. They want to pay it forward to others who are suffering similar struggles and also be heard, but haven't been yet, or not enough. You're going to be validated. You're going to be empowered, or you're going to feel validated and empowered on behalf of your family member or friend. And you're also going to get an authentic preview of how our patient care team works with patients because these would just basically be patient interviews, patient visits. It's going to be a unique look behind the curtain on how our functional medicine practitioners think and make decisions as partners for their patients. Secondly, you're going to meet my good friend Mike Schantz. He's an IEP indoor environmental professional. He's like a doctor for homes and buildings, where I and my colleagues are doctors for people. We share a ton of similar professional and personal experiences. And we're going to talk through current news, trends, and controversies in the professional or practitioner communities. All right. We're going to dissect mainstream news and social media posts and help you discern hype from hope, hype from truth, and help you save time, money, and energy. We're just going to call it a spade and bring the reality of what it is and just be real. Lastly, you're going to meet a variety of health experts. It's a more familiar style of podcast that I'm sure if you're a podcast fan, then you'll you're very familiar with this. But instead of the usual interviews, beyond the information dump, you're going to better understand how functional medicine practitioners think, not just what they know. All right. How do they help, how do they make decisions for patients? In other interviews, you're going to hear some unique perspectives about the intersect between conventional care to functional medicine care or the translation of research into functional medicine practice, why and how it happens or why it doesn't happen, the reality of these dynamics. You're going to be better informed, set better expectations for yourself and for your practitioners, and you're going to be clear with your goals and decision making, whether on your own or with your practitioner in partnership with your doctor or the practitioner. So with that, thanks for joining us during this introductory episode of the Functional Medicine Reality Podcast. We're here to build a community of healing and growth. And we look forward to the opportunity to help many people achieving better health, whether reducing symptomatic chronic inflammation or pursuing wellness and longevity, or whatever your personal goals may be. We're also here looking forward to helping others just make establish better clarity, gain better clarity within yourself and external to yourself, so that you can enjoy your quality of life for the time that we have on this earth more robustly than you are now. So until next time, this is Dr. Mark Su, signing off. Keep it real, friends, and peace be with you.