The Gold Coast Podcast

What Your Doctor Isn't Telling You About Metabolic Health | Dr. Jonathan Hinds

• Eric Winegard • Season 3 • Episode 6

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0:00 | 58:45

What if the reason you're struggling with weight, energy, inflammation, and overall health isn't a lack of discipline?

In this episode of The Gold Coast Podcast, Eric Winegard sits down with Dr. Jonathan Hinds, CEO of Hinds Sight Health, emergency medicine physician, obesity medicine specialist, and longevity expert.

Dr. Hinds shares his incredible journey from working 100+ hour weeks in emergency medicine during COVID to transforming his own health after battling obesity, inflammation, insulin resistance, and chronic health challenges. Together, they dive into the realities of modern healthcare, telemedicine, weight loss, metabolic dysfunction, functional medicine, longevity, and why so many people feel frustrated with traditional approaches to health.

You'll learn:
- Why diet and exercise alone may not be enough
- The role inflammation plays in weight gain
- How insulin resistance silently affects millions
- Lessons learned from working on the front lines during COVID
- Why personalized healthcare matters
- The future of telemedicine and functional medicine
- How Dr. Hinds lost over 90 pounds and transformed his health
- What questions every patient should ask their doctor

Whether you're trying to lose weight, improve your energy, optimize your health, or simply better understand your body, this conversation is packed with valuable insights.

Connect with Dr. Jonathan Hinds:
 📍 HindsSight Health
 🌐 HindsSightHealth.com
 📱 Instagram: @HindsSightHealth

Subscribe for more conversations with entrepreneurs, business leaders, and experts who are changing lives!

Thank you all for listening in on today's episode of The Gold Coast Podcast!

SPEAKER_01

So where where'd you grow up? Um so New Jersey. Jersey? Yep. How long have you been down here? It's 2019, so almost seven years, which is crazy.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Time flies.

SPEAKER_00

So what made you so it's interesting. You came pre-COVID. What made you weather just weather?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, because I worked a lot, so I had to make sure she was in an environment where she wouldn't realize I was at work all the time. Yeah. Right? Because like the winter times, putting kids in like, you know, their jackets and their onesies in and out of a car seat, just it just got old. So I figured it was a good time. And we moved to Jersey initially because we thought we were gonna have all this family help, and we didn't. So we're like, so what's the difference? Let's just go somewhere we want to live.

SPEAKER_00

Now, where were you before Jersey?

SPEAKER_01

Uh so I trained out in Massachusetts. Um I did residency there, which is so we went from cold, we went from really cold to semi-cold to warm. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Dude, so so you guys have been married how long?

SPEAKER_01

13 years next month. Okay.

SPEAKER_00

Good for you. We uh I've been married, I think almost two years. But I have a little girl on the way. Nice, Alexis. Alexis is coming in here, you'll get to meet her, hopefully. Six months pregnant now. So we're very, very blessed. I met your wife in one of the meetings. Oh, you did? Okay, yeah, okay, cool. On a Zoom, she was on a Zoom. Yeah, okay, cool. So you know what people you know what's funny about the cold? Like, I'm from Rochester, New York, way upstate. Dude, just even like you said, I didn't even think about this. Like when I take my dogs out, it's a process. Yeah, I didn't even think about the kids. Yeah, but um, dude, I want to so let's walk me through your like you're obviously an extremely just on the call I was on with you, by the way. Um, Dr. Heinz is a client of ours. We're very excited. We just started working with him, and uh Dr. Heinz is uh, you know, um I I can tell you're extremely talented. I can tell. Kind of walk me through your professional background.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Um, so everyone laughs, but since I was a kid, I always wanted to be a doctor, everyone says that. But there's actually photos of me like dressing up for Halloween as a doctor. Um, and you know, I it was definitely something where I had a one-track mind, which could lead to being disappointed if you didn't get into medical school, so there's all this pressure. Um, but my had a one kind of track mind from high school, did all AP classes for sciences, really doubled down in undergrad and thought I would do pharmacy uh D as well as med school, and then I woke up and said I don't need to do both. Um and uh got into medical school in an early tract at Rutgers University and really then started taking off from there in terms of what I wanted to do. Realized that you know there is a lot of access to care issues in this country, um, and being able to be at the forefront of being able to help people was exciting. Uh emergency medicine is what sparked my interest. Um, I guess there's an adrenaline rush that people say you get. I would tell you that it's a very unique field. Um, and I don't think many people think about it, but it's one of the unique places where you can bring a life into the world and the same day pronounce one. And going through those ebbs and flows of emotions is sometimes difficult. And I think you put up a guard. And one of the things I had to learn was not always having that guard up and being able to kind of just be a person every once in a while because you face a lot of things that are can be depressing on a daily basis. Um, so you know, I think as a provider, you go through multiple kind of career shifts and how you take a look at work-life balance, um, take a look at going through multiple pandemics, right? So every year there's a new flu, but COVID was definitely something that none of us were prepared for. When I was in Redincy, we had Ebola, but I don't think that obviously that wasn't as widespread, but it was definitely things that we had to learn in terms of dealing with um a disease process that you had no cure for. Um, but COVID was unique. I think it really changed the shape of how people look at medicine, how doctors decided how they wanted to have that work-life balance because we didn't have it during those years, right? Doctors worked multiple shifts. I was running the ICU and the ER. Um, I was isolated from my family on top of working, but also like not wanting to go home and get my family sick. My kids were young at that particular point in time. Um, so it's it's scary, and uh, it made you respect the fact that no matter how immortal you think you are, you see a young kid walk into the ER and drop dead in front of you, puts things in perspective really quickly. Yeah. So what did you call it? Emergency what? Emergency medicine. So I did my Yeah, so I did my um emergency medicine residency at the University of Massachusetts and Worcester, uh, and then from there moved to New Jersey, uh, where I worked in my first uh trauma center, emergency department. Um, kind of mentioning weather, right? So kind of work-life balance and trying to figure out a place that my family could call home, decided to come to South Florida, which I think was the best decision, you know. My my daughter rides horses, so she's able to ride horses all year round. Uh, you know, my son loves being outside jumping in the pool. There's nothing like jumping in the pool in December. Yeah, right. So you know, although I work with the water. With a pool heater on. Exactly. Yeah. So although I work a lot, I do think, you know, being in this environment allows my family to, you know, be able to really enjoy where they live. So I'm blessed to be able to do that.

SPEAKER_00

I was talking with a woman yesterday. She came in for an interview, and this is the way she solved her 16-year-old daughter's depression. They were living in Seattle. Husband and wife worked at Microsoft, super high earners, 16-year-old girl super depressed, verge of you know, some hurting herself conversations. They asked her, Where would you want to live? And she goes, I want to live in South Florida. I want to live near palm trees and sun. They all relocated down here two years ago. Depression gone. All she does is ride her little moped, you know. She, you know, she hops in all these little uh they have like a little moch, I don't know, um, like a little car, like a little beach cruiser. Said she's out in the sun all day long in a cured depression. It's real. It is. You know, it's real. I'm fascinated about the emergency room. Could you carefully unpack this a little bit?

SPEAKER_01

That's fine.

SPEAKER_00

This is this is fascinating to me. So I I had one emergency room incident. Uh, my heart went into AFib about 10, 12 years ago, and I thought I was having a heart attack. I was at the gym, I was working out. Next thing I know, my heart was racing, and I said, Oh man, something I've been going a little too hard on the weekends. And uh I drove myself to the emergency room, and I remember being in the car, almost like panicking a little bit, like, oh boy, if I panic more, maybe I'm gonna send my heart into even worse of a place. I get into the emergency room and they're like, This guy's having a heart attack, right? They're you know, they're they're throwing me into the, you know, whatever the heck they're throwing me into, and the next thing I know, they're talking about doing open heart surgery on me, and boom, they go, Oh, you got AFib, dude. They're like, uh, the guy's like, lay off the recreational stuff, you're going a little too hard on the weekends, and I was a young, dumb man at the time. But I was in the emergency room, and it was chaotic. Yeah. Unpack what the emergency room is like on a day-to-day.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Um, if anyone local walking into Boca Town Center Mall, Christmas Eve. It's like the ER every day. It's scattered chaos, right? So, you know, we walk into there and we have systems and processes, how we can very quickly ascertain if someone's sick or not sick. You need to know that within seconds. You need to know there's a person over there on the right, he's fine, he's there every day. Give him a sandwich, he's fine. The woman who you think is doing fine, who has abdominal pain, don't ignore, because even though her vital signs are normal, we need to make sure that she's being watched. So, you know, it's it's a lot of I would say moving parts, but the good thing is if you have a great team, those things are dealt with very quickly, right? So, depending if you work in a trauma center, you have the trauma bag, you have the trauma surgeons, you have a protocol for that. Working with the local EMS, they call us, they let us know if a heart attack or stroke's coming in. Then we have triage, they'll let us know if someone's sick or not sick. So it's a lot of teamwork. I think though it's really, you know, it's really for the people who can work at that very quick pace, right? Like you had said, I need to identify when you walk in, are you having a heart attack or is AFib? Am I sending you to the cath lab, calling the cardiologist, or am I putting you in a room, giving you some medication to put you back in a normal rhythm? And I've got to make that call within seconds, right? Because the wrong call, you end up not coming home to your family, right? So yeah, you know, I have a lot of respect for my colleagues for what they do. It leads to burnout though, because you're constantly having making decisions. And I laugh with my wife and I say I have decision fatigue. So when I come home, please don't ask me what I want, what you want to eat, because I've been making decisions all day. I want to not make a decision. Yeah, yeah. Um so you know, it's it's it's one of the things it's one of the things that I think it's a unique skill set, and you've and you've got to know you can do it uh because you're constantly under pressure all of the time. You know, a heart attack, a stroke, you know, unfortunately, you know, a trauma, someone deciding, you know, they're gonna ride their motorcycle and flip-flops. You know, it's it's it's every day. Um and you know, we joke around, you know, the full moon, you know, people just do crazy things. Oh, it's real. So it's real. But yeah, it's it's scattered chaos, but on a daily basis, the emergency departments are, you know, they say the front door of the hospital, right? Uh they allow the hospital to have the patients that come in, whether or not they're coming in for a joint replacement, whether coming in to get some type of surgery. So they are the heartbeat of the hospital. Um, I wish that there was more, I think, attention paid to how integral the emergency departments are. I think they're taken for granted. And you see that now with a lot of the younger physicians and longer health professionals not wanting to work in there, but at the end of the day, you know, that becomes a detriment to the rest of the medical uh, you know, society because it without a sustainable emergency department, who's taking care of the vast majority of people? That's where a lot of people get their day-to-day care.

SPEAKER_00

I mean, I'm fascinated by this, and I didn't know the conversation was gonna go here, and this is some great content, by the way. So I want to ask you a few questions. Working in the emergency room, describe your hourly uh working in the emergency room. What does your work week look like? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

So I used to do crazy. I used to do like 10 days on, 10, 10 days off of overnight. Uh so I'd get up, get to the ER about 9 p.m. Uh, as soon as you walk in there, that 9 p.m. doctor is ready to go, they hand you your caseload, you have a huge waiting room waiting for you. Um, so you kind of settle in and you say, okay, what are you know who's sick, who's not sick, who's the one am I taking over for? Is there consultants I need to speak to? Because they're about to go home. Uh and the night kind of ebbs and flows depending on if it's, you know, depending on if it's a weekend night in South Florida, is there a fair going on at Wellington, you know, is there, you know, an event done in Palm Beach? All those things matter. And in Wellington, it's interesting because of the horse shows. So is there polo going on? Do I need to know that there is, do I need to have a bay on call in case there's an equestrian accident? So those are all the things that I think when you first go in, just kind of understanding what your limitations are, what are what's going on. And then you just have your bread and butter stuff: cough, cold, stomach aches. You throw COVID in there. Now remember, there were two separate ERs. There was you're not sure if they have COVID, and they were already screened and don't have COVID. So you had completely separation. So you had people sitting in a room who you're waiting for the test to come back. In the beginning of COVID, there was no test. So you assumed every single person who had a cough and fever had COVID. So now the ERs were backed up because you couldn't move those people. Um so the biggest issue is where there was no beds, people are complaining because they're in the hallway. So there's a lot of not only just delivering medicine, but also like care coordination. Like, where are you going to put this person? Where are you going to put Miss Jones, who's delirious, from the you know, the neighborhood, um, the neighborhood nursing home? What do you do with the screaming guy, you know, who's actively psychotic? So there's a lot of those things. And I say, like, you know, the ER, you have your priest, that's the ER doctor. You have your social worker, that's the ER doctor, you know, and the rest of the staff. Uh, you have somebody who's helping because someone can't get their medications, all of those things, because at the end of the day, that's the only place that's open. I laugh. Like, why do people go to Walmart? Because it's open and has everything. Why do people go to the ER? Because they're not going to say no to you.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Do people have you ever had people come to the emergency room for like the dumbest little thing here?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, oh, this is my favorite chapstick.

SPEAKER_00

I'm scared to hear how this goes.

SPEAKER_01

So we're in we're in I'm in residency, we're in the pediatric emergency department. It's cold in Western Mass, so you know, it's below zero. Um, had this 17-year-old come in and she said my lips hurt. So, you know, I'm I'm you know, I'm a resident. I'm like, oh, let's, let's, what, what could be going on? Does she have maybe it's a cold sore, and maybe it's what we call periorbodermatitis, which is from fungus. I'm like, you know, I'm going through all differential because I want to impress my attending. I walk in the room and the mom's like, Do you guys have chapstick? And I'm thinking, like, the mom's asking for chapstick has nothing to do with the kid. And I'm like, I don't think so. We have like Vaseline. She's like, No, my daughter's lips hurts, and we can't afford chapstick, so we came here. And you know, you always, and this is like when member like punked was all those things, and like you get so I'm thinking like someone's gonna jump out with the camera and like like uh funny. No, like they came for chapstick.

SPEAKER_00

Well, that actually you know, hearing that story as funny and crazy as it is, it actually makes it really sad. Yeah, it actually makes me really sad that someone can't afford chapstick. Yep. You know, I had this um years ago, I started making pretty good money. And I always I grew up very poor, so I always Christmas makes me feel weird, especially because I can buy nice things now, and that just still makes me feel a little weird. And because I remember when I was 10 years old, I saw my mother stress out about Christmas, and I told her at 10 years old, I said, Hey, I'd rather not get a present. Don't stop stressing out about Christmas and my birthday. So Christmas makes me emotional in the sense of I feel I just feel weird buying nice things. Okay, so that's my little background. But uh my girlfriend at the time, this is like 10 years ago, I said, Hey, why don't we just give to somebody else rather than buying each other obnoxious stuff? Like, let's go donate a little bit of money. She found this organization, and this organization was for basically women that have been abused by the by the man. The man's holding the financial card against her, and you know, they take their kids and they finally leave them. I forget the name of the organization, but awesome organization. And uh, and she had two young children, a young, young boy and a young girl, probably 10 and 8, and they had a Christmas wish list. The Christmas wish list started off with a chapstick, toothpaste, and it went all the way on down to like at the time beats headphones were like a huge deal, right? So it went from low investment to high investment, and we were supposed to pick out a few things. I remember it got me really emotional because I was just like, damn, people like this eight-year-old girl wanted perfume and soap, and it just made me feel terrible that a a young girl just wants to smell good, right? But anyway, I told her, I said, uh, don't look at the list, just buy the list. And at the time it was like three or four thousand dollars. It was a ton of money to me back then, but but um, but it hurts to hear that story, it hurts to hear that somebody doesn't have chapstick.

SPEAKER_01

And that's the reality of the emergency department, right? You know, you you never know who's gonna walk in. And I'd say that because there's just because someone may have battered clothes, and I've had this in the emergency department, someone came up to me and was like, that guy's a billionaire. He doesn't look like it because maybe he has substance abuse, maybe he's having a hard day. And you have people who walk in there and you know, and you're like they're they look like they got dressed before coming in. Um, and you know, at the end of the day, you don't know what that person's going through that day. Um, nobody goes to the emergency department because they want to. I remember when I was in med school, I saw uh childhood buddy in the hospital in the corridor, uh, right where we were getting food. I hadn't saw him, I hadn't seen him in years. Got so excited to see him. I'm like, hey, how are you doing? He's like, not great. And I I forgot that I was in the hospital because I saw him, and you know, you think about childhood, and he's like, My dad just had a massive heart attack. And that day I said, I don't want to ever see anyone I know in the hospital. Now, granted, there is there's good times where you're thinking someone's having a baby, but the vast majority of time when someone's in the hospital with ER, it's not a good thing. Um, so you we have to respect the fact that like, you know, at the end of the day, someone's coming there, they're vulnerable, they're looking for help, and you as a provider is supposed to help them navigate whatever they're going through. That's that could be a mental health thing, it could be a physical thing, it could be talking to the gentleman because they watching their loved one who's their you know, either their spouse or even their their parent go through something. Um it's hard because every day you've got to put on that kind of I'm here to help, and you go into your shift with your own stuff at home. So it's it's definitely something that can be taxing and it's important to take care of yourself. Uh because if you don't take care of yourself, you can't help others, which is which is really truly really important. I think a lot of times providers forget, and it's why you see a lot of providers go through mental health issues or substance abuse, or you know, if you take a look at divorce rates, it's real because you're so used to helping others and you forget that you have yourself take care of first. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

I can't even I I I applaud you for doing it because I can't even go on TikTok and watch an animal mistreated without it destroying the next 10 minutes of my life, bawling, crying. My wife will see me at, you know, I'll go on like a TikTok binge, maybe around 11 o'clock at night on a Friday. This is like my party time, where I'm actually just gonna really decompress, she falls asleep, and I'm looking at animals being mistreated or you know, not adopted, and I'm just crying like you wouldn't believe. And you know, she'll look over me, babe, is everything okay? I'm like, Toby, they won't adopt Toby. So I can't even imagine what you saw there. But last question about the ER. Trying to get some good content for you, too. This is trust me, I'm doing this strategically for you. When you were working your 10 hours on in the emergency room, how many hours a week were you working? Or when you were working your 10 days on, how many hours a day were you working?

SPEAKER_01

So I'm a little crazy. So I would come home after my shift, and that's when I started building out my digital healthcare company. So I really didn't sleep much. Um, so I would, you know, I would I would work, come home. It's sometimes I would get home before the kids would go to school. Um, but on average, I'm lear looking at if I was working the six or seven days, probably a hundred hours a week at least.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, people gotta hear that. I asked that question for that reason because I knew the answer. Yeah, that's why I asked it. You know, when I asked people to work a 40-hour work week or you know, really get after it and do 60 hours, they gotta hear that. You know, like I remember when I was in the military at one point, we worked how many hours is this? Seven straight days a week, sixteen hours a day, so it's seven one sixteen. Worked 116 hours a week for nine months straight. Yeah. Now I know I know that's burnout, but sometimes you gotta there's seasons in your life where you gotta do it. All right, moving on from the ER. I'm I'm fascinated by your by your story already. So after the ER, what was the next professional move for you?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, so I like I mentioned to you, I started kind of building my digital footprint in terms of um virtual health care. Um when I first started doing it, everyone would laugh, like, oh, you're a dock in the box or teledocing. My kids even say you use the word teledocing. Uh, but it was, you know, until COVID, it really was just something that some people knew about, but most people didn't. If you flipped over the back of your insurance card, there was probably a carrier that you had, but for the most part, people were not comfortable getting their care that way. COVID changed that. Um, obviously, when you couldn't go to your local doctors because it was closed, it wasn't you weren't sick enough to go to the ER, people utilize virtual health care as a way for them to get their care, which was phenomenal, I think, for access to care, but also people now being able to get to their doctors without you know having to take out take off of work early or to pick up their kids early or figure out someone to watch their kids. So all the people that you know their 40-50-hour work weeks were blockers for them to get health care that no longer was a blocker. Um so I was one of the first physicians licensed in all 50 states in 2017 when that happened, there was 13 of us because there was no reason to be licensed everywhere unless you were a locum's doctor. Um, their big players in that time was Teledoc, MD Live, and MWell, and they had just started licensing a bunch of physicians, but there really wasn't a lot of volume, so it didn't really make sense. Um, but that was the biggest, I think, career move for me because it opened the doors for a lot of opportunity. Um, and being an ER physician, I was very able to quickly, you know, triage people, talk to them, figure out was a plan. Do you need to go to the ER? Can this be taken care of home? Because it's something I did on a daily basis. Um, so it was a kind of a natural transition of being able to talk to people because I, you know, being in the ER, you're constantly, you know, you'd see 50 people a night, which was no difference for me virtually. Versus some doctors, they were used to being in the office, sitting down, getting comfortable. It's different when you're doing virtual health care because they're much more fast-paced, people want to get in and out. So it was interesting. There was a skill set that I learned very early on that I had, um, and the comfort level of being able to get information from people very quickly without being able to touch them. Uh, because you're sitting on a camera, you can't do an abdominal exam. It's very difficult to listen to lung sounds. So getting people to participate with your consultation without being in front of them is a unique skill set that I think I learned very early on.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, that that's fascinating to me, and and I'm not challenging you here, I'm really Just asking the question. If I if I go see a doctor face to face versus me seeing a telehealth doctor, does the care depreciate because it's over a Zoom?

SPEAKER_01

I think it well depends on the provider, it depends on the chief complaint. Um I don't think it depreciates. I think it depends on how well the physician's able to get you and engage on the questions. You know, like I'll give you an example. Um, somebody comes in for belly pain. If I'm in the emergency department, I'm probably not asking a bunch of questions because I can get my answers by just pressing your belly. A good physician is still gonna ask the questions, like when did it start? Did it move? Nausea vomit, blah, blah, blah. Those questions don't change whether you're on a Zoom call or not. If I want to do an abdominal exam, I don't need my hands, I have yours. Or maybe there's someone else in the room. Hey, can you press on the person's belly? Does it hurt more here or more there? Does it hurt more when I let go? So it's just a different skill set you have to have. And I think as an emergency room physician, and actually COVID taught you this, because a lot of people were you had to go in a room very quickly, you're draped and gowned, and you had to get information very quickly because you didn't want to expose yourself to someone very sick. Um, so I I think physicians learn to evolve. The doctors who were very quick at it are awesome virtual healthcare physicians. There's no difference. The doctors who are very, I would say, I want to say rigid, but they have their ways, which is great. I think a brick and mortar setting still has its place. It's awesome. You know, I think for certain people that's great. But as as fast-paced as the environment is today, you have to be able to have both, and you have to be able to quickly tell someone, hey, this is not appropriate for virtual. You need to go be seen in person. But the other thing that's important is is that person, if they if you don't have access to virtual, are they never going to go see the doctor in person? I can't tell you how many diabetes I've caught, thyroid issues I've caught, issues that ultimately, because I was able to write them a lab, they would able to go to lab core on their convenience, circle back with me. I was able to do that screening process. Hey, that your prostate levels are really, really high. Had you ever been checked? No, I haven't been a doctor in 10 years. Luckily, I was able to make an appointment with you randomly on a Sunday morning because that's the only time I'm available to get those things checked. So I think there's a lot of benefit and they can work hand in hand for people that ultimately don't have time to go see doctors physically.

SPEAKER_00

You know, you you keep bringing up COVID. I feel I feel like COVID was a big change changing point in your career. It was. I feel like very pivotal. Kind of unpack that a little bit.

SPEAKER_01

You know, I I for me, um, you know, we were running the ICU and the ER. The number of deaths that I saw from otherwise healthy people um was eye-opening. And it really brought me down the pathway of like what is happening on a cellular level that a healthy person gets a virus and just drops dead for no reason. And it really made me think, okay, all the things that we've learned in terms of you know, the flu season could be really bad, and all these other things that we saw, you didn't see the catastrophic death toll. And the other thing is as a physician, it's the first time in my career I was actually scared because there was no answers. You didn't know. And you know, and someone could look completely normal in front of you and have COVID, and then you're like, what do I do? Do I not do I isolate myself from my kids? Do I not go home and sleep in the same bed as my wife? Do I tell my you know my parents don't come because they're they're older and have you know medical problems? So it really said for me to take a step back. And the other thing that happened was that one day something was fine, the next day it wasn't, right? All the guidance that we got from the subject matter experts.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Do this, don't do that. Oh, you do this, you're a bad person. Oh, you're not wearing a mask, oh, you are marrying a mask, oh, you should get this vaccine. Oh, if you don't get this vaccine, you're gonna be fired. We've made such pivotal decisions on such little data, and it's funny because I think there is things that are great that have data that we don't support. I don't want to make it political, but I do think it allowed physicians to open their eyes and say, go back and read. Like who funded this study? Who's behind this medication, and is it really changing people's lives? And at the end of the day, I think it also allowed people to start having shared decision making with their providers instead of blindly trusting what somebody said.

SPEAKER_00

Can I ask you a crazy question? I don't know if this will get you in trouble or not. You can decline to answer. Okay, but this will be juicy if you answer it. So my wife, as you'll see here walking around, you'll see her belly's getting a little bigger. She's I think she's about six months pregnant. We're due in August, right? So May, June, July, okay. To um uneducated father when it comes to medicine, uneducated mother, just trying to do the right thing for our kid. Sophia. What vaccines should I I knew we were going there. What vaccines are an absolute don't be a dummy, get it, which ones should I consider leaving out? It's such a multi-factorial question, right?

SPEAKER_01

Because I think it really depends on if you make a decision not to vaccinate your kid, and I'm all pro patient and the family. I think you sit down, you talk about what the risk factors are for both, right? So depending on where you live, depending on the environment that you think you're going to expose your kids to, what is the real chances of them being exposed to a disease process, and what is the actual mortality risk that's associated with it? Because it really just depends. Um, you know, I've known some people when I lived, when I did residency in Western Mass, there was a subset of uh families in a town where the vast majority of town wasn't vaccinated. But because there was an understanding around that, there were certain things they did as a population to protect their the kids. Um so you know, I am I am pro patient making a decision. I think the issue in today's society is that we the herd protection is difficult to say because we have so many transplants coming in constantly, right? You really can't control the environment to the to the extent that you want to. And even if you know you say, I'm not gonna vaccinate my kid or I'm only gonna get certain vaccinations, at the end of the day, it's a roll of the dice. But what does the data say if your kid gets polio, if your kid gets um, you know, some like even something simple as varicella chicken pox. Like, what is the mortality with that? And then the other question that everyone's heard of does the vaccines cause issues like autism, developmental delay? You know, I I do think that if you're gonna do it, not doing 10 vaccines on one visit is the smart way of going about it. Yeah, um, I would tell you I stopped getting the flu shot, I have not gotten the COVID shot. Um, that's my decision. Um, I you know, I would say for my kids, my wife and I have a little bit of difference of opinion on what's ones are essential versus not. You know, you know, our kids go to school with kids that are 25 kids in the classroom who come from everywhere, right? So, you know, things like meningitis, which is real, what are you gonna do? Things like, you know, the TDAP shot, pertussis, you know, can pretussis kill your kid? Depends, right? Does your kid have a weakened immune system? Those are all things that I think you have to sit down and take a look at with a family and give them real choices. And whatever decision they make, you respect that decision. And whatever side of the fence you are as a provider, it's not really your this your uh I would say your place to shun them on either side. Um but I what I love that has come out of the pandemic is that people truly are engaged with decisions around their health, around vaccines, and they're no longer just saying, well, because this was what happened 50 years ago, we should continue to do it. What I would challenge society is to stop putting out misinformation about things and actually have evidence-based, non-big pharma-driven studies to say whether or not something is true. I listen, I went to residency with uh a resident, or now she's an attending, um, an amazing ER physician. And you know what she'd also say? We'd read a study and be like, oh, the study said this medication is great, and we'll talk about strokes, TPA for strokes. Give it. Hospital makes a bunch of money, um, you know, it's the greatest thing ever. And she used to say, Well, who funded the study? And you would be like, Oh, this company. Who funded that company? Oh, the company that makes the medication for TPA. Of course they're gonna say it's the greatest thing in the world. And, you know, I think as providers, we have gotten so used to whatever paper is in front of you has to be accurate. We're gonna follow it. That's the evidence-based guideline. Um, and I would challenge it. That's fine. Who wrote, you know, how many people are in the study? And you know, if she ever she listens to this podcast, I doubt it. But if Dr. Wester listens to this, she'd always say, What is the number needed to treat? What's the number needed to harm? That's real. How many people do I need to give the medication to to improve outcomes? And of those people, how many people am I harming with the side effects? And if you are hurting more people than you're treating, then it's not a good medication, right? So I think we as physicians have to be comfortable having that conversation. The problem is in a traditional healthcare setting, most of the time you don't have time to have a conversation like this with patients. And that's where you know I try to, with my practice, have those decisions, have those conversations, and guide people to a decision that they're comfortable with.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, no, that's that was a very good answer. Very good answer. Um I wanna I wanna tell you my COVID story, um, and I think you'll I think you'll find it pretty interesting. And I'm just telling you what happened. I'm not even making a causality here. I'm just telling you what happened. So during I had that apib heart issue, and it would only come around maybe once a year. Once a year it would be irregular for 24 hours, then it would go away. Wasn't a big deal. Doctors always said keep your eye on it. Um started to get a little worse here and there, it would last for three days here and there, whatever, not a big deal. Now, because I had a pre-existing condition where I would go into AFib once a year, my doctor in upstate New York said, Eric, I'm not telling everybody they need to get the vaccine, but you are one of those people with an underlying condition that if you don't take it, it could get really bad for you. And because of that, against my own better judgment, I said, you know, I probably should get the vaccine. Who am I? And I end up getting the vaccine. 30 days later, my heart goes into permanent AFib. And it was the worst period of my life. The next nine months, my heart never beat regular. I'm on all these blood thinners, we're doing all these various procedures. And for anyone out there that doesn't understand what atrial fibrillation is, basically it's an irregular heartbeat. The electrical signal, I believe, is misfiring. And it just you're in risk of a stroke because your blood can clot, right? Because it's not, you know, necessarily moving freely through your heart. That's my non-medical. I'm sure you got a pretty cooler way of saying it. Um but but I went to permanent AFib, and the next nine months of my life were brutal. And uh, and I eventually got an ablasion, and they said that if you're if you don't, if it doesn't come back in the next year, there's a 99% chance it never comes back. That was four years ago. Haven't felt a flutter in four years. God bless. Do you think that vaccine caused that?

SPEAKER_01

You know, you talk to a lot of patients, and a lot of patients now who have some underlying either autoimmune thing or underlying cardiac thing have all traced it back. And it's hard to prove causality, but I also say like sometimes coincidence is not coincidence. So I'll give you a story. Um, I have celiac disease. Um and during the COVID time I was unhealthy. I was working in the ER, as I told you, 100 plus hours, cortisol level through the roof. Um, I was obese, had high blood pressure, high cholesterol. Yeah. Um and you know, I get my tell you take care of yourself. You know, you you don't realize, you don't look in the mirror, you just see the patient in front of you, and you forget until you walk up the stairs one day, you're like, I'm 32 years old, why am I short of breath? But um, so uh I always had some issues with like lactose and if I ate too much bread, but that's calm, some people just have that. Then all of a sudden, um it was around right during COVID, I started realizing I'd start eating certain things and my stomach would blow up like a basketball, and I would have joint pain and vomiting, it just felt like crap, and I thought I kept getting like food poisoning. And um, you know, I'm like, oh, I work in the ER, I'm just getting exposed to food poisoning. And then during that time too, because restaurants were closed, you always wondered, like, am I eating something from two weeks ago they didn't want to throw away because they have no one coming in? So I was like, oh, it's the bad meat I ate. I kept making excuses after excuse. Finally, I'm like, okay, I'm a physician, let me like take a step back. I'm like, I have Crohn's disease. Like, oh my god, what's what's going on? So um went to a GI doctor, actually went to my primary, um, and she was like, Oh, it's your Ozempic. Your Ozempic is causing you to be nauseous. I was like, oh, okay, fine. Uh, but it kept happening, and I'm like, this does this not my Ozempic because I've been on it for for a while and didn't always call always call that. So I started thinking thinking deep, and I said, wait a second, I think I may be allergic to gluten. And and I'm thinking, like, oh wait, it's every time I eat pizza, and like the food in the hospital at night's horrible. Um, so I decided to remove gluten from my diet, felt a little bit better, did a gluten antigen test, and it was negative. But the hilarious part is you have to be eating gluten for that test to be positive. But I don't want to be miserable. So ended up doing a colonoscopy. GI doctor calls me like a month later, they did a biopsy, and they were like, This is the worst case of Salax disease I've ever seen. He's like, How long were you ignoring this for? And I'm like, honestly, it got bad over the last year, but before that it was tolerable. Like I thought maybe had a little IBS, no big deal. They're like, your intestines are shot. Like you can't eat gluten ever again.

SPEAKER_02

Wow.

SPEAKER_01

Like to the point, like when I my I I would have just intractable vomiting. Like there's times where I vomit so hard like I couldn't breathe. It didn't get that bad until after the vaccine. I mean, for years I had, you know, like if I was, you know, I was like lactose, and maybe like if I ate too much gluten, but it was never to the point that like I was sick. Like it was I was sick in bed for days. I lose 10 or 15 pounds at a clip, couldn't eat, couldn't drink. Um, it completely shut me down. Um so you know, I've I've had young kids who've said, you know, before that they ended up with weird things like pericarditis or myocarditis, or now the big thing that you probably well I see, I don't know if you see, POTS, right? Where people have this dysautonomia, they have issues with blood pressure and heart rate. Young people. So again, I'm not saying I can prove causality, but it's very strange that post-COVID we see a lot of different disease processes that were not prevalent otherwise young, healthy people that you're seeing now.

SPEAKER_00

Well, here's here's my saying if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it ain't a pigeon. Yep. Yep, yep. So um, so I'm pretty blown away. You were obese. How heavy were you? 280 pounds. Wow, you're making me feel terrible. I've been 284 in my life. Wow, two you know what, that number scared the heck out of me. It did. Because you look really close to 300. Yeah, I was like, oh no, no, no, no.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, it's a there's a there's a visceral response you get. Well, first of all, you get a for me, the first response was like 250, and I'm like, oh, but I'm lifting, it's fine.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Then like 260, and I'm like, okay, I'll go a little bit of diet, and then you yo-yo, and then one day it was like 280, and I'm like, that's really close to 300. And I'm not six feet tall, like I'll say I am, I'm like 5'11 and a half. You start doing, you start doing the math, and I'm like, this isn't good. Like it doesn't matter how hard you work, it doesn't matter all the things you know that you think you're doing career-wise. If you're gonna drop dead of a heart attack at 42, it doesn't matter. And it was an eye-opener for me. And listen, I have access to the greatest doctors in the world. I'd go to my primary care doctor, and this is one of the reasons why I got my obesity board certification. I feel like every doctor says, just diet and exercise more. And I'm like, but I am eat your fruits and vegetables. Yeah. And I'm like, there, you know, and I was already on Ozimpic, wasn't working, and I said there has to be an underlying reason, there has to be a different way to approach weight, that it's more that you can be more patient-centered than saying someone, oh, just diet and exercise more. Um, because for the person who's doing it's kind of offensive. Um, and I really want to understand the biology behind it. And I, single-handedly, not with help of my doctors, took my weight into my own hands and I lost 90 plus pounds. Wow, good for you.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and and you know, uh walk me through this.

SPEAKER_01

Well, how did you take how did you take your weight in your own hands and so I you know, I f I think a lot of times people think that because someone's heavy, it's their choice. And what I've learned, you know, through a lot of going to conferences and to get another broad certification, insulin resistance is a real thing. And the problem in today's traditional medical pathway, we wait until someone's diabetic to address it, right? Oh, your A1C is 5.7, it's fine. Your fasting sugar is 99, it's fine. And you just, you know, and that could be someone who's 26, 27 years old. Um, and there's warning signs, you know, oh, your liver enzymes are slightly elevated. That's the beginning of fatty liver disease, right? One of the things that I think that's nice on the functional medicine side versus traditional side is we take a look at things and say, what is your risk factors right now that are going to push you towards having a disease? What can we do right now to even out some of the dysfunction that's happening at the cellular level so the things that you're doing, such as diet and exercise, can actually help. You know, a lot of people say, oh, if you're on a GLP one, it's cheating. It's not. It's like saying to a person with one leg who's trying to run a race, okay, go run a little go run a race with people with two legs and let me know how it's gonna work out. When you have metabolic dysfunction, it's a it's a battle you're not gonna win, right? And when you talk about insulin resistance and inflammation, mitochondrial dysfunction, all those things happen with weight. Weight and accumulation of fat is all a pro-inflammatory process, which makes it very difficult for your body to function as normally should. It's like when you turn your computer on and it's not turning and it's not loading up correctly, you figure out, oh, well, there's a startup program that's that's going on, there's a software issue that's going on. You can apply that same process to the body. When you are doing the right things, eating right, exercising right, and you're not noticing the f the health benefits, there's a software issue. That software issue could be insulin resistance, that software issue could be inflammation, or one of the big things now everyone talks about is mitochondria health. How healthy are your mitochondria? Everyone needs NAD, right? Everyone needs all those things. There's this underlying science behind it, and a lot of people are running their body at a you know, a capacity that's not one that the body wants to be at, right? So if there is inflammation, if you have insulin resistance, all those things will force your body to run in a program that it's not doesn't want to. Um so those are the things that I try to look at, and I found them myself. I had a ton of insulin resistance, so my low dose Ozempic wasn't touching me. Because I wasn't sleeping, my cortisol levels were through the roof. I had a lot of inflammation. Anytime I ate something, my body would shift not towards using it for usable energy, shift it towards fat. So my liver enzymes were elevated. Um, I couldn't, my vitamin D levels were garbage because I was working at night, never not out during the day. All those things are related. Um, and when you have a conversation with a patient, you sit down, you take a look at those things, you can set someone up for success. And it's not sometimes just hand them a medication. What is the dysfunction? How are we gonna fix the dysfunction? And how can we also incorporate healthy habits so the things that you're doing can give you positive momentum? Because everybody hates going to the gym and the scale doesn't move, makes you not want to go, right?

SPEAKER_00

I feel like this is my own therapy session right now. So I'm I'm a very muscular person. I I used to lift weights like a like a bodybuilder, you know, five, six days a week. So I do have I'm I'm about six foot, two fifty-two, and I have 19% body fat. There's a lot of muscle in there, right? But I just recently lost 4% of my body fat relatively rapidly. I want to tell you what I did, and I'd be curious to hear your take on it. So I was the guy you're talking about. I go to the gym, I eat good. You know, I eat good 90% of the time, and and and the weight just doesn't move, right? So I started doing a lot of fasting, and fasting actually works very easy for me. I could drink black coffee and water in the morning, and and I did two 72-hour fasts. It was kind of easy, it felt really good, right? Now, I have an addiction to this, this caffeine, right? And we started doing some research, and from what we can tell is that I was likely spiking my cortisol so high that it didn't matter about the fasting. Uh my body was in a I don't know what you want to call it, just a non-fat burning state the whole time. So I started consuming some protein in the morning. Yep. You know, I do about I have a little shake, a little 150 calorie shake with 30 grams. I first thing I have, then I have water, then I have coffee, then I go to the gym, then I have another little thirty grams of protein, and I got on a anti inflammatory diet. I haven't been having red meat or you know if I have carbs, it's like a sweet potato or something, right? Boom, I lost four percent body fat. Like Yeah, and I feel good, my joints feel great. Am I on to something with this, what I'm saying, or am I totally inflammation?

SPEAKER_01

The inflammation is huge. Cortisol dysregulation is huge. Um, so the problem with cortisol is that most of the time we get in lab work just one time, it doesn't tell the story. It's the diurnal cortisol, so getting over 24 hours. And in looking at what are some of the underlying things, is the diet, is it stress, is it sleeping, is there a medication that you're on that's causing cortisol spikes? But inflammation is huge, you know. So inflammation can lead to things like insulin resistance and can lead to NAD dysfunction. So it can also lead to low testosterone. All of those things are inflammatory processes. So you hit on it, hit it on the head. Like you have to put your body in a state where it wants to be optimal. And that's why I talk about, you know, people that come into the office. It's about how do we optimize the things that you're doing so you can see a benefit. Uh the other thing is using a body composition scale versus just a regular scale, because I can get on a scale today and I, you know, 195 pounds. But then I get on a body composition scale and I'm like, yeah, but you know, like what is your weight? How is it distributed? How much of that is body fat? How much of it is muscle mass? How much of it is retaining water? Because my weight can fluctuate. I can go from being 202 to 190 in one week.

unknown

Wow.

SPEAKER_01

Just because I retain water a lot. So, um, you know, so for people, I've I've had patients come in, you know, who are on a weight loss journey with me, it's not working. That's like, okay, come into the office. Like, I know it, I just need to increase my dose. Before you increase your dose, let's just get on on the scale. And if they've been listening to me, what they find is they've gained three or four pounds of muscle and lost three or four pounds of fat. So your weight's not changing, but your body composition is changing. And they've lost visceral fat, they lost subcutaneous fat. So they're actually getting healthier, they're putting on more muscle mass, which is going to lead to the body to have be more metabolic active. So when you do eat, your body now is able to metabolize that glucose, bring inside the cell, which is one of the biggest things when people lose weight. When they lose muscle mass, they plateau. So what happens is, you know, your muscles utilize the vast majority of glucose. So when you eat, your muscle cells, with the help of insulin, will bring glucose inside the cells. If there's still blood or there's still sugar in your blood that's high, your liver just takes and converts it to fat, right? So when you lose weight, especially if you lose it rapidly, most people lose muscle mass before they lose fat. So what happens is if there's less muscle mass, there's less active tissue to bring in glucose, which means your basal metabolic rate goes down and it's a rat race you can't win. Your body also has a lot of different hormones and different signal molecules that will combat weight loss. It's not natural for you to lose weight, right? Your body losing mass always sees that as something negative, no matter how heavy you are. So as you do things that are pro-weight loss, um, your body's like, okay, fine, I'm gonna need to work just as hard to push the things that make you maintain weight. So one of the things I talk about patients is okay, we're gonna, you're gonna hit plateaus, you gotta switch it up a little bit. Maybe do a little bit more cardio, maybe do more a little bit resistance training, increase your protein, trick because you have to trick your body's smarter than you are subconsciously, right? So every time you think that you're tricking your body, your body's like, okay, fine, you're not doing that, I'll go do this.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, you're trying to play with me? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

So, you know, it's it's a constant, it's a and that's why people who kind of like cycle in and out of different things. Like someone say, What's the greatest diet? Yeah, it's a diet that fluctuates because you could do low carb, eventually plateau, right? Mediterranean overall, long-term, is great, but these like fad diets, like I'm gonna do carnivore for a little bit, you'll lose a little bit of weight, and what happens is you lose inflammation when you do the carnivore diet, you lose a lot of glycogen. So a lot of people like look doing it quickly because you'll you'll look more lean, but eventually your body goes back to equilibrium. That's the game. Your body wants to recalibrate. So every time you do something, it figures out a way to recalibrate. So, you know, a lot of these programs that people are on, having a physician that can kind of guide you in those moments of plateau, so you're not doing things just dramatic, like I'm just gonna double my dose, um, is helpful. And it gives people hope when you say, hey, you're doing the right things. I know the scale's not moving, but look how much healthier you are now. Because I always I say, like you're you're you know, health is more than just a number, right? That's on the scale. There's plenty of people, and I, you know, when people don't believe me, I say, okay, look at a running back in the NFL. What's their BMI? They're all obese, right? They're all obese. 5'10, 225 pounds, that's obesity. But I would tell you the vast majority of people would sign up to have the body of a running back, right? So when you take a look at weight and BMI, it doesn't tell the story. The story is really body composition. So I think we have to get off of this. Well, your BMI meets criteria to be on this medication. Your BMI doesn't meet that criteria. I've had plenty of people come in the office who've had normal BMIs, and I take a look at their fat content, and they're 60% fat. Wow. Right? So it doesn't really matter because they have no muscle mass. So those are the things that I think we have to take a look at how people, how their weight's distributed, and not just look at just weight and BMI as a marker of how healthy somebody is.

SPEAKER_00

You're making me feel a little better now that I know I have a little muscle on me. Um So t what let's uh last thing, I want to talk about the business today and what some of the goals are there. Kind of walk me through through through your business and Meisner Park right now.

SPEAKER_01

So uh we opened up our functional medicine clinic clinic. Um my wife and I were, like I told you, um, you know, I was patient zero, my wife was patient one. Um we both went through our weight loss journeys and our healthy journeys together. Um she had weight too? Yeah, yes.

SPEAKER_00

You guys don't even have an aftermath of it. We listen.

SPEAKER_01

We love food. I would say that's our love language, food. Yeah. Uh and food finds comfort. Is you know, for me, it's like after a long day, like I like going home and eat. Now with celiacs disease, I'm much more limited. Before celiacs, though, pizza, Chinese, pasta, like, yeah, that was my comfort. Um, but both of us struggle with weight loss. Um, both of us did the traditional. I mean, you you named the medication, we tried it, wasn't successful. Um, you know, just you know, we're gonna be just completely exposed here. I did liposuction on my stomach to get a six-pack, and then within two months the weight was right back. So, you know, all the patients out there is like, hey, I don't want to tell my doctor, we've done it too. Uh, we all want to look good. Um switching my mentality in terms of really understanding weight and metabolism really helped. Um, you know, my wife struggles with also hormone irregularity, which makes losing weight difficult. Um, so understanding those things and understanding the data points so you can create a customized pro profile program. So we decided to open up, you know, a clinic because there's a lot of people that could benefit from our stories, you know. So combined together, we've lost 180 pounds between the two of us. Um, you know, both of us now have much better blood work. You know, we're able to, you know, I laugh when we go for a jog. I'm like, I'm not short of breath, I'm not tired playing with my kids. Um and, you know, I think we take a look at jokingly and say, yeah, let's live to 100, right? Like that's the goal. But we don't want to, we want to be that 70-year-old in Boca who's running down Federal Highway, you know, who looks like they're 40, right? I don't want to be the six-year-old in a wheelchair, right? So aging, you know, starts now. What are some of the things that you're gonna do so that, you know, if you are gonna live to 80 and 90, you can go to Disney World, you can go on a vacation. I've seen so many, you know, older people you never thought they were 80 years old who are living amazing lives, right? So, what are some of the things that we can do today in terms of looking at biomarkers? What are your risk factors? And let's create a care plan to optimize the things that you're doing. Uh, because plenty of people are on things that they, you know, their neighbors on it, and they're like, oh, I think it's a good idea, and maybe it's a good idea for you, maybe it's not. Um, we can look at genetic markers, biomarkers, lifestyle, and create a plan towards your goals. We use a body composition scale in the office so that we're not just guessing. We know how much you know fat you have, what's your bone density, are you losing bone density? All the things that we that people say, oh, you know, you shouldn't be on this medication for weight loss because it causes this. We look into it. You shouldn't be on this peptide because it can cause this, we look into it. You know, I want to practice medicine on the patient's terms, shared decision making. This is no longer the world where your doctor says that you should do it, so you should do it. Question your physician. Are you doing this test? Is it necessary? With the results of the test, what's the next step? Does the next step actually have more harm than actually not looking? I had a phenomenal ER attending tell me don't order a test unless you know what you're gonna do with it. And if what you're gonna do with it is put somebody at greater risk of health harm, then why order the test? Right? So I think as physicians now in the world, I love that patients are questioning us. Like there's some people who I say, okay, where do you get that from? Chat GPT. But you know what? People should ask. Why am I taking this? You know, why am I on a statin for my cholesterol being this? Is it actually gonna cause cognitive decline? What are my risk factors for heart disease? What actually are the risk factors for a heart attack? Um, you know, why am I on six different blood pressure medications? What are some of the things that I can do to lower blood pressures I don't need to be on medications? You know, I always say I I read a book back in residency and it's called uh the American Sickness, okay? And if you haven't listened to or read it, it's really, really good. Listen, at the end of the day, the medical field is a business. Yeah, American sickness. It's a business, right? Like anything else. At the end of the day, yes, the first goal is to do no harm. But I would tell you that chronic disease management is a membership that you don't want to be a part of. You start someone in a statin, we never talk about how to get them off. We start somebody on a blood pressure medication, we never talk about how to get them off.

SPEAKER_00

I love it. Um and I love your business, and and I think I think the biggest uh selling point you guys have is that you you you are you were your own patients. And I think you know, just hearing you talk, listen, I'm on a program right now, and and if you know if it doesn't work here in a few months, I'll I promise you I'll come see you. But you know, it it's it's frustrating, dude. I whatever it is with my body, you know, it's it's frustrating. So um you guys have lived it and and and breathed it and solved the problem. I think that's a really cool testimonial for you. I want to do some rapid fire questions with you. These tend to do really good too. Um and um, you know, let me see which ones I think that are good. What's ooh, this might get you in trouble. What's something you were taught in conventional medicine that you now strongly disagree with?

SPEAKER_01

All elevated cholesterol levels need to statins. So, and I'll tell you why. So, one of the functional medicine doctors that I learned under did I did blood work and I told all the medications that I'm I'm on, and she's like, You're on a statin for the cholesterol level of 150, and I'm like, Yeah, because my dad has heart disease, my mom has heart disease. And she's like, Well, have you noticed that you're a little bit cognitively slower? Maybe. And she's like, and I bet your testosterone levels in the in the dr in the toilet. And I'm like, probably. And she's like, Well, why don't you try non-conventional statin methods before you put a 30-year-old on a statin? We're so scared about cholesterol in this country, and we're so quick to put someone on a statin. And statins do a lot of harm. It can cause muscle fatigue, it can cause joint pain, it lowers uh hormone levels like testosterone, it can definitely cause cognitive decline. So it's one of the things I think we do so quickly traditionally as a gut reflex to a number before actually looking at some other ways that are non-conventional. And listen, not all elevated cholesterol is bad. There's also different types, there's also biomarkers associated, lipoprotein A, aproprotein B. There's more things than just an LDL. Again, your doctor has to be well versed and willing to do that test. The other, you know, elephant in the room is that typically insurance doesn't pay for these tests, right? So it's difficult for the vast majority of people to get this information, and it's way cheaper to get the Walmart $5 statin than it is to get the $400 lab test.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, that was really good. Um last one What's one non-negotiable you follow in your own health? Non-negotiable.

SPEAKER_01

So I you know, I before I do anything, I try to really just delve into what am what is the goal and are there side effects that are worse than what I'm trying to treat? Because there's tons of things that you can do. Um, and you take a look at all the positives, but at the same time, are there things that we're not sure of that could be a side effect that are actually worse for you than what you're trying to treat? So I try to take a look at both sides, and before I before I put any anyone on something, I I have to believe that I would work for myself as well. And it's kind of what we did on our spa. All of the machines, all of the care plans we've done. Um, so I speak from a level of not just a physician, but as a level as a patient. And for most of the time, I find that when I speak to people at the level of the patient, it's more relatable than me talking to them as a physician. So, you know, before I prescribe anything or advise anyone, I I have done it myself as well.

SPEAKER_00

Very cool. You know, do me a favor, Dr. Hines. Um, look into that camera and you know, give your 20-second elevator pitch. You know, who who should consider reaching out to you and for what? And if they do want to reach out to you, where can they find you?

SPEAKER_01

Um, so I'm Dr. Jonathan Hines, multi-board certified physician, um, emergency medicine, obesity medicine, anti-aging, longevity health optimization. Um, I run a 50-state uh medical practice. We are also located in Boca Raton, uh, where genitive medicine, functional medicine practice. Patients that I'm looking for are people who are kind of just frustrated with the traditional medical model. Do you feel like your physician's not listening to you? Do you feel like you've done things without any improvement? Are you looking to delve into more of a customized evidence-based approach? Um, you know, we look at each person as an individual and create plans individualized to your goals. Um, you know, we use things like the newest functional medicine lab tests. We do things like heavy metal testing, mold testing, things that are a little bit outside the box, but may explain why you've had no improvement in the traditional things that you've done. Um, if you'd like to find us, we are on Instagram at Hindsight Health. You can also go on our Facebook page. Um, we also have a website, hindsighthealth.com, and our phone number is 561-208-5543. Come take a look. Let's just have a conversation of how we can optimize your health.

SPEAKER_00

Guys, thanks again for tuning into the Gold Coast Podcast. Dr. Jonathan Hines, the architect of Next Gen Healthcare. Make sure to like and subscribe. We'll see you again. Thank you.