Ep. 189 - AAR on Functional Medicine and The City

In this late release of the show, Rob provides an After Action Review (AAR) on his experience with the Functional Medicine Department at the Cleveland Clinic and his experience in the city after leaving the campus of the Cleveland Clinic. 

Functional Medicine Notes from meeting with Dr. Michael Siciliano:

Emphasis on the ties between gut health and neurological wellness.  

Gut Health "3 R's"

• Remove (bad bacteria, etc)
• Repair
• Replace (with good bacteria, etc)

Comprehensive exam including review of all notes previously submitted in the LivingMatrix system - and you can learn more about all leading up to this exam in the previous episode here:

• Ep. 178 - A Focus on Health and The Future

Most of the dialogue was about my diet, my previous supplement regime, stool tests to further examine gastrointestinal health, and tests including, but not limited to:

• CK levels
• ICE / IGGG Food Reactions
• Mold
• Omega Fatty Acid levels
• Iodine levels
• Adrenal stress profile
• Male hormone panel
• Adrenal Salivary Index

Regarding diet, I will be engaging in a grain-free elimination diet.  You can learn more about the elimination diet here.  Below is a link to material further discussed with the nutritionist:

The Institute for Functional Medicine’s Elimination Diet Comprehensive Guide and Food Plan

The above link will provide you with a free download of The Institute for Functional Medicine's Elimination Diet Comprehensive Guide - but to make it easy for you, I've linked to it here:

• The Institute for Functional Medicine's Elimination Diet Comprehensive Guide

 He also recommended that I begin a supplementary protocol once all lab work and testing has been completed.  I will try to follow up with the specific supplements I will be taking in a future episode. 

He wanted to see me in 8 weeks...but he's booked into December, and I'm on a waiting list to see him earlier - and was advised that as soon as an opening occurs to jump on it *immediately* as open spots in the Functional Medicine department are filled quickly.

After that, I went to the lab to have the most comprehensive panel of lab work ever done.  There were thirty-three (33) vials of blood taken to be analyzed both in house and off site.

Following the lab work, I met with Kevin Heine, who will be serving as my health coach.  We will be discussing immediate next steps and putting together an action plan after the information gathering phase.  He focused discussion on what he calls the 4 Pillars of Health:

Four Pillars of Health:

• Nutrition
• Movement
• Sleep
• Stress

The two primary areas of focus in Functional medicine are Nutrition and Stress.

Luckily the health coaching is part and parcel of working with the Functional Medicine Department - and there is no additional billing required (as I'll likely be paying a significant portion of this out of pocket, as insurance doesn't cover much of Functional Medicine).

Before leaving, I ended up meeting with Katherine Straub, who will be my nutritionist.  We spent a considerable amount of time discussing Functional Nutrition, which I will detail out in a future episode for lack of room to write...

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hello everybody and welcome back to the show. Today, on this episode of the All Around Growth Podcast, we are going to get into an after-action review of my appointment today with the Department of Functional Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic, as well as my trip to the city. I am here at the gas station back in town, headed home. I thought about doing something a little bit longer on the way home from the city, but I will expand on reasons why I did not do that as we get into the recording on the way home. First and foremost, this was my first trip to the city in about six months. When I say the city, I mean the city of Cleveland. I had been up there earlier in the year to regroup with my neurologist after an increase in seizure activity. My appointment was in the morning, and as soon as I left the doctor's office, I promptly left the city. Today was a little bit different. I was up there all day, and before I get into the actual lab work and the three different doctors that I met with today, I just want to share some thoughts on the city. I ended up driving around a little bit just to do some sightseeing, see my grandpa's old office building down near Terminal Tower, get some lunch down in uh what used to be called Chinatown, now called Asia Town, and otherwise known as the International District in other cities, in the name of inclusiveness. But when I was downtown, especially near Terminal Tower, which is the town center, if you will, it it's it's not quite like it used to be. There are areas that are unkempt, the landscaping is not taken care of. There seems to be an increase in homelessness and garbage everywhere. It's just not the way that I remember it, and it was a little bit disappointing to say the least. Now when I got there this morning, I first met with the doctor, uh, Michael Siciliano. And we just got right into it. Um he made it very clear that his ideas with regard to gut health were remove, repair, replace the three R's. We want to remove and get rid of the things that are not serving us or are hurting or harming us, repair the damage, and replace bacteria and things like that with good bacteria. Since we are looking at removing the bad bacteria and such. I did not expect to be walking away from this appointment, crapping in a box, but this is how we learn with specificity what's going on with our digestive system and our gastrointestinal system. Um he also set me up with a supplement protocol, which I can outline and shed light on in the telegram group t.me slash allaround growth. I don't quite have the time to get into that now. Maybe I will also do so in a future episode. And um, there's a lot of homework to do. While I've got some things on my to-do list and some protocols and procedures to follow, I can't really engage in much of this until I get some of these stool samples and saliva samples taken care of. In addition to the comprehensive panel of lab work done, I have never had as much blood drawn in my life as I had today. And it was, I took a picture of all the vials. There must have been two dozen of them. At the most, I've probably had six or seven vials of blood drawn in the past for whatever it was that I was getting work done on or checked out, but this was over the top. Um that was the second part of the procedure after the visit with Dr. Ceciliano. I will be engaging in an elimination diet, a grain-free elimination diet, and that is pretty intense. I'll be doing that for about six to eight weeks at some point when I put it all together and uh do my homework, so to speak. I've got a follow-up appointment with him in December, and he also suggested that I work with a counselor who is very involved with the functional medicine department at the Cleveland Clinic, and that was something that I did not expect to be doing or anticipate to be suggested, but perhaps with all of the stressors that are going on in life right now, re-engaging in that behavior is probably not a bad idea. It is something that I used to do in the past, see a counselor, and I just it's not something I've done in the past couple of years because I feel pretty good, like I've got a pretty good handle on things. And the reality is I probably have the same feeling as though the same handle on things as I did a few years ago when I was seeing the counselor. But the difference is I have more going on in life, and I'm likely putting some of the stressors that caused me to go to this counselor or therapist in the past, I'm likely masking some of that with all of the activity that I am involved with. Volunteer work, work within the community, things of that nature. Now, after I went and got my labs done and had a lengthy conversation with the person in there who was actually drawing the blood about his experiences with functional medicine, I saw an individual, I presume a doctor, who will be serving as my health coach. And he talked about the four pillars of health, in his opinion: nutrition, movement, sleep, and stress. And the big two that he and the functional medicine department focuses on are nutrition and stress. And that is excellent because the current health coach that I am working with got me thinking about talking about and acting on stress, which was not something I expected to be working with or thinking about and discussing with a health coach. And if you're interested in a health coach, but not really quite at a point where you want to explore functional medicine yet, uh let me know. Yvette is an excellent health coach. I've really enjoyed the experience working with her, and I would highly recommend anyone who is interested in naturopathy, health coaching, and just improving your health and wellness to hit me up and talk about, uh inquire about my experience with Yvette, and I'll give you her details if interested. Now, one of the other things that Kevin told me about with health coaching is that it's not necessarily prescriptive, but it's more patient-led, and that was not something that I was really expecting to hear. So we're kind of in the information gathering stage at this point in the game, so my meeting with him was brief, it was really just an introductory meeting, and after getting acquainted with him, I went ahead and met with the nutritionist, and her name was Catherine, and there was another individual in there as well. As we sort of got the lowdown on nutrition and sort of a group setting, we were both or are both suggested to follow the grain-free elimination diet, and with the nutritional aspect of functional medicine, we are really talking about excuse me, functional nutrition, and that is healthful eating personalized to your genetics, lifestyle, environment, and health concerns. And we are going to have uh after visit summaries from the health coach, the nutritionist, as well as the doctor, and what's interesting is the resources on this elimination diet are comprehensive, and the elimination diet is or includes a lot of things that I didn't think would be items that I would be removing from my diet. For example, beef, pork, and eggs. I but lamb is okay. Chicken, poultry, all of that's okay, and even bison, elk. That's okay, and I inquired why beef? Why lamb? Even if the beef is grass-fed and grass finished, and apparently there are uh there is a type of protein, and it's the protein structure, if I'm not mistaken, that is a little different in beef than other red meats, other ruminant red meats, and that has something to do with uh also has something to do with the protein structure or the uh you know dairy and why we are eliminating dairy as well. Um grains, no corn, um, but some grains in their seed form are okay, like quinoa, wild rice is okay. It's really a whole foods diet. We won't be counting calories, we won't be tracking macros, we won't really be doing a lot of the things that I am accustomed to doing with regard to diet, other than eliminating certain foods from my diet and following some basic guidelines on what to eat and more specifically what not to eat. I've been advised to cut out alcohol and caffeine as well. Maybe a small amount of alcohol is okay, but apparently the frequency and quantity with which I am consuming alcohol is to be curtailed. So this is something that I was expecting, especially with the alcohol use, but some of the foods that are to be eliminated for a six to eight week period and then reintegrated with monitoring, some of those foods, that's not really what I was expecting. So the long and short of it is um with this uh with this functional medicine, how do I conclude this? Let's see, Cody's out here, Mike's out cutting the grass. We got a lot of activity on the farm today, and hopefully I will. Okay. Free and clear from conversation. He wants to keep mowing. I don't see Cody, but the long and short of it today is this. Functional medicine is how do we how do we nutshell what this is? Um a comprehensive approach towards the way in which we treat ourselves, utilizing food as the basis and framework for our healing. And that is profound because they acknowledged what the other specialists are doing, which is largely treating and mitigating symptoms. But the one thing that pleased me the most was what the nutritionist said as she was explaining the process behind functional nutrition and how the nutrition is such a big component of functional medicine. And she spoke of root cause analysis and how we want to. Since I'm in the driveway, I can read this. We are we're looking at we are looking at the symptoms as a whole. And she discussed root cause, and that makes me happy because root cause was, and and and doing root cause analysis on all manners of things is something that my old boss Ray used to tell me. You remember me talking about Ray in past episodes. Rob, you're either growing or dying. And in all of my projects, we would do exactly that, a root cause analysis. And as it turns out, I'm taking much of the same approach to my health as I've taken in other projects in my career, and which is a sensible thing to do. So, anyways, guys, that's a brief AAR on my time in the city, my time with functional medicine, and my experiences during the day. As always, you guys are definitely encouraged to join in the telegram group, t.me slash allaroundgrowth, to participate in the discussion. We've had some lively discussion over the past couple days regarding health issues and just all sorts of things. Um good stuff. So check it out, t.me slash allaroundgrowth. And that is it for today's show, my friends. We will be back tomorrow morning with an episode more along the lines of what we normally do. Record in the mornings and begin our day with uh with the podcast in that way. So until then, I wish you well. This is Rob Kaiser, and thank you.