From Sleep Apnea To SIBO: Fixing Root Causes With Functional Medicine

Ever been told “you’re fine” while your body says otherwise? 

In this episode, we trace a real journey from unresolved sleep apnea and chronic fatigue to the root causes hiding in hormones, gut health, and systemic inflammation.

Randy, a functional medicine physician assistant, breaks down how testosterone, growth hormone, melatonin, and the gut are deeply connected and how SIBO, leaky gut, and inflammation can quietly destroy sleep, recovery, and focus. We also dive into GLP-1 medications, why they can backfire when used blindly, and how microdosing, strength training, protein intake, and hydration help protect muscle and metabolic health.

We cover peptides, hormone replacement therapy, and why insurance driven care often misses the full picture.

If you’re chasing real energy, deeper sleep, and sustainable fat loss, this episode shows where to look.

Like, subscribe, and comment with the questions you want us to tackle next.

Transcript

Meet Randy And Her Practice

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the Anthony Amber Show. We are back to having guests here for the show, and I'm really excited about this. So without further ado, we're going to welcome a local business owner, Randy. It's a pleasure to have you on.

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Hi, a pleasure to be here.

SPEAKER_01 0:14

Randy owns method functional medicine. You do a lot of fun stuff inside of it. I'm not going to spoil it. So first, just tell us a little bit about what you do.

Who Seeks Functional Medicine

SPEAKER_00 0:21

Yeah, absolutely. So I'm a physician assistant. I own method functional medicine. As the name suggests, I do functional medicine, but I also do peptide therapy and testosterone and hormone replacement.

SPEAKER_01 0:32

So my first question would be what is the primary driver that drives people to your business? What do you mostly see and what do you mostly work on with these people?

SPEAKER_00 0:40

Absolutely. So, you know, I offer like initial calls for people. So the majority of people that I get really just want to feel better, feel very frustrated with their options and the current healthcare landscape. It's people who either are seeking longevity and just a better lifestyle and are already implementing, you know, diet and exercise and a good routine, but are looking for something a little bit further than what maybe their primary care offers. Or it's somebody with a chronic condition that they feel has been left unheard, unfortunately, through the providers that are available to them and they're seeking to find root causes to their conditions.

SPEAKER_01 1:19

I feel like life works in really mysterious ways. And I didn't tell you this pre-show, but I have had a lot of personal issues that I've been dealing with and trying to figure out and get to the root cause of. And every time I go to the doctor, every time I look at things, it's like, oh, you're fine, you're fine, you're fine, you're fine, you're fine.

SPEAKER_00 1:34

Right, of course.

SPEAKER_01 1:35

And it's a journey that I gave to myself. Like I talked about New Year's resolutions in a previous show. This is actually one of the first times in about 10 years I've made like a fitness and health New Year's resolution for myself. And it's to figure out two underlying causes of things that I've know aren't normal and know I need to get addressed, but everyone in the medical community tells me I'm fine.

SPEAKER_02 1:55

Yep.

Host’s Sleep Apnea Story

SPEAKER_01 1:56

So I would like to start with those specifically because I think it's more related to relatable to people.

SPEAKER_02 2:01

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 2:01

So the first one is my sleep.

SPEAKER_02 2:03

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 2:03

And this has been an ongoing saga. The problem with having your family members be your doctors when I'm when you're young.

SPEAKER_00 2:09

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 2:10

Your parents do it because they're family and there's no copay, and usually you get discounts when you have no insurance.

SPEAKER_02 2:15

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:16

But when you're going to see your uncle and you're telling him that you know your sleep's off and you don't understand what's going on, like you're always tired, and he's like, Oh, you're just a teenager, get over it. And then that progresses to me doing my own research, saying, No, listen, like I have sleep apnea. I've did my own digging, like I definitely have sleep apnea. You don't have sleep apnea. Get into an argument in the doctor's office. I'm like, just give me a sleep study. What does that do to you? Okay, fine. And he gives me a sleep study. News flash. I have sleep apnea.

SPEAKER_00 2:45

Amazing.

SPEAKER_01 2:46

And that's even correlated to me then getting a tonsillectomy. I got my aneroids moved, my uver liver moved. Even three years after that, got a rhinoplasty. So all this stuff to help kind of fix that sleep apnea. And it cumulated in an event where recently it was a couple four years ago, five years ago, um, driving in the wife with my car. I'm driving my wife in the car, and I fell asleep with the wheel at 6:30 at night.

SPEAKER_00 3:09

Wow.

Beyond CPAP: Hormones And Sleep

SPEAKER_01 3:09

And I almost killed the bicyclist. And she literally, I think it was in the car with me, screamed, grabbed the wheel, and adjusted. And most people assume like it's oh, you get slowly tired and you drift and you're no dreaming. No, you literally are dreaming you're driving. Yes. So there's no like correlation to that misomer. And now I'm back on a CPAP, and that's always the just take a CPAP, but I'm still sleeping nine, ten and a half hours a night. And if I don't, I'm exhausted. So someone like an underlying condition like that, what would be first steps you would look into? And I want to see if that relates to what I'm currently doing for myself.

Gut Health Links To Sleep And Energy

SPEAKER_00 3:45

Yeah, sure, absolutely. So I mean, you as a male, a healthy male that exercises a lot, I would also look into like starting with hormones, testosterone, things like that. Testosterone certainly regulates sleep at night, but also sleep apnea can affect your testosterone level. So it can be a little bit of a loop there. So I would definitely look into that. You know, if those are different or if those are low, um, then I would look into the root cause of that. So functional medicine is all about kind of like finding the next thing and uncovering the next thing and uncovering the next thing. So chronic inflammation is a huge driver of so many conditions, um, sleep being one of them. So there are many hormones that affect sleep other than testosterone, like growth hormone, for example. So if your growth hormone production for any reason is, you know, not as efficient as it should be for somebody that your age, um, that can certainly affect your deep sleep and your ability to get restorative sleep. So if you're waking up in the, if you're sleeping nine to ten hours or you're sleeping even eight and you're waking up exhausted, that's definitely a problem. That's not strictly from sleep apnea if you're adequately treated with a CPAP. So we would definitely look into that. If you have chronic inflammation, we would start with blood work. And if we see any signs, then we go on to the next thing and the next clue and the next clue. That could emanate even from your gut. Your gut health can dramatically affect your ability to produce growth hormone, your ability to produce testosterone. If you have chronic inflammation, all of those things work together. So functional medicine acknowledges that the systems in our body work together to perform one function. And it's not just you probably had mechanical sleep apnea, which is why you had the adenoids and tonsils removed and had the rhinoplasty as well, but there's clearly still an underlying component there, right? So we would look kind of like beyond what a standard practitioner might look at to see what the actual underlying cause would be.

SPEAKER_01 5:34

I am so happy you said that. So I'm on that same exact page. And another correlation I've had is I have currently self-diagnosed and I'm waiting for a true diagnosis of SIBO, which is small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, because I've noticed everything, like as I get older, everything I eat bothers my gut. It doesn't matter what it is to like, even a piece of spinach will be put me in excruciating pain the next day.

SPEAKER_00 5:59

And I just you need to come see me.

SPEAKER_01 6:00

Yeah. This is all me self-diagnosing and doing tests. And so it's all stuff I'm I'm starting to notice uh relationship to, and then even take it a step further, which I feel like a lot of people miss the ball on, is when it comes to weight training, right? I've been working out consistently for 10 years, and I mean most days two to four times a week, obviously I know what the fuck I'm doing. So it's why when I look at my brother who's very close to me in like genetics and DNA, he can not work out for a year, work out for a year consistently be three times my size doing the same workouts. So to me, it's like, okay, there's something going on that's preventing me from building muscle and retaining muscle. And I know that's related to sleep. So it becomes that loop. 100%. And it's just like, no, I feel like no doctor is asking these specific questions. So how would you arm a patient to go talk to a physician, ask the right proper questions to get the right proper health? Is it even possible?

SIBO Explained And Systemic Inflammation

SPEAKER_00 7:02

Is it possible? I wouldn't want to say that it's not, but I think um, you know, the way unfortunately that our insurance-run healthcare system is um is based upon these days is just um it's not a priority um for providers. And not because they don't want it to be, but um providers are very restricted, especially when they're working in larger healthcare systems and things like that. They have limitations to what they can do, whether that's system-based or insurance-based. Um, there are limitations to how they can practice, extreme limitations on how they can practice. So um for them to really want to deep dive into something like that would be incredibly rare. Um, incredibly rare, unfortunately. But that's why I'm here. So um, yeah, so it's interesting that you bring this up because you know, having chronic inflammation, um, particularly in the context of SIBO. So for those listening, SIBO, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth can occur when there become an abnormal level of pathogenic bacteria or bad bacteria in the gut. When that happens, you get an overwhelming production of toxins from that bad bacteria. Those toxins produce inflammation in the small intestine. They also damage the tight junctions and the intestinal lining. So these junctions become damaged, they become loosened. Um, and during that process, those pathogens that are produced by the bacteria andor unbroken down food that's in the intestine actually seeps into the bloodstream, and so to speak. When that happens, the immune system has a massive reaction because they're like, what is this doing here? This is a foreign invader, we need to attack it. When that happens chronically, year after year, and gets worse and worse. Um, not only do you get intestinal issues like eating a piece of spinach and like blowing up, you know, or looking five months pregnant at the end of the day, um, those are very complicated.

SPEAKER_01 8:59

I can't make that joke. My wife is nine months pregnant.

SPEAKER_00 9:02

Well, she has a reason. But um, but you know, over time, when that happens chronically, it it it the symptoms are not just within the gut. They become, you know, inf inflammation happens everywhere. When the immune system is starts um going haywire, um, it's not just going to attack those foreign invaders. It's gonna start attacking the thyroid, it can attack the brain, sleep center, all of these things. Um, pineal glands not functioning properly, our pineal gland and our brain is what naturally produces our melatonin. So all of these things are very intimately connected. So it's always interesting when I sit down with a patient and we're talking, like just like we did, we're talking about something like sleep. And I say, how's your digestion? And they look at me like I'm crazy. But um, a lot of us, you know, in the beginning of SIBO or some other um, some other condition, we kind of ignore it, right? We're we're not really, you know, we're not listening to our gut, so to speak, as much as maybe we should. So these early signs of SIBO, like you're a little bloated, or oh, your stomach kind of hurts a little bit after you ate, you know, X, Y, and Z, you're not really noticing consistent patterns. And we learn to unfortunately kind of ignore our bodies because we don't, you know, we're not accustomed to going to the doctor and getting answers for those problems. So we just ignore it until it becomes a disease and then we take a pill for it.

GLP-1s, Microdosing, And SIBO Risks

SPEAKER_01 10:23

So yeah, you pretty much uh nailed that directly on the head. It's linked to so many different issues as far as I get sick a lot. My wife brings it up. You get sick a lot, like what the heck? You get it's a normal amount of time. I'm like, well, it's all related. But I think there's another side to this story, because I do agree the physician side is off. And you mentioned I'm so happy you mentioned gut, and we kind of branched down this because the other side is then people who go and just take these, I don't want to say experimental medications, but if they are experimental, I'm not gonna there's no beating around the bush.

SPEAKER_02 10:55

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 10:56

But so considering specifically with GLP1s, is like you would go for inozempic, like that group in and of itself, it's I can point 10 people in a room, three of them are on GLP1s. Absolutely, and they're just taking it just to take it. And I don't see how it's good for your gut microme, even as a whole. So I think that's a great place to start. Is what is a worry as far as someone taking a GLP one? As you have to wormly worry about permanently screwing their gut microme as a whole, and what are some ways you can go to prevent that?

Muscle Loss, Habits, And Responsible Weight Loss

SPEAKER_00 11:27

Absolutely. So very, very good points that you make. So GLP1 therapy um slows um or creates stasis in the small intestine, slows the progress of food through the intestinal tract. When there is stasis, like think of sitting water, right? That's sitting outside in your backyard for a long time. It's gonna start growing stuff, right? Same thing in your gut. Things ferment, um, bacteria are you know produced or overproduced, and then you get SIBO. So as a functional medicine provider, when I decided to implement GLP1 therapies into my practice, I really had to do so very, very consciously because I cannot, you know, with all due respect to, you know, the makers of the drug and all of that, I cannot follow the therapeutic recommendation recommended dosing for those. And that's why, you know, compounding pharmacies are so great because you can really tweak a patient's dosage, et cetera. Um, you know, microdosing GLP1 therapy, I think it certainly has its place. It has its place in my practice, but some of these extremely large doses that we're seeing people go on, um almost everyone that I have that has come from another, you know, weight loss clinic, whether it's one of these big telehealth companies or something like that, that's just pumping out GLP1s to people, always come with SIBO symptoms. Chronic constipation, which is, of course, from the GLP one, but that, you know, they've been on trazepatide at that point for let's just say a year and a half, you know, and it's it's like, okay, we've been chronically constipated for a year and a half. You were probably chronically constipated prior to that. And now we're dealing with a SIBO situation. And we have to look at how we can treat this while also, you know, maybe you reaping the benefits of microdosing a GLP one. Um, and, you know, but one of the massive factors in treating a condition like SIBO is going to ensure that you're able to detoxify the things that you're killing off. The process is killing off that extra bacteria. And if you're not getting it out of your body because you're on a high dose GLP, then it won't work. So, you know, I think there is most definitely not a one size fits all. Not everybody should be on a GLP one. I mean, for obvious reasons, but um I think they have their place in certain conditions, like um with regard to microdosing, I know I mentioned that, but um I, you know, I utilize it. I think it's got an amazing role in hormone balancing, um, both in conditions like PCOS and then, you know, some of my patients who come in perimenopause, it's been great for them. Um, as we women enter perimenopause, um, you deal with a lot of metabolic and insulin resistance changes that, you know, things like trzepatite can really help during that time. It can very much so help with chronic inflammation. So it's a tool, it's not a solution, but it is a tool in the in the tool belt that I think can be used responsibly when used responsibly.

SPEAKER_01 14:24

One of the best things you said is microdosing, because I think that's definitely more of a place for it than what you're seeing with yet again, going to a position over prescribing or go, there's a black market for it, which is wild. And everyone knows everyone who to buy it from at this specific point in time.

SPEAKER_02 14:37

Of course.

SPEAKER_01 14:38

So they're taking it more as a cuff, and it now you're taking a medication for weight loss just for more of a cosmetic reason than anything. Well, and that's going to cause a lot of issues with it. So I'm sure you get a lot of patients that are coming in that are like, hey, I just want to be prescribed this, I just want to lose the weight, but it doesn't fix the underlying condition.

SPEAKER_02 14:57

Right.

SPEAKER_01 14:57

And the biggest underlying condition for most people is habits, where you're you have to fix someone's habit and how they structure their lives. And a medication is just a band-aid because what happens after you're off of it? And the sad part about what happens when you're off of it, which what we see, and what you see with every weight loss drug and every weight loss, et cetera, thing out there, is yeah, you lose weight, but you're also losing the same amount of muscle tissue as you're losing fat. So now your metabolic rate is tanking. So now when you start eating food again, you're gonna gain that weight back way quicker than you ever before because you lost all that muscle mass because there's no habits involved to exercise, right? To work out. Absolutely. So, how do you address those people? If I'm coming to you to see in your office, what's something you would love to just give to the general public that do this?

SPEAKER_00 15:44

Sure, absolutely. So, whenever I approach a patient who's interested in a GLP one or is already on one, um, patients who are on one, I give everybody nutrition recommendations. Um, they have to be meeting one pound per uh, one gram per kilo of body weight and protein.

SPEAKER_01 16:00

That's huge.

Peptides, HRT, And Future Of Care

SPEAKER_00 16:01

That's very hard to do. Um, and a lot of people either don't want to or can't do it. And, you know, unfortunately, that's just not our our visions that are not aligned. And they are probably better served, maybe, you know, going to another, you know, cookie cut or weight loss clinic or something like that, um, if that's what they want. Now, when you mentioned like losing muscle mass, and that's such a hot topic when we're talking about GLP1s or GLP3s, which is a very popular subject. Um, but um, when you are looking at losing um large amounts of weight, you will lose muscle no matter how you're doing it. It just so happens that GLP ones suppress your appetite to the point that makes it much easier to do than really any other method that we've ever had. Um, so there's nothing about the medication themselves that, you know, cause muscle wasting. It's just the amount of weight lost in a short period of time that creates that muscle loss, that isempic face, you know. And then you're looking at issues on urine, resistance training issues. Well, down the road, we're looking at osteoporosis in a woman because she has no muscle mass. Um, you know, so my goal as a provider is not to trade one chronic condition for another. I, you know, I'd love to fix your insulin resistance and help with your cholesterol and things like that with weight loss, but you know, we have to do it responsibly. Then what? So you just have osteoporosis 10 years from now because you never worked out, you never had muscle mass and things like that. It has to be an all-encompassing plan. I will say a lot of my patients who come to me are really doing the work, which I love. They're working out four to five days a week, they're already doing resistance training, they eat relatively clean, or they're looking for guidance and very receptive to it and like implement the changes, which is huge.

SPEAKER_01 17:46

Yeah, I absolutely love that. I think something I just as a broader, like narrow like not broader, narrow scope, kind of what we're looking at here. What's out of everything you treat, one component inside of that that you're like, this is the drug or this is the thing that's really gonna change medicine as a whole? Because functional medicine, right, is really looking ahead. So whether it's maybe it's microdose and GLP1s, maybe it's peptides which you didn't touch at all, or maybe it's TRT. What what do you think is where people should really look first? And how would you direct the people there?

Insurance Limits And Why Cash-Based

SPEAKER_00 18:21

I think people should look at functional medicine first. I mean, I think that's the ideal foundation. Again, I, you know, I have patients who are just peptide patients or just HRT patients for me. The things that I think will be the biggest chain game changers for people moving forward in the future and will be a huge part of medicine. There's three things: gut health, stool testing, treating SIBO, HRT for women, which has been widely not used for the past two generations and has done a massive disservice to women as a whole. Um, it has predisposed women to, you know, um osteoporosis, heart conditions that could have been prevented if HRT were actually available to them, and peptides. Um, you know, peptides largely being synthetic analogs of naturally occurring peptides in our body, um, you know, they work to um benefit us and work with our body's natural responses by sending a message to our body to maybe doing produce more of that. So, like, for example, um, GLP ones are peptides. Um, but rather than giving someone insulin, right, to treat their blood glucose, a GLP1 sends a message to the pancreas to produce more insulin so that the pancreas is actually doing the work. It's not just giving exogenous insulin and pumping the body for all of that. Because you can kill someone doing that if you're not doing it right. So telling your body to do it in response to how much glucose is existing in the body is a more responsible and safe way to do that than just pumping it. But other peptides work in the same way by messaging, you know, the body to produce more of this or heal this. Um, A really great example of that is uh pentodeca arginate, um, which is a um which is sort of a copy of BPC 157, which is you know not FDA approved. And it um it's basically just an additional arginate added to it, but it um it helps to improve connective tissue quality and repair in the gut. BPC 157 is produced in the gut to keep that repair going. So for our gut health patients, SIBO and all of that, you know, it really works to actually heal these conditions, which I think is not an approach that we've taken in medicine so far.

SPEAKER_01 20:36

I I totally agree and I have one final question because I think this is really the kicker of all of it. You have a paid someone that comes and wants to see you, but they say, you know, Randy, I spend$1,500,$2,000 a month on health insurance, and I want to use my health insurance. So why am I coming to you and I can't use something I'm paying an absorbent amount of money for?

SPEAKER_02 20:58

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 20:58

As opposed to going the medical route, I want to use this health insurance, I'm paying so much money for. Because we get the same thing here. So what's your response to that? And how if you could give a direct talk to those people who are spending so much money and really want to use insurance, what would be that message?

Closing And Listener Questions

SPEAKER_00 21:14

Sure, I completely understand. As a as an owner of health and uh health insurance plan myself, it's very frustrating. But um, you know, unfortunately, um, first of all, insurance does not cover functional medicine services, um, it does not cover peptides, it it does is gonna start covering HRT, I think, more, which is great. So I am happy to work with patients. My my blood work, I get, I code so that the lab can build their insurance for it. So I do try to work with patients in that way. Um, but unfortunately, they just insurance uh directs a lot of medical care. And I think people don't realize that. Um I, you know, at one point uh was trying to be more um insurance friendly, I guess. And I would get letters from insurance companies saying that if I didn't put a patient on a statin that they were gonna drop me. Um so, and the whole reason people are coming to me is to get off their statin so or not go on one. Um and that's what we're you know, it's um it's it functional medicine is a different world and and you know, for the benefit of all, I think, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_01 22:17

Couldn't agree more, and I just hope that the world starts seeing it that way. We're gonna have to do another side, another episode on the side of owning a business, doing all this and that side. I think it'd be really interesting for a lot of people to hear. But thank you for coming on. Thank you guys for this listening to this week's episode of the Anthony Damon Show. Please don't forget, like, subscribe, share, comment if you want to have her back and what questions you would have. Love to do more of these. Thank you so much. Until next time.

SPEAKER_00 22:37

Thanks for having me.

unknown 22:38

Bye.