Affiliate Partner, Thentic Nutrition https://thenticnutrition.com/
Alessi Functional Health Tampa https://alessifunctionalhealth.com/
(0:00) Welcome & Introduction to Root Cause Revolution (2:12) Why Root Cause Medicine Matters (3:15) The Problem with Symptom-Focused Care (6:15) Functional Medicine's Approach to Common Conditions (10:17) The Interconnectedness of Body Systems and Patient Stories (12:18) Advocacy and Change in Healthcare (16:05) Action Items for Better Health (16:52) Sponsor: Fentik Nutrition (18:19) Episode Summary and Next Episode Preview (19:24) Closing Remarks00:00:00
The problem with, symptom focused care is that it's not patient focused.
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The doctor is often not even focusing on the person in front of them.
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They're looking at a panel of blood work.
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They're looking at whatever paperwork they got, and and they're making a diagnosis, and they're
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prescribing something before they even hear the whole story.
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Welcome to Health Decode, your number one source for real health information with your
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host, doctor Alessi and Matt Tack.
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Alright.
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Welcome back to episode 2 of the Health Decoded podcast.
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I'm your host, doctor Alfred Alessi.
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Mine is my co host, Matt Tack today.
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I'm just running a solo show, and what we're gonna talk about today is what we like to call
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the root cause revolution and why Band Aid fixes do not work in health care and in
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optimally getting you better.
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Right?
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If we wanna focus on symptom based care, then band aid fixes are what we do.
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If we want to talk about health, longevity, and ultimately getting people out of pain and out
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of disease, they don't work.
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And this is why we need to get to the root cause.
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Now before we get into that, I just wanna thank you for joining us.
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I wanna recap kind of what we talked about last week.
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We talked about our mission and why we're doing this podcast, why we called it Health Decoded.
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And the whole goal here is to sift through the nonsense, to sift through the noise that is so
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prevalent in today's society.
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There's a million people shouting things at you, telling you things, telling you this,
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telling you that.
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And we wanna just present facts.
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We wanna present ideas that are based on science, based on antidote, and ultimately will
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work for you.
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That being said, everybody's biodiversity is different.
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Everybody has different things that help them, different things that, will work for them long
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term.
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However, there are very structurally sound methods and protocols that are based on science
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that can help people.
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And so our whole goal here is to sift through that, provide you with high level content and
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action items that you can take today to get closer to a state of health and well-being.
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And so if you didn't hear our first episode, go back and listen to episode 1.
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You'll meet myself and Matt, and you'll be able to hear about what we're doing and all the cool
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things we have going on within our clinics and just on the show in general.
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Please go to Alessi functionalhealth.com.
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Sign up for our newsletter.
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That's how you're gonna stay in the know with the show and know when every episode's coming
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out every Tuesday and what we talked about, and you'll get a little insight as to what's going
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on.
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As always, if you find value, please share this with someone.
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Subscribe to the channel so you don't miss anything, and give us feedback.
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We love reviews.
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We love honest feedback so that we can know how we can best serve you.
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We also want to hear from you.
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We want this to be a patient and, driven by you.
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So a patient driven podcast where you tell us what you need.
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You ask us questions.
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You can send them to ask at Alessi f x health dot com, and we'll answer those questions live
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on the show for you to hear.
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Now why does root cause medicine matter?
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And so let's get into the nuts and bolts here.
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And the truth is that chronic conditions in this country are on the rise.
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In fact, about 90% of health care costs are driven by chronic disease.
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That is a staggering number and something that can be drastically reduced through preventative
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medicine, through focusing on lifestyle, focusing on the things that are making us sick
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and not just giving out medications willy nilly for something that can be treated or modified
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through lifestyle intervention.
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And so the concept of root cause medicine is really about the specifics.
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And, you know, so the the the problem with, symptom symptom focused care is that it's not
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patient focused.
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The doctor is often not even focusing on the person in front of them.
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They're looking at a panel of blood work.
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They're looking at whatever paperwork they got, and they're making a diagnosis, and they're
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prescribing something before they even hear the whole story.
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They rarely ask what you're eating.
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They rarely ask what you're doing for physical activity.
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They rarely ask how much sleep you're getting.
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They rarely ask how stressed are you?
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What does your life look like?
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Do you have 5 kids that are crazy toddlers at home and trying to balance 2 jobs and this and
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that?
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They don't ask that kind of stuff.
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Now I'm not putting a blanket over every single conventional western medicine doctor because
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there are some really good doctors.
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I'm just saying that this is not the standard, and this is not what we're seeing.
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And so the concept is that it is highly symptom focused and not patient focused.
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And so with a stat, like, 90% of health care costs being driven by chronic disease, we need
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to do better as a country and as a whole.
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And so what is the band aid approach?
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It's basically what I just said.
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They focus on what are your symptoms and what can I prescribe a medication for?
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So if you have headaches, what's the best medicine for that?
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There's basically an algorithm that is taught to doctors that they can take your symptom,
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plug it into a database, use some of the knowledge they have from school, and say, x y z
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medicine will help you.
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What they fail to realize is that there are side effects from these medications that then
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cause other things.
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And then what is the symptom for that?
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And what is the medication for that?
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And this is where people get stuck in the rabbit hole of western medicine because it's
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not specific enough to a person.
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Everybody is bio unique.
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Everybody is bio individual is a better way to say it.
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And focusing and taking the time with each patient is now a lost art.
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And so it's very, very common that I see patients in my clinic who have been through the
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western medicine rabbit hole.
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They've been through the weeds of it all.
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5, 6, 7 different doctors appointments just to come out with hardly any answers and zero
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solutions or at least zero solutions for long term care.
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It's basically short term things that doctors then are just saying, here, go ahead and take
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this, and we'll see you in a few months to see if it works.
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What we focus on in our clinics is getting to the root cause.
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And so for the example of something like high blood pressure, high blood pressure is a
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symptom or a sign of something else.
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It is not the problem.
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The high blood pressure is coming from something else.
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Do you have chronic stress?
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Do you have adrenal fatigue or insufficiency?
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Are there things going on with the way that your body's fluid dynamics operate with inside?
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Are you dehydrated?
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Right?
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Those are root causes that if addressed can reverse high blood pressure.
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Things like chronic pain.
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Chronic pain is often a diagnosis I hear.
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Oh, the doc said I have chronic pain.
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The doctor just gave you a diagnosis of what you told them.
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You told him you were in pain for the last 5 years.
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He said you have chronic pain.
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That's not an answer, in my opinion.
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That is him repeating back to you.
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So chronic pain is a sign or a symptom.
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Now how do we find out what is the root cause of that?
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Is there high inflammation within the body?
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Is there something like rheumatoid arthritis attacking the joints due to an autoimmune
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condition?
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Maybe caused by some type of gut dysbiosis or hyperintestinal permeability.
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These are things that we call root cause problems.
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If your gut is hyper permeable and it is letting an adjusted proteins into the
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bloodstream, the body can confuse these for proteins that make up the joints or proteins
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that make up your thyroid.
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And the body can start to attack itself, and this is called autoimmunity.
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The autoimmune condition is not the root cause.
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Do you get what I'm saying?
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I hope this is making sense.
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And so some of the consequences that we we see when we ignore root causes and we focus on
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symptoms is honestly to hit these hidden costs that the condition tends to get worse over
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time.
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People tend to get dependent on medications because the body is smart and the body starts
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to realize, okay.
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This works a little bit, but I need more now to get the same effect.
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I need more now to get the same effect.
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And so over time, we need to increase doses.
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We need to try different medications.
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We need to balance the side effects of one medication with another.
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And all of this can lead to a reduced quality of life and longevity.
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And so how does functional medicine take a different approach?
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Well, exactly the way I just said.
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We focus on identifying and addressing the root cause of these issues.
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Now even something like inflammation, which is a buzzword thrown around, even inflammation is
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not a root cause.
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It can be a cause, but inflammation is being caused by something.
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Right?
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There is some type of dysfunction within the body that is causing chronic inflammation.
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And we're gonna get to this in our next episode about decoding inflammation and what
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inflammation is.
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Really, inflammation is your body's response to something, an infection, an injury.
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It's a good thing, and we should have it.
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That's how we're alive.
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That's how we've lasted this long as a society and as a as a race and a species.
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However, chronic inflammation is not normal and is something that must be addressed.
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And so what could be a root cause of something like chronic inflammation?
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It could be toxicity, an overload of toxins in the body.
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It could be a dysbiotic gut that we have too much bad bacteria, not enough good bacteria
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causing an imbalance.
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It could be something like spinal misalignment on nerves that is leading to dysfunction of the
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nervous system and the communication between those nerves.
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And so it's really important that we focus on the interconnectedness of our body.
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How one issue can cascade into another because we're not just a heart connected to a liver,
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connected to a gut, connected to a muscle system.
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We are a whole person.
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Right?
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And so if you're looking at the whole person, you need to focus on the entire person
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themself.
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And that's what functional medicine does.
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A really good example of this is a patient that I saw in my office, and she would be cool with
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me telling this story, so I'm gonna tell it.
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I won't use her name.
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But she had been to multiple gastric doctors, gastrointestinal doctors, even
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endocrinologists.
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She was fed up.
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She she wasn't getting any relief, any results, And they basically said, well, we think you
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have high stomach acid.
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Here's this.
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And they gave her some proton pump inhibitors, which made her feel worse.
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They said, oh, well, if you feel worse, that's just that's just how it is.
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She came into my office, referred to me from a friend of mine who's a chiropractor because
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we've helped tons of people with gut gut issues, these kind of problems.
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It turned out she didn't have high stomach acid.
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She had low stomach acid due to an imbalance of bacteria in her small intestine.
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All it took was us to run a stool test to see what the balance of her bacteria looked like.
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Very simple, noninvasive test.
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Collect a sample of stool, send it to the lab, they give you the results.
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Very specific test, actually.
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However, none of the other doctors in the conventional medicine thought to do that
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because it lies outside of the normal protocol that they have.
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They are also very much run by the insurance company and what they can do.
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And And so if the insurance company doesn't cover it, they don't do it.
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And so I think that's a massive piece real quick to tangent is that when you wanna get
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better, when you want to improve your health, heal disease, you need to be your own advocate.
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And the insurance company is not gonna do it for you.
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Even the doctors aren't gonna do it for you.
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I cannot care more about your health than you do.
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And so on our show and in our clinics, we are proponents of your health is your
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responsibility.
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We're here to guide you.
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You're the hero in the journey.
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We are the guide.
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Right?
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We give you the information.
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We teach you what you can do.
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Ultimately, you have to do it.
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We can't go home and eat healthy for you.
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We can't go home and exercise for you.
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And so when you can start to make that shift in your life, you will see night and day change in
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the way that you operate and in your health.
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And so back to the story, we helped this patient to balance her gut, to remove and detox
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the bad, to reinoculate with probiotics and healthy gut bacteria.
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And then we taught her what foods to avoid and what foods to use.
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And basically using food as medicine in this situation.
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4 months later, she went through this entire protocol, symptom free.
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She's back to eating things that she wasn't able to eat before, and she's doing amazing.
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And she shouts from the rooftops to all her friends what we did for her because we took the
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time to sit with her.
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I spent an hour with her on her first visit.
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Got to know her.
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Got to know what was going on.
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The frustrations in her story, and I really dug into it.
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And so I highly recommend if you're frustrated, you find a doctor like that.
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You find a doctor who's gonna get on the same page as you and be on your level.
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And if you wanna reach out to us, please do.
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This is what we love to do.
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And we are not a clinic who wants to keep patients on long term.
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We want to get you back to health, empower you to take your health into your own hands.
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And then, like, the mother bird sets you free and let you ultimately determine your future.
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And then if you need us again, we're here to help.
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So please go to Alessi functional health dot com.
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And if you need, please book a consultation.
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Happy to get on the phone with you.
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Happy to have you come in and just hear how we can best serve you.
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And so, ultimately, we also need to start to radicalize a change in traditional health care.
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Start thinking of things differently.
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Not what can my insurance cover, but what is out there.
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Because so many people are limited by what their insurance will cover for them that they
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don't even think outside of the box, And they they hold themselves back from ultimately
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getting to a state of health.
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And so I wanna be here to tell you that it doesn't have to be that way.
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We can really make a shift together if we start to promote these kind of topics, talk about
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this stuff, and ultimately educate.
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And that's what we are here to do.
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And so please go to Alessi functionalhealth.com.
00:15:09
Sign up for our newsletter.
00:15:11
We release a newsletter every week and often twice a week to keep you updated, keep you
00:15:16
informed, keep you in the loop on what we're doing here in the clinics.
00:15:21
And just in general on the podcast, please subscribe to the show.
00:15:24
If you found any value and stay tuned.
00:15:27
We are gonna be having some really cool guests coming on the show soon.
00:15:31
We're gonna be relaunching some older episodes that we've shot that had some really great
00:15:36
content to kind of reinoculate you with with what we talked about.
00:15:41
And we want to include you in this mission.
00:15:44
We want you to be an active participant in what we're doing.
00:15:47
So, please, I encourage you to send your questions to ask at Alesi fxhealth.com, and we
00:15:55
will answer them live on the show.
00:15:57
If you don't want us to shout out your name, that's fine.
00:15:59
We'll keep it anonymous, but you will be able to listen and hear your health questions
00:16:03
answered.
00:16:05
And so what can we do today?
00:16:07
Right?
00:16:07
We talk about action items and what we can do to make a step in the right direction.
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Well, today, you can start thinking of yourself as a whole, and you can stop thinking of your
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symptoms.
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And what you can do is also take a step in the right direction by seeking guidance, seeking
00:16:26
help.
00:16:27
If you have something that's been plaguing you or holding you back, you've been to doctors,
00:16:33
you've been through the gamut of Google and searched and searched and haven't found any
00:16:38
answers.
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Look into functional medicine.
00:16:41
Find a doctor that you align with.
00:16:43
Find a doctor who will listen to you.
00:16:46
And, ultimately, a doctor who's gonna give you the tools to make this change for yourself.
00:16:52
And so, again, if we can help, we would love to.
00:16:55
Lesseefunctionalhealth.com.
00:16:58
I want to also quickly talk about some of our partnerships.
00:17:02
1 in particular, a sports nutrition company, Fentik Nutrition.
00:17:08
Fentik Nutrition is our flagship sponsor right now, and we have an affiliate code with them.
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The reason we partnered with them is they have the same mission as us to empower and to
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educate.
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They are family people.
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They are dedicated to their clients, and they always do the right thing.
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Please go try them out if you like using sports nutrition for fueling your workouts or your
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Now just in summary, we talked about why it's important to move beyond Band Aid fixes and
00:18:15
look at the root cause because this is how you can set yourself up for success.
00:18:19
You can take these things and educate your family.
00:18:22
And so I want to encourage you now to take small steps.
00:18:26
Start tracking your symptoms.
00:18:28
Get a journal.
00:18:29
Start tracking your foods in correlation to these symptoms.
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Every time you eat x, you get y symptom.
00:18:36
Or every time you eat this, you get that.
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Every time you get shorter amount of sleep, you feel this.
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Every time you get stressed out or anxious, you feel this.
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Start writing these things down and look for trends.
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Look for where you may be having these problems that you're unable to identify before but now
00:18:58
can make a correlation to.
00:19:00
So I wanna thank you for listening.
00:19:02
I want to tell you that our next episode is gonna be a great one.
00:19:06
We're gonna be talking about decoding inflammation and how if you have chronic
00:19:11
inflammation leading to chronic pain, leading to any kind of host of diseases, listen up
00:19:17
because that episode is gonna be chocked full of information.
00:19:21
I wanna thank you for being part of our community.
00:19:24
Again, if you want more information, sign up for our newsletter and stay tuned.
00:19:30
As always, I'm doctor Alessi.
00:19:33
Stay curious, stay empowered, and remember your health is in your hands.
00:19:39
Thank you for tuning in to Health Decoded, where we break down the truth about all things
00:19:43
health and empower you to take charge of your well-being.
00:19:47
If you found value in today's episode, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with
00:19:52
someone who needs to hear this.
00:19:54
For more resources and personalized support, visit us atalesifunctionalhealth.com, and sign
00:20:00
up for our newsletter.
00:20:02
To hear your questions answered live on the show, send them to ask atalesifxhealth.com.
00:20:07
That's ask atalesifxhealth dotcom.
00:20:13
Until next time.
00:20:14
Stay curious, stay empowered, and remember, your health is in your hands.