A Functional Medicine Guide To Longevity And Health Span

Aging is universal — but how we age is anything but. In this powerful episode of Wellness Connection MD, Dr. Jim McMinn and Coach Lindsay Mathews welcome Dr. Jerry Kitchens to explore a functional medicine approach to longevity and healthspan.

Dr. Kitchens, a Birmingham native and former general surgeon, practiced for 23 years before osteoarthritis in his hands led to early retirement. That turning point — combined with his father’s diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment progressing to Alzheimer’s — ignited a new professional passion. After completing rigorous Institute for Functional Medicine (IFM) training, he launched Homewood Health and Wellness and now serves as Medical Director of Birmingham Longevity Clinic.

Together, the team dives deep into the difference between lifespan and healthspan, chronological age versus biological age, and whether aging should be viewed as a disease process or a natural part of life. The discussion explores the foundational pillars of healthy aging — including nutrition, exercise, sleep, muscle mass, inflammation control, insulin sensitivity, mitochondrial health, gut health, toxin reduction, hormone optimization, and emotional well-being.

They also tackle:

• The “5 Horsemen of Disease” and how to prevent or manage them
• The critical role of muscle mass in predicting longevity
• How the microbiome influences aging
• The impact of inflammation and insulin resistance
• Functional lab testing: optimal vs. normal ranges
• Key biomarkers to track annually
• The role of genetics and epigenetics
• Loneliness, purpose, and social connection as determinants of healthspan
• Practical, actionable steps listeners can begin tomorrow

This episode moves beyond simply living longer — and focuses on living stronger, sharper, and more engaged for as many years as possible.

If you’re interested in extending not just your lifespan but your healthspan, this conversation is packed with evidence-based, practical insights you won’t want to miss.

Chapters

• 0:02 Framing Longevity And Health Span
• 1:45 Meet Dr. Jerry Kitchens
• 6:36 Functional Medicine And Key Definitions
• 10:37 Pillars: Sleep, Diet, Movement, Purpose
• 15:50 Personalization, Wearables, And Feedback Loops
• 20:31 Muscle Mass, Frailty, And Starter Exercise Plans
• 28:10 Coaching, Adherence, And Building Momentum
• 31:55 Cholesterol, Inflammation, And Cardiac Risk
• 38:18 Cancer Screening And Colonoscopy Strategy
• 42:03 Cognitive Decline, Ketosis, And Bredesen Protocol
• 49:20 Toxins, Mold, Heavy Metals, And Detox Tactics
• 56:20 Gut Health, Microbiome, And Fermented Foods
• 1:00:56 Optimal vs Normal Labs And Vitamin D
• 1:06:35 Exam, Gait, Body Comp, And Imaging
• 1:09:40 Biological Age Metrics And PhenoAge
• 1:11:29 Patient Journey And Precision Care Workflow
• 1:16:35 Hormone Optimization For Healthy Aging
• 1:21:16 Core Supplements For Health Span
• 1:24:19 Loneliness, Purpose, And Community Medicine
• 1:30:06 System Gaps And Changing The Model
• 1:34:56 Barriers, Myths, And Starting Simple

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:02

Welcome to the Wellness Connection MD Podcast. Two people can be the exact same chronologic age, but yet live very different biological realities. One is living a vibrant life physically, mentally, spiritually, and emotionally, while the other is struggling to get up out of a chair in a nursing home. Aging is not simply genetics or luck. It is the accumulation of lifestyle choices, habits, exposures, environments, social connections, and even attitude towards life that either builds resilience or accelerates decline. Today on Wellness Connection MD, we take a deep dive into a functional medicine approach to longevity and improving health span with Dr. Jerry Kitchens. Together we unpack the pillars of staying strong, sharp, vibrant, and engaged for as many years as possible. It's never too late to get started with the Health Span Optimization Program, so let's get going.

SPEAKER_00 0:50

Welcome to the Wellness Connection MD Podcast with Dr. McMinn and Coach Lindsay, where we bring you the latest up-to-date evidence-based information on a wide variety of health and wellness topics, along with practical take-home solutions. Dr. McMinn is an interactive functional MD. And Lindsay Matthews is a registered nurse and IIN Certified Health Coach. Together, our goal is to help you optimize your health and wellness in mind, body, and spirit. To see a list of all of our podcasts at MD.com. To stay up to date on the latest topics, be sure to subscribe to our podcast on your favorite podcast player so that you'll be notified when future episodes come out. The discussions continue these podcasts for educational purposes only. Diagnose or treatment disease. Not apply any of this information without approval from your personal doctor. And now, on to the show with Dr. McMinn and Coach Lindsay.

SPEAKER_03 1:59

Thank you so much for joining us today. I'm Dr. Jim McMinn. I'm here with the Coach Lindsay Matthews.

SPEAKER_05 2:04

Good to be back, Dr. Mack. Together we bring you the evidence-based podcast with honest, commercial-free, unbiased, up-to-date information about functional, integrative, lifestyle, and wellness medicine.

SPEAKER_03 2:17

Our goal is to empower you with practical solutions to overcome your health care challenges and to become a great captain of your ship when it comes to your health. Today we are thrilled to bring you my friend and colleague, Dr. Jerry Kitchens, to discuss a very important and interesting topic, and that is a functional medicine approach to longevity. Before we get going with our discussion, let me tell you just a bit about Dr. Kitchens.

SPEAKER_05 2:40

Dr. Kitchens was born and raised right here in Birmingham, Alabama. He graduated from the University of Alabama School of Medicine in 1987 and then completed his general surgery training at the University of Louisville. He practiced in Birmingham for 23 years. However, unfortunately, osteoarthritis in his hands forced an early retirement in 2015.

SPEAKER_03 3:04

But Jerry's not the kind of guy who sits still. He assumed an administrative role for St. Vincent's Hospital here in Birmingham and continues to this day in that role.

SPEAKER_05 3:12

Coinciding with his retirement from practice was his dad's diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment, which then progressed to Alzheimer's disease. He read The End of Alzheimer's by Dr. Dale Bredizen, which opened his eyes to the power of functional medicine.

unknown 3:29

Dr.

SPEAKER_03 3:29

Kitchens then went through the rigorous IFM, which is Institute of Functional Medicine training course. And with that under his belt, he opened a functional medicine practice here called Home Wood Health and Wellness. And most recently he was hired as a medical director for Birmingham Longevity Clinic LLC.

SPEAKER_05 3:45

Wow, that is an impressive bio. And Dr. Kitchens, you certainly have your hands full since you retired from your active hospital practice. Uh it makes me tired just hearing all of that. So as you can see, you're a lifelong learner, listeners, Dr. Kitchens.

SPEAKER_03 4:00

And just like Coach Lindsay and me, uh Jerry is passionate about uh the potential for functional medicine to improve and extend health and longevity.

SPEAKER_05 4:07

Aging is universal, but the experience of aging is widely variable. Two people can have the same chronological age, yet live in completely different biological realities. One is out hiking the mountains at 75, the other is struggling just to get out of the chair. I think that it's safe to say that most of us would rather be the hiker in that scenario. But the important point is that the difference isn't just luck or genetics, although to be fair, those do play a role. It's the accumulation of choices, environments, and habits that either accelerate the aging process or build resilience.

SPEAKER_03 4:48

And for decades, modern medicine has been extending lifespan for keeping us alive longer, but our healthcare system is not nearly as good as extending health span, the years we actually feel strong, capable, and engaged with life. Longevity isn't just about living to 100, it's about making the years you do have deeply worth living.

SPEAKER_05 5:06

And functional medicine brings a different lens to this conversation. Instead of asking how do we treat disease once it appears, it asks how do we create the conditions for optimal health so that we can prevent disease from starting in the first place. So we address the why by doing so and d delay that decline. So we have this classical functional medicine root cause thinking applied to the aging process.

SPEAKER_03 5:32

So today we're going to take a deep dive with Dr. Kitchens into what truly drives aging and what are the pillars of a functional medicine-based program to optimize health span. And so without further ado, welcome Dr. Kitchens to the Wellness Connection MD podcast.

SPEAKER_01 5:49

I appreciate being on the show with y'all.

SPEAKER_03 5:51

It's great to have Jerry. Uh so uh so let's start with a few definitions to make sure that everyone's on the same page with some of the terms that we're going to be using. We did a whole podcast about functional medicine that folks might want to check out, uh, but we'd love to hear your definition of functional medicine.

SPEAKER_01 6:06

Well, mine's probably Jeff Bland's definition. He started the Institute of Functional Medicine. It's just a system-based, uh patient-centered approach. You identify the underlying causes of chronic diseases and treat those underlying causes as opposed to waiting till they're uh manifest themselves and treating them with a big pharma solution.

SPEAKER_05 6:24

Love that.

SPEAKER_01 6:25

Thank you.

Functional Medicine And Key Definitions

SPEAKER_05 6:26

Very opposite of what we experience mainstream medicine. It is. Um let's also talk about the difference um between lifespan versus health span.

SPEAKER_01 6:37

Absolutely. Um so I like to say lifespan are the number of candles on your birthday cake. You know, it's how many years you've been here. Uh and those can be quality years or not quality years. And unfortunately for most of us in America, the last 12 to 15 years of our lives are probably not going to be quality-filled. Uh health span is actually when you still have your energy, your vigor, hopefully avoid all these uh chronic conditions that lead to our slow demise, and specifically avoiding metabolic syndrome. Um and mostly due to clean living, you know, eating the right foods and being active. And and I know we'll get into that in this podcast.

SPEAKER_03 7:13

But yeah, before we move on, Jerry, I I I think we've talked about metabolic syndrome many times on the podcast, but just give us a just a brief definition of that. Some people may not know what that is. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 7:22

Okay. So that would be uh the confluence of symptoms that come from uh mostly associated with visceral fat, would be things like hypertension, type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol, inflammatory conditions that are fed by the visceral fat and things of that nature. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_03 7:38

Okay, last on our definition list, uh, tell us the difference between biological aging and chronological aging.

SPEAKER_01 7:44

Okay. So chronological aging is your number. So like I'm about to turn 64, but I feel like I'm 48. Yeah. But my pheno age would say I'm in my mid-50s, which is not bad. So uh that would be your biological age. That's how old are your cells acting? You know, how much oxidative damage have you had? Uh how how robust is your DNA? Are things still working well? So that would be your biological age. Well, great, great.

SPEAKER_05 8:12

And do you think that aging is like a disease process or just a natural part of life?

SPEAKER_01 8:19

I think aging is well, it's a combination. I think you age faster with diseases in place. Uh but we all age and we're not immortal, at least not here. We all have a defined lifespan. And so the unwinding of your your energetics and everything else happens over time, no matter how healthy you are. I have a great aunt who uh recently died and uh at her right after her 106th birthday. Wow. So I mean she lived a long life, but you know, eventually you we all are are gonna reach the end of our life. But yes, you can accelerate your aging by uh living a poor lifestyle. And we see that all the time.

SPEAKER_03 9:00

There's an interesting movie out a couple years ago. Gosh, I'm blanking on the name of it. Morgan Spurlo Spurlock. Morgan Spurlock did this really interesting movie about uh his theory that uh someday we're gonna crack the aging code scientifically and uh people can then live forever. I think the title might have been How Long Would You Live If You Could Live Forever? And uh it was kind of fascinating. I think he's building a case for it. There are are are lots of folks, I think uh Kurzweil, if I recall, is really into that uh that project. And uh so it it it's interesting. We'll have to see where that goes, but that's gonna create a whole conundrum of new issues if nobody's dying, you know, keep up keep keep being born and nobody dies, right? Uh uh that that's gonna be interesting. But anyway, so let's uh focus today on health span. And so what would you say are the important pillars of a long healthy health span?

SPEAKER_01 9:45

Well, they'll be very similar to the the pillars you've taught me in your mentorship. You know, sleep, exercise, a good diet, social connections, purpose. We all need a purpose. A lot of which can be spiritual in nature, you know, your spirituality, your community, your family. And then I would add uh you know, oral hygiene, avoiding to toxins like tobacco and overconsumption of alcohol. Although, you know, if you look at the blue zones, four out of five of the blue zones, they consume some form of alcohol. You know, I'm excluding the seven-day adventus and lumalinda, but if the rest of them have some fermented drink that they drink.

Pillars: Sleep, Diet, Movement, Purpose

SPEAKER_03 10:25

Yeah, i i it's hard to really wrap your head around that one, isn't it, Jerry? That's that's it's one of those things in medicine that says like eggs, it's good for you, bad for you, good for you, bad for you. You know, I remember my my great-grandfather uh lived 104 and he had a hot toddy every actually twice a day, uh m morning and supper. Uh old MacDaniel's moonshine whiskey in fact. There you go. So So yeah, anyway, but um yeah, actually I I I did a uh a little graphic on similar to that issue a few years ago. It's called The Four Fundamental Causes of All Diseases. And it's kind of interesting. You can find that on my website at McMinnMD.com under uh causes of diseases. So you might want to take a look at that.

SPEAKER_05 11:03

Aaron Powell So all those pillars are of course important, but do you feel like as you've practiced that you find more of a prioritization or some that some that are more important than others?

SPEAKER_01 11:15

Yes, I have. I mean I've seen some patterns, but yes, also what's interesting about functional medicine is it's precision medicine because we're all different. We're all carrying different baggage in life. Found that sleep's always a big issue, getting people's sleep right. And and I think that intertwines with stress, and Alyssos is two separate pillars, but but bad sleep can be stressful, and then stressful leads to bad sleep, and the next thing you know, you're in a cycle of just spiraling, worsening health. And then diet and our our modern American diet and the amount of inflammation we generate in our bodies. And speaking personally, as a as a doctor who had to retire from surgery because of bad arthritis in his hands, if I if I'm a strict follower of a Mediterranean diet, I my hands feel great. But I mean I go eat one of my wife's wonderful cookies and she's an incredible baker, and the next day I'll pay for it. I can feel the inflammation in my joints.

SPEAKER_03 12:12

Right. So these pillars, uh, do they affect one another? Are they like separate silos or do they affect one another? For example, you talked about sleep. Uh, does improving sleep uh or gut health make um or inflammation markers improve?

SPEAKER_01 12:24

Absolutely. I think it's all interrelated. So that stress sleep interaction also interacts with, you know, alcohol as a toxin. And and just to pr pr present my personal experience today, went out to dinner with a friend of mine, a psychiatrist buddy of mine and his wife, and had a nice Italian dinner and had a glass of wine, which I've been trying to avoid alcohol. My oral ring tells me when I've had some alcohol because my heart rate goes up. And uh so I thought I had a good night's sleep last night, you know, in general, but my heart rate was up for most of the evening, and it was probably that glass of red wine. You know, so so what you consume, your diet affects your your heart rate affects your sleep. So everything's interrelated. I think that all the all the components that we that we address in functional medicine are interrelated. And I think the gut's probably the most important.

SPEAKER_03 13:16

Aaron Powell You know, when I was younger, Jerry, I used to think I could kind of cheat sleep. If I got less sleep, I could be more productive. And uh I know a couple people who thought the same thing, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, but they both died of Alzheimer's. So maybe there's a connection there, you know. So uh but I used to tell my patients, no, you cannot be healthy if you're not getting good sleep. Uh yeah, yeah, for sure. All right.

SPEAKER_05 13:36

I've been fascinated with what I found with my aura ring. And to your point, I think you see different things affect people differently. And I know for me, one of the biggest things I've seen is just eating later at night. My heart rate vulnerability tanks. But that doesn't affect my husband in the same way. It it is negative for him. But so just to your point, everyone's uniquely made up, and that's where a personalized functional medicine plan, where that where you're able to work with your doctor and find out like how do we leverage these pillars? What are the most important ones for that patient sitting in front of you at that time? Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_03 14:12

Absolutely. Also, yeah, I love that comment about personalized and your uh comment, Jerry, about precision medicine. And I think we should do a podcast on that sometime. I think you should. We're all so unique and different, and what works for one doesn't work for another. Uh so uh you know sometimes when I come up with a uh kind of protocol, I ha I have a list of therapeutic options. But uh the reason I list them all is because you find option A works well for this patient, but option C works well for the other patients. So you never know. You have to kind of list them all. But but yeah, I think that uh that's that's the beauty of uh somebody seeing a good functional medicine doctor like you, because you can help them sort out which of the options might work better for them. But it's all about precision medicine. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 14:48

Exactly. And and we might not be right out of the chute, but we're gonna get to the correct solution. If if if if trial A doesn't work, we've got trial B, C and D, like you said, multiple alternatives to plug and play and and upregulate, down regulate egg epigenes and enzymatic processes and and try to get you in the in the proper order so that you function to the best of your ability.

SPEAKER_05 15:11

You know, it seems like there's been a lot of chatter recently about the role of muscle mass as a predictor when it comes to health span and lifespan. Can you talk some more to us about that?

Personalization, Wearables, And Feedback Loops

SPEAKER_01 15:22

Absolutely. Well, you know, I think the data is pretty clear that at least by age 40, we're starting to decline as far as our lean muscle mass. And some of that's hormonally related, and some of it's just uh decline in bioenergetics or whatever. But there's another interesting one where this interrelated because bioenergetics decline, but then muscle mass feeds bioenergetics. So which came first, the chicken or the egg? You know, keep maintain your muscle mass is really important to drive your basal metabolic rate and help you burn calories so you don't become obese. But it's also very important to keep you stable and keep you from falling and prevents frailty and and and all those important things. So yeah, I think muscle mass is very important, and we're we're gonna target that extensively in our longevity clinic because I think you can't stay healthy if you can't stand up. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_03 16:10

Well, and there's a direct link between muscle mass and dementia. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 16:14

Correct.

SPEAKER_03 16:14

Right.

SPEAKER_01 16:15

Interesting.

SPEAKER_03 16:15

So so what would be your recipe for a good exercise program for the average person? Once again, I know it's all individualized, but for the for the average Joe who comes in to see you.

SPEAKER_01 16:23

Okay, well so I'll so I'll I'll start with my average functional medicine practice patient who most of them would show up with some uh visceral adiposity, obviously they had some visceral fat, probably not very active in eating ultra-processed foods and everything wrong. I mean, it's simple steps to begin with. And I'd I'd encourage them to just start off with look, we're not gonna push you real hard, but why don't you walk 10 minutes after each meal? And that's 30 minutes of exercise a day if you eat three meals. Now if you eat 10, that's a hundred minutes.

SPEAKER_03 16:52

But Yeah, because you remember uh uh Rachel when she was on the show, uh dietitian nutritionist love Rachel, she talked about that, about the importance of getting a little bit of exercise just to walk after a big meal. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:03

And you feel better too. You feel less full. If you walk 10 minutes after you eat, you just feel better. Yeah. And that that starts creating the the drive to want to exercise. And and I I know we had talked before about some of the topics we were going to dis discuss, but one of the hard parts about that is overcoming the inertia. You know, inertia is just the state stays in its state. It's a m moving state stays moving and a s and a stationary state stays stationary. So m going from stationary to an active life, if you're if historically you've been stationary for decades, is a really big ask and a and and it requires coaching and encouragement. And you have to give them small achievements so that they can hit their milestones and feel like they're doing something instead of throwing them a plate of really heavy workouts that they're not gonna be able to do and they're gonna get discouraged and then they quit. And I would rather them start simple, not at the ideal level I want them at, but start simple so they buy in and accept the process and understand the value for their health. And and I I know w all three of us are have bought in, but you you feel better. And then once you feel better, you want to keep doing what made you feel better.

SPEAKER_03 18:18

But you know, that's the beauty of uh when I had Coach Lindsay in the practice, uh she would sort of figuratively wrap her arms around the patient and say, I'm gonna take care of you, and uh we're we're gonna get you on track and we're not gonna let you go. We're gonna hold your hand through this process, and and uh it was wonderful. And and oh my gosh, uh certainly I I always like to felt like you know, if you have two kids who want to say be a pro basketball player and they they want to learn how to shoot foul shots, and you give one kid a coach and one kid you don't give a coach. The kid with a coach is obviously gonna be better. Absolutely. And so the same thing with a wellness. If you can uh hook up with a good functional medicine doctor like you, Jerry, or especially with a good coach, you're uh a lot more likely, I think, to stick with the program and to be successful. And as you said, eventually they feel so much better. They say, Why didn't I do this earlier? And they uh definitely want to keep going.

SPEAKER_01 19:05

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 19:06

Yeah.

Muscle Mass, Frailty, And Starter Exercise Plans

SPEAKER_01 19:07

And I we come in with our own biases. I was a wrestler in high school and involved in other sports and and always active. And and so you just assume everybody lives that same lifestyle. But I can look at my you know, personally, look at my dad's history, and he was not an exerciser, and he was grew up in that era where everybody smoked, so he smoked a couple packs a day. And unfortunately, later in life, he was he had those signs of frailty where he walked very slowly, he started to have cognitive decline, eventually developed Alzheimer's, all really I think from smoking and not being active. And it it's uh I I don't want to take my preconceived kind of you know experience and and and put that on a patient that has no conception of what exercise really is and how important it is. I just want to kind of lead them in. And then for those that are farther down the road that are active, then then it's things like resistance training. You know, it's not just pure cardiovascular, you gotta have some resistance training to help build muscle mass. And then I'm a believer in creatine. I I take creatine every day. And interestingly, there's some some data that suggests that, you know, the so five grams of creatine is good for muscle mass, but ten in some studies has shown some improvement in cognitive function. So there might be a role of creatine in the brain to help us re repair damage.

SPEAKER_03 20:33

So it would be a combination of say some cardio, some strength training, and some stretching, like a little bit of yoga thrown in, something like that would be that'd be a good thing. Absolutely. Yeah. My wife and I we do yoga together twice a week and really enjoy it. I'm not nearly as good as she is, but uh anyway, Dr. Cheryl, she she she holds me accountable. And so anyway. You know, Jerry, uh y'all were talking about the aura ring. I feel very deprived. I don't have an aura ring. Uh I'm I think I think I'm afraid of what it might tell me. And it reminds me of a patient who came in one one day, he was a new patient. He said, Doctor, I don't need no doctor to tell me to eat more spinach. And so I've kind of like with the aura ring, I think the aura ring is gonna tell me I need to get a better night's sleep or whatever. So but then it's one thing to tell you you need to sleep better, but then another thing, like how to do it, you know. Uh so I don't know, but I I I think maybe I need to get an aura ring to to motivate me or something like that.

SPEAKER_01 21:25

I I think you have to have keen insight into your patients' um mental conditions too. Do they have do they suffer from anxiety? Are they OCD? Because I think wearables are great. They give you instant feedback and you know, even continuous glucose monitoring, and now they can do where it measures ketones also. You can get great feedback. And I've I've talked to people who've changed their entire diet based on watching the sugar spikes on their CGM. I've also seen people with an aura ring get feedback and they're so wrapped up in what the R ring's telling them is wrong that then they sleep worse. And they sleep worse the next night and it just ended up in this spiral where they can't sleep. And in that situation, I tell them, take the thing off and just put it away for a while. But for me, it's been very helpful because I've realized those two or three things I do, which occasionally eat late, that, like you said, affect my sleep, and I try to avoid those because as you had taught me and the functional mescore songs, sleep is very important. Fundamental.

SPEAKER_03 22:27

Yeah, yeah, yeah. My my daughter, Julia, went to Argentina back a few years ago. She's uh in in Buenos Aires. She said that uh they start eating usually around maybe 11 o'clock at night. Wow. And of course they always have red wine and meat with it. So you would think that uh got a whole nation of sick people down there from going to bed too.

SPEAKER_05 22:47

Yeah ideas where you have this community aspect, this spirituality aspect, all those other things that are maybe, you know, covering the multitude of sins.

SPEAKER_03 22:57

I don't recall Argentina being on the blue zone list. No, it's not. Costa Rica is, but but not Argentina. Costa Rica, that's right. That's right.

SPEAKER_04 23:04

Well, for people out there listening, is it ever too late to get started? Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_03 23:09

She's referring to me, Jerry. I'm 74 years old and she's looking at Mike Gray here in bald head melatine and the same thing.

SPEAKER_01 23:15

I'm tailgating you uh down the chronological age track. But no, it's never too late. It's never too late. And you know, every every day is a new beginning. You know, I wake up every morning and thank the Lord I got up out of bed and that I'm blessed to have my family and friends and community, and for people like Dr. McMinn, who have been you know been a great mentor for me. No, but I I would encourage people, if you want to start today, don't rush out and get a gym membership and then go try all the heavyweights and all that. You know, it's very important to move in alignment with what your body's expecting. And I actually work out with a kinesiologist every Wednesday, and I've learned more on that 30-minute time with her than I did a whole life of lifting weights about how to do things properly. And I always wonder why I'd come up lame every so often and have to take six or eight weeks off from working out, and then you know, you have to start over to get back into it. But if you do it properly and you ease into it, moving is uh one of my PT buddies always says, motion is lotion. I mean it it fix a lot of ills just moving. And it can be just a walk around the block.

SPEAKER_03 24:22

Yeah, I always had this thing I said to my patients, you know, fish swim and birds fly, people move, and you stop moving, the game's over. You know, you gotta move. Right. You know, Jerry, you've mentioned a couple times my uh mentorship, and it's been such an honor and privilege to mentor somebody like you who's bright and enthusiastic and and and really has a passion for this. I know when I started, I was uh learning this kind of in a vacuum. And and and even worse than that, I was labeled almost universally in our community as a quack, you know. And it was frustrating, but I kept uh persisting and and thanks to encouragement of people like Lindsay, uh I kept going and we helped a lot of people along the way. So anyway, it's been such an honor and privilege to to mentor you over the years. Well, thank you. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 24:58

It's been my privilege too.

SPEAKER_03 24:59

Uh Jerry, uh I've heard the phrase the four horsemen of disease. Have you heard that?

SPEAKER_01 25:03

Yeah, from Peter Tia's book.

SPEAKER_03 25:05

Yeah, I can't remember where that came from. I want to give proper credit, but uh yeah, good, thank you, Peter Atia. And and but you know, I'm actually going to reframe it as what I call the five horsemen, and these would include heart disease, cancer, diabetes, uh, chronic respiratory diseases, and neurologic diseases like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's ALS, and various neuropathies. So certainly avoiding these horsemen or managing them well would help to increase our health span. So share with us uh some of your high-level uh wisdom as far as a functional medicine approach to these horsemen.

SPEAKER_01 25:34

Absolutely. So I think we'll start with heart disease. And uh I I will say that in Peter Tia's book, he he gave a really low LDL target that he was shooting for in his patients, and um it that I don't agree with. Trevor Burrus, Jr. Yeah, I think it's some brain benefit to some LDL, isn't it? Your brain's cholesterol. And you know, I told my patients, I said if you get rid of the cholesterol, it's like building a house with wiring without insulation. I mean, would you put plain copper wires in your walls and expect your house to stand, it's gonna burn down. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_03 26:06

And if I recall, if you get it too low, there's actually an increased risk of dementia. Is that right? Yeah, yeah. So so yeah, I I I I listen, uh Peter Peter's the man, but having said that, you you uh you and I happen to disagree with him on that one. Correct.

SPEAKER_01 26:19

I do agree with him that it's a very important health issue in our country and it leads to shortened lifespan and health span. You know, if you're in congestive heart failure, you're not gonna be doing much of anything.

SPEAKER_03 26:29

Yeah, just off the top of my head, I would think that managing triglycerides would be also more important than of course A1C.

SPEAKER_01 26:35

Uh yeah, and and and looking at some of the mark yeah, homocysteine, you know, marker's inflammation, and like you said, CRP. Yeah. Yeah, and there's a big argument like w which is the smoke and which is the fire. So is is are is hypercholesterolemia the fire or is hypercholcholesteremia the smoke? And there's some good studies that show that that our our LDLs function to fight inflammation. They package up oxidative species and carry it back to the liver so the liver can detoxify it and excrete it. So it may be that that we're looking at the LDL as as a predictor, but it like you said, triglycerides and we I'll touch on that in a second, you know, that might be a more important predictor. But are we are we trying to reduce the actual process that's helping us fight our inflammation instead of addressing the inflammation and letting the cholesterol reach its normal, you know, equilibrium level for that for that particular person?

Coaching, Adherence, And Building Momentum

SPEAKER_03 27:34

Yeah, I I don't think it's universally accepted, but I've seen some studies that say really C-reactive protein is a better predictor of health and and mortality than cholesterols. And I need to do podcasts on cholesterol. It's so controversial and it's a difficult subject, but uh I I think that uh it's there are certainly some pretty smart people who say that we we really are overthinking the whole cholesterol thing and it's not that big a deal. And and I think there's just so much money in statins and drugs. And and and if you look at these blue-ribbon committees that say what we do should need to be treating, what our goals should be in cholesterol, half the guys on the committee are on the direct payroll of the drug companies. Right. And a lot of times it's not disclosed. I I think medicine has some dirty little secrets that we're hiding about stuff like that. And and and of course, I mean people respond to financial incentives. I I I feel I I mean I feel that with my heart. And and if they are being paid by the drug company, they're going to err on the side of uh maybe shooting for a lower LDL level uh so that we can pump out more statins. And uh so I don't know. It it's really, really hard to find unbiased information about that. Do you agree with that?

SPEAKER_01 28:45

I would agree. And it's interesting, Del Redison in his book End of Alzheimer's, he he touches on cholesterol and and the importance for for cognitive health importance of for cognitive health to have some level of cholesterol. I mean, it's it's in all our mem cell membranes in our body. I mean, it obviously it's an important part of us. And he quoted a study that showed that 75% of patients presenting with a myocardial infarction would have an LDL that falls within therapeutic ranges. But their triglycerides are elevated. And as you taught me, and I've learned in my functional medicine courses, triglyceride is more of a marker of of how you're living your lifestyle. It's uh it's generally a marker of overeating and not exercising as much as you should. And I think it's it may be a a better marker. I don't think it's as as accurate as CRP or homocysteine for for vascular inflammation.

SPEAKER_03 29:36

And and isn't cholesterol the raw material for all of your hormones? All hormones. All hormones. So if you have a super low LDL or low cholesterol, then you're not gonna get the hormone production you need. And hormones we know are are huge for health, right?

SPEAKER_01 29:47

I agree. I would say if you want to have a recipe for uh reducing health span, just deplete your body of cholesterol. You're not gonna have hormones, you're not gonna have insulation on your brain, you're not gonna be able to do anything. And and and the most important membranous structure for maintaining your health span, I would submit, is mitochondria. And there are just lots of membrane material within a mitochondria. And you look at that and you think, well, how how can you maintain healthy mitochondria in the absence of cholesterol? And if you look at the uh muscle biopsy studies on patients that had uh muscle pain after starting a statin, which I did and my dad did, there's mitochondrial depletion, so you're actually damaging the mitochondria.

SPEAKER_03 30:30

Yeah, I think some recent studies say that those uh complaints about muscle weakness are overblown, but you know, it's not what I heard from my patients. I heard a a lot of them had had that. And of course, they also sometimes got the brain fog as well because of that mitochondrial issue. Absolutely. Right, right.

SPEAKER_02 30:44

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 30:44

Okay, well, I interrupted you. You're talking about the the uh the five or four horsemen. Uh go ahead and uh fill us in on the rest.

SPEAKER_01 30:50

Well, and uh the other thing I didn't mention is uric acid is a good test to check too, which you and of course Pearl Mutter wrote that nice book on that.

SPEAKER_03 30:58

Uh what was it called? I forget the name. Drop acid. Thank you. You've read some heavyweights, haven't you? Uh we we we love the Brettison book, uh, the end of Alzheimer's and the drop acid was a good one as well. Yes. Um I started measuring uric acid after that book came out, and uh uh it's it's uh enlightening. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:15

So I'm uh I have f familial hypercholesterolemia. My cholesterol, if I don't take anything, runs in the 300s. And on five of Crestor, which is one of the two that doesn't cross the blood-brain barrier, I run around 200. And and I've had a CTA, courtesy of your neighbor down the street, Dr. Baker, uh and and I had one small insignificant lesion.

SPEAKER_03 31:37

CTA is, by the way, is kind of a scan of the heart. Right.

Cholesterol, Inflammation, And Cardiac Risk

SPEAKER_01 31:40

A CTA angiogram, and it's it's like a three-dimensional image of your coronary arteries. And my calcium score was a little elevated, which he thought it would be because I had been on statins for a while, and he said, Why don't you get a CTA afterwards? And I did, and I'm glad I did, because my calcium score would have said, well, you're at higher risk, and they might have doubled down on my statins, but I have this CTA that shows I'm really low risk.

unknown 32:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 32:01

And let me be clear, uh, there is a time and a place for statins, and and some people do have the, as you talked about, the familial hyperlipidemia, which uh needs to be treated. I mean, these people, if you look if you actually draw their blood and you let the tube stand there, you come back and say half of it's fat, right? Yeah, it looks like my coffee creamer on top. But uh but yeah, uh there's a time and a place for women, and I'm not bashing them. I'm just uh you know, it's just sometimes with all the money involved in drugs and medicines, it's just hard to find an unbiased, honest middle ground truth. Right. So we'll have to ferret that out as best we can someday.

SPEAKER_01 32:36

Trevor Burrus, Jr. Absolutely. So you mentioned cancer. You know, that's toc uh commonly toxin and mutation related, and mutations can be from toxins. So I I would point out that one of the biggest killers of younger people is colon cancer. And uh and it's an entirely preventable disease with colonoscopy. If you remove the polyps, you don't develop a cancer. And uh I think we're seeing um uh this tsunami of young people presenting with colon cancers.

SPEAKER_03 33:06

Is it diet-related, Roger?

SPEAKER_01 33:08

You know, there's a presumption that there's either it's diet or alcohol or you know, alcohol is a toxin, which would be a you know, that's diet also. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_03 33:16

Th they say actually there's a study recently that's showing that uh young people are drinking less than older people, so I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 33:23

I don't know either. I do think they should lower the age for initial screening to at least 40. Yeah. I I will it go ahead and throw my personal experience out there, cause y'all could probably write do a whole podcast on just my health. But but I have no family history for colon cancer whatsoever. And when I was I ran a six-man surgical group for 10 years, and after, you know, it there's a fair amount of egos w in surgeons' heads, and so you put six of them together and it's just a it's it's like herding cats in your head. It is, yeah. So I decided I was gonna go solo and just start my solo practice and just look in the mirror and make decisions myself. And and I knew when I started my practice I was gonna be busy, and that was when I was gonna turn what was I would have turned 50 for my what they recommended my screening colonoscopies. So I called my gastroenterologist and said, Well, look, I I need to go ahead and get my colonoscopy because I'm not gonna have time. And he said, Well, you need symptoms. And I said, Well, just put down them, have bright red blood per rectum.

SPEAKER_02 34:23

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:24

And he did it, and he did a colonoscopy on me, and I had a polyp in my rectum with high grade dysplasia. So if I'd have waited for those two years till my practice kind of got in its swing and finally had time to go have my colonoscopy, I would have had a colon cancer in my rectum. Might have had an abdominal perineal resection with a permanent colostomy, who knows? Yeah. And it just by the grace of God, I've happened to have that done. And so I'm always, you know, I'm I'm always pushing people to have their colonoscopies. Nobody wants to go through the prep or anything, but it's a totally preventable cancer.

SPEAKER_03 34:59

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Well, what do you think about those new color guard uh you know they're that's fine, but then what are you going to do?

SPEAKER_01 35:04

And and and if it doesn't do anything to treat the polyps.

SPEAKER_03 35:09

But if you're if you're fairly low risk, no family history, would that be an alternative? That's what I've been doing. Uh you think I need to insist on that.

SPEAKER_01 35:16

I think everybody should have at least one colonoscopy to say, okay, you're not a polyp former.

SPEAKER_03 35:21

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that's a good thing.

SPEAKER_01 35:22

And once you know you're not a polyp former, then I think coligard's fine. But if you're a polyp former, then you need to be followed and have your polyps removed so you don't develop a cancer. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_03 35:29

Yeah. Okay, very good. And let's see, moving on here. How what about the uh the neurologic stuff, Jerry?

SPEAKER_01 35:33

Trevor Burrus, Well, yeah, I'm starting to get into that. I'm doing the RECO training that uh that Dr. Del Bredison does. Yeah. And it's like drinking from a fire host. There's so much information. And you know, we're really been going through toxins and detoxify detoxification and phase one, phase two, and how do you feed it and up regulate it, downregulate it? And so you know there's another tsunami is cognitive decline. Yeah, for sure. But it's interesting that that that that dementia itself has been more of a disease of industrial civilization than earlier. Now, was is that due to the fact that we live longer now because of the age of antibiotics, and so we've conquered all the diseases that kill people at a young age. They may have something to do with it. Or is it, you know, because of our ultra-processed foods and and living in basically a toxic environment? Because now, you know, every car is a little mini plant pumping out some pollution and and we've got glyphosate and all these, you know, like I mean, glyphosate in and of itself, if you live within 150 fifty yards of a golf course, you've doubled your risk of Parkinson's disease. Just by being that close to them spraying the grass. Yeah, I mean that's scary stuff.

SPEAKER_03 36:47

I thought, whoa. Yeah. Does she does she have any idea what uh what what the risk is? Yeah, and you know, with uh you know climate change, we're getting more forest fires, and they've shown that the the smoke from forest fires also is uh significant as far as uh disease goes. Yeah, particularly.

SPEAKER_01 37:02

Um but yeah, there's some there's some good treatments for for neurodegenerative diseases, and I think it it a lot of it starts with your diet and becoming metabolically flexible and maybe getting into ketosis. And then they had proven years ago with pediatric patients with uh recalcinate seizures that ketosis eliminated the seizures. Uh they've shown they've got some data with autism and ketosis and improvement in in uh cognition. And then Dale Redison's demonstrated recently, I don't know when he's gonna publish his data in a peer-reviewed journal, but he had a early release of the data, and they had astounding results, even with Alzheimer's patients with improvements in cognition. And and he he pushes for time-restricted eating and mild ketosis, not full ketosis, and and reducing sugar. There are people that call Alzheimer's type 3 diabetes, you know, diabetes of the brain. And so I think that keeping your brain metabolically flexible so he can you know feeding it ketones and some sugars to go back and forth between glucose and ketones is good for brain health.

Cancer Screening And Colonoscopy Strategy

SPEAKER_03 38:08

Aaron Ross Powell Yeah. If anybody's interested in this subject, uh then yeah, by all means check out Dale Bredison's book. I like the first one. I think he came up with a second one, the program or whatever the first one's the best one. And and just to kind of summarize very quickly, you know, he he he thinks that there's really never going to be a great drug for Alzheimer's because it's not one particular cause. He has this concept of the 36, a leaky roof with 36 holes. Right. And and uh you know, and you gotta patch all the holes basically in order to have a healthy brain. And so so yeah, it's it's complicated, uh, but as we talked about earlier, it's it's it should be an individualized program because I I remember when I I read the book and when I closed it after I I finished the last page, I thought, oh my gosh, this is just too much stuff. You know, you could spend all your day taking supplements or whatever. And and so I think it has to be tailored and individualized uh and simplified. You know, Dr. Lachen and I, uh right before I retire, we had this thing called the Brain Health Institute here in Birmingham, and uh we saw a lot of Alzheimer's patients. I think at one point we saw more patients than anybody else in the country. Wow. Um uh is early on in the Brettus program. But uh but yeah, well, I think we really changed some lives, and and I'm really proud of the work we did.

SPEAKER_01 39:15

Uh I will state, and and you and I are both would appreciate this, that Del Bredison himself will state that the reason he quit focusing on a pharmaceutical pharmaceutical solution and on lifestyle and in supplements and things of that nature was because his wife's a functional medicine, and she told him one day, yeah, you know why these drugs aren't working. Because it's not one thing. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, there you go.

SPEAKER_03 39:40

Right, right, right. Well, I think uh most of the time it's it's our wives that are really the focus of our success. Exactly. But we usually we'd never give them credit, right, Lindsay? I'll give a shout out to Trisha. There we go, there we go. But yeah, uh so check out uh uh Dr. Budson's book. You know, it's so interesting, Jerry. Gosh, it seems like all my friends die of cancer in heart disease. I think heart disease still statistically is number one, but it seems like cancer, cancer, cancer in my friends. And let's see, I think the other of the horsemen is the chronic respiratory diseases. I think that seems to be getting better, doesn't it, since uh less smoking? You want to think about it. I think so.

SPEAKER_01 40:12

Absolutely. Uh uh I I have not seen a patient in my functional medicine practice that has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or emphysema or anything like that. I think we're still exposed to in inhaled toxins in your degree. I mean, it's just it we live in a toxic world and that's just the way it is. But uh I would say that it's probably less important than, say, inflammation. Yeah, yeah. Inflammation.

SPEAKER_03 40:37

Back in my ER days, oh my gosh, I used to see so many people coming in with end stage COP COPD, and it was so sad. Uh, you know, when you're just starving for air and um i it it you you you you wish you had stopped smoking at that point, you know, but uh you didn't and uh you're paying the price, and it was just uh really a tragic, terrible way to sp to spend the end of your life. You know, talking about health span, I mean they they've far past that. They're still alive, but they're having a miserable life.

SPEAKER_01 41:02

They're alive, but they're not.

SPEAKER_03 41:04

Yeah, yeah, for real. All right. Well uh well thank you for your insight on those uh five horsemen, and uh so we'll uh move on.

SPEAKER_05 41:10

What about you know, thinking about all those horsemen? But what's functional medicine? Dr. Mac's always like, but why? But why? And is one of those whys when we look at multiple of those horsemen, inflammation. And what role does inflammation play in aging? I mean, we hear that term inflammaging and let's let's hear your thoughts on inflammation.

Cognitive Decline, Ketosis, And Bredesen Protocol

SPEAKER_01 41:32

I think it plays a huge role. I mean, I think inflammation damages your mitochondria, which affects your bioenergetics, and as you lose bioenergetics, you are on a decline. I mean, the difference between a dead human being and a live human being is energy. You know, when your energetics are gone, then then you're dead. And but also when you when you when your energetics are declining because of inflammation, you get all these oxidative species, these reaction, you know, I like to explain it like peroxide, the way it bubbles away at things, is you know, these are bubbling away at your body and damaging both your DNA and your organelles and your cell membranes and creating decline in structure and function. And inflammation is a huge driver of a lot of what we see. I would I would think that it's probably the in my practice is the biggest thing I've spent time reversing on patients. Trevor Burrus, Jr. Yes.

SPEAKER_03 42:25

And it's really neat because you have these markers for inflammation. You see those markers come down, it's really a a beautiful thing to see, isn't it, Jay? Yeah, and some of them are so simple.

SPEAKER_01 42:32

I mean, like you taught me. I mean, they just go, oh my goodness, yeah, this works.

SPEAKER_03 42:35

Yeah, and it's really neat from the patient's point of view, they say, wow, my C-reactive protein's gone from 10 to 2, and it's really so encouraging that uh you know they can't. And they feel it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 42:44

It's not just a number of chart, they feel it.

SPEAKER_03 42:46

They don't ache all over and feel so inflamed. Yeah. So anyway, uh so what about insulin resistance? Uh uh is that another biggie that uh e even if people are not pre-od prediabetic or or diabetic, is that insulin resistance a significant role in aging?

SPEAKER_01 43:00

So it it does correlate with aging. We do have a sort of a natural uh increase in insulin resistance as we age. You know, is that due to less muscle mass or something else like that, or just chronic exposure to inflammation? Probably some of that. I I I'd still go go back to diet. I think the standard American diet, which we in functional medicine call the SAD diet. Exactly. It is sad. And what it does to to your body is if if you really knew what it was doing to your body, you would just push the plate away and go get a good, healthy salad and and you know, a lean piece of fish and eat well.

SPEAKER_05 43:39

Yes. We've you've mentioned mitochondria several times now. So what role do mitochondria play in energy resilience, disease risk, and aging?

SPEAKER_01 43:49

I mean, there I as you can tell I'm a mitochondria freak. I I just love bioenergetics and the whole subject and just how important that is to everything. And it they seem to be so energetic. Intertwined with with everything that we need to function and age well. And it's a fascinating organelles. I mean, they carry your mom's DNA, which is just interesting.

SPEAKER_03 44:13

They do. Yeah, yeah. So we're a human species, but this is really a really fascinating concept that you had, you know, humans and and and microbes evolving together and and it's this sort of marriage of these two genomes that then creates this mitochondria that gives humans their energy. It's kind of fascinating.

SPEAKER_01 44:31

Well, you know, it it uh does well with what you taught me about like candida and and other organisms, your microbiome, and how you you think that you want to eat that piece of chocolate or that cookie, but it might be a yeast in your gut signaling your brain to go eat that so they can thrive. Right. And you think about all that interplay between us and these microorganisms, and the mitochondria is just one example of that where we've had this long interplay with these with basically our microbiome and interchange of of information and probably some you know some DNA and RNA interchanging. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_03 45:07

Yeah, there's a book years ago, I think it's called Gulp G U L P. It was kind of fascinating. I think one of the things he talked about was that you know your bugs make you eat what they want. So in a way, you could say, well, we have evolved to be a life support system for our microbiome, and we've created you know bones and muscles and stuff like that so we can go get the foods that the microbiome wants, right?

SPEAKER_05 45:26

So uh it's the microbiome made me do it. The microbe made me do it.

SPEAKER_03 45:30

Right, right. Yeah, so there we go. So anyway, so uh what about toxins, uh Jerry? Uh uh tell us about the role of toxins and disease and aging, and do you have any strategies to deal with toxins either from the prevention or the detox perspective?

SPEAKER_01 45:43

Well, obviously the best would be prevention. Like don't spray glyphosate on your yard. If you do, make sure you're covered in a hazmat suit and yeah, you know, wearing a mask that will filter the the fumes out. And you know, if you're if you're around lead or anything like that, just you know be careful. Exposure, avoiding exposure is important. Interestingly, we uh this lecture on mercury toxicity that we've been going through in this recode training had uh 17 mercury amalgam fillings and found out as he had them removed for his health because he was having symptoms from mercury toxicity, that only two of them were actual cavities. That his dentist was scamming his mom. And he ended up with a mouthful of mercury. And um, and I have a couple of mercury amalgams, and I keep thinking about maybe having them removed. I want to make sure I have them removed by the right person.

SPEAKER_03 46:38

There's money and mercury in the jersey.

SPEAKER_01 46:40

There is money and mercury.

SPEAKER_03 46:41

So you have a a uh biological dentist you work with, don't you?

SPEAKER_05 46:44

Yeah, it's down in Dothan. Yep. Um Dr. Fister.

SPEAKER_03 46:46

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there's a lot of controversy in that s area. However, uh uh I I do think that like with most things in life, that there's some truth there. And and uh so certainly it seems to have helped uh Tyler, right? Yes. Her husband who has uh dysautonomia. And so I've heard that from a number of people when they um and you've you mentioned it earlier, Jerry. I think there's a huge connection between oral health and overall health.

SPEAKER_01 47:10

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 47:10

And so um so yeah, I think that that that can be helpful to see a good biological dentist, and once again, Dr. Pister in Dothan, Alabama, does a good job.

SPEAKER_01 47:18

Yeah, you know, we you we deal with you know biological toxins, which are toxins related to, you know, I would throw out mold is one of the primary ones, mycotoxins. In fact, I th saw a patient who recently in my practice whose mom has dementia, and he was just wanting to get a checkup to make sure his his he didn't he wasn't carrying any significant risk factors and wanted to clean up his lifestyle. And in the course of working him up, he had a hu really high level of okrotoxin A. Yeah, which is normally associated with black mold. Right. And so we've been treating him with binders and and and he's testing his house to make sure that it's not his house. He actually thinks it might have been an old can of Folger's coffee that was sitting on the shelf forever, and his aunt fixed him a cup of coffee, and that might have been his exposure.

SPEAKER_02 48:07

Oh wow.

Toxins, Mold, Heavy Metals, And Detox Tactics

SPEAKER_03 48:08

Yeah, yeah. We we I think we underestimate the role of toxins in disease. And we did a whole podcast, one of the best I think we've done, Lindsay, on uh toxins and disease. Uh but I think they're a big, big, big deal. Uh I I I I recall a lecture I heard just recently by these to two guys, uh academics uh in uh neurology, talking about they think that all Parkinson's disease is caused by toxins. It isn't that interesting. And and unfortunately, we live in a world full of toxins. Uh at least uh in in this country, maybe if you go to some well, you actually come to think of it, they have found uh microplastics on uninhabited islands in the middle of the ocean and at the top of the Alps. So you you cannot get away from uh toxins these days. You can't. Um and so uh and and uh we have toxins in the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat, and ultimately, as you're kind of alluding to, I think there's three major kinds you need to think about. The organic toxins, like the the the Roundup that you mentioned, the uh uh mycotoxins from the mold, like you mentioned, and then the heavy metals. And so uh that's that's uh what you want to take a look at. Unfortunately, and and I don't mean I don't mean this to bash anybody. You know, uh one of the core principles of me and Lindsay, we're not here to bash modern medicine. This saved my life and and I'm very grateful. However, if you go see your average doctor at any academic institution, and they're not gonna know a whole lot about mold toxicity or heavy metals or any of that stuff. You really kind of need to see a functional medicine doctor like Jerry Kitchens to really get at this stuff. So because you learned about am I right, Jerry, you learned about toxins in your functional medicine training, not in Did you ever learn about it in medical school?

SPEAKER_01 49:43

No.

SPEAKER_03 49:43

In residency?

SPEAKER_01 49:45

No.

SPEAKER_03 49:45

I'm just saying. I'm just saying. And and uh but but yet so so here we are, unequivocally. Nobody would argue it's a major cause of disease, morbidity and mortality, and yet doctors learn nothing about it in their training. Go figure. What what what's w it doesn't add up to me, Jerry? Why is that? Is nobody in it?

SPEAKER_01 50:03

Well, you know, I think uh even the president of the AMA not too long ago said that they're gonna have to restructure medical training. So, yeah, it it and I always tell my patients I see when I when I tell them that look, this I know your doctor didn't mention this to you, but here's the things I think are wrong with you. And I said it and I always tell them it's not their fault. They were trained to practice medicine the way they trained it. And and really if you think about how lifespan changed after the advent of antibiotics, it was a miracle. I mean people weren't dying of strep throat and things of that nature. And and so everybody kind of was at the altar of pharmaceutical solutions. And so they that was that's what everybody was expecting and clamoring for, and that's how they were treated. And and then you add to that the fact that they're being paid for a five to seven minute visit. So it's really a one-problem visit. I mean you can't you can't solve somebody's health issues going one problem at a time, especially for somebody that might have 20 different things going on with them. It takes too long. You can't get them healthy. You need to fix all of them.

SPEAKER_03 51:06

So so they're dealing with that one problem, but but they don't look at the big picture. And and and I I kind of get it with toxins, but here's another thing that I used to see a lot of people would come in to see me and they had Frank metabolic syndrome. And they're excellent internists, had never mentioned it. I would see this over and over and over again because they're not connecting the dots. And I would go through them. Well, here are the five criteria for metabolic syndrome, according to the American Heart Association. They had them all. Yeah. Right? But their internists said these are good doctors. They they just never connected the dots. And and and and so it's kind of frustrating.

SPEAKER_01 51:37

I think we if you're trained to think that you can't do something about where people are going, then you just sit and wait for them to get where they're going to the point that you can prescribe a prescription solution. I think if you have in your toolbox, and I love you talk about your toolbox, but if you have in your toolbox the tools to intervene at the root cause and stop the progression to the disease state, then you want to use those tools to save the patient the trouble of A, going through this slow decline, and B to get them feeling good and healthy immediately.

SPEAKER_03 52:10

But on the other hand, I think we're trained to uh to look at things from the disease pill, disease, pill, disease pill point of view. So we we wait we don't recognize and treat the metabolic syndrome, we wait for them to get diabetes.

SPEAKER_01 52:21

Correct. And then we treat it. Yeah. It's kind of like we do with cognitive decline now. Right. Is is well, I can't treat you yet because you're at mild cognitive impairment, but when you get to have Alzheimer's, we'll try some of these experimental drugs on you.

SPEAKER_03 52:33

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 52:34

Which don't work. Right. That don't work. So what who in their right mind would just say, well, yeah, I'll just wait till my brain's gone and then we'll try some things that don't work. Yeah. I mean, as opposed to doing what Dr. Bettison's doing, which is look, let's do active intervention on what we know contributes to cognitive decline that you have present in your body, you know, whether it's three or four or five or six or eight of those thirty-six factors that he's identified, and let's target those and fix them.

SPEAKER_03 53:00

I had a pa somebody I had treated their mother-in-law for like it was kind of early, but it was documented sort of Alzheimer's disease years ago. And this has been, oh my gosh, at least ten years ago. And I talked to her recently, she said she's uh sharp as attack because she's doing the Bredison protocol. Wow. Amazing, isn't it? Yeah. It is.

SPEAKER_01 53:19

If if you go to his website, uh which is Apollohealth.com and the landing page is this wonderful lady from I think she's from North Carolina, who had Frank Alzheimer's. Couldn't remember her kids' names or anything, and she's given her testimony of coming back to normal from being in the darkness of Alzheimer's to come back to normal by following the protocol. It is amazing. It's an amazing witness in just the joy she has to have her life back.

SPEAKER_03 53:49

Of course, of course. Profound. Absolutely profound.

SPEAKER_05 53:53

Yes. Well, switching gears just a little bit, what about the role of genetics? Are we prisoners of our DNA or can we use functional and lifestyle medicine to optimize epigenetics and to improve outcomes?

SPEAKER_01 54:09

Uh well, you know, it interesting that you asked that question. I was reading recently, and I can't remember who the paper was or who wrote the paper, but it was that 20% of our outcomes are driven by our DNA, and 80% are due to our environment or lifestyle choices or things of that nature. In other words, things that are affecting our epigenetics would then affect our genes. And I guess I should explain that epigenetics are part of our DNA, but they're not a gene that's like a gene that say would code for eye color or hair color or you know how tall you're going to be or something like that. We have tons of epigenes, and I think they've discovered over a million of them of these SNPs, these uh polymorphisms that can affect how these epigenes function. And I think like one of the most common ones is MTHFR mutation, which over half of our population has, which prevents them from metabolizing folate and vitamin B12, and so they keep taking more and more vitamins and their levels never go up, and nobody ever thinks, well, you know, they make methylated vitamins. You can give them methylated vitamins and their levels will go to normal. So there's there's all sorts of information like that. And that's you you talk about precision medicine. I think we're gonna continue to get more and more precision as we understand all the epigenetics. Because I don't know that we know the function of all 1.1 million SNPs that we've identified so far. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_03 55:35

Yeah, I think we're just on the forefront of this whole medical revolution with precision medicine. Didn't UAB open a or they're gonna open a institute for presion medicine. Seems like a lot of like a no-male clinic or whatever are heading in that direction. Trevor Burrus, Jr. I've heard a rumbling about that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Another SNP that uh was pretty common was uh C O M T. T, yeah. Yeah, it's catecholamine old methyl transfer transferase, and uh when they have a mutation of that, they they can't metabolize their catecholamine, so then these people tend to be anxious and and kind of I have a good friend who has that, and and we've always thought, well, she she's just wired you know, too tight for the world.

Gut Health, Microbiome, And Fermented Foods

SPEAKER_01 56:12

Right. And it's and he ends up it's not her fault. Right. She's she's got a mutation that's causing her to be amped up all the time. I can't imagine being like that. I know. I'd feel like Dr. McMahon if I was amped up. All right. I like my downtime.

SPEAKER_03 56:28

Yeah, here we go. There we go. Well, uh speaking of which, uh you came here from your guitar lesson. Uh I that's kind of cool, Jerry, that you're a guitar player. Down here we say guitar. We say guitar. Guitar. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wonderful. Um so yeah, you know, Jerry, I'm I'm all over gut health. I think our first four podcasts that we ever did were on gut health. And uh and many times on the show I've talked about the gut brain connection, gut skin connection, gut just about everything connection, really. And is there a gut connection to aging and health span? And if so, where does the microbiome fit into that equation?

SPEAKER_01 56:58

Oh, it's huge. I think gut health is is very important. I think maybe the first time I heard you say that, I thought, is that really true? And the deeper I go into functional medicine, the more I realize that gut, the microbiome's fingers are in every aspect of your daily living. You know, they're in they affect mitochondrial health, they affect your cognition, they affect your heart, they affect everything. And so I I I can't say enough about you know having good gut health. And I think that's really, if you look at ultra-processed foods, that's probably their initial strike against your health, is that they change your gut health.

SPEAKER_03 57:36

Aaron Ross Powell And when you eat, you not only think about what's healthy for my body, but what's healthy for my microbiome. Right. Right. Because if you eat a lot of sugar, guess what that's going to feed? Yeast, right? You get yeast overgrowth, and that directly affects your brain health and all kinds of other stuff. So uh so yeah, I I I think it's a big, big, big deal.

SPEAKER_01 57:51

And uh I think good probiotics and uh prebiotics, prebiotics are just the fiber to help the probiotics, the microbiome to grow. And food, starting with food. With food first, you know.

SPEAKER_03 58:04

Food is medicine.

SPEAKER_01 58:05

If you look at the blue zones, I don't know about Lumelinda uh uh and I I probably should know, but I think all the other uh blue zones, they have a cultured, a fermented food that they consume. So whether it's kimchi and and okinawa or a kimchi equivalent, or in in Sardinia is organic wines with live culture that they that they drink. And uh I'm trying to think in that was in Greece. In Sardinia, it was I can't remember what it was, but sauerkraut, kimchi y yogurts.

SPEAKER_03 58:40

I I remember there's a uh study one time, oh, is it Mark Hyman, I think looked at I may be wrong, but I think it's Mark, looked at the number of colony forming units or CFUs in sauerkraut, and oh my gosh, it was it was just amazing. It blew away any kind of probiotic we could ever buy on uh as a pill. But uh but yeah, those cultured fermented foods. I know y'all are big into it, aren't you?

SPEAKER_05 59:00

Yeah, we love them.

SPEAKER_01 59:01

So I have the recipe for how much salt per water, and I'll ferment anything. Like my favorite thing is to ferment beets. And I'll shred beets and ferment them to make beet pickles. But I've got a big fermenting croc. I make kimchi and sauerkraut. I've actually prefer kimchi to sauerkraut, but they mean they're basically the same thing as cabbage and it's and I you know feel better when I'm eating that.

SPEAKER_05 59:21

Yes, and you want more. You know, the microbes are asking for more. Yes, absolutely. The more you eat it, the more you want it.

SPEAKER_01 59:27

It's like you get reinforcements against all these terrible yeasts, and they go, okay, keep sending more. Yes. We need it.

SPEAKER_03 59:34

Yeah, cool. Well, thanks for your information on the gut theory, Jury. That's really cool.

SPEAKER_05 59:37

As a functional medicine doctor, when you're reviewing labs, how do you address the issue of optimal versus normal?

SPEAKER_01 59:45

Well, it's interesting. And I learned a lot from you on this and also in my functional medicine course that, you know, our our normal range is really almost the whole population. They toss out a small percentage of the top and the bottom, and then normal's that whole range in between. But you know, everything's got a bell curve, and at the middle of this somewhere is where most people live. And that may or may not be the best level, but that's kind of at least you want to start there and maybe be a little bit higher. I mean, I would say for vitamin D, you know, probably the top of the bell curve is probably a level of 35 or 40 or something. And and I shoot for a little bit higher than that. I think vitamin D levels should be higher than that. But you certainly don't want to be the person that's lowered 3% of the country, but you're considered you just eked into normal.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:31

Right.

Optimal vs Normal Labs And Vitamin D

SPEAKER_03 1:00:31

Yeah, there was a study out at Harvard uh years ago, if I recall, and they looked at vitamin D levels and they suggested a level of like forty to eighty. I I I prefer like fifty to a hundred. Yeah. But you could be like probably twenty-five and be normal, you know. Uh but you're not optimal. You're not optimal. And so so yeah, I think there is a big difference there. Although I think most I hate to say, but uh, most of your practicing regular physicians would disagree with that whole concept of normal versus optimal, but I I think that there's some something to it. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:56

Well the Endocrine Society came out and said you shouldn't be testing vitamin D levels.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:00

Yeah, I was just about to say I had to ask to get mine done. Yeah, yeah. But I disagree.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:04

And I I think you gave a great example when went last time we had breakfast about a patient you had that had I I could think it was depression.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:11

Profound depression. Profound depression.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:13

Couldn't like nobody could help her. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:15

She was she had been seen every psychiatrist in town had been on every drug, and it was her vitamin D. It was five. Her level was five. And we got that up and and she came back. I I could hardly recognize her as the same person. She the the light bulb was on. It was great. It's amazing, isn't it? It brings it it brought me great joy. And so for now for the rest of her life, uh, she will be uh a a happy, you know, well-rounded person, whereas before she was uh a basket case of depression.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:40

Aaron Ross Powell I will say that the probably the most satisfying thing about functional medicine journey has been the gratitude of the patients. Yeah. A for sitting and listening to them do their whole history from womb to where they are now, but also for picking out these little things that people say you shouldn't even test and fixing it and then feeling normal again. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:00

You know, Jerry, so many times people come to see me and they have seen all these other wonderful doctors, really great doctors, uh specialists, whatever, and they're not getting better, and they will say to me, Doctor, you're my last hope. The buck stops here. Right. So so yeah. And guess what? They all got better. I I I wouldn't say 100%. What didn't you say, L Lindsay? What 90%, we bet? Right? It was amazing. It was amazing. These people who were difficult patients, they got better on functional medicine. It was just and you know what, quite frankly, when I was on the other side of the fence and I was a regular doctor, I wouldn't have believed it. I would not have believed my outcomes. But once I got into it and and and learned from, you know, people like IFM and stuff like that, and I went to A4M. I I would look for anybody who could teach me something, right? I devoured this stuff. But uh, but yeah, I I I wouldn't have believed it. Once I got into it, though, I said it was so re encouraging and and and it brought me great joy to to fix these people who otherwise fell through the cracks of modern medicine.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:53

Yeah. I I'm with you. I would have never thought that it would make a the difference it's made. And and seeing is believing, and then you see it happen and you realize that you know we really kind of were put here with with all we needed. So you should be able to you should be able to get yourself well with diet and supplements and and and a few other you know, pharmaceutical interventions, but but your your machinery's designed. It wasn't like we're we're walking around waiting for somebody to drop a pill out of the sky. I mean, we our our cells and everything were made to metabolize our things in our surrounding.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:28

So Yeah, our our our body wants to be healthy.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:30

It does.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:31

We just kind of have to get it out of the way and stop poisoning it with bad food and and stress and and and whatever. But uh yeah, it wants to be healthy. So uh Dre, uh so what are some of the lab markers you use to take a look at aging and kind of give us a list of, if you don't mind, of the top five or so markers that uh most folks who are interested in optimizing health spans should be tracking annually.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:51

Wow, you know, that's hard to get it down to five.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:54

Oh no, you don't have to get it down to five.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:55

Well, I'll say, you know, we've talked about some of them. So uh C-reactive protein, homocysteine, uh triglycerides, I think LP, little A's uh gonna is seems to be trending to be a good cardiac marker, cardiac risk marker. CBC and and an ALT will give you a ton of information. So just your your CBC and your basic, you know, chem 12 or 17, whether you have a metabolic panel, I'll give you all the information you need uh for baseline. But but I go beyond that. I want to know their vitamin their vitamin levels and things of that nature. But if you're gonna say, well, what are the main things I want to look at, those would probably be the main things. Great. Thank you.

SPEAKER_05 1:04:33

What about outside of labs? What other markers are you looking at with patients?

SPEAKER_01 1:04:39

You know, I look at you know, their gait, how quickly they can walk, can they get up and down out of a chair, you know, uh do a full physical exam, check them for mercury amalgams. Not that I'm gonna push them to have them removed, but if I have somebody that's having some cognitive issues and I look in there and they've got 12 mercury f fillings, then we're gonna have a discussion. Um, it's just looking and and and and uh Jerry, you're you're you're an old-fashioned doctor.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:07

Well, you know, the the physical example matters. You know what? Most doctors I go to now, they'd never touch you. Sometimes they your cardiologist doesn't even listen to your heart. It's amazing to be.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:18

They do touch the screen when they look at your cat scanning. Right, right. They never touch you. It's amazing.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:22

You know, I I I have I'll never forget, I had a lady who came in one time and I just do a two-minute physical exam. And I was mashing on her belly, and she had no complaints. And I said, hmm, what's this? She said, Oh, I'm just a little bit constipated. I said, Uh, geez, it doesn't feel like constipation to me. Let's get a quick ultrasound. And we did, and she had early ovarian cancer. Wow. And she we they took out the cancer surgically, she never no chemo, no radiation, and twenty years later, she's cancer free. I'm just saying, a quick two minute physical exam saved that lady's life. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Right. So so I I I don't know. I'm old fashioned, you're old fashioned, but I still believe in a history of Physical is the fundamental thing we need to be doing, folks.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:03

Uh one of my chairmen, well my vice chairman, when I trained in general surgery, he said, you know, a good surgeon can walk in a room and know when a patient's sick before you even lay the hand on the patient, because they look, they have a certain look to them. And you and and I know that's kind of sounds like, you know, the force or something, but it once you understand what a sick patient looks like with certain diseases, you can walk in and before you even lay a hand on that patient, you recognize some things that are going on. And you just it's just a you you have to learn it over time by experience.

Exam, Gait, Body Comp, And Imaging

SPEAKER_03 1:06:34

There's a decorator to that, and it's it goes like this. Listen to the patient, they'll tell you what's wrong with them, right? So taking that history is so important. Absolutely. And that's what I love about laying hands on.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:45

Having two hours with the patient, you get to hear their whole history. And then you ask them to make the add anything later on. Did you forget something? Here's what I have. Did you forget something? And and and I will say this that that has been therapeutic in and of itself to be heard. Yeah, right. And to be believed. And to believe.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:02

Because a lot of times I can and Lindsay ran into this with her husband who had dysonomia. If they can't figure it out, then it's all in your head. Right. Right. And and you're malingering or or or whatever. So so yeah, I I think that my default was always to trust the patient. Yeah. And I'm sure I got fooled a few times, but that's all right. I'd rather err on the side of trusting the patient.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:22

I agree.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:22

Right, right, right. So uh what about things like DEXA scans and stuff like that?

SPEAKER_01 1:07:26

So we're gonna do DEXA scan at our longevity clinic just to measure muscle mass and visceral fat. And but really more we talked about earlier about exercise and starting easy and giving them some easy hurdles to get over, is to be able to give them follow-up track to show them the difference in their body makeup after doing what we're asking them to do. Because I think, you know, even as we get older, we all need a little report card or award or something. Some some bell to ring to let us know that we crossed that finish line and we're doing what we're supposed to do. And that feeds the loop that helps you keep doing what you need to be doing. Whereas if you are doing stuff and you don't see any change, you just get frustrated and you burn out.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:08

Didn't I give you my old uh Tanita scanner? Yes. Yeah, yeah. And and there we go. Sometimes they come in and and once they see their body composition, it's so enlightening to them. It is. I have this saying, I never want to miss things that are gonna kill people. Right. Right. And so you know that can take it out, boom, like that. So a simple live scan, I think it costs like twenty hundred twenty-five dollars. They do kidneys, stratids, uh but the main thing I want is get that uh that abdominal aorta and so we don't miss that. So that's another thing I always uh did, just sort of just a a one-time test. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:51

Um we're gonna have ultrasound in our longevity clinic, so we'll lift all that.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:56

Archer, are any of these markers really help you uh sort of assess biological age versus chronological chronological age in the clinical setting?

SPEAKER_01 1:09:04

You know, uh there's a really simple free test, and I don't know if you ever used it, Dr. McMinn, called Pheno Age.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:11

No, I never did.

Biological Age Metrics And PhenoAge

SPEAKER_01 1:09:12

And it uses it takes in eight or nine data points. I don't have it sitting in front of me, so I can't remember, but it's free, and you can punch in some of its lab and some of its age and weight and things of that nature, and it'll give you your basically your biological age. Now, you know, you're not testing your DNA to see if your telomeres are shortened or anything like that, but it's correlated pretty well to to if you look at the DNA, what it looks like. So and that's what I did that that gave me my pheno age of 55, even though I'm almost 64. So yeah, I think that's you know, just plug in that information. And and you can go to it online. Just look up PhenoAge and P-H-E-N-O-A-G-E. And and they've got free calculators all over the place. Great, quick, quick, quick.

SPEAKER_05 1:10:00

It's great. So walk us through what it looks like for the average 50 or a five-year-old patient that walks into your clinic and and meets you guys.

Patient Journey And Precision Care Workflow

SPEAKER_01 1:10:09

Okay. Uh well, in in my functional medicine clinic, my wife's gonna greet you with a smile and take you back. She's an old pediatric ICU nurse, so she'll take you back and get your vital signs and all that. And then I come in and do the exam first. And because you probably the most uncomfortable thing for a patient is to sit on an exam table with, you know, a cloth apron over them and and you're a paper gown, right? A paper gown, and you're and you're and you're basically asking them their life history. So I will you go through a full physical exam, we go top to bottom of everything, neurologic, everything. Look at everything from the top of your head to the bottom of your feet. And then and then I leave the room to say, go ahead and get dressed, and and then we I I basically take them to just a comfortable sitting area. So it'd be like sitting in your living room or whatever. I want them to feel at home. And then we start doing intake of their history, and we start w when your mom was pregnant with you, you know, did she smoke, drink, did she have any issues, you know. Then were you vaginally delivered, C-section? Were you breastfed, bottle fed? And then you start going from that point to today, and you get, you know, and then one of the questions that I ask is, Well, when did you last feel well? Yeah. And then what changed? Can you remember what changed? But we can easily look at the timeline and put everything together. And then and then the second part of the functional medicine intake is what they call the functional medicine matrix, which I think answers a couple of the questions you asked, like spirituality, community. There's all these nodes, and you populate the nodes with the positives and the negatives in their life, and then that helps you build a treatment plan. You know, obviously, physical exam and and a thorough history doesn't answer everything, and there's always the labs, you have to wait for those results to come back. But I know you you've told me that you know, after you do it for a while, you almost don't even need that because you you by the time you spent five minutes with the patient, you're in the back of your brain, you're already thinking, well, I I suspect they have this problem and this problem and this problem, and this is what I think my treatment would be. But you go ahead and just finish the process. And then in my practice, I would say I would I'll I would regurgitate back everything they've we've talked about and make sure I didn't misstate anything. You know, it gives them the power to to edit and amend the the record. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:24

And they know they've been heard.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:25

Trevor Burrus, Jr. They know they've been heard. And they and they and literally every one of them. Thank you for listening. That's the first time anybody's listened to my whole story.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:32

Aaron Powell I think I showed you early on, Jerry, when we started talking, like uh every single patient who came to see me, I wrote them a letter. And the first letter, in the first ch uh paragraph of the letter, I was sort of regurgitated what the issues were. And sometimes it went on and on and on. But they knew they had been heard and it and I I read it back to them, so they they knew I got it right.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:51

Yes, so I send them that and and then I tell ask them to send it back if we either agree or you know. Send your amendments and your edits. I want to make sure that I I need to know that I'm right and and what I'm visualizing for you. And if I've made a mistake here or there, I need to know that I've made a mistake. And then we package that all up with the lab data and any x-rays we might need and and then come up with a plan. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:14

That's great. That's great. Uh Joe, you know, uh back in my practice in the old days, uh, I was big on hormone optimization uh for men and women. Any thoughts on that as far as its role in healthy aging and health span management?

SPEAKER_01 1:13:25

Aaron Ross Powell I think it's key. I mean, you look at uh women's health and and you know the recent studies that have shown that uh for postmenopausal women that don't start their hormonal replacement within the first 10 years, that their cognitive decline is worse than those that are placed on estrogen progesterone early on.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:43

Aaron Ross Powell I had so many women who came in and said, Doctor, I think I'm getting Alzheimer's, but uh we'd get their hormones right and boom, they were clear as a bell.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:50

Trevor Burrus, Jr. It's amazing. I think it's good for bone health. And uh you know, there are and vaginal health.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:57

I mean, we underestimate the role of that. It's important. Uh uh so many women came in and and it was a big, big, big deal to them that they were just dry as a bone and and uh they weren't getting any relief from their LBG line doctors, unfortunately. So uh I think we can sweep that under the rug.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:11

Aaron Powell And testosterone is overlooked in women, also. Trevor Burrus, Jr. It is and and testosterone is part of a woman's normal hormonal makeup. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:18

Absolutely. It's in the symphony of hormones. So we did a whole podcast on testosterone in women that uh we invite you to go back and listen to. It can really, really, really make a difference in a woman's life. Trevor Burrus, Absolutely. And it's not just about libido, it's about energy and muscle mass and and so many other things. People think it's just teach about libido and sex life. No, no, no, no. It's about so many other things.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:37

It's helpful to prevent frailty. Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Trevor Burrus, Jr.: And same for men. You know, optimizing their testosterone level is important. Yeah. Um you have to make sure you don't have any you know contraindications to increasing the testosterone. Sometimes there's a reason your testosterone is low, or you know, your HPA access is shut down, it's because there's something else stressing it, and you have to fix that first and then you can go back and supplement the hormones.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:01

But you know, i i i it it can be d it can be done by any doctor, but you gotta the doctor's got to got to got to go study this stuff and know what they're doing. You know, if they just give them PRIMPRO or something like that, no, no, no. You're doing a lot of damage with that. You you got to know what to give and how to give it. Uh and and I highly recommend IFM. You you went through their course and and uh for functional medicine training, whether it be gut health or hormones or whatever, they really do a good job if anybody's interested in in getting into functional medicine. But yeah, it it's it's hugely important. But unfortunately, and I know even OBGYN doctors who said, I learned nothing about this. I think about maybe only 20 percent of OBGYN doctors really learn about hormone management in their training. And yet they're the ones that women go to for this, right? So it doesn't make sense. I agree 100%.

SPEAKER_05 1:15:47

Like you've said many times, it's a symphony. So there's like there's masterful work that has to go behind this. It's complex.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:55

And coach, you you you you said, I think maybe last time we got together that you have so many friends who are kind of entering uh perimenopause. So, okay, we we gotta rise up, coach, and do a hormone podcast uh for perimenopause for your friends. So we'll do that.

SPEAKER_05 1:16:07

And then they're asking if you want those solutions before because they're already starting to have symptoms.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:12

Yeah, yeah, right.

SPEAKER_05 1:16:14

Well, what about supplements? Are there supplements that have been proven to help optimize health span?

Hormone Optimization For Healthy Aging

SPEAKER_01 1:16:21

Yeah, I think this is very similar to Bredison's book in that there's probably not one thing. It's probably a combination of things. But if I was like, well, what are the things that I would just some basic things that I would throw out there? A good, clean, omega-3 fatty acid supplement to help reduce inflammation. We've talked about vitamin D3, I mean, essential for so many processes in the body and getting that right. Magnesium is involved in so many enzymatic reactions in your body. So having and take it at night and it helps you sleep. So I mean it's just it's a win-win all around. That helps longevity. I think uh become if you can't, if you don't like cultured foods, take a probiotic. You know, get your get your important fix your microbiome one way or the other. I think I would prefer to go with uh fermented foods, but but get a good probiotic and a prebiotic. Creatine, like I said, for most has been proven for muscle mass. I think we've got some early data that's saying it's helpful for cognitive health. So I would say if you're if you want to try 10 grams a day, do it. It's it's it's gonna help your muscle mass and it may help your cognition. And then NAD precursors, you know, they're there's a huge market in the NAD world, but NAD is important. And and then I I'll say that I've started taking berberine once a day. My dad had high two diabetes. There's some really good data on berberine. And in fact, there's in I I know at least one study it was as effective as metformin in controlling blood sugar. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:54

It's pretty amazing. And plus it does a lot of other stuff. Inflammation, helps microbiome, all kind of good stuff. You know, Jerry, our previous surge in general described what he called as uh an epidemic of loneliness, uh, and studies from Harvard show that uh it's a major factor for omitted for morbidity and mortality. So how do you integrate uh purpose, meaning, social relationships, community, and emotional health into your health brand uh medical model?

SPEAKER_01 1:18:17

So it's very important. And it's and it when when I mentioned the IFM matrix sheet, that those are all components of that. And then as we as I get information about what their life's like, then then I try to address those issues. Like if they're if they're lonely and not getting out, to see how we can mobilize them and get them engaged, and if it whether it's visitors to their house, but you know, the idea being if they're if they're able to be mobile, to start walking after meals and running into people and engaging, but also to have something that gives you purpose and and and and I think that really is the spirituality mode. I mean it's it what drives you and and I encourage people just to live a generous life, to love generously, to help your and love your neighbor and reach out and know your neighbor and and the people in your community. I call it loving kindness. Exactly. And and and serve your fellow man in in ways that you can, whatever you feel comfortable doing, but get involved and get moving. And the more you do, the the the more you'll improve. I think in uh Dostoevsky and Brothers Koromazov he he talks about the wise elder monk says he he called it active love. And if you do active love, then everything will improve. Right. And I think that from that standpoint, your communal relationships, family relationship, if you actively loving, which means forgiving and and and commiserating and understanding and doing those things, that your life improves. And I think that that when your life improves, your stress goes down, your sleep gets better. It's you know, like we've talked about, everything is in is interconnected.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:59

You know, Julie, that's one of the things I I I loved about the practice of medicine, and I think that Lindsay shares this uh it's the perfect medium for the expression of love and kindness. You know, people come whether it's in the ER or the clinic setting, they come in, they're scared, they're they're you know, they're they're upset, they're not feeling well, and you know, Lindsay would come in and wrap her arms around them and make them feel better and share that loving kindness. And so it's just the perfect medium for that, and it brings me great children. And I think unfortunately, we don't teach that in medical school, and a lot of young doctors don't really get that.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:32

And the EMRs made it more impersonal because they're behind a computer typing all the information they need to.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:37

Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:38

I always made a point to leave the patient chart at the desk and sit on the patient's bed and just you know pat them on the leg or hold their hand and talk to them about their, you know, how they did their surgery and everything. And I'd spent probably less time than the person that walked in with the computer typing. Yeah. But the patients always felt like I spent an eternity with them. Yeah. And it wasn't. And and I didn't do it because I was trying to improve my health grade score. I did it because it's just the right thing to do.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:02

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Core Supplements For Health Span

SPEAKER_05 1:21:04

And when you connect with people like that, they just there's a healing that happens. And when you're listening fully to someone, you can't help but give them part of your heart. Right. It just it just happens if you're listening to all of their issues and writing out a page like you did, Dr. McMahon, and these are all the things you are giving part of yourself to those people.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:25

If at the end of my life, you know, uh they they say, well, we've looked at your history and you know, all those supplements you gave them, they were okay, but what really changed your patients' lives was the amount of time you spent listening to them. I would not be surprised because I've heard that from my patients. Yeah. That was very therapeutic.

SPEAKER_05 1:21:44

Yes. Where does modest modern medicine go wrong when it comes to improving health span for the masses?

SPEAKER_01 1:21:54

Well, I think we've touched on this some. I don't I don't want to belabor it, but you know, we we have a population health department in every major health system in this community. And and they're and their one of their primary things they do is is address readmission rates. Well, I look at that from my functional medicine lens and say, well, that's not even population health, because if your population was healthy, you wouldn't be worried about readmissions because they wouldn't be admitted in the first place, because they'd be healthy. So that's not really population health. So they we put labels on things in medicine to make it sound good. You know, it's kind of a catchy phrase, well, we're doing population health. But really, we're just managing admissions and readmissions. We're not changing the health of the population. And I think that's that's because the the payers don't reward preventing disease. Right. And until that unfortunately, until that market changes, and it's just going to be people like us that believe in it, that go out there and do it, that try to improve patients' health so that they don't end up in the hospital and they don't end up on all these medications. And it goes back to training. We talked about that earlier. Uh you're you're not trained. It was never mentioned when we were in training. You were not trained to do that, not trained to think that way. And you know, the kind of the the overarching glory was that that we have all these pharmaceutical solutions and and when all these great new uh surgical machines. And so that's where we're going to worship instead of go back to the basics of why did you get here?

SPEAKER_03 1:23:29

You know, Jerry, I I found going from regular medicine and again not bashing it, but to functional medicine was almost like a process of enlightenment. It is. Yeah, it is. It really was. So anyway, it's like the scales falling off your eyes and now you can see. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_05 1:23:44

And I think it takes the patient's partnership too. Like we as it's not just the healthcare providers, but the patient has to completely change their mindset. They have to be bought in and you know, not come just like fix me, but let's partner together and I'm willing to make changes in my life and not just here, give me a pill to fix my problem right now. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:05

Yeah, and you know, Koch, so many of them were so miserable and desperate that they were willing to make the changes. Yes, yes.

Loneliness, Purpose, And Community Medicine

SPEAKER_05 1:24:14

And unfortunately, sometimes it takes people getting to that point. But wow, could we what if we could culturally change as a society, teach our kids from a young age this is what being healthy looks like. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:25

Well, you know, 10 years ago, functional medicine was unheard of, but I think that the culture is starting to change and people are starting to see the value of this. And when you go to your uh IFM conferences, Jerry, there's thousands of young doctors there trying to learn this.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:37

In fact, we had one of our lecturers is a functional medicine gastroenterologist on staff at Vanderbilt. So now you got a functional medicine department at Vainderbilt.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:47

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we have one at Cleveland Clinic now. And uh so it's really cool. I think things are starting to change. But Jerry, what do you think are the biggest barriers that patients face when uh they're trying to implement like a health span or longevity protocol protocol?

SPEAKER_01 1:25:00

Aaron Ross Powell Well, I mentioned earlier overcoming inertia, trusting that just to quote Coach Saban, the GOAT, you know, trusting the process and and trusting that we're gonna that we're gonna walk this path with you, we're gonna help you, we're not gonna lead you astray, and if you trust us, you are gonna feel better and you're gonna be healthier. And and I think you have to you have to meet the patient where they are. And some patients are super motivated and you just I mean give them a little bit of inf encouragement and they're gone. And the next thing you see, they're just healthy, they've lost all their visceral fat. And those patients are wonderful, but I mean those are the easy patients. You know, most patients are there because they've had struggles and they've had struggles with weight and struggles with with exercise and or injuries or whatever, and and it's our job to convince them that they can do it and to help them do it, and that we're doing this together as a team. It's not just me, it's not just you, it's us, and we're gonna get to the goal line.

SPEAKER_05 1:26:02

Are there any harmful myths about aging and health span that you'd like to dispel?

SPEAKER_01 1:26:07

I think the the myth that cognitive decline is a normal part of aging, it's not. Historically it hasn't been. That that I I think that uh the current accepted thing is that you're gonna spend a certain amount of time in an assisted living and or you know, skilled nursing facility or whatever is a myth. It doesn't have to be that way. I think the blue zones teach us that, that with communal support and with taking care of your health and eating well and being active, you can extend your health span so that you know hopefully I think what we would all want was would be to be vibrant and active as we can be until we kind of fall off the cliff and that's that's the end of our life instead of dwindling for 14 to however many years that would the average American does. So that that's the hurdles, the inertia, and I think the belief, because the medical complex isn't preaching what we're preaching, and so this had a new exposure for most of my patients.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:07

Yeah, I kind of ran into a roadblock there because sometimes a patient would come in and they'd have a problem, and I'd tell them this is our path to recovery, and they say, gee, I've seen all these other doctors and they didn't say that. So, you know, the patient's gotta decide whether they're gonna invest in this process or not. But uh anyway, uh so Jerry, this may sound a bit overwhelming for some people, and and so they've got to be thinking, so where do I start? So what what are some simple things that people could do starting tomorrow to improve their health span?

SPEAKER_01 1:27:38

So I think we've touched on the kind of the pillars, but I th I would say number one, find a way to reduce stress, which I think is exercise. Exercise helps reduce stress better than just about anything that I've encountered. Simple exercises at first, like I said, walk after meals. It doesn't have to be 10 minutes, it could be five minutes after each meal, and then start extending it. Uh getting Outside, get fresh air, you know, diet, a s a simple diet change. Get away from a standard American diet, get away from you get take every ultra-processed food in your pantry and throw it away or give it to somebody that you don't like, I guess. But uh and and start eating healthy, eat whole foods. I I would encourage you, even though they're more expensive, to get organic so you avoid some toxins. I think, you know, embracing community spirituality, sleep. You know, I I sleep if you need to take a supplement, take it. I take best rest formula by pure encapsulations and some magnesium at night, but there are multiple options for helping with sleep. And I think sleep's so important that if you have to resort to something like an ambient or whatever to help you get started, you need to do it. But uh Dr. McMinn has a great sleep protocol. I'm sure it's on your site, that you know, a dark room, cold room, temperature 65 degrees is really important.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:59

Uh and just making it a high priority, I think, is the key. It is.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:02

It is. No, it should never be in the bedroom. Falling asleep in front of the TV is probably the worst habit you can have.

SPEAKER_03 1:29:10

Absolutely. And being on your iPhone, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:29:12

You know, in the hour before so bad. Power down an hour and a half. And I'll say that's one thing about the R Ring. It does tell you hey, you need to start powering down.

SPEAKER_03 1:29:20

All right. Well, okay, well, Jerry, uh I'm just so excited about your practice here in Birmingham. I feel like I'm kind of handing off the baton to to you uh after all those years we practice. But uh so tell us a little bit more about your practice, actually, both of them, your homewood uh health and wellness plus uh your longevity practice.

System Gaps And Changing The Model

SPEAKER_01 1:29:35

Aaron Powell So you know, homewood health and wellness has been fun and I've enjoyed it and I've I'll still continue to do it. Uh as I mentioned when I got here, but the space that I was occupying is is is not available right now. I I think I'll end up using the space at the longevity clinic to continue to see my patients once we get it up and rolling. But we're really excited about this longevity clinic. And and I don't I'd really hate to separate functional medicine from longevity, because I think functional medicine is longevity medicine. I mean, it always has been. It's always been about health span. Uh it is the way to health span. And and so incorporating all of my functional medicine experience and and the and then my further learnings to this longevity journey. But I'll see some functional medicine patients on my own too, there. But if is it okay for me to give out our contact information or you can't.

SPEAKER_05 1:30:24

Please do. We'd love to our listeners to know how to get in touch with your practice here in Birmingham.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:29

Absolutely. So our clinic is Birmingham Longevity Clinic, and we're in Liberty Park area here in Birmingham, right off 459, a major thoroughfare. Easy to get to. So if you want information, you can email info at BHAM, B-H-A-M-Longevity, L-O-N-G-E-V-I-T-Y dot com. And or you can call 205-855-7787, and we'd be glad to talk to you, give you information, and then you you can also go to our website, which is bham longevity.com, and just see what we're up to. We're we're invested in your health for the long haul.

SPEAKER_05 1:31:10

And y'all got an Instagram too. I was watching a lot of your videos up there.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:14

Those are their private equity guys. They are they're they're younger and they're all in the modern, you know. I I'm just I'm an old fart. So I have Facebook so I know when the next high school reunion's gonna be. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:31:25

Yes, I'm sure we'll include those links at the bottom of the show notes.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:27

Yeah, you just share those links with me and I'll put them in on the website. So well, Jerry, thank you so much for sharing this valuable insights with us. Uh it it's it's just been wonderful to chat with you, and we've learned so much, and we really appreciate you being on the show today.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:39

Well, thank you for your mentorship and friendship and guidance and uh for allowing me to be on here and talk to you today. And uh, we look forward to uh creating a much healthier population.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:50

For for real. We'll have to come out and visit you out out in uh Liberty Park at your New Clinic. Yeah, yeah. All right. Well, good to see you, Jerry. Take care now. Thank you. Thank you, Liz.

SPEAKER_05 1:31:59

Yes, thank you.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:01

Well, that'll about do it for this edition of the Wellness Connection MD Podcast. Uh, a special thank you to Dr. Kitchens for joining us, and also thank you, the listener. I hope that we were able to share with you something that informed and inspired you.

SPEAKER_05 1:32:14

And before we part, I'd like to remind you folks that our podcast is one of the rare podcasts these days that remains completely unbiased and commercial free. We've been bringing this to you now for eight years, and you have never heard a single commercial on the show. But it does cost money to produce these, so consider making a contribution to help us keep it coming to you.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:36

And there are a couple ways you can contribute. First, if you buy nutritional supplements, and again, we're not asking you to buy anything you don't already take, then consider purchasing physician grade supplements from our Full Script dispensary at a 10% discount. You can see the link to Full Script below in the show notes, or you can go to McMinnMD.com and the link will also appear there at the bottom of the homepage under Helpful Links. It's quite simple. Just click on the link and they'll guide you through the process. It's a win-win. You get high quality supplements at a discount, and we get your support for the show, for which we are very grateful.

SPEAKER_05 1:33:08

You can also make a contribution directly to the show via credit card or by PayPal at the Support the Show link, which is in the show notes. Thank you so much for your support. It really means a lot to us.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:21

And please don't forget to subscribe to the show so that you won't miss an episode and tell your friends and family about us. Help us spread the word about evidence-based holistic functional lifestyle and integrative medicine.

SPEAKER_05 1:33:31

If you like this show, then please help us out by taking a moment to rate us on iTunes. I'm proud to say, Dr. Mack, that we have one of the highest ratings in the wellness podcast space, and we're really grateful for that. So keep that love coming to us, listeners. It really, again, means a lot to us.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:48

And if you'd like to reach out to us to comment on the show or to make recommendations for a future topic, then you can do so at drmcmin at yahoo.com. And if you'd like to view a complete transcript of the show, then go on over to McMinn MD.buzzsprout.com and you will find it there. And now, coach, can you please leave us with one of your wonderful coach, Lindsay Pearls of Wisdom?

Barriers, Myths, And Starting Simple

SPEAKER_05 1:34:11

You know, this whole conversation makes me think about my dad. For many years, he coached basketball and he drilled the fundamentals into us. Play defense, box out, hit your free throws, protect the ball. He always said the best offense is a good defense. Longevity medicine feels the same way to me. We can talk about advanced labs or cutting edge therapies, but the fundamentals still win, Dr. Mack. Get that glucose stabilized, do the diet, preserve the muscle mass, build your fitness, protect your sleep, invest in social and emotional and spiritual health. It seems like the most powerful longevity strategies aren't flashy. They're disciplined. And just like basketball, if you commit to those fundamentals, you can change the outcome of the game.

SPEAKER_03 1:34:57

And as another coach once said, uh, Coach Saban, uh trust the process, right? Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And well, that should do it. Uh until next time, stay curious, stay informed, keep it real, and remember small actions can lead to big changes. Take that first step towards better health.

SPEAKER_05 1:35:13

This is Coach Lindsay signing out.

SPEAKER_03 1:35:15

And this is Dr. McMahon. Take care and be well.