Reed Davis - Functional Diagnostic Nutrition Uncovers the Root Causes of Health Issues #146

Reed Davis, the founder of Functional Diagnostic Nutrition, shares his expertise on the underlying causes of health issues and how functional medicine approaches these problems by identifying and then addressing what he terms "metabolic chaos" – the complex interplay of multiple causal factors that contribute to illness.

We delve into the limitations of traditional allopathic medicine in addressing root causes, as it often focuses on symptom relief rather than uncovering the true sources of health problems. Davis explains that every symptom has a cause or causal factor, and that functional diagnostic testing plays a crucial role in identifying hidden stressors and dysfunctions that may be contributing to an individual's health issues.

One of the key insights shared by Davis is the significance of nutrition in supporting optimal health. He stresses that nutrition is the ultimate medicine and must be tailored to an individual's unique nutritional requirements based on factors such as genetics and oxidative rates. By providing the body with the proper fuel and removing obstacles to healing, functional diagnostic nutrition aims to support the body's innate intelligence and desire to heal.

Throughout the podcast, Davis and host Dr. Philip Ovadia explore various aspects of functional diagnostic nutrition, including the role of hormones, immune function, digestion, detoxification, energy production, and the nervous system in overall health. They also discuss the concept of "biochemical individuality" and how it influences dietary needs.

This engaging podcast offers listeners a deep dive into the world of functional diagnostic nutrition, providing valuable insights and practical tips for optimizing health and addressing the underlying causes of illness. By understanding the concept of metabolic chaos and the importance of individualized nutrition, listeners can take proactive steps towards achieving optimal wellness.

Connect with Reed Davis
Twitter: https://twitter.com/FDNtraining
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fdntraining/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FunctionalDiagnosticNutrition
Website: https://fdntraining.com/drphilip
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/san-diego-natural-health-&-fitness-ctr/

Chances are, you wouldn't be listening to this podcast if you didn't need to change your life and get healthier.

So take action right now. Book a call with Dr. Ovadia's team. 

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How to connect with Stay Off My Operating Table:

Twitter:

• Dr. Ovadia: @iFixHearts
• Jack Heald: @JackHeald5

Learn more:

• Learn more about Dr. Ovadia's personalized health coaching
• Get Dr. Ovadia's book Stay Off My Operating Table on Amazon.
• Take Dr. Ovadia's metabolic health quiz: iFixHearts
• visit Dr. Ovadia's website: Ovadia Heart Health
• visit Jack Heald's website: CultYourBrand.com

Theme Song : Rage Against
Written & Performed by Logan Gritton & Colin Gailey
(c) 2016 Mercury Retro Recordings

Any use of this intellectual property for text and data mining or computational analysis including as training material for artificial intelligence systems is strictly prohibited without express written consent from Philip Ovadia.

Transcript

Jack Heald: 0:38

Welcome folks. It's the Stay Off my Operating Table podcast with Dr Philip Ovedia, and today we've got a rare treat. It's not something that's never happened, but it happens seldom. We have a citizen as opposed to a healthcare professional, in other words, somebody that I can probably understand. Phil, introduce our guest.

Dr. Philip Ovadia: 1:03

Yeah, definitely, but this isn't any ordinary citizen. I'll say we're real honored today to have Reed Davis with us. And Reed Davis, I'm going to say, was a citizen who chose to do something about a problem that he saw. Reed is the founder of the Functional Diagnostic Nutrition Platform and we'll get into kind of what that is, but I was introduced to his work a while ago and really excited to talk about how it fits into really the stay off my operating table philosophy stay off any operating table philosophy. So with that I'm going to turn it over to Reid so he can introduce himself to our audience and then we'll jump right in.

Reed Davis: 1:57

Hey, thanks so much. I'm happy to be here and I love the name of your podcast and I've been helping people try to stay off the operating table for over 25 years. I started, uh, back in the last century the end of it I actually was in environmental law and conservation and uh, and I was saving the whole planet and I started to you know all the environmental stuff going on. I started thinking, what about people? What's it doing to me so you can just save so many birds, trees and air and bees and things? And I wondered about people. So I switched jobs really and I went to work in the clinic and I spent 10 years in that clinic running thousands of labs on thousands of people, all the sort of. At the time they were considered alternative. Now they're considered standard fare in functional medicine, but we worked with some of the real early pioneers and had a really incredibly busy office that I sort of started working at.

Dr. Philip Ovadia: 3:06

And it changed my life forever. So let's kind of start with some basics. You know many people, I think, have heard the term functional medicine but may not really understand what that means, and so talk about from your perspective. You know what what functional medicine is, what functional practitioners do and how that may be jives or doesn't jive with you know the more what we call the allopathic medical system medical system.

Reed Davis: 3:44

Sure, well, it's a good thing, it's part of an evolution of standard medicine or allopathic medicine. I don't think it's fully evolved yet. You know, when I started in 1999, I was in a truly alternative clinic, considered quackery. But you know, no, we were not standard medicine and so it was all kinds of modalities, you know, chiropractic, acupuncture and nutrition and things like that. So I saw that alternative go into. It kind of became what was called complementary, you know, because it's it works, what we were doing worked. So it became kind of a complement to standard medicine. Then it became integrative. So integrative medicine was big. Now it's evolved into functional medicine because physicians have caught on to finding underlying causes and conditions, which is good.

Reed Davis: 4:40

So, again, the evolution of standard through, you know, complementary, integrative and what have you, is not finished evolving Because while there are physicians using functional lab work, which is what we specialize in, what we specialize in and what I teach they're still bound by standard of care, licensure and all kinds of algorithms that work in that, the same as standard medicine, the exact same. They get paid the same way, for the most part by insurance. So what your insurance covers is what you're going to get. The doctor might be very and this is just my opinion trying to lay some cards on the table here, that it hasn't finished evolving, and I have my own theories about finding underlying causes and conditions and what that should look like and the freedom that a practitioner really needs to have to be able to again not be bound, if you will, to the diagnosis and treatment model, because that doesn't always work, and so I'd be happy to explain further.

Jack Heald: 5:49

Yeah, I'm still not clear. So when you say functional medicine, you said the diagnostic and treatment model, and I guess that contrasts with the functional medicine. You said diagnosis the diagnostic and treatment model, and I guess that contrasts with the functional medicine model the functional medicine approach is to find underlying causes and conditions which is not the which is a good thing.

Reed Davis: 6:14

That's the functional typical allopathic approach correct, correct allopathic approach. Correct, correct Allopathy is about relieving symptoms. You know, if you take pills you might feel better. If the pills don't work, you get stronger pills. If the stronger pills don't work, you just cut the parts out. You know that's considered drugs and surgery, standard medicine. That's how it works. There's a lot of jokes about it actually, which we can go to sometime. I've probably told some of them. Well, you know, the lady goes in.

Dr. Philip Ovadia: 6:53

Unfortunately, lots of the jokes are true.

Reed Davis: 6:56

Yeah, well, the lady goes in and says to the doctor you know, I had this pain down here near my abdomen and they gave me some ovary pills for a while pills for my ovaries but eventually they just took my ovaries out, you know. And doctor said that's, I'm sorry to hear that, what else is going on? And she said well, I had this other pain up here and they gave me some gallbladder pills for a while and, uh, then they didn't work, so they just took my gallbladder out. And the doctor says well, wait, just don't, don't tell those doctors that you get headaches. And so you know the drugs and surgery approach. It is sometimes required. If you get something really bad, you probably want want to get it out.

Reed Davis: 7:38

But the functional medicine approach is to try to find the underlying cause and condition before it gets to that point and then allow the person to change something. What we use is epigenetic forces instead of drugs and surgery. So epigenetics are how you get things to function in your body the way you want to. It's not about your genes. It's about the influences on the genes from the environment, from everything from your diet and your sleep and your exercise and all the different stressors and things like that. So the approach that I take just to try to clarify, jack is similar to the functional medicine approach, but I don't call it medicine, we call it functional diagnostic nutrition. It's very functional. It's diagnostic in nature because we use labs and data, so it's data-driven. And the N in FDN is nutrition, because I'm a nutritionist. But it's also nurturing, so you can provide nutrition to everything, every cell, tissue, organ and system in your body, even to your heart, soul, emotions. All these things need to be nurtured.

Reed Davis: 8:59

So FDN, which is what I created in 2008, was a movement towards getting people to be responsible for their own health, so they didn't have to rely on doctors. If they're educated well enough on how things are using lab work, you get the data. Then well, how do I fix it? Mrs smith would say. I say, well, you know, it's not coming into the office, that's going to fix anything. We can do chiropractic, acupuncture, all kinds of modalities. We could um lots of therapies and things, but it's what you do at home that matters. So I I started really in about 2000 sending people home with their home regimen and that along, because I'd run the labs. I'd run the saliva testing, urine testing, stool testing hair and some blood work, of course and when you get the data then you can direct the kind of forces that need to come to bear on that person. They pretty much have lived themselves into their problems.

Jack Heald: 10:09

That's you know the the downward spiral of.

Reed Davis: 10:11

They have lived themselves into their problems yeah, you know it's bad habits, it's, it's, uh, or maybe you just don't know about what you're eating and breathing and drinking and the kind of stressors that are around that have a very negative effect and create chaos in your body. Pretty soon you don't feel so well and, by the way, you might even be told by a standard physician nothing's wrong with you. Your blood work looks normal because it isn't looking at all of the data that's available again through these other testing mediums, gotcha.

Dr. Philip Ovadia: 10:48

Yeah, I was just going to say let's talk a little bit about those testing mediums. If they've gone to an allopathic doctor and they says, well, ok, my doctor checks blood work and maybe they get you know CAT scans or imaging studies, like, isn't that looking for the root of my problem? And talk a little bit from your perspective about, maybe, where that might fall short and what other modalities maybe we need to be looking at.

Reed Davis: 11:25

So I'm glad you brought that up, because CT scans and there's other you know the imaging all kinds of things can be really useful when you have a medical condition, so kidney stones, or you got a bladder stone or you have cysts or all these kind of things that have manifested as part of that downward spiral that I originally talked about, and so thank God they're there. Thank goodness that we have our standard physicians who are good at identifying those things, but I think they would um. The difference would be for like like with um stones, can they be dissolved through proper therapies? Is there solutions you can take that would uh yourself to take control, or do you have to go get um those things taken out through heart surgery or whatever it might be radiation and other steam therapy? There's lots of things that doctors can do to get rid of the stone, but I don't think you'd find them. Looking for the cause, oh, they just happen. Can I do anything with my diet? No, you just genetically predispose You're going to get kidney stones. Your dad had them right? Yeah, my dad had them. Well, you got them too. So there's a big difference in the outlook.

Reed Davis: 12:46

And keep in mind this that when I started I came from a different field. It was very scientific, so I had some really good research and writing skills and things like that to bring to bear on people, and so I had a lot to learn. But I had nothing to unlearn, just in that sense. I just wasn't licensed to practice medicine and didn't want to. These people come into our office, have been to six or eight or 10 or 12 doctors already and been told nothing's wrong with you or here's your diagnosis. That's why I say we don't diagnose and treat anything specifically, because everyone's done enough of that. People come in with four diagnosis, eight diagnosis. They're on eight, nine medications, so things like that. Well, they didn't want any more of that and so I was plunked down in the situation where, well, reed you, you can't do any of that. You got to find out what's really wrong and then what can they do to reverse it? That was my job, that was my mission and it hasn't changed in all these years. And so I spent 10 years with a lot of game people, thank goodness, who were willing to invest in this alternative laboratory work Again, the saliva, urine, stool and things like that, even hair analysis and stuff, other tissues, but so they were game. I ran thousands of labs on thousands of people, but so they were game. I ran thousands of labs on thousands of people and what occurred? You know, I had great mentorship from some of the lab directors, the geeks that work there. I mean, these scientists are. They don't care about diagnosing and treating. They don't have licenses either. They just really want to know what's really going on inside. And so that's where functional medicine was born. And so that's where functional medicine was born. And I was right there.

Reed Davis: 14:43

But again, not being able to diagnose and treat was to my advantage. It was like, well, we don't want to do that. What's really wrong? So I found out that the hormones are almost always involved. Remember, we're talking about people coming in not with horns growing out of the side of their head, but with very common maladies that a lot had been told nothing's wrong with you and so. But they knew something was. Well, what is it? And it gets pretty complicated. But I was there to simplify things. I was the patient educator I had to run.

Reed Davis: 15:17

The labs say oh look, your hormones are out of balance, your cortisol, thca is out of wax, you're in a catabolic state, your body's breaking down, you're getting old before your time and again they'd been told nothing or that it was just hypothyroidism. They needed pills, and I'm the first one that said your body's breaking down. You know what they said to me. Well, that's how I feel. Okay, we're on to something.

Reed Davis: 15:43

Well, what other measurements can we get From cortisol and DHEA saliva testing? You look at the sex hormones. Yeah, progesterone and estrogen are out of balance, or, for the men, testosterone and women need that too. By the way, and on the same test I worked with these lab guys to develop what else can we get from saliva? Well, now we have melatonin we take at noon. We have secretory IgA, which is part of your immune system. We have insulin you can look at.

Reed Davis: 16:12

Now you're looking at all kinds of lifestyle and repair opportunities. What I call them are healing opportunities, opportunities. What I call them are healing opportunities. And when you add in the other testing for digestion, for detoxification, you know liver function, of course, um, and oxidative stress, which there's different things to look at. We look at mucosal barriers, so we know if you have hyperpermeability, what actually actually envision. What's going on with the villi and the crypts? You know the spaces between. Are they making their juices the way they're supposed to. You can envision all of this stuff for a person and every test I ever did with someone was relative to them. So everybody in our world, fdn is a study of one. There's no cohorts, there's no here. Take this, because 50,000 people took it and only four died.

Jack Heald: 17:11

We're not referencing anything in modern life. So, given the history that you have um, I've got two questions related. 20 years ago, when you were doing this, what was the most common root cause? And the follow-up question is has it changed?

Reed Davis: 17:39

That is an excellent question, jack, and I would say that the causal factors are common that we deal with. That affect the people who would come and see one of our practitioners. It's all stress related. You know, hippocrates, the so-called father of medicine, said all disease begins in the gut. I would say no, who might argue with Hippocrates? But I'm sorry.

Jack Heald: 18:04

You heard?

Reed Davis: 18:05

it here, folks, he's arguing with Hippocrates, hippocrates, but I'm sorry you heard it here, folks, he's arguing with Hippocrates, but it circles around to the gut so much that it's like, well, gut is really really common. The most common malady back then, the most overused and abused diagnosis was fibromyalgia. We thought it was a joke because people were coming in my fibro, my fibro. Well, they had a lot of symptoms and you know, call it fibromyalgia and there is such a thing. But we want to know what's really wrong. We found that their hormones are out of balance, their immune system was underactive or overactive, their digestion wasn't working, their detoxification systems weren't working, energy production on a cellular level was poor because of their diet and other factors, and their nervous system was out of balance. They were sympathetic, dominant for the most part.

Jack Heald: 19:00

Okay, got to explain that. Got to explain what that means.

Reed Davis: 19:03

So it's fight-flight. They were in fight-flight, irritated, um, by, by life and a lot of things, and it is it's very sort of holistic and all-encompassing, because there's a lot of different types of stress, but I could. Here's a couple things I want to say about this, without babbling, hopefully, is that, uh, chronic stress is ubiquitous. We're all under stress, right, we know that it's a stressful world, but it's not just emotional. It's emotional. Yes, your boss, your wife, your kids, your money, your, whatever it is, you know, and you got the news. God forbid you watch it.

Reed Davis: 19:46

And then you've got on top of the even deeper sort of psycho-spiritual lack of purpose. People walk around, they have no reason for existing and they feel shitty and they wonder well, no wonder, you know. So there's all this kind of stress. But on top of that you have what probably what my main concern is, which is the physical abuse I've.

Reed Davis: 20:06

I did every kind of sport, every kind of extreme sport. I did jiu-jitsu till I was in my 60s. I'm in my 70s now and I wrecked my body. I have neck and back and upper back, low back, shoulders, knees, pain. So that's the type of stress, too, that your body responds exactly the same to as if you'd get punched in the face by somebody you know, your boss, or yelled at by your wife or whatever it is. So there's all this stress psycho-spiritual, emotional and there's then there's the physical aches and pains. You have car accidents. You never really resolved it, you know. And what have you? Um, on top of that, remember where I started with the environment. Yeah, that was my business and I know how bad it is there's thousands and thousands of chemicals that were assaulted by.

Reed Davis: 20:58

They've done studies, uh, of, of, uh umbilical cords of babies, finding 300 different chemicals. They've also done autopsies on people who lived on a mountaintop where there's no pollution, baloney. Same thing, two to 300 chemicals in people who live away from the city, away from you know, and so it's ubiquitous. And so you've got the mental, emotional, psycho, spiritual. You got the physical trauma aches and and pains, owies and things like that. And then you've got this chemical assaults on us day in and day, 24 hours a day, everything from mold to you know again, the chemicals. And then there's the, the biochemical stressors of what, the toxins that our body makes, the mere metabolic processes, produces waste, and if you're not properly detoxifying then you throw that on the fire. So that was one thing I wanted to say about stress, and it's in your body. There are some natural ways to get rid of some of each of those things. I could tell you about all the different therapies, but the other thing is, I could show you on paper, I could show you the data, I could show you an adrenal stress profile with the cortisol DHA. You're catabolic. Therefore your sex hormones are out of balance and that's how people feel. Yeah, my libido is gone, I can't build muscle, I have no energy, but you know, then the next thing is that you're with the catabolic state, your secretory iga, which is uh, juice in the gut that keeps you from getting diseases.

Reed Davis: 22:41

You know, everything goes down the pipes, right, we have this um immunoglobulin there that fights infection and it goes down. It lives in a little mucosal layer inside the gut and that mucosal layer gets thin and has less secretory HA. So what happens next? So that's your immune system, so hormone immune. Then you get this dysbiosis, mild at first. Then it gets a little stronger. That's a lack of good bacteria, which you have to have an abundance of, to break down protein. So you chew your food and swallow it and your stomach, you know further, purifies it and starts breaking things down. But when it goes to your small intestine is when it really gets broken down and absorbed into the body, to the villi, or lacteals in the villi, and so that process is diminished. When you have a dysbiosis, and when you have a dysbiosis so you're not breaking down your proteins, it means you're not getting all the amino acids you need, which are the building blocks of everything in your body and they're the parent of all your neurotransmitters.

Reed Davis: 23:49

So now you can really feel like crap because your hormones are out of balance, you're tired and fatigued and your immune system isn't working well and you've got a dysbiosis. You're not bringing out foods, you're kind of malnourished and no wonder you feel like crap. You know, but the standard medicine would be what? How do you feel? Heartburn, gas, indigestion, bloating, constipation, diarrhea, or the famous alternating constipation and diarrhea. So you take pills for it. There's stuff you could take and you're not addressing the cause at all. You're not even thinking about the cause. You're not considering everything that's upstream from there, by the way, we're only at the midpoint, because it just gets worse from there. And again, I can show you on paper the hormones, all the data, the secretory IgA. The dysbiosis shows up in a urine test, so does what comes next, which is there's. Well, there's a step in between, because if you have a dysbiosis, that's not enough good flora to bad flora ratio, so you have more of the sort of unwanted, unfriendly bugs than you have the good, friendly bugs.

Reed Davis: 24:59

Right Then, there's a medical term, I call it bigger, badder bugs. So bigger badder bugs can come along. Those are the parasites and real bacterial overgrowth really unfriendly stuff and funguses and viruses there too and that develops some biofilms. So so now you start getting these permeability issues remember that mucosal barrier has thinned out and it doesn't have enough of the secretory IgA in it and so other bigger, badder bugs start living there and they're excreting and all kinds of endotoxins and things and it starts penetrating through into the inside, basically going into your liver, and it's a somewhat circuitous root, but that's what happens. So you get now you get hyperpermeability and you got now you got a congested liver and the liver is just one of five main detoxifying organs and if it's clogged up, we can show you on paper.

Reed Davis: 26:00

This is what I was trying to get to is I got all the measurements in the dominoes and I can just show you why you feel so lousy and why just treating symptoms isn't going to help you one bit. You have to change your life. You have to change your lifestyle, including how you think about the whole thing, and then so this if you didn't notice, I gave you hormone, immune, digestion, detoxification, energy production and nervous system as our general intake. Those are the general healing opportunities. You could throw in oxidative stress, um so, but that spells h-i-d-d-e-n. So that's hidden. That's why I remember it so well, because it's an easy acronym and it's hidden, it's kind of cute.

Reed Davis: 26:45

But now the? So what's? You know, if you're, mrs smith, and I'm and I just ran five labs and I'm going through all this stuff it's, it's overwhelming. They don't understand the, the downward spiral and the, the cascade and all the numbers and and everything I I do because it's what I do, and my practitioners that I teach. We all get it. Um, but what do you tell mrs smith? You know you explain the basics and it explains exactly why she feels the way she does and and and they're, they're so thankful, clients are so thankful when you explain to them why they and everyone else has said you know, either there's nothing wrong with you or it's just it's that you parasite, you have hypothyroidism, you've got IBD. They'll give a diagnosis and treat that, but they're really ignoring the entire downward spiral and so, or most of it or enough of it that they're not getting better. And so we follow and have people follow.

Reed Davis: 27:45

20 years ago I started telling people what to do at home. That would make the biggest difference in their life, and you don't even need to come in the office. They love me at the office, but that part they didn't like about me so much, you know, um, because I would say look, just go home and eat right, go to bed on time, exercise, reduce stress in every way that we can find it, and we help you find it. Like you know, parasites, bacteria, funguses, viruses, food sensitivities are huge. We can test for that stuff and then take some supplements. Now I don't have my own brand, but I know a lot about them and I've developed some for other companies. So that spells DRESS other companies, so that spells DRESS. D-r-e-s-s. Diet, rest, exercise, stress reduction supplementation. So you have H-I-D-D-E-N. Easy. Here's what's wrong with you. Here's how you fix it D-R-E-S-S. And isn't life wonderful.

Dr. Philip Ovadia: 28:42

So you know, from your perspective, why do you think the allopathic system has such a blind spot for this? Why does it remain hidden? I mean, you know, I think back to medical school and you know I was taught to look at the blood work and you know use that as part of our. You know figuring out the diagnosis, like you said, and then you know, depending on the diagnosis that you came up with, you know that would lead you down a treatment algorithm and you know we were taught to look at blood work. You know there were some urine tests, maybe there were a few stool tests that you know would come into play, but certainly you know, weren't taught to look at these systems you're talking about. You know the hormones and you know, and the autonomic nervous system and doing things like saliva testing and hair testing, and why do you think that kind of divide occurred in the first place? And I guess you know what would your advice be to my allopathic colleagues out there about how they can start incorporating this into their management?

Reed Davis: 30:00

you know, into helping patients ultimately.

Reed Davis: 30:04

It's a really good question and of course, physicians are taught by physicians, who teach what they were taught 20 years ago, and so you have a lag, you know, first of all, between what's available scientifically and what's being done in a general practitioner's office. But the first thing I would say is every single symptom, every single complaint has an underlying cause or causal factors. Now I could complicate it a bit, but let's just because I have a whole theory on that why they gave up looking for the root cause and a lot of physicians. They just don't look because they know how to treat the disease. It's not their job. We don't know why. Idiopathic is the biggest excuse in the world, but if a physician just realizes that every single symptom or something has root causes usually multiple they're not easy to just realize that every single symptom or something has root causes usually multiple they're not easy to find. Some of them may not even be there anymore. Recent research from the University of California, san Diego, says the original stressor, some causal factor, doesn't even have to be there anymore. So you can look for the root cause for a long time and not find it. So it might sound like there's some futility, but aha, I have a solution, but we'll get to that. But the next thing is that vitamins, minerals, essential fatty acids, antioxidants, trace elements and phytonutrients in other words, everyone knows about protein, fat and carbs, the macronutrients, and they're really important, and the micronutrients. Everyone knows about protein, fat and carbs, the macronutrients, and they're really important, and the micronutrients, the vitamins, minerals and other things I just mentioned. They're really really important too. And so physicians get taught that vitamin C prevents scurvy and vitamin D prevents rickets, you know, or whatever it is. So they get taught this sort of general idea that, yeah, they're good, that's good for you. You know, um, we all know that some famous explorer, um, his, his, uh, sailors, didn't get sick because he gave them all a spoonful of lime juice every day. So they got their vitamin c and they didn't get scurvy while the other ships were getting scurvy. So it's so much more than that. You know. Nutrition is so much more interesting and valuable and critical than that. That, oh, it's disease prevention. Um, it's functional, it's functioning, really required to be a good human. And so, number number one all symptoms have a cause or causal factor. Two nutrition is just the most important thing. You just couldn't overemphasize nutrition.

Reed Davis: 32:56

Another thing that I noticed that could be improved upon is kind of whose test results are these? So physicians are trained to look at test results, to go look, and here you got to get those numbers up and get these numbers down and things. You know what about? Who is that person?

Reed Davis: 33:15

I spent 10 years, from 2008, 2018, as a clinical advisor for a laboratory just part time. I just really enjoyed it and it paid me pretty good. So, for a few hours a week laboratory, just part-time, I just really enjoyed it and they paid me pretty good. So, for a few hours a week, I would do clinical advising, so I'd get to talk to doctors hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of doctors and they'd get on the phone to go over a test result. This is all new functional medicine. They're learning this new form of testing, testing, and they would just want to know what's the agent to use, what's the dosage, frequency and duration, and I would, you know? Like, what do I give them? What do I? What do I put? What do I put them on? And I would say I'd frustrate the hell out of them. I say, well, whose test results are these? Well, I don't know. I don't have her file in front of me. Well, well, what's her main complaint? It's something to do with hormones, I think. So they just didn't even know their client.

Reed Davis: 34:12

That's the third thing, besides the underlying causal awareness that nutrition is just the ultimate medicine and that it matters whose test results these are. What's that person do for a living? You know, I've been to physicians. I'm 70. So I've had a couple of things. I went and got checked out, I'm on Medicare, so you go to the person and they don't want to tell you anything. They refer you and that person just wants to poke and prod and doesn't even know what I do for a living. You know I shouldn't tell them either. They'd really hate me.

Reed Davis: 34:48

So, anyway, those three things could improve medicine a lot, and there's more. Don't stop, yeah, knowing the person that's why you're here. Knowing the person you're dealing with. It really matters. And so functional medicine is taking a really good stab at it. They're hiring health coaches, they're getting and if they're trained by me, they're going to be the best health coaches on the planet, because they're going to know all, not just how to health coach, discipline and scheduling and helping and being a good helper person. They're going to have the anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, the lab work and they're going to know a thing or two about nutrition and all the other lifestyle factors. Um, so we were kind of at hidden stressors and dysfunctions. And then the dress protocols, which empowers the person. You know, I couldn't believe my.

Reed Davis: 35:43

The patients in the office where I first started, who became my clients, were putting their health in someone else's hands. You know, that just doesn't seem right to me right there. And when I first started being a practitioner, amazing things occurred. I can tell some quick stories. You know, I had a lady who said she's very happy with our work and she said do you work with kids? So I'm raising four kids, I'm a football coach, you know, part time, volunteer, kind of thing, fifteen years, yeah, I work with kids.

Reed Davis: 36:22

Why? Well, they're trying to send my kid home from school because he's kind of misbehaving. And they said if I don't put him on Ritalin, they're going to kick him out. And I said well, do you think he has a Ritalin deficiency? Which she didn't think was very funny. She said I'm serious, I don't want to put my kid on drugs. I said, well, is this a doctor at the school prescribing medication? No, it's the teacher and the principal telling her, put him on drugs or we're kicking him out. And I don't want to put him on drugs and I said honestly I don't know if I could help her now but let's do some testing.

Reed Davis: 37:03

Was sensitive to, including some foods he was eating, got him off the foods, got him going to bed on time, doing his homework the right time and a lot of lifestyle little things, but mostly those food sensitivities and some chemical sensitivities. So easy to run these labs. Anyone can do it. And I never even met the nine-year-old. Can you imagine putting a nine-year-old on drugs? Doctors would go yeah, I put four-year-olds on drugs and three-year-olds on drugs. It's kind of weird to me. But, um, within three weeks of this kid's new protocol that I just was so to me so natural and just just stuff everyone should do, um, the principal calls me, says this kid, mr Davis, I tracked you down through Johnny's mom. He's not poking the other kids, he's not outbursting a class, he's actually paying attention and improving everything about him and I'm like gleefully listening, you know, kind of a little ego boost, you know, and just that reward you get from helping others and things. And then he goes what'd you put them on? Yeah, yeah.

Reed Davis: 38:09

I'm glad you're laughing Cause I I laughed too. I go huh, Okay, you want the magic pill and there isn't one. So what we put them on was a cleaner, healthier system and lifestyle and help the mom a lot to educating her.

Jack Heald: 38:27

So I don't want to be a pain in the neck, but I'm going to be a pain in the neck, yeah please. You didn't answer the question.

Reed Davis: 38:33

I don't know, so you, you asked me about what do you think happened?

Jack Heald: 38:37

And we're just asking for your educated opinion. What happened with allopathic medicine? Yeah, they forgot about tracking down the root cause.

Reed Davis: 38:46

You can start with patent medicine. Go back to 1903 when Thomas Edison one of the greatest inventors. We wouldn't be talking to each other like this if it wasn't for Thomas Edison inventing the light bulb and thousands of other wonderful things. But he made a mistake. Um, but he made a mistake, he. One thing he said was the doctor of the future will prescribe no medicine but will interest his patient in diet, care of the human frame and things like that. The quote is very, very famous and he was dead wrong. There was only nine drug companies back then. There's about 26 drugs today. There are 1500 drug companies and about 3500 drugs.

Reed Davis: 39:32

Don't fact check me because I'm might be exaggerating slightly, but but it's he's was wrong, as wrong could be that one of the smartest guys in the planet, the doctor of the future, that was 1903, prescribing plenty and not interesting his patient in. So if you want to know what happened, uh, I think it got really easy to just treat symptoms and it's not so easy to get people to change their lifestyle, and so that's what doctors started to do. And then you know, obviously there's lots of research going on how to get rid of those symptoms. It's wonderful to be able to take a pill, and I don't. You don't feel that way anymore. Whatever it was, that that's actually a matter of fact in our world. There's nothing wrong with relief care.

Reed Davis: 40:18

We just don't leave it there, because most of the time you're just making something that was visible, your pain, your complaint invisible. Well, you don't have the complaint anymore. But are the underlying processes still downward spiraling? Oh, yes, they are. So that means you're going to need stronger pills, and we actually started here with you know, pills don't work, take stronger ones. If those don't work, cut the parts out.

Reed Davis: 40:47

There's lots of ectomies going on and so and I've seen, so I, I'm, I'm glad you reminded me of the question. I don't like talking about it all. Right, I see that, but you know, I I kind of don't. It's not my world, I'm not in the allopathic world, I don't. I think it's wonderful if you get, if you're the victim of a drive-by shooting, thank god there's an emergency room you can go to and you get patched up. If you get off a plane from west africa, jack, and your temperature is 105 and you're bleeding from your eyeballs, you're not going to call your nutritionist. You're going to go for the best allopathic nutrition there is and it's right here around the corner, and in most big cities there's 10 of them and you've got all the big systems and they are magnificent at that stuff. They will save your life. So we call that getting on the life preserver. You're drowning, you've got to get out of the pool, you got to get the life preserver. Now you're kind of in our backyard. Now you could be. Now what could we do to help? And if it's gotten that bad, yeah, you need allopathy. We even have our own relief care and there's a period of time when people come to us if they're a real mess. They just want to feel better too. Same thing, they just want to feel better and that's good. So there's all kinds of you know, plant medicine and things have been used for thousands of years. They're relief, pain or more energy or support. So we use supplements to support systems like the adrenals or support digestion, and you can stimulate the immune system.

Reed Davis: 42:36

If you're going on a trip, take some stuff you could also probably more importantly was supplements is substituting for what's missing from food. Remember all those little pesky micronutrients. You know you can't get it all out of food anymore. They've they've ruined the soil and so on and so on. So we substitute for what's missing in food. We can stimulate certain systems as needed. We can support weak systems, and then finally, there is such a thing as self-treatment. Parasites, bacteria, funguses if they're not too bad, you know, and they haven't caused any real pathology yet, you can chase that stuff away with botanicals Really well researched like people spend their lives devoted to just parasites, for instance. And yeah, you can get rid of those little critters without patent medicine. So the answer to your question is I think patent medicine did a lot to move things in that direction, not to mention the advances in um, like you mentioned, the ct scan, you know, testing the diagnostic equipment and there's a there's a bunch of money in it. That never hurts a business.

Dr. Philip Ovadia: 43:57

So, when it you know, functional diagnostic nutrition, as you said, and, uh, you know, maybe nutrition isn't only about what we eat, but, um, what we eat is an important, uh component of that Um, and so talk about your perspective on nutrition. Um, are there, do you think there's, you know, a right diet for everyone? Are there kind of overarching principles that people should be paying attention to? And then you know, what are some of the ways that maybe you figure out the nuances of what one person might need versus another.

Reed Davis: 44:37

I'll make some pretty bold statements on that note because, remember, our formula for success is D-R-e-s as diet, rest, exercise. And they have to be individualized and that's why we collect data, we do the lab testing and for diet, we look do what's called a metabolic typing test. Listeners could relates to who's eating it. So, again, just like, whose lab test results are these? Well, whose diet is this? Because we have things that dictate what our macronutrient ratio should be the protein, fat and carbs. And you know low carb is all the rage and it really started with Dr Atkins back around 1998 or 9 when he wrote the book the Atkins Diet. So I went on it in 2000, and I loved it.

Reed Davis: 45:42

A lot of meat fat, you know I could eat bacon for breakfast and yeah, you do get a lot of meat fat. You know I could eat bacon for breakfast and so, and yeah, you do get a lot of energy and you can feel great. But man, the next person feels like crap on it, and the next person might just say, well, I feel the same. And so diet has to be tailored to to one's nutritional requirements, which are dictated by genetics. It'd be nice if we could. It's hard to do this. But you take your genetically sort of pure tribe like take a tribe, the Bantu tribe in Africa. They're very strict on what they eat. It's what they can catch and kill in their neighborhood. It's what they can catch and kill in their neighborhood. It's what they can catch and kill in their neighborhood, in their tribal grounds area, and that includes plants and seeds and nuts and all the things which are scarce. So they eat a lot of meat and fat. They do fantastic on that. They're healthy. You look at their teeth they're white. You look at their reproductive ability they do just fine. You look at their teeth they're white. You look at their reproductive ability they do just fine. You look at their skin it's clear. Their eyes are clear and white and and so their skin is very, very dark, you know. But they're just perfectly in tune with nature and the diet that that was there for them for millennia, even more years than that many millennia.

Reed Davis: 47:06

So then you take the um, take the uh, let's take the. We could take the eskimos, we could take the ketsuin indians from the uh andes mountains in peru and and chile and stuff like that. They eat corn and potatoes. They grew up on corn and potatoes, their grandfather 500 times back grew up on corn and potatoes. Their grandfather 500 times back grew up on corn and potatoes. So they're carb eaters and they do perfect on it and they're strong, some of the strongest people. They walk up and down mountains all day, right Not to be too, you know, I'm just saying. And they live above 8,000 feet and they do really well on potatoes. They have a potato for every ailment. They have 400 species of potatoes and there's like the village potato expert and kind of equivalent of a witch doctor kind of a thing. But they're very colorful people.

Reed Davis: 47:59

They also eat you know they have some domesticated animals and things like that. They do milk and stuff, but boy, they're carb types. So why is it that the Bantu would die on that diet and the Quechuan would die on the Bantu diet? It's because they have different oxidatives. They produce energy at different rates and quality and quantities on a cellular level and they need the fuel that fuels that type of genetics. So the Eskimo is another good example. How come they can live like on 95% fat protein? Because their oxidative rate is so fast that they have to have slow-burning fuel to produce energy.

Reed Davis: 48:49

Now, once a cell produces energy, do you think you have to teach it what it does with that energy? Not one bit. There's innate intelligence. Cell knows what to do. It knows if it's a brain cell, muscle cell, bone cell, whatever. It needs to be fed the right fuel mixture so it can produce energy at the right rate, quality and quantity. And that's called oxidation. We burn fuel through oxidation.

Reed Davis: 49:15

It's a long, drawn-out, very complicated process and I hated that part of biochemistry. But the Krebs cycle, you know, and the citric acid cycle, these things that tell us that it's it's not the food, it's the person eating it, and this is why some people do so. Fantastic on the incest, the so-called ancestral diet, because they've kind of discovered what their ancestors ate in terms of protein, fat and carb ratios and it's in. The most popular ones are are the high protein and fat. But there's other. They do terrible on that diet, why? It's not the food, it's the person. Now, you, now, I could do a whole, nother part of this.

Reed Davis: 49:59

Just on the micronutrients, because if you think about those bantus, the, the, the seeds and and whatever vegetables, vegetation, low-hanging fruit and and roots a lot of roots out of the ground those have minerals and vitamins based on the soil and it hasn't changed in millions of years. So though that's the kind of combination and quantities and interrelationships, the values there, the ratios there of the vitamins, minerals, essential fatty acids, antioxidants, trace elements and phytonutrients, and the animals that they eat eat those things or eat the animals that eat those things. So their macronutrient ratios are all set in stone. It's bred in their bones. Eat like this, grow up, be strong, be good, whatever it is they want to do and think is cool. It gives them peace, hopefully, and joy in peace, hopefully, and joy, and then so that those ratios plus if it's homegrown from their soils with their proper amount of nutrients and things, then they'd be in pretty good shape, and so that's how it was supposed to be Now, 12,000 years ago, we started migrating, someone invented boats, we started going on long walks and intermarrying.

Reed Davis: 51:30

So today in america it's hard to figure out well well, which, which ancestral diet is right for me. You know, I'm german, irish and, uh, south african or or american, south African or American Indian, or what should I eat? So the mtdietcom test will tell you, because it looks at, it, figures out your oxidative rate. And there's another big factor that there's too much to go into.

Reed Davis: 51:58

But your nervous system is important to keeping that balance between sympathetic and parasympathetic, and it can do it with food. I got a book right here on my desk Biochemical Individuality. This is the first edition, written in 1956. And I keep it on my desk because nothing changes in terms of biochemical individuality. The rules don't change.

Jack Heald: 52:25

So that takes us to the folks who are listening and thinking. Okay, this makes sense.

Reed Davis: 52:30

This guy's a whack job. How?

Jack Heald: 52:32

do I stay away from him? This makes sense. No, those guys are to your left. What do I do next? How do I start getting myself evaluated, tested? What can I do myself? Dec.

Reed Davis: 52:49

Do myself decide decide to take control. Decide you're going to get it back and you're going to understand. Decide you're going to learn and do whatever it takes, because without a decision, nothing happens. If you're just going to think about it, all right, well, go think. All right, well, let us know you know what. You're just going to think about it, all right, well, go think. All right, well, let us know you know what you're going to do. But if you can make a decision, hopefully you still have enough energy and wherewithal to make a decision, to change something and start getting educated. You know and I mean we have some training materials, of course, and you guys do too Amazing stuff, but start getting educated on. I have to. I have to before we sort of I could give them the URL. That would be our call to action for today Go visit FDN training dot com. Slash Dr Philip.

Dr. Philip Ovadia: 53:46

FDN is, you know, functional diagnosis.

Reed Davis: 53:48

FDNTrainingcom slash, dr Philip. So that's, we'll give you some free training, you know, and we won't try to sell you anything unless you really bother us and then. But you know, we've been around.

Jack Heald: 54:03

Don't bother them, or they'll try to sell you something.

Reed Davis: 54:05

It's our mission. We're here to help. But I have to say this because it's part of my sort of flagship understanding of the questions you ask, from all the way back to, you know, our inventor friend in 1903, thomas Edison, to today, to today, people are seeking and they've been looking for what this magic root cause, especially in alternative medicine, root cause has been the mantra. I get to the root cause. Let me give you some news. There's always multiple causal factors, so there isn't one and it can be really far removed from where you're manifesting the problem, really far removed, way upstream. And here's the other thing, and you hear this almost nowhere else these causal factors, all the causal factors, are having an effect on each other. They're, in a lot of it's not singly measurable and A lot of it's not singly measurable. And I'm saying it's not singly measurable, I run a. You know I teach lab work and I'm telling you you can't measure all that stuff. So you need, you have to have a construct to follow, which is in all these years the construct we follow is let's test hormones, immune digestion, detoxification, energy production and nervous system, oxidative stress. So this idea of hidden. Let's get some data and then let's use that as a starting point, and then we'll apply the principles of healing in the dress that are inherent in d-R-E-S-S. That's what heals, and understand too that the body wants to heal. Every cell in your body has an intelligence in it. It's trying to survive. I mean, survival is what cells do if they can, if they're not polluted and destroyed and all these things. So if they're fed, give and destroyed and all these things. So, so if they're fed, you know, give them everything they need genetically to survive and remove everything that's working against them. Sounds simple. But so this, this idea of root cause, I just want to return that. So there's all these healing opportunities, a whole constellation in every person that we meet, in every person. It's a study of one. So what are your healing opportunities? They're going to fall in that, hiddn somewhere, and then apply the principles.

Reed Davis: 56:40

So instead of root cause, I use the word metabolic chaos. You know, it's just. It's just. It really is kind of chaotic. And if you just pictured taking a handful of stones, six or eight or ten stones, and throw them up into a real smooth pool of water, what would happen? You'd get ten rings or eight rings. Those rings would be causal factors, but they're going to go out and spread out and pretty soon, the whole surface. You can't tell which stone was thrown first. It's just a bunch of ripples, it's chaos, and that's what happens in your body. And so without a system of sorting out metabolic chaos, like hidden, uh, it's going to be really hard to sort out. Um, you're going to end up picking one or two things through a specialist you know, I'm here a gut specialist, here a hormone specialist, here, you know, and what have you and it just doesn't perform as well as looking at everything that we can look at.

Jack Heald: 57:46

Makes sense to me.

Reed Davis: 57:48

All right, sign up at the next FDN event.

Jack Heald: 57:53

Well, we'll make sure that the uh, this contact information appears in the show to show notes. Fdn trainingcom slash Dr Phillip. It'll be in the show notes. Okay, phil, um for somebody this guy sure, sure knows his stuff. Exactly, and really paying attention to fall.

Dr. Philip Ovadia: 58:22

And that's why we were excited to have him on recognize how you know it's all part of taking care of, you know, the person and trying to empower the person to. You know, heal themselves and that's a large part of the message that we talk about here. We talk about taking back control of your health and, like Reed said, there's roles for allopathic treatments, but there's also places that those treatments fall short. And you know, I think in these functional approaches I've now come to understand and this isn't something I always understood, but now I certainly understand and appreciate how they can work together.

Reed Davis: 59:12

That's the key.

Dr. Philip Ovadia: 59:13

Exactly so. Thank you, Reed, and you know, I hope for my colleagues out there listening to this, my allopathic colleagues out there listening to this, that we do become more open to incorporating this into the care of our patients.

Reed Davis: 59:35

Thank you very much for that. I would encourage anyone in the healing arts, you know, to consider some of the things that I said with some openness, hopefully, and um, you know, it's really the. The purpose being served is the the health and happiness and joy of our, our customers, if you want to let me put it that way.

Jack Heald: 59:57

Very much so. I think most people are in favor of health, happiness and joy.

Reed Davis: 1:00:03

Except my ex-wife. I don't know that she's really into it that much. Totally kidding, that's enough, it that much Totally kidding.

Jack Heald: 1:00:10

That's a totally another show.

Reed Davis: 1:00:13

All right, I got a new one now, so I don't worry about it anymore. All right, sorry for cutting up so much, guys. I can't help myself, that's okay.

Jack Heald: 1:00:21

Well for Dr Philip Ovadia and Reed Davis of Functional Diagnostic Nutrition, this has been the Stay off my operating table. We are glad you are here. Be sure to visit that site if you feel like you're ready to take your own health into your own hands and really make that decision. That's fdntrainingcom slash, dr Philip, and that is in the show notes, and we will talk to you next time.