Doctors Said He Was “Normal” — His Body Said Otherwise

Welcome to the show. Tired of the hype about living a dream? It's time for truth.This is the place for tools, power and real talk so you can create the life you dream and deserve your ultimate life. Subscribe, share, create. You have infinite power.Hello there and welcome to this episode of your ultimate life, the podcast especially for you to both teach you how, give you examples, and encourage you as you create your ultimate life. A life of purpose, prosperity and joy that you create with your skills, your gifts and your life experience.I'm blessed today to have a gift, a gift of a guest as Dr. Sam Shea, D C, FMCP which are some initials that need to happen with his particular specialty. Sam, welcome to the show.

Thank you, Kellen. It's great to be here.

So I don't do big introductions other than names and we'll just dive in and all of the coolness that you have will, will come out in the, in the conversation. And so I'm going to ask you a question that is always top of mind for me.Because people, we add something to the world, you know, by breathing, we add carbon dioxide, and if we haven't showered, we add body odor or whatever it is. I love talking to people who make choices to add good to the world. So without being modest at all, I'd like you to answer that question.How does Sam add good to the world?

Sure, a couple ways. One is I add, I do advocacy work through my stand up comedy.Even though I, I'm a practitioner and clinician, I do stand up comedy work to advocate for people on the spectrum and for people who are suffering with chronic illness. And so I was born with something called Asperger syndrome, which is a, on the spectrum of autism.And I put together a one hour show called Neurospicy, Love Life and Comedy on the Spectrum that's available for free on YouTube because it's the one hour that I wish I had 40 years ago to share with my, my, my parents, my family, the school, the community, other gatekeepers to explain how my brain worked and how I can better adapt and navigate the normie world.

And I want to interrupt. I've seen it and I love it. So I enjoyed that and I appreciate that. So I wanted not to let you finish talking about it without giving an endorsement.Go ahead.

Totally. And, and for people listening, like, it's clean, observational comedy written in the style of like, Jerry Seinfeld and Jim Gaffigan.So there's no, there's no cursing, there's no politics, there's no Gratuitous body fluid jokes. It's, it's people, the spectrum and normies to watch together. It's. If I was to give it a rating I'd say it's like PG13.Not because of particular language issues but because like the topic's kind of heady but it's clean, observational, a well written comedy and my funny. Thank you. Thank you.Yeah, it's, it's, it's I, I come off, I come off as kind of academic and you know, as I'm talking right now, but I do act outs and, and, and imitate. It's I, I think it's, it's.I'm really, really proud of it and it's, I've actually shared it at the American Academy of Therapeutic Humor as a keynote.This is a conference that Patch Adams spoke at years ago and it's an organization that's been around for over 30 years and they, it was a group to like 250 doctors and whatnot. And it's like my dream is to share like this, like this, this, this section share the reality of what it's like for people like us on the spectrum.But also it has a message and a kind of a to do of how to better integrate us and we all integrate together into society. So.And then I'm working on my second comedy special right now on what it was like to grow up with chronic illness and why I became a functional medicine practitioner and a holistic health practitioner and which is a. And so that's going to be coming out I believe next year. And the.Which is a good segue into the other thing that I do to help bring goodness and elevate humanity as a whole is reducing suffering in terms of people's where they're suffering on their health, but also optimizing their performance. So when we're talking about health, there's actually two separate philosophies of health.One is Western medicine, which the philosophy at its core is how to get someone out of emergency into stabilization.Western medicine came out of triage, out of World War I of is the symptom, the problem and triaging people into like at a risk of losing life, limb or function urgently and we stabilize them. That's like the emergency room. So that's crisis management philosophically.And then functional medicine is described, I describe it as the best of western medicine lab diagnostics with the best of natural medicines, nutrition, lifestyle and diet interventions. So we're not looking at crisis into stabilization. Instead it's helping pe.Functional medicine is Philosophically helping people go from chronic to normal, normal to optimal. So there are two different sides of the health sandbox and the problem.The argument, the arguments between the two is what I see is actually mission creep into the wrong side of the sidebox. So sandbox. So there's different tools and different approaches depending on what the concern actually is. Like I'm not suited for an emergency room.That's not my tools. Not the philosophy, not the approach.And an emergency tools are not necessarily the best or appropriate for things when you're trying to get someone from a chronic, long term thing to get them to normal or to get them from normal to optimal. So I'm just talking the way that I serve in the health field is the chronic to normal, normal to optimal.And the way that I do that is through data which definitely maps and is narratively consistent with me being on the spectrum and just being super like thinking in spreadsheets and whatnot is like, I like data based decisions. And functional testing gives an array of an amazing set of tests that are beyond what a normal Western general practitioner would do.So we're talking looking at tests around like for example, thyroid tests. You go to a general practitioner, usually they only give you like tsh and maybe if you, you ask enough, they'll give you maybe free T3, free T4.But in a functional practice, you look at TSH, free T3, free T4, reverse T3, anti TPO antibodies, anti TG antibodies, and then the other tests that relate to thyroid function and how it affects it, like estrogen, because estrogen, high estrogen dominance can suppress thyroid.Gut testing to look for intestinal permeability, or what's known colloquially as leaky gut because things can leak through like H. Pylori and then create immune response to attack the thyroid. Or we look at mitochondria, or we look at genetics, we look at all these other things that affect. We're not chasing a singular marker.We're looking at what is the entire playing field, the, the entire suite, the entire set of lab markers that look at the person literally as a whole and to, to see like what is going on. Because a lot of people have had the experience of. I went to a practitioner, got a test and they said I'm normal, but I feel awful.And then I'm told to come back when it's bad enough so that we can diagnose you with some pathology.And that's more like the western style thinking as opposed to functional style thinking where we're looking at the gray space between when the numbers are completely out of whack and sometimes they are out of whack. But the gray space, the uncanny valley of health is where you're not within the optimal range, but you're within the quote, normal medical range.

I have a story, I'm going to put a comma right there. I went to a doctor and had this very experienced, an old school doctor and she's since retired and she was okay, whatever.But I'd also gone to an ND naturopath for something or other and he had asked, he looked at the tests that I'd had and blood work and some other things and he said, do you think you could get your doctor to. Because in, in the Alberta medical system in terms of who gets to order tests and the ND can't do that, but an MD can.So he asked me, do you think you get your doctor to do this? I don't know. Give me a sheet, one of the lab wrecks and mark it up, tell me what you want. So I took it to the doctor and ask her if she'd do that.And she freaked out, like literally got angry and started yelling at me and said we weren't going to waste the money, the provincial health care money, we're not going to waste the money doing all these superfluous tests and it doesn't matter, it just was a rant and I had never experienced anything like that. And so I got her, calmed down and talked to her a little bit and I said, well, I was just curious about these other things.And finally I got her to agree to do most of it. There were two or three or four that she took off, but she did.But it was just interesting to see the, the prejudice, the negativity, the witchcraft sort of thing.

Well, there's also a financial element. I practice in a socialist medicine country for eight years.And so there's another element that they're not telling you about, which is socialized medicine manages doctors by exception. So if they, they track everything statistically.So if you are a doc in a socialized medicine system, whether it's Australia, New Zealand, Canada or otherwise, if you order outside the bounds of what is considered standard affair, which is dictated by the pharmaceutical industries and the other medical higher ups, then you're flagged and then you're scrutinized and then you can be shut down.And so even if the things, the tests you can do you should be doing outside the normal standard of care, like what these, what the naturopath asks you to do, there is a non trivial risk to socialized medicine practitioners who order tests in the public sphere to be extremely, to be shut down and scrutinized and just make their life deeply uncomfortable and time consumed from the scrutiny, even if it's appropriate to request it. It's just, it's.They manage by exception and it's like basically getting audited and, and by, and by the, by the professional body and the government together. It's like both of them together. Now you have the government and your, and your medical body scrutinizing you.So there's a lot of, there's a, like, there's a lot of eye of sauron on doctors who work in the socialized medicine sphere to dare step outside the few markers they're allowed to run. Wow.

So anyway, I had that experience. I didn't know about that pressure, but it sure was an emotional thing for her. She had a cow. So I just.When you were describing it, I'm thinking, I know that I had that.

Yeah, I had, I had the whole, the whole reason I brought up thyroid as an example is because that was one of the most formative experiences of my clinical life where, you know, I practiced in practicing in New Zealand. And by the way, there are still goiters in New Zealand.I saw my first goiter within the first month of practice and this woman came to me, she had a goiter and she had every possible sign of hypothyroidism except maybe one out of the dozen. You know, thinning hair, thinning eyebrows, overweight, tired all the time, joint pain, just all the things.And the endocrinologist, the quote specialist only ran TSH which happened to be within quote, normal range. Now normal medical range is roughly between 0.5 and 5, whereas functional optimal range is between 0.5 and like 2.And so she was told her thyroid was quote normal and that she's just depressed and should stop complaining and take an antidepressant. So she was basically medically gaslit.And then she found me and she told me that and I said, we're going to find you an actual functional test that's going to test for everything else, including antibodies to the thyroid, because your thyroid and, and sure enough, she had a whole bunch of the other stuff around thyroid beyond tsh, just out of range. And then there was other issues as well that were affecting thyroid.So that's just like one example of people can have, people can also have normal thyroid but still have signs of hypothyroidism because the thyroid hormone actually affects the Mitochondria, which is the, the power plant of the cell.And this, this like T4 is the four wheel car that leaves the thyroid, goes into the bloodstream and drives down the blood system on the super blood superhighway, pulls into the parking lot of the mitochondria factory, makes that transformer noise from the movies, you know, and then one door opens, turns it from a wheel into a hand. So now it's T3. That's the conversion from T4 to T3. Now that's a one armed engineer.That's button mashing on the controls of the factory to dial it up to burn more calories, to make more energy.So you can have a problem at the thyroid level where the car is not being built, it's having trouble getting there, it's not being converting into the one armed engineer, whatever.And you can have a hypothyroid issue that way, or you can have a problem with a factory being broken or slowed or damaged or lacking nutrients or clogged with, you know, toxins that gum up the machines. That's what happens. Toxins come up the mitochondria. So the engineer can button mash all at once and the thyroid's not going to dial up.So I've seen multiple times people have normal thyroids, even on a functional expanded panel, but they have the signs of low thyroid because it's the factory that's broken, not the thyroid engineer or the engineers getting there. So this is the type of thinking that an experienced functional practitioner has.And then you layer on additional things like genetics, like genetics and mitochondria and gut and thyroid happen to be like specialties of mine. Genetics in particular.I've created genetics tests to help people identify their foundational diet, exercise, nutrients and lifestyle, which, that's the thing that I think is the biggest gap in people's repertoire is like what is their foundational genetics? And whether you're.People, for example, can be genetically tested nowadays to see if they're more suited for a keto style, paleo style, Mediterranean style, or even higher carb style diet. So people have heard these questions like, well, I don't know what to eat and I should do this thing this day and tomorrow the other thing.And another podcast says this, and then halfway through the podcast it changes their mind and it just gets all confusing. And the reality is that a foundational layer of determining your diet is what are you genetically optimized for?And now the genetics exist to tell what's your, what's your general carb tolerance Also, the genetics of are you reactive to caffeine? Like I was? Caffeine induced anxiety and depression.So the people who think they're getting energy from caffeine may actually just be getting a mild anxiety attack and they're calling it energy. So some people like me, are deeply sensitive genetically to caffeine.I quit coffee when I finally realized that basically genetics has held me accountable. Some people are genetically sensitive to things like gluten and lactose and histamine and alcohol and food intolerances.Other people are genetically vulnerable to overeating or over craving sugar or over consuming sugar. Some people may hear that like, well, if I'm genetically vulnerable to that, might as well give up and just pass the Twinkies.Like, no, if you know you're genetically vulnerable to the thing, then you now can control your environment, not your willpower. That's what I'm thinking.

What I'm thinking here as you say that, especially as you were talking about the different diets and halfway through the podcast they change their mind or whatever.I know you're busy and you're writing another skit, but at least there's a skit segment in there about the diet craze, the different kinds of diets and all the kinds of things and you know, acting out the pieces of the, as you discussed, the mitochondria or the little pieces of whatever that react to the different genetic sensitivities. I'm not a comedy person, but there's absolutely a skit in there.

So absolutely. I've got, I actually written down, actually interactions I've had with, with clients over the years.One of them, and this is true, I asked, so how would you describe your diet? Paleo plus rice. And I said, so not paleo.

Right.

So and I also had like people, they would, I'd have them write out. This is a bit, this is my sense of humor and kind of unfair on my part. I would have people write out their diet, like a three to five day diet diary.And like in like a grid, breakfast, lunch and dinner. And then they would come to me, like all proud that they like wrote it all down. And then I, I got this special pen.It was a red pen that had the loudest click. So then I would pick up their paper, put on clipboard, and then I would go full schoolmarm on them. Look at it, look at them take the pen, click it.It was a red pen and then start circling and they'd start sweating over all. It was, it was just theatrics. It Was. It was. It was. It was a bit. It was kind of. And then I pointed out since, like, hey, look, this isn't.I'm not grading a school paper, but this is kind of my sense of humor, so just bear with me. And they got it. That. And then, then they paid attention like they were real. Like they wanted to know what was circled in red.And some people, like, they just don't know. They think like this waking up and having boxed cereals is healthy, but it's mostly just glorified sugar and chemicals.And that's actually what I'm talking about in my set. I'm Talking about my 80s breakfast as a child, which was mostly colorings, chemicals, and carbs. I should probably write that down.That's actually a good phrase.

Yeah, it is. Coloring, chemicals and carbs.

I'm Write that in real quick. Okay. Colorings, chemicals, and carbs. Done. Excellent.

All right. Well, you know, I agree. And there's lots of. Especially the way you do it. Like, you're very skilled at that.So I'm hearing in this description here, when I ask you how you're adding good to the world, you're paying a lot of attention to the. And I love the distinction between Western medicine. People ask me about coaching, and I say the same thing if I.If you're thinking about athletes, because that's easy to understand. If you break your leg, you go to the doctor, they set it and you do some stuff, maybe they put you on some kind of rehab to get it back to normal.But if you want to go to your Olympic level performance, that you don't go to the doctor because the doctor is from busted to okay, and you go to some other program or coach or whatever to go from okay to spectacular. And so that just felt a little bit like the distinction you were talking about there.

Absolutely. And the thing about the thing about today versus like 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago and older is that we now have the testing.Like I said, the functional medicine is the best of Western medicine diagnostics with the best of natural medicine, lifestyle, diet, nutrition.We now have the testing to look at all these amazing markers like genetics, like mitochondria, so that we can now, based on data, optimize, instead of playing this silver, you know, chasing magic bullets and silver bullets games like, oh, I heard on a biohacking thing to try this goji berry juice, you squirt up into your left nostril, but not the right because that would affect the breathing. Whatever. It's.It's like there's all these different tools, whether it's supplements or exercise things or meditation apps or other hacks that are all really helpful in their own way if the person actually needs it for the time duration that it's effective. And so instead of people running and chasing after magic bullets, I would suggest people get a map.Get a map of what is, what is going on in your biochemistry, what is the map of your genetics, what's the map of your mitochondria, what's the map of your gut health.And then you can actually pull in efficiently and effectively and cost effectively the right tools that may sound like it worked, that all these other tools that people are recommending on, whether it's, it's podcasts, books, TV shows, whatever there, they can all be useful, but only in the right context and in the right concert of other things. Because some people need more than one thing and they can't just rely on the one thing.And that this worked for this one person and now they've made a whole business out of it. And this, this is the difference between trying a thing versus actually finding, mapping your thing. And that's what I'm encouraging people to do.

I, I love that. And I'm going to, I, I, I want you to take a minute here.And so I'm hearing you say that and I think to myself, okay, wow, a map, a map of whatever it is, what I am predisposed to or not. Not just illness wise, but all this other stuff.So where does a person, if someone hearing this says wow, I need a map, okay, do I look up, do I go to chat GPT and say where do I get a genetic map of everything in the universe about my body? Obviously not. So then what you have to, you.

Have to have the pro plan for that to answer that question, I think.

Yeah,.

So, so where you go depends on a couple variation variables. So there's, there's a bunch of different.The best thing to do is to have a guide is, is to have someone who's actually been through like this and this, this journey.Ideally if someone's been through the journey themselves, like that's how I got into functional testing and being a practitioner I am, is because I was deeply sick as a child from 6 to 18. And then I pivoted.I was supposed to be the third generation medical doctor in my family and I pivoted to natural medicine because my parents were offering western medical tools that were not appropriate for the issues that I was, the chronic issues I was dealing with. And these are parents in the 80s, both of them were medical doctors, actually both of them were psychiatrists.So that's an extra layer of special there. And like most 80s parents, their parenting consisted mostly of SSRIs, TV and emotional neglect.And I was basically being told I was basically being medicated into submission as opposed to actually looking at the diet, the lifestyle, the stress and the violence at school, the gaslighting at home and all the, the chemical toxic. I got Lyme disease, I didn't know it till much later when I was younger and mold exposure and all these other things that they didn't.Nothing was paid attention to. It was all just Medicaid into submission and stick in front of a tv. And the.So I went into natural medicine because the western philosophy was not appropriate for my particular case. And I.

What was the shift? How did you do that? Like if, if they did that. And they were both doctors, psychiatrists, which, you know, head doctors and medical doctors.And they were obviously not intentionally trying to harm you or ignore you, but we're doing the approach that they either thought worked or was right or whatever.What was the triggering event or set of events that said, wait a minute, there's got to be a way to do this better rather than just say, ah, this really sucks. I hope someday it changes. Like what, what happened?

Two things. One is I met a mentor named Eliza Bergeson. She was a brain gym consultant and was a form of, it's a form of kinesiology.And she helped help me understand that the mind and the body are actually connected and that I can rewire belief systems by working with my nervous system and how, and how my body would react and just kind of repatterning different, different aspects of my, my brain and my approach to belief systems. So one, I learned that I, I could change my belief Systems.And number two is I read a book by a naturopath, actually, Dr. Bernard Jensen, Dr. Jensen's Guide to Better Bowel Care. And I had terrible, embarrassing gut problems when I first had conscious memories when I was like five, six years old.And I then learned that there's this entire field of natural medicine and that I could actually do something about my gut health that by. With a whole different set of tools that were available to me.And so between those two things, I was like, oh wow, there's an entire different field of medicine that.And I also got injured, I also got injured in, in a dive, in a, in, in a race dive when I was swimming in high school and I went to see a chiropractor for my back Pain. And then I saw like, oh, there's a whole physical medicine side of thing that's not involving surgery called chiropractic.So it's those three things that opened up my eyes.And then I went on to, you know, do pre med in college and holistic health practitioner study on the weekends and evenings and, and then I got into a couple postgrad acupuncture classes just to sit in on.I don't think I was really allowed to be there, but I did it anyway when I was in college and just sat in and just, just learned, didn't actually do any needles, just.Just learned some Chinese philosophy, medicine philosophy there, then went on to chiropractic school, got heavy into functional neurology while I was there, then went into practice, got an acupuncture degree and then got really heavy into functional medicine and functional genetics. The whole time working on myself and then working with very, very complex cases. And when people are looking to, when there's.There's two things to look for. When people are trying to find how to find the map. There's two sets of maps. One is, does a person have a map for your lifestyle?Do they have a map for your labs? Like do they, do they have a way to actually look at and assess what's your lifestyle?Do they look at diet, exercise, sleep, toxic exposure, morning and evening routines and usually they'll have some fun name like the triangle of health or the six steps of this or you know, mine's the ten pillars of health. It can be called the invert inverted hypotenuse of wellness. I don't care. They just have to have a map to understand your lifestyle.Then you have to have a map of labs. And there are five major labs, lab, lab categories. There's gut testing, there's hormone testing, there's mitochondria metabolism testing.Then there's the weird stuff that's metals, molds, toxins, hidden infections. Then there's genetics. So those are the five categories and there's like subcategories under each of them.Like in gut testing there's the big general gut tests and there's sibo and then there's food intolerances under hormones, there's adrenal, there's thyroid, there's sex hormones, there's melatonin under a mitochondria metabolism, you've got to look at organic acids, fatty acids, amino acids, blood sugars, liver market, all that.And under the weird stuff I mentioned, mold, metals, environmental toxins, weird infections, Lyme disease and genetics, you can break down into ex genes for optimal exercise and recovery, genes for optimal diet, carb tolerance, trigger foods, eating behaviors, genes for immunity like vitamin D, zinc and vitamin C. Genes for longevity, health and well being. So these are the genes for inflammation, the genes for free radical damage, scavenging, liver detox genes, methylation genes, cardiovascular genes.And you just want to have someone who has a map that can understand which labs are appropriate and then under what, what lab categories, which specific labs and then ideally they'd be married together. The lifestyle mapping and the lab mapping. And that's holistic medicine, both of those together, labs and lifestyle.It's totally appropriate to if you need to, whether you're constrained or if you got other practitioners involved.Like you can focus on labs or even specific labs with certain practitioners, but you really do want to get someone to coach you and work with you on the, on your mapping of your lifestyle in conjunction with that. Sometimes you have to do one than the other.But as long as people conceptually understand you want to have a map, a blueprint for lifestyle and for labs, and you put those together now you have a more holistic lens on your entire life.And when people do that, then they have a much better capacity and probability and enjoyment of living a joyful, effective life like you opened up in the beginning. Like people talk about, you know, I want to, I want to have, I want to live a great life.Well, you know people, people who have non optimized health do not have as optimal life as possible to do the good in the world they want to see and to feel the good vibes and emotions they have from doing good things in the world.

So I have a question, I'm interrupting you again. So I understand that and you've actually painted a really compelling picture. So I would ask maybe two or maybe three things.One, I completely understand the lifestyle map and I absolutely understand the need to have somebody who's been through this or who specializes in this to ask the right questions.Because if somebody sits around and does their own, they're going to do it wrong or they're going to leave out a bunch of stuff that they don't really think about.

All they're ask chat and then they'll go down some rabbit trail that may not be the best direction. I don't know.

Yeah, all of the above. And then the other one, the labs, you know, you've given the five categories, they're completely understandable and I get it.And marrying those is essential. How many people? Like there's 8 billion people in the world. And if you just count, you know, North America, Australia, New Zealand.You said you were from.

I lived in New Zealand for a bit.

But you're not there now, right?

No, no, no, no, no. I was born and raised in the States and I came back to New Zealand after being there for eight years.I came back to the States after eight years in New Zealand.

So where are you now? I forgot.

So I'm in the. I'm in Colorado.

Colorado. Okay, cool. It doesn't matter. I just wondered. All right, so how many people. What is the population of people that can help you effectively?That's not chatgpt with one or both of these maps. Is there a lot? Is there? Just a few. And it's like, you know, some guru on the mountaintop in outside Boulder or like how many.What's the population of people that can actually help you with one or both of these sets of maps?

So. So around the world there are different systems. Like I was trained in Chinese medicine, but I almost went to Ayurveda college also before that.So different around the world there are systems out there that may, that may not have full access to labs, but there are, you know, Chinese medicine has its own system of diagnostics, the eight limbs of which we won't get into because that's like 300 hour course to describe it. Like, like they have their own system of diagnostics and their own toolkits and it is looking at the whole person.Even if they don't have the labs now they do have. You now have the conjunction of those things of Western labs and Chinese medicine together in coming out of India.Like you've got the whole system of Ayurveda which is a system and you've got Tibetan medicine, you've got, you know, you've got different systems all over the world and, and access to. So that, that those for sure have the lifestyle analysis components to it. They're different components and different, you know, verbiage.But in general they've got the lifestyle analysis there.In terms of the lab analysis that's more of a modern invention where I mean yes, in Chinese medicine they did pulse diagnosis, tongue diagnosis and like other things that, that are more like analysis from a trained practitioner that are, that they don't. They're not labs per se, but they're assessments. That's kind of a bridge between say like, it's kind of like the hybrid between lifestyle and labs.

So I had some experience with that. I had a guy here who was a very, very experienced in Chinese medicine and he was also a veterinarian, the traditional veterinarian.And so he brought the medical knowledge from that. And I went and saw him.In fact, I'd still be seeing him except he moved from Edmonton, Alberta, where I live now, to San Diego because of some other stuff. But anyway, so I understand that piece. I'm just curious about both things. The accessibility and the cost of some.

No, accessibility and cost. It's a real issue. So make no mistake, to the majority of the world, doing, doing air quotes.Functional medicine is definitely, you have to be in a certain financial strata, which is one reason why I educate so widely for free on podcasts, ebooks, you know, courses, YouTube channel, etc. Like it's not like we're not in the way.The current, the way the current incentive structure is designed today in, in the west is like people, people have to invest out of pocket or they get so sick their insurance takes over.And so whereas in ancient China it used to be, which is a system I agree with, this particular business model is that the village would preemptively pay a monthly thing to the village doctor and if they got sick, they stopped the payment stopped. It was, it was a doctor's job to keep everyone well.And if people didn't get well, there was a financial, you know, there was, there was an issue there. So the doctor had an incentive structure to keep people as well as possible. And so it's an incentive structure that makes so much sense.That's not a business model that is, is like around it. It's not, it's just doesn't really exist except in very specific things.And so there's some people that do more like monthly concierge repeating stuff.But like even then like it's on a wider level, it would be a better system for a government to fund people to be well as opposed to pick them up up when they're sick. And we just, we just have the wrong incentive structures right now in the sickness care industry.What we're trying to do in functional medicine is educate and help people get and stay healthy through all the lifestyle changes, which is what I do through all, you know, media appearances like this etc, like can we educate and, and help people?And then for people who want to need more particular scrutiny and, and more individual or group support, then they can work with functional health practitioners in whatever model that they have and ideal. And now what's happening, there's even a democratization at scale. Like now you've got lab companies are now making things wider and wider and wider.I Mean, it's one reason why I love genetics. Like, it's one reason why I run a genetics company and I teach genetics.I write, I design the genetics reports, I teach health practitioners, and I teach certified health coaches how to run genetics in their practice. And you want to talk about cost effectiveness and availability like, it's a cheek swab.We all know how to handle cheek swabs at this point, given what happened in 2020. And it's really easy, really stable to send and analyze.And the good thing about genetics testing is you run the test once, only once, to get the genes that are analyzed within that swab, and then you've got the data and the recommendations for life.So going to your point about, like, accessibility and affordability, genetics is a test you run once and then you just amortize how many decades you plan on living. And the cost comes down to effectively nothing over the decades. Like, it's really, really cheap relative to other testing.You have to repeat to check in on how you're doing on three months, six months, nine months, 12 months, whatever that that is.What you just described is precisely one of the main reasons I focused on genetics, because it now becomes a tool that is way more accessible and affordable, especially when you take the long view that you just do it once.

So that's fabulous. What.

Plus all the money you say from knowing what your actual diet is and what the nutrients are like, like, you, you make, you make up for the cost of it easily within the first whatever, three to six months, year. Because you save so much money and headache and not. And bandwidth of not. Like, well, what diet do I do? Ah, like you just.You save, you know, you save money on supplements, you save money on all this distraction.

Well, I love that and I think that's really, really good. What I'd like to do now.

Is.

I'd like you to tell people where to find you. You've mentioned a lot of free resources on YouTube, so I want you to share that. But.And where your comedy thing is, but I also want you to share where you're not.Free stuff is so that if someone is moved to get a genetics test and you know, you're not offering services to do all the labs, but the fifth one, which you said, which was genetics, sounds like something you do as a business model.

Well, I do. Well, I do, I do do the other functional labs as well. But the thing that I'm just emphasizing that's scaling out widely is the genetics testing. So.

So tell us how to find all of this stuff.

Sure. So the YouTube will start there. Just put in YouTube, Dr. Samshay. It's D R S A M S H A Y.And if you just put my name, Dr. Sam Shay into YouTube, you'll find my channel. You'll find I lost count of how many interviews I've been on at this point. And on my channel there is a comedy playlist called Neurospicy.And that's where you'll see there's a 12 minute highlight reel, there's the full one hour show. There's little short clips that are fun to share. Especially the little clips are like Asperger's on a date. Like that.That one is always a crowd pleaser, really funny and anyone who's been on date with someone on the spectrum is like, yeah, that happened. So. And I've done that. I've done the thing.

Yeah, yeah, I get it, I get it. I love it. So that's fabulous.

So that's YouTube.And then there's for the practitioners and health coaches out there that are wanting to incorporate genetics into their practice in a really efficient and effective way, go to fitgenesusa.com f I t g e n e s usa.com and you can become a practitioner. And then I train, I train the practitioners how to run genetics are just life transforming.I mean changed my life in multiple ways, identified my real diet. I, I figured out I was a hyper inflamer and I had crippling joint pain in my hands as like an 80 year old but I was in my 30s.And then once I figured I was a hyperinflamer genetically the recommendations from the genetics now I've got rid of all the pain in a couple months and I haven't had the pain since. So that's just one example.Then there's for people that are interested in actually doing the genetics tests themselves, then they just go to the DNA decoded.com T H E the, the DNA decoded.com all one word, no hyphens or anything. And then there's, there's the gold program and the silver program. And then people can put in code gold 100 for 100 bucks off the gold program.It's my company.And then, and then if they're interested in the more functional side of things, they would go to drsamshay.com and that's where there can schedule a chat to see what people, what people's goals and interests and concerns are. So there's a lot of websites there. But you know, I'm there's, there's a lot of good I want to do in the world.And, you know, it's hard to cram it all into one website.

I completely love it. I support it. So let's just ask one final question, and that is, what didn't we talk about that you would like to leave listeners with?What kind of either advice or encouragement or whatever. What, what didn't we do that you want to share?

So the, the, the primary, the primary thing that I have found, people who are struggling with, whatever it is they're struggling with or they're wanting to be better at, whatever they want to be better at is work with experts. Like, like, if you can work, like, work with a guide, work with a coach.And if you can afford, if you can afford working with someone individually, do that. If you can't, then consume all of their free content online or cheaply in books or online courses or whatever it might be.But working with people who are farther along in the place that you want to go is going to really shorten your timeline and ultimately save you a lot of headache and a lot of money and a lot of effort compared to if you try to do this on your own. We're drowning in information right now, and we're also losing.Yes, AI is very tempting, but in a day where we're losing communities and replacing them with networks, it's really important to have a real life flesh and blood person that has modeled where you want to go and where you've come from so that you can, you can live the most fulfilling and fun life that you can.

Thank you. That's fabulous advice and I love the. We're replacing communities with networks. That's a nice visual.Sam, I want to thank you for sharing your heart, your obvious commitment and passion and your love with us today. Thank you.

Thank you, Kellen listeners.

I want you to go back and listen to this. Sam said a lot. There's a lot of stuff he gave a lot of websites. They'll be in the show notes.Yeah, but, but go back and listen to this because he's speaking from a point of view of one who has walked the road and found the pitfalls and done the research. And that time compression thing is real and it's powerful and it is one of the best ways to get moving on creating your ultimate life.Right here, right now. Your opportunity for massive growth is right in front of you. Every episode gives you practical tips and practices that will change everything.If you want to know more, go to kellenfluermedia.com if you want more free tools, go here. YourUltimate Life ca Subscribe Share Stand with.

Your heart in the sky.