What is the Best Diet to Lose Weight?
Q: Do you think there is a “Best Diet to Lose Weight?”
A: Having been a student of health and fitness for 25 years, I can tell you for sure, that the best diet to lose weight, is the diet that is right for your body!
If you are researching the best diet to lose weight, then you have probably tried several different diets with mixed results. The average person that has difficulty managing their body weight struggles with weight loss their entire life, because they are not following a diet that is right for their individual and unique body chemistry. That is right, the best diet is the diet that optimizes your body’s internal biochemistry naturally. What kind of diet does that you ask? The same kind of diet that will decrease inflammation, improve and optimize hormone function in your body, improve and stabilize blood sugar spikes and dips, and the same kind of diet that gets you healthy!
Every-time I write and teach weight loss to patients and potential patients I get on my soap box and feel as if I am preaching, but this is the truth folks, and there is no way around it… you have to get healthy, and as a direct result, you will lose weight as a natural and healthy side-effect! Isn’t that a novel idea… actually address why you are overweight or obese and you lose weight as a side-effect. Really, shouldn’t getting you healthy be the approach every doctor and diet takes?
I don’t want to be to harsh, because I believe every doctor means well when they work with people to help them lose weight, but the truth is, you have to know what health IS, if your goal is to help people lose weight by getting them healthy. You already know this, but let me share with you something important… doctors don’t get ANY education on nutrition in medical school, none! As a mater of fact there is a petition right now that is trying to get nutritional training added to medical programs. Isn’t that scary? It is unbelievable to me that the people we go to for our health, that we look to for advice on chronic diseases that are the leading causes of death in the United States, know next to nothing about the primary causes of those disease… diet and lifestyle! In reality, the fact our primary care physicians know nothing of nutrition or the underlying drivers of many chronic disease processes is tragic, and misleading… after all, they have the public trust.
Why is my knowledge any different? In addition to being Board Certified in Integrative Medicine, studying health and fitness for 25 years and being an aggressive self educator in Functional Medicine and a dedicated life-long learner, I have had to help myself and my family. When you have a personal experience with health problems that no one else can seem to fix or give you good answers about that actually makes sense, if you are like me, then you become your own advocate. My own personal experience has brought me to this place in my life, and given me the opportunity to share what I have learned with the world.
I created the presentation below on what I believe to be the best diet to lose weight. It should be no surprise that what you will learn in this presentation is that the best way to lose weight is to focus on getting healthy, and you will then lose weight as a side-effect of good health. This approach works, but it isn’t a pill, or a fad diet… it is for people that are ready to change their life for good!
Welcome to what I believe to be the future of true “Health Care.”
Have you heard of Body Contouring Light Therapy? It is the fastest way to spot reduce fat I have ever seen. You can learn about it here.
Best Diet to Lose Weight – “The Mystery of Weight Loss” Transcript
Weight Loss Program – True Health Weight Loss
[Start [0:00:00]
Hi, I’m Dr. Brad Shook! I’d like to welcome you to my presentation on the mystery of weight loss where we will discuss the best diet to lose weight.
Really what we’re going to talk about we’re going to talk about a lot of the information that people have been given that is really just outdated science. I’m going to tell you right now that what I’ll go through and what I’m going to cover is going to upset some of you because you’re going to realize that a lot of the information that you thought was you should be doing is actually probably causing you some problems and difficulty losing weight.
My Story
As we get into this, I want to talk about first a little bit about my background and how I started working with patients that are having difficulty with weight loss and metabolic problems or issues with their internal biochemistry.
Now I want to go through my story but I want to tell you I’m a board-certified chiropractic physician. I love to talk to my patients about why I am a chiropractor because a lot of people come in and they think, “You’re a chiropractor but you’re doing weight loss or you’re dealing with someone that has an inflammatory condition. Why are you doing that?” Really it’s not that much of a stretch if you look at my background and when you look at the education and the continuing education that I’ve done.
First of all, chiropractic is a natural healing profession. The entire profession is based on the idea that the body has a capacity to heal and it’s not just spine unless people want to get pigeonholed in back doctors. Most people don’t realize that actually to practice chiropractic today, I had to go through basically a pre-medicine curriculum, which included organic chemistries and college physics, and I have a four-year bachelor’s degree.
Then after that, I went onto chiropractic college, which was another 4 years for my doctoral degree. Then beyond that, I’ve done extensive postgraduate training and a lot of that training is in functional diagnostic medicine and integrative medicine. I have a board certification in integrative medicine. Really integrative medicine looks at the person as a whole and functional medicine and integrative medicine seek to identify what causes, the drivers of disease processes and help people to work backwards to heal their body naturally so that they can be healthy. The doctorate degree, we take the same classes that medical doctors take. We just don’t take pharmacology. When we talk about my background, my personal story and how I started treating patients that have metabolic issues with weight loss and I work with patients that have inflammatory conditions is because I had to learn how to help myself and my family members.
Now my additional postgraduate training is I’ve done hundreds of hours in continuing education in functional medicine, and I spend one or two weekends per month going to postgraduate education. I spend a lot of time away from my family, a lot of time away from my practice, so that I can help my patients. I want people to heal and I want to do the best job that I can for everyone that comes through my door.
Question: So how what I do is different?
Let’s talk about how and what I do is different and the way that we approach weight loss and obesity. There is no one-size fits all best diet to lose weight. The first thing is I look at the whole person. As I said with integrative medicine and functional medicine, you look at the whole person, and there is a method to it. You look at the whole person. We do that with a very extensive history, and that means basically we’re going to look at all of your different systems. We’re going to look at what’s going on with you as an individual, and we can also do lab testing that helps us with better understanding what these problems are.
But the first thing that we look for is inflammation or autoimmunity. We do that because inflammation or autoimmunity is like I talked to you it’s like an eight-legged octopus. It has its fingers in everything. It can influence receptor sensitivity for insulin, for your thyroid hormone. Basically what that means is they don’t work as well in your body. It affects every physiological process that you have inflammation. It does so because of things called cytokines and those are inflammatory chemicals when you have inflammation that will affect your endocrine, which is your hormonal system, your nervous system, every system in your body, your digestive system. Everything is affected by inflammation, so we look at that first because that is something that we want to address.
If we calm down the inflammation and autoimmunity, we look at anemia. Do you have low red blood cell count because that affects your ability to deliver oxygen to all the tissues of your body? Every cell of your body needs oxygen and blood sugar to function. Without oxygen, if you’re anemic, you won’t have normal physiology. You won’t make normal hormones. You won’t make normal neurotransmitters. You can’t have the energy that you need to have an optimum metabolism.
Then we look at dysglycemia. Are you hypo – low blood sugar – hypoglycemic or hyper? Do you have insulin resistance? What is happening? Do you have diabetes? What is happening that is causing you to not have normal blood sugar regulation?
Then we look at gut and liver problems.
All of these things are important as a priority. The most foundational thing is the inflammation. We look at anemia. We look at dysglycemia. Then we look at the gut and the liver. You’re wondering like, “Why would you consider the gut when I’m trying to lose weight or why would you look at the liver?”
This is one thing that not a lot of people know when you study functional medicine, you study integrative medicine, you look at how the systems of the body interact. Everything is connected. That’s the main thing you need to know. The liver for example when you make thyroid hormone, thyroid hormone is primarily the least active hormone, which it doesn’t have a very strong effect on the body is T4. T4, 60 percent of it is converted to T3, which is what makes the cells and the metabolism pick up in the liver, so that in converts there. If your liver is not healthy, you may not be getting good conversion of T4 to T3 and therefore you appear to have enough thyroid hormone, you’re not getting the physiological effects from it. Can you see why it would be important to look at the liver and the gut if we have metabolism issues as well?
Beyond that, we look at fatty acid metabolism. The reason that we consider fatty acids is because fat is the building block for so many things in our body. You can’t have normal testosterone and estrogen, which are the male and female hormone sex hormones without optimal fatty acid metabolism. You can’t absorb your fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K. There are numerous, numerous problems with poor fat absorption because it really creates a lot of issues.
We look at the person from this perspective. If we address inflammation or autoimmunity or basically your body attacking itself, which creates inflammation, then we look at anemia, dysglycemia. If we work on these things in this order, in this priority, we can help to improve your systemic health. Your metabolism increases. Your energy levels increase. You lose weight. You feel better. You sleep better. You have more mental clarity. This is the way to look for true health. So many people have these problems and they’re just put on medication after medication with no real consideration of what is driving that process, and we’re going to talk about some of the drivers of these processes in the next few slides. Don’t get caught up in trying to find a magical, best diet to lose weight… remember, it is unique to you, and that is my goal, to help you figure out what your best diet to lose weight is.
3 Goals of this Presentation
I have a few goals in this presentation for you.
Goal #1. Reinvent your life. I want to reinvent your life. What I mean by that is I want this information, I want to empower you. I want to give you another perspective on healthcare, on weight loss, on your body that you didn’t have and you weren’t aware of before. I meet people every single day and my patients every single day that I share this with. Almost none of them have heard of looking at your health in this perspective, yet functional medicine is a branch of medicine that’s exploding in growth. Integrative medicine is exploding in growth.
We talk about integrating Eastern and Western approaches to healthcare and that’s what you see in a lot of cancer treatments. When you look at the body as a whole, chronic disease processes whether it be obesity or whether it be other inflammatory conditions, or cancers. These are all rooted in dietary, lifestyle, chronic drivers of those processes, which there are numerous drivers of those processes that we’ll talk about a little bit more. My goal is to give you insight into your health like you’ve never had before, so that you can understand and be empowered and change your life for the better, not short term improve your health, lose weight long term.
Goal #2: Add maximum positive impact on every human being I come into contact with. Second, I want to make a maximum positive impact on every person I come into contact with every single day. I do that because that’s really a mission of mine. If I can affect one person’s health, I know that will affect the people that is family or their close friends that will then in turn affect those people’s friends. It’s a ripple effect. It has an impact on our community. It has an impact on society and overall, it has an impact on improving the entire world that we live in, and I mean it’s one person at a time, and that’s how you have to make a difference, and that’s what I want to do. This is where we’re starting.
Goal #3. For you to have an exit strategy. My third goal is for you to have an exit strategy. So many people are chronically sick, so many people are obese and have so many problems as a result of that obesity. I mean they can be anything from physical problems to psychological problems that I want to give you an exit strategy. I want you to be able to get off of medications if you’re taking them. I want you to be able to enjoy your life and have a way out of being chronically sick. Let’s get to your chronically healthy. Let’s get you so you’re able to enjoy your life and do the things you want to do. Those are my goals for anyone that’s watching this is to be empowered and to learn a new way, a new perspective on health.
People’s Frustrations with their Weight
I want to talk about some of the frustrations that people have with their weight. People are told that they need to move more and eat less. If you have normal physiology, then moving more and ‑ not necessarily eating less ‑ eating the right foods can help you. This is told to people and they just feel like it’s their fault and the fact is that you have to look at each person individually. You have to see what’s happening with that person. Is there a metabolic problem that’s interfering with their ability to have normal metabolism. We see that so much and that is definitely the case more than anything else.
Then you do the right things to lose weight, but it just doesn’t work, and it’s frustrating. It’s defeating and you feel like it’s your fault. This is why I’m doing this because we can help you to get answers to some of these questions and figure out why you’re not responding as you think you should.
How many believe that exercising more and eating less just doesn’t work for everyone?
If you believe that eating less and moving more is the answer, I’m going to tell you that you’re wrong about that because your hormones and your metabolism and your internal chemistry affect your ability to lose weight. I mean just ask anyone that’s diabetic, that takes insulin, and they will tell you that they can exercise, but they’re still gaining weight or they don’t lose weight because that’s a hormonal issue.
The insulin being high puts their body in fat storage mode all the time, so it doesn’t matter. Anything that they consume gets converted to stored energy, which is fat because that’s the job of insulin. You need to have an exit strategy to get off of insulin if at all possible if you have the capacity to make it naturally because it’s very, very difficult to lose weight and it tends to perpetuate abdominal obesity and drive you more into that disease process.
We all know that this is true I mean that it doesn’t work for everybody to move more and eat less because we all know a lot of people that are skinny that can eat anything they want, so why can’t you eat anything that you want? It’s because it’s metabolism. We all know of someone that’s obese because that works out all the time but they don’t really lose weight. That’s metabolism. That’s an internal chemistry. That’s internal biochemistry, and that’s a unique thing you have to look at you as an individual to better understand what’s happening.
You’re not Alone if You’re Overweight or Obese
Listen, if you’re overweight or obese, you’re definitely not alone. This is staggering, folks. In the United States, 34 percent or 1 in 3 adults are obese while 17 percent of our children, which is 1 in 6, are obese. Sixty-eight percent of adults and 33 percent of children are considered overweight. The rate has doubled since 1980 and the rate of obese children has tripled since 1980. If we’re doing it with all the money that’s spent on healthcare and all of the advice that we hear and all the new drugs and everything else that we have at our disposal, why are we getting sicker and sicker? Why are we getting fatter and fatter than we were better?
I say that because it is something that it doesn’t make sense why are we getting sicker if we spend all this money and do all these things? I will tell you. Before this presentation and when I give this presentation, they’re overweight or obese, they thought it was their fault and people have told them it was their fault. Spouses or people that didn’t know better told them you’re fat because it’s your fault. You’re overweight because it’s your fault. It’s hurtful and it destroys your self-esteem.
Here’s the facts: you’ve been provided with inaccurate or bad advice, and a lot of bad advice is very outdated. What we used to think is no longer true, and what I want to share with you is how the science has changed and what we know is different. I think some of those things that we were told in the past, now we have a lot more insight into why some people can exercise and they can’t lose weight, why some people can eat anything they want and they don’t have weight gain. That’s the individual biochemistry of the person. A lot of that is due to chronic problems with their biochemistry that can be addressed if you approach and you understand what is happening.
Outdated Science: Some Examples
Let’s talk about some examples about this science. I’m not going to go into this in great, great detail here, but I’m just going to touch on some things that will illustrate outdated science so you’ll know exactly where I’m coming from.
Let’s talk about grains, wheat, which are wheat, rice, corn, bread, cereal, and pasta for example. You’ve been told that grains are for years the stuff of life that US government 6 to 11 servings a day, and it’s the main source of calories for working muscles, and that you need it because of nutritional value. What we know today, scientifically what we know is that grains drive excess insulin production, which I said already insulin causes you to store fat. Most people have allergies or sensitivities. One-third of the population are believed to be gluten-intolerant, which they have a sensitivity and creates inflammation and immune response.
These whole grains are actually what you think they’re supposed to eat. You’re supposed to eat whole grains because of the fiber content are actually worse due to they tend to be very inflammatory and they cause issues with digestion, which we’ve all been taught, “Well, you’re supposed to eat it because they’re fiber. It helps to keep you regular.” We’re finding out that with grains, that it could actually be causing you problems with your metabolism and with your digestion and overall health.
Saturated animal fat, it’s been one of those things when you talk about saturated fat, but it’s a bad thing. For years in the ‘80s, it was all carbohydrates. They thought you should eat all carbohydrates and what happened in the ‘80s, everyone got fatter and more sick because it promoted a carbohydrate-rich diet. What we’ve been told of saturated fat is that we should limit intake, that it increases heart disease risk, that eating meat makes you fat, and that you should replace the saturated fat with polyunsaturated fats like vegetable oils.
What we really know is there is little or no association with heart disease risk, and there’s a Framingham Study and the Nurses Health Study, one was in Massachusetts to look at the entire population and prove this and we know that it should be a major dietary product source because it promotes metabolism, increased metabolism. It improves stable energy levels. It is essential for the normal sex hormone production, which are your testosterone and estrogen – a number of different things.
You can see cholesterol is another one. Cholesterol, you’ve been told to limit intake, that elevated amounts are associated with heart disease, and that you should even use statin medications before you have a problem if you have a family history. We know that science tells us that cholesterol is essential for metabolic processes. It’s essential for the formation of your male and female sex hormones again. It’s essential for normal cellular metabolism, for the wall of your cells of your body that they need cholesterol and fat. When you reduce it and you take statins, that it can disastrous side effects systematically through your body. Those are just the scientific facts of cholesterol.
I mean you talk about eggs. You’ve been told eat the white, that it creates high cholesterol, and it creates a lot of other side effects. We know now that there is no correlation between heart disease and cholesterol. It all has to do with inflammation. The inflammation in your body can cause cholesterol to stick to the arterial walls. We know that the yolk of the egg is extremely nutritious. It’s much more nutritious than the egg white. These are some of the things that are still talked today that you should avoid this stuff and this is perpetuating and promoting a lot of metabolic problems and chronic disease in my patients and in people in general. If you’re trying to lose weight, a lot of this is terrible advice.
Fiber – I’m not going to belabor this point, but basically fiber, if you eat too much fiber, it can actually cause nutrient deficiencies because too much fiber in the GI tract will actually pull vitamins and nutrients out of your system and we all eliminate it. It’s good if you have fiber from vegetables and from fruits, but excess fiber from grains especially create nutrient deficiencies and it can actually interfere with your GI function, which is contradictory to what most people are taught.
Where has all the Great Advice Led Us?
I want you to understand that a lot of the science is just plain outdated. If you think about all of the current science and things that are taught today and what you’re being told, where has this gotten us? Where are we as a country? These are just staggering facts. In 1997, the US was ranked 34th in healthcare, okay 34th. In 2000, we ranked 37th. In 2007, we ranked 48th. This is among industrialized nations according to the World Health Organization. In 2009, we ranked 50th. We ranked 41st in life expectancy in 2009. How is it that we spend more money than the other industrialized country by like 10 times? We have more pharmaceuticals. We have more doctors. We have the best healthcare, yet we are sicker and we are getting more and more sick every single year.
If the approach that we have to health is actually working, why aren’t we the healthiest? If spending more money is the answer, why aren’t we the healthiest country in the entire world? We should be! You got to look at this and you got to ask yourself what are we doing? Is our approach to healthcare actually working or why are we doing what we’re doing? I can tell you that this is a broken system.
USA Health Statistics
These facts are very sobering. One in four people will die from heart disease. One in four will die from cancer. One in three people will develop diabetes. One in three women are considered clinically depressed. One in six couples are infertile. One in six kids have a neurological condition. One in eight people have an autoimmune disease where their immune system is attacking their own body. These are all chronic diseases. These are diseases of diet, lifestyle, and things that have to do with chronic infections and underlying metabolic problems that are not being addressed in our current medical system. They’re not just not! I mean the doctor comes in and has 5 minutes for you. What are your symptoms? Either order a test or write a prescription. Test comes back. It’s either buy a prescription or refer you to another specialist who’s going to order another test or write a prescription or they’re going to replace or remove something. There’s no appreciation for getting the body healthy.
Let me just step back for a second because I want you to know that I mean I have medical doctors in my family. I have a lot of friends that are medical doctors, and they mean well and they understand that the system is not helping the chronically diseased. But they’re tied to what the insurance companies will do and they’re married to that type of practice. If they wanted to do something different, you’ll have to spend more time. They can only spend a 5 to 10-minute office visit or they can’t pay for their practice.
We’ve never been sicker than we are today, and you have to look at this, and you have to wonder what is going on? We spend more money than anybody. We take more medications than anybody? Why are we such a sick country? You’ve got to understand something is wrong with the advice that you’ve been following. I think you realized that with all the statistics and what’s going on with our country that something is wrong with the way that we’re looking at health and the advice that you’ve been following.
Write This Down!
You need to write this down. The advice that you’ve been given is outdated, it’s wrong, and it’s been making you unhealthy. Here’s the thing: you know a lot of the science is outdated, but people are still getting dietary recommendations that are from the 1980s that have to do with eating these grains that tend to be inflammatory. I mean the latest science is clear on this stuff.
You got to keep this in mind: you’re overweight because you’re unhealthy. Your weight gain is a symptom of metabolism and metabolic problems. It’s not the other way around. You got to improve your health if you decide that you want to lose weight and keep it off. You need to have someone that can help you find what’s causing you to be unhealthy and overweight and that is exactly what we do in this office. We look at you as an individual. We look at your different metabolic problems, and we help you to figure out how can we support you to get you healthy and you lose weight as a side effect. We see it all the time even when I’m dealing with someone who has an inflammatory condition and I’m working with them the same kind of approach to work on their body’s health, decrease inflammation. They lose weight half a pound to a pound a day. We’re finding true health with them. Their body is getting healthier.
What Makes my Program Different?
What makes this different is its different not a one-size-fits-all. We look at you as an individual. We look at your metabolic problems. We order labs to determine exactly what’s happening with you. It’s not exercise based. It’s not about calorie restriction. There’s no meals. There’s no calorie counting. There are no quick fixes. This is something that we’ll take a little bit time, but it is about getting healthy. It is about true weight loss. It’s about helping to find why you’re unhealthy and really optimizing metabolism, so that you can lose weight and burn fat naturally.
A lot of the stuff that we teach is on the right foods for you. One of the things that I’ll do is I help people to determine foods that they may have sensitivities or that are causing an inflammation within their body. There’s a wide variety of problems that can occur with some of the dietary consumption, but we help you find the right foods, you make the right choice so that we can get you back to a life that you want and that you deserve.
I can tell you that what we do is not for everyone. If you’re not willing to change your current habits, you’re not willing to take responsibility for your health, then I’m sorry but there’s just no way that I’m going to help you. Because this does require that you change some habits and that you take responsibility for your health and that you do a lot of the work and the information that I give you. You have to be able to take my guidance and be willing to make changes in your life to really find true health.
Even when we talk about like bypass surgeries and whatnot, I mean I can’t tell you how many patients I’ve seen that have had bypass surgeries that their health has declined dramatically and they have chronic anemia. They cannot absorb their vitamins and nutrients. They have all kinds of issues related to their bypass. Some people will tell you it’s the best thing that ever happened to them, but I’ve seen a lot of people that are young that are really having serious complications from the surgeries and that’s well documented. I mean you can find information on that on our website and just by looking on the Internet.
Why are you struggling to lose weight?
We’re going to identify why you’re struggling to lose weight and this is the thing: all of the systems of your body work together. I call it whenever someone has a metabolic problem, a web of physiological dysfunction because the physiology of how your body works is all related. This is the diagram that I use to illustrate this because this is a diagram that shows arrows that connect different systems of the body and how they’re interrelated whether it be how inflammation from one system influences another or how the immune system can be irritated and exacerbated through food sensitivities or through autoimmune diseases.
All these things with gut dysfunction can be influenced by decreased hydrochloric acid in your digestive tract and how hormone function can be for example conversion of your thyroid gland hormone from T4, the least active form, to T3, the active form in your liver. However, if your liver is stressed, you can have problems converting. There are ways that you can go on and on and on with nutrient deficiency and mitochondrial dysfunction, which is a cellular dysfunction to all kinds of hormonal feedback systems. The list just goes on and on. What you have to do is you have to understand that with the study of functional medicine and integrative medicine, there is a method to this madness.
Is there a pill for this?
But one thing that is not there is there is no cure for this because this is actually your body’s systemic function and there is no pill to fix these problems. When we talk about this web of dysfunction, I want you to write this stuff down. To determine what’s going on with you, we have to take a good history. Most likely, we’ll need to order expansive lab testing, the more expanded you’ve ever had that surveys your physiology for declining health or for problems. I’m not just looking at what your insurance will cover. I’m looking at what do you need so we can determine how to help you regain health and as a side effect, lose weight.
Metabolic Assessment
I talked about something called a metabolic assessment form. It’s one of my intake forms that we use, and it helps to ask specific questions about different systems of your body. It asks questions for example about your gut or your GI tract, and the reason that we look at that is because it is a common source of inflammation, and it can be inflamed due to bacterial overgrowth, yeast infections, parasitic infections ‑ a number of different things that can occur and occur in a lot of people. That is almost always caused by these different bacteria or stomach acid imbalances. You can have something called intestinal permeability or you can even have celiac disease ‑ that’s a food allergy, sensitivities to different things that you’re consuming.
Really the only way that we know that is we can take a very good history, but a lot of times, we have to get more advanced laboratory testing. That’s really the only way that you can get to the bottom of it.
People ask me, “You know, my GI tract, how does that affect my weight? How does that cause any weight loss problems?” That’s what I’m going to illustrate here. Your GI problems, an inflamed gut will create systemic full body inflammation. You don’t just have inflammation in your digestive tract. It is systemic if you have an inflammation in your gut that causes an increased stress response.
When you have systemic inflammation, that creates stress response and your adrenal glands and your kidneys will release cortisol, which is a stress hormone. Cortisol stimulates your muscles and liver to release stored blood sugar, so it’s going to raise your blood sugar. In turn your insulin your body will produce increased insulin, which is a hormone to lower blood sugar. If you’re chronically inflamed, you’re going to have chronic increase in insulin.
Insulin will cause your body to store any of the calories that you’re consuming and it will drive you into insulin resistance, which pushes you into metabolic syndrome and obesity. It can even lead to diabetes. That’s how your gut and inflammation in your gut can cause obesity and those are all literature-proven physiological realities that we know.
We look at other things in the gut. We look at blood sugar. We want to make sure that it’s not too low, not too high. It’s critical in hormone production and in neurotransmitter and chemical production. We got to maintain blood sugar because we want to keep that insulin nice and low and even.
We’re going to look at your adrenal glands, which I just mentioned. They produce your stress hormone, cortisol. What they do is throughout the day, you produce cortisol naturally. It’s higher in the morning, lower in the evening. We sometimes will order advanced testing to look at your cortisol levels because again if they’re high, you’re going to have higher blood sugar. You’re going to have higher insulin levels, and that will cause you to store fat. We always do this with diabetic patients.
We also want to look at the thyroid because the thyroid gland is one of the primary drivers of your metabolism, and I don’t just look at the TSH marker, which is typically ordered. We look at 10 different markers on the thyroid that can give you much more insight into problems that can be happening with the thyroid gland. When we work with people that have thyroid problems typically Hashimoto’s thyroiditis and autoimmune process, but it’s critically important to consider the thyroid.
Every cell in the body has thyroid cell receptors, so we have to look at the thyroid and your endocrine glands that produce your hormones where everything is influenced by thyroid physiology. Getting back to this web of physiological dysfunction, if you have problems in any of these areas, we need to look at that and we need to address it. We need to support it so that we can help support your body so it can heal and you can function optimally and have optimum metabolism.
Health and Fat Loss
There’s really no secret to fat loss, and I want to tell you exactly how we approach it, and that’s what we’re doing with this presentation, but to lose weight, you’ve got to eat right. When I say you eat right, I don’t mean you starve yourself or any of that stuff. You can’t doughnuts [unintelligible [0:32:28] sugar obviously. You need to do some moderate exercise, but when we start with patients, it’s really all about getting your physiology working correctly, which is what we’ve been talking about.
Once you get the physiology working correctly, I don’t have people exercise unless they’re already exercising, but they don’t have to exercise at all for the first 30 or 45 days. We’re just focusing on getting your physiology correct, then we’ll add in some physical activity. Then we have people lose half a pound to a pound a day just doing the right stuff, eating correctly. The body just self-regulates. It corrects itself. If any of those things are missing, you’re going to have problems losing weight, especially the physiology aspect.
The physiology dictates how you respond to diet and exercise. To know how your physiology is and to what state your physiology is, you have to order some basic tests. Sometimes I’m able to approach it and help people without ordering some of the lab testing, but it’s always typically a much better thing if we can get some of those initial labs. We’ll get better results because we can be more specific in how we support your health.
Have you been told all of your lab tests are normal?
Many people come to me, and we talk about lab testing and they tell me, “My doctor said that my labs are good. I’m fine.”
I just ask them like, “But you don’t feel good. You’re tired all the time. You’re not sleeping well. You just feel lousy even though your labs are normal.” There’s one or two reasons for that. It’s either that they’re not running the right tests and they’re not seeing something that is obviously not functioning properly physiologically or they’re using the traditional lab ranges.
What do I mean by that is that the lab ranges that we typically see when we go to LabCorp or to Quest Labs or one of the labs year you and you get your lab testing, what will come back is you look at your labs. It will show your levels and then compare it to the high and low for that particular physiological marker. What it comes down to is those markers are actually based on averages of people that go into their lab and their lab work done, and they’re at that particular location. Those averages, what are those are they’re comparing people that come there.
I ask you this one question: who gets their blood work checked on a regular basis? Do you think a lot of healthy people go and get their blood work checked every day? They absolutely don’t. You walk in there and you see a little old man on oxygen. You see someone who’s battling cancer. You see other people that are there, that are getting drug testing, and all these people that are typically they’re not healthy population, they’re the ones that are going routinely to get their labs monitored and checked. It’s all those markers and the averages based on unhealthy people, so they’re comparing you to unhealthy and unhealthy population.
What we do is we use what are called functional lab values that are sensitive to reveal problems in your physiology. What I mean by that is if you look at this diagram, you’ll see that this is why your labs look normal but you don’t feel well. The top graph here shows a range, and it shows abnormal low and abnormal high values. In the middle of that green area is the traditional lab normal. That’s what your doctor is looking at now. What we look at if you look at this modern graph, we look at these functional lab ranges, which are more narrow. Those functional lab ranges indicate a more optimal physiology and more optimal state of health that was determined by the American Association of Clinical Chemists.
What we do is we apply a tighter more narrow range so we can see if you’re optimal, we can see if you’re suboptimal, if your health seems to be like these markers are a little skewed in certain areas, then we look to see if you’re outside of the lab high and low. We will have a better insight into systems in decline and areas of your health that are stressed. That is one of the reasons that your labs may look normal but you still don’t feel well, and that’s because they’re not sensitive enough.
This is just an illustration and an example of some of the potential lab markers and the functional ranges compared to the standard range. If we look at like glucose, which is your blood sugar, we want to see it between 85 and 100 on the functional range. Standard labs are 65 to 110. If you came into my office and I saw you with a 73, on the standard range, you’d be fine. On my range, you’re hypoglycemic. That’s blood sugar dysregulation or hypoglycemia.
TSH levels, which are thyroid-stimulating hormone, those markers are typically what’s ordered for thyroid hormone. Those ranges are typically 0.3 to 5.7, with a standard lab range. We look at it from 1.8 to 3, which is a more narrow more optimal range. If you came in with a 4.2, I would consider that subclinical hypothyroidism. We wouldn’t call it hypothyroid. We call it subclinical because to be hypothyroid or low thyroid, you technically have to be above that standard lab range, but we know that’s not optimal. That’s been published. There’s numerous studies that show this. But all of your markers, all of your laboratory markers have this, and that’s what we want to look at because that would help us get a lot more insight into areas where your physiology is not optimal.
Here’s the point: the next time that you’re out in public, if you want to compare yourself to normal, just look around. You’re going to find that the majority of the people ‑ just like we talked about the statistics with obesity and people being overweight ‑ everyone is unhealthy and you want to be compared to normal, I mean that’s what you’re looking at. I don’t want you to be normal like that. I don’t want you to be the average American because we’re sick. We’re getting sick, more and more sick every year. I want you to be healthy. I want you to have vibrant health. I want you to have optimal health, so that you can feel good, you can lose weight, you can exercise, you can do the things that you want to do.
There is an Order to this Chaos
Whenever we look at the stuff, people are like, “Wow! This is a lot of stuff! How do you keep it straight?” Well there’s a priority list that we approach to looking at your physiology. See you may want to write this down.
The first thing that we look at is do you have an inflammatory or autoimmune condition? Inflammation is I call it the octopus with all its tentacles in your physiology. Inflammation will affect everything. If we know that you have high inflammation, high levels of inflammation, we can look at that on labs, but if we know you’re autoimmune, we already know you have high levels of inflammation, we address that first. That’s our first metabolic priority.
Then what we do is if you don’t have that, then we move on to our next priority, which is anemia. If you have anemia, it means you don’t have enough red blood cells to carry oxygen to your tissues. That’s a major priority that we have to address. Nothing will function properly without adequate oxygen ‑ none of your cells, none of your glands, none of your organs.
Then we look at blood sugar.
We get gut and liver function, and we talk all about the inflammation with the gut and the liver.
Then we look at fatty acid metabolism if you’re absorbing your fats properly. If you’re not absorbing fat properly, you’re going to have major problems with hormone production. You have major issues with your vitamin levels of some of the very, very critical vitamins. Vitamin A, D, E, and K are all fat-soluble. If you don’t absorb fat, you won’t absorb those. We’re going to have major issues. Those are major risk factors to your health if you have poor fatty acid metabolism.
It’s less important again no inflammation. This is the order we go in. We just look at you, talk to you. We identify what’s happening. Get labs. Look at the labs, and then we put together a plan and we work on it. We follow up and we figure out where you are. What we do is we just chip away at what’s left. What’s left if we need to do follow-up labs. That’s how we approach this. That’s how you get true health. I mean you got to approach the problems. You got to get more to the root of this stuff. You can’t just take medications and cover it up.
What do I do differently?
What I do differently is we get expanded lab panel. When we get an expanded lab panel, we get complete metabolic panel. We get a blood cell count with differential. We get expanded lipid panel. We get thyroid panel unlike anything you’ve ever had. It’s about 10 markers that show us T3, T4, free T3, free T4, antibodies that show us reverse T3, all these markers you’ve probably never heard of that are critically important to work up potential physiological problems with your thyroid. They’re absolutely critical and almost no one has ever has this done. We look at your vitamin D levels and see if they’re optimal. We will look at your inflammatory markers, C-reactive protein, homocysteine, the sedimentation rate.
We will look at all of these things and we’re going to figure out if there are declines or areas of your physiology that are not optimal. Then we can work from there with your history to really create a customized and focused program for you.
We can also get a lot of advanced diagnostic laboratory testing. This comes from a lot of my functional medicine testing. We can look at your gut much more closely to determine if there’s inflammation with intestinal permeability tests to see if you have leaky gut or the gut is chronically inflamed and actually develops tiny holes that make it permeable or leaky. It’s a major, major problem and risk factor for autoimmunity and chronic inflammation.
We can look at immune system panels to see if you have autoimmune conditions. We can look at your cortisol through an adrenal stress index to look at their levels and the normal rhythm under your cortisol.
We can look at hormone panels, food sensitivity panels to determine if there are certain foods that you might be consuming that are causing chronic inflammation that you need to get out of your diet.
We can look at the stool microbial ecology profile which is it’s actually a stool test where the lab will analyze some of your stool in order to determine if you have bacterial overgrowth, yeast overgrowth, parasites, and a lot of things that contribute to chronic inflammatory conditions, which we have to address.
A lot of people have been to their doctor and you’ve tried a lot of different diets, medications, and a lot of supplements. All I can say is if this stuff worked, why are you still struggling with your weight loss? We know you know we’re sick as a country. You’ve seen the statistics. What we’re doing in our approach to chronic disease process is not working and no one is going to argue with that. I mean if you need emergency medicine, you want to be in the United States because we have the best, most technologically advanced, state-of-the-art that there is. But when it comes to chronic disease processes, we are ranking lower and lower every year. We are becoming more and more sick every year. That model is broken, and we have got to approach this differently if we’re going to make a difference.
The fact is that something is being missed with you. If you’re still having problems, you’ve got something that’s being missed and the problem with this conventional approach is that unfortunately doctors don’t have time to read journals. They’re so tied up with the demand of insurance and with everything with their day-to-day practice. They’re on a production line. They have to see six people an hour. You’ve got a 5-minute office visit or a 10-minute office visit maximum, but sometimes it’s even less than that. What ends up happening is that you’re in and out. They have to do that to maintain and cover their overhead. Reimbursements are dropping and their costs are going up or staying the same.
You have to realize that your doctors mean well but what’s actually happening is that they can’t do this type of work with you because they’re not able to get the education and I don’t have time to do it. They’re getting their training from the pharmaceutical reps during their lunch break or during their mandated continuing education seminar that is sponsored by the pharmaceutical representatives to teach them about the newest drugs and medication. It’s not that it’s a bad thing but they never get information on how to help you truly become healthy. The stuff that we’re talking about is relatively new science. The research, a lot of this is like 10 years old and there’s 2 months old. Unless you’re aggressively educating, you are getting outdated information. Your doctors are giving out outdated information.
[0:45]: 02]
I have family members that are medical doctors and I have good friends that are medical doctors. When we talk about it, it’s the same exact thing that the research and the information that they have is outdated. Even when we discuss this and I open their minds to this new integrative and functional medicine approach, they’re fascinated by it. It makes sense when you know someone that helps them to understand systems of the body and the physiology. They get it, but they can’t do anything about it. They don’t even have time to talk to you about it. It’s really something that it’s a shame but it’s where we are in healthcare right now and these are problems that we’re facing and why your medical doctors aren’t able to help you.
I’ve seen weight problems. People in my family, my patients, close friends struggle with weight problems that cause them tremendous emotional distress, destroy relationships, make it hard for them at work, create a lot of self-esteem issues and even they develop a lot of orthopedic problems – their spine and their hips and knees and their ankles ‑ and they have this huge risk factor. Obesity is a huge risk factor for them for heart disease and stroke, all of these chronic cancer disease processes. It’s a life-changing thing that can really devastate your life. It can destroy relationships. It’s one of those things that we have to do a better job in this country and you have to take it seriously.
It’s my Goal to Help You Get Your Life Back
It’s my goal to help you get your life back, to help you realize the things that you want to realize in life, to feel better, whether it be to look better and lose weight, or to feel better, and sleep better, or do the things that you want to do or enjoy your life with your kids or your grandkids and family or friends. That’s what I want to help you do.
We do that by looking at why, why are you having these problems? We do that by looking at you metabolically. We’ve talked about that from looking at your metabolic assessment and also looking at you from these advanced labs.
The other thing that we do is we use the latest nutritional science to help you regain your health and support your physiology, support you metabolically so that you can get healthy, you can lose weight and feel better as a side effect of getting your health back.
What I can tell you and I have done so many of these talks and presentations that it’s important that we talk about this. Life is a matter of choices and the information that I share with people sometimes they don’t make clear sense, but they become paralyzed by it almost. All I can say is all you have to do is take action and ask for help. That’s what you have to do. You’ve been exposed to this knowledge. You got to take action. Ask for help, and then that’s when you could start getting some results where your life can change for the better.
I always tell people to reflect on where they are in life. What can you prove if you schedule an appointment and we sit down and we talk about what’s going on with you? What can happen if you decide not to do this 3 or 5 years down the road? Where are you going to be? We really reflect on this and think about what’s important to you because you have to take action to change your life. The choices that you make every day that’s makes you and molds you tomorrow. That’s what changes your life every single day. What we do today creates our life tomorrow. I can’t help you if you don’t ask for help. I’m here to help you out. I’m here to give you guidance and advice and see what I can do to help you, but you have to ask for help.
Want to see if you’re a candidate for my program?
If you want to see if we can help you, there’s a few things I need you to do. I need you to go to our website, TrueHealthWeightLoss.com, and you can go there and request an appointment. There’s a form at the bottom of each page or you can go to our request an appointment tab and you can put in your name, phone number, and email. My staff will receive an email once you submit that form. They’ll call you to help you out with scheduling. They’ll also send you an email with our intake packet.
When you get that intake packet, complete it in its entirety. Don’t leave any blanks. Complete it in its entirety. I need that and I need you to return that within two days of that phone call to my staff. When we get that back, I will review that and when you come in for your appointment, I will have already reviewed your entire case and will be able to get right to it and really address things that I need to get more clarity on and we’ll be able to have a much more efficient appointment. That first appointment is usually 30 minutes.
At that point, we may need to order some lab testing and we’ll discuss that and see what we can do, what the next step will be. When we get the labs ordered, and once I get the results, we will follow up for a second appointment. Typically, that’s about 1 to 2 weeks maximum. Then on that second appointment, I will have reviewed your labs. We’ll talk about what we found, and we’ll see if we can come up with a plan to help you.
That is the basic approach that we take. You have to make an appointment. You get your intake forms. You complete them and return them within 2 days from that phone call. I will review them. We’ll have our first appointment and really see what’s going on with you. Get clarification on anything that I have questions on. Order labs, get the results and follow up. Come up with a plan to really help you with your physiology.
Here’s what I’m doing. For everyone that’s attended and watched my presentation right now, we’re doing a $70 appointment reservation fee. You pay $70 for an appointment reservation fee with me, and I will review your intake packet that you send in. I will sit down with you and that 30-minute first appointment. I will order and interpret labs, but you have to pay for the labs in addition to the $70 if we order them. Then I will come up with a plan. That usually takes me about 3 hours to do and I charge $500 to do that.
What I’m doing right now and as of the time that I’m recording this is we’re offering that for $70. I can only take about 5 to 10 people per month maximum. If someone needs ongoing help with their weight loss, then that’s one less person I can take on the next month.
Right now, what we’re offering is until we get those spots filled, I’m doing this for $70. I cannot continue to do this, so really you need to call the office and say you’re still offering the $70 weight loss offer to do the case review and sit down with me for those first two visits. In any event, I’m doing that because you’ve taken the time to educate yourself.
That’s what we’re doing for now. You go to TrueHealthWeightLoss.com and request an appointment to get started with the process, but I would love to help you if I can. I am here to help you. I am here to help you get your life back, lose weight and enjoy your life.
I’m Dr. Shook. I appreciate you taking time to learn about your health. I’m here to help you out. If you have any questions or if you’d like to make an appointment, see if you’re a candidate, just give us a call or request an appointment, I’d love to meet you.
I hope you learned a lot from this, and I really look forward to helping you get your health back.
[End [0:52:16]
