 Hello, everyone. Welcome back to Mind Pump. In this episode, we talked to Dr. Stephen Cabral about functional medicine, what functional medicine is, the benefits of seeing a functional medicine doctor versus a traditional medical doctor, and even how trainers and coaches can get certifications in functional medicine to grow their business. All right, enjoy the show. Dr. Cabral, it's always great to have you on the show. Always great to be here. Some of your episodes are some of the most commented, shared episodes of ours and bring such great information. Today, I think we want to focus on just what you do as a functional medicine practitioner, when someone should see a functional medicine doctor, what that looks like, how we have a lot of coaches and trainers who listen to the show, how they can maybe utilize some of the skills and testing that you guys utilize or how they can work with people like to bring their clients more value. But let's start with functional medicine. What is it and what's different about it versus traditional medicine? Yeah, absolutely. So I call it the basis between sick care and health care. So a lot of people call what they use for their insurance health care. So you go to your PCP, you go to your doctor, and when you go there, you probably get, well, once a year, you get your wellness visit, your health visit, which might be an hour. You go through all of your different blood work. But typically it's only blood work. And we've talked about in this show that blood work is not enough. It's great to diagnose a disease state and you absolutely should run your blood work at least once a year. But it stops there. There's no education on nutrition, exercise, sleep or any of those things that actually lead to a healthy body. So what they're waiting for is something to go wrong on your body for you to be able to be diagnosed with a disease where a blood marker is off. And that is when conventional medicine shines, if you choose to look at it that way, where they give you a pharmaceutical for high cholesterol, high blood pressure, rheumatoid arthritis, autoimmune, et cetera. So that's how that works. And then there is no goal at the end of that. It's just to make sure that the pharmaceuticals are working until you need the next one. And I'm not trying to have a bleak outlook on conventional medicine because it's the absolute best in the world when it comes to acute-based medical. If something serious happens, you want to make sure that your blood pressure or you're in accident or emergency room that you're taken care of. But then there's this other half of it, which is called natural health, and they don't do what functional, they don't do what medical doctors are doing, right? So with natural health, what are you looking at? Well, ideally, you're looking at someone's vitamin levels, mineral levels, omega-3s, you're looking at their gut function, you're looking at their hormones. And again, you can do that with functional medicine, which we'll talk about in a moment, but that's more natural health. So just to preempt things, I believe everyone should have their medical doctor, 100%. I just believe everyone should also have a natural health practitioner. We'll call that a naturopathic doctor or a functional medicine doctor or functional medicine practitioner, whatever it may be, that provides the healthcare, not just the sick care. Do you think we're going to blend this in the future? I believe that that is... You think they're competing. Well, there's a certain ego to all medicine. So there's like this hierarchy, right? So we have medical doctors and then below that, maybe, or you might even say it's surgeons, they look down upon medical doctors and specialists. And the specialists look down upon a PCP, because they're not specialized, right? And then a PCP looks down upon a naturopathic doctor or a chiropractor. And then they look down upon maybe an acupuncturist who looks down upon a nutritionist who looks down upon a personal trainer, who then looks down upon a, I don't know, Curve's Gym Fitness Technique. It's just like... They're waiting out the bottle. It's just all... That's all that it is. And it's just this ego, whereas everyone is doing their own job. They're all amazing. We need them all. And what I try to do is create a network. And the network is basically every person, every human should have a network of all these different people to go to, because nobody does anybody else's job. So I think that there will be a certain blending only because health insurance is now pushing it. And health insurance tells conventional medicine what to do. So health insurance actually now knows if we keep people healthier, it costs us less money. Like 60 to 70% less money they found. So now they're trying to bring wellness coaching into medical-based practices. Because here's a crazy statistic. I don't know if you knew this, but your medical doctor, again, you guys go to functional medicine, so it's different when you talk about that, but a PCP, your primary care physician, your medical doctor that you typically see has 3,000 to 5,000 patients unless they're a concierge doctor, right? They're being out of the pocket. So that's what they're required to do in their practice by health insurance. That's what makes the numbers work. But that means you're getting a 15-minute visit. It's in and out, half the time it's being done to type in their electronic medical records. And again, your PCP is not doing anything wrong. They're just following the system. So the only way that your PCP can give you better quality of care is if the system changes. While health insurance is saying we need to keep people healthier, but PCPs still need to be doing the number of hours they're doing. Okay, so we bring in then health coaches and health coaches can then do all the follow-up for the nutrition, whether it's for registration or themselves, the exercise, the sleep, all those things. That's actually going to get results for health. I believe that that's the future and we're starting to see it now. So who's going to disrupt it then? Do you think it's going to be the insurance companies? I believe so. Yes, because it'll make so much money. It costs a lot of money. Yeah, I think it's a pretty fair assessment of the traditional kind of Western medicine model. Do you think it's fair to say that the reason why, because skeptics or people with really a negative outlook would say, oh, they just want to prescribe drugs. It's all about prescription drugs. It's all about symptomatic care. And I get where that comes from, but I do agree with you when it comes to acute issues, like you want to see a Western medicine doctor if you're dying right now or if something really dire is happening. But do you think it's fair to say that what drives a lot of this is like any industry is where the revenue comes in? Okay, so like in our industry, in the fitness industry, a lot of the information that people tend to get online tends to push them in the direction of taking the next supplement. Well, why? Well, supplements are one of the biggest money markers makers, I should say, in the fitness space. So it makes sense that the content's going to kind of move in that direction with Western medicine, biggest money makers with pharmaceuticals. So it makes sense to me that when you have a symptom, they're going to prescribe a pharmaceutical rather than looking maybe at the root cause. Would you say that that's kind of fair? I think it's absolutely fair. But however, I would say it's not just because it's a money maker. Supplements work, pharmaceutical drugs work, right? So like they're giving you something that actually does work. So if you have high cholesterol and your PCP wants to lower it, they put you on a statin. It goes down. It goes down. Like it works. But we didn't assess why it was high in the first place, if it's an actually an issue, and we didn't look at how it interacts with other things in the body. Same as a supplement, I have no problem with supplements. But if you're doing that, and we talked about this in the last show, if you're doing that to not improve your sleep or to calm your overall stress or remove whatever it might be from your body that needs to be removed, such as toxicities, then that's a problem. So my issue isn't necessarily with pharmaceutical drugs, because they should be used in acute based instances to save your life. So good. But I always say like, well, what's the game plan? So is the game plan to use this pharmaceutical drug to mask your symptoms for the rest of your life? Some people, it's yes, because that's what they want. They don't want it to the work, right? I think a lot of people listen to your show, they're willing to do the work. They just want to know exactly what they're supposed to do. Same as supplements. Okay, so you're low on testosterone. Okay, we're using adrenal soothe, we're using daily testosterone support, using magnesium, we're using whatever we need to. Good. So is that the plan though for the rest of your life too? Or are we looking to shore up your levels, work on your sleep, three days, a week of weight training, or whatever you're supposed to be doing based on your program, getting nutrition where it should be doing intermittent fasting, but not overdoing, that should be the goal as well. So what I'm saying is that both of them are money makers, they both work. I believe that in a lot of instances, they're both overused and over-prescribed. I would 100% agree. What's up everybody? The giveaway today, MAPS Anabolic. This is the program that started all. You can win this program by doing the following, leaving a comment in the first 24 hours that we drop this episode, subscribing to the channel, turning on notifications, and then if you win, we'll notify you in the comment section. Now this episode is a good one. We have Dr. Steven Cabral on, he's our favorite functional medicine practitioner. He's one of our favorites. He's amazing. And he also has put together a certification course. So if you're a trainer or a coach, you're trying to improve people's health, their certification courses will certify you in functional medicine methods, which combine things like Ayurvedic medicine, Chinese medicine, Western medicine, and then their level two certification actually allows you to order and analyze labs. So you can do labs for your clients as well. And if you go to ihp.coach.com forward slash mind pump, you can get $100 off level one or $250 off level two with the code mind pump. And that's pretty much it. Oh, also one more thing, 50% off MAPS OCR right now and 50% off MAPS Cardio right now. If you're interested, click on the link at the top of the description below to get set up. All right, here comes the show. Okay, so do you think because I've been in the space for a long time and I years ago, I mean, when I first became an entrepreneur, or at least I don't want to say first, but the second time I became an entrepreneur, I was 24, I opened up a studio. It was a wellness studio. And I was just a trainer at that point. I really know much about wellness. I knew proteins, fats, carbs, calories, you know, an exercise, but I knew enough that there's probably a lot of value in different aspects of health. Like I knew chiropractors had some value and you acupuncturists had some value. And back then functional medicine, so you're talking 20 years ago, functional medicine was hard to find very hard to find. In fact, I had heard about it through other health practitioners in my studio. But since then, it seems to have exploded. Now I don't think it's as big as it needs to be, but it seems to have exploded. Do you think this is a market response? In other words, people are getting to the point where like, okay, my traditional care health is not working. So let's look at some of this other stuff. Do you think that it's that market response that's making it grow so much? 100%. And so if we kind of go back now over 25 years, I got sick at 17 years old, my immune system just shut down. We didn't know why. Went to over two dozen specialists around Boston. Harvard trained brilliant doctors. They looked at my blood work. They could see the white blood cells were off, but they didn't know why. It took me two years to actually get a diagnosis of Addison's disease, rheumatoid arthritis, type 2 diabetes, myalgic encephalomyelitis, and a bunch of other things. Okay. The only way that I actually got well was through functional medicine. So a functional medicine doctor to actually answer your question is someone that kind of bridges the gap between let's just say like overall good healthy nutrition lifestyle and conventional medicine. There's someone with some advanced knowledge that they've studied that's able to then look at both sides, be unbiased and say, hey, everything can work. Who's this right for and when? And so when I found, because this was now 25 years ago, and you're right, they didn't believe in increased intestine, they didn't believe in leaky gut. They didn't believe in all these different mystery-based pains. They didn't believe in adrenal-based issues. So the problem was that even when you saw it out, a natural health practitioner seemed like woo-woo, right? Because they're talking about all these things that in the fitness, the best example is the fitness industry. We already knew metabolic conditioning workouts worked 30 years ago. We already knew that low-carb worked for weight loss, especially in the beginning years ago. We already knew these things. Finally, it makes its way to textbooks and research and then, oh, like, hey, these things actually work. So it's no different. The explosion for it is because of the online world, because the way that I got into finding a natural health practitioner was word of mouth. And so I had the yellow pages back in the late 90s, no online, not Medford, Massachusetts, and I had word of mouth. That's it. So you wouldn't even know to look at the yellow pages if you even knew what a functional medicine doctor was and what would it be under. So now with online, well, I mean, every day you just go on a chat feed and you'll be able to see hundreds of people making recommendations. Well, since you've been doing this for so long, I would imagine that there's a bit of a self-selection bias with your patients in the sense that you're not the first person they came to see. You're the fifth or sixth or tenth person. Yeah, are you ever the first person? So they're coming. Actually, I was going to say, you're probably never the first person. Almost never. So that's my question because I'm assuming the vast majority of people come see you when they're like, they've exhausted all traditional methods. They're fed up. It's been five years. I can't figure this out. It's ruining my life. Fine. I'm going to go see this, let me seek out this last option or whatever. Are you starting to see more people now that are coming to you sooner, not waiting until it's like, this is my last resort? So how I got my start is 18 years old, became a certified nutritionist, became a certified personal trainer. At 17, I was just working gym floors, cleaned up sweat off machines, those types of things. And that was my start to the industry. I started just collecting certifications because you had to get CEUs anyway, CECs. So I just got new certification, new certification, new certification, got my strength and conditioning, specialist CECs. All these things are great. And then I said, okay, I'm still working on my overall health. Finally, met my mentor. I met a lot of great practitioners, but typically people meet one person that they connect with. I connected with this person. They taught me what I needed to do to get well. I got well. I said, okay, I want to study this. I went back, got my degree in natch pathe. So I'm a doctor of natch pathe, which is interesting too, because you're also told that you're supposed to take the ego out of it, meaning like you take from Ayurvedic medicine, traditional Chinese medicine, you take at-home lab testing, you don't even care. Like, well, who's right? So people are like, hey, do you use homeopathy? I'm like, well, not really. I mean, I don't use that very much in my practice, but I'm not against it. Like I'm not taught to look, well, everybody's kind of taught to judge what's good and bad. Like I have a bias against conventional medicine. I know that. I say that upfront because conventional medicine put me where I am back when I was 17. I was put on antibiotics at 14 years old through 17 years old. I was on for three years for acne because they give antibiotics for acne because it can be bacteria that's causing your acne. So imagine swallowing 3,000 capsules of antibiotics, how that would destroy your gut, right? But the dermatologist, why would he ever think about your gut when he's doing it for acne, right? And as a child growing up, our pediatrician gave us, we literally had Z-packs. Remember Z-packs? I had Z-packs in my closet. Is it through my son? Yeah, exactly right. So my mom, PCP was tired of us coming in for like a common cold you would give them out. My mom had four kids under six years old. And so we're all like 12 to 18 months apart. So she had enough to think about. So anytime we get sick, here's your Z-Pack. I would take a Z-Pack three, four, five times a year. I had the worst allergies in the world because obviously I'd got health issues. None of this was ever connected. So when I speak negatively against conventional medicine, it's not against medical doctors. It's not against your PCP. It's against the system that's taught when they go to school. So when I went to school, okay, I've really learned physiology, kinesiology, toxicology, et cetera, the first couple of years. Then medical doctors go on to learn about pharmacology. And they say, when this comes up on a test, you give this. And again, I have no particular issue with that in acute-based circumstances. In naturopathy, we say, okay, after that, what are we going to learn? Well, we're going to learn healthy lifestyle. We're going to learn about herbs. We're going to learn about vitamins. We're going to learn about all these different things. And then after you graduate, a medical doctor or an acupuncturist, nurse, doctor of naturopathy, et cetera, can go and then study functional medicine, which then they use specific lab testing. So it's actually postdoctoral work that you do that gives you that extra little ability to do that. So it's not like anyone could be a functional medicine doctor. The one thing I would be a little bit weary of saying is that a functional medicine doctor only does one thing. The most prevalent is bioidentical hormones. Because then, and I know that you've talked about your experiences on the show, they took a weekend course. They don't have the knowledge base that you want for your own health. And now you know the difference because you've gone to someone else, Dr. Rand, I believe that you said before, who's fantastic. And he can give you the right dosage for you based on your own body and then tweak it as needed. And so what I don't like is what's called green medicine. This niacin is for your depression, right? Vitamin B3. This is for your low estrogen. We just do this. So I'm hoping that we get to an industry that starts to incorporate everything from the benefits of exercise, the benefits of nutrition, the benefits of sleep, the benefits of supplements, the benefits of even pharmacological. If you were to build the super doctor, what education and path would you take them through? It's interesting because the best practitioners or doctors I know are not typically medical doctors. And I'm not saying that with any unbiased because I have colleagues that are brilliant medical doctors, brilliant. But what happens is it's the lens that shapes you, that allows you to even look into and have the passion for the field that you're in. So when most people graduate, they never read another book. They read one book a year. Like let's be honest, like your most doctors or most, just pick any industry. I'm just going to pick on medical doctors for today because again, it's the industry. They have no real use to read any more books because it would not have any bearing whatsoever on their ability to read the lab, make an assessment and then make a pharmacological intervention. Give your pharmaceutical. Now, that's why I love the field of health and fitness. There's always new information. There's always different takes. There's always little nuggets and not just for personal training and nutrition, but myself, again, working as a doctor of matchpathy. I like to read as many books as I can. Maybe the information isn't new, but it's presented in a different way and it gives me a different lens to view it and then be able to then cue my client, wellness client, in a little different way. Because maybe the way I'm saying it, they don't get it, right? So you need to tell them three, four different ways like to how to perform a Romanian deadlift, right? Hey, keep the weight on your heels. Push your hips back, slightly bend the knees, feel the stretch in your hands. Sometimes the same cue does not work for every individual. So that's what I go back to. So if I'm building the perfect person, it's someone that is passionate about the field of health. It's not a job. It's someone that loves to learn because everything can be taught and that there's no potential to their growth. If you show me that individual, all they do is give them the books, give them the study, give them the ways to go, the internships and they'll learn it. You've also studied non-traditional forms of medicine, like Ayurvedic medicine and even Chinese medicine. What are some strengths and weaknesses of those? So, and the only reason, so I studied those because my mentor, Dr. Pete, actually had a deep background in Ayurvedic medicine and although I had looked into it in my like 25s, 26s, early 20s, mid 20s, it was one of the ways in which I got well. And the difficult thing about Ayurvedic medicine is that we want to break it down to a quiz, you know, which dosha are you, pitta, vata, kafa and it's the world's oldest form of medicine. It's based out of India? It's based out of India, Kerala, India. And it's so in-depth. And so the brilliant thing about it is it's all just about bio-individuality and it's trying to teach it in a way 6,000 years ago about how they spoke and were translated in it. So there's so much brilliance in it. But here's the thing, I didn't get well for 10 years. I went through every program, every protocol, every supplement and I would get better for a little while and then relapse. And I'm like, you know, I'm just never going to get well. And it was a really bad state, you know? So like training and nutrition was my savior because I was able to at least feel like I was getting an outcome from the work I put in. I mean, I could get myself in shape. And that to me was like tremendous and it helped me not relapse quite as much. But on the inside, I still was getting like bronchitis in the winter. I was still getting pneumonia. I was still relapsing my immune system where it wasn't needed to be. I had felt like a zombie, flu-like symptoms, all sorts of different things. But so I said, I've tried everything. Yes, I'm going to try to follow in the footsteps of my mentor, but I'm actually going to go study overseas. I'm going to actually see what actually works in these clinics. So I interned in clinics in about six clinics or all over India. Oh, wow. Sri Lanka, China in atrial Chinese medicine hospital in Old Beijing. And I was in Europe in the Netherlands studying functional medicine as well, and then all over the US. Wow. Now, anything surprising? Like did you go in with certain expectations to come out? I did. I went in with expectations that every single one of them was going to work amazingly well. And what I realized was not everyone was ready for the particular treatments that were there. It worked for the right people who would get benefit from that treatment. So I'll say it in a different way. There is every modality in the world works that I know of. That's TCM, traditional Chinese medicine, Ayurvedic medicine, let's include acupuncture or things like that in it. If you needed that treatment, then it helped you. Which is why people are so radical and passionate about it. Because it works wildly well for like a third of the people. And then I don't want to say this about Ayurvedic. Because Ayurveda is so in-depth. It's like, okay, well, we did punch a calmer. We did like certain treatments. But Ayurvedic is also a philosophy of life and balance about your body. So it's always going to work when you look at the deeper philosophy. But like acupuncture is not going to work for everybody. It's not going to help you get rid of Candida. It's not going to help you get rid of parasites. Not to that degree. Now, it can be phenomenal for inflammation, pain relief, sleep, anxiety, anything to do with a nervous system. It can be fantastic. And I saw it work. But I saw it did not work for these people with these particular issues. So what I learned was this, because I went into a skeptics mindset, because I basically said, I'm going to do the practice like TCM, Ayurveda, bioregulatory medicine in the Netherlands, like all these different types of medicine. I call them the seven forms of natural health, of integrative health. And what I realized was everything works at the right time for the right person. So we can't be a practitioner that only has one tool in the toolbox, as I say, right? Like it's not going to work. We were joking around earlier just about when Kettlebell's first came out, it was Kettlebell only workouts, as if like dumbbells stop being effective, bands, you know, barbells, like your own body. That's all you have. And so it's difficult because, well, there are other things that do work. And so I want to be able to just draw upon the wisdom from every different form of medicine. And that includes conventional medical as well. And so if I need to refer out, I refer out. And I'm okay with that. It's so funny because you speak about medicine the same way that I think we speak about strength training. There's so many different modalities. And I always feel like, and it's the same path, right? There's a third of the people that will go try CrossFit or will go try yoga or will go try powerlifting or go try bodybuilding, and it will change their life. And then they become these evangelists for that modality. And the truth is they all work. I mean, and I think the best practitioner is somebody who's versed in a little bit or a lot of all of it so that you can apply it to each individual. Well, and the reason why that's so important is because, okay, it's going to work phenomenally well. This includes nutrition plans as well, right? So carnivore diet, keto diet, phenomenally well for a third. For a third, I didn't feel anything, right? You can see the people's reviews. For a third, I felt worse. So what does that mean? Well, it means that as a practitioner, you're going to help about a third of the people with your particular program. Now, for the people you don't help, what do you do? Well, you either better be able to refer out, take your ego out of it because it's what's best for the individual. Or, hey, this didn't work. I know why. Let's move on to this. Are you seeing, because you've been doing this for a while, and culture shifts and popular culture shifts quite a bit in the sense that, you know, I mean, when we were kids, if somebody was trying to eat healthy, quote unquote, they were eating low fat and then it was low carb. And then now we're seeing this push both, you know, even politically for people to go plant-based or vegan, for example. Are you starting to see things pop up more commonly because of that, where you get the average person who says, yeah, I saw this documentary called What the Health, I'm just going to eat, you know, vegan from now on, and then they don't feel good or whatever, and they come see you. Are you starting to see more trends or different trends? Well, whatever the trend is, we see it. And it's, it'll never change because people want what's new and exciting, and they always hold out hope that this is the thing. And so when you have this silver bullet mentality, you're always going to believe that it's, oh, I'm just one more diet away. I'm just one more exercise plan away. Instead of looking at the holistic picture that it's not just diet, it's not just exercise, it's sleep, it's stress, it's toxins, it's all of these particular things. One of the things we used to find is that people did consider us the last stop and you said, okay, I'm going to try one more thing. I'm going to go to Dr. Cabral, I'm going to go to his team, whatever it may be. But over the last few years, I've actually been pleasantly surprised by this, is that a lot of people are doing preventative based health. And even though sometimes I make fun of the biohacking community, just obviously tongue in cheek, just because of some of the things that are so outrageous that people are doing, it's actually spawned a lot of good discussions and a lot of good media in terms of using infrared sauna, running your labs, doing cold plunge. Like sometimes it's taken to excess, but it's brought way more awareness. And sometimes people's first entry into anything, like you see it back in the day at curves, you know, curves, fitness. I used to make fun of it and like joke around, but then I realized like, that's not intimidating. They know the eight exercises, they're going to do the machines. And then it gets them to take the next step, which might be like planet fitness. And then after that, they hire a personal trainer. And so it's like, it's this stepping zone. So if people's first entry into natural health is doing a sauna or doing even a supplement, I'm good with that. So are you, are you saying that part of your protocol for your anybody that has got issues as buttholes hunting? Is that what you're talking about? I've actually, I've actually seen that. I just, I thought it was amazing that that's a thing. But there's a thing for everybody. I'm sure we evolved and I have the butthole exposed to the sun. Yeah. It's back there. I imagine if that was the cure, right? That was the thing. Yeah. I think people just want to show their buttholes on Instagram. No, the thing with curves, which was interesting, because I saw that come up, explode, become the number one chain and then crash. But one thing I saw them do very well is they, gyms back then were trading members, like fighting for the same members. Curves penetrated the market that nobody was touching. Disrupted it completely. Disrupted it completely. So there was something there you could, you could definitely take from. And I think that's kind of what you're talking about with these different methods and how functional medicine kind of looks at all these different things. So with, with all these different methods that you, and I didn't realize that you had that extensive experience with all those different modalities, which I think is so incredible. I know that you offer a certification for our trainers and coaches or people that are aspiring to be one. How did, did you take from all those to build this? What did that, what did that process look like? I'm so curious to putting that together with that look like. Well, that, that's what it was. And it was never intended. So when I was a personal trainer and nutritionist, it, and Australia, the condition specialist, it was me trying to teach others what I loved to do and that was helping me. And so then I found something else that also really worked. And that was, we'll call it naturopathy or Nate, basically natural health. And I wanted to share that with other people too. And then I started running at home lab tests and I'm like, Oh, this really works now. Cause what I knew before was all of the lifestyle and nutrition and even supplementation. But now I can tell you, not if you might need it, but yes, you definitely do need it or you're using too much of it. And so that to me was like, I love, I love the science behind it. I love the data. I love the numbers. I love the detective work. And so all I ever tried to do was up level my education and learn more. And I was always, I was always questioning things, but I was also very skeptical. So the skepticism also led me not to do certain things. And I think that was good too. So I'm trying to teach people what works the best, what doesn't work and include everything. So we include now bioregulatory medicine, which is basically the original form of functional medicine over in Europe, mainly Germany and Switzerland. It's amazing. Still practice to this day. I included Ayurvedic medicine, herbalism or traditional Chinese medicine as well in Eastern based philosophy. And a lot of people, like when I, when I wrote my book to the rain barrel effect, one thing I try to share with people is that we have a lot of science behind the nutrition, the exercise, the stress reduction, the talks, remove all those things. But a lot of times what's bothering people are emotional based traumas and mental blocks that they're not able to get past. They're the victim of a disease. And anytime you see yourself as the victim of something, you lose control. So what I try to do is as much as I can and being as sensitive as I can to help people take back control of their health. Because we always have the statistic, 168 hours, right? 168 hours, the number of hours a week you have with you. Let's say that you guys are the best personal trainers are the best coaches are the best, whatever in the world. No matter what, nobody's seen you for more than two hours a week, maybe three, right? So at the end of the day, I need to be able to instill in someone what to do and how to do it, not just take this one thing or do that. You know, it's funny, they have studies that show that they'll put groups of people in the same situation, but one group feels like they have some autonomy and they have better immune systems, better blood marker, just because they feel like they're more in control. Then you read the accounts of like POWs and people who've been in really terrible situation. They say that one of the ways to survive is to control what you can and to give yourself that sense of autonomy. And they did it in very structured small ways for what they could, but just that alone. So I think the biohacking community, like you said, I agree with you, a lot of stuff they do is silly. But one thing that they did do is they got a lot of people to start to look at how they can empower themselves, right? Like, okay, what can I do? What are the things I can change? Let me do some more reading. And that's a big problem I think in Western health, traditional Western health is we've taken the power away from people, where you just go do what someone tells you and, you know, don't ask any of the questions or whatever. And I think that's terrible. I think you need to understand that first off, as good as your doctor is, you are the one that ultimately suffers from the negative consequences of poor health, or you're the one that benefits ultimately from great health. It's your responsibility. You have to take it and under your control. So this is a bit of an odd question, but because we went the biohacking direction, you're just somebody who would be super curious to hear how you answer this. Do you have a favorite biohacking tool that we've seen invented or that we've seen get popular in the last decade that you think has the most application or has been the most beneficial for your average person? Is there anything that pops out to you? Well, I mean, it's the one that people are willing to use the most that's least invasive. Right. And I know that part, I'm going to stop you or interrupt you right before you go, because I know that you're going to have the perfect answer of that, the individual or anything like that. But I'm more curious to your opinion on like what you like or what you think is the coolest. So in my opinion, there is nothing better than the Oro ring right now. And the reason is that if I want to wear a watch, I want to wear a watch. So that cancels out the whoop and it cancels out the Fitbit. Although you can wear the whoop on your forum, you can now wear it on your ankle. So I like that that you can put it in different less conspicuous places. So I'm not against that. I've used the BioStrap, which I like no problem at all. We're worn on the wrist. The winner though, will not be the Oro ring in the long run. It's most likely going to be a patch, some type of wearable patch that you can put anywhere. Because also we think, so why do I like the Oro ring? And again, I'm not a sponsor. I don't get sponsored by them. I don't get anything. Like they might send me a sweatshirt in the mail like great job. I don't even know. But the reason is, is that it gives you quantifiable data on what you're doing. Are you getting better or worse? Like the signals aren't even perfect. The HRV is incorrect. It's lower than it should be. But it's your baseline every day. And now it is getting better. So it's actually looking at cycle mapping for women is looking your oxygen now, which again, it's not perfect, but it's getting better. Looks at your deep sleep. It looks at your REM sleep. They're using their own algorithms. It's not perfect, but it gives you your baseline. So people need also on the way to health, you need to have wins along the way. So if you're not feeling better yet, but you're improving your HRV by three points, five points, and you go from a 25 to a 28, you're doing something correct. If your REM sleep starts to go from under an hour to now over an hour, you're on your path to wellness. So before you ever lost the weight as a post-training client or got healthy as a health client, you can start to see those numbers move in the right positive direction. So that's the reason why I like it. I also like that you can put it on airplane mode. So you don't need to have these devices sending signals to you and your phone all day long. And I think that in the future, when we live in literally a scanning based biometric EMF soup, I think that that's probably going to matter. It gives you, you can see your trends. Right? Well, I mean, you know me, I'm like, that's totally an answer I would give. I think when these types of tools, when they came out, it was game changer for me. And I'm one of the people that defend, and I defend all of them for the, for the simple point that you made, which is it gives me a baseline. I don't give a shit if you want to make the argument that it's night, this one's 97% more accurate. This one's 67%. It's like, to me, it's that if it's consistent with the data it's reading me, boy, I mean, otherwise I'm guessing. And so at least now, I have a really good educated guess on whether I should increase calories, focus more on sleep or not. So yeah, this whole approach and everything. It's, it's really like it's an aggregation of as much data as possible, right? So it would make sense that like having sensors and including some data from lifestyle would be very important to be able to then sort of do your detective work of which sort of method would apply best for these individuals. Is that something that you're kind of going through that as through the certification you kind of teach them through that? Yeah. So even if we look at it, a lot of what we do is at home lab testing. So it's phenomenal, but how often you're running out at home lab testing too, right? I mean, at the most, probably once a quarter. And so when you look at it, what do you have? Well, you have biometric data on a daily basis and it will get better when it's real time. So there's nothing you can do about these numbers in real time, except like your steps, right? But eventually there'll be what's called haptic feedback. So there's a company, HANU Health, Dr. J. Wiles is a great guy, Dr. Patrick McEwen and a few other people. And what they're looking at is heart rate variability. So your heart rate variability signal gets weaker, the further the strap, like, you know, the puller chest straps. Okay, it's going to be best on that. You go to the forearm, pretty good. You go to wrist, okay, better. You go to your hand, it's a weaker signal. But again, it just matters like what are your trends. But what they're going to find, and they're in the infancy of it, but it's there. I mean, it's there. It's just going to get better and better. They just need a way to let you know at the time when you're under stress and your HRV is plummeting. So on our last show, we talked about cortisol. Well, it'll tell you when your heart rate variability drops a couple different standard deviations, you'll get actually a buzz. You'll get something either to your phone or right on your chest that will tell you like, and I have done this before because I've done the original database models, breathe, relax, and it'll catch you in real time. So I believe the future of biometrics is that we're not there yet, but it's getting close. Interesting. Okay. So with the move away from Adam. Okay. So the integrative health practitioner certification. I have some questions about that. So what are, you mentioned you can do labs with that or you can read labs. So that's one of the things that you could do. So if a coach or trainer is listening right now and they got this certification, one of the things that they'll come out of that with is that they can, you know, for lack of a better term, prescribe labs. Yeah. I think you should do this lab. I think you should do that lab, you know, hair test, blood saliva, whatever. Then when they get the results, they can read them and then advise based off them. Is that okay? So basically our goal is two things. One, if you have health issues, teach you how to heal yourself. And then we say heal others because when you find something that works, you want to shed it from the rooftops. So that's what we want to do. And that's level one. That's the diet, exercise, stress reduction, toxin removal, rest and sleep protocols. So you're getting protocols for all of these, not supplements. You're actually getting protocols of what to do. Emotional based stress, scientifically based supplement protocols, and then success mindset. Basically the art of coaching, you know, like how to motivate a client to do what they need to do for themselves and for others. Level two is where they now know all the protocols that they can implement when they find something on these at home labs that have gone wrong. So if testosterone is low, if estrogen is high, if there's candida overgrowth, bacterial overgrowth, if there's heavy metals. Okay. You learn how to read the labs. We teach you how to read them so that you can actually then use this information to help clients get to the next level. So we call it, you know, putting a health coach in every home. That's our goal. So a lot of people in our programs are nurses, personal trainers, acupuncturists, chiropractors. It's people who are already kind of in the in between helping clients with health and fitness. We actually have a lot of estheticians in the program too because they're seeing skin-based issues and they're treating the outside when it's most likely gut issues or hormonal issues. So now we can help the esthetician take their practice to the next level. Because in my opinion, most natural health practitioners, and I'm putting that in fitness and wellness and chiropractors, they're all just, they're passionate. They're looking to help their clients get the best results possible. So there's two things you can do. You can refer out if you have the knowledge of who to refer out to, which I think is great. And I know Sally used to do that. Or you can start to take on some of these responsibilities yourself. And by responsibilities, I mean be the go-to person that your clients want and need and help them actually introduce them now to food sensitivities. That's an easy one to get started with. Or just hormonal health or, you know, your vitamin levels. Like people should know their levels or omega-3 levels because then you can be like, hey, you weren't eating any wild salmon. Now you are and you've improved your inflammation levels. Like we can actually quantify these results. So I find it does two things. One, obviously your clients are going to get results, but it's going to bring in then, like for your career-wise, a whole new avenue of people you would never have reached because not everybody wants a personal trainer, but they may want a health coach. And so you're getting lots of referrals for that. But the other thing too is it keeps your knowledge and interest in the industry just continuing to grow. I wish. So I used to... I would have killed for this. So I teach trainers and coaches all the time. When I talk to them all the time, I teach them to be mavens. I say find practitioners that you can refer to, that you can work to. And the ones I always recommend are functional medicine, acupuncture, body work specialists, and then any else you think that may help, but find those people. But that's so hard to do, right? You got to find the right person. Will they work with you? Then you got to communicate with them, with their clients. I wish I had something like this. I would have loved to have been able, A, order labs because you can't do that as just a regular person. So I wish I could have ordered labs and then B, read them and then based off of those, combine them with my fitness knowledge and be able to say, okay, John, I know now why this strength training program is not working for you as good as it should. I can see here your stress hormones are too high. So let's do this first. I used to do that with a functional medicine practitioner. I would talk to them. We'd go back and forth and put together a protocol. And it was so successful. It worked so well. But man, I wish I had. You know what? I actually was, I went on a rant last night because I actually was talking to all these trainers and coaches about not utilizing all of our free resources that we have. And there's this weird scarcity mindset and I feel it's big in our space. Like just these trainers and coaches a lot of times are fearful that, oh, if I send them over to Dr. Cabral and they have to get the supplements, they're no longer going to buy from me and that's going to hurt my business. Oh, no. It's the opposite. It is the opposite. That's why I was yelling at them on the phone last night because I was so frustrated. I'm like, this is what made me really successful because I was the youngest trainer. I was the least educated, the least experienced, but then I had the most success because I was not afraid to farm out. I was not afraid to be like, oh, I'm not sure, but I know a guy or I know a girl. And I never lost business because of that. No, they stay with you longer. They do and they refer you out to more people and then you become that person. It's weird though in our space we get like this sometimes. And I totally agree with you and you need to actually see it for yourself, but what happens is this, if you are the go-to person for this person's health, you're invaluable. So you know the meal delivery company, you know the right supplements, you know the chiropractor, you know the kinesiologist, you know the functional range conditioning specialist, you know the acupuncturist. If you know all these people, of course this client is never going to leave. That's what I became. You're always going to be with you. I became the Maven. That's right. And so the Maven's from a book, right? There's different, like the different like connectors and different people, right? Yes. It's a good analogy right there. Remember that. So that's what you want to be. So even if you don't want to become an integrative health practitioner, although I'm telling you right now, you need to be able to learn how to read your own labs for yourself, your family. If you have kids one day, like you just need to have at least a knowledge base. So when this comes back, you can say, is this really true? Yes or not? Yes or no? And if the answer is no, you don't have to have even all the answers, but you at least know what is right and what is wrong and what to look at. Like, so it takes you to that next level. The other thing is too, and I would love to get all of your opinion on this. I've just seen that they shut down gyms, they shut down personal training studios, they shut down wellness studios, they shut down estheticians. You want to have some virtual aspect of your practice in my opinion. It's completely moving that direction. So if it's going virtual and you can work with anyone anywhere, be the go-to person no longer in your community, because the chiropractor can't meet with them, either if this happens again. So what about now, if you can order the labs, give nutrition, give again, you're not giving registered edition plans, you're giving, and I do have to make a disclaimer, we're not prescribing any medical advice, we're not teaching you to practice medicine, we're teaching you to practice health coaching. You become a certified health coach through the integrative health practitioner institute, and you can actually become board-certified because our certification holds up. We have the highest level of certifications, so you actually can get board-certified as a holistic health coach, which has a lot of weight. So then you can start to work with, again, these doctors, you have the... Okay, that's a great point. So to be clear, you can... Because there's a lot of online coaches that listen to our show, and they help people through exercise, nutrition online, it's just, you know, you don't have to charge as much, you can do, you know, you can help more people, you can reach a larger audience, right, it's easy to scale, and a lot of people like that, they like helping people that way. So with this, you can literally, same thing, order the lab for them, even if I'm in California, they're in Florida, I could order the labs, they can get, they can do the tests, send it in themselves, I get the results, I can look at them with the person over the phone or over the internet and say, okay, this is low, this is high, let's try supplementing with this, let's try this particular thing in your diet, let's try more or less exercise, whatever. Absolutely, it's exactly right. So then you can start to use a lot of those modalities, which is the sauna, sleep, food, higher carb, lower carb, like if you have, especially, again, we've chatted about this before, okay, you have a woman in your practice, she's 37 years old, she has two kids, she's not getting the sleep that she should, you put her on a low carb diet, it seems to be working, and six weeks later, she plateaus. Okay, what do you do? You go lower carb, you go lower calories, do you exercise her more? Like what's the plan to keep losing weight? Let's look at her home runs, that's what we need to do, right, so now you have the ability to do that, and you can actually show, here's why you plateaued, okay, now we know what's going on, we could do cycle low carb, and then we have to move back into some refeeding meals or something like that, that's best for your body, okay, intermittent fasting is great, but 14 hours seems to be the sweet spot from you, from six at night to eight in the morning, not fasting till noon, and you're able to show all of these things now, the things that you know that you've been taught, and actually prove them out. So personal trainers are some of the people that have the most success, because it's a natural add-on, like it's a bolt onto your practice, because you're learning, one of the hardest parts is actually to learn how to create an exercise program, like that's not easy to do. So if you get that, and you've been doing nutrition probably with your personal training, so you get a little bit of that, okay, now what's the next thing? I would have gotten better so much faster, because you know, I got good at what I did, and we talk about this all time, so three of us did this for the same amount of time, I got good at what I did through trial and error, asking questions, that didn't work, this does work, and then eventually after, you know, 15 years of training, hundreds or thousands of people by proxy, I start to see this works, that doesn't work, whatever, to have like data, and to have labs, and to try something, like what I would do now, with all of this, is I would take a client and say, we're going to do these tests to start, because we're just getting started, I want to see where we're at now. Then we're going to start this program based on what I think is going to be best for you, based off those tests, based off your fitness history, your lifestyle, that kind of stuff. Then three months later, we're going to run these tests again, and see, and I'm going to see if I can connect the changes in your labs with what we've noticed subjectively. You're sleeping better, you feel better, you're stronger, wow, I can see this thing in your lab, got much better, I can see this is working, or maybe I can see not why it's been a little bit more struggle for you, or why you've been plateauing a little bit. So, I mean, I think this is- I would take it as valuable, yeah. I mean, the thing is, it's like the specificity of it, because like you said, like you had to learn over years of how to ask the right questions to even get to that lifestyle, like really like a good visual picture of that, to be able to kind of find those specific screws you could just tighten a bit, that's going to move the needle the furthest, and so to be able to have like the labs really identify that a lot earlier would be massive for a personal trainer. I would take it even a step further, I would build it into my pricing. Oh, 100%, it would be a part of the whole thing. I would build it into my price. Most people sell training by either the sessions or monthly services or whatever, or by the package of what you train for this long with me, and I would actually just do exactly what you said, like part of my assessment, these labs, it comes with this total price. And imagine how you can paint the picture. Here's what it looks like. This is what we're going to start with three months later. Then you build the plan. Yeah, and you got yourself now a nine month or year plan that you could present to someone and really provide tremendous value. Which labs specifically are you able to look at and read through this certification? So, and I just want to get to your point, our most successful coaches in the program are actually a lot of personal trainers that are developing packages like that. Yep, okay. So, your typical package, oh, it's four weeks, it's 12 weeks, okay. No, now it's six months. Yes. And it includes certain nutritional supplements, certain, I don't know if it's meal delivery, whatever you want to do in the labs. And the reason is that I don't have to sell nutritional supplements. I don't sell nutritional supplements. If I run an Omega-3 inflammation test with you and the standard American is an 18 to one, well, let's say you know the standard American, most people in our practice are doing a pretty good job on the nutrition. So, they're a 10 to one. I'm not selling you nutritional supplements. You can either take an Omega-3 supplement or you can eat wild fish three to four times a week. Your choice. Yeah. But the lab is telling you, you have higher levels of inflammation. Again, I'm just showing you what it is. You decide what you want to do. So, it makes the whole process of helping someone make the right decision. It's just, there's no feeling or emotion to it. It is what it is. And we're going to help you get to that point the fastest way possible. The other thing is this, you're no longer a commodity. When everybody went online and everybody is a personal trainer, how are you different? You know, you're using this fitness app, you're using it, okay, good. So, is the next guy. So, is the next girl. So, it's like, well, what are you doing? Oh, well, I actually customize your nutrition plan based on your food sensitivities. Oh, that's a step up. Oh, I actually customize your days of workout based on your cortisol levels and your testosterone or whatever it might be. And so, this is taking it to that next level. I believe I've always wanted to take personalization in the fitness industry to this next level. I believe that there's a lot of personal trainers, not all of them, but a lot of personal trainers are ready to separate themselves at that next level. That's what I try to do in my wellness studio. Oh, I just didn't do it myself. It's the thing all three of us had in common. And we didn't know each other, we're all doing, had success in different directions, but, and we all did it in different ways, like how we packaged things, but it was the, taking the service to another level, like everyone's always trying to compete in price and stuff like that. It's like, we all knew to better to go the opposite direction. It's like, no, you bring, you bring a whole another level of value to that. And the success, the success you had when my clients went, it exploded because they could see me, they could see this other person, this other person. We could communicate, work together, and measure the results, the success, work with the client, and the success was phenomenal. I just can't imagine how powerful, because I can see myself sitting, I've had thousands of conversations of sitting down with a client and we're assessing the diet and I'm telling you what I think they should or shouldn't do or adjusting things. I just can't believe how powerful it would be if I had lab sitting right next to me going, what you could do is we could, you know, I'd like you to eat fish three times a week, but if you don't, then I want you to take this. I want you to, you know, that just would be... To give you an example, like, you know, I'll give you an example of the feeling out process versus what you're talking about. Like, we did feeling out and asking questions. And, you know, if I had a client whose B vitamins were low, and I, or let's say their iron was low, but I said, I thought maybe it was a B vitamin. So I said, here, eat some more red meat and they got better. I think it was the B, it was the iron. I don't know, because I can't test. So I'm giving them suggestions and they're helping, but I don't know specifically what part of what I recommended helped because foods come with many nutrients, you know, exercise. There's lots of different impacts it has on the body. So was it the fact that I incorporated more compound lifts? Was it the fact that the rest periods got different? Was it? And so it was, it's very, very... It's, it takes years and years and years to develop the sensitivity to be able to figure this out without this kind of... Imagine helping people break plateaus that can't figure out why we're not losing weight. I'm doing this, I'm doing that. And it's like, and you're trying to guess as a coach and a trainer all the time are, or you're thinking either they're lying to me or maybe this. And then we get a test back and go like, oh my God, their hormone levels are all over the place. Like let's address that. And now we know, and I mean, talk about taking the frustration off the client who feels like they're trying so hard, but have no idea they're all out of balance. I had a client that we could not figure out why she was fatigued. We could not figure it out. And we did some improvements through exercise, sleep, nutrition, and it was just so frustrating. Anyway, finally I got her to work with a functional medicine practitioner. She had high levels of, I forgot which heavy metal it was, but it was so high. So she had to go detox, get rid of it, and she felt better. I would have never known. I would have never known had she not done that testing. What are the tests that people can work with through the integrative health practitioner certification? Yeah, so what we do in level two, we take people through what's called a big five plus the bacteria and parasite stool test. So we are doing what's called the Candida metabolic vitamins test, also called the organic acids test. That looks at 75 biomarkers, and it's just a small sample of urine. So I think that's one of the ones we may even do. But it looks at all your vitamin levels, looks at mitochondrial health for energy. It's going to look at detox factors, those B vitamins we were just talking about. It's going to look at Candida overgrowth, potentially Clostridia overgrowth, which is a nasty bacteria in your stomach that you can get, and so much more, overall metabolism. So that's an amazing lab. We look at 190 food sensitivities, but to healthy foods, like eggs, are you sensitive to eggs? Yes or no? Because if you are, and you can't lose that last five pounds and you're eating eggs every day, well, there's a reason for your inflammation and water retention. Like you're just inflamed from eating eggs, like it's a common food sensitivity. Okay, so we're testing 190 foods there. Then we're doing the minerals and metals test, which we did on an episode, goes through all of your minerals. So now you don't just have your vitamins, but you have your zinc and your copper and your selenium and your chromium and your magnesium. So we look at all those, and it also looks at heavy metals. So your client, the mercury, aluminum, cadmium, arsenic, lead, we look at those. Then we're looking at your omega-6 to omega-3 levels, plus we're looking at your arachidonic acid to EPA. So there are people that can eat all the red meat in the world they want, and they don't build up arachidonic acid. Some people do. 26% of the population. I think we were chatting about that, it was either today or our last show. But a third of the population does not do well with a high-fat diet. Can I pause for a second? So arachidonic acid is a fatty acid found in a lot of it in red meat. They marketed that as a muscle-building supplement a while ago, because they found that supplementing it with some people built more muscle. I bought into it, I was a kid, I took it, and my joints felt like crap. So it can be very pro-inflammatory in the wrong, with for the wrong person, right? It increases prostaglandin series too. And which is the most, one of the most inflammatory processes in your body. Yeah, that's interesting. It's awful. So if you can't clear it, you wake up, puffy and swollen, joint pain, it's miserable. So we can test for that. And then EPA is basically like DHA, they're both high-level omega-3s. But EPA can actually balance arachidonic acid really well, but it can become DHA. So it's a really nice omega-3. But it even gives you your omega-3 index. And if you're above what's called 9% saturation of omega-3s, you have a 90% risk reduction rate for dying from a heart attack. Even if you have high levels of cholesterol, high levels of whatever. So it's an amazing marker. Because heart disease isn't just about cholesterol, right? And for some people, it has totally negligible. But it is about your arteries being constricted and inflammation can do that. So we look at that. Isn't like a quarter of people who get heart attacks, something like that, or 20 seconds, substantial minority have fine blood lipids. Like their cholesterol numbers look fine if they get heart attacks. Literally 50-50. Oh, is it? Okay, so it's more than five. 50% of high, 50% of low. So there's much other factors. That's why you need to run homocysteine, high-sensitive CRP, run your omegas. And you'll have a much better profile. I mean, now you can break down lipid profile, but yeah. And that's why, again, these lab tests are not diagnostic medical lab tests. They look at the underlying root cause health issues. It looks at the hormones such as cortisol, testosterone, estrogen, thyroid that we did in the last episode. So again, these are very powerful labs in the Bacterian Parasite Stool Test. Well, if a client is bloated all the time for meeting just normal food, like they won't eat meat anymore. They won't eat fish. Not because that's a choice for spiritual-based reasons or other. They just don't, they can't digest it. Okay, well, why can't you digest it? We can figure that out. And so we run these labs to look at that. So again, I consider them invaluable for yourself as an individual, but also be able to add these to the practice. You know, what's interesting, Dr. Gabral, is if, and I know this, I had gut issues for a long time. So I did lots of reading, lots of research and bacterial overgrowth issues in the, you can treat them with pharmaceuticals, but they did a study not that long ago where they actually compared herbal micro anti-microbials just as effective, just as effective at treating SIBO in individuals. In other words, you don't have to go get a prescription. You can do this with natural products you can buy over the counter. And the studies, they actually did really good studies that show it's just as effective. Are there things like that for parasites as well or do you have to go to pharmaceutical route for parasites? No, so we always say that if it can be diagnosed as a medical disease, the wellness client, because they're not patients, because you're not doing practicing medicine, can share it with their PCP. So they have the patient or the wellness client has the option of doing an anti-parasitic or they have the option of the herbal based protocols, which work amazingly well. So just to kind of back that up a little bit, not only do the herbals work just as well, there's no, there's not a chance of relapse. Yeah. Because when you use, I won't name the specific drug, but when you use the drug for SIBO, the relapse is so high two, three, six months later. Because what it's not doing, it's not a protocol. So we do protocols, not supplements or not drugs. So if your doctor is giving you the drug, which is an antibiotic, which probably got you SIBO in the first place, but we won't talk about that. And they're not giving you saccharomycespillarity to prevent the yeast overgrowth. And then they're not giving you a specific probiotic to help repopulate your gut. You just can hand it back where you were. Well, you knew everything for a while. You just knew everything with this, I did that. I nuked it and I got better and then two months later, it came back. Well, you go to a garden with a flamethrower and you burn everything out, right? It eventually grows back. You didn't teach it how to grow back properly. So you get the weeds, you get everything else. You need to repopulate in a very specific way. Yeah, very interesting. So you could do that even with parasites. I had no idea that's interesting. And parasites are actually easier to work with than Candida overgrowth or bacterial overgrowth because parasites are their own living thing working or inside of the ecosystem. So you're using what would be considered, almost like, again, go back to the garden. The garden's fine. Maybe it's fine. Let's say that you just have parasites. Okay, unlikely that it's fine if you have parasites, but you're going in what would be a natural pesticide. And so you're going in with specific things like cloves and black walnut hulls and the things that are literally scientific proven to get rid of it. Plus what's called a biofilm disruptor that people are now starting to catch up on. So you can actually get to these and you can eradicate those without having to even change the diets. Now for Candida overgrowth and SIBO, you have to change the diets. So biofilm, that's where the bacteria almost develop like a almost impermeable wall that prevents any medicine or antimicrobials from actually getting to the bacteria to killing them. So it's like, you have to break down that biofilm so that you can get in there and kill them. Otherwise it's doing nothing. Did I say that? Absolutely. It's basically like a roof over the house that can protect the inhabitants inside of the house. And so you use enzymes, all natural, again, these are all natural, all natural enzymes, proteolytic enzymes and others as well, to break down that fiber layer. It's like a gel and then you can actually access then the parasites or bacteria or whatever it is. Wow, wow, that's pretty cool. So how common, I'm pretty sure bacterial overgrowth very common. How common are parasites though? People tend to think, so I, I remember learning about this myself. Because again, I've had gut issues on and off forever. I remember thinking parasites. That's like a third world issue. Like we live in clean first world countries. And I remember what the statistic was, but it's like an alarming amount of people in first world countries have parasites. It's like, what's the number? 25%. So one out of every four people probably has a parasite. That's right. Doesn't even know it. And if you go to South America, unfortunately it's almost one in two. It's at least 35% they found. And it is because typically you're drinking unclean water. So the unclean water and animal, you know, with the bathroom and the water and you're drinking that now and you're going to get parasites from that. But in the US, people don't know it. You can get parasites from a salad bar because they can be on produce. Undercooked meat, undercooked fish. Sushi. If you ate sushi, you most likely have a parasite. Yes. Unless you had strong, strong stomach acid in order to be able to kill that parasite. Because I mean, I eat wild salmon. I know how to look for it. And when I get my frozen wild salmon because it should be frozen for at least three days, deep freeze, and then it should be cooked all the way through for the fish, I can see the parasites. And so. We trust you can see them. If you, so if you get salmon filets, I'm telling you right now, they are, so the most, if you eat swordfish. Those by only hamburgers. You certainly have parasites. If you eat swordfish, undercooked, they, swordfish is a absolutely disgusted fish. If you were to cut open to swordfish, you would see hundreds, potentially thousands of parasites. Wow. It's unbelievable. And so when you look at salmon, you'll see, and we teach the, we teach the parasites like what they actually look like, but they're little tiny squiggly worms. And you can actually see the grown ones. Now most parasites start off microscopic. That's the issue. You don't necessarily see them because you wouldn't purposely eat a little worm. But they grow inside of you because they're parasitic. They literally leech off of you. Just like a tick is a parasite. Well, it's a parasite on the inside. You also get internal parasites that you get. One of the most common ones you find here, what are they called? Rope worm, tape worm. Okay. Pinworms. Okay. Wow, that sucks. Hookworm the one in the south that like just... It's another one. Yeah. They used to get like a bit... Wow. That's affected your brain. That's terrible. Now when you're doing a parasite test, are they just looking at stool and looking at eggs? And okay. So that's, and I'm glad you brought that up. The reason we use a lot of different lab tests is because every lab test is best at what it does. So we would never use a urine-based test to find parasites. No. And that when we wouldn't use urine to even find out your hormone markers because it just shows what's been used. Not necessarily the best way to look at it. Not bad, but it's not the best way. So if you're looking at, hey, what's in your intestines? Let's do a stool test. And then if we're looking at what escaped from the gut wall, let's do a urine test. If we're looking at what's being excreted from the body, let's do a hair test. And if we want to know best levels of hormones that are unbound, we're doing a saliva test. So we have a little bit of everything for each person in order to be able to say, hey, this is what you can do. The nice thing is the thing that prevents people from running functional medicine tests is they have to have a needle put in their arm to draw blood. Nobody likes that. I don't know anybody who likes that. I will do it quite often. I don't like it. Plus you have to go to a lab and do the whole thing. That's right. Or you spend $150 for full bottom is to come to your house and all those different things if it's reliable enough. So these labs allow you to reach all of your clients or additional people or family members. And it's just a little finger poke, which would be the blood spot, same as you would do for your blood sugar. Morning urine sample, saliva sample, stool sample, or a couple of snips of hair. And then that's it. So we've covered level one, level two coaching. Is that as far as it goes? That's what people are initially able to join with. I will say that almost 70% now people sign up for level one and level two combination because they want the access to be able to run these labs, which makes sense to me. Yeah, especially if you're going to build it in, like I said, I think that's the way to go if you're a coach. If you think about it too, like just to move back to that point, if you do that as a coach or an acupuncturist or anyone doing this, you're at the top. Yes. Like where is someone else going to go? It's better than you that does that. My sales brain was already going like... If I had this... I would guarantee money back. What I know when I get a client who's broken, has an exercise, is out of shape, got all these issues, when I introduce strength training, improve their diet, sleep, if I had access to labs, I would guarantee you that after you spend six months with me, you will feel the best you've felt. Maybe you're holding... So I'd have some sort of a guarantee money back after that and I would just charge you a super premium price because I feel so confident to give it all back. Yeah, a success rate would go through the roof and then the value you could provide... See, the thing is too with a lot of coaches and trainers is they're afraid to charge X amount of dollars or more money because they're not sure of their own value. Like you do something like this, this is extremely valuable to the person and I used to do this through multiple practitioners. Like I said, a studio and I'd have them in my studio. If I could have done this myself, I would have... This would have been amazing. So very cool. And the thing is too, let's say you go through the certification, you're like, you know what? I don't necessarily feel comfortable running these labs. We have people who say that and that's okay because you might... You get lifetime access right now. Yeah. You can continue study, continue to learn. Most people are able to just literally take it and run with it and they learn with their clients like all of us do. It's totally fine. But you can actually have one of our equal life health coaches on my team read the lab for the client, give the program and the personal trainer who's going through IHP, then takes it and implements it with their client. Really. Because we talked about this before. Meaning like we're not here to take anybody's clients. That's not what we do. We don't even use our private practice. We literally read labs for people in 27 countries around the world. And we're running now about 20,000 appointments a year. We've done well over 300,000 appointments. We have so much data. So what we do is we actually just teach to our IHPs. This is what works. This is what works. This is what works. Oh, we found something that tweaked us even a little bit better. Here's the update for that. So we're always giving updates as well. Wow. Wow. It's awesome. So people can enter at whatever level they feel comfortable. Because let's face it, when you start anything new, you have the imposter syndrome. Right? Yes. Like so there's a lot of people who won't get started because they're like, who am I to run a hormone lab? Who am I to run a food sensitivity test? Okay. Well, once you do it, you are that person and you can learn from doing it. But in the beginning, if you don't feel comfortable, you dip your toe in, you get the knowledge. The more you learn about it, the more professional you feel. And then inside of our IHP community, we just call them study buddies. And so you match up with someone to practice these labs together and the education. And so you basically are just doing role playing, which gets you comfortable. So how long does it typically take someone to go through and get the level one, level two certification? Typically 12 weeks for level one, 12 weeks for level two. Okay. Six months. About six months. Yeah, you can get started working right away as an IHP and put the IHP after your name, after the level one, which people can do. Well, I think it's one of the most valuable courses I've ever heard of. I wish, I mean, so much cool stuff. Makes you want to build an online coaching business. I mean, we got a backup plan. Absolutely. Yeah. No. So very cool. We really appreciate that you offer this to people. And I know we're doing something for our audience with this. So really appreciate you coming back on the show. Yeah, my pleasure. Always great chatting with the three of you. Thank you. Definitely. This one's really important. And that is to phase your training. If somebody trains for a full year doing a bench press and they're always aiming for five reps, if you compared that person to a person who did bench press where they did three or four weeks of five reps, but then they did three or four weeks of 12 reps and then three or four weeks of, let's say, 15 to 20 reps and then they'll throw in some supersets, at the end of that year, you're going to see more consistent progress from the person who's moving in and out. And less injury. That's another thing. You'll see less injury as well.