November 11, 2016 By Dr. Kurt, DC

Pathetic Thyroid Apathy

I am really starting to feel bad for other other doctors that work in a traditional setting. Under the surface, over 80% of doctors in this country are disillusioned with medicine and over 60% are considering quitting in the next 2 years. But most people in the healthcare service industry are pretty good at hiding that painful reality…until lately.

I’m seeing more and more lab results from patients that went to their doctor with a genuine concern that is affecting their life. I can’t tell you how many people have showed me those labs, looking at their thyroid specifically, with ONLY a TSH and maybe some metabolic markers and were told, ‘you’re fine.’

The other day, I got one with just a TSH and vitamin D and she was told her thyroid was all good. I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s not lazy healthcare, it’s pathetic and apathetic healthcare. If someone is coming to me with a list of complaints asking for me to help figure out what it could be, I’m going to dig. Running a panel of 2 values just shows me that doctor is done caring. Time to find a new one.

Let’s dive into what a full assessment might look like for your thyroid.

There’s a host of symptoms that can arise with a thyroid imbalance: fatigue, cold sensitivity, constipation, dry skin, unexplained weight gain, difficulty losing weight, brittle nails, constipation, enlarged thyroid, high cholesterol, irritability, sensitivity to cold, sexual dysfunction, slow heart rate, sluggishness, or irregular uterine bleeding. But guess what? There’s a host of other issues that can cause these as well.

How do you know if your doctor is apathetic? They run tests, deem them ‘normal’ and end the discussion, even though you are struggling. If you persist, they hand you off to a ‘specialist’ or suggest you take an antidepressant to numb you to what you’re feeling. If my wife had these symptoms, was told that her labs were fine, and there was no plan to look at potential other causes, we would find another doctor.

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October 27, 2016 By Dr. Kurt, DC

Increasing Premiums are NOT the Problem

As we near the end of 2016, there are multiple reports that health care premiums are going to spike 25% and people are outraged…except for the ones that made the policy and these people below.

If you’re upset and frustrated about your premiums going up, stop. You should be exponentially more pissed off over the products and services your premiums are providing. But I’ve never met an insurance broker that goes over the unfeatures of your insurance coverage.

The part that baffles me the most is that people seem to ignore that they are paying a higher premium to access a system that is great in emergencies but has failed miserable in health promotion. In other words, you keep paying more for access to a system that will NEVER get you better. It’s about as effective as paying your monthly minimum balance on a 12% interest credit card and expecting to get out of debt.

Our traditional healthcare system provides 2 options. Drugs and surgery. The companies that create and supply the products for your doctor to perform a service are publicly traded companies. Regardless of the industry, a publicly traded company has one goal and that is to create profits for the shareholders. When a company engages in activities that purposely lower the profits to shareholders, this is called fraud. This is illegal.

If a pharmaceutical company were to create something that made you healthy and therefore created less need of their product, this would lower profits. In other words, they would be actively lowering the profits of the shareholders, which is illegal. Providing a cure would be fraud.

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October 19, 2016 By Dr. Kurt, DC

Silent Starvation

If you were to ask my wife, current and past co-workers, and kids what I really suck at, I’m sure it would take them about a microseconds to spit out EMPATHY. It’s enormously difficult for me to relate emotionally with someone else’s struggles. It doesn’t mean I don’t care. I just hard for me to shed a tear…except for the movie Rudy.

But the more I dive into looking at the disruptions at the cell level and even genetic level, my view of individual’s health struggles is starting to change, especially when it comes to people that struggle with obesity. The empathy really grows when I see them do so much that is right but can’t seem to have a break through.

One of the biochemical factors that keep the person unsatisfied is because often times they are starving. Really. In other words, what they are eating isn’t being shuttled into the cell to produce that universal energy currency we all learned about in high school biology called ATP. One of those main reasons for an overfed but under nourished state is due to inefficiencies of the Kreb’s cycle. As a result, the person is going to crave more and more energy substrates (usually carb type foods) to flood the system to ultimately produce ATP.

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September 20, 2016 By Dr. Kurt, DC

What’s for Breakfast? You Missed the Point

My last post was about about breakfast, I mean dessert. What’s the difference? The point of it is that if you break down the ingredients in your typical breakfast, it’s nothing more than dessert consumed early in the day. My suggestion was that maybe you should skip it. I thought that was pretty clear but then got tons of feedback with questions about what should they eat for breakfast?

Let me be clear. Breakfast isn’t that important. What sparked my writing of the last post was the news of the researchers being paid in the 1960’s to shift the blame of heart disease away from sugar and onto fat. Then one of those scientists becoming the head of the USDA’s nutritional guidelines, which happened to start the ‘fat is bad’ campaign, brain washing you the past 40 years.

I feel I need to shed some light on another myth.

Breakfast is the Most Important Meal of the Day

Where did this come from? It came from a major publication, Good Health. I’m sure you have seen this in the check out lanes at your favorite grocery store or drug store.

Did you know it was once edited by Dr. John Harvey Kellogg? And in that magazine in 1917, an article written called ‘August Breakfasts’ by Lenna F. Cooper makes a passing statement that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. I don’t know if Ms. Cooper was the first to ever say this but it becomes a catchy phrase to someone with the last name of Kellogg. Yes, that Kellogg.

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September 16, 2016 By Dr. Kurt, DC

Breakfast is the Most Important Meal…To Skip

Breakfast vs. Dessert

On my initial intake paperwork for people, I have the potential client list out their food items. Under more investigation of the ingredients of those foods, I vote that breakfast is the most important meal…to skip entirely.

Think about it. Why is chocolate milk a ‘health food,’ great for recovery but chocolate ice cream will send you to an early grave? Please don’t hit reply with, ‘that’s why I just let my ice cream melt and call it a smoothie.’ I’ve already used that line.

Javier Zarracina/Vox

Javier Zarracina/Vox

What’s the big deal? The big deal is that in case you hadn’t seen it this week, the NY Times ran a column called, ‘How the Sugar Industry Shifted Blame to Fat.’

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September 9, 2016 By Dr. Kurt, DC

VDR – A Missing Piece in Your Hashimoto Journey

My last post was about MTHFR. If these letters are new to you or you think I just called you an insult, please go back and review before proceeding.

Letters like MTHFR, COMT, MTRR, and today’s topic of VDR have to do with your DNA code. Genetically, the human race is virtually identical. You can take a female from Sri Lanka, mate her with a dude from Alaska, and they will produce a gorgeous baby with all the right parts and capacities for that human to become a world leader someday.

The goofy letters I listed above fall into the category of what makes us unique. MTHFR is used in how we process folic acid. MTRR is used on how we process B12. COMT has roles in breaking down neurotransmitters like dopamine and epinephrine. Regardless of your stance on creation and/or evolution, the one point of agreement is that today’s modern human has been around for 10,000 years. This means your DNA code has been unchanged from classic hunter-gatherer type populations.

What has changed immensely is our environment. That’s why this has the greatest factor on your overall health expression. With that same DNA code being passed from generation to generation for 10,000 years, there’s potential that the basic blue print over time can have a typo here and there or even a little fading at times.

It’s these ‘typos’ that may create challenges the more your environment is compromised in your eating, movement, thought, social, and spiritual patterns. They are called SNPs (snips). Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms.

One I want to highlight today is the VDR.

Vitamin D Receptor

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September 2, 2016 By Dr. Kurt, DC

MTHFR Myopia

If you happened upon this post with interest in how MTHFR can cause near sightedness, you’ll be sadly disappointed. You’re probably looking for affirmation that the cause of all your problems stem from a MTHFR dysfunction. Instead, I hope to provide information for those practitioners and general population people that learn just enough about MTHFR to become dangerous…and careless…and myopic.

For those that are still hung up on the letters MTHFR and wondering if I just insulted you, let me explain. Actually, let me give you the meaning of life. Ready? Life is like our favorite food. You need ingredients and directions to create a finished product.

Substrate + Enzyme/Co-Factors = Product.

Substrates are your basic ingredients. These are your lifestyle choices, circumstances, perceptions, nutrition levels, social influences, movement patterns, and all the variables in life. This accounts for 98% of your health outcomes (finished product).

The enzymes are coded for in your DNA. This is your recipe guide. It’s the constant in the equation, it doesn’t change. There can be tweaks here and there but any typos in that recipe can most often be corrected for by changing your spices, heating, altitude, etc (i.e. co-factors).

The product is you and your health expression. You have an amazing recipe and access to ingredients to live a life your ancestors only dreamed about.

The better your ingredients, the better the product. This life recipe has stood the test of time but because it’s a copy from your great-great-great grandmother x 10,000 years, some of the print may be a bit faded or maybe even contain some typos? You’ve seen plenty of those in my posts. Depending on your surrounding environment, you may get caught up on those typos and decide you don’t want to read any further. You’re disgusted by my ineptness of editing and disregard anything I’ve ever said because I used the wrong version of affect versus effect.

For the majority of you, it’s no big deal, you’re kind and forgiving and will send a sweet email directing me to a correction that needs attention. I appreciate those.

Typos

This ‘typo’ is a simplistic way of looking at MTHFR. In essence there’s a deviation in the code from your DNA and it may or may not affect you…or is that effect? I’ll never understand that one.

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August 9, 2016 By Dr. Kurt, DC

Are You Seeking Information or Affirmation?

In the age of information, are you actually seeking information or are you seeking affirmation? When you accept something as truth, do you seek out other sources that may question that truth or do you seek out outlets that continually affirm your truth?

“If they would just be informed.” I hear this statement often from people that are on a health journey and want the people in their closest circles to jump on board with them. The statement should actually read something like this. “If they would just accept my truth as their truth, they would then be affirming all the time and energy I have put into seeking out and creating this world view. Whom do they think they are for not agreeing and affirming my views?”

I especially see this with diets. Whether it’s vegan, paleo, keto, or the ‘hell no’ diet. It’s easy to then seek out references and data points that back up your view point. Seriously, how many 300 page books do you have to read that end with the same conclusion that gluten is bad?

If that is you (me included), you are practicing seeking affirmation, not seeking information. The information you do seek regarding the other view point is often to show those supporters NOT how your view is right but how their view is ultimately dangerous.

If there’s something more annoying than arguing with a person seeking affirmation, it’s arguing with a person seeking affirmation through fear motivation. This is our current presidential race right now. If so and so is elected, look at all the ways our country will crumble under their leadership. Relax, we will all be ok.

In honor of seeking information instead of just affirmation, I have a few challenges for you. [Read more…]

August 2, 2016 By Dr. Kurt, DC

When High Intensity Harms

I’ve been getting a very similar question/story lately. It goes something like this.

I’ve been eating paleo for months, doing high intensity exercise, doing everything right, and I still can’t drop the weight.

They often add fatigue into the equation as well. That statement in itself could mean a lot of things but for the sake of this post, I want to focus on the high intensity exercise piece.

I LOVE high intensity exercise. I do high intensity workouts in a CrossFit manner. But exercise is actually one of the poorest interventions for you to lose weight. Why? Because most measure exercise in terms of calorie expenditure. This mind set is when high intensity harms as it leaves you in the mental state of more it better. I don’t really want to get into the calorie-in, calorie-out falsehood of activity and weight. Instead, I’m going to focus on the bigger picture.

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July 25, 2016 By Dr. Kurt, DC

The #1 Question I Hate Answering

I get asked a LOT of questions. It is the nature of my profession. But there’s one question I cringe at answering. I hate this question because it’s usually in an awkward social setting with people I will probably never see again. Honestly, I would rather speak to a group of 200 people than make small talk with 5. Don’t even get me started about flying alone.

The question I dread is, “so what do you do for a living?” I don’t dread it because I’m embarrassed or hate what I do. I’m more excited and passionate today than I was 12 years ago when I started my professional career. I dread it because the answer limits what I do and have done in the minds of the question asker, especially over this last year.

If I say I’m a chiropractor, I often get the obnoxious response of someone grabbing their neck or pretending that their back just went out. Or I get the totally uninformed person that responds with, “I love having my back rubbed.” At this point, I’m ready to put a knee in the middle of their back. Or it’s the total opposite and they think I’m the spawn of Satan and practice voodoo.

I could say I’m a writer, but it’s just a piece of what I do. Yes I wrote a book and have written probably 200 articles the past 4-5 years. I could also say I’m a speaker, but again, it’s just a piece. I use these pieces more as one of the core expressions (Education) of my core values (Leadership, Family, and Community) to ultimately support my mission of helping you create ‘More Health Less Healthcare.’

What I usually say is that I practice Functional Medicine. The problem is that unless you’re looking for a functional medicine practitioner you’ve probably never even heard of the term. This role of ‘what I do’ has been the focus of my career over the past few years.

I just have completed the course work and passed the 12 exams through Functional Medicine University in the credentialing process. This means in the near future you will see some additional letters after my name, CFMP. In all honesty, the letters don’t matter. What matters is if I’m able to use all that information, apply it to each individual and move them towards their health goals.

So what is Functional Medicine? I would define it as assessing and supporting systems and origins, instead of treating symptoms and organs. Honestly, it takes my chiropractic education and biochemistry background and ties it all together to assess the root cause of a person’s health problems more efficiently, effectively, and thoroughly.

Many practitioners are using the term ‘functional medicine’ in their marketing. I have a cynical feeling this term will get as bastardized as the term ‘wellness’ has. A doctor can say they practice functional medicine but how do you, the consumer, know?

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