Functional Medicine Lab Interpretation with Reed Davis: Rational Wellness Podcast 444

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Reed Davis discusses Functional Medicine Lab Interpretation with Dr. Ben Weitz.  

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Podcast Highlights

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Reed Davis is a clinical nutritionist and founder of Functional Diagnostic Nutrition. Reed is known as one of the most successful and experienced clinicians in the world today, having provided functional lab assessments to over 11,000 people for hormone levels as well as adrenal, digestion, detoxification, mucosal barrier, pathogenic, bone density and diet related health problems.  He has certified hundreds of FDN Practitioners worldwide and with FDN, specializes in teaching about Functional Health Coach Training.

Dr. Ben Weitz is available for Functional Nutrition consultations specializing in Functional Gastrointestinal Disorders like IBS/SIBO and Reflux and also Cardiometabolic Risk Factors like elevated lipids, high blood sugar, and high blood pressure.  Dr. Weitz has also successfully helped many patients with managing their weight and improving their athletic performance, as well as sports chiropractic work by calling his Santa Monica office 310-395-3111.

 

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Podcast Transcript

Dr. Weitz:  Hey, this is Dr. Ben Weitz host of the Rational Wellness Podcast. I talk to the leading health and nutrition experts and researchers in the field to bring you the latest in cutting edge health information. Subscribe to the Rational Wellness Podcast for weekly updates and to learn more, check out my website, drweitz.com.  Thanks for joining me and let’s jump into the podcast.

Hello this is Dr. Ben Weitz and this is The Rational Wellness Podcast, and our topic for today is lab test interpretation with Reed Davis. Reed Davis is a clinical nutritionist and the founder of Functional Diagnostic Nutrition. Reed is one of the most successful and experienced clinicians in the world, having provided functional lab assessments to over 11,000 people for hormone levels, as well as digestion, detoxification, mucosal barrier function bone density, diet related health problems.  He certified hundreds of FDN practitioners worldwide and he teaches about functional health coach training. Reed, thanks so much for joining us.

Reed: Well, thanks Dr. Ben for having me here. Happy to help out anytime.

Dr. Weitz: Great. So, when it comes to labs, what are some of your favorite lab panels that you like to run, and what companies do you like to use?

Reed:  Sure. Well, for years and years I’ve been running what used to be called alternative labs. Now they’re more known, more widely as functional lab work. So I use saliva, urine, stool, blood when necessary. A lot of people actually, though they’ve already been to a physician, let’s say, and told their blood work looks normal.  And that was something that occurred to me 26, 27 years ago when I started. So I started using these alternatives, like for instance, for the saliva testing of the hormones. I now use a company called FluidsIQ. FluidsIQ, that’s all one word. And they’re out of Toronto, Canada. Okay. They have a US distributor.  They ship all over, including to some of the states that it’s hard to get lab tests into, like New York and Rhode Island and some of these places there. So they’re really good company Fluids iq. I use them for saliva testing of the hormones. By the way, our panel, I’ve gotten the labs to add markers as we’ve learned what’s important here healing wise.  So their hormone test, for instance, has, it’s not just the cortisol and DHEA four point, you know, with the sex hormones. It’s got estrogen and progesterone, testosterone, but it [00:03:00] also includes melatonin. And so that’s an indicator that’s often very important. So. You know, if you can do a test at home that’s real simple and kind of not real expensive it’s, there’s a fee of course, but you can get melatonin added and any other markers would be great.

So, you know what we had them include secretory, ICA. Now that’s from saliva. So at the same time you’re submitting your hormone panel. You can get your melatonin, you can get your secretory IGA or SigA that tells us about your immune system. So we’re looking at whether it’s overactive or underactive, and it tells you something about a person.  And oh, by the way, when someone has stress and cortisol or DHEA, you’re outta balance. You’re more catabolic. Your sex hormones go outta balance. Which is all on there. And then your melatonin, because the circadian rhythm is off. So we want to look at [00:04:00] that and hey, while we’re now,

Dr. Weitz:  There’s been a lot of critique of saliva testing for sex hormones as not being accurate.

Reed: Yeah, I’ve heard that. You know, but mostly it’s by the companies that don’t do it. So, you know, there’s over 300 white papers written on the accuracy of saliva testing for hormones. The trouble that a lot of practitioners might have is that there’s not very much hormone in saliva, but the cool thing about it is if it’s made it through the saliva glands into your mouth, that’s real bioavailable hormone.  So it’s not attached to anything. There’s no binding of any of it. And so, some practitioners are using dried urine, for instance, right? 

Dr. Weitz:  Like DUTCH testing, for example.

Reed:  There’s zero white papers on that. The only papers, the only research you can find on that test is written by the people who do the test, the [00:05:00] manufacturer or lab people.  So a, again, there’s over 300 white papers written on the accuracy and effectiveness of saliva testing. So, you know, I don’t really like to get into the debate because I know plenty of people who use the dried urine and I think it’s an okay test. I trust the lab too, but there isn’t even a fraction of the research done on that test. Now, the gold standard’s probably wet urine or even blood if you’re doing hormone

Dr. Weitz:  Blood, is really considered the gold standard I think.

Reed:  If you’re doing replacement, it is. And so, we don’t really do replacement, like we’re not prescribing hormones. We’re trying to find out what’s wrong with a person.  We, we would be more inclined to ask, well, why are your hormones out of balance and not just blaming it on age or something like that. So we and that way we can kind of help the person. The goal is to have them live themself out of [00:06:00] the trouble they’ve lived themself into. Right. One of the things that sometimes,

Dr. Weitz:  One of the things I’ll sometimes put hormones at a balance, and some of the labs now are starting to test for this also is endocrine disrupting substances.

Reed: Yeah, for sure. So we use for that, the vibrant total tox test for one thing.

Dr. Weitz:  Right? Yep.

Reed: Yeah, you’re probably familiar with that. And there’s other, yeah,

Dr. Weitz: I like that test.

Reed:   It’s what do you like so much about it? No, you’re interviewing me.

Dr. Weitz: Well, I love the fact that it’s looking at so many different forms of toxins.  It’s got environmental toxins, it’s got heavy metals, it’s got mycotoxins and I found it to be very helpful and accurate. And so, yeah, you know, I just tested a patient last week and she had very high levels of of gadolinium. And, you know, it’s one of the few tests that includes [00:07:00] gadolinium.  And we started talking about it and it turned out that she’d had three MRIs with contrast of her brain because she’s having brain problems and we, there’s actually warnings from the FDA that gadolinium tends to build up in the brain. And now we have a test showing that she has high gadolinium levels and she had no idea that she was being exposed to a heavy metal.

Getting these MRI scans.

Reed: That’s fantastic and reminds me recently, ’cause I’m older, you know, I was gonna get a scan for a standard checkup by my urologist and he wanted to use a contrast gadolinium. I said, no, I don’t want you injecting any contrast. Just take the MRI or your CT scan or whatever, do the best you can, you know, and right.

Dr. Weitz:  And by the way, this a patient who has MS and she’s having a flare and

Speaker 3: yeah.

Dr. Weitz: And then she also had high levels of [00:08:00] mycotoxins and then we talked about it. And she has a air conditioning unit that’s leaking water and she knows she has mold and the air conditioning unit’s throwing it all around her apartment.

Reed: It’s really helpful to run these labs to, and to try to be a good detective, you know, to find out what’s really going on with the person, their environment. Things. I’ve been finding it just fascinating. First test I ever ran was in 1999 and it was actually a food sensitivity test. Okay. Those are really great too.  I, by the way I’m full disclosure, I use Oxford Biomedical, they run the Mediator Release test, which I find to be the best for almost everybody.

Dr. Weitz: Oxford Biomedical, I’m not familiar with them.

Reed: Yeah, well, you know, you might wanna jot that down or use your note taker or whatever. Because it, I’ve been using it for all these years.  The first time I used it, and this is not typical, but not uncommon either. So I’ve had a lot of success stories, just like this lady comes in the office for chiropractic. She had sore neck and I was walking her back. She was on about her eighth visit and hadn’t really talked to her about much else at that time.  And she was walking back to the treatment room. And Ben, you know, we would do a little trigger point therapy and put a heat pack on a patient before we did the adjustment. I wasn’t doing the adjustment, so I would kind of triage the whole thing. And I’m walking this lady back and I could see she’s really sad.  Just tell what’s wrong. Oh, it’s this weight Reed. I’m 40 pounds overweight because I’m on medication for the hives and I’m, I wanna butt in. Right? But she goes and, she goes, I went to the doctor the other day and I told him how unhappy [00:10:00] I was, how frustrating it was to be 40 pounds overweight because of this darn medication for the hives you have me on.  According to her, she he said, lady, you can be fat or you can have the hives, take your pick. So wait, so now I really wanna butt in now. Nope. She goes and she goes, I told him how depressing that was and he said he’d be happy to write me a prescription for antidepressants.  So, you know, from the hives to being overweight because of the medication and how frustrating that was.  And now he’s prescribing or willing to prescribe antidepressants. Finally, I got my word in edgewise and I said, Hey, first name. How come you never tried to find out why you get the hives or would you like to, or something to that effect. Her head turned around so hard from staring at the floor to looking at me, I thought she wouldn’t [00:11:00] need her adjustment that day. It was like, what? I said, yeah, you know, let’s test, let’s run. I don’t know what, we’ll find

Dr. Weitz: you know, big pharma has figured out that’s not gonna sell so many drugs. So now every time you see a drug commercial on tv, and by the way, if you watch any tv, every freaking commercial is a drug company, is people taking these injectable medications that cost thousands of dollars a month, but every time they take it, they’re dancing and singing and everybody’s happy and it’s the greatest thing in the world.  And you’re like, sign me up for this injectable medication for autoimmune disease.

Reed: It’s amazing. And. Back then there was biologics, but this was just like a steroid, you know, just to keep the hives down. And you’re right, i, those commercials there, there’s birds singing and there’s butterflies flying around and everything, making it look good, even though they kind of under their breath tell you that could cause, you know, serious diarrhea [00:12:00] and, you know, like death.  

Dr. Weitz:  Oh, yeah, exactly. You know, and impotency and,

Reed: oh, yeah. Yeah. So I simply said. Hey, let’s let, maybe we could find something. And she took home a test kit, got the test kit completed. I finally got the results. Takes a little while sometimes for people to get it together, but this is by the way, out of pocket ’cause insurance didn’t cover it then 25 years ago and doesn’t cover it now for whatever reason.  It’s insane that these wonderful tests aren’t covered by insurance. A lot of ’em. So she was willing to pay, obviously. And when I went over her results, we changed a few things. As I recall, it was really the food sensitivity test that worked. But she was sensitive to some foods she was eating every day.  Got her off those foods. She told me later, she said, Reed, within nine days I was calling the doctor. I told ’em I’m [00:13:00] not taking this medication anymore because I found out why I get the hives right. I found, I mean, what a concept, you know, find out why you get

Dr. Weitz: the hives. Yeah. I mean that’s one of the fundamental principles of functional medicine is trying to get to the root causes and keep asking, why do I have this problem instead of just treating the symptoms

Reed: and it, yes, and it’s the same for like the saliva testing of the hormones.  We’re not looking for the kinda results would have a. You know, titrate medication, you know, like hormone replacement. You could do it, but that’s not why we do it. So I, my group, the Functional Diagnostic Nutrition Group are always, we’re strictly underlying causes and conditions. No prescribing, no drugs.  It’s we do use supplements, but a lot of other things like lifestyle, diet, rest, exercise, stress reduction. 

Dr. Weitz:  So give us an example of a patient who had some hormone imbalance and how did you treat it? 

Reed: Yeah, well, we try not to treat it. We try to indicate to that person, Hey, look, you’re all stressed out.  Stress throws the cortisol and DHEA off and the next domino to fall is always the sex hormones. So people with these sex hormone problems, you can use supplements. There’s adaptogenics and lots of things that make you feel better. You could even use a little estrogen or progesterone or what have you.  You can get a lot of that over the counter these days. But we would be more inclined to find out what the stressors were. And that’s the true detective work. And you know, of course people are eating wrong and they’re not sleeping and they’re working too hard and all these things that do stress them out.  But handling stress has always been our secret to success, you know, and along with, of course, eating right, going to bed on time, exercising and taking your supplements. And so I did. I, there’s so many [00:15:00] cases. And as a matter of fact, well, this would lead into another story. We had a lady coming in who was all of that overweight, fatigued brain fog you know, can’t sleep and you name it.  A very unhappy person who’s working with us for several weeks. And we did not just hormones, but ’cause I never just look at hormones. It’s like, I won’t guess what their problem is. I run five labs in every person, which is,

Dr. Weitz:  What are the five labs you run?

Reed:  I run the saliva test of the hormones, which includes melatonin, SigA and now we’re adding insulin to it.  

I look at the mucosal barrier. So I look at zonulin…

Dr. Weitz:  Insulin via saliva? That’s interesting. I haven’t heard anybody mention that.

Reed: Totally. Yeah. And because it’s so convenient. And remember, these are just windows. These aren’t always diagnostic tests. We’re not trying to diagnose and treat, we’re trying to find out what are the healing opportunities.  So that’s a better word [00:16:00] for us than diagnosed, I think for chiropractors, for health coaches, for, you know, these allied practitioners. Most people coming in don’t want another diagnosis and prescription. They want to know what’s really wrong with me. And that’s what started my career in 1999. I wasn’t a doctor.  I had a lot to learn. I had nothing to unlearn, but case after case of looking for those underlying causes, I found hormones are obviously very helpful. And I learned on saliva and I’m, I’ve stuck with it, although I’ve tried everything else. So, so,

Dr. Weitz:  So the five tests, the first one is salivary hormones….

Reed:  We do a urinary metabolic wellness panel, which is Indican for digestion and protein breakdown.  And also it indicates dysbiosis doctors used to run 40, 50 years ago, doctors were running a urinalysis in their office. They weren’t always sending everything out. And they would look at Indican, which is a measurement of dysbiosis and improper [00:17:00] protein breakdown. That’s important. So, but the same test has urinary bowel acids on it, which tells us you have congested liver.  So detox,  

Dr. Weitz:  So is this like an organic acids profile? 

Reed:  There is one organic acid on it. That’s the 8OHDG, which is a and we used to use lipid peroxide. We’re looking for oxidative stress, liver function, and of course the digestion dysbiosis all in one simple urine collection.  That, that’s pretty remarkable. So we use the saliva, that urine collection for those markers we use,

Dr. Weitz:  What lab do you get that urine collection from?

Reed:  That’s also FluidsIQ. Fluids iq. It is called their metabolic wellness panel. I helped ’em develop it because that’s what I learned on again. And the lab I learned on was BioHealth Diagnostics.  You might’ve heard of them. The owner, scientist, research lab geek, my buddy Tim Bill is Dr. Bill. Tim has died and the business has gone out. So I had to get other labs. Hey, I need, this is what [00:18:00] I need for my people. So we’d run the saliva test, fluids iq, it’s called their Stress and hormone panel, plus the add-ons.  They have the metabolic wellness panel, the Indicin lipid product or 8OHD guanine and their UUA. That’s a direct measurement of liver function. So that tells you a lot about a person why you feel so crappy. Here’s why not diagnosing and treating how to get rid of the symptoms. Here’s why you feel so bad, and here’s the things you can do to correct it.  By the same same type of test also from fluids. Iq, fluids IQ is their mucosal barrier assessment, which is a finger stick. Now, a finger stick allows you to do this at home too, very inexpensively. There’s no blood draw required, so you just poke your finger, you drip it out onto a blotter, it dries you, send it into the lab.  Very convenient, inexpensive. That gives us, first of all, zonulin, or zonulin, as Dr. [00:19:00] Gonshor says. He’s French Canadian, so a smart guy. Really brilliant guy. Zonulin is a marker for leaky gut, as you know. But along with it, we’re looking at the histamine and the diamine oxidase, those, and the ratio between those two because they’re going to give you a picture of what’s happening in the gut along with the endocrine and the, you know, from the urine test. You get this really nice picture of how healthy or unhealthy the gut is, and everyone seems to know about leaky gut, but to actually be able to, if you know the anatomy and physiology, you can see what’s going on with these markers, the histamine and the DAO, the diamine oxidase and the ratio.  And you can also predict what’s gonna happen. So histamine and

Dr. Weitz:  So histamine and DAO would be one way to try to assess the presence of mast cell activation syndrome, correct?

Reed:  Well, that and just any kind of histamine.

Dr. Weitz:  Histamine [00:20:00] intolerance, yeah.

Reed: Yeah. And it could be from eating histamine foods, but mostly it is from histamine being produced by the body in reaction in response to something.  And so something unpleasant to the body. And so, but the how well it respond, it’s responding if DAO is high. Then the system’s working the way it’s supposed to. If DAO is really low, well, histamine’s high. Hey, you have a problem. You’ve got k cryp hyperplasia, it’s called where the villi are flattened out.  You’ve got other things going on and you can tell how much healing is required when you look at this all again, it’s kind of connecting the dots. So this constellation of healing opportunities, we mentioned the hormones from saliva, which gives you SigA also you, so if that’s high, you’ve got bugs, while you look at the metabolic wellness panel and that Indican tells you, yeah, serious dysbiosis.  Now it’s gotten worse when you run the Mucosal barrier assessment, which has the zonulin, leaky gut and the other markers there. They’re telling you a lot about the health of that person and how much work it’s gonna be to heal, not just take your medicine. So the other tests we use, so those three are by Fluids IQ.  Now we use DSL’s GI Map for a stool test. Just find that’s still the standard. I’ve looked at everything else. I wish they did it the old fashioned way with Microscoping and tri-chrome staining and where the human’s actually looking at the stool.

Dr. Weitz:   Do you try to find more parasites?

Reed:  Well, they can identify things and you’re also culturing that you would used to do a stool culture.  You look at what kind of fuzz is growing on different Petri dishes. It’s, I think it’s more, it’s better for me as a natural healer, you know, to look at what’s really going to not just have some machine tell me, oh, here’s this, and this. But still the DSL has some the GI map has some [00:22:00] functional markers on it for digestion and it’s kind of a cool test.  It’s considered the standard today. So we use that and we also use that Oxford biomedical food sensitivity tests. Those five labs give you a lot of information when someone’s coming in. And if it’s okay, Ben, I’ll just elucidate a bit. So we’re different in that we’re not medical doctors trying to diagnose and treat one thing.  You got your, at your, you know, you’re a gastroenterologist, you’re your endocrine. And so on. So we’re looking at the whole person with a holistic approach to healing, trying to identify a whole constellation of healing opportunities because people that come in and I’m gonna give you the phrase that I used, that’s, I think, critical.

So people come in and they’ve got multiple causal things. You know, there’s they’re, again, they’re tired, fatigued, overweight, they can’t lose it. They got and you can tell they got bad [00:23:00] digestion, bad skin, you name it, bad attitude, moody irritability. And so, so they’ve got this whole constellation of things going on.

Some of them, and you know, this way upstream, you know, where the symptoms aren’t really pointing the finger. So we, what the phrase that I came up with? We’re looking for root cause. Yes, but you’re never gonna find one. There’s multiple root causes. And here’s the other thing you don’t hear a lot of places, Ben, is they’re having an effect on each other.

These multiple causal factors are crashing into each other, causing new problems. Very hard to measure. Some of them, by the way, and I teach a course in lab work I know a little bit about that. You can’t measure everything. So you need this constellation of healing opportunities. You need to you know, connect the dots, so to speak.

Explain that person. The most important thing I learned in the office. [00:24:00] Remember I started in a chiropractic wellness center. Running labs. Running labs, the and it’s, you know, that there isn’t one cause, there’s no one root cause. By the way, the University of California, San Diego did a study and said the original root cause might not even be there anymore.

So all these things crashed into each other, creating new problems you can’t even measure some of them. I call it metabolic chaos. And that is a, actually a phrase that I coined and it’s what my practitioners that I teach understand it’s metabolic chaos. You don’t want to just, oh, you’ve got IBS and you’ve got, you know, endocrine disruptors and you’ve got toxicity and you’ve, you have metabolic chaos from multiple causal factors.

So there’s a way to straighten it out, which is the other half of the business. And first half is figuring out what’s wrong. The step in between. You’ll love this and you know this ’cause I learned it [00:25:00] in that wellness center clinical correlation. Does this explain why the person in front of you feels so crappy?

And you know, so the practitioners that we teach, and I know you get it, metabolic chaos, right? You know, who else gets it? Mrs. Smith and Mrs. Jones who are sitting in front of you with all these complaints and they’ve been told by everyone else that it let’s they pick one thing. It sounds like thyroid.

It sounds like, you know, irritable bowel, it sounds like a parasite or we don’t use the sounds like method. You know, we don’t actually don’t wanna know what it sounds like. We wanna know what’s really wrong. That’s why I run five labs in every person and I used to do it one at a time, Ben, but I finally had a couple clients years ago, 20 years ago, say, Reed, why didn’t you just run all these labs at once?  You know, because every time I come in, you’re running another lab. That’s how it went when I was [00:26:00] learning. I was learning well, hormones, immune digestion, detoxification you know, oxidative stress, obviously energy production. You can run labs for all these things. I had to learn the hard way. And then of course there’s nervous system balance, you know, auto, the autonomic, I mean, in, I learned that from chiropractor.

Dr. Weitz:  You ever run micronutrients?

Reed: I have run micronutrients. I find them a little confusing because you don’t know if it’s a quantitative deficiency or qualitative, you know, a lot of people are eating that food. They’re not breaking it down and absorbing it. Right. So you’re not getting it in, into the system

Dr. Weitz: where you could test it.

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Dr. Weitz:  What is your general approach to diet and what sorts of dietary programs have you found to be the most effective?

Reed:  You know, the only one I found that works is the one that, it was called metabolic typing.  William Walcott’s, the founder of the, or the 40 years he’s done the research and I love that because it treats everyone as an individual. Is that the fast, slow?

Dr. Weitz: Is that the fast and slow oxidizers?

Reed: Yes. There’s fast and slow oxidizers, but there’s also autonomic dominance, sympathetic and parasympathetic that plays into it according to his system.  And I’ve done the test, the metabolic testing test. [00:29:00] I haven’t done it in a couple years, but I’ve done it over the last 26 years, probably 15 times. And I always come out the same. I’m a parasympathetic dominant and there’s a diet for that balances you out. You don’t wanna be overly parasympathetic.  Everyone knows about sympathetic dominance. It’s. That’s hell. But parasympathetic dominance is also a problem. And so,

Dr. Weitz: I’m actually not that familiar with parasympathetic dominance. Most people are so stressed. You don’t see too many people that are parasympathetic dominant. What is the parasympathetic dominant person like?

Reed:  Well, you know, the parasympathetics if you think about the tribal aspects there’s your warrior tribes, like in the jungles of South Africa or South America, you know, you got people that they live in the jungle. Everything around them can kill them, including their neighbors. So they’re very sympathetic dominant.  They’re just always on the alert. They’re in fight flight most of the [00:30:00] time. But you take your let’s say your Eskimos we’re always considered very parasympathetic. They can see for, no one’s gonna sneak up on ’em. They can see in a thousand miles in every direction, and they just eat a lot of meat and fat.  Very little carbohydrates and things. And so they’re parasympathetic dump. They’re just peaceful, relaxed people. They’re very steady. And I know this is true about me. I’m pretty hard to rile, you know, I have a calmness and it’s ’cause I’m in parasympathetic. They also, they call it the rest and digest. And so you’re very, you know, fast digestion and things like that.

So there, there’s a lot of physical characteristics and psychological traits, both along with your dietary likes and dislikes that matter. And so you can figure out the diet that’s right for you and fast and slow oxidation and in between is another great indicator. But sometimes [00:31:00] the nervous system will dominate the oxidative system.

Dr. Weitz:  So what do you do with, what do you do for a patient like yourself who’s a overly parasympathetic dominant?

Reed: I mean, you balance, you got, I got to not get too parasympathetic. You get kind of catatonic. Listen, every mother would understand this. If you look at the one kid can’t sit down, you know, he’s always bouncing off the walls and outside and playing and things like that.  Because he’s, you know, sympathetic dominant. And it doesn’t matter if he’s fast or slow. Oxidizer really, he’s a sympathetic dominant. The other one can’t get off the couch because everything. And so that one’s outta balance. Parasympathetically, you gotta feed that youngster more meat and fat because it just helps balance out.  It gives him more energy according to his type, you know, his dominance. And so. [00:32:00] You give a parasympathetic too much carbs and sugar and stuff like that, and they literally can’t produce energy.

Dr. Weitz: Oh, so it’s kind of like being a slow oxidizer. Yeah, exactly.

Reed: They’re very compatible. You feed them like a fast oxidizer.  So, I have a quick, real quick story. My cousin is a priest up in Canada. He was, he’s retired now, but he he must have been a bad boy in the priesthood. They sent him north to the to the Hudson’s Bay where his parish. We had two Cree Indian VI villages and the Cree Indians were known by the early settlers as they could work all day long.  They would hop around the rocks up and cross the ice and things like that. Very good hunters and trappers. And they had endless energy. They, that’s how parasympathetics are by the way. They’re like turtles. They can just go and go and go. So, you know, you just imagine you, it makes a lot of sense.  Your sympathetics more like rabbits, right? They get, they burn out, [00:33:00] they need to rest. They burn, they eat, they burn out and need to rest. Parasympathetics go all night. And so these Cree Indians who are basically parasympathetic, fast oxidizers when they were eating salmon and killing caribou and only eating seasonal fruits, nuts, seeds, what have you.

Blueberries, I remember ’cause I went up there a few times. They’re very healthy and happy and active and things. So when I asked my priest cousin, Hey, what are your native people there do for if they get sick? Like, do they go to a medicine? Man? So you know what he said? He goes, well, I’m their medicine man, you know, meaning the spiritual medicine man.  I said, no, if they get sick. And he said, read, they’re all sick. They’re all going to the clinic all the time. And why is that? Because they brought in, as they built, dug these mines and, you know, basically Euro came in and started bringing their donuts and their [00:34:00] spaghetti and their pizza and their stuff with them.  And when the native people started eating the crap, they completely fell apart, became huge consumers of alcohol and. Crap and depression. And

Dr. Weitz: like the story about the Puma Indians who were all alcoholic and diabetic and obese.

Reed: Yeah. He said, read, they’re all sick. And it’s because they stopped trapping and fishing.  And except for a few, you know, I mean, he went fishing and caught giant salmon and whatever. But the, when the diet changed, so that to me is evidence that they’re eating not according to their true metabolic, genetic, metabolic type. It’s very easy to see. And what’s really interesting to about this diet thing is, it’s such a great question.  So that’s the Cree Indians, which are like almost Eskimos, not quite that far [00:35:00] north but almost the natives of the Andes. Mountains down in South America who live above 8,000 feet, don’t eat hardly any meat and fat. They eat corn and potatoes, and yet they’re perfectly happy and fine. Why is that?

Well, it’s because they’re slow oxidizers and sympathetic dominant. You know, they can live that way. You give that diet to an Eskimo, it kills them. You give the Eskimo diet to a they’re called Kean, the Kean Indians, and they die. It’s just, so where are we? We’re, maybe we’re in the middle. So there’s a way to find out there’s no one diet right for everyone.  You have to find out the diet that’s right for you. Do use a questionnaire

Dr. Weitz: to figure out if you’re a slow or fast oxidizer.

Reed: There’s some, no, I’ve seen that test and I, if you’re having success with it, keep doing it. If it’s really working for you. The only layer you’d add is the sympathetic parasympathetic ’cause that can outweigh the oxidative [00:36:00] rate.  But ox start with oxidative rate. Eat the, according to the diet, which is gonna be a con the ratio of fats, carbs and proteins. So, a true fast oxidizer is gonna eat about 70% fat and protein. And a slow oxidizer would be kind of the opposite. They can eat a lot of vegetables, a little meat, and they’re fine.  So if you’re getting the test is in your energy level, your, sense of satiation. If you eat breakfast and an hour later you’re hungry or craving that wasn’t the right breakfast.

Dr. Weitz: And also, so, so how do you d how do you determine which type of diet is right for each person?

Reed: We do the mt diet.com.

So I just said, if everyone go to mt diet.com, have ’em take the test that tells you what type you are and give, so that’s an

Dr. Weitz: online yeah. Questionnaire.

Reed: Yeah, it’s, well, yes. And it sounds like, oh, that’s a questionnaire. It’s subjective. No, it, that’s very [00:37:00] objective. Questions like to your eyes dilate or does your skin turn red with certain foods and food groups, things like that.  So it’s very objective. It has been run for, it was run for many years next to an objective test, oxidative rate and things. And but that. Objective test is out the window. ’cause this test is cheap. It’s online and you can do it and get the results like within 24 hours or something. So I send everybody to mt diet.com and you know, there’s lots of education and things on how to eat, right.  Can’t tell you how many people I changed their breakfast and they couldn’t believe, oh boy, now I can make it to lunch without having to snack or crave or get tired or, you know, have less mental acuity. And, you know, you actually, life should be fun anyway. Right? Right. You eat right. If you eat right, you’re doing good.

So the other thing now, because there’s the investigation that [00:38:00] you’re very familiar with, you’re a good functional medicine practitioner. We were, we look at, the hormones, the immune system, digestion, detoxification, energy production, and the nervous system, the balance I just mentioned that spells heden, H-A-T-T-E-N.

And so it’s easy to remember. You can test for other stuff, but that’s, those are the, what I learned in all those years, running thousands of labs on thousands of people with the basics to start a foundational what lifestyle program? The D-R-E-S-S. So that’s the diet, metabolic timing, rest, which is, you know, not just sleep, but it’s resting your emotions and soul, so to speak, even during the day.

Diet, rest, exercise goes without saying, but that’s different for everyone too. I’m 72, I can’t do what I did at 40. I, that would kill me. [00:39:00] So, so, yeah, you just can’t do the I did jiujitsu and kickboxing for years till I got so hurt. I can’t do it anymore. And so diet, rest, exercise appropriately.

Then of course the D-R-E-S-S. So diet, rest, exercise. The two S’s are stress reduction and supplementation. I’ll start with supplements. You got to substitute What’s missing from food. You know, food doesn’t have all the nutrients in it anymore. The soils are depleted. You gotta take supplements, vitamins, minerals and ci, fat acids, antioxidants, trace elements, phytonutrients.

You, you need that genetically. It’s how we were born to be. And then stress reduction is huge ’cause it’s mental, emotional, psychospiritual, physical aches and pains. So kinda stress I have. It’s like I’m in pain a lot from injuries. Motorcycle. Kickboxing and stuff. I’ve had stem cells in both shoulders, both [00:40:00] hips, low back, neck, mid back, left knee, you know, so I keep trying to get outta pain and stuff, but there’s stress.

You have to reduce stress. Again, if it’s mental, emotional, like, you know, I haven’t worked for anyone but myself in almost 50 years. But a lot of people hate their jobs. They don’t like their relationships. They got money problems and stuff. So you have to reduce stress. You gotta know a few things.

Dr. Weitz:  What kind of an exercise program are you doing now these days?

Reed: Believe it or not, Pilates. Okay. And, you know, chiropractic and some aerobic, you know, I try to. Walk and I hike and I use my son takes me, you know, he taught me the summer how to do wake surfing, you know, and stuff like, right.  So, so just staying active is good enough for 72-year-old. And Pilates is really core strength, you know, so you, they say every old man has one good punch in him and [00:41:00] you better stay out of the way of it, you know, you better stay outta the way of it. ’cause if it comes, it’s coming hard. Right. You know?  But the diet, rest, exercise, stress reduction and supplementation, and I was talking about stress reduction. The chemical stress is the final. And I actually was in environmental law before I jumped into this business. I was saving the whole planet and decided, you know, after seeing enough dead fish and birds what about people?

So I literally just changed jobs, you know, I was healthy, but I didn’t want anything sneaking up on me. And a friend of mine’s dad passed away in 1999. And he, they, everyone said he was perfectly healthy. He was perfectly healthy. And then he drops dead and I go, no, you haven’t been, something snuck up on him, you know, that.

So I went to work for my son’s chiropractor. I just, I changed jobs like that, you know, he was in the middle of getting seven varsity letters in four [00:42:00] different sports, you know, from going to this chiropractic wellness center. I listened to those doctors in there and I was jazzed and I asked, could I work?

You know, Hey, I want to change jobs and work for you. That’s what started my whole thing, you know, Tony, what was it, 26, 7 years ago, I studied hard. I ran a lot of labs on a lot of people. 10 years I worked there and I sorted out the system. H-I-D-D-E-N-D-R-S.

Dr. Weitz: So, so when it comes to supplementation what supplements do you take daily?  What are some of your favorite supplements?

Reed: You know, I, I take a multivitamin which is, you know, all the. A, B, c, d, E, you know, all the things that you need. That’s supposed to be in food that isn’t. Also a mineral supplement. So the standard multi minerals are good. So vitamins, minerals. Now, when it comes to essential [00:43:00] fatty acids, you have a lot of choices, but probably the fish oil, crill oil, things like that work really well.

I stay away from seed oils like the plague, you know, I eat a lot of olive oil actually. And things like that. So then you’ve got your antioxidants, which are some are in the vitamins. The d and e. What are,

Dr. Weitz: what is some of your favorite antioxidants?

Reed: I’d say vitamin E, vitamin D vitamin E.

What form of vitamin

Dr. Weitz: E do you

Reed: like? You know, a mix Toco

Dr. Weitz: probably best mix the Carrols. We also have Tocotrienols. 

Reed:  These days. Yeah. All that stuff.  You know, I don’t have a brand of my own or anything like that. People say I should, I started long, long time ago and I studied nutrition, started working at the wellness center.  I went right into a, the boss was taking a diplomat program in nutrition for chiropractors and said I could go along [00:44:00] if and work on her patients in between, you know, school. And I had to jump on that, you know, so I, I learned a few things about nutrition supplementation and also learned that you can’t supplement your way out of bad lifestyle.  You can’t just take your same way. You can’t just take your metformin and eat a line key lime pie if you’re diabetic, you know, like, you know, you can’t medicate or supplement your way out of a bad lifestyle. So, you know, the whole dress program covers its holistic, there’s specialty

Dr. Weitz: and are there specialty antioxidants that you like?  A lot of people are taking berberine, resveratrol, quercetin. There’s a whole bunch of ’em out there.

Reed: I try everything that comes out and every supplement manufacturer, because I have 5,000 practitioners I’ve trained now, they think it’s gonna be a gold mine for ’em. They send me stuff, [00:45:00] I have stuff even just here on my desk, you know, that just people send me stuff.  And then my wife is also kind of an expert. She’s always got me trying things. So, I think food is your best source. I keep saying I’m going to eat right, and only make up for what’s missing those foods. So I eat all grass fed beef. We eat strictly organic you know, farm fresh farmer’s market type vegetables.

Again, you know, my advice is to marry someone who really cares about us. You know, and have them, you know, look at labels for you and shop for you and stuff like that. I do use a metabolic typing diet. Mostly I eat high levels of protein and fat and only good fresh carbs. I love vegetables and stay away from breads and things that make you fat, raise your blood sugar.

They aren’t good for my digestion anyway, and I don’t do dairy to too much. I’ll eat little cheese here and there, [00:46:00] but I haven’t had a glass of milk in 25 years or more. And so I try to find diet, but as terms of a, of an ex antioxidant, there’s some we don’t think about, like melatonin, believe it or not, is made in your gut.  Most of it’s made in the gut. It’s a great, yeah, absolutely antioxidant. So you find strange ways to, yeah. 

Dr. Weitz:  The integrative doctors who specialize in cancer are using two, 300 milligrams a day of melatonin, which is surprisingly good. Benefits.

Reed: Yeah. Might make you a little sleepy, but heck, you know, you’re recovering from cancer.  Who cares?

Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.

Reed: If you’re sleepy, right. It doesn’t. So, there’s the whole secret to FDN, what I call what we do. It’s just a name I came up with when I taught my first class back in 2008. I had to call it something. Until then, I was just nutritionist [00:47:00] and body worker working in a clinic who also ran labs.

I didn’t need a name. I just, only reason I developed the FDN system was for our patients, my clients, and our patients in that office. I had never thought I would teach Ben and. One day I got a call from this lab director. He said, who the hell are you? I go, I’m Reid. You know I work here. You know that.

He goes, no. I mean, who the hell are you that you run so many labs? I said, I don’t know. I just, I like it. He goes, no, Reid. He goes, you run more than our top five doctors combined. So whatever you’re doing, you should be teaching it. And the truth is, I was just so excited to be helping people run in labs, run labs, the right labs, and then interpret them individually so that you’re not, there’s no cohorts walking in your office.

They’re individual people. And so you treat ’em like that. And I got [00:48:00] some pretty good results and established this repeatable pattern what to look for and then how to teach that person. You know, it was really. Like I said, when I started I had a lot to learn. I had nothing to unlearn and I couldn’t diagnose or treat.

The doctors there would laugh. Ha. We can diagnose and treat. You have to actually figure out what’s wrong with them and teach them how to fix it. ’cause you know, you’re not supposed to treat either. If you don’t have a medical license, you can’t diagnose, you can’t treat. How the heck are you gonna help people run labs, figure out what’s really wrong, and teach ’em how to live themself out of.

What they live themself into primarily. Yeah.

Dr. Weitz: It’s amazing actually how many people are caught up in that whole diagnostic thing. You know, I get patients all the time going I, I’m trying to figure out what I have. Do I have this, do I have that? And, you know, yeah, sometimes I tell ’em, you know what, let’s call it [00:49:00] Mary.  It doesn’t matter what you call it. The bottom line is what’s going on that’s causing that problem? And what can we do to change your physiology to make things better?

Reed: That’s right. That’s right, Ben. There’s a lot going on. We call it metabolic chaos. That’s what’s going on. And the people who we had both types walking in the office, which you’re very familiar with back in the day, either they had fibromyalgia or they didn’t know what the heck was wrong with them.  It, this, I don’t know what they’ve had this diagnosis and that, you know, a lot of thyroid and hormone imbalances and you name it. But really it was, there’s a lot of causal factors. We try to take it all into consideration, and again, you can live yourself out of this, these chronic downward, spiraling, stress related conditions.

You know, it’s not good if you drive by victim, you know, you got shot. You’re not gonna call your nutritionist. Right, [00:50:00] right. You know, if you get off a off a plane from West Africa with a temperature of 105 and bleeding from your eyeballs, you don’t call me you don’t even go see your chiropractor.

You go get urgent care and get outta the woods, you know, then you can do some of what we work around the edges of some of those diseases until the, they don’t need the medicine anymore. That’s what it’s supposed to work.

So, what now you’re in Santa Monica you said, right?

Dr. Weitz: Yes,

Reed: sir. There are no sick people around there, is there?

Dr. Weitz: No. We’ve got our masks and our gloves, so we make sure we don’t get any germ exposure.

Reed: Yeah, I just bet. I just bet. So. Well, you know, the, what we try to teach Ben is that everybody should be in control of their own health. You know, like, that’s what blew me away when [00:51:00] I first started. I started studying anatomy and physiology and biochemistry and on and talking to the people coming in the office mostly for pain.  They were coming in for pain, right. And well it was the chiropractic office. Yep. Yeah, the chiropractic wellness center. We had acupuncture, massage, and. A bunch of modalities, you know, and things. But it was me doing the lab testing that developed this system that’s now f the n 26 years later.

But I couldn’t believe the people coming in had been to six or eight practitioners or 10 and weren’t better yet, you know, as a consumer and planet advocate, I’m just an advocate. I di I couldn’t, I said, you must be getting ripped off because how could you go to 10 people and not be better yet?

And the other thing was, why are you putting your health in someone else’s hands? So now if you need a chiropractic adjustment, you can’t do that yourself. [00:52:00] But the other stuff, you know, a lot of it you are in control of. And that’s our main theme is that, you know, you gotta watch out for yourself and your family.  So my whole education system is based on that self-directed, you know, once you get the labs run and find out what you’re supposed to do, then you’re supposed to do it.

Dr. Weitz: So how long does it take to become a functional diagnostic nutritionist?

Reed: Yeah the course is, it’s basically, I like to say, look, it took me 10 years to learn what I could teach you in 10 months or less.  It’s a self-paced course. And so, I’m not here to push the course, but it’s fun. It’s a lot of learning. For chiropractors, they’ve had some of the anatomy and physiology, but it’s a great refresher and and pick me up, you know, ’cause there, there’s a logical way to handle everyone coming in your office.  Now if you’re just doing sort of neck pain, back pain, which you’re not, but a lot of chiropractors are still [00:53:00] just neck pain, back pain. And they’re getting I don’t wanna say the word, but they’re getting messed around by, you know, the big franchises and stuff like that. ’cause how can, if you’re doing neck and back pain, how are you gonna compete with the average $17 adjustment that, that these.

These franchises are do plus you gotta be open seven days a week from nine to, you know, not nine to five, but from, you know, seven to seven. It’s unbelievable. What’s happened to the pain based chiropractor, you know, they’re getting squeezed and that’s a nice word for it. Word.

Dr. Weitz: Well, that’s been happening for years and years with all the insurance stuff.

Reed: Oh, that’s horrible. Yeah, I did it back in the day. The three Ds of insurance delay, deny and discount the three Ds every time you open up, you know, back then it was all you gotta open up, you gotta mail it in, you gotta open up the [00:54:00] envelopes, you get your your eops and it’s like they’re chopping you in half or they’re and that’s, if you ever get the eop, you know, if they ever even send you the check and then discounting you and.

Denying some Oh yeah. 

Dr. Weitz:  These days you’re lucky to get 30 cents on the dollar.

Reed: Yeah. See, so, so the wellness business is different. It’s all cash. That was the other thing that, that why I left that office after 10 years was I was doing better financially than any two doctors combined there. Just doing my own practice.  You know, I used to run the office and everything, right. And I couldn’t anymore. I was just out lecturing and getting new clients or patients you would call ’em. Right. And doing lab work now, that’s all I do and all I teach and that’s great. So let’s, chiropractors would do more of it. They could really expand if they would do what you’re doing, you know, do wellness.

Dr. Weitz: Right. So let’s bring this to a wrap. How [00:55:00] does how do our listeners find out about the functional diagnostic nutrition, where they go?

Reed: Yeah, well, we put a URL together for you guys. I’m just making sure I get it right. So it’s FDN training.com/ra. Rational Wellness. Okay. Rational Wellness. No. So F FDN training.

I, this name I came up with is Functional Diagnostic Nutrition. It was fancy. I was teaching my first class ever. Oh, that sounds great. Now I’m stuck with it. You know, the original 20 people, whoever took my course, wouldn’t go away. You know, it just, what about this? What more and more they wanted to run the labs.

It was a two day workshop. Now it’s a 10 month program, so you really learn it, do it on yourself, experiment, practice, and everything. And it, so, FDN we’re known affectionately as f dn training.com, rational [00:56:00] Wellness. And, that’s what I would, where I would send your listeners, if you wanna put that in your show notes or something, that’d be great.

Dr. Weitz: Okay. And if they use that code, they’re gonna get a discount. There’s nothing for

Reed: sale. They’re really, it’s just information. They okay. Yeah. There’s just get some information on it. Okay. Yeah it is a free booklet. I’d have to like, you know, I have a crew that kind of puts my notes together for me.  Okay. Yeah. It’s a behind the scenes access to our proven functional lab methodology, so we go through some cases for you.

Dr. Weitz: Okay. Sounds good. To help

Reed: your people.

Dr. Weitz: Well, thank you so much, Reid.

Reed: Hey, thank you. It is good to talk to you, Ben. Real pleasure. You got a great show there. And I know you’re helping lots of people up in Santa Monica and now across the planet, this wonderful worldwide web.

Listen, you’re not as old as me but Hightech for me was pagers and fax machines.

Dr. Weitz: Oh, yeah, I remember all that. I’m [00:57:00] 67, so I’m not too many years behind. Oh, man. You look good. Thanks, man. You look

Reed: great. Yeah.

Dr. Weitz: All right, so we’ll talk to you anytime. Okay. Thank you. Sounds good.

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Dr. Weitz:  Thank you for making it all the way through this episode of the Rational Wellness Podcast.  For those of you who enjoy listening to the Rational Wellness Podcast, I would very much appreciate it if you could go to Apple Podcast or Spotify and give us a five star readings and review. As you may know, I continue to accept a limited number of new patients per month for functional medicine. If you would like help overcoming a gut or other chronic health condition and want to prevent chronic problems and want to promote longevity, please call my Santa Monica Weitz Sports chiropractic and nutrition office at 310-395-3111 and we can set you up for a consultation for functional medicine and I will talk to everybody next week.