Inside a Direct Primary Care Practice at Year’s End

Intro and patient Googling 0:00

What do you think about patients Googling labs before visits? This may surprise you, but I think that's nice. I'm perfectly fine with that. That actually did surprise me. Yeah. No, I mean, that sounds like a setup, right? But at our office, we have time to go over it. So I'm perfectly happy with you guys Googling and looking for answers on your own and then coming in and having us talk about it, because you're probably going to Google it after you leave anyway. So why don't we just go ahead and Well, you know, if I'm Googling it with you, then we can come to the right answer.

If you just go with Google by yourself, it'll always lead to cancer. In every episode, my expert guest and I dive into real conversations about what's broken and how we can fix it by making health care about people, not just managing disease. It's time to rethink what health care should be and how we can make it better together. Welcome to The Bike Gats. Hello and welcome back to My MD Unscripted. I'm your host, Dr. Clint Carter, and today is a fun episode. It's Christmas, y'all. So we're launching on Thursdays and Christmas is on a Thursday, so we thought we'd go all out.

And when I say we, I'm super excited to introduce you guys to Alexis or Lexi as she's affectionately known. She's my nurse and a key part of our team at My EMD Select here in Tyler.

Christmas episode and team introduction 1:35

And so Lexi, I guess introduce yourself for a half a second. Tell us a little bit about how we got here and then we'll talk about a fun Different setup as you can tell I'm not just sitting in front of my screen in my office doing this podcast today We're at an actual podcast studio with two mics at the same time multiple camera shots We're super fancy as you can tell If you're listening on audio you are totally missing out It's still gonna be better though because Lex is in the office and that's right in the studio and it's gonna be awesome So Lex tell us more about you and let's get this party started All right, well, I'm Alexis.

I am Dr. Carter's nurse and have been for a little while. I've been at Miami Select now for a little over three years, which is crazy because I like to joke around and tell everybody I've never really worked anywhere over a year, but these guys put their hooks in me and I love them so much. But just being introduced here to the staff and to everybody blew my mind open wide about what Concierge and DPC Medicine is all about. Being able to dive in with Dr. Carter and our patients, being able to love on them and really advocate.

I love advocating for our patients. just a different way to practice medicine. I came from corrections, so it was the... The polar opposite. The exact opposite end of the spectrum of things. Being able to be on one end versus the other, I feel, has really given me a very different way to practice just the way that I view our patients and the interactions that I have with them each and every day. I'm very grateful for all of it. And most of the time someone gets a direct primary care or concierge doctor, you know, when we describe it, it's the patient and the provider and nothing in between, which is true.

But outside of that relationships, really the nurses do all the work, right? Like, you know, 24-7 access, she's on the app all day. Lexi's our go-to for patients with unmet expectations or confused or any of that. customer service extraordinaire. So the nurses and the medical assistants, to be frank, the rest of the team, all the way down to the front desk, everyone around the provider does more work to make this thing work on the day in and day out. Kudos to our team. You're going to hear a lot about our team today, not because that's what this is about, but because we can't talk about much without them.

So let's kind of set the expectation for the episode, which is kind of a little bit of a year end reflection. So we'll talk a little bit about 2025. The format of this is more of, we're just going to kind of do a series of games, most talk show style. We like games. Yeah, we're gamey. And then we'll try to give a little peek into 2026 along the way. So game number one, we're gonna call it 2025 Wrapped. So Lex, let's see, do you have, let's see, you start with the questions, you have some cards ready to go?

Okay, so let's start bigger. What's your favorite moment of 2025 at My MD Select? What has been your favorite moment? I think it's a trick question. Thinking about this question earlier, I think that my favorite moment for MyMD Select was when we launched Live, L-Y-V, Longevity, Youthfulness, and Vitality. And that's the aesthetic arm of our practice. Over the years, we've been making people feel better to the point that they wanted to look as good as they felt.

Favorite 2025 moments and the Liv launch 5:10

And so over time, we've added a few different devices. But it got hard and confusing because patients were like, are you in med-spa now? And so that's never been the focus. So I love about MyMD Select is that we go deep and we take care of people to the point. that they wanted to look better as well. And so we've carved all of those pieces out into Liv, L-Y-V. And the launch party was awesome. It's going great. Cool things to come on membership availabilities and things like that for Liv. But yeah, Liv was the biggest sort of my favorite moment.

And it came out with a bang. I think people still get a little confused about what it's all about, but something that you'll hear a common theme with us is optimization. And so once we get you in the door, you're just going to see all the things that we can do. And Live is just an extension of one of the ways that we can optimize you with so many avenues there. Okay, Dr. Carter, what is the most meaningful, I guess, you experience? You have a lot of time with your patients, which is wonderful. And that's also what sets us apart compared to being with someone else at a different office or within a different institution of medicine.

You get to spend a lot of time with your patients. So if you could think and maybe share of one time that was really memorable or a memorable patient and experience with that particular patient, obviously we really value the privacy of our patients, but there are a lot of you guys that really stick with us, your stories and the impact that you have not on just our lives, but how we practice as a group. Yeah, gosh man, like everybody. Most of what I'm the most excited about is people who I think the mental health piece changes.

Now a lot of that is physical. We get rid of a lot of the inflammation, a lot of the pain, you start to feel better, you have energy, you can sleep. But I've got one patient in particular who we've been following along and she's been struggling and we've been making small progression in her health. But then, you know, she had a couple big hits in a row, and mentally she was in a bad place, and quite frankly, she was suicidal. But she had just enough background in healthcare that she was like, I'm not going into an inpatient place.

I'm not doing it. Those are terrible. And I was like, well, you put me in kind of a tough spot. So how do we help those patients? What do we have to offer to them? So, you know, obviously there's antidepressants and there's counseling and all the things. And she was trying and we had her on an antidepressant already, which, you know, is more numbing than it is fixing. And so About that time, we had our newest device called the ExoMind. And the ExoMind is, you know, it's a magnet wave to the frontal lobe to help with depression.

It's FDA approved for depression. And it does a bunch of other things. And she needed that. And so we just made it happen. And she was our first patient ever. We had just gotten it. We had just gotten trained on it. And I was like, let's go. And so we got her in twice a week for three weeks. And she's just... obviously not suicidal anymore. She's amazing. It's an amazing transformation. I've had some encounters myself with this patient and the drastic changes that have occurred. It's wild to be able to have conversations with her from one extreme to the other and just to have just that inside and know where she started and where she is now.

It's pretty phenomenal. Her outside stressors haven't changed, but her mental health resilience, in the science nerds would call it, the plasticity of her brain's ability to handle these things. You're going to hear us talking about XMI on and off over the next few years if you're a patient at our practice because it has done amazing things for me personally. I'm weaning off my antidepressant. It's been fun. So she's a shining star of 2025 for me. Pretty memorable. Yeah. We are constantly making waves where we are.

And my favorite thing that I love about Dr. Carter is his quarterly State of the Union addresses that he does. It really helps to keep the vision and the mission, keep us all in line with that. And I love that. And something that a lot of you don't know is he has his own personal awards that he likes to do for the staff and they're the medspeeds. And so I love that because he loves to highlight And the wonderful things that are not just our, you know, just our people, our group, but just individually, because we can accomplish a lot as a whole, but individually, when we shine, he loves to set that out and sing the praises of individual people when they win a medspe.

So that's just kind of a little segue. Is there anything that you're really proud of as a team that we've done together as a whole? I think the team is the answer to the question. I think the thing I'm the most proud of is the team and the medspees that you brought up. And it's not just like, hey, you did a good job. We have six core values that we used to hire, to reward, to correct, and to fire.

Memorable patient story and ExoMind 10:20

The core values are who we are at our core. And if you don't fit, then it's OK. You just don't fit. But in the end, Um, we also want to celebrate because our people are doing these, these values every day. And so every time we need to hire help in this year, one thing I'm proud of is we've hired quite a bit because we're in a, we're growing. And so every time we hire someone, it's like, Oh no, is this person going to mess up our, our perfect. I call that waiting for the other shoe to drop that sort of.

No, but the core values have been God's gift to us. I basically threaten every new hire with, if these core values all sound great, but these are not you at your core, we're going to be miserable, you're going to be miserable, and then I'm going to have to fire you. So, and we do it lightheartedly, but just to let folks know this is who we are and we're serious because most places you hire, you're going to hear about core values and then you're never going to hear about them again. But our team is amazing.

And if you're a patient in our practice, you know that. It's so hard to grow, but just know that if you see new faces where we are, we are putting them through all the testing just to make sure they fit in perfectly. And I love that at our practice, a patient walks in and sees a new face like, whoa, whoa, whoa, who are you? because we're like family, right? Absolutely. And so when a new face, they're like, wait a minute. And our patients come see me like, I'm seeing a lot of new faces, you know, how's it going?

You know, usually like, hey, do you need, you know, are these people as good as the people you already had? Sometimes it takes a little introduction, Mr. So-and-so, this is so-and-so, and they're gonna take great care of you. But once we break that ice, then they end up being somebody else's favorite, so. Agreed. So far, so great. And it's God's grace as well, but the core values have been huge. So I'm going to go ahead and take over for a minute and ask you a few questions in a segment that we like to call From the Clinic Floor.

The first thing that I want to ask is, can you think of a small thing that we do that patients don't realize matters? I'm going to go with every day at 9.30 in the morning from 9.30 to 10. We have, we call it morning meeting, but a lot of our patients don't know we have two other locations that are technically on site at one of our employers work sites. We have every employee either in the same room or on the screen, and we talk about every patient from yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Are we ready?

Did we make any promises we haven't kept? What do I need to know about what I'm getting into today? The providers will bring up questions for the team on, hey, we got this, this, and this, and someone else will kick in. In that 30 minutes, we could do so many other things, but it's such an important use of our time to sit down and just make sure we're all on the same page and that our patients are taken care of. Absolutely. The scheduler can kick in, hey, this person said this, the medical assistants, the nurses, everybody, the provider that saw them last, because we do, we share our patients quite a bit.

People, of course, we don't know that, but that's a super important part of what we do. That's extremely important. I also think it goes to show how important everyone in our building, how important everyone on the team is. And like you said, from the person scheduling all the way to the back, I mean, it does not matter because there have been things, revelations have occurred in those meetings and we've solved. It's like for the you know, Scooby-Doo team being able to find things out and put things together.

And it really blew me away being able to see that happen when I came on board. So I look forward to that. So I have another question for you. So I wanted to ask, can you tell me if there's any workflow changes in 2025 that you are Well, let me kick it back to you. You know, so oftentimes I'm blissfully unaware of the details of how things get done. I can confirm that. Yes. And it's like, hey, Lexi, can you fix this? So are there any, you know, what did you see in 2025 that you thought made the biggest difference?

Okay, so 2025 has been a year of processes for us because we always and will always try to do things the best way for you, our patients. But one of the coolest things that I think is everywhere in 2025 are GLP-1s. We see them everywhere. They have infiltrated The internet, I mean, everywhere you go, people are asking about them. You look around and everybody's sister, mother, brother, uncle, they're on them. But it's because they're so life-changing. But I do want to let you know that there are good ways to do that and bad ways to do that.

So as far as GOP ones go, You may have somebody and you may have done it yourself, gone online and done something and ordered something, but I can tell you the way that we do things is so much different than everyone else. We have it nailed out and we've made mistakes along the way, don't get me wrong, but it has taken us a lot of practice and we do things the right way. We take a lot of care with how we bring our patients in when we're starting on that process, from doing lab work and education to following you along the way.

You would be surprised how many people, Dr. Carter, try to reach out and text me and try to get information on the side. You guys have to have a membership to practice with us. But I will say that I'm very proud of the processes that we've put in place with our GLPs and the success that we've had. because you will find that a lot of people are not well supported and do not have the same success.

Team culture, core values, and morning meetings 16:20

So I'm grateful for that. So I think that's pretty cool. And I think what we do about, so GLPs, for those of you who don't know, are the weight loss shots that everyone is talking about. So, you know, semaglutide and Ozempic, or what do you want to call it? But the process with us is, you know, what dose are you on? How much weight have you lost? Are you losing weight too fast? Are you losing weight too slow? Are you having any side effects? And, you know, if you just get on these meds and it suppresses your appetite and you start losing weight like crazy, well, 30 to 40% of the weight loss you're doing is muscle.

Like, we don't want that. Your muscle is the currency of longevity, man. We need to do this well so that you look and feel your best from the inside out, right? That's really what we're going for. We want you to be healthier. Losing 20-30% of your muscle mass is not healthier. Metabolically, everything changes. And those are real statistics, absolutely. I agree. And then as far as my little bit on that is that we are always changing. So we're a disruptive industry. All that means is we don't practice medicine like everybody else practice medicine.

We do something different. And so we're always looking for a better way. We don't think we've perfected it yet. We're continuing to change. So all I can say is we changed a lot in 2025. We will change a lot in 2026. you know, small changes for the patients and big changes for us, but also, you know, anything that improves the experience and both, you know, for us and the patients, then that's a win. And one of our core values that we referred to earlier is evolution without compromise, man. We're going to continue to evolve this thing towards better.

We're not going to compromise the big deal. So I love it. Phenomenal. That's a great response. Can you think of a moment that reminded you of why this model works? I know that this year has been a big year for you because you've had a lot of your peers maybe reaching out to you wanting to know more about the DPC model. and what we do because it's so different. And I mean, you can't just put it into a little bit of words. If you want to come in and ask Tony, he will show you around. You got to see what we have going on.

But is there anything that reminded you of why this model works and why you love it? Almost every patient probably, but you know, I mean, yesterday I was sitting with a long time patient and she's going through a hard time. And quite frankly, an hour wasn't enough time. I didn't make it to my workout yesterday. We needed to sit even longer. But the point is that we get an hour with every patient for your follow ups. We get, you know, same day, next day, sick visits. I think that every time someone sits with us for an hour and or gets, you know, taken care of as quickly and completely by someone who knows and cares about them, they're kind of blown away.

Even people that have been with us for a long time are just like, God, I love you guys. And that's obviously heartwarming for me. But yeah, there's almost every patient. And on this podcast, you guys that listen are familiar with the fact that I'm interviewing other people all the time and we're learning from them. But when I'm on other people's podcasts, man, they cannot get enough information from me about direct primary care. the experience of doing medicine that way. And then once the interview's over, they're like, so what's it like?

How do you make that happen? And so I have, you know, reach out to me if you're a provider and you're interested in making that change and I'd love to help you along the way. It's way better. Absolutely. So as far as everything that encompasses what we do, I think probably my favorite thing about being where I'm at is the patient care. and being able to take care of your needs or if you have a problem or being able to minister to something that I didn't know that I was gonna experience when you came into that door, do you have an idea for you of what's the most underrated part of patient care?

I, you know, the theme for 2025 for me has been mental health. It's, it's obviously the under rate. It's the under addressed, underrated part of medicine. And so often it's, it's under addressed because we don't feel like we really have any good tools, you know, so you want to know their antidepressant. Oh, you didn't like that. Let me try. You want a different antidepressant. Meanwhile, their GI track is all, they got leaky gut and everything's on fire and their brain's getting all the wrong chemicals and don't have enough, you know, serotonin and norepinephrine, you know, whatever it's, it's a.

It's a systemic problem and we're addressing it with an antidepressant medicine, which has its place. Like I said, I'm on one now, but as I get more and more educated on functional medicine and addressing that from the inside out, as well as ExoMine has been a game changer. So I think that the most underrated, under addressed part of healthcare is definitely mental health. And I'm so excited about the direction that it's going, at least in our practice, functional medicine, you know, country-wide, plus we have ExoMind, so it's being, I think, the next decade or so of mental health's gonna be great, but I'm glad to be sort of on the leading edge of that.

Absolutely. I'm grateful that we have the tools to help so many people. It's so wild how mental health is an epidemic that affects everyone. And we actually have something that can help. So that's really awesome. So moving on, this year has been pretty cool. And cool is just an understatement. It's just a word that I like to overuse. But as far as, I don't know, your favorite things in 2025, like, do you have, anything that really just touches your heart on anything or just No,

GLP-1 workflow and responsible weight loss 22:00

I mean, 2025 has been pretty awesome. It's been a little crazy. You know, I think God's called us to grow as a practice, which is super hard, right? Like, you know, we're just good at taking care of people, the people we have our way. And then as growth means new employees, and it's going to mean new locations, and it's going to mean all this new, new, new. And our patients, I have so many patients that are like, I kind of miss the old days when you were just sitting around waiting on me to call.

But on the other hand, those are the same patients that are super proud of how we've grown and what God's doing at our practice. And at the same time, I'm always like, yeah, I don't miss the old days because I was also working full-time ER to pay the bills. And now we're able to help so many more people. It's just special. Well, and some of those patients, they don't bother us as much. And I say bother. You're never bothered when you reach out. But because they're so busy living their life, because they feel better, they've been optimized.

But when they need us, we're here. We will evolve, but we will not compromise. I love that so much. Would you say that there's a favorite treatment that you have this year? You know, I think my favorite treatment still is Imcella. The Imcella is a It's a chair that if you've come to see me personally and you've been in my little waiting lounge for five minutes getting your vitals taken and you saw that funky looking blue chair in there. That's what the spaceship. Yeah, you sit on it fully clothed and it sends a magnetic wave through your pelvic floor and it just strengthens the pelvic floor.

So for any woman who's ever been pregnant, ever had hysterectomy for, you know, men with prostate problems and erectile dysfunction or whatever, it's It's just a part of your body you don't even really know exists. It's hard to address. It just withers over time and then things start falling out or stop working. The first time I went to a trampoline park with my wife, I found out at that point, 15 years of marriage, that she couldn't jump on a trampoline. I was like, are you kidding me? What? So, we were, I think, emcella still, if I get the chance to go, you know, pull a stand in front of it, put my computer on it, and chart while I sit on it after work sometimes, that's still, it's still my favorite, it's the most practical thing we have, almost everyone to benefit from, and it's amazing.

Well, and the EXO mind, of course, is brand new, and literally everyone to benefit from that, but. I don't know one person in the office that hasn't sat on the emcella, we all love it, you should try it, it's pretty good. Well, do you have a favorite? I mean, we're talking about favorites of 2025. It's so hard to narrow things down because this was a wild year, just wild and crazy. We learned a lot. We did a lot. But we have integrated so much into our practice, so many tools. Do you have a favorite one or a favorite lab or just something different that you've really utilized within the practice that has just made things easier or better for you?

I don't know, I mean, we have so many tools, all of them. You know, we've got, we're getting more and more into functional medicine. We're getting, we've got more, you know, we've got testing for, you know, blood tests that test for 50 different cancers. We've got testing for dementia. We've got testing, you know, for genetics. There's so many different tools. And what I like about what we've, you know, as we create more and more of these tools, it's personalized medicine, man. Like, what's the right tool for you?

So I just think 2025 was a fun kind of hard year as we were stretched. But at the same time, we just keep evolving and bringing on new cool tools that I love. And then of course, with Liv, we launched We've got, you know, all of the devices for making you look and feel your best from the inside out, as well as the things that are preventative and, you know, whole system care and root cause medicine that we're doing on the MyMD side on top of all the other things. I just think it's funny because with the fruition of all of this, it's funny because it really started with a question from patients.

Like, do you do that here? Yeah. Can I do that here? And it was like, well, why not? And just to see all of it just flourish. Yeah. And 2025 was a big year for peptides. Absolutely. Oh my gosh. The weight loss shots are peptides. We've been doing that for years. And so when the peptides came along and became bigger. And responsible integration of peptides. Responsible, educated. ways of practicing with these peptides. There's so many of them out there and there's so much that they can do for everyone, but we do them responsibly.

And I love to highlight that. I might be a little bit, Dr. Carter and I a little wild compared to everybody else in the office, but I do love to bring it down a notch when it talks about responsibility because that's something you can always count on for us. is being responsible with how we practice those. I mean, peptides are remarkably safe. It's a protein that your body makes anyway or something that looks very similar to something that your body makes anyway. But the idea is you can definitely have too much of a good thing.

So, yeah, all the peptides sound awesome. You should be on all peptides all the time. You know, if you were listening to the wrong podcast, you would get a message like that. I think for us, it's like, OK, let's talk about what's going on in your life. Let's look at your sleep. Let's look at some of these other things. And what's going to benefit you the most? You have gut inflammation, recovery issues, sleep issues, energy, mental health, cognitive decline, immune.

Why direct primary care works 27:45

It's just, man, autoimmune. It's just so many. It's just a good time to be doing outside the box medicine. As much as I feel sorry for my colleagues that are doing a pretty good job in seven minutes per visit inside the system, I feel even worse that not only do they not have time to give the patients the attention they want, but they don't really have access to all this outside the box stuff because insurance doesn't pay for it and they're stuck in an insurance world. And we're not. And one of my favorite things is when I get to tell patients that we, oh, you guys, you do that here?

Yeah, absolutely. We have patients that we've had for years that don't know because maybe we don't say it enough or we're working on focusing on one thing and when you're ready for the next phase, then we'll lay it on you. We're not here to bum rush you all at once. Yeah, you can't do it all at once. We put out the fires first and then a lot of times the patients come in and be like, Well, I guess I'm good. I'm like, no, no, no, we're just getting started. Let's talk about the next decade. I love that.

So do you want to play a little rapid fire round? So ladies and gentlemen, if you're on social media, which majority of people are, there's little games that, you know, rapid fire games. We're going to play one real quick. This one's called Naughty or Nice. I'm just going to ask a few questions, Dr. Carter, and let me know if he thinks they're naughty or nice. if he wants to add anything onto that or maybe just leave a little mystery for you. Okay, so the first one, the first question, regarding GLP-1s without lifestyle changes, naughty or nice?

Oh, naughty. If you're on a GLP-1 weight loss shot and you're not working out, you're not taking care of your hormones, you're not getting good sleep, like I said, you're wasting as much muscle as you are fat, bone health too. So your body is just eating itself from the inside out. What you need is GLP-1 with a little help. All right, I love it. Okay, so this one is pretty popular. Naughty or nice as far as oversupplementing? Can you give me some insight on that? What do you think? I mean, naughty.

Oversupplementing is a negative term, but I think the problem is that once you're on a supplement, it's always hard to decide when to get off of it. A lot of supplements is faith-based, right? Like you don't immediately feel amazing, but you're like, okay, but I want to feel amazing in 10 years. podcast or this internet site or even my physician said I should always be on this and then next thing you know you're on you're on $2,000 a month of supplements or something and so too many supplements it's not even so much that it's it's bad for you I'm sure there's interactions in there somewhere but really a lot of it is just it's a waste you need to make sure that what you're on makes sense and there's times to be on and there's times to be off then there might you know as you cycle on one you can cycle off the other one and just give your body what it needs Yeah, I'm a frugal gal.

Don't waste your money on something. You're just gonna expel. Do the right thing for yourself. Okay, naughty or nice, what do you think about patients Googling labs before visits? This may surprise you, but I think that's nice. I'm perfectly fine with that. That actually did surprise me. Yeah, no, I mean that sounds like a setup, right? Excuse me. At our office, We have time to go over it. So I'm perfectly happy with you guys Googling and looking for answers on your own and then coming in and having us talk about it.

Because you're probably gonna Google it after you leave anyway. So why don't we just go ahead and help. If I'm Googling it with you, then we can come to the right answer. If you just go and Google by yourself, it'll always lead to cancer. That and you're not dying, it's just your hormones. I promise you. I promise you. All right, naughty or nice, AI scribes in the clinic. Oh, nice. If you're at our office, by the way, you're being an AI agent is scribing our note about your visit so that we can spend more time with you.

But we're not recording it. It's not kept anywhere. It just it prints it out and it doesn't memorize. It doesn't listen. So ultimately, it's not a privacy issue. So if you didn't know you're being listened to, but ultimately, I mean, but aren't we all really? I mean, not as much. Yeah, the AI scribe is way more secure than having your cell phone on in the room while we talk. I mean, they're always listening, right? Anyway. You know, you're going to get that ad. It gives us more time with the patient.

It takes the crappy side out of medicine. It's great. I love that. Okay, naughty or nice, biohacking without the basics. What do you feel about that? Yeah. So, you know, I have all these patients come in and they want to, you know, I want to, I read about this and this and this and that peptide and I want to, and I'm doing all these things and it's like, okay, naughty, for sure naughty. If your gut's on fire and you're a ball of inflammation and your lifestyle sucks and you never exercise and you eat fast food all the time, like you can skip the peptides.

It's so much more low-hanging fruit. All right. What about naughty or nice as far as the New Year's resolutions in medicine? New Year's resolutions. Nice. I mean, anytime you make a decision for the better, I think it's great. What I like about our practice is that we can walk along with you. And so there's really no reason to fall off the resolution if it was a reasonable one, because I can walk along with you and support you. You know, people can concentrate on something for maybe three months if you're lucky, if your resolution makes it three months.

But somewhere along the way, we can check labs for you, we can verify that it's working for you. So let us in on your resolutions, ma'am. But anytime you make a decision to do something better for your health, let's do it. I think that's definitely nice. And as your nurse, wherever you find this podcast on social media, Facebook, whatever, DM us, get in our DM box, and let us know what your resolutions

Rapid fire: naughty or nice 33:30

are because we want to support you there. For sure, man. And we may reach back out. Warning, we may reach back out and be like, great, let's check labs on you in a month and see how this is going. Absolutely. Hey, stay out of my business, man. OK, I'm going to ask you a couple of questions because I'm going to look forward to 2026 now because we need to wrap this up. So one thing you hope patients feel more of in 2026, and that's very easy for me to answer. I would love for our patients to feel more loved.

I do feel like we have had a very busy year in 2025, laying down processes, growing and ironing out all the details. We have the most wonderful staff. And we are all growing and ready to support you, our patients. I want you to feel loved because that is one of the unique things that we can, I know that sounds so corny, but uniquely we can offer that within ourselves at MyMD. We, I can ask you about your babies and your recitals. And I love, I love when you bring me pictures and show me things like when you traveled or an accomplishment that you made, we had somebody I think ran, was it the Boston Marathon?

That was so exciting. Like we live vicariously through you. So we love that, but we want you to feel more love. Like, absolutely. Because that makes us feel like we're doing our job right. And chances are you do feel loved at our practice, but like we said, we've hired more people. We've got more bandwidth. We can love you even more. I love that. What's one thing you hope changes or improves in the practice in 2026? As far as that, I would like to see more patients that have not been turned on to DPC type of medicine before because Let me tell you, I have been without insurance pretty much my entire life.

And if I would have known about this type of business model, and I say business model, the business of practicing medicine, if I would have known that this existed, I cannot tell you having a daughter that, you know, was very scary when she was young, having a NICU baby and going through navigating all of those things and having her older and a son that's got some movement issues, mechanical, body mechanical issues. And myself, going into early menopause, that was scary. I would have loved to know about this.

So I would like more people to know. I wouldn't spread the gospel, if you will, on direct primary care. because what we do is amazing. And it's so amazing, in fact, that legislation is like, you know what, we probably should make room for that somewhere. And so if you haven't and weren't aware and you have an HSA, guess what? There's room for us there with direct primary care for you. So you should utilize that. Yeah, the government can't keep up with what's right and what's best. But they're finally coming along with this and they're saying that if you have a health savings account as a part of your insurance thing, that they will pay up to $150 a month and some amount for your family as well, for you to have a direct primary care doctor, because they get that we take care of people in a more personalized, and I'll say better, it's a better way.

It doesn't necessarily guarantee better outcomes, I'm not allowed to say that, but. It kind of does because you're in charge of your own health care, man. And so we get a chance to walk through this thing together. And that's part of, I don't know, I say part of why we're growing. It's really just that it's the right thing to do. And even the government's catching up on that, which is a little wild. One thing that you're personally excited to learn or lean into in 2026. Oh, my gosh. That that's an overwhelming question for me, because we have so many wonderful things.

But I think just personally, Just being able to get excited about is what we have, our devices and what they've done for our patients. and being able to learn more, being able to learn more about peptides. You guys have no idea the amount of training that our providers have and our nursing staff that we do not, we truly evolve like every day. We do not stop growing, we don't stop learning. And who knows what 2026 has in store education wise, but I am hungry for more, for sure. Well, and it's coming.

I mean, we're evolving without compromise for sure. And Stephanie and I just got back from the A4M conference literally yesterday. And it's been, you know, more and more and more. It's the right thing. Functional medicine is the right thing for you getting to the root cause of your problems. It's really longevity conference, right? Like this is how you live. not just live long but live well long. So I'm excited about growing in our functional medicine base. Blaze is getting his functional medicine certification now.

I'm going to be right behind him. Like very soon now. Yeah, like he's fast. We probably need to throw a party for him. Yeah, we do. And then I'm right behind him, I think. It's impossible to take care of people the way you want without it now. So I definitely think that's a big part of what our patients want and expect is that we stay on the cutting edge, which is fun.

Looking ahead to 2026 38:45

Okay, guys, I think this is a longer episode, but rightfully so. It's been fun. We're celebrating. We're in a podcast studio. We gotta milk it, baby. This is fun. Lexi, before we wrap this up, I guess, I mean, Christmas is here. This, you know, we're wearing, you know, cool hats and the whole bit. You know, I guess I'm thankful for our patients who put their trust in us. I know that's a big deal. Each and every day. It's a privilege to be able to walk along you, along your health journey, your way.

It's a privilege to be able to work in a business model of medicine that allows the patient to be in charge of their own healthcare. And it's been a pleasure to work with the amazing team that God's brought with us. You know, all of the new hires, we had three new hires in the last like month and it's They're amazing. It's crazy. So we're just so blessed. And the families that they represent and the way that they're supported at home so they can spend time taking care of you is amazing. So I'm super grateful, you know, this Christmas season for that specifically.

Anything else you want to close with Lex? Well, as your nurse, I would invite all of you to make sure that you've had your colonoscopy annually. Wow. Well, not annual. You don't have to get one every year. Well, not annually, but if you haven't had one and it's time, do that. There's so many things that we have to offer for our patients that I'm grateful for. We found so many things ahead of time where we've been able to prevent a lot of things and It's really driven home the preventative side for me, who hasn't always lived the best.

As far as a nurse goes, I'm learning. And just like you, I'm a patient. So aside from that, it has just been a joy to be able to work with all of our providers, to see our providers develop into the people that they are. The same with our staff. And to know that each person at that office They love all of our patients and they are so diligent about their processes, about what they do to make sure that you're having the best experience and that you're well taken care of. So I'm very, very happy about that.

And just to drive home that this time of the year, I think that we were talking about that earlier. We wanted to talk about the importance of what, slowing down? Yeah. My piece of advice going into the holidays is slow it down. The pace picks up. The world wants you to go faster, spend more money, don't think about it. And the stressors add not only just the time restraints, but the financial restraints. And just health, you're eaten more poorly. It's dark and cold and cruddy out there, so you're exercising less potentially.

take a moment remember that you know christmas is really about you know your savior coming to be born so that he could die so that we'd have a chance to understand you know why we're put here and the the christmas message itself is one of hope and you know the trials of this world even the worst ones are still short term and you know thanks to thanks to jesus himself we get to celebrate this season um so take those moments,

Holiday reflections and closing 42:05

reflect, and then, you know, as you go into 2026, look at your health and just know, and one of the themes that we do at our office is like, hey, I'm so glad we're not putting out a fire. You're feeling okay. Let's talk about, you feel pretty good. Do you want to feel this good or better 10 years from now? What about 20 years from now? You know, how, you know, so I had a 34 year old yesterday and we were like, You've been kind of getting by. You've got young kids, you're eating junk, and you're not exercising, and you work long hours.

It's like, I get that. You're in a building phase. But we need to start building for your next decade or four. So I do think that this is a great season to stop and reflect and be purposeful on that. Absolutely. The season of Advent, I mean, we know that Advent tends to the name Arrival, let's arrive at a great place in 2026 and do it together and be stronger and better and be optimized. So. Lexi, we're going to have to do this more often. Thanks for being a part of it. That was so fun. Thank you for inviting me.

And you know guys, thanks for putting up with us for a little extra long today. It's just fun for us. Thank you for listening. Thanks for being a part of our lives. If you're a patient, thanks for trusting us. And we will see you guys next year. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Thanks for joining me today on My MD Unscripted. I hope today's conversation opened your mind and inspired you to imagine a better path for your health and therefore life. If you found value in this episode, be sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone passionate about transforming healthcare.

Real change starts with real conversation, so let's keep on going. Until next time, stay well, stay curious, and never stop pushing for better.