Tackling Toxins: A Modern Approach To Detox

Introduction to Doctor Talks and Sam Tejada 0:00

Seeing them year after year, circled down the drain, and I'm transporting them to the hospital where there's the quote unquote professionals, right. The medical doctors. And it's not the medical doctors fault. It's that the system that we've created has become such a algorithmic type of treatment that the part of medicine that's missing the lifestyle medicine is not being taught to the actual patients. So so that's what I told myself. I said, you know what? I love being this firefighter paramedic, but I think I can do more with my time and I can bring true health and wellness to these individuals.

Welcome to Doctor Talks, the podcast where every episode leads to a healthier you. Join us as we navigate the world of optimal health, uncovering groundbreaking strategies to conquer chronic disease. In each episode, we'll bring you the latest insights from leading health experts, medical innovators, and wellness warriors. If you're seeking to transform your health journey, or if you're looking for answers to burning questions, you've come to the right place. Get ready to unlock the secrets of lifelong health and vitality.

This is Doctor Talks, real talk from real doctors on the issues that matter to you most. Hello everyone. Welcome back to the Integrative Health Podcast. I'm Doctor Jen and today we're going to be talking to a modern wellness expert. I'm so excited to have Sam to Hoda here today with us. He is the author of How to Win in Modern Wellness. He's a former paramedic firefighter revolutionizing the health care industry with his personal approach to modern wellness. Founder of Liquid Vida, a multi-million dollar company with franchises locations throughout the US.

He couples his medical background with a deep desire to help others lead healthier, happier lives. As a true pioneer in modern wellness, Sam is an expert in transformative wellness services that cater to individual needs such as I.V. therapy, weight management, regenerative therapies, hormone replacement therapy, advanced esthetic procedures, and more. Sam's book, How to Win in Modern Wellness, is a collaborative effort with top CEOs and leaders in the wellness industry educating, enlightening,

From Paramedic to Wellness Entrepreneur 2:12

and empowering medical professionals, aspiring entrepreneurs, and health conscious consumers about the benefits of preventative therapies. As a visionary leader with unwavering focus on increasing awareness, growth, oversight, and compliance, Sam earned recognitions from the American I.V. Association where in January 2024, he was named chairman at their newly appointed Leadership Advisory Board. A regular speaker and participant in major industry events including age, medicine, age management Medicine Group AMG, and the American Academy of Anti-Aging medicine.

A friend. Sam is also a media favorite. Recently features on Gma3, KTLA morning show, News Nation, Cheddar News, essence and many more. Welcome, Sam, so excited to have you here. Doctor Jen, I'm excited to get into some of these great conversations with you. Yes. Yes, exactly. And I, I love that you come from the firefighter paramedic EMS world. And I don't think people know how difficult it is to go into people's houses to see how they're living to emotionally, like, deal with all of that. Can you tell us a little bit about your days being a paramedic?

Yeah. So you're absolutely right about that. It's, you see a difference side of the world when you're working in emergency medicine. You know, specifically the EMS side, which I did as a firefighter paramedic here in South Florida for 12 years. I've been retired for five years. You know, where I was stationed was in a very, metropolitan, you know, inner city. So one of the things that I noticed between living in the middle class, working in the, you know, inner city, and then also having my patients from the company that I have now, liquid vitae, which I studied when I was in the fire department, which was a lot more for, like, the upper class when I was working with other companies in the industry.

You see a huge difference in the level of education when it comes to health and wellness, right? And you start seeing those not necessarily by interacting with the actual patient or running the number one calls, just walking into their homes. Right. You see what's in the fridge. You see, all of the junk food that's just built up in the kitchen and packages, and you start putting two and two together and start wondering, well, why am I coming out to this person's house every other day for for a medical emergency?

Well, this is why is that they know no different. So what they're doing, they're feeding their bodies a lot of this toxic chemicals that are in some of these foods, and it's just making their health progressively worse. Yeah, it's really heartbreaking. And part of my emergency medicine fellowship, we had to run, like with the inner city Toledo. We had to run on EMS calls. And and it's really heartbreaking. And it's not always the time to educate on, hey, you shouldn't be eating that when someone is having a heart attack.

You know, you can gently bring that in. I'll try to layer an integrative medicine when someone's there for more non-urgent things, because that happens a lot in the E.R. but it's really it's really hard to see the disconnect and how, you know, basically, I mean, our country has kind of failed us. They've let all the subsidies and, you know, food advertising of packaged food, let that win over talking about healthy food. But but also right when they get to the hospital and they stay there so they get admitted, what are they fed gross packaged.

Right. Yeah. It's scary when you start thinking about it. You look at the food that the hospital gives to a patient post-surgery. Right. A patient who's at an A triple bypass. And then you look at the food that they're served in the hospital. It's the exact food that cause them to have to get, you know, whatever procedure they had to go into the hospital for. So it's scary to say the least. But, you know, when I became a firefighter, the reason I became a firefighter, I wanted the most rewarding job that's out there.

And I told myself as well, what's not more rewarding than being a hero? And don't get me wrong, but only about 10% of the calls were actually those heroic type of calls. Saving someone out of a car accident. Saving someone out of a fire in 90% of the other calls were these calls, these emergency, these medical calls were what I was doing. I was transporting these patients. And over 12 years, you would actually see when someone starts their acute illness and then you see it become chronic throughout those years.

Where are you transporting this person? To the hospital. Once every year. So all of a sudden, once every other month to then once every other week to then now you're transporting them once every other day. And that's where it clicked in my head. I said, something's wrong with this system because I'm supposedly the hero, right? And I'm transporting this person to the hospital. I'm seeing them year after year circled down the drain. And I'm transporting them to the hospital where there's the quote unquote, professionals.

Right. The medical doctors. And it's not the medical doctors fault. It's that the system that we've created has become such a algorithmic type of treatment that the part of medicine that's missing the lifestyle medicine is not being taught to the actual patients. So so that's where I told myself. I said, you know what? I love being this firefighter paramedic, but I think I could do more with my time

Building Liquid Vida and Early IV Therapy 7:48

and I can bring true health and wellness to these individuals. Yes, absolutely. I feel like we have so much in common because of that. When I was working in the E.R., I was like, wow, only like you were saying, 10% of things are actual emergencies. The other 90% could have been prevented. And that is really heartbreaking when you go into a profession trying to help people. Like you said, you wanted to be a hero and you were, but you saw how things could be prevented and they never really needed you if they have been healthier, had lifestyle changes.

So you said, well, you were still a firefighter, that you created this liquid beat. Like tell us how that you had the passion and you want you had the mission, but how did you do that while you were working? So, so, you know, firefighters who worked 24 hours out and were all for 48 hours. So most firefighter paramedics, they do something else to supplement their income. Some guys have landscaping companies, the painting, working at the hospital. What I decided to do early on I was working on my days off with a company, Carcinogenic Energetics.

They were the pioneers in hormone optimization. A lot of these alternative treatments that you see that was centered Gen-X. They had some of the, you know, most high profile physicians, a lot of them cardiologists or even heart surgeons that left their primary practice to focus on preventative health. And what I was doing on my days off. I was doing all of their specialized tests, what their very high profile patients, what I would do. I'd go to their multi-million dollar homes every three months and I'd collect, you know, different type of specimens.

And that was part of the functional medicine treatment. Now, I did that for about 6 to 8 years. So you can just imagine every three months we had about 350, you know, very affluent people here in South Florida that I would go to their homes. So I built some great relationships with some of these patients. And I started hearing about how when they go back to their homes in California and also Colorado, they were doing these I.V. vitamin therapies. And, you know, they were telling me that the technician that was doing the therapies was an off duty firefighter paramedic.

So after I had like the fifth patient tell me about these IV vitamin therapies, I started researching it and I said, you know what? This sounds pretty legit. Let me, go take some classes with the A forum, and if I like it, I'm going to do it, and I'm going to do it better than anyone else that's out there. And that's exactly what I did. I love it, that is so cool. So it started out just with one location and now you have locations all over the US. Yeah. So we started off with IB therapy. What I did, I actually partnered up with a integrative, chiropractic physician who had a beautiful wellness center, but he also integrated, medical in there.

So he had an MD that was a functional medicine doctor, and the chiropractor had a background in Chinese medicine. So the facility was actually called East-West physicians, where he was taking Eastern and Western medicine and integrating them together. So we started doing the IVs. And, you know, early on when we were doing these vitamin drips, people would always, you know, even a lot of doctors in the allopathic world would say, oh, this is just bogus stuff. None of those nutrients work. I said, well, something doesn't make sense because I'm working in the world of emergency medicine, and a lot of these nutrients are the nutrients that we actually use as drugs.

Right. Calcium gluconate housing chloride, sodium chloride. We're looking at, magnesium sulfate. You know, adenosine monophosphate. You know, these are all things that do have a purpose in your body, right? So what we're doing is giving your body the raw ingredients for it to actually function and do what it needs to do itself. Yeah, exactly. And when you're eating ultra processed or processed food or genetically, maybe you just don't processed things the same as as the person sitting next to you.

You do need a little bit more support to get those pathways moving correctly. And and I always tell my patients like, yes, you need to do this extra stuff to stay healthy because we live in a toxic Super Bowl, you know, like things are really toxic now. And they didn't used to be. It wasn't like when I was young. Things have really gotten a lot different in our environment. Unfortunately. I agree, I agree things have gotten, significantly worse with the chemicals and stuff that they're putting into these foods, and it's not good.

It's causing issues with their gene expression, which then develops into disease, you know, unfortunately, yeah, it's really hard, especially where I'm currently located in northwest Ohio. There's a lot of glyphosate and roundup here, and I can tell my patients will have some flares right when it's, you know, they're harvesting all the crops and they have all that floating around and they're spraying. And, it's it's really hard. And sometimes you just you need more support, sometimes you don't. And this is where personalized medicine and like you said, these functional testing, it's really important to know your own body and how your body specifically, you know, processes estrogen or how your gut health is functioning.

And make sure you don't have an overgrowth in your gut and make sure that is healthy. And then you can prevent disease. But to simplify things, we can do a lot just with disease prevention with what we eat. Right? Right. And, and and you know, we were talking earlier and you brought up, you know, to make America healthy again and just how how that's going to impact and improve the nutrition that we're getting from inner city and out to the suburbs.

Lifestyle Medicine, Toxins, and Prevention 13:48

Yeah. You know, there's there's, a couple of verticals that we have to look at. And first is the toxins that surround us right from what's in the environment and then also what we're feeding our body, what we're, eating, what we're inhaling, what comes in contact with our skin, which includes cosmetics. You know, avoiding these toxic chemicals is going to be the first thing that we should do. Try to avoid them. But unfortunately, there's certain toxins that we're just never going to be able to avoid.

We're going to have to learn how to live around them as much as we do our best to avoid them. They're still going to be there. So that's where now we have to figure out what we feed our bodies so our bodies can properly detoxify these chemicals from your body. Right. So we want to enhance the detox pathways. So there's a lot of, type of, antioxidant rich foods that we should be eating there shouldn't supplementation that are really good, to take like glutathione and to help, detoxify the body and then, you know, testing to figure out what some of these toxins are that, that could be potentially sitting in your bones and your fat cells in your intestines, you know, doing some therapy, testing to figure out what type of toxins you have sitting in your body because every toxin is eliminated a bit differently.

Right? There's different protocols for that. So if we understand exactly what toxic, toxins are in our body, then we can probably remove them doing the the correct detoxification protocols. Yes, absolutely. And it's it's really an exciting time right now. So we're going to have just different people where they need to be in the FDA, in the CDC, the surgeon general. So it's it's really exciting that hopefully we can make simple changes like getting food dyes out of our food so that our body doesn't have to process.

Like another thing, like we weren't we at the movies last night. And you know, their popcorn has yellow five in it. It's like, why does our popcorn have to be super bright yellow? And you can get dye free popcorn flavor, or it's just they use like some tumeric as a coloring, because when I was in charge of my town's little league, the concessions, I got that popcorn and I had, I looked for dye free foods. But I will tell you, the Mountain Dew would always sell out. And I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm body poison.

It's in C! I'm like, here's the thing, it is so hard to change a cultural like thing, right? I mean, how do we do that? How do we do that? How do we tell people that have drank Mountain Dew out of a baby bottle that it's not good? And this is where you were alluding to earlier? It's knowledge, you know, and if someone doesn't know that high fructose corn sirup can lead to liver failure and that fatty liver, which is from high fructose corn sirup and excessive sugar calories, is bypassing alcoholic cirrhosis for being on the transplant list.

I mean, that is scary. Like if we keep going where we're going, all of these, all of these people are going to need liver transplants, because I see fatty liver even in relatively healthy, like 30 year old women. And they're shocked and I'm shocked and yeah, I mean, I what do you what do you think about all that? I mean, like you were saying, you would go into these inner city homes and just see all the packaged food out and they're they're not eating it for snacks. They're eating it for dinner. Right.

Well, see, the one thing is, is people are well aware of what's happening. People have, invested more of their time and being aware of what is good from bad. And that's why, you know, some of these, the, some of these companies have tremendous amount of petitions out there. I mean, just the other day, you know, they said Kellogg's had over 400,000 petitions or probably even more than that. 4 million maybe. I don't know the exact number, but it was a crazy number. Right. And now people are speaking up about it.

Were even regardless of everything you hear about the corruption in the food and the pharmaceutical industry, now, when you get the masses out there speaking up about it, there has to be some change in what's interesting, just yesterday I saw it on the news is that, they're looking to make some of these changes before, Trump actually gets in his presidential seat in 2025. They're looking to make this happen before the year's even done, which I think it's a good move. Right. But, these are things that we have to be more aware of.

And truthfully, people are just sick and tired of feeling sick and tired. And in my professional opinion, I think where it starts when you're mentioning, you know, the Mountain Dew and the snacks and everything else, it really starts with the big food companies, especially the big American food companies. They have to take care of their own people because when you start looking at companies like Starbucks or McDonald's, where you can get the exact same thing that's on the menu in another country on the other side of the globe, but it has natural, organic ingredients, then that just tells you something that means that the the cereal, the burger, the the the coffee that you're getting, you can still get the exact same one.

You can still get it in the same package, you know, but it's the ingredients that are going inside of there that's making us sick. So it can be done. People just have to care. That's what it comes down to. Yeah. And it's super frustrating because our, like the how they basically certified food like in the US versus in Europe. Like they're they have stricter policies in Europe. And I don't know how it got this way. I mean it's political, right. They have lobbyists. They're like just let this slide through.

And we just haven't fought back. And I think that's what's changed a lot is now we're fighting back. And because of social media, it's becoming more, well known and people are starting to read labels. And that is what's most important. Reading labels. I, I tell like my followers on Instagram. I tell my patients, I tell whoever will listen like you just need to flip it over and read the labels. You don't need all that extra junk in there. And I also see it's balanced to no one I don't know. Like our family, I have four kids.

Like we don't eat perfect all the time. I'm gonna go to a forum actually this week, and my husband and I already joked with my daughter, I'm like, you guys know you'll eat out a few times while I'm gone. Otherwise, I cook home cooked meals for for dinner every time of the week. I try to, yeah, it's balanced, it's as balanced. But I mean, some people are just drinking pot for breakfast. I yeah, Florida's a little bit better. I will tell you. The community in Ohio now, like there will be like dads and moms.

They're just drinking pop for breakfast and I. Yeah. And and if I'm close enough like to them I would see something. But you usually just like don't go up to someone that you just know from your kid's school and say, hey, like, do you know that that is poisoning your liver? And then because your liver is being poisoned, you, you won't be able to, you know, detoxify your hormones properly and then you're going to have problems there. And then also you are putting your blood sugar on a roller coaster right from the start all day long.

And that's why you're moody. And that's why you don't feel like working out. But yeah, I mean, it's it's really hard. I guess the gap that I see is how do we meet the people, you know, that that can't afford, you know, all the functional testing that are just kind of just going through their day that aren't more health conscious. That's where I'm hoping with everything going to go on in 2025 with Trump's new administration, that it will bridge that gap. Yeah. So so, you know, it comes from the top.

You know, leadership and being able to educate the masses. Like when when we look at that food pyramid that was designed many years back, it's the complete opposite of what it's supposed to be. And we all know that. So it has to change, right? You go back years ago. I remember when I was in grade school, there was the Presidential Fitness Award. Where has that gone? Right. It doesn't even exist anymore. You know, it's something that has to be brought back. We have to put the emphasis on on food.

Food Industry, Labels, and Public Health Change 22:48

We have to put the emphasis on exercising. All of these things are free, right? It doesn't cost you anything. The specialized testing is great, and I think it's something that should be implemented. But the first step is what we're putting in our bodies and moving our bodies and making sure that we're holding people accountable. And I think with the leadership that you're going to see that's been appointed and nominated into these different roles leading the FDA, leading the CDC, the Surgeon General, you know, all of the people that have been put into these positions are people that are talking what you and I have been talking about for years.

Right. They have more of that functional medicine approach to to the patients health and wellness, taking more of that proactive preventative approach. So, I think that this is truly going to be that true changing course of medicine that, honestly, I would say a lot of physicians that I talk to in the functional medicine space, they have all all been very optimistic about even being able to see this type of change, of course, of medicine in their lifetime. So this is, if there's any time for us to be able to see this change, it's now it really is.

And I'll be at the a forum, this week as well too. So which is going to be very interesting. It's actually a sold out conference. I had doctor Bob Goldman, the co-founder of the, a forum on the podcast, on my podcast just a week ago. So he was telling me some of the people, the who's who's that will be there. And this is going to be a very beautiful event, super exciting, because everyone is very revved up and excited right now about the future of health care. It's great. And so you wrote this book on how to win in modern wellness.

And tell us a little bit about that. So you you've got a lot of the thought leaders in the wellness community to be a part of this book. Yeah. So when I got into the industry initially, a lot of the other CEOs, it was a bit of a cut throat mentality that a lot of other CEOs had. And, when I got into the industry, I told myself, you know, if we're all here chanting that we want to change the course of medicine, but we have to do is we got to come together collectively and create that one strong voice.

Because at the end of the day, you know, we're up against some big, you know, powerful organization out there when it comes to the food companies, big pharma. And we have to be loud, you know, and set the new standards. So what I started doing was building some strong relationships with my direct competitors, not sharing any, you know, intellectual property, intellectual information or any kind of, like, proprietary stuff that we're doing for our own organizations, but more or less to be there to support each other and, and be able to grow together.

And what I ended up doing about eight years in, of starting my business, I ended up, reaching out to all of these other CEOs that I've built these relationships with. And I gave them a chapter in my book, and we're all talking about how we're winning in this world of modern wellness and how we're doing it collectively, together. That is beautiful. And, you know, a rising tide lifts all ships. And like you said, if you want to make change to against the like, the big bad guys that are trying to hurt people's health, that you have to band together, that's that's really beautiful.

That says just a lot about your passion and your, your character to getting together with direct competitors. I love it. Community over competition for sure, 100%, especially when it's for a good cause, right? Listen, we're all in business. We all want to be profitable. But when you allow profitability to become greed and affect people's health, now, it's no longer good business, right? When you're putting people's health at risk, that's not good business. To me, that's a crime. And it should be treated as a crime.

So we have to take care of the people, right? And there is profit to be made with healthy food, with healthy procedures, with awareness. So, you know, we're not talking about companies, doing things for free. This is not the Mother Teresa Foundation. You know, at the end of the day, we're just asking to take care of the people. Yeah. That that is really beautiful. That's great. And when you look at health care and you know, things going like with food and stuff, it's very interesting because in the online community people get really mad when like small companies get bought out by big companies like I don't know if you remember the Sierra, you know, they just got bought out like maybe two months ago.

And I'm like, people were mad about it. They were like, they sold out. And I'm like, they built a beautiful business and they were profitable and doing great. And I forget which company. It's one of the big food companies bought them out. And I'm like, we need to think of that as now there's going to be more awareness about grain free food and using avocado oil instead of seed oils to fry chips and, you know, I mean, it's just interesting sometimes to see how people's mind shifts and how they navigate.

Do you know what I mean? It's like, what do you do? You know what I'm talking about. How when, like, the smaller companies get bought out and people get really upset and it's like, yeah, because they sometimes feel like they've sold their soul to the devil or something, you know? Yeah. And the people have to be a little bit more optimistic than that. You know, if you only because a bigger company buys a, a good, smaller company, that might be the change that's needed, right, to, to actually bring in those forces, that bigger power in and be able to elevate some of the natural, nutritious, organic things.

You know, obviously, we got to keep a close eye on it, making sure that they don't deviate from what the scope is. But yeah, I, I agree with you. I understand completely, yeah. Like you said, be optimistic about it. And I think it's awesome because as consumers we vote with our dollar and we all have to buy food and eat. And we all like some good chips and salsa. So if someone's buying the healthier things, you know, the big companies are paying attention. They're like, oh my gosh. Like they're they're picking the $6 bag of chips over our $3 bags.

That's made with nasty ingredients. They'll pay more for quality. So I see it as a positive. My favorite chips are the Mesa chips in the tallow I and they're from Florida. That company. But I they're they're so good. That's my go to chip now. But I it's just interesting when you look at the health business and people are paying more attention, they're reading more labels. They're voting with their dollar. And you know, I, I was telling a local cookie lady she was making dye free gluten free cut outs.

And I'm like, people pay more per cookie. You know, they'll pay. They'll make up that difference in the more cost of the ingredients. Right I agree. Yeah. That yeah. So I want to know about this exciting new journey you're on being part of the American Ivy Association and Leadership Advisory Board. How how did that happen? That's a really exciting thing. So so yeah, so I was appointed as the chairman of the Leadership Advisory board for the American Ivy Association. That was actually January of 2024.

And, what we're doing with the American Ivy Association, a bunch of the leading companies around the globe, we've collectively gotten together to create good compliance and standardization for Ivy nutrition, because Ivy nutrition has become it's it's been around for years, you know, at least a couple decades easily even more. And now it's become a heck of a lot more mainstream

Modern Wellness Leadership and Industry Standards 30:48

because of, you know, people taking more of that proactive approach to the health and wellness. So what what's happening is regulatory, bodies that are out there, the regulators, they really don't know how to regulate this. Right. And what you're getting are people that have no medical background, right, that have just been elected into a certain, political role that are now trying to say how things need to be when it comes to, you know, the treatment of these patients with Ivy nutrition. So instead of us being regulated, what we want to do is regulate ourselves, set the standardization.

Right. So, the American Ivy Association, we have some of the top companies around the globe that include, Tennis Health, which is Grant Cardone company has Liquid vitae, which is, you know, my company, we have drip bar that has over 600 locations, sold, over 100 that are already open. We have revive, which is a 47 different countries around the world that all have different levels of standards that have to be met. And what we're doing is, you know, we've created multiple different committees to address a lot of these different topics and issues.

And then we also have our scientific advisory board, which consists of a lot of our, chief medical officers for each company. But we're doing, research and development there to be able to publish certain studies and the different journals that are out there. That's exciting. I love how you said you're going to set the standards so you're not, you know, regulated by people that aren't in medicine. And I see that a lot. I mean, we saw that during the pandemic with certain medications that were working well.

And it it's really hard when you have someone non-medical coming in and telling you how you should treat patients. That's very critical in in what we're not here to work against the regulators. We're here to work with them. So our goal is to actually educate them and show them that what we are doing is working, and there's the data to support it. You know, it's not like we're just giving people these IVs magically, you know, we're doing comprehensive blood work on our patients. So we're doing a micronutrients deficiency test, as a baseline.

And, and then throughout, you know, the procedures that, you know, we do the follow ups to see exactly if these nutrients are going intracellular and if there is a change and how they feel. So the data is definitely there. And now it's just taking a lot of that quantifiable data and and putting it together and you know, studying it. Yeah absolutely. How did the Ivy companies do during the Ivy bag shortage with, you know, some of the distributors getting hit with hurricanes? How. Oh, yeah. What do we do with that?

We're all still struggling with it. You know, we've worked with a lot of the different manufacturers. And, you know, fortunately, the FDA opened up, the borders, to some of the larger companies that do have manufacturing in other countries, same big companies. Hospira Baxter B Brong, for seniors. Kabi you know, they they've allowed some of their facilities from outside of the country that follow the FDA guidelines to start shipping products into the United States. So that's help, alleviate some of the shortage.

But it's still something that we're going to be dealing with for the next few months. Yeah, that was super hard. I was thinking about that when I was working in the E.R. when it when it first hit and, you know, there was a big like shortage where I was getting emails like every day, like, only use bags if you really need it. And, and it's like, and it was just it was a lot of drama and a lot of. Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, but that's, that's part of being an entrepreneur. And you, you pivot and you make it work when it's when it's difficult.

Right. That's the truth. Absolutely. So why don't you take us a little bit, through like, liquid vitae, like you say that you mentioned micronutrient testing. What other kind of testing are you currently doing? So to kind of give you, high level overview of what we do in the process that we put our patients through is the first step is we like to listen to our patients. It's not the 5 to 7 minute consultation, but we pat you on the back and send you on the way on your way home. So what we do is we start off by a lifestyle assessment and questionnaire.

We want to know what your lifestyle is like, what type of, hours do you work, what type of work you do? Are you getting exposed to hazardous chemicals when you go to work every day? Is it a high stress job? Are you sleeping properly? What's what's your lifestyle out of work? Well, you know, your social life, does it consist of drinking every single day? What is that social life like? Are you moving your body? Are you active? Are you doing activities? So for us to really understand the individual and what their lifestyles like.

And then from there, that's when we start our testing. We're big into diagnostics. So, one of the first, diagnostic acts that we like to do is called a body composition analysis. So we use two devices. We do an in-body and also a Dexa scan to, look at body composition analysis, which include looking at adipose fat, which is more of your fluffy fat. And then we look at visceral fat, which is the fat that lines your organs, which if you have a high percentage of that, that can be indicative of cardiovascular disease, diabetes and other many, chronic illnesses that can develop and then we're looking at lean mass.

We're looking at intracellular extracellular water. So it really gives us a good idea of what your body's made up of. Instead of getting on a regular scale that just tells you total weight. You know, I want to know what that weight is made up of. So when we start working with our patients, we know that we're going to start trending in the correct direction. Because let me give you an example. A patient comes in and they want to lose weight. They want to go through one of our medically supervised weight loss programs.

They lose 30 pounds. Well get it on a regular scale. Was it was it 30 pounds a muscle. They lost 30 pounds of fat because if they lost 30 pounds of muscle that's not good. I would have, at that point hope that they just didn't do the weight loss program. So for us is really understanding what the patient needs and making sure that they're getting the results that they came in for. So body composition analysis is one of the diagnostics. We also do what's called a VO2 max where we're looking at cellular health, cardiovascular health and also pulmonary health.

This gives us the ability to look at their endurance, fat burning zones. It also, the device that we utilize does the RMR, which is the resting metabolic rate that we calculate, but we could see exactly how many calories the patient is burning at a resting state that information allows us to customize the nutritional program on how many macros and macros they need throughout the day, and how many, how many, what their caloric intake needs to be as well, too, depending the goals that they're trying to accomplish.

If they're trying to put on more lean mass, build endurance, or lose weight, that data allows us to have more of that personalized approach and create programs that are precise to the actual individual. So, those are some of the diagnostics we do, with the technologies that we have. And then we do a thorough blood exam, which the blood work. It's actually more than blood work. There's urine, there's blood, there's saliva, or we're looking at genetics.

Personalized Testing and Proactive Health Care 38:48

We're looking at toxins, environmental toxins that people can get exposed to. We're looking at hormones, food sensitivity. We're looking at, inflammation markers where our blood work consists of anywhere between 20 to about 80 pages long. So we're just really getting a good bird's eye view of the patient's health. And then from there, we trend all of these diagnostics to make sure that we're going in the right direction. That's amazing. And it's so important to see what your personalized blood work is.

And it's frustrating because when someone goes to a conventional doctor, they're like, I don't think you're bad enough to need blood work. I mean, I can't tell you how many patients will come into my office, and they're like, they refused blood work. And it's like, that's just that's just conventional medicine. It's just how it is. And sometimes you need to search out different companies, different businesses, different doctors to really get a handle on, like your personalized health, because we all want to to age well and just aging right now is not good.

You don't want the chronic diseases. You don't want the average aging in the US. You want to be above average for sure. You know, doctor, that's one of the issues with, the way that people think about blood work. They want to do the blood work once they feel like crap. Right. That's not good. That's reactive. We need to be proactive. We need to prevent ourselves from getting to the point from feeling like crap. And you know, the other part that sometimes really annoys me is when, you know, I try to put emphasis on doing blood work, right?

And people tell it, look, let's wait three weeks. I got to make sure I clean up my data stuff before I do the blood works. Now, this is not a test that you're going to study for. You know, I want to see how your body is, how you normally live. I don't want you to prepare 3 to 4 weeks in advance just to make it look good for that immediate moment, you know, let's see what your body, how your body's functioning on a regular basis. Right? Right. It's almost like cheating on a test. Like that's not going to benefit you long term.

My mother has a friend and she's so funny because my mom told me this story. She's like, yeah, she eats really good. Like a month before she gets her yearly bloodwork. And then she goes back to eating, like, whatever. And it's like, well, that's not you're not fooling your doctor. You're not fooling anyone but yourself. Like, we need to see what your body's actually living in real time. And you don't you don't want to be. I don't want to see you in the air when I'm in an air shift. I don't want to see someone with chronic disease.

If you have any negative symptoms, you need to get the blood work now. And I mean, Sam, you probably agree with this. The other problem is, is that there's this normalizing of symptoms, right? Like, oh, I'm bloated. Like that's normal or even PMS or, you know, even carrying extra weight. That's a symptom. And, you know, we're normalizing all of this via social media or whatnot. And I'm like, no, your body is like telling you something's wrong. And you're you're normalizing it or ignoring it. Yeah, yeah, I see it all all the time.

And people have just made it seem like, hey, this is this is normal. It isn't normal, you know? And the other one that I hear, it's like, oh, I'm just getting old. This is part of getting old now. It's not, it's not. You're getting sick. You're getting sick because you're not taking care of yourself. You're getting sick because of toxic foods in your body. You're getting sick because you're not exercising. You're not moving your body. Like these are things that can be simply addressed. Absolutely.

I don't know about you, but I like being the weird one. Like I'm fine with it. We went to a Christmas party and I brought gluten free, diet free cookies and, cupcakes because they needed dessert. And then, I made some, like, really nice, like, rump roast shredded, you know, and I labeled it all gluten free. And someone came up to me and they're like, oh, they're like my family member. Or like, my cousin is gluten free. And I've been trying it and I'm like, you should just go for it. Like, eat more animal based, see how you feel.

So, be the weird one. And then if someone questions your weirdness, then use that as an opportunity to to teach them and plant seeds. That's that's what I try to do, at least. Yeah. And I'm the same way. One of the things that I talk a lot about, myself and my business partner is, two doctors, Doctor Heywood and Doctor Davis, is that we don't want health and wellness and medical to be stuck in this hole idea of the person you know, the doctor with the white lab cope with the stethoscope over the neck.

For us, it's like we're making health and wellness hip and cool, you know? So things like that. It's like, I'm going to let people know that I'm eating gluten free. I'm going to let people know that I want the organic stuff, and I'm going to do it in a way where it's just like, hey, the cool guys doing it, why don't the rest of us do it as well too? So when you actually see a lot of my content out there and me being outside and hanging out with people, you know, I'm not that guy who's wearing, you know, a shirt that's tucked in and, you know, button all the way up.

It's like, this is cool. This is a cool thing to do. We're going to be with celebrities talking about it, and we're going to get the word out. And this is going to be something that people want to be a part of. People are going to want to be part of this movement of being healthy. Yes. Awesome. I just love your passion and thank you for just being so passionate and being an entrepreneur. And it's scary to do what you're doing. But we need more people like you just to be, like, loud and proud. Like you said, make it cool.

Absolutely, I appreciate it. Thank you. Yeah, well, Sam, can you let everyone know how to find you?

Closing Thoughts and Where to Find Sam 45:00

You have a great social media. You have a podcast. Where else can people follow you? Yeah, if people just Google me, Sam Tejada, you'll see a lot of information pop up. But you can find me on Instagram at Sammy. Sammy underscore to how to Adda. You can go on my website Sam to how did that com you can find their company Liquid vida. It's liquid vida.com and, I'm not hard to get Ahold of. If you have any questions or anything that I can potentially help you with your health, just reach out. You'll get a message back.

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being here, and I'll see you at a forum. Thanks, doc. Take care. Thank you for tuning in to Doctor Talks. We hope today's episode has enlightened and inspired you on your path to optimal health. Each day is a new opportunity to make choices that empower your wellbeing. For more insights and strategies, subscribe to our podcast and visit our website w WW dot doctor Talksport.com. Stay connected. Stay healthy and join us next time on Doctor Talks. Real talks from real doctors on the issues that matter to you most.