The Four Foundations of Real Wellness Most Patients Never Hear About

Introduction to Healing Traditions 0:00

After studying so many different medical traditions or healing traditions, I recognize that each tradition has its own view, has its own scope of understanding and its own toolbox. Yeah, his medicine does what it does, Ayurveda does what it does, functional medicine does what it does, traditional medicine does what it does. Each healing tradition has a merit. Each healing tradition is amazing. I mean, functional medicine and ICU, that train could, that you could sail. And traditional medicine is amazing at what it does, where it does.

I'm Dr. Basmire Phan, a physician on a mission to help you break free from symptom management and step into a life of thriving health. Together we will uncover simple, powerful ways to prevent disease, restore energy and take control of your health naturally. If you're ready to stop managing illness and start building vitality, you're in the right place. Your prescription for vitality starts now. Welcome, Dr. Inna. Before we get into the science, I want our listeners to know your story. You were a successful hospital physician in ICU, specialty floors, and eventually a medical director.

From the outside, everything looked great. What was happening behind the scenes? Can you tell us a little bit about that? Well, just a full thank you for having me. It's true, you nailed it. Everything was successful outside.

Dr. Innau2019s Health Decline in Medicine 1:35

And inside, it seemed like I was living a dream. I relicensed in the US. I passed the boards. I was back to my field that I absolutely loved. I was doing hospital medicine, which is always a cutting edge. And all my dreams as an immigrant came true, except somewhere in the process, I lost my health. And I didn't feel good. It really started in my late 20s, and I looked really good, so obviously nobody would suspect anything, but my energy was going downhill, and I was losing hair, and I couldn't sleep, and I was anxious, and I would wake up in the middle of the night for no reason whatsoever, and I couldn't fall asleep for two hours, and I was miserable inside.

And finally, I think when I hit 30, I thought I'm not sick, I'm just not well anymore. So I went to primary care doctor and she was great and she really paid attention. There are no labs in the world and of course everything was normal. So that was the first time I heard that is that I think every woman hears everything's perfectly normal. You get. So as a physician yourself, how did it feel like to be on the other side, to be the patient who isn't being heard? Yeah, so it's scary, it's really disheartening.

It's scary to be a doctor and not knowing what's going on with you. Because then you start questioning, you know, am I authentic? Here I am saving lives in a hospital and yet I cannot save my own life. And it was bad in the 30s, bad enough that I would think too long about it. It was just the very first time where I just wondered. And that was the very first time I will say, well, you're 30 now. What do you expect? about my age until that phrase and I thought 30, like what's special about 30. I was a busy physician, I had practice, I had family, so I just moved on with life.

I told them everything is normal, I take it. I, as a doctor, I'm obviously trusting other doctors and this is my colleague and I know what she's doing. So I moved on with life and I kept going and I thought maybe it's true that at 30 you just feel different than you were at early 20s. But things kept getting worse and for a while I just sort of ignore that, but through the decade, closer to my 40s, it was becoming harder and harder to ignore. I mean, I had to drag myself out of bed multiple times, push an alarm clock.

I had no energy by 10 a.m. If I had an opportunity to take a nap, I would, except I was in hospital. So coffee or black tea. Your best friend. And then by 3 p.m. I was so done with my day, except I'm still on my shift. So again, more coffee and pastries just to stay awake. And I was tired to the point where vacations, and I love travel, vacations were boring. And weekends didn't make it better. in the morning I would think tonight I will get to bed early and I will just get a really good sleep and tomorrow will be so much better and it wasn't because first of all by the time I finally got to bed I couldn't fall asleep for an hour and then I would fall asleep and I would wake up once or twice through the night couldn't fall asleep so next morning I'm just as exhausted if not more and by 40 I started forgetting things and I used to have photographic memory So now it was affecting my work and it was becoming just plain scary.

And when I turned 40, I remember that day when I was rounding an ICU in the morning and I looked up patient's labs as usual and I looked up patient's room number just to verify. And I got up and I got into the middle of hallway and I didn't remember the room number. that was like Alzheimer's patient diagnosis, that was so scary. So I looked up the number, I have it in my memory, I've rounded, but that was serious. I mean, now I question, do I remember, do I know what I'm doing? That's eye-opening.

Yeah. It was really major eye-opener and My dark little secret, everybody around me was so healthy and vibrant and successful. And God forbid in our medical field, everything is so competitive and you have to perform. I mean, in any professional field, you have to perform. You expect that too. I was just 40 and everybody around me was just healthy. I was the only one, so I had no idea what was going on with me. By then, I was absolutely sure either I have Alzheimer's or I have severe uncontrolled diabetes and it's blood sugar making me sore, foggy, or I have cancer somewhere.

So I also read your biography a little bit because you were experiencing all these things.

Searching for Answers Beyond Conventional Care 7:00

However, you didn't accept it. You researched, you did Chinese medicine at Harvard, you did Ayurveda through Deepak Chopra Center, mind-body medicine. I mean, what an incredible journey. So what was the moment when you finally found that answer? And what were you looking for? I was looking for solutions, because again, when I saw another primary care doc at 40, and I was told, you're 40 now, what do you expect? And all the labs came back normal. And I came to that appointment absolutely desperate.

And I remember waiting for that answer. I was sure she will walk through the door saying, I'm sorry, you may have got cancer. I was just whatever we find to be fixable, because I just wanted my life back. And when I do healthy as a horse, everything is perfectly normal. Whatever you're doing, keep doing it. It's working for you. True deep experience of, did you even hear what I said? Did you even hear why I came to you? Right. And he was so disappointed and we were college, he knew me professionally, I knew him professionally.

And so he really, I mean, he was very respectful and sincere, but he was like, look at your lips, they're all normal, what do you want me to say? And understanding not feeling great your 40s, that's how people feel in their 40s. And I was like, if that's how 40 feels like, I mean, I can't wait to be 50 there. One whole hour just going downhill, it cannot be right. It just did not sound right. And that day when I, after the appointment, I went back to the hospital for my usual work day. And I was rounding and all of a sudden, every room just spoke to me.

I was looking at patients just like through the different eyes. And every room I went through in stage Alzheimer's and cancer and amputations because of diabetes, I looked at them and I thought, it didn't start like this. It didn't start yesterday. 20, 30 years ago, they didn't feel right. They came to their doctors. They run whatever labs they run. And say to the world, everything is normal, whatever you're doing, keep doing it. And here they are. And so all of a sudden I was working through room by room.

I thought, which one is my future? Not ready for that future. I thought way more than that. I deserve way more than that. What I'm experiencing isn't right. And just because my doctor doesn't validate it or doesn't see it, or whatever lapse here ends, don't reflect what truly is going on. I'm not going to give up my life just because somebody doesn't know and so I realized that it was actually that night that's called dark night of the soul right and so I couldn't sleep and I was so anxious and in the middle of the night all of a sudden it dawned on me You know, I served traditional medicine.

I loved it. We saved lives. That's true. But I just all of a sudden recognized that the traditional medicine I'm serving has all the tools to help us survive. It has no tools to help us thrive. And that's what I did. I didn't need survival. It's true. My labs did not reflect disease. I just didn't feel well. and I was not ready to sign up for just pushing through life day by day and getting worse every year and every decade. So I knew I had to find my answers for my own sake and for the sake of my patients because all of a sudden I recognized everybody I was seeing in the hospital went through the same experience.

Everything is great. Keep going. So what did you discover first? You have done a couple of different out of box trainings, right? So tell me about that experience a little bit. What was the first step and how did you reach the second step and what did that look for you? So I initially thought, well, if Western medicine doesn't have answers, Eastern medicine will, because it's ancient, it's a wisdom tradition. So I decided I'm studying Chinese medicine and of course life is short. I always learn from the best.

And Harvard had a one year program for physicians. on Chinese medicine. So I joined, I did a year of that. It was great. I learned a lot. I learned about energetic side of medicine. I learned about prevention because Chinese medicine is very much about prevention. So I learned a lot about tendencies and nutrition. That was my first experience of a bigger toolbox. It was very different toolbox. I mean, rather than giving medications, we used herbs in Chinese medicine. which again to me is another tool.

But the biggest part I took out of Chinese medicine is understanding how body works, basically body wisdom. And as I started applying it, I felt somewhat better. It wasn't transformational. It did not give me my life back. But I definitely, as I started to understand how body works, I definitely was able to make it better. But then again, I was after transformation. I wanted to go back how I felt at 27. Yeah, why not? This is how we should be.

Discovering Chinese Medicine, Ayurveda, and Mind-Body Medicine 12:40

And I absolutely genuinely believed that it's possible. And I think that's where it all begins. And so I thought, well, if Chinese medicine doesn't quite explain everything, then I rather will because it's the most ancient tradition. And so I studied Ayurveda, Deepak Chopra had a course in San Diego and off I went and I studied and it gave me another level of understanding of nutrition. Most important from Ayurveda, I learned lifestyle, basically lifestyle medicine and mindfulness. So that was a big introduction to sort of that whole mind level of medicine.

and how we make ourselves sick or well. And then from there, I thought I really want to have either a Western view of mindfulness and overall just mind-based medicine. For sure, Harvard had mind-body medicine. So Dr. Benson, the head of cardiology department for Harvard at the time, led the course. And I thought, you know, he's a top scientist. And if he's doing it, I am in. So I study and that's how I learned that mind-driven body follows the mind. Even departure of the soul does that, body follows the mind.

So it is important for us. So I was getting all these tools and I studied palliative medicine which is complex, the highest complexity of medicine and end of life. So there were so many things that went over so many years and that was just driven and everything I would learn would give me a little bit more tools and it would also help me to feel a little bit better. But it wasn't until, just by accident, I landed in functional medicine conference. I see. That was not an eye-opener. That was just a different universe.

All of a sudden, I honestly felt this is why I went to medical school. This is what medicine is about, truly should be about. I learned about things. I remember first phase was almost, I felt angry, I felt deceived because by then I practiced the highest complexity medicine for 17 years. I was trained in the best institutions all over the world. I learned so many advanced techniques and strategies. And yet I never was taught in depth about nutrition and ability by disability to cleanse and hormones and stress response.

And it seemed to be everything that was so foundational. And that's all good and bad. It felt like in traditional medicine. We're addressing the end stage of it, but we're missing the whole foundation. So sure enough, the end stage looks harsh. So what did that tell you about everything that you have been taught in medical school, in residency, and now you're learning this part, right? And as you mentioned that this was such a big eye-opener. You did all these trainings. How do you compare that with what you were taught and the box that you were kind of supposed to be in, and you broke the barriers and started learning about this side?

What was that contrast like? You know, when I applied it to myself, because we are all first patients, right? I started simply applying it. And within days, brain fog was gone, and I was sharp and focused, and memory kicked back. And within a couple of months, three months, my ideal weight came back. I was not trying to lose weight. That was the least of my issues. It just was a sidekick. And all of a sudden I was losing weight. I was vibrant. I had energy. I slept well. Every single problem I struggled with for 15 years, well, 13 years at least, All of a sudden just went away and I wasn't doing any glamorous medications.

I was not on medications at all. I was changing foundational things. What I eat, how I cleanse, I balanced my hormones. I looked at practically every aspect of healthy living. And those things I've done habitually, they didn't serve me anymore. And that was the biggest point I had and still have. And I teach it every decade of life has different requirements for wellness. And what doesn't serve us at 20 does not serve us at 40. It thanks us way down at 50. So every day. the requirement for being well, you can be well on 90 cents, probably really hungry.

You have to give the body what it needs, and the needs change every decade of our life. And if we just try to push through it, just like the way we did in our 20s, sleep is not important, and I can push it, and I can push through, and I can do it all, and I could, but I crashed physically. And when I started applying functional medicine principles within six months, I remember that day in the morning, I was again getting ready for work and I looked in the mirror and I just thought, I'm back. like it was me again.

And I was... How beautiful is that? I was in my 40s. And honestly, at 49, I felt so much better than I felt at 30 and 35, not to mention, so 40. So it's not about age. It's about giving your body what it needs to perform at your best. And when I lived through that experience, first of all, there was no way I could go back and lie to my patients that the only way to fix their problems

Functional Medicine as the Turning Point 18:45

is a pill. In fact, it was clear and obvious it was not a pill. Second, and I really could not, like, I could not lie to my patients. I had to face a very spiritual choice. And secondly, very unexpectedly, all of a sudden my colleagues, nurses and doctors in the hospital started coming to me saying, hey, whatever you're doing, I need that. And they would show symptoms and they had exactly the same stuff I used to have. And all of a sudden, like one after another, I finally recognize the dark little secrets that I kept, that everybody's great and I'm the one dying here.

It's not just my little secret, we all keep a secret, or most of us. I mean, a lot of people who are hearing us now probably are recognizing that it's my secret too. I'm trying to pretend that everything is great and I'm dying inside. So the chronic disease, the concept is that in the world of functional medicine that we practice, we know that the chronic disease, even though it may have been diagnosed at a certain year, but we know that this probably began 10 to 20 years back. So the most important question is, why do you think conventional medicine misses this window or they don't look at it?

What is that thing that is going to help us the most, especially if let's say we are talking to practitioners or physicians, what would be that first step that they should do in order to at least acknowledge that maybe they're not seeing things on the labs, but that doesn't mean that it is all in the mind or it does not exist. Yeah, after studying so many different medical traditions or healing traditions, I recognize that each tradition has its own view, has its own scope of understanding and its own toolbox.

Yeah, his medicine does what it does, Ayurveda does what it does, functional medicine does what it does, traditional medicine does what it does. Each healing tradition has a merit. Each healing tradition is amazing. I mean, functional medicine and ICU, that train could, that you could sail. And traditional medicine is amazing at what it does, where it does. But traditional medicine is acute care medicine. I think where the problem began is when one tradition takes over the whole picture. and starts telling everybody that this is the only way.

And yet it only has toolbox for certain things. In acute care, I still believe, I mean, I still believe medicine in US is the best in the world. And I have to compare, I mean, I have something to compare, I practiced in different parts of the world. So it is amazing for what it does. It is the most advanced. And if God forbid I have something very severe, I want to be here in the States. But 94% of what we see in emergency rooms is actually not an acute disease. It's problems that were accumulated through the lifestyle, through their own nutrition, through stress that wasn't mitigated or balanced for years.

And those things are not fixed by antidepressants. They're not fixed by sleeping pills. Absolutely. We don't ask why it's happening, we subscribe to always depending on that peel, on that band-aid. And there is nothing wrong with band-aids. but I'm using it as a tool for tour to heal. And I would never subscribe to that, depend on the band-aid for the rest of my life. I want to see why I scrape this area. And if I scrape it all the time, then what is it that I keep doing? Oh, for me, right. And so on the level, you just understand functional medicine is a medicine of why it's a medicine of course.

I mean, they need, if they need surgery, they need traditional medicine. But if somebody has osteoporosis, then when these people come to me, I'm asking why. There are certain food to it. There is like a community will put them at higher risk. Why? Because it's inflammatory condition. Why is it inflamed? What is out of balance? What can we change to get them back? So the problem stops to exist rather than constantly depending on medication with its side effects. Right. And basically, what I believe that these medicines are basically just Band-Aid, right?

They are not addressing why it happened. And if you will not address the why, then you will always continue to be using the Band-Aid. And there is place for the Band-Aid. But Ideally, you should be working at the root cause level so that the band-aid can finally be off and not continue to be used all the time, right? So, you know, as a kidney physician, I see this pattern all the time, you know, having basically inflammation in the body, hormone disruption, cortisol, you know, affected. And basically, it's the same story through different organs.

How interconnected is the system in your lens? Everything's connected to everything. So when I work with patients, we always start with foundation. And foundation is again, what we eat, do we flush out toxins efficiently, our hormones balanced, and since the hormonal realm, I often see, I specialize in BHRT and bioidentical hormone replacement for a patient. And often I see people coming and they instantly want to address their hormones, there is nothing wrong with that. But most options are not.

When I check their cortisol, their stress or survival hormone, it's very much off.

Why Conventional Medicine Misses Root Causes 25:15

And I guess trying to fix the consequence without addressing the foundation is like trying to build the house without a foundation or on a cracked foundation. It's just not going well. It's so important to start from the bottom, from the foundation. And foundation again, nutrition, lifestyle, sleep, which is part of lifestyle, ability to cleanse our body, ability to manage stress or deal with stress, restoring that survival system. So we're not constantly in survival state because when body is in survival state, we're inflamed.

You know, you cannot be both surviving and thriving at the same time. Absolutely true. But it doesn't multitask. We have the salute, multitasking. Reality doesn't multitask. Yeah. Or with thriving 100% of the time. And it's a different focus, it's different nerves, different hormones, different neurotransmitters. And when we're in survival state, body, or actually nature, it doesn't care how it feels, it just feels for us to stay alive. And often it happens at the cost. And all of us suffering more or less with the same symptoms.

I hear day in and day out, weight issues, digestive issues. We'll have variants of that and it has to be individualized. You can't just like develop one protocol, apply blindly to everybody. Somebody will be like better and somebody will not, but so it's individualized. But the patterns of the universe have to be honored. And so if someone is listening right now, right? And they're feeling exactly how maybe you felt, right? Exhausted, brain fog, forgetting things. What is the first thing you will tell them to do?

Just one thing, not the whole step or protocol, right? Because as it is individualized, what's that first thing that you would want them to do? Without knowing the story, an individual person, I would say 80%. I tell my patients 80% of our success is based on what you eat. So I would say the very, very first thing to look at, what am I eating? Very, very, very basic stuff. Processed food is designed to make us inflamed. And so if people are getting by on processed food, by definition, they're hurting themselves.

And so, you know, before I go into intricates of how broccoli works and how food and this food and what needs to be removed, we eat quite inflammatory in the modern world. And here in the States, it's quite prominent and it's, I mean, a lot of my patients without the immunity will go overseas for vacations. They'll come back and they will say, I ate everything and it felt good. And then I got on my United flight home and after lunch, I felt home. So, unfortunately, these days, and it's changing now, and I just really pray for this change to be fast, but we're complicated about what we put in our mouths, and when you think of it, whatever gets into your mouth is either beneficial and it helps your body, it nourishes your body, or it's a toxin, and body has to work really hard to get rid of it, and it requires it.

And so I think it's a very foundational, very basic look at what you eat and if it comes from the box or a jar. Uh, go granular or on, uh, specific foods again, without more any person in the store. I would say everybody would benefit from it. We get way too much sugar in our diet and a lot of hidden sugar. And again, sugar is a fire and there's only so much fire your body can take. And so it's one thing to change in your nutrition, go sugar free for three weeks. and you'll be surprised as you experience.

Wow, I love that. That is pretty powerful because you know how everyone talks about, oh, do dairy-free, do gluten-free, and you know, all these different free's and everyone is different and everyone may, you know, benefit from that or this or, you know, something like that. But from what I'm hearing from your side is two things. One thing is process rules. So that means to remove the things that is harming you. And the other thing is just try to see how your body responds just by going sugar free for three weeks.

And three weeks absolutely is doable. And what I love about three weeks is that it takes 21 days, right, for your gut to repair itself. So if there is any kind of inflammation that the sugar is bringing in your body, then in 21 days, which is out of or free of sugar, you will be able to repair that if this is something that is affecting you and you will be able to see the benefits of whatever intervention you're doing. So I also want to touch on peptides. We will go deep into the peptides in our masterclass, but because, you know, you're from Russia and peptides, you know, were basically, I don't know, developed, but basically they started in Russia.

So tell me a little bit about maybe your excitement and your maybe personal use of peptides and what does that mean to you? It's a tool. It's a very popular tool. I love peptides. They're very powerful in the right setting. I just want to say I've never in 34 years of clinical experience I've never met one tool that overpowers everything else.

Foundations of Wellness: Food, Stress, and Hormones 31:25

So there is not a single tool that is everything. And the way peptides are marketed right now, unfortunately or unfortunately, it's like the solution, nothing is the solution. Peptides are regulatory. Peptis means digest in Greek, so peptide is just short protein. And short cell chain chains are regulatory. So rather than being food for our bodies, they're actually going to cells and cells have receptors for them. And so peptides are regulatory. It's a high level of regulation because it's intercellular regulation.

The receptors for peptides, the sensory things that connect the peptides are sitting inside on the cell membrane. And so peptides regulate what happens inside every cell of our body. And again, going back to the concept of foundation, peptides to me are sort of a golden roof. It's beautiful. But if you don't have foundation, you don't have a house. So peptides add a whole new level of wellness when foundation is in place. And so when the foundation is built and regulation of that foundation is established, which is hormones, now we go to the whole next level of regulation, intracellular regulation, which is peptides.

And when foundation is in place, peptides can. the whole next level of magic and they can separate how we make energy, how our brain works, how we make energy inside those microchondria energy stations, how we sleep, how we perceive the world, how we regulate. I love that. Tell me about your personal use of peptides. Have you used any peptides personally and what have you seen as a result of maybe using that on top of the foundations that you've already built for yourself? I tell my patients, I will never ask you to do anything that I haven't done.

So I'm my first patient, I test things on myself. So very basic, years ago when I entered menopause without realizing what's happening, the first entrance into menopause was rotator cuff injury, which is actually classic. When your estrogen drops, everything becomes stiff and painful. It's super common, rotator cuff injury with usual workouts that used to be just fine. And with a half injury, usually what happens, you get PT and it's very slow healing and there is a very high risk of frozen shoulder.

In fact, most women will end up with frozen shoulder, even though they're doing physical therapy. And frozen shoulder takes up to two years to resolve. And so as they took off injuries that I got without recognizing what's happening and doing traditional approach, it was full. I lost range of motion. I mean, I couldn't dress myself for a while. It was really painful. And at some point I decided that's how I went back to peptides. I haven't used them for ages because here it's not really common. And so they were not part of my practice.

It was just for myself that I decided to try and I did BPC and in two weeks my frozen shoulder started to unfreeze very rapidly. My PT said, finally, physical therapy works. Let them be happy. Yes. So I did two weeks initially and it felt so much better. I did another two weeks and call later. I did not have frozen shoulder anymore. And I, I mean, my ligament healed. I paid for MRI just to see because I needed to go to myself and sure enough it was completely healed with partial tear. It was completely healed.

I absolutely loved it and then I forget six, seven months later I ended up with second rotator cuff. I didn't even weigh. So that rotator cuff injury only lasted three weeks. So because when I started I didn't even go into frozen shoulder I started to try to weigh. So that creates muscular injury. Later When I started looking into peptide field and learning more and using what's available in the States, my energy changed. Again, you can feel great. And if everything is addressed and you add peptides, you get whole new level of wellness.

You can optimize your energy. I did not have trouble sleeping. I mean, I regulate myself very well. But for patients who have difficulty sleeping and Just lifestyle modification, hormonal optimization, and lifestyle is still not enough. Mostly it's the creatives who just, they have so much higher requirement for performance. There are peptides that will optimize your sleep, your focus. Once people go through menopause or underpass, will be the sufferers, which means relationships sufferers.

Peptides and Personal Healing Experience 36:55

There are some peptides that actually can improve libida and sexual desire and performance. I mean, oxytocin is hormone of relationships that our body makes, except with age, less and less, so oxytocin is peptide. Insulin is a peptide, it's a hormone, but structure-wise, it's a peptide. So really, the introduction into peptide therapy in traditional medicine happened in the 1930s. And it won't save lives day in and day out. So, a lot of different peptides and they work differently. And again, Aquarius Foundation is in place.

Peptides give you a whole new level. Lingerity, body composition, sleep, stress, energy production, all those. Those are with peptides. So it's really... Thank you for sharing. Yeah, thank you for sharing. So let's just quickly turn our tracks and I wanted to talk about your, I think you have developed this four-step core method and that has helped hundreds of patients get their lives back. Can you give us a little glimpse of what it looks like? Just maybe, you know, what does core four stands for?

What does it include? And then we will dive deeper into that when we talk about it in the masterclass. Sure. Again, going into foundations, our proprietary methods that we, or roadmaps that we use for patients has seven major areas addressed, and those are for people who want longevity work or high-performance work. However, foundation of all that for things, and I called it core method, and it's clearing your, clearing of flushing toxins. It's optimizing hormones. It's healing the God or restoring and reviving the God.

And it's addressing lifestyles, the habits that either serve you or thank you. And so those are the four pillars that we address with every single patient. And everybody, friends, they have different life stories, different symptoms, different health goals. And so the program for every person becomes individualized, but those four core principles have to be addressed in order for anything to work well. And most importantly, stay well, because we can optimize something to feel great the next three months or four months, but I want those results to last.

And so those four core principles clear the talk sense, optimize hormones, restore and enhance lifestyle habits. So basically that's the foundation, right? As a foundation. Okay. So one quick question. What does wellness means to you as a physician in one sentence? Vibrant. Vibrant. You can say living my best life. You can say feeling my best. Sometimes I say I wake up in the morning and I feel like the world is mine. That's my formula of wellness when I love that. So what message would you leave with someone who has been to doctor after doctor, they've been told they're fine and is basically by this time they have started to lose hope?

What would your advice be to them? Never lose hope, just to follow. We designed beautifully. My pathology professor used to say we are fearfully and wonderfully made. It's absolutely true. Our body has an innate endless potential for healing. And if something doesn't feel right, don't ignore it, don't push through it. And if somebody tells you it's normal, just don't buy that. I'm sure, Azar, a lot of things I don't know. So it's a maturity of a mastery of practitioner to say, I don't know. you need to see somebody else.

And if the practitioner you are seeing, and I don't care which field, whether it's functional medicine, Chinese medicine, or traditional medicine, if somebody tells you, if you're not feeling well and somebody tells you it's normal, maybe it's their normal. It doesn't have to be yours. That's beautiful. Serve to feel well. There is always, always solution. And if whoever you are seeing is not able to give you that solution, Find, find the one who can. There are a lot of different practitioners out there.

Never stop. I knew, I mean, I was searching endlessly for years. I just knew I deserved it. I wanted it. And I always remember it. I only have one life to live. I was not going to settle for mediocre. So we all deserve it. We're all able to feel our best. And if it feels less than the best, look for somebody who can guide you to that. I love that. I feel like you deserve to be healthy.

The CORE Method and Final Advice 42:05

You deserve to be whiter, right? And anyone who tells you that this is your new normal or this is what you're going to live with, that is where you have to stop, take a step back and be like, okay, is there anyone else who has answers to it? And the most beautiful thing that I loved is maybe the mediocrity that, you know, they have or they think that this is the new normal of 40 or 50 is not or does not have to be the same for you. So tell us, tell our listeners, where can they find you? How they can connect with you?

How can they work with you? What do you do? So I'm in Denver. I'm an internal medicine physician by trade and I've done 26 years of traditional medicine. For the last seven years, I'm only doing functional medicine and I specialize in longevity and wellness and hormone optimization. I'm located in Denver. Most of our patients live in Colorado. Many patients travel to see me. We have some patients from different states coming and seeing us. We have some people coming overseas. happy to help you. You can find us on the web as midlifewellnessinstitute.com and you can always sign up for free discovery call and then we can see if I can help you with what's going on and we're doing medicine very differently as you're now getting a gist and so if that's what you're looking for then we're happy to help you and I'm not alone.

There is whole army of us. You're doing the same. Yeah, I love that. Dr. Inna, thank you so much for reminding us that normal labs doesn't mean normal life and that midlife is not a decline. It is an invitation. For those of you who want to go deeper to learn about the specific lab markers Dr. Inna tracks, the hormone protocols, the gut health strategies, real clinical cases, and how she applies her core methods step by step, we have an exclusive masterclass where we will cover everything. You can get the link down below.

I am Dr. Visma Irfan and this is Kidney Wellness, where every conversation brings us closer to whole body healing. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.