Uncovering the Root: How Precision Genetics Changed Dr. K’s Life

Podcast Introduction and Sponsor Message 0:00

This is Doctor Talks. Every story is unique, and so is your DNA. As you'll hear in today's episode, discovering genetics was a game changer in my own health journey, and it continues to transform how I care for patients. Through our partnership with Legrand, we use advanced genetic panels that reveal the root causes behind conditions like brain inflammation, anxiety, addiction, and behavior change. We're grateful to Fugran for sponsoring this podcast and helping us provide personalized care from the inside out.

Learn more in the show notes. Hi, Dr. K. So glad you're here. We've talked about Pan's Pandas, and I know that's near and dear to your heart for so many different reasons. And in hormones, we kind of touched on your story a little bit. And I thought now would be a great time to really How did you become a doctor? Why did you get into functional medicine? And I just think unpacking the why in your heart behind a lot of what you do will encourage a lot of people who may feel stuck in their life right now.

Well, you know, that's kind of a fun question. When I was in second grade, my dad went to Vietnam for a year.

Dr. K's Early Calling to Medicine 1:23

And during that time, he would send us back pictures of an orphanage that he and other service members would go to. And there was just a longing in my heart to do something. The other thing is, the summer that he was gone, I almost drowned. I was in a friend's pool and I kept slipping into the deep end and all the adults were talking and nobody was listening. And I was able to push my head up and go, help. And so in my mind as a child, I was like, people need to listen to kids. Somebody needs to advocate for kids.

And so, Everyone has different gifts, but I felt like I had the gift of mercy and compassion, and I wanted to cultivate that. And I'm also a problem solver and kind of a little bit of a rebel, but I had never stepped out on my own. I was a follower, but yet a rebel. By the time I had eighth grade, I knew that when I hit ninth grade, I had to make good grades because I wanted to go to medical school. And so then I went to college and I obtained a medical scholarship through the United States Army and I became an Army physician.

So I did my internship and residency at William Beaumont Army Medical Center. And one of the benefits of doing a military internship in residency is that it wasn't just 100% pediatrics. I also cared for adults and soldiers that came into the emergency room with all kinds of things. Medical school equips you to see birth to geriatric patients, but then when you do an internship and residency. And so when you're a military officer, you could be deployed. And so trauma care is important. So anywhere from heart attacks to gunshots, stitches, those kind of things.

We had the wonderful experience of learning in internship and residency. And then I went and I was an attending physician at Fort Hood, Texas. Now, I passed my pediatric board certification in 1993 when I finished my residency in Peds, but my own challenges started showing up in residency. I had met my husband, who was a field artillery officer right before I started my internship. He was deployed, went to the Persian Gulf War, came back, and we were married less than four months later, and we've been married 34 years now.

And yeah, and we have four kids and one grandson and another grandbaby do literally any minute. So a lot of water under the bridge. But I started having my own health challenges. I reflected back. In high school, I was like, why do I sometimes feel sad? Then when I went to medical school and you had all the pressures of med school, I struggled with depression. I thought it was normal to cry every day. We figured out our course load and it would be equivalent to taking 36 credit hours our first semester of med school.

It was nuts. yet there was this resiliency. So made it through, and what my passion was, I loved getting with people, hearing what was going on, and then putting together the pieces of what's happening in their life. But when my own depression started to surface, my second year of residency, shortly after I was married, I was like, this should be the happiest time of my life. I'm newlywed. I'm past my internship. I'm learning. And it was just this gap. And so there were problems. When I went to Fort Hood, Texas, I had my first miscarriage and then clinical depression and then I had my first child and I was clinically depressed and the military retired me medically.

I spent 27 plus years off and on various antidepressants, 11 to 13, and it wasn't until my late 40s, early 50s that I found functional medicine and how

Personal Health Struggles and Depression 6:12

it can help. I really love, thank you so much for your vulnerability. I think it's really beautiful, especially I feel like as a doctor and really where your journey started, which was you as a child understanding that children's voices matter, but all the while and the caring and you even just said it, I loved hearing people's stories, I loved engaging with them and that was beautiful, but I think whether you're a doctor or you're in a field that you are frequently the caretaker, I think as moms and parents, they feel that same thing, right?

Where it's like, no, there is this thing that I'm going through and that's almost like the line of my story, but my kids need me, my clients need me, my patients need me. And we almost like dim that voice that we need to be taken care of. So what was that kind of, I mean, and clearly you still sought people, you still got medications, you were still trying to take care of it. But what was that kind of breaking point that led you not only to functional medicine, but to think outside the box of the pill that people were giving you?

Yeah. Well, you know, I've been there and done that with a lot of the shame and the guilt. But I had four children, and I was 42 when I had my last one. And my cholesterol was elevated. And being the Western medicine trained person, I thought, well, with my family history of cardiovascular disease, I'm going to go on a statin. And I chose to formula feed my last child. And so moms, dads, all that guilt of breastfeeding, formula feeding, all of that. It's like. Don't go there. You can beat yourself up and drag yourself through the mud.

So it's extending grace to yourself. So the straw that broke the camel's back was I took a statin and within six weeks I was suicidal. I was literally seeing images of how I wanted to harm myself and I saw no way out and I missed a memo. I went and saw a lovely Christian psychiatrist who said to me, you know, Did you know that postpartum depression tends to worsen with each subsequent pregnancy? And I'm like, heck no, nobody ever taught me that. And then the next thing was, based on my family history, and this is where a lot of people come to us, they say, I have MTHFR.

And that is a genetic vulnerability that actually about 48% of the population has that. And so I had done 23 in me. And I looked it up, and sure enough, I had that. And at the 20-year mark of our marriage, I told my husband, because I'd seen the psychiatrist, he said, you know, you might have this MTHFR thing. I want you to try this stuff called methylfolate. And so I showed him these results. And the first thing, spontaneously, involuntarily, out of his mouth was, you mean there's hope. So we've been married 20 years and he had resigned to love me and care for me and our family, being faithful and loyal.

But he saw. It seemed hopeless because of this depression that just exacted this, it sucked the life out of you. And then there's also anxiety and panic and insomnia. So that began the journey. And when I went to my internist about six weeks into this taking a statin, and it's in the one to 2% of side effects, suicidal ideation. He said, really? And you know, there's so many times when we go to a medical provider and you're being vulnerable and you're sharing from your heart, but then they don't believe you or they question you.

And so at that point in my heart and mind, I'm like, I'm never coming back here again and I am pursuing another way. Do you think like you are a medical professional? who I can assume the vulnerability of being like, hey, I am capable of doing my job, but something else is going on. And to be vulnerable in front of another doctor, do you think sometimes those bad experiences, instead of what you did, which was ultimately fire that provider because they did not need to be a part of your life, do you think sometimes people just stop and don't pursue any further because, well, the doctor said I was crazy, so that's fine.

Yeah, I think it stops people all the time because you look at your medical provider and they don't know what they don't know So,

Statin Reaction and Turning to Functional Medicine 11:16

you know, there were so many things that I didn't know and I'll never know But that medical provider out of the goodness of their heart, you know They never met any harm to me, but they didn't ask open-ended questions and they didn't affirm me saying, you know, that must have took a lot of courage for you as an MD board certified to say that you're having these images of harming yourself. So my encouragement to parents and my encouragement to moms and dads is that if you go to a medical provider and you have seemingly unrelated symptoms, And your doctor wants to send you to multiple subspecialists, and they're not really sure how to put it all together.

That's where seeking medical care with a functional medicine provider will really, really help. I think that's where people kind of stop, right? They hear the one provider or worse, they've heard six or seven providers, you've gone to all the specialists, you've done all the things, and it feels so incredibly hopeless especially because even I think even in the unknown right you said that like I may not know all the things right so even in the unknown you can be empathetic and that is what was missing it was just like oh you're stressed and let's just put it to that and give us a pill and I think so many people could relate with that so I just wanted to dig in that again but okay so you had that experience you fired the doctor and then where does that come next Well, a sweet friend of mine shared with me about a medical provider in the Austin area, Dr.

Kendall Stewart. He runs Neurosensory Centers of America, and he was hosting a workshop in February of 2015. And I went and attended his workshop, and it was life-giving. And I asked him at a break, I said, Do people tell you that they become suicidal on statins? And he says, I hear that at least once a week. And so we have in our conventional medicine toolbox what we think will help. And you know, what you were saying about the mom with diarrhea or irritable bowel syndrome, she goes to the gastroenterologist and gets her linses and she's having trouble with insomnia and she gets her sleeping pill.

She has trouble with anxiety and she gets her anti anxiolytic and she has aches and pains so she's on ibuprofen and no one's trying to put all the picture together of what's happening in the body. And so we are or Dr. K, because you talk about this a lot and I think they're or we've just said that all of these pills are in and we use some of these things sometimes and we have to layer. But nobody's giving her the OK, well, that's a lot to detox. Like, how are we supporting your detox pathway while we figure everything out?

So it's not what I think I've loved about you. And people will hear this in all the episodes we recorded is that you're like, I'm not throwing out anything. timely, important, and then also supporting your body as you take all these things is so important. So no one's being like, hey, we put you on an antibiotic, like here's this probiotic, or hey, you've had to take something and now you need to detox this out of your body. And so I just think... where you kind of see the best of both worlds having been an MD and in the conventional world and really knowing that you bring a whole nother spectrum that I just would hate for people to miss when they're listening to your functional medicine approach.

Well, and you know, the thing about functional medicine is that most medical providers that pursue it have a reason. Either their own health has failed them or their own child's health or their spouse, and they're looking for something outside the box or beyond what conventional medicine offers. And I appreciate what you said, Lauren. You know, if a person has a bacterial infection, By golly, we're prescribing antibiotics here at our practice, but we support the gut, like you said, with the probiotic.

So to rewind, one of the things that my husband and I did was we did 23andMe on all four of our daughters and ourselves because my husband's mother died of metastatic breast cancer. And sometimes it'll skip a generation. And breast cancer or cancers of any kind is not just one thing. But we were looking for some markers on 23andMe. So I had that basis. And that's what this doctor in Austin was using to go through and create reports to partner with patients. He was a surgeon, a neurosurgeon, called a neurotologist, and he thought that if he could recover the function of a nerve instead of to sever it, then he would not be doing harm.

And so the approach was so encouraging to me. And then it's also the approach that allowed me to get off the conventional SSRIs. Now, there's health challenges that we all face. And when you've been sick a long time, weaning off of certain things, you have to do that under the care of a provider. Don't just stop something abruptly. But anyway, then Dr. Stewart opened his own lab. And then he sold that company. And the company is called Fagran Genomics. And I've been to the lab a couple of times in Austin.

And it is a lab where we utilize precision genetics to help figure out what is causing imbalances and dysfunction in people's body.

Precision Genetics and Root-Cause Care 17:28

I started the practice in 2015 looking at precision genetics because that's what helped me. But then I didn't want to stop my bread and butter, which is what I love is pediatrics. So I still see adults. But I'm trying to focus more on children. So it's a case-by-case basis. But I don't function as a primary care provider for adults because that's not my board certification. However, functional medicine providers and medical doctors know their limitations. And so I practice within the scope that I know is appropriate.

And on our staff, there's a family medicine doctor that if I have questions, we can put our heads together and work collaboratively. The journey is that out of my own brokenness, And the thing is, the US Military Code of Justice has a clause that if a medical doctor stops practicing medicine for a medical reason, they have to put that on paperwork for seven years. So for seven years, it followed me and I had to say that I had clinical depression with pregnancy and I could not take a sabbatical, I had to either work or stop working, and I had to stop working and I had to voluntarily surrender my clinical privileges.

So that was a very devastating time because I was like, am I any less of a person, any less of a doctor? No, because I didn't harm any patients. but it also was very traumatic. So I gained wonderful experience, but I'm here to say that functional medicine can help you get your life back. On my journey, I ballooned up to almost 300 pounds. And early on, I had obstructive sleep apnea, required CPAP, and was very hypertensive. And if I went ahead and I chose to have a permanent Roux-NY gastric bypass, Well, I still didn't know why food was my drug of choice.

So I started to gain my weight back. I got down to 135. I'm less than that now and feel good in my own skin. But it's it I started to balloon up again to like 190 and then I found Dr. Stewart and that helped me show that when you struggle with addiction there's two major processes or systems in your body that can be impaired and it's inflammation and methylation. It's a symphony. There's all kinds of other things, but those are the two areas that made the most profound changes in me and who I am and in my mental health and wellbeing.

And we all struggle. with the things that are thrown at us. But that's why I am so gung-ho on Get Your Wellness Blueprint Done. That is a panel that we ask people to partner with us. And they can be anywhere in the world to have a genetic review, as long as you're not establishing medical care with us, and to have your genetics interpreted. And it gives you this beautiful roadmap You can do this preventatively if you have a child and you want to know what to give them in order to prevent things.

Now, it doesn't tell you diseases per se, but it just tells you how to optimize your body. And then if you are struggling and you're really sick and you've been to all these subspecialists and you just want to know where to start, genetics are step number one. Well, because genetics were such an impart to you to be able to kind of unpack and really see what was going on in the systems that needed to be cooled down and the fire to be put out. And so this comes from, and this kind of leads to the second question, is when many patients, I think, Many patients will find comfort in knowing that their doctors have been there too, right?

That they have been there, they've done that, they've seen, and they've learned. How do you feel like your own experience helps you connect more deeply with the people that you serve, having been gaslit by doctors? Like nobody wants or chooses to be overweight and struggle with addiction, right? And so you really get to see a lot of that when you unpack genetics. So how do you think that's helped you serve people? It helps me to know how people feel. For example, someone who's struggling with morbid obesity, they cannot buy clothes off the rack in a store unless it's plus sizes.

Many times if you find something that fits the waist, they're way too long. You want to know what it's like to walk down a hallway without your thighs rubbing together. You want to know what it's like to walk up a few stairs and not be so winded. You want to know what it's like to be able to lean over and tie your shoes and to be able to see your feet. and you feel dumb. People think you're dumb when you're obese. We judge people by the outside, but God looks at the heart. So how dare we judge people by the outside?

So we're seeing more culturally where they'll have plus-size models, which I think is much more realistic. You know, let's face it, we have our own prejudices. We judge people by the outside and we need to look on the inside and we cannot take our mindset, which many times we may have what we call a scarcity mindset and, you know, out of our own where we've been, but Empathizing and knowing how people feel goes a long way because I know that if we address inflammation first, that can help calm the mind.

And then, you know, looking at all the other factors, your biochemistry, looking at your vitamin D, your zinc, your copper, your micronutrients, where you live, what struggles that you have. So I feel like because people didn't do that with you, right? They found a little silos for you to fit into your need for this.

Inflammation, Methylation, and Weight Loss 24:58

You can kind of, I can see even in your conversation right now, see how this has been, well, we can't exclude blank happening over here. And we do have to look at all the different pieces, which I really feel like is the functional medicine approach. Like you were saying earlier, which is seeing this symptom not as this isolated thing Or like what I think you were also like leaning into is like this symptom is not my identity, right? This is not who I am, which I think is also a part of that kind of conversation you get to have with people, which is this isn't who you are.

This is something you're struggling with. And so I'm going to treat you like an intelligent human being. who's going to be able to make their own decisions while I can give you the best medical advice that I can. And I really appreciate the way you dive into that through just hearing your life story of how it wasn't given to you and how that wasn't. But then you can talk about this brilliant like Dr. Stewart and who someone came in and said, hey, I'm going to look at that a little differently. You said something that I really want to address though.

You said that I think it would be a little helpful like precision genetics to kind of describe what the difference is where we're not going to say you will have sickle cell anemia or you will have this type of thing. Can you describe a little bit about what it is and how it's different and what we're going to look into? It unpacks various systems of your body and shows you what your vulnerabilities are. Because just because you have a certain gene doesn't mean that certain things are going to happen.

However, these are what we call non-epigenetically modifiable genes, meaning there's only so much of a substance that your body can make. And when we look at these enzymatic pathways, we can predict that, hey, if you don't start doing this, you're going to be at risk for developing type 2 diabetes. Or based on all these inflammatory markers, there's a high chance of autoimmunity developing unless you layer in non-inflammatory food plan, these lifestyle modifications, and certain targeted supplements for what you have your vulnerabilities in.

And so, for example, if someone brings a sibling of a patient, a child of theirs that has autism, but the sibling's born, and the parents noticed that, hey, around 15 to 18 months of age, the sibling with autism regressed, and then that was very frightening to have this brand new baby and they're like can we do precision genetics on our new baby that so far is doing fine and can you partner with us to help us make a path forward giving our body what they need giving our baby's body what it needs, or some through mama, some with or on or in the baby, and to help these things have a much less chance of developing this.

There's broad categories like you because you mentioned that the two pathways that were really helpful for you and not that there weren't many because there's so many pathways, but could you break down maybe your story with like either the inflammation pathway or the methylation pathway and what you said why it was so informational and important to you. You know, one thing I failed to state was that when I was a child in third grade, I developed migratory joint pain and I was given the diagnosis of juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, but I never fit all the criteria.

And it turned out that I had a medical condition that we discovered around 2017 called chronic inflammatory response syndrome. And I was living in water damaged military homes. So when we talk about inflammation, just imagine hot, red, swollen, and painful like a big yucky bug bite. There's different systems in the body the endocannabinoid system, the toll-like receptor system, the JAK-STAT system, CB2 receptors. And on our precision genetic panel, we can identify what you don't have available to you.

And we can give you things that you can put in or on your body to lower the inflammation. And then, for example, you look at your family history and you see polycystic ovary syndrome and lots of cancers. Well, cancers are an inability to clean out your cells and then impaired detoxification. And PCOS is impaired autophagy. And you could develop type 2 diabetes. So we want to prevent that. in you. So autophagy, we address with several different things, but your autophagy could be normal. And then for detoxification, think liver, kidneys, skin, bowel movement.

How does your liver function? What's going on with your white cells? does your skin break out? Do you chronically have respiratory tract infections and ear infections? And as a kid, my gosh, I had double ear infections and pneumonia. But I would smile at the doctor and they're like, she's sicker than dog snot, but you would never know because I was smiley. But there's this process called methylation. There's seven different enzymes in that pathway. They're at different places in the body. It's not just MTHFR, but it's folate receptors on various organs of the body and also in different parts of the cell.

So to be able to absorb enough vitamin B9 in the right amount, to have good focus and concentration and organizational skills and be able to get things done to make dopamine. I didn't have that. I had some, but I was fulfilling my dopamine reward system with the food that I ate. I stuffed it. And then when I started giving myself the proper type of methylation, orally and topically, I started to lose weight when I was 190 pounds,

SIRS, Mold Exposure, and Family Illness 31:58

and my desire for certain things went away. So when you love your milk chocolate like me, it was Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and Twix bars, the desire went away. And when I started to change my food plan, The weight started to come off even after the gastric bypass. You've all met people who've had a gastric sleeve or a gastric bypass and they've ballooned up. That's because the root cause of inflammation and methylation for morbid obesity is not being addressed. And the answer is not a GLP-1 agonist.

I mean, it's like you have to address what the dysfunction is. So that really, really helped me. And because it changed who I was in March of 2015, I went to my first Applying Functional Medicine to Clinical Practice. It's like the foundation course for the Institute for Functional Medicine. And I remember talking to my husband, I was 50, and I said, this is what I want to be when I grow up. And he had never heard me say, because I hadn't been a risk taker, but it's like it was in me because I was always this rebel.

And God's faithfulness, and I think out of my own brokenness, it has allowed me to be able to partner with people. So I love that. Thank you for kind of breaking down this beautiful thing. So all of this kind of happened in, you said 2015, where you got the precision genetics. You started to understand and kind of really start to get the beauty of this is the inflammation down, right? Not only the inflammation in the physical body, what people could probably see, but the inflammation in your brain.

So the reason why I want to transition into this is because you touched on SIRS. And I want to unpack that a little bit more because you said y'all find out that about 2017 is when y'all started to understand, okay, there's probably more and then you can start piecing together your childhood like military housing probably was not the cleanest environment or and you didn't really have a choice, right? So you just are being put wherever so you couldn't see that. So the kind of this transition that I'd like to make, especially because we serve so many people with SERS.

And if you are on a SERS journey right now, which could also be called mold illness, biotoxin illness, people call it many names, we call it SERS because it's what it is, Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome. And so let's talk a little bit about, because I think when people are on that journey, it feels incredibly hopeless. And you've talked this beautiful arc of hope that precision genetics gave you. And also I feel like what a beautiful God order of things, right? So you got the inflammation down in your brain through the precision genetics and then you really had to unpack this very new big diagnosis of SIRS.

Can you talk about that journey? Yeah, you know, I started my functional medicine practice still on an antidepressant. And I kept working with a functionally minded psychiatrist in the Houston area who I just love. And we refer people to that practice all the time. I just couldn't figure out why I couldn't wean off, and neither could this other provider. And so chronic inflammatory response is a syndrome, meaning that there's not just one ICD-10 code, but when you are exposed to the interior of a water-damaged building or if you have gotten SIRS from Borrelia, which is Lyme disease, that's called post-Lyme syndrome, Then what happens is your brain has difficulty telling the body that you're not on fire, okay?

So you have all these seemingly unrelated symptoms like fatigue, brain fog, pain. migraine headaches, abdominal pain, depression, anxiety, panic attacks, peeing all night long, parched. So it's just all kind of unrelated. But when I found out that I had that, I tested my husband all for my children. We haven't even talked about my kids and how this you know, pulls us into my story. That was what allowed me to wean off of antidepressants, still working on some of the sleep because when some of the hormones in your brain have been low for a long period of time, it takes time for those to go up.

And so As far as sleep goes, get early morning sunlight, early morning sunlight, and that will help your sleep at night. Okay. So I think the other thing Lauren, and maybe you were going to ask this, is that three out of my four children developed autoimmunity. And as I mentioned, my last child developed juvenile idiopathic arthritis. And I blame myself because I didn't breastfeed her. But lo and behold, it was so much more because we were living in a water damaged building, a home when she was born.

All four of my children, who are now adults, all got what we call vector-borne illness, either Lyme disease, Bartonella, and or Babesia, with co-infections, mycoplasma, and that was quite the journey, and two out of the four with PANS-Pandas. So as a pediatrician, as a mom, as a functional medicine provider, My desire is for all these kids and even young men and women who've been given the diagnosis of autism, brain inflammation, they may not fit the strict criteria of Pan's Pandas, is that utilizing the foundation of lifestyle with the precision genetics, you've got to remove inflammatory foods from your food plan.

I mean, that's part of our lifestyle. We call it, you know, the foundation. But leaning into what your genetics show that you need and at the right amount, the right place, the right time, Well, what was what impacted you? This is as your story that you know that to be true because you've lived it. And I think that's what's so hard about inflammatory response syndrome or mental health conditions that are unexplained or weight gain or weight, a lack of being able to lose weight. So I mean, you talk to people all the time that kind of feel that.

that like I am eating healthy. I have removed. I haven't eaten dessert in like a month. Why is my weight not going down? Like this doesn't make sense. And you're the beautiful like piece that comes in that says it doesn't make sense if you don't know this side of things, which is where I think you operate with kindness and grace with providers that just don't know. And so when you're talking to someone who is either a mother struggling with maybe they don't physically have something but their children does.

And so they do think there's a lot of shame that comes from, they came from me, so it's probably my fault. Where do you think you could just give a glimmer of hope to a parent who is blaming themselves? Yeah, you know, therapy is good for everyone. So I participated in a lot of therapy and it was unpacking my emotions, how I felt. Shame says you are bad. Guilt is what you did was bad. And I had to remove the dialogue that I am bad and realize that with my relationship with Christ that every man and woman is a new creation in Christ, the old is gone and the new has come.

That is what I hang my hat on. And that is, you know, we pray for our patients because that is the only way I ask for wisdom to impart love and grace, but also to tell the truth. You know, as moms, we cannot go there and we need to reframe what we say and not blame ourselves. Because you start thinking, oh, I did this when I was pregnant. I did this before I was pregnant. And I lived here and I lived that. You can't do that. You have to stop. So it's telling yourself the truth, not made up things.

So that's number one. I love that. And then next up I really want to break down because like as we close just kind of that arc of hope that you have for anyone, someone who is being told that maybe their symptoms are in their head or it's just stress or what is that?

Hope, Advocacy, and Closing Remarks 41:18

What is the arc of hope that you had to process and go through within your story that would give them a glimmer of hope? I think advocating for yourself or your child, and if you ask an open-ended question of a medical provider, are you aware of any other thing that could be causing this? Could unknown water damage in my home, like you may not see? you may not see water damage at all, you may not smell musty smells, but if that's the case, then you really need to try to find a functional medicine practice that can help you with that.

Once you kind of hit a point where you've tried all the things, which is honestly what a lot of people come to us, right? They've tried everything, they've asked the questions, and the conventional approach just doesn't have the answer. to the questions. It's not that they're not great providers out there. It's just they themselves literally do not know some of the things that these functional medicine providers have trained to know. Right. So it's you don't know what you don't know. Right. And you only function with what your toolbox is.

So I would say that when you partner with us here at Hope for Healing, I would just, if you choose to, or any functional medicine practice, We are for you. We believe you or you wouldn't be on our doorstep. And because most functional medicine practitioners have been gaslit themselves medically and by their family. Their families don't understand what's wrong with you or why are you the only person in this household that's sick or there may be only one person that's well in a whole household. So you need to surround yourself with people that are supportive.

I love that. And then lastly, the SIRS journey is a very long journey that, again, we do have hope for remission, which is super exciting. And we are going to have a whole entire podcast series about SIRS and really getting to the root and discussing all of that. But for those who are listening to your story and who just feel the weight of the SIRS journey, what is just a glimmer of hope that you could give them as we close out this podcast. That chronic inflammatory response syndrome implies chronic, but you can move it into remission and you can have a very vibrant, healthy life.

And so don't give up hope. And if your kids are sick, they get well uber quick. So getting out of a moldy environment is step number one, but you can start to get well living in a moldy environment. So it's partnering with someone who believes you and can evaluate you. And if you're interested, we have a discovery call that you can have with a medical provider. We always start everything with a coach because we think everyone needs someone to go along with them for behavioral modification. But if you want to have a 15-minute discovery call to just meet a provider, find out based on, you know, that's not establishing a physician-patient relationship, but it's basically meeting the person, seeing if you gel with them if they're a good fit for you and what their approach would be based on some questionnaires.

I would just say hang in there. Anything and everything is possible. Honestly, I think I would not be here on this earth if I hadn't chosen conventional but then moved into functional because the answers are looking the 40,000 foot view and that's where functional medicine is so beautiful. I love that. Well, thank you, Dr. K, for sharing your story, seeing how it has very clearly interwoven in what you do at Hope for Healing, not only for your patients, but the way that you lead Hope for Healing and the way you ask every part of Hope for Healing to kind of integrate in to this beautiful flow.

So thank you so much, Dr. K. I appreciate you. Thank you, Lauren. Thank you for tuning into 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, www.doctortalks.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.