There is no alternative. God put laws into the earth. We all have to live by them. Every mechanic has to go by the same law of internal combustion engines.

I just got off an airplane from Washington state, that pilot, they all have to follow the same law of aerodynamics. It's just the way it is. And Roby said, if you will just learn God's law and his rules, his design of this machine, quote unquote, this body, this physiology, Go back to your physiology books, not just the stomach acid, that's huge, but there's more.

Learn the truth. Then he said, be a good doctor, be a detective and dig. It's designed intelligently. This is Doctor Talks, real talk from real doctors on the issues that matter to you most.

Hi, everyone. Welcome back to the Integrative Health Podcast with Dr. Jen. Today we have a really special guest. I met him at the Seeking Whole Health Conference this year where he was the main speaker.

Dr. Ben Edwards is going to talk to us today. Dr. Ben Edwards was born in Belton, Texas. He grew up watching both of his grandads practice old school country doctoring, which is the way it should be, right?

They were general practitioners who might be found doing anything like delivering a baby to amputating a leg, sitting for an entire hour counseling a crying patient.

Early on, Dr. Edwards knew that he wanted to be that kind of doctor, one who took care of the entire family from cradle to grave. He wanted to work with the whole body and the whole family.

He received his undergraduate degree from Baylor University and later graduated from UT Houston Medical School. His wife Jamie and him moved to Waco to complete his training at Waco Family Practice Residency Program.

He was the chief resident there. After graduation, the Lord directed him to West Texas and Garza Health country health clinic in post Texas. Dr. Edwards then had a divine appointment that would change the course of his life through witnessing an incurable disease and his nurse practitioner actually was fully reversed.

He was introduced to an area of medicine he had never been taught. And it was time for him to move on to what the lure designed him to be, a physician who treats the whole patient, mind, body, and spirit.

Welcome, Dr. Edwards. So excited to have you. Hey, Dr. Jin, thank you so much. It's an honor to be here. Such a beautiful story about your journey going into medicine.

Can you tell us a little bit more about what you saw growing up and how that molded what you wanted to do as a physician? Yeah. So like most kids growing up in a small town, you kind of know everybody.

And if your family's been there for a few generations, everybody knows your family and everybody knows everybody. But my granddad's were the two main doctors in town.

And so just watching these guys, they were pillars in the community, not just the physicians, but they were members of the school board and deacons at church and just all the different community organizations and just amazing men.

And seeing the community lean on them and look to them and the service they provided to the community, really helping people. So obviously just watching that, their whole life, not just their doctoring, impacted me a lot.

We all have our different paths to go down and I actually tried to go down some other paths as far as a career. I really didn't think I was smart enough to get into med school.

And then even if I was, I didn't know if I wanted to be in school that long and have that much debt and just, you know, all the things you go through in your mind.

So I changed my major actually five times in college. But nothing really satisfied that deep inner desire to just help, you know, help people. Which everybody's got a piece of that in them, I think, but you can do that in lots of different fields.

But I tried to think about, you know, being an attorney and helping people that way or being a businessman or a coach or a preacher. I mean, lots of different paths you can help people, but the doctrine thing just wouldn't go away.

So, you know, watching those guys, I think is probably the number one thing. My two granddads was the number one thing that really drew me into medicine, seeing how they really had a holistic approach.

Even back then, they weren't calling it holistic. But I remember my mom's dad telling me, if you're going to go to a small town and basically do what I do, be sure to save all your psychology books from medical school and residency, because what these folks mostly need is counseling.

They need someone to listen. And so that stuck with me too. So probably that human touch and the true compassion and caring, which now we know in a more holistic approach, you can do that.

Yeah, it is really interesting. I will say since branching off into integrative medicine, I do a lot of motivational interviewing or more like coaching with patients because a lot of these illnesses we see They come from that spirit.

They come from emotional stress or problems and then it affects their body. So I definitely agree with that. And you can't get that deep if you're only spending five to 10 minutes with a patient.

And that is a big problem with why medicine doesn't work anymore, I think. Yeah, absolutely. And of course, probably like yourself. I mean, I had no idea when I went through medical school, I had the mindset of medical school in the United States is the best of the best.

And they're going to teach me all there is to know. And it's a lot. I mean, we don't remember probably 80% of what I learned about you. You cram, you stay up all night, you study for the tests, your boards, all the things.

Then in the hospital, I mean, your own call, it's just, it's a lot of work. It's a lot of stuff you're learning. And the assumption I had was I learned it all.

All the things that there are to know to go out to that small town in West Texas and help people. I just learned it because we're the best. And it turns out that one true.

But I didn't know that. Doctors don't know that. Patients don't know that. Some are more and more waking up to that fact. Unfortunately, it's taken many decades of getting worse and worse and worse health outcomes.

And now it's just undeniable. I mean, we are dead last place in all these outcomes. So it's almost insane to keep doing the same thing over and over and over.

I'm going to keep giving a statin to lower your cholesterol expecting we're going to have a massive drop in cardiovascular disease deaths and heart attacks.

Well, we've been doing these statins since I was in residency 20 plus years ago. And we haven't seen the dramatic drop. So, but you know, we just get the blinders on.

We have a lot of assumptions and then we get busy. As you know, five to seven minute visits and go, go, go. And you got to meet all the criteria for the paperwork to get paid by the insurance or Medicaid, Medicare and HMOs and all the things.

And the patient is the one that's suffering and doctors are suffering too. Having to work so hard and just the pressure is on. Pressure from the insurance, pressure from peers, pressure from medical boards and societies and all the things.

And the patients too. I mean, these are sick, sick patients. These doctors, I mean, I feel for them. We were one of them, but now we've come out of that.

We have more time to spend, like you said, actually talking to patients. When you can spend an hour. It makes all the difference. Even if all you did was listen, you'll get better outcomes just from having an hour to listen to patients.

Even if you end up prescribing a pharmaceutical and it just treats a symptom, you'll still have better outcomes because that patient felt cared for, loved, and heard.

The number one chief complaint we have coming into our practice today is I don't trust my doctor. Oh, yeah. The problem. Yeah. And that's gotten a lot worse.

And a couple of points that you said we have to learn outside of medical school. We know so much in medical school is so vigorous. I feel like we come out of it and we're just like we're exhausted mentally.

Then we have to go and pay off debt. And then we're governed by insurance companies. So then if we're working nine to five, five days a week, you're burnt out.

You don't have time for that curiosity to go home and read and study more and talk to colleagues or be like, wait, I wonder why the statin I'm prescribing or whatever drug isn't working.

It's really not changing outcomes, but it's part of the protocol. Maybe we should look outside the box, right? So you have to have that curiosity and you have to have that pursuit.

and discipline, honestly, to go and study more and do better for your patients to help them, which is why we all went into medicine. So when did you realize that you had to search for educating yourself and searching for that education outside of conventional methods?

Yeah. So after my training went out to West Texas in 19, excuse me, seven years of practicing conventional medicine, I was only doctor in the county, busy, busy, busy doing house calls in the county jail and the nursing home and fry nut football game team doctor and all the things like you just stated.

I was so busy. and under the assumption that I learned it all. So these outcome things, I was too busy to go really look at outcomes. I didn't know we were dead last place.

So what did it for me was my nurse practitioner that I had hired to help me manage all these patients, this volume. I mean, as the only doctor in the county, you're overwhelmed.

So this nurse practitioner had been working for me for a couple of years and he would never eat anything the drug reps brought. that had gluten wheat because he had celiac disease so he wouldn't eat the breakfast burritos or the cookies or whatever and one day he went to a bed and breakfast with his wife for a getaway weekend and he told the bed and breakfast lady that he needed a gluten-free pancake and she said i'll make that for you but you should talk to this doctor here his office is right here in the bed and breakfast he could cure you of that And of course we know you don't cure celiac and really don't cure any disease.

We get taught to manage disease, manage hypertension, manage diabetes, manage autoimmune disease, manage everything. But anyways, my nurse politely said, no thanks, just give me my gluten-free pancake and I'll be about my business.

But the lady kept bugging him, pestering him, and the doctor was right there in the bed and breakfast. So more to be polite than anything, my nurse practitioner went and talked to this guy.

He was an MD, PhD, super smart. And in the four hour conversation that ensued, he convinced Munder's practitioner there were things he could do that could steward his GI tract.

And he taught him that normal stomach acid levels of pH, normal range of pH is in the one to two range. Battery acid is 1.5. And when he went and looked in the physiology book from school and it was true, normal gastric pH after you're putting food in your mouth, those stomach acid pumps should turn on high volume and get your pH to a one to dissolve and chop up all that protein, blooms of protein.

Anyway, so I mean, a little thing like that. Hey, if you get your pH right and if you get your microbiome right and you show them studies, because we got to have the studies, our intellect, 94 different strains of probiotic bacteria in your gut that we know will break down gluten.

So if the gut lining is impermeable, if there's no leaky gut, if those tight junctions are tight and you've got good stomach acid chopping stuff up and you've got bacteria breaking stuff down, then amino acids is all that should pass through that gut lining appropriately escorted across the cell wall.

And, you know, it was stuff like this that just made sense. It's the number one comment I get when I go give lectures. Oh, that makes sense. Well, enough of that conversation made sense to my nurse practitioner that he decided to implement some of these things because it was all natural, one going to hurt him, get your stomach acid better and take some probiotics basically.

Long story short, and it is a long story, so I'll shorten it, but my nurse crack implemented some of these things. He got better. Three to four months down the road and my nurse Pratt came in at the end of that three or four months and he told me, Dr.

Ben, I think I've healed my gut from celiac. And I laughed at him. What is it? April fools today. What's the joke about? And now, granted, I had noticed because he didn't tell me any of this was going on until he got well.

But I had noticed, man, what's going on with Shane? Like his complexion is better, his color is better, his mood is better. He's trimming up some of this little bit of 10 pounds of extra fat around the belly.

He had told me his cycling times because he was a cycler where he's hitting his personal best lately. All these like improvements in his overall just health and physique and fitness and all this stuff.

I'd noticed that. And then he dropped this bomb, which of course, I just said, whatever, you know, get back to work. No way. That's impossible. Who are you talking to?

Where do you even, what do you mean? I mean, this one nurse prac wasn't a holistic anything. He was like, straight and narrow, allopathic, allopathic, allopathic.

But it was his testimony, anecdotal, which we're told to ignore anecdotal. But I couldn't ignore it, partly because he wouldn't let me ignore it. I didn't believe it.

So he went and got a breakfast burrito that was in the nurse's station and brought it out and started eating it. And he ate a hamburger at lunch and cookies from a drug rep that afternoon and he wasn't sick.

Normally he would be sick, call in sick the next day and he wasn't. And really that was the moment where I had this piece of me that thought, you know, I can deny this.

So then I started to try to justify, well, maybe it's a delayed reaction. He'll get sick in a few days or it's a one-off miracle healing or who knows?

He was misdiagnosed to begin with. I even called his dad as a doctor to see how was he diagnosed. But at the end of the day, after going through all that, I decided, no, he actually is better.

And what he told me he did kind of made sense. Okay, yeah. If you get your stomach acid better and your probiotics better and your gut lining sealed up, you know, epigenetics, can you turn these genes on and off?

That was just becoming a thought of above the genes, not just everything driven by genes. Because we know there are genetic predispositions to different autoimmune, including Celiac.

But I just started going through it, but ultimately just thought, man, what am I going to do with my next Celiac patient? Because I know I'm going to have another one come in and am I going to hide Shane's testimony and just say, hey, eat gluten free the rest of your life?

That's what I was taught in medical school. Or was I going to give them both options? Here's a med school answer, conventional standard of care, eat gluten free the rest of your life.

Here's another potential alternative that you could explore. I don't know anything about it, but you could go talk to Shane if you want. It could have just been a one-off kind of thing.

Who knows? But, and I just made that decision. That's what I was going to do. I was going to offer both. And then of course that led me to why I got to know what Shane's going to be saying in that room.

Cause he's my nurse practitioner under my license. I'm responsible for him. So I had to call that doctor up and quiz him on who are you? What kind of hocus pocus quackery, you know, voodoo, crystals, whatever.

And that phone call was the beginning of a lot more phone calls to Roby Mitchell in Amarillo, Texas, who's since passed away. But Roby opened my eyes in a lot of ways.

And I can go into some of that if you want, but bottom of the line, that's what started it. Opened my eyes was Munder's practitioner's testimony of his Healy.

And then Roby Mitchell bringing the intellectual evidence. the published studies, because then I start going to integrated functional conferences. Then your mind is really blown.

You've got super smart doctors up on that lecture stage going through slides and evidence-based medicine, all these journal articles that I never saw before.

Yeah. Well, they're hidden. They're hidden in medical school. We're groomed to think of, think of our boards. Here is a disease, match the drug. But, but it's funny because they're like, oh, we only talk about drugs and they're generic because we don't want the drug companies to have a say on our medical education.

No, like there's still drugs and we know, we knew the name brand too. You know, it was ingrained in our brain. So yeah, I mean, when I started opening up to the world of integrative medicine, you just, you can't go back.

And I don't know if it's like the root like is pride that as doctors, we don't want to look Like we don't want to think our body, our patient's body can heal, that it can actually heal and then maybe they won't need us, right?

I mean, I joke about this. Our pastor had a great sermon on the new heavens and we won't have jobs. Have you ever thought like, what are we going to do in the new heaven?

We won't need doctors. We're not gonna have jobs. But anyway, it's very sad, like they just don't have eyes to see sometimes these doctors that, and it took you, it took this like miracle, right?

It took this healing for you to finally open your eyes and you were kind of hesitant. So I'm curious that conversation you had with that doctor, like what was it that he said that really started, like put you on the trajectory of where you're at now?

Yeah. Well, it was multiple conversations over a whole entire year because of this pride, hard-hearted, stubborn, argumentative, and we're trained to just be right.

From first grade on, we got to make all eights. We got to be the best. We got to be number one in all our extracurricular number one so we can get a good resume to get into a good college, to a good med school.

I mean, we're just trained up to be right, right, right, right, right. So, it took a year back and forth. One of the first things was the stomach acid.

He said, get Dr. Jonathan Wright's book. It's an old book, but it's for the lay person, for the general public. It's an easy read, but he explains clearly on the stomach acid.

Dr. Mitchell said, how many patients have you told that have acid reflux? that they're making too much stomach acid. Well, I told a lot of patients that.

And so he would just say, go read that book. And you read that book and boom, a light bulb goes off that this valve between the esophagus and your stomach, there's a pressure valve.

And if it's squeezed shut, everything stays below it. No acid reflux. But if it doesn't squeeze shut, it opens and boom, here comes your stomach contents and it burns your esophagus.

Well, the trigger for that to squeeze shut is a pH of one to two. You have to have enough stomach acid to squeeze that shut. So it would be a little thing.

Well, these are big things. But so he'd point me to this book, this paper, this conference. But you get into that cognitive dissonance back and forth in your mind.

You just can't believe it. How could this one guy be right? And all these doctors that train me and all these doctors, all my peers be wrong. There's no way.

And so I just couldn't believe it. And I'd call them back and forth and back and forth. And, you know, one of the biggest conversations, it's when I, because I was busy seeing 40 patients a day, doing the house calls after hours all the weekend, extra work, four kids were raising.

Now we have six, but the time for busy. And I called Roby. I said, Roby, I mean, I appreciate you. These books that you're sending me and conferences to watch and YouTube things and all this.

But can you just send me one book that kind of summarizes all this alternative medicine? And he yelled at me through the phone and he said, alternative?

What do you mean alternative? And I said, well, you know, all this kind of different holistic stuff. And he said, okay, Mr. Big Shot, because I didn't mention, not to brag, but to set the stage a little more in that clinic in Garza County, seven years doing conventional medicine.

We, because it takes a team, really good nurse, office manager, good staff, all that. You got to have a team, but we cranked it out. And that clinic had lost money for 10 years prior.

And they challenged me when I came and said, the taxpayers are tired of funding this clinic with tax dollars because it's running deficit every month.

You got to get us out of debt. Well, we did. We cranked the volume and got them out of debt. And to the tune of the tax money is coming in and we're not using it because we're self-sufficient.

We're making money. So the tax money builds up. They had a million dollars in their bank account. And then they built a brand new, brand new state of the art clinic, million dollar clinic, paid the bank note off in one year.

And then the Washington Post newspaper came and toured the clinic and followed me for a week, put us on the front page and said, basically, this is how you do conventional medicine successfully in an underserved area with Medicaid and Medicare as your payer.

So that set in the stage of we were cranking through it. Well, Roby took that, he knew how busy and successful we were. And he said, okay, hotshot, that brand new clinic you built, the county built for you.

You're so busy, you're probably about to outgrow it. And when you need to build an addition to that clinic, are you going to call the engineer to design that or the alternative engineer to design that?

Every time you get on an airplane to fly to a medical conference or vacation, you're going to call the aviation guys or the alternative aviation guys.

Next time your car is making a weird noise, you're going to call the mechanic or the alternative mechanic. And when he said all those things, it just resonates.

I'm probably with your listeners. Yeah, that's the truth. That just makes sense. There is no alternative. God put laws into the earth. We all have to live by them.

Every mechanic has to go by the same law of internal combustion engines. I just got off an airplane from Washington state. That pilot, they all have to follow the same law of aerodynamics.

It's just the way it is. And Roby said, if you will just learn God's law and his rules, his design of this machine, quote unquote, this body, this physiology, Go back to your physiology books, not just the stomach acid.

That's huge, but there's more. Learn the truth. Then he said, be a good doctor, be a detective and dig. It's designed intelligently and that's, I think, the root of it.

We're trained in a Darwinian You know, we evolved out and came from nothing, evolved from nothing into pond scum and the monkeys into us. And we're just not highly evolved enough.

And therefore this body breaks down, has disease. That's the mindset and the training as opposed to know it's perfectly designed from God. And so any breakdown is not from lack of good design.

It's like a stewardship of that design. Our carburetors, our mitochondria aren't designed to burn high-fructose corn syrup every day for fuel. It can, but it will break down and cause more inflammation in that cell, and inflammation in the cell leads to what we call a disease, and we treat a pharmaceutical-based approach to that.

But anyways, Roby kept just hammering me on design, design, design, lack of knowledge. My people are destroyed from lack of knowledge. Learn. dig deeper, get to root causes.

And then a big moment was when he said type two diabetes is totally reversible almost always. This was in 2011, so now in 2025, so probably a lot of people know diabetes is reversible, even though the American Diabetes Association website says it's a chronic progressive disease, but there's too many testimonies now of people saying I reversed my type two diabetes.

But he told me this in 2011 and I thought, no way. You are absolutely off your rocker. There's no way. If that's true, my endocrinology professor at UT Houston and in Waco and in Lubbock would have told me that.

Everybody, it'd be front paper, front line, headline. There's no way. That is absolutely no way that's true. He said, oh yeah, just go YouTube. Tonight, go YouTube this guy.

Forget the guy's name. I went home, watched this guy on YouTube. He was an African American engineer, lay person, not a doctor. He had type 2 diabetes.

He showed his A1C lab results. He changed his diet and exercise regimen, and then he showed his A1C again, and he was non-diabetic off his meds. It blew my mind.

I woke my wife up in the middle of the night because I'm watching this all night, 3 a.m. Babe, look, type 2 diabetes. This guy reversed it. It's amazing.

This is a miracle. And the reason that resonated so much with me because half of Garza County was diabetic or pre-diabetic. The other half were going to be if I gave them enough time.

I diagnosed a seven-year-old with type 2 diabetes in Garza County. And if you're diabetic, you increase your risk of Alzheimer's and cancer and stroke and heart attack and everything.

So if you can just get that one thing done, you just help that patient more than you can imagine. So that was huge. Another huge moment in that year of going back and forth and arguing and calling Roby and just couldn't believe it.

That was huge. But the final thing was he said, I'm tired of arguing with you. Just send me your 10 sickest patients and I'll just show you and it'll be undeniable for you.

You're so strong intellectually, you just can't let yourself believe that there's another way for medical school what you learned in school. So I'm going to show you with your 10 sickest that you've already referred them to the specialist.

They've been up here to Texas Tech Medical Center. They've been to UT Southwestern in Dallas, one of the best in the state and the country. They've been to Mayo, wherever you've referred them to, but they're still sick and they keep coming back and nobody has an answer and they've tried every drug regimen.

Send those to me. So the worst lupus patient, the worst chronic urticaria, this hive skin rash thing, this lady was clawing herself in her sleep till she was bleeding.

A chronic prostatitis that wouldn't heal. Been a multiple urologist, multiple antibiotics, over two years. Wouldn't heal. Didn't know what to do. The worst diabetic, he refused insulin.

His sugar is in the 300s. He's 74 years old. He's waiting to die. Because he's not going to give himself a shot of insulin. He refused. Then he said, I'll just sit in my recliner and die.

I can't do anything anyways. I'm short of breath. I have no energy. I'm losing my eyesight. My neuropathy is so bad. It's not worth living. But I'm not doing insulin.

So it was these super, super sick people and they all, they went to Solrobi and over a number of months, they all came back to my clinic well. Wow. I'm talking off their medication, no more diabetes from three diabetes meds with A1C in the 11 to 12 range to A1C in the fives off his meds, 74 years old.

And he had a tear in his eye and said, thank you, Dr. Ben, because I have my life back. I'm out in the garden, picking the garden with my grandkids. So those 10 super, super sick people that had been everywhere, tried everything, couldn't get better, and they got better.

At that point of my, okay, I'm all in. I mean, these people, I know these people. I've been here seven years. I'm the only doctor in the county. These are my patients.

I'm the one that prescribed all these meds. I'm the one that referred them. I know, I go to church with them. They go to school with my kids, all the things.

They're not lying is what I'm saying. This is real. And although the intellectual part of me and that part that goes, wait a minute, what will your peers think?

What will the medical board think? What about your license? What about your provision? What about your paycheck? You're in the top 95th percentile of all clinics in America.

on the money, which we were, more revenue, best overhead ratio, all that is going to. It's a huge thing to overcome. And I'm not bragging that I overcame it because actually I didn't.

I tried to scheme and compromise. OK, God, here's my plan. And I went to the board and I said, how about I said, here's what I'm learning. I'm learning disease can go into remission.

It can be reversed. acid reflux can go away, diabetes can go away, high blood pressure can go away, autoimmune can go away. And I said, but it takes an hour, sometimes more than an hour to talk to these patients.

So I'm going to need more time instead of seven minute visits, 40 patients a day making all the money for the clinic. If someone asks me, if the word gets out, hey, I reversed my diabetes.

Go talk to Dr. Ben. He can help you reverse. If someone comes and says, help me reverse, I'm going to say, I will. I'll try to help teach you because all I can do is teach.

You have to go actually do this thing. But I'm going to need an hour to teach you. So go to the checkout desk because today's only a seven minute visit.

Go check out at the front desk and tell the lady at the front, little Miss Sandy, that Dr. Ben said to give me a follow up appointment for one hour. So I told Lord, if enough people start asking for this, you can see the writing's on the wall.

The money's going to go away. I can't, if it's seven hour, one hour times seven times eight, whatever, we're not going to make the money. So get another doctor in here to run them through like cattle and I'll do my physical thing.

So we were going to tag team, have another doctor kind of do regular run them, you know, and I'll do my thing. Anyways, had this plan and at the end of the day, the hospital board was advised by some advisors that there's no way the clinic could support two doctor salaries.

Everyone loves Dr. Ben, going to wait for him, not going to use the new guy. So Ben's out and new guy's in. I got fired Friday afternoon, be out by Monday.

So I was fired. Yeah, I was pushed out. I probably wouldn't have left on my own because of a spirit of man pleasing and an orphan spirit provision and protection, you know, is up to me instead of my father in heaven.

So it was a huge spiritual awakening and it still is. I'm on my journey of spiritual maturity, but I got fired and that forced me to rely on the Lord and it forced us.

figure out the business real quick, cash only. And that was 13, 14 years ago. It's kind of interesting when the Lord does that, right? When we, we're not really listening, like we think we're doing what he wants, but then bam, like hits you.

That kind of happened with me with my brick and mortar and moving and going virtual and being obedient with stuff. But we, it's, I always like chuckle.

I'm like, Oh, okay. Yeah. I totally wasn't asking you what your plan was. I, You know, and going back to like being a doctor and thinking we know everything, it's very humbling when we rely on the Lord and his plan and how to actually serve people.

So when you, I mean, what did your wife and your children, they were younger at that point, but I mean, what did your family think of this? That's a lot.

Yeah, it is. My wife is awesome. She, I mean, she was seeing this year of me going back and forth with Robi. She was hearing the testimonies too. And the spirit leads her.

She just knew in her spirit, this is truth. I knew it too. The day I got fired and I called her and I said, Hey, meet me at the clinic with the pickup truck.

Cause we got to load up and be out by Monday morning. She, the first thing she said is, I feel like I'm a butterfly coming out of the cocoon being released that we're free.

We're not trained here anymore. The Lord's releasing us into our next stage. And actually, prior to all this, prior to me, my nurse meeting Robi and me talking to Robi, We had gone to Africa, my wife and I.

She was seven months pregnant with our number four at the time. It was a medical mission trip. We'd never been before. We had an experience there that was amazing and came back thinking something big is about to happen in our lives.

A major turnover is about to happen. We didn't know what, and we were kind of worried, sort of. You got to say, move to Africa. But so we were kind of prepared in our hearts that something major is happening and then boom, this thing starts unfolding.

But she was super supportive the whole time, very encouraging. She knows how to rely on God for provision and protection. And I'm the one that struggles more.

I'm the black and white rational, show it to me, prove it to me, evidence-based, you know, born left brain. So she's been great the whole time. I'm super, super supportive.

The kids were young. They didn't realize really anything going on. So the Lord was gracious to bring some people into my life that continued to encourage me, mentor me, help me.

I had a business up in Lubbock that the owner of the business, it was a blue collar, like welding machinist kind of shop. He had about a hundred employees in heat, but the owner believed in holistic medicine because of some personal experience with his daughter with heavy metals from mercury fillings and seizures.

And so he understood root causes. to a degree and he said hey I'll give you some office space no charge rent free up here in Lubbock in my warehouse on the east side which is you know more the industrial side it's not the ideal setting but it was free he said if you'll take care of my guys my hundred employees and I'll pay you a little stipend every month so free office space and the stipend I mean, it was stuff like that.

Doors would open, encouragement here, encouragement there. The Lord was super faithful. Jamie, my wife, was super supportive. And it just grew word of mouth, word of mouth, word of mouth.

And I hired a nurse practice to help me because we had a waiting list and then another, another. And at our max, we were eight or nine nurse practitioners at four different locations, kind of in the heyday.

and then a couple years ago or maybe it's three now forget it was a 10 year anniversary so three years ago God said clearly in my spirit man I heard the first 10 years it was our 10 year anniversary of my firing June of 2012 June of 2022 and he said the first 10 years was your way now it's my way and you need to flip this thing what you're my way I thought I was doing it your way because I was preaching this thing called the four pillars nutrition hydration movement and peace If people will learn those four basic things and steward those well, then the body automatically fixes itself.

I got those four pillar download early, like first month after being fired, but in my own intellect. I hear about this cool ozone therapy. Hey, I'm going to go to the ozone conference, learn about ozone.

Super cool integrated medical therapy. Ooh, ultraviolet blood irradiation. I'm going to go learn about that. I'm going to learn about PRP. I'm going to go learn about bioidentical hormones.

I'm going to go learn parasite, Lyme, heavy metals, root canal, all the things. And so the four pillars was in there, but then, you know, these other things and, but over time and what, and I'm still on my journey.

I don't have it all figured out, but really when the Lord said flip it, the understanding I had at the time was you can do a whole lot of integrative holistic things.

And it, in a lot of ways, it'll be the green version of pharmaceutical based treat a symptom. Yeah. Everyone kind of can see now the pharmaceuticals, it's money, money, money.

It's symptom treatment only, and the outcomes are awful. Well, you can flip into using supplements to treat a symptom for migraine or whatever, and that's fine.

There's no condemnation. I write prescriptions still, so don't get into that thing. But it was like, man, if you can just go deeper. You can encourage these, teach and encourage the patient and keep going so they can be set free and made whole and not need a doctor.

and that was the four pillars, but nutrition, we were preaching that so much, and obviously it's important, but people are making nutrition their savior, their idol, they're worshiping this diet, keto, paleo, whatever, carnivore stuff, and there's benefit, we recommend those all the time.

So it's not, when you get into either or that's bad and that's good, that's eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. So it's not that. You can use carnivore for, especially if Holy Spirit, and that's what we recommend, let the Holy Spirit tell you when to fast, when to cut whatever.

You want to fast from sugar, you want to fast from gluten, you want to fast from all food, fast from your cell phone, fast from social media. Yeah. Holy Spirit knows what your heart needs.

It's such a unique individual journey that Holy Spirit will lead it. And God told David, David said, I don't build you a temple. God said, no, don't do that.

Would you go back and read that story? And David basically said, no, I really want to. And God said, don't do that. There's no house a man will build that can hold me.

I told you, build a tabernacle. That's a mobile tent that moves with the people. I want my presence moving with the people. Anyways, God told David, OK, go ahead if you really want to.

But one of your descendants is going to build a spiritual house made of living stones. And I'm going to write my truth on their hearts, not on these tablets of clay.

Well, the truth my heart needs is different from what you need today, Dr. Jen, and your listener needs today because we're unique, living stones. Stones are unique.

There's no two that look the same. Tower of Babel, bricks, those are all uniform and the same. We're not like that. We're unique, unique DNA, unique fingerprint, unique facial structure.

We're all unique. And the Holy Spirit knows the unique thing my heart needs. And a big one was people pleasing. I mean, I said yes to every single thing they asked me to do at Garza County, the nursing home, the county jail, the juvenile detention center, the Friday football game house calls.

I never batted an eye. It was yes, yes, yes. Cause I didn't want anybody to be mad at me. That was a huge spirit that was lording over me. I was making decisions under the influence of this thing, didn't even know it.

And then this orphan spirit, then orphan has to scrounge for everything and protect himself and doesn't know who his parents are, doesn't know his daddy.

So you got to be your own provision, your own protection, my 401k, my life insurance, my paycheck, and your identities wrapped up in what you do. I'm a doctor.

I'm a small town country doctor. And that orphan spirit was huge. It was lording over me. I was making decisions under the influence of that spirit. And then the spirit of performance.

I got to be number one. I got to be right. I got to be the best. Those are three spirits not from the Kingdom of Truth, the Kingdom of God. Those are spirits that don't have my best interest and that will lead to death.

Still kill and destroy. By my voluntary submission to those guys, it will lead to my internal fight or flight kicking in. That fight or flight will shut down my stomach acid.

That fight or flight will shut down my thyroid. that fight or flight will shut down progesterone, ladies, for pregnancy, for heavy menstrual bleeding.

It's directly correlated to our health, what we're submitted to in our heart beliefs. There is no way to separate. Medical school divides the physical body into parts.

You have a headache, see the neurologist. You have a stomach ache, see the gastroenterologist. You have whatever We divide the body. Well, in functional and integrative, in some natural healing, we separate.

We don't bring in the spiritual. We stay in the natural. The diet, the diet, the exercise, the supplements, all this will fix me. No, that's stewardship.

But we can't divide out soul and spirit and body. Jesus said it in the garden, His flesh is weak, His spirit is willing, His soul is sorrowful and to death.

Paul says in Thessalonians, be sanctified through and through, body, soul, and spirit. These three parts are super important. A board again, spirit, boom, has it all.

We have every spiritual blessing in heavenly places. We have everything from life and godliness. We have the spirit that raised Jesus from the dead now lives in you.

I mean, our spirit man has it, but our soul, our intellect, our emotions, our will, that's the problem. I'm used to operating over there and that's under the influence of these spirits that aren't from the kingdom of life.

So there's just no way that you cannot end up, I think, for truly to be made whole, set free, made whole, well, symptom free. You've got to go deeper.

You've got to get the relational part of God. He's not theology. He's not facts and information. He's a relational father that loves you and he's good.

And he wants nothing but good. He poured out his wrath on Jesus, not on us. We're in a new covenant. Jesus and God made a covenant this time, and we get to join that covenant.

It's a huge thing. I mean, I know we're probably getting close to our time, and I'm preaching now. Oh, I'm here for it. And I see this so many times, and I agree with you.

And I think there's a lot of new people in the wellness, alternative, functional world. They're new, so they might be seeing good outcomes. But I know from practicing for over a decade, there is a spiritual connection and same like as you you know I got my assignment like last year like you know to flip things too and and it's scary it's scary to once like be an integrative doctor but also like be led you know using the Holy Spirit and really putting that spiritual side into it because I will have patience that I know it's a spiritual battle and I know like you said I had someone today that they had a really stressful job.

And I'm like, well, that's affecting your gut health, you know, and that if you don't have true peace, which you should, you know, yes, like you were saying, there's different things that like pride that can come in the way and different flesh and different spiritual, you know, afflictions and oppressions.

But if you don't realize that if you're not working on that, Like you were saying, we can idolize supplements, we can idolize being carnivore or diets and we're not really healing.

And it's interesting if you watch influencers that are carnivore, they'll flip back and forth or they're like, well, now I'm animal-based or now I'm adding in carbs, right?

They're looking for something to fill a void that only Jesus can fill. So I love this. And for you, this is the solution. This is what we're missing. This is why we're sick in America, right?

Absolutely. We have looked to another, maybe this is a bad word, but another savior, another God. It's an idol. We're looking to scientism, intellect, doctors, and not to throw doctors on their bus, but the original doctor's Latin root for doctor is teacher.

The founder of Hopkins Med School, the founder of modern medicine, Sir William Mosler said, one of the first duties of the physician is to teach. The mass is not to take medicine.

People don't realize heart attacks were non-existent pre-1912. All these are modern diseases because we changed our diet. We got more stress, more toxic.

All the physical things are there too, but we've also become more and more separated from God's original intent, His original plan, His original design, and He's restoring all that.

It's a ministry of reconciliation, reconciling us back to God's original intent. So yeah, it's awesome. One question I have for you, Dr. Biden, because what I've seen and what happened to me is that people are searching for something spiritual and because integrative medicine, it's kind of like intertwined with new age.

and I was sucked into that. And in my fellowship, I participated in a drum circle and I was a yoga instructor and did a sound bath. So people are looking for spiritualism, but maybe the church is not really showing them like the Holy Spirit and how it, you know, like the Bible says, it's there to dwell in us.

So what do you think that disconnect is? Because I think that is a big problem in the United States also is that we have people that they wanted but they're not being fed at the church or they're just being given milk at the church and not getting enough of what they need so they do look outside of the Lord.

Yeah, absolutely. They're searching, they're looking, but if it's not the full truth, the gospel of the kingdom, A gospel of salvation has been mostly preached, I would say, in the Western Church, especially in America.

The gospel of the kingdom is what Jesus and Paul were talking about, and most people don't understand the fullness of that. People are looking for a purpose.

Why are they here? God, I believe God's been misunderstood and misrepresented. Religion comes in with doctrines of man, and we don't accurately, not on purpose, it's through deception, just like in the garden.

did God really say, but we make these doctrines so that we can explain things we see in our life and our life experience, but those doctrines of men, they end up misrepresenting God.

So yeah, people are searching. They haven't seen the real thing. They've seen counterfeit stuff and all this new age stuff. I mean, it's real. It's quantum physics created real.

So it's not that these different things aren't actually happening. Yeah, they're happening, but under the influence of what invisible realm spirit. There are spirits that got cast out of the third heaven, the first, second, third heaven scripture talks about.

Holy Spirit will lead us into all truth and these other spirits they're in this other realm, that's what you gotta be careful. And the new age doesn't understand that, yeah, they're seeing some results, but at the end of the day, they're gonna get burned.

So we've gotta have a remnant, a people group, the ecclesia, that's the word church in the Bible is ecclesia. We gotta redefine, we don't go to church or do church, we need to become the church.

The only biblical definition of church is, the church which is his body. The body of Christ in the earth needs to mature so we're not knocked to and fro by every wind and doctrine.

It's that milk thing. People get saves, go in the narrow gate, sit down on the first step of the narrow path, drinking milk their whole life, don't understand gospel of the kingdom, don't understand body, soul, spirit, don't understand authority, all this stuff.

And yeah, so we misrepresent God out of ignorance, lack of knowledge that people are getting destroyed because of it. And again, I don't have it all figured out, but I'm seeking the kingdom.

And as you seek, you will find guaranteed. God wants, he's eager to reveal himself, but we got to get off these mindsets and goggles. And I mentioned mine, man-pleasing, orphan, performance, but there's a religious spirit too.

We got to get rid of that. We've been coming out of that since 13, I think it was 313 when Constantine and the Christian leaders got together, made it the official state church, Roman church, 313 Constantine, Edith of Milan.

And after a long time, Reformation, Luther, boom, come out of that. Wesley, you know, 200 years later, come out of that. And then the Azusa Street Revival, 1906, Pentecostal stuff.

And then, I mean, it's like we're shedding, shedding, shedding, understanding, understanding more and more and more. Well, there's still more to go. Sonship, huge.

We're sons. Yeah, you're a Christian. But the original term Christian was the pagans were looking at the followers of Jesus going, you look like Christ.

Little Christ-like ones. Christian. That's where that term came from. God calls us sons. That's neither male nor female. We're His kids. He's our daddy.

We're His kids. He chose to have this relational thing in the earth. Him in us, not us, we got to die. It's Him in us that's going to shine His glory, His truth, His light, and peace and joy will attend you when this is happening, and the world will see that.

You're not going to get that from New Age stuff. True peace and joy is going to be lacking. True peace and joy will come when the kingdom in your heart shines through, and people will come ask you, what is this?

How can you be like this in this circumstance, in this turmoil, in this wars and rumors of wars? It's the truth is what will set you free. When you realize you're seated in heavenly places, you already died.

You can't die your spirit. You're already seated in heaven. When you get that, you're a new creation. Paul said, put off the old, put on the new, the new man.

Yeah. It sets you free from the fear of death. And the spirit of fear is the number one thing that traps us, puts us in bondage, keeps a burden on us.

If someone's in a burden and a bondage heavy yoke, no, Jesus said, no, no, no, my yoke is light. My burden is easy. So that's a good measure. If I'm having a hard-burning, heavy-yoke day, I'm talking to Jesus about it.

Hey, you bought and paid for me to not have a heavy yoke. I feel heavy today. What am I not seeing clearly? Absolutely. And we see that with our patients.

We see that fear. And a lot of the times, they go to the conventional doctor and they get a diagnosis, and it's almost like a word curse, right? And then that sickness becomes part of their identity instead of their identity being in Christ.

It really does intertwine with medicine. And we really have to just keep talking about this and normalize this. Yeah, for sure. Absolutely. And not to deny symptoms or even labels of those symptoms.

If you've got inflamed joints, whatever, and your blood work shows, you can be labeled rheumatoid arthritis. But just understand what that is. It's just a word that describes some symptoms going on.

But symptoms mean something's out of order. There's a perfect design to these joints. What's out of order causing your immune system to attack? So fine, put that word there, but don't give it any more merit in your heart than what it is.

It's a label. And whether you label it or not, you can tell there's symptoms, there's disorder, so let's gain some knowledge. And some of that will be physical stewardship.

You've probably seen it. I've seen it where autoimmune disease can improve. Like Shane, my nurse practitioner, all he did was diet supplement stuff, basically.

You can get massive improvement, even remission. So it's not to deny that part of it. But like Jen, Dr. Jen said, you do this long enough, you'll see these patients will come back.

Hey, I resolved whatever symptom or disease. I've been good for three years, four years. I'm still eating keto or taking supplements or doing all my things, but the symptoms are coming back.

It's always chronic stress, almost always chronic stress. Just saying that today to a patient. That's where you got to go deeper to the filters on your heart.

What do you believe? Wrong thinking leads to wrong belief leads to wrong action. And these actions create circumstances that drive fight or flight. So we got to go deeper to the heart beliefs.

Yeah, and I'm not gonna lie, like this is not easy stuff we're talking about. If you bring stuff to attention like heart, deep heart healing like I did in January, you're in the frying pot, like you're bringing that in the frying pan and you're gonna feel the heat.

Like I had some relationships blow up with my family where, you know, but I had peace, I had peace. I wasn't talking to some of my family members, but I had peace about it and we've reconciled because I prayed over it and I trusted the process.

But it will shine, the light will shine darkness and darkness doesn't like that. But you have to have that peace. You have to have that peace. And if you don't have that peace, then you have fear or you have rejection or you have other things that are going to affect your health and bring you chronic stress.

Yeah, absolutely. I tell my patients, let peace be your guide and your barometer. And you know deep in your gut that peace. Now in your intellect, like down when I got fired, of course, ding, ding, ding, that's in my intellect.

What in the world am I going to do? What about my bills, more mortgage, my career, all the things? I mean, that's going to be there. But deep down, and Jamie had it more on the surface, but in me, I'd say, I know this is right.

I know this is the truth. It's undeniable. This is the truth. God's word says He will be my provision. Do I believe that or not? And honestly, I didn't.

And that's okay. But the number one thing is confess that. And I did. I believe, but help me with my unbelief. That means you can have both at the same time.

So there's this peace that believes, but there's this unbelief. That's okay. And yes, this fire brings some of this up. It burns off the dross, the impurities to get that pure gold.

It takes a fire because us humans tend to be pretty self-sufficient, self-reliant. We're trained this way. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Work harder.

You're smart enough. You're capable. Go get a loan from the bank. Go rely on the world for this and we'll get it done. But it's more burdened, more heavy.

So there's the way and then there's lots of other ways that seem right to man. The way will lead to peace. Everything else, it's a false peace. It's not true peace.

And you'll know it in your gut. And if you're not sure about that, you ask the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit wants to show you. the truth and where the true peace lies.

But it's going to take trust. You're going to have to trust an invisible God is going to show up. He's going to provide it. He's going to open that door.

He's going to show me. I can hear from him. He's not quiet anymore. I mean, it's a trust thing. And yeah, the fire will put you through it, but you'll come out more relational, more trusting and stronger in him because it's really us, it has to die.

We're made strong in our weakness. It's his strength in us. So he's got to come into us and will and wants to, but we have to let him. He's a gentleman.

He's not going to force himself. It's all voluntary submission. We're just so good at self-sufficiency. Yeah, that's a great point. Well, Dr. Venn, we could talk all day.

Maybe we'll have to have part two, but thank you so much for sharing your passion and your journey and what an amazing journey. You've hit the spotlight a few times here in the past year and you just are so calm and collected under pressure.

It's beautiful to see the peace you do have and you practice what you preach. And you had some exciting things that you recently launched. I would love for you to share those with the community.

Well, thank you, Jen. I appreciate you letting me come on the podcast. A joy for me to be here and to meet you at the Seeking Whole Health Conference.

That was a lot of fun. Yeah, veritaswellnessmember.com is our website, but we launched Veritas Wellness, an online education platform and community groups, support groups, stuff like that with health coaches only.

It's no doctoring. We have a clinic in Lubbock, Texas, but my goal is for no one to come to the clinic. I wanted to learn the four pillars and walk in that and get well without seeing the doctor.

So we have that and that's been a year and a half or so, but what was really in my heart was just a self-guided, self-module, self-paced kind of package program called You're the Cure.

I think it's nine modules and there's multiple videos in each module. There's PDF handouts on the stewardship of three pillars and then of course the peace pillars in there too.

So you're the cure is a program that's available where people can kind of start. There's my thought. Hey, just start here You only enjoy need to join the wellness program if you just need to get an Introduction to all this because it's like a firehose when you know when we started to learn this integrative You feel like you're going back to school.

I had to learn all this So the you're the cure program boils it down to some basics. I believe the four pillars But we have a wellness program too, where you can get online and connect with one of our health coaches if you need more one-on-one support.

And then we have a podcast called Year the Cure. So that's our different platforms. We're on Instagram, Facebook, I think Dr. Ben Edwards, but those are the veritaswellnessmember.com.

You'll have all the links to YouTube page and all that kind of stuff. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for your time and today and just everything you're doing there in Texas and nationally.

It's amazing. Well, thank you, Dr. Geno. I know you're touching a lot of lives. Keep up the good work. Thank you. 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 well-being.

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.

You Are the Cure: Dr. Ben Edwards on Healing the Body, Mind & Spirit

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM

Ben Edwards, MD

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