Earnest Medicine and Dr. Jonathan M Fields:

awesome I I have to say I went to The Valor conference here in Washington DC and that was something for me where a

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lot of these old war heroes right it’s it’s the story that we always talk about yes and I can’t tell you how many of

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these guys have served their country in a really amazing way but at the root of it all we we got to document a piece of history

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with each and every single one of those those individuals and it was so miraculous that now that that footage is

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out there you know that person’s story and that history is available for anyone and everyone to go in and say hey I get

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to witness a little piece of History it’s not it’s not lost and the same thing with Earnest medicine right yeah

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it’s storytelling yeah that’s all the base of it is storytelling because if we

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don’t capture this then there won’t be an opportunity for people to have a voice get heard or give consideration

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for things I mean when you hear these stories from these veterans yeah for somebody who’s never been in combat it’s

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like yeah whoa you know yeah yeah so it’s it’s kind of like in a sense

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getting into somebody else’s shoes their experience and it is there’s a connection I mean the storytelling is a

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sense of you know that oral visual experience but it is uh for me it is how

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do I connect right like what are the roots of but you know that person and their story and then my story and how

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they understand intersect absolutely yeah and that’s the really cool thing I think about Earnest medicine especially with you being in the medical space and

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getting to to hear practitioner stories patient stories that’s where that connection is for us so very excited to

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have Dr Jonathan fields in with us today I’m going to read this because he provided us with a really wonderful

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outline and it will give at least a brief overview of everything this gentleman has accomplished up to this

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point and and what’s next so Dr Jonathan Fields is a renowned Integrative Medicine practitioner martial and visual

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artist author and speaker he owns two clinics in South Florida where he specializes in acupuncture functional

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medicine herbs PRP stem cells and IV Therapy he holds a doctorate in a masters of acupuncture in eastern

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medicine a bachelor’s in Health Sciences and four national board certifications he’s lectured at universities Fortune

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500 companies works with elite pro athletes and formulated for public

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trading companies this is Dr Jonathan Fields so we’re going to roll our intro we’ll be right back with his

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introduction [Music]

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[Music] [Applause] [Music]

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we’re going to go ahead and come back from our break welcome back to Earnest medicine I want to turn it over for Dr

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Jonathan Fields introduction here is our guy go ahead and introduce yourself to

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the audience thank you doctor hi I’m Dr Jonathan Fields I think you did a wonderful job introducing me

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already now I have to live up to the hype but I’m honored to be on the show and thank you for having me absolutely

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an honor absolutely so I’ll turn it over here to Dr Brown and and Dr Jonathan

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Fields very interested to have you guys kind of get into this and hear a little bit of origin from um from our guest

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yeah so I mean uh Jonathan so you and I first interact I mean we’ve never met

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each other right and but we interacted in a way uh in in taking care of a

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patient mutually and from that experience you know it’s you know we’re

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now we’re we’re running side by side as opposed to uh never having met you

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before but understanding what your mission is and what you try to do for your clients uh aligns very much with

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what I do and so that was like it was a no-brainer that you know it’s like hey

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what’s your story because if we don’t you know if we don’t capture those stories uh unique then you know look

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everything can be cookie cutter we just had a medical somebody who’s interested in becoming a physician a young person

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who wants to begin that journey and do they see any other option other than

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just joining the factory work right right so what’s your story where are you from

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uh I’ve been in South Florida most of my life I was born in Israel originally on a little farm in the Galileo in the

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middle of nowhere a small tiny town with about a hundred houses moved here uh to the U.S when I was about seven years old

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been here ever since and grew up in uh suburbs South Florida it’s beautiful

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area the weather is great uh except for a couple months a hurricane season other than that we love it out here you know

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the people are nice we don’t have any of the snow to deal with like you guys over there well Global Norm global warming we

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don’t have snow anymore so that’s yeah what was it today well that’s true and from the looks of it it looks like I

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might need to move in the next 20 30 Years anyway so it might be coming up your way you’re always welcome fantastic

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I have appreciate it well I wanted to ask a really quick question because this was one of the points that we sort of

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resonated on whenever we spoke initially and that’s that you have approached the medical space from a very sort of

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kinetic kinetic active um position I mean you you have a background in martial arts and I think

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that that’s something that has translated now from your early years into what you’re doing now even working

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with pro athletes some former UFC world champions people of that nature can you tell us a little bit about the

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motivations that that you experienced as a young person and why you sort of navigated in that direction

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yeah absolutely so I come from a medical family my mom’s an occupational therapist that’s been her entire career

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since I was born uh my father was a medic in the Israeli Army for the time

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that he was there and my brother is a hospital internal medicine doctor and fortunate obesity medicine but having

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some experiences within the medical system I went a little outside the box on the traditional conventional medicine

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I’ve been in martial arts most of my life since I was a little kid as long as I could remember pretty much when I was

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in my 20s I’m about 25 I met one of my mentors who’s my Qigong Master he’s an

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acupuncturist and I started practicing the Qigong which is like high tea the strictly medical a lot of breathing slow

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moving meditation almost like yoga but mostly performs standing up and very different visualizations very different

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philosophy behind it but you get some of the similar benefits a little bit of overlap and the health benefits there so

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it was so profound for me personally that I became fascinated with it and I kind of started leaning a big part of my

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martial arts is towards the Healing Arts and I started studying with my mentor I

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would intern with him at his medical clinic I would help him with his terminal sorry

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there’s a taller over 15 years at the same problem with town for about 20 years and eventually throughout that

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time about seven to eight years into that journey I guess it must have been about 30 years old I got extremely ill

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very very ill to the point where I was disabled I couldn’t work I lost my business I lost my relationships my

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family life was pretty much ruined and what was going on was basically I was having hot flashes tills fatigue

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depression carpal tunnel tendonitis systemic joint pain every joint my entire body was hurting all the time and

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my back and my neck was so bad I couldn’t I physically could not fit in a chair and work in a computer anymore

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before that I was in the size of martial arts I was into DJing and art and my soul time was basically my first degree

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was in digital media oh my God I was a graphic designer I used to do social media marketing web design all that kind

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of stuff and it got to the point where I physically could not work anymore I spent a whole year going from Doctor to

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doctor to specialist a specialist and I saw endocrinologists they did biopsies on my thyroid they did all my labs I saw

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orthopedic doctors three different neurologists hand surgeons they wanted to operate on me from carpal tunnel two

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different times and I never did it and all they kept telling me is for the most part that it’s all in your head here’s

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the muscle relaxers here’s some pain pills your blood work’s fine go home and I just could not accept that I had been

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healthy my whole life I had a very good diet or at least I thought I tried to go vegan a couple times but I didn’t eat

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any Crossing food any junk food so I should have been healthy I was exercising probably two hours a day or

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more every single day maybe five six days a week uh sometimes longer right so

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there’s no reason I should have been going through this and I just felt so disparaged as a young you know 30 year

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old uh business owner who has Insurance in America I should be able to get

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professional medical assistant right nope and uh and you know what then they start telling you it’s all in your head

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it’s anxiety and then you you begin to question yourself oh you’re like am I crazy is this really all in my head and

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after uh suffering for about a year and progressively getting worse and worse and worse my family was like we’re sick

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of hearing that the doctor said you’re fine there’s nothing wrong with you you know go back to work and eventually I walked into a friend of mine’s vitamin

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store and he’s another one of my mentors he’s done a nutrition for me later he he’s on the scientific Advisory Board

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and he invents vitamins he works with mvds and big companies to invent vitamins and I walked in and the first

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thing he said to me is you look like crap so I tell him the whole story I had already known him for about 10 years we

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used to go there from if I was in high school just to get protein or creatine or whatever Maltese and he says oh

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you’re fine you’re healthy I’m Gonna Get You better I know what’s wrong and I don’t believe them because I’ve already

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seen you know a dozen different doctors and I’m thinking listen if you sell vitamins in a retail store you’re

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sitting here in sneakers and shorts how are you going to help me right to doctors Count On Me no way but I said

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you know at this point I got nothing left to lose and he takes good care of me doesn’t even charge me for anything we had a relationship I used to do some

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of his advertising with him so it was kind of like barter and he just said here take this he gives me some stuff uh

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two different nutrients within a week maybe two weeks no more hot flashes No More Chills no more fatigue no more

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depression gone like that after over a year we getting progressively worse clicked me with a chiropractor I start

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seeing my acupuncturist they had me changed my diet a little bit they had me start eating meat again I started

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drinking green tea so I wouldn’t be like as dehydrated or whatever um what’s going on and I just started

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getting better and better and better and within like six to eight months I had a hundred percent recovery and having

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lived through that experience uh which was devastating I mean I was almost ready to check out it was really really

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bad yeah you know and for somebody that who’s always healthy to suddenly be chronically ill

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it’s devastating right you’re not used to you know for people who I think are chronically ill it’s just like oh one

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more symptom after the lit but when you go one more pill yeah super healthy he does super sick it’s it’s you know it’s

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like the end of your world so I after living through that experience I wanted to help other people and I was already

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interested in the the Eastern medicine and the acupuncture it was a very holistic system where we looked for root causes of problems and and it was almost

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like uh you know God spoke to me and I knew I really did not have a choice I

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felt like this is the only thing I can do I have no other path so I went back to school uh I went back and did a

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bachelor the health scientist then a master’s and then a doctorate in the Eastern medicine and acupuncture I’ve

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studied in China I’ve lived in the Shaolin Temple trained in kung fu with the monks eight hours a day and studied

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in the hospitals over there doing herbal medicine and all sorts of other stuff and uh and I’m still studying right I

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was at a conference this weekend we’re always doing continuing education that’s my story I’m sticking to it well

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the story doesn’t stop there I mean that’s I mean it is a matter of perspective you know what are the things

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that have affected your life and the the thing that I think is most important is

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um you went through the normal channels you know what was expected right but the

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the issue is that you actually uh chose uh to take care of your own health

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as opposed to being passive about it right you decided to make a change for

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yourself and but you got to that point you know uh for you know some patients

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who are maybe older or they have other conditions I think it’s wrong for patients to be

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left powerless without any other option or choice I think it is a personal

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Journey somebody has to go through and you know unfortunately in our health care System it’s just factory work I

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mean there’s no there’s no I mean there’s no sense of the individual you know one of the things that you know I

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always when I start off with a patient is how many medications are you taking okay

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well let’s see how many we can come off of you know and this is like wait a minute I’ve been taking this for a long

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time I’m like yeah yeah but but you’re still sick yeah I mean and so

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it’s it’s important for viewers to understand that sense of being active and not being

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passive and always I think as a physician I’m always curious and I think

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the problem with Healthcare is that it doesn’t give enough time for clinicians to really sit and talk

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and listen and and actually touch and experience because how can you expect in

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a cubicle you know a little room that’s sterile that has no nothing to get in 10

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minutes and know oh yeah I know exactly what that is that’s I mean it doesn’t

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take a rocket sign to realize that that that’s a system doomed for failure and and you change that you know you

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educated yourself so I mean I I think that’s inspiring it should be that

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um and that’s kind of what I expect of my patients I don’t expect them to just

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take what I tell them it’s a relationship and if they’re all in I’m

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all in and we can you know we can get there and it’s not going to get done in a day but there there’s an opportunity

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um so yeah I think that’s fantastic well I wanted to bring up a point because you

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had a really pivotal thing happen in your life that was a transition for you I mean you were a young guy a business

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owner healthy very active and and all of a sudden that’s sort of crashing down around you and you took a rather drastic

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change a rather drastic change in your direction you had to and you said that yeah yours was really quite fascinating

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because it took you abroad it took you to these places all around the globe and I think change for all of us looks a

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little bit different but yours is quite fascinating I’d love to get more details on how you were connected with these

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individuals specifically or master and how you know what were the steps that you took in order to move in that

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direction with some level of fluidity I know there had to be some anxiety attached to that stuff but I’d love to

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hear it from you how did that all go down absolutely yeah and I appreciate that

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well you know I’ve I kind of lucky because I grew up in a family of Travelers my folks like to travel they

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were taking some trips as kids so I think we were never scared or anxiety I think at that point didn’t really play a

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role for me also because I knew what I wanted and I knew where I was going to go and I was going to make it happen regardless and so the uh the first time

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or when we went to actually to stay with the monks in China so I had spent quite a bit of time trying

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to contact different schools out there trying to find out who can give us this program where we can do the martial arts

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stuff and practice the spiritual component and learn about the meditation and some of the lifestyle that

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philosophy and have the the medical component as well where we can actually work with doctors and herbalists and

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acupuncturists and twina whereas basically their body work with like Chiropractic and Bone setting and all

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that and it took a little bit of time because the majority of the schools that I contacted was said no we don’t want anything to do with that

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you come in this is a program leave us alone they barely speak any English over

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there to begin with so it’s very difficult after some time I got very lucky I found a school where the woman

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who was I guess in charge or running the management of the school happened to be from Romania and lived in in England and

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was in Greece as well so she spoke English wow pretty well and we were able to have a translator and my teacher my

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shaolin’s secret got a few different martial arts seizures depending on Styles but my challenge if you is

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basically very much into the medicinal component and actually lives the bunk bed I grew up living in the Shaolin

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Temple since he was beautiful and at the time he had his own Academy

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walking distance from the temple in the temple National Park grounds so they

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said you know what we don’t normally do this it’s never really been done here as a program every now and then they’ll get some people that come in for like a

day
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and they’ll like you know observe a little bit in the clinic or whatever but I said if you give us enough leeway if you bring some people with you we’ll set

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up a special program so I think I was still in school at the time my Master’s and my doctor was done here in Fort

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Lauderdale at Atlantic Institute of Oriental medicine it’s been there for about 30 years they do just Eastern medicine and we I took a group of nine

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students so it was my well myself with eight others that we were I guess about two-thirds of the way with my masters at

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the time and we used the first time we went we went for about a month and we were able to set this up where we’d have

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a four hour lunch break every day and we would spend that time we would have lunch and we’d spend that time with the

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doctor and the routine was amazing you’d wake up at five o’clock in the morning and from five uh 5 30 to stick you would

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meditate and from 6 to 6 30 you would practice too young like from 6 30 to 7

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you would do tai chi and then you would have breakfast after about an hour and a half you would do four hours super

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intense Kung Fu training I’m talking about like professional athletic training these guys do shows all over

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the world The Shaolin Monks are actually known for having some of the toughest conditioning in the world and then you

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have a four hour lunch break where most people would rest and have lunch and we would just have lunch and study with the doctors and then after the lunch break

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you would do another three to four hours of training then you’d have dinner then sometimes after dinner we might train

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for another hour or so afterwards just kind of um practice in some of the things we had learned throughout the day

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so it was a fascinating experience yeah we got to they have a in the temple

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which is 1500 years old they have a clinic associated with it so they took us to study with the doctors in the

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temple and sometimes the doctors would come and uh teach us at the Academy and we basically got to learn a little bit

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of everything a little bit of the the herbs acupuncture the the mugwort that they burn

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um between all the Bodywork yeah in the addition of the Kung Fu and at the same time we went to the nearest town we

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studied in some of the clinics and the hospitals over there as well uh the next year I went back which is three of us my

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wife and another black Man of Mine at that point we were already actually we were we had just finished a masters and

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we were going right from the Masters into the doctor program we had about two and a half month break and we spent the

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time we spent um six weeks in China at that point I think I spent two weeks traveling Romania before that so we went

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back again and it kind of went through the whole same experience and then spent a few weeks in the hospital as well

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working in an integrated Hospital most of the hospitals in China are actually complete Western medicine completely conventional message there’s very few

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that actually practice the traditional medicine we happen to find one we got very lucky it was actually somebody we

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met on the plane from the year before on the way home they had the hook out and this hospital was the first

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traditional hospital that they opened in Beijing after they brought back the Eastern medicine because originally Mao

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had banned yeah all the Eastern Michigan because they thought it was um to religious or spiritual practices and

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you know the party kind of didn’t want to have any of that but what had happened was they found that for a billion people they didn’t have enough

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Western trained doctors yeah they didn’t have enough medicine yeah they didn’t have enough right so they brought it back to 52 they opened this beijingulo

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hospital and the people who opened it were actually descendants of the doctors who the Imperial doctors that took care

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of the royal family wow so it was an amazing opportunity we got

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to train and learn from some of the cream of the crop and study with the uh the president of the Beijing University

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of China uh you know I think when you put yourself out there and you have a goal

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and people know that you’re genuine like you know connections just open up and just fall into place kind of like how we

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met taking care of a CIP patient and it just you know we hit it off I I think I

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I loved Dr Rounds approach to medicine is you’re not your typical right doctor you will spend time with the patient and

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like you had mentioned medications before right you come in and they’re on 20 different meds prescribed by seven different doctors and the doctors

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haven’t even read the charts they don’t know what meds are on they don’t know if there’s any interactions going on and they don’t really care so right almost

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five minutes yeah and I would say the system’s broken and so if you’re somebody who’s you’re just trying to get

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through the day you know when you’ve got 30 patients you need to see you got 10 minutes and you don’t even own the

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practice you’re just in a factory worker and you’ve got some somebody who’s a

21:44
practice manager who’s telling you you need to see more patients in this period of time you’re it’s a system of failure you know

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when the system itself is sick how can you expect any good from that right so

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yeah right that’s why my dad had an expression that sometimes you just gotta let it burn you know maybe that’s a

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little bit graphic but sometimes the truth is that you don’t try to fix something that’s continuously just

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failing and you just go in a different direction right yeah and I will say that

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our party is guests Dr Uli chidapelli he’s out in California he made a really interesting analogy which was

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essentially you know we’re like on a our well not not myself but individuals in the medical space are on a treadmill of

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sorts and they’re just continuously running up this thing and someone else is controlling the dials they’re

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cranking that speed higher they’re increasing the incline and you get to a point where this individual is so burned out and so tired that you have no choice

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but to fall off yeah and it’s it sucks because these are individuals that you

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know are intelligent and driven but the system beats them

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um and you know who I mean just you just have to look at the satisfaction rates

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you know you know the suicide rates the divorce rates all of those things just tell you that

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this is this is bad and that’s the important point the why what we’re trying to do is share these stories and

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experiences because we want to go to other countries you know I’ll be going to Istanbul on Friday and part of that

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will be to look at you know their Health Care System yeah that’s very exciting and set up so that and we have already

23:20
set up a connection just like you’ve kind of described with a group that does uh medical tourism so people will call

23:27
them from all over uh for things that are done in Turkey because they have the skills but also when you look at the

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comparison for what’s here in the U.S uh you know I have a patient who had fifty

23:38
thousand dollars worth of dental work done well so I I sent the invoice to a buddy of

23:46
mine in in turkey and I said hey how much would this cost there he was like oh well they could stay at the beach for

23:52
about two weeks and get their flight and and and get the dental work done over several days in a relaxed environment it

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would be about three thousand dollars it’s like good grief uh yeah so there’s

24:05
there’s so many of these different things I really want to explore the stories I really want to be able to share different experiences that there

24:12
isn’t just one way of doing it when we look at the US and how much we spend on Health Care 20 it’s sickening to see

24:19
that because other countries spend you know a quarter of that and yet we’re we’re sicker it’s almost like we’re

24:25
cattle and we’re we’re fed all of this just to be sick because it’s profitable

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um and I always you know I hate to say it but insurance companies are the mafia that in the Pharmaceuticals it’s like

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you know they come in and they toss a few things around say hey yeah you need this uh insurance no you don’t you go

24:46
you go to these other places and you realize if something Sparks in your head and you have that International uh you

24:53
know travel experience you know and so that’s fortunate I think one of the key things is that it almost should be

25:00
mandatory that people leave this country to see other things you know in Australia in Australia they take a walk

25:07
about you know they’ll be gone I’ve met Australians in the weirdest places and it but it changes them you know and

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I think one of our biggest problems is that we’re too isolated and you know that’s easy for people to take advantage

25:21
of and that’s that’s the important part is that it’s not just open your mind I’m not saying open your mind just don’t let

25:27
things take advantage of you you know Empower yourself and don’t be passive about it otherwise people will profit

25:34
off of you yeah yeah and the system is obviously designed that way right over five

25:40
percent of the world’s population I think we’re taking 60 of the world’s drugs something like that that doesn’t even make a remote a little bit sense it

25:47
makes no sense at all that’s why my brother’s trying to go to the hospital now we just opened the clinic together he’s been you know I think probably

25:54
about 10 years as a hospitalist and he’s