Earnest Medicine and Dr. Jonathan M Fields: In search of health, wealth and well-being.

Dr. Nadav D. Fields / Co-Founder & Medical Director of CR8 Health
Jonathan M. Fields / Co-Founder of CR8 Health

Earnest Medicine and Dr. Jonathan M Fields: In search of health, wealth and well-being.

Dr. Jonathan Fields takes us on a global adventure in search of health, wealth, and well-being.

His own health journey took a drastic turn for the worst in his mid 20s after a debilitating barrage of illness and functional movement impairments turned his life upside down. With no end in sight Dr. Fields decided to take his life into his own hands and devote himself to health.

Through this journey he has helped others in his position while maintaining his own strong core values to the martial arts, functional movement and traditional health care practices.

He is a renowned integrative medicine practitioner, martial & visual artist, author and speaker. He owns two clinics in South Florida, where he specializes in: acupuncture, functional medicine, herbs, prp, stem cells and IV therapy. He holds a Doctorate & Masters of Acupuncture & Eastern Medicine, a Bachelors in Health Sciences and 4 National Board Certifications. He’s lectured at Universities, Fortune 500 companies, works with elite pro athletes, and formulated for publicly traded companies.

Professionally lit photos in the gym are shot by: James Woodley

Professional photos on the black background are shot by: Peter Urbanski

For more info on the Earnest Medicine Show:

http://earnestmedicine.org/

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

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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

23:07

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

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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

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

24:31

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

24:38

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

25:14

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