The Food Movement

Today I'm talking with Rob at The Food Movement. You can follow on Facebook as well.

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00:00
This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Rob at The Food Movement. Good morning, Rob. How are you? Good morning. I'm well. How are you? I'm fantastic. Are you in Illinois? I am. I am talking to you right now from Arlington Heights, Illinois. Okay, yeah.

00:29
My mom grew up in Illinois, so I have a little geographic knowledge about the state. I'm in Minnesota. It is a beautiful sunny day here. I don't know what it's like where you are. Oh, yeah. No, the sun is shining. It's actually relatively warm. It's in the 40s today. Yes. For anyone who listens to my podcast, I usually ask about where you are in the weather because I feel like asking about the weather is asking...

00:55
How are you? Like it is how I say I care about you. So for anyone who's never heard the podcast before, that's why I do it. Well, likewise, what part of Minnesota are you in? I am about 40 minutes southwest of Minneapolis. Okay, cool. Yeah, so. I know the twin cities very well. Yeah, corn and soybean country is where I live, so. Yeah, I've driven through it.

01:19
Yeah, it's really, really pretty. It's much prettier in May and June than it is right now. But we have to have the winter too. The winter is the tax we pay to enjoy the spring, summer, and fall in Minnesota. Yeah, I like having all four seasons, but I don't know, this year here in Illinois, I think we skipped right past fall and sort of an interesting year weather-wise.

01:45
It sure was. And I'm really hoping we get a reset in January and we can have some normal, moderate weather for 2025. I was just talking to a friend yesterday about this and she was like, our gardens didn't do anything. And I was like, no, neither did ours because the weather was crazy. So anyway, that leads me to tell me about yourself and what you do, because what you do has a lot to do with food. Yeah. So for the past

02:15
Oh, 24-ish years. I've had a company called Whole Earth Marketing and we sell nutritional supplements, primarily to independent health food stores. And I love this business so much that in about 2009, I became a partner in an independent health food store in Gurnee, Illinois called Earthly Goods. Sorry, I'm giving you the long version, but- No, that's fine. Tell me.

02:45
And so a business partner and I acquired a store called Earthly Goods. It's no longer there, but had a good 20 plus year run in Gurnee, Illinois. And about two years into it, we realized that it was a lot more work than we thought running a store. We had some complications, staff left and things like that. And we conveniently got an offer to sell the store. And we did that.

03:15
Around that time, I had been working on a line of private label superfoods for our health food store. And I really wanted to do something in depth. I didn't want to just accept something turnkey from a manufacturer. So I started sourcing superfoods from around the world. And my naivete led me in some really interesting directions.

03:44
For example, importing superfoods from other countries or any kind of foods is a really complicated and potentially risky business. You really don't necessarily have to, which is what I found out later. There are ways to navigate that. In that process of putting together a line of superfoods for the health food store I was part owner of and then selling that store.

04:14
The food movement was born. I said, I've done all this work. I've come so far. This could really be a business venture in and of itself.

04:25
And that became the food movement. Okay. So do you have a background in the science of this, or did you just learn it as you went? So I think my background coming into the industry would best be described as herbalism, which is somewhat of a science, but also a traditional school of healing.

04:53
So, you know, my interest has always been in sort of the overlap of science and tradition, whether it be herbs or food, you know. So no, my background is not primarily scientific, but I do find the science quite interesting and relevant. And, you know, one of my favorite books when I was starting out in the industry working in a health food store, I was the book buyer. And there was a book.

05:22
called the scientific validation of herbal medicine. And I really thought that was cool, because I thought, you know, here we have traditions of thousands of years sometimes that cultures have found the validity of these foods and herbs, and they've seen the results, you know, in their culture and their trial and error. You know, traditionally using herbs, there was no scientific validation.

05:51
going back thousands of years. They really didn't exist, you know, when culture started using herbs as medicine. But in the modern era, it's exciting and, um, you know, interesting to see the validation of these traditional, you know, because it's really as simple as finding out that a plant can be medicine. And if you discover that garlic, for example, can kill just about any kind of

06:19
And this is today validated by hundreds, if not thousands, of scientific studies. But where did we learn that? We learned that from traditional cultures. The wise women and men who lived it, didn't study it, but lived it, yes. Absolutely, yeah. And that's, and so the name the food movement for the company that I started coming out

06:49
the Earthly Goods days was meant to put a pin in that intersection of herbs as food and food as medicine. And so I think, you know, we have a model in allopathic Western medicine, which is to have a symptom, I want to relieve it, I'm going to take a substance. So I've got a headache, I'm going to take ibuprofen. Problem solution.

07:20
But there's a bigger picture when you look at what do you consume, you know, 99% of the time when you don't have a symptom presenting. And how do you treat your body holistically and on a day-to-day basis? And I think that mindset is becoming more and more popular. And people are seeking that out. And more so than looking for a magic bullet. Which

07:49
really hard to find a magic bullet. I've never really found a true magic bullet that would be you know an antidote for the 99% of what we do. But thinking holistically, looking at what we do every day, what we consume every day as part of the medicine I think is really, it's really a growing, it's been there for just since time began probably. Sure and

08:17
I'm not going to lie to you. I'm going to push you a little on what you're doing because there are lots of supplement companies out there who are selling things that aren't necessarily good for you. So I guess my first question is where are you sourcing the ingredients for what you're selling? Yeah, so it really varies. We make a wide variety of supplements at the food movement.

08:46
And the first thing I would say is that, you know, the name of our company, the food movement is meant to draw a distinction and an alignment with a tradition in this business that has been around for many years, the trade organizations. So, um, and the reason I make that distinction is because since my time, starting in the health food business where there were many

09:14
legacy companies that had really good practices. In the modern era, we've seen hundreds, if not thousands, definitely thousands, I should say, Amazon supplement brands popping up. Never heard of them before. And suddenly they've got X, Y, and Z product Moringa. And, you know, I can tell you where we source.

09:38
Armoringa and that Armoringa is, you know, just as one example, just picking on Yes. Moringa, the miracle tree as one herb. You know, we source Armoringa from Asia, from reputable suppliers that provide us with testing to show that the product is what it says it is and that it's not contaminated. And then we, as part of our good manufacturing practices, which is validated by FDA.

10:08
we then do our own testing. So it's not enough to accept the testing of the supplier. Obvious reason being, they have a good motive to lie to you. So finding the right supplier that has vetting a supplier is an important part of the process in the supply chain, but then doing your own due diligence. So every product that the food movement makes is third party tested multiple times.

10:37
And we test for, and these are industry standards, you know, every good company does this. We test for microbiological contamination, and then we test for heavy metal content.

10:52
And then the third aspect of that is botanical identification. So just making sure the Moringa is Moringa. And there's essentially like a botanical fingerprint that validates that. That's the easiest part. But it's an important part because sometimes, you know, depending on who you're buying stuff from, you have no guarantee that it is what it says it is.

11:21
Yes, and that's exactly what I was trying to get to. So thank you for telling me all that. And I'm not picking on you, Rob, at all. I just, this is my podcast. I'm the only one doing it. And I have to make sure that what I'm telling people and what I'm letting people tell my listeners is accurate. So I'm not trying to be a brat about this. I'm just trying to play devil's advocate a little bit, if you get what I'm saying.

11:51
Well, yeah, and I could play, you know, devil's advocate in the other direction. You know, I think, I think it is important to hold supplement companies accountable. It's also important to hold drug companies accountable. Oh, yes. Yes. Important to hold food companies accountable, you know, and I will just, I hate to harp on this point about, you know, you're talking about supply chain. So how do we know the food movement products are good?

12:20
And so I'm going to use some concrete ways that we're doing third party testing, whatever. But we also go a step further, which is that we recommend you buy our products in a local health food store close to you. There's some great stores in the Twin Cities. Mastells is a store in St. Paul that I highly recommend as a great source to buy not just our products, but products that are also reputable.

12:50
They're very thorough in how they look at what they carry. I'm sure many other independent stores are as well. Because you can Google this, fraudulent supplements sold on Amazon. So you have brands that have been sold for many years. Two that come to mind are Host Defense Mushrooms and Now Foods right here in Illinois. And they found that there were sellers on Amazon

13:18
that were making counterfeit versions of their products. They actually found this out on one of the host defense products, there was a typo. So someone, some criminal, I hate to say it that way, had made a counterfeit version of their product. You're hoping what was actually in the capsules was not harmful. Right. But at the very least, it wasn't what it said it was. And...

13:46
That's because when you buy things online, you have less accountability. Both of those companies that I just mentioned, they only ship directly to customers, to retail customers, wholesale customers in this case. So if you go into Mastel's or any other health food store and you buy a host defense product, a now foods product, a food movement product, you know the chain of custody has been

14:16
honored has been properly handled and that it is what it says it is because it came directly from the manufacturer who does their due diligence. So I think it comes back to dealing with reputable brands and when people go and I'm you know I might get in trouble for saying this because you know somebody's gonna there's somebody out there who has an Amazon only brand who's gonna say wait a minute you can buy good supplements on Amazon what are you talking about but

14:46
And I'm not saying you should never buy anything on Amazon because since, you know, this fraud and counterfeiting of supplements came out, I understand that Amazon has put processes in place to try to validate in a greater way the products that they're carrying and you know, that's great. That's fantastic. But I think it's twofold. You know, one, when you walk into a health food store, by and large, they're

15:16
brands that they have vetted, that our industry has vetted through third-party means. And so there is some accountability. You can feel good about what you're purchasing. And if you ask the store, how do you know this is a good brand? What made you decide to carry this brand of Moringa? They have an answer. Well, they do third-party testing. Their sourcing is consistent.

15:45
You know, they have good relationships with reputable suppliers. Mm hmm. Okay. Awesome. So now my next thing, I, I am not at all downplaying what you have created because I think that supplements are very important and have their place. But I also feel like we should as a human species be getting most of what we need nutritionally from our diet.

16:15
Now, you know as well as I do that our country does not promote people getting what they need nutritionally from their diet. Thank you McDonald's and Burger King and all those places. And the reason I even bring this up is because I live on a 3.1 acre property and we grow a garden every summer and we try to grow things that are good for us to eat that support our bodies. And so what is...

16:44
Why do we need supplements, I guess is my question. Yeah, so there are a number of reasons. So as we kind of started off saying, we have really two kinds of products. We have whole foods as supplements, really just whole food, superfoods, really no different than something you would have grown and dried and.

17:12
you know, in this case powderized, but they haven't been processed, they haven't been extracted. They are raw foods, essentially. And I take the case of maca. So I'm going to venture to guess that you don't grow maca on your farm. No, no, we do not. And that's probably good because there have actually been studies that found that the

17:41
And it grows in that climate, in that region, in part because of the altitude. It's a high altitude. It's also a very rich volcanic soil. And it is native to that area and they've tried growing makarut in other places. There was a study published looking at cultivating makarut in Eastern Europe, because that could be a great cash crop, you know, over there. But

18:08
They found that it did not have the same potency, didn't have the same properties and qualities that indigenous maka root does. So Peru realizing this and maka being a cash crop, they only allow the export of maka root as a finished product. In this case, ours is certified organic, traditionally sun dried, and it's in a powder. So,

18:37
I say all that to say, you know, maka root is something you cannot grow yourself. Right. Very, you know, to my knowledge, it'd be very hard and it would not necessarily be as good as what you're getting from Peru. And maka offers as a whole food, some really unique benefits. So I think the answer is probably both. And that word, supplement, you know, so it's not replacement. We don't sell. Right.

19:05
meal replacements or food replacements. We sell something to supplement your diet to give you benefits that you would not necessarily get from just the diet that you already eat. Okay. So you've brought up maca a couple of times. What are the benefits of it? So maca, yeah, I mean, maca is a great example just because, you know, it is something you

19:34
to source from the region it's indigenous to, from Peru. So it's a great example. Same with moringa. I mean, you can grow moringa other places. So these are the foods we're offering as supplements, right? So maca itself is what we like to call an adaptogen. And adaptogens are plants that can non-specifically increase a state of resistance. So it means basically that they strengthen the systems of the body.

20:04
So a lot of people feel more energy taking maca. It also has been shown in studies to help with reproductive health. So it has some hormonal balancing properties and that could be, you know, on one end of the spectrum, helping, you know, somebody's reproductive health. And then you can extend that.

20:32
out to later stages of life. It's been shown to help with things like prostate health and dealing with symptoms of menopause.

20:44
Okay, that's what I wanted to know because I know nothing about maca. I think I read about it maybe five years ago and went, eh, I don't need it. And then I didn't look at it again. So thank you for the information. Absolutely. Goodness sake. It's allergy season again in Minnesota. It's dry and gross here. Oh my gosh. Sorry. Yeah. Yes, I won't try to recommend any supplements.

21:12
for your allergy symptoms on this podcast, because that is one thing we don't do. We're not, and that's an interesting distinction with supplements, right? You have the laws in the United States. You sell supplements to support the natural structure and function of body symptoms, but not to treat disease or illness. And that's an interesting sort of line there. It's a law called Deshae.

21:42
And people don't always stick to those rules. But certainly there are lots of great formulas that can potentially help with allergy symptoms, for example. But that's kind of the crossover between food and what we would call medicine. And another thing about supplements, what you're saying.

22:13
you're growing your own food. And the question is, why would I need supplements? You know, can't I get it all from food? And I think I the reason I brought that up is, is I want to hope that we can get what we need from our food. But I know we can't. So go ahead. Well, and you got to look at the the evolution of the human body. And it happened over thousands, if not millions of years, where we've adapted to our environment.

22:41
The problem is that our environment has radically changed over the last 100 plus years to where we're not just dealing with, I mean think about, and you may not be living this way, but the average person has, I mean, I can only speculate, 100 times more stress than we did in our evolutionary history. I bet it's even higher than that, but yes, I get what you're saying. And we have, let's say...

23:10
100-folds, 100-folds more exposure to pollution, kinds of pollution that we never dealt with. So I think the point being that in the modern world, our nutritional needs may be increased beyond the level that normal, even normal amounts of food might provide. Yep. Yeah. Because of this, you know, even...

23:38
the sort of mainstream government bodies recommend adding B vitamins to enrich cereal products. So it's actually since 1998 a rule that if you're selling, you know, grain products that you're supposed to be adding B vitamins like folic acid and niacin, other B vitamins, very small amounts. You know, I think that's where our industry differs because if you want a therapeutic

24:08
you probably are going to look towards a supplement outside of just enriched grains. And I'm not sure. I would rather eat less processed grains and take a more effective supplement. So I was, I was just going to say the same thing. Okay. We're on the same page here. Yeah. I mean, you got to look at if you, you feel like the, I feel like the body is a natural healer. If you give it the right nutrients that it can

24:37
heal itself, really. And so that's where the original approach to supplementation that I encountered, if you go back maybe not even quite a hundred years, but the early 20th century, where folks were talking about using vitamins in conjunction with the whole foods diet, it was to identify deficiencies. And one of the biggest deficiencies, and I really

25:06
zoom in on this for the food movement. One of our areas of focus are minerals and trace minerals in particular because that's an area of deficiency that we don't often talk about. People talk about vitamin deficiency. Oh, you know, look at your diet. You're really not getting enough B vitamins. You're dealing with a lot of stress. You need to think about

25:34
water soluble, they don't build up in the body and they may help. A lot of people feel a real difference taking an effective B vitamin supplement, but the minerals above and apart from the vitamins. So magnesium is a major mineral. A lot of folks find that they're not getting enough of in their diet, especially if they're eating at those places you mentioned before.

26:02
If you're on the Super Size Me diet, you're probably magnesium deficient. Most likely, yes. But there's this broad range of over 70 trace minerals that in our evolutionary history were part of our diet because they were part of our agriculture. When people were doing crop rotation, when people were doing composting and those kind of things, there was a natural balance of trace minerals, trace elements that were

26:32
recycled, you know, that were part of the life cycle. Switch fast forward to a big agra, you know, modernized food systems. And there was a turning point. You could call it an evolutionary U-turn where big agra decided, you know what we really need to make big profitable crops in P and K, you know, we need these three elements because they're what make plants.

27:01
grow strong or grow big, I should say. And N, P, and K are nitrogen.

27:12
Oh my gosh, nitrogen, phosphorus.

27:22
And potassium maybe? Yes, thank you. Okay, yep. Well, it's definitely Monday over here. Nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, thank you. But yeah, the focus on those. I live in cornfields. I hear about nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium all the time. And if you look at our natural evolution, we weren't getting crops that were fed just nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium.

27:49
they had a broad range of other minerals. You know, they had, and if you look at even just traditional farming outside of big agra, adding things like limestone as a natural source of calcium, that puts nutrients back in our food. You know, the trace mineral is a little more elusive because it's at a trace amount.

28:19
So you're talking maybe parts per million, and what the modern system has said, your body doesn't need that. I know it was there for thousands, millions of years as we evolved, but we don't see a need for it. And I think the naturalist looks at how things have evolved and how they've been done prior to now, prior to modernization, and they go, wait a minute, if it was part of the system,

28:48
part of the cycle, if it was part of how we evolved, the need for it may not be as pronounced as, for example, a calcium deficiency or magnesium deficiency, because you need more of those. We know that you need much larger amounts of calcium and magnesium than you do of, say, chromium.

29:16
thousand milligrams or more of calcium a day. You need, based on what we know, micrograms of chromium.

29:27
But there's no chromium in the crops that are being grown with NPK as fertilizer by big agro. And where else are you going to get chromium if not from a supplement? Early natural products looked at supplementing with nutritional yeast was a really popular kind of whole food supplement. And it's naturally rich in chromium.

29:55
is a big factor in blood sugar metabolism. It helps to regulate insulin sensitivity in the body. It's a big correlation between potential blood sugar disruptions and chromium intake. And you don't need a lot. We're talking about maybe hundreds of micrograms, so less than a

30:26
but there's still great evidence that you need these micro-minerals and rather than picking ones out to supplement, well let's just take some chromium and then let's take some manganese. What the food movement is focused on is a broad spectrum of these trace minerals as they occur in nature and we use a very ancient plant material called humates.

30:54
And that's what we sell as black earth minerals. And that's made from lignite, which is basically, like you say, very, very old plant material that's broken down over long periods of time. And then it results in these organic acids and this broad array of trace minerals. Wow, that's a lot of information. So I'm gonna, I would love to have 10 more minutes of your time if you have it.

31:24
Absolutely. Yeah. Okay. So I want to break this down into layman's terms for my listeners, because I'm listening to you and I love words and I read a lot. So everything you're saying is actually sinking in. But what it comes down to is what you've done is you have taken these really good for people things, broken them down into things that can be ingested and used by the body

31:55
So my big question is how does this stuff taste? Because I know kids who take medicine and will spit it out because it tastes gross. So how do the supplements taste? Yeah, that's a great question. And I'm realizing now I didn't say it at the start, but it's part of the Hippocratic oath. Do no harm? First, do no harm. Primare no ser noctum, right? That's our...

32:23
primary responsibility and that's partly why it's called the food movement, you know, because there are some really interesting supplements that are not food and that are, you know, things that can be useful. But I think the safest path forward is to stick to things that are food. The exception to that is probably the black earth minerals which are made from food because it's very old plant matter broken down. It is...

32:52
I'd sort of say it's ancient foods. Sure, yes. Like ancient grains, but ancient foods. Yeah, yeah. But the answer to how does it taste, I think the greatest thing, we have a lot of parents that use our black earth zeolite, which uses our black earth minerals with an extract of volcanic mineral called Kleinoptilolite. Sorry, I know I'm throwing out a lot of food.

33:20
As you say, I'm throwing out a lot of terms here. And, you know, I think, but the bottom line, I think this is, I love words as well. And I try to be clear and not just to throw words around. And I think one of the great things about Black Earth Minerals is that we didn't come up with this, you know, one supplement that's been very popular lately, sort of because of social media and whatnot, is called Shilajit.

33:49
And you may have heard of that one. I'm sure some of your listeners have heard of Shilajit. It's just really trending. It is an ancient Ayurvedic from India, Indian traditions, humate. So it's very much like our black earth minerals, but it comes from India and it's sourced up in the mountains. And you know, and I say that to say, a lot of these influencers are saying, you really want Shilajit that tastes bad.

34:19
You know it's good stuff if it smells like a horse's feet and it tastes the same. That's how you know you got the good stuff. I'm sort of going like, well, this is an interesting world that we're living in now. When I got into this business, people complained that spirulina, it's an amazing superfood, but it tastes so terrible. The industry responded by making products that had spirulina and then a bunch of sugar

34:49
flavorings like wild berry and banana. So you take something that's naturally not necessarily tasty, and then you try to make it fit the modern paradigm. We don't do that. If you look at our black earth minerals, we have a black earth fulvic, is just the most basic liquid extract. Most of the feedback we get from reviews and things like that is that it does not taste

35:19
bad. It does not taste strongly. I think I would put our black earth minerals up against Shilajit as tasting a heck of a lot better, get a lot higher compliance with kids. And that's not to say there's anything wrong with Shilajit. I mean, Shilajit, I love, you know, what taste is a matter of conditioning. So they say you have to taste something I've heard like what 11, 12 times before you'll develop a taste for it.

35:50
And in American processed foods, we develop a love for salty and for sweet, but maybe not as much for savory or bitter taste. And I think that the more I have changed my diet since I was young and eating more processed foods, I develop more of a taste for those.

36:16
I mean, Shilajit, you know, we don't sell that. We sell a North American version in our black earth minerals, but it's got this smoky, bitter kind of flavor that I find myself sometimes kind of craving. There's a different company, not our company, but that has a Shilajit honey. And it is this complex taste. You know how sweet honey is? I mean, it's like.

36:44
It's just pure sweetness, right? And nothing tastes like honey. It's very sweet, but yes, nothing tastes like honey. So I'm guessing you're going there with this. Well, you gotta look for the Shilajit honey because I mean, they call it campfire honey, not because you eat it around the campfire because it tastes like it fell in the campfire, but it's got a smoky, savory taste to it. And I just, I think,

37:14
There's something to that about, you know, a lot of our products are made to not be tasted. To your original point, you know, that if you dilute our minerals in water, it will change the color. It gets very dark because of the fulvic acid and the humic acid, but it really just tastes like water. I mean, our ultimate trace minerals, 10X, is a black earth mineral that you dilute in water.

37:42
put about 20 drops in a bottle of water or whatever you're drinking. And I don't taste it at all. And a lot of the reviews we've gotten say that they don't mind the taste, they don't notice the taste. It's a very...

38:00
you know, not a strong unpleasant taste, if anything. So neutral. Yeah. I think that's a great way to put it. Kind of a neutral tasting way to take these minerals, whereas other kinds of trace minerals that we don't make, like the ones that are extracted from the Great Salt Lakes, it's a good way to get minerals, but they're very, very salty. And if you don't dilute those, man, you will just spit it out because it tastes like you swallowed some of the ocean.

38:29
you know, which you don't swallow that, you know. Yeah, and if you can taste that much salt in something you're drinking, you probably shouldn't be drinking it. It's not good for your body. I think it's okay. You know, it really depends on how much salt you're taking in otherwise, you know? Right. I think trace minerals from the Great Salt Lake, just to be sort of objective about products we don't make, you know, that they're good sources of trace minerals. You do want to dilute them.

38:58
but it's more about how much salt. Like if you're taking that supplement and you're eating at McDonald's where they're adding a lot of sodium, then you're gonna spike way high above what your sodium intake should be, but probably more so because of the processed foods. I mean, if you're eating whole foods and you're, let's say you're adding Himalayan sea salt, you know, or I'm sorry, Himalayan salt or sea salt to your food, I think you're safe to add a reasonable amount.

39:27
You know, your body will kind of tell you. But if you go around eating cheese whiz, you know, that's been spiked with tons of sodium, yeah, studies show that your body will start craving more sodium than you really should be taken in. And since you said all that, I always anytime I have anybody on the podcast who is talking about supplements or.

39:56
herbal, I don't know, salves or lotions or anything where you are taking something into your body or into your skin that you don't normally do, make sure that you talk to your doctor before you start anything new. And that's only because sometimes things do interact with maybe medications you're already taking or maybe you have diabetes and something that you are going to take is going to mess with that. So

40:24
Anytime you're going to start a new thing that affects your biology, talk to your doctor. That's all I want to say about that. Yeah, no, I think that's a very safe recommendation to have. And you know, I think that's a really good thing about that is it may make people think about

40:46
the medical care that they have. Because if you go to your doctor and you ask them about Shiela Jeans, what are they gonna say? Or if, you know, and if what they say is, well I- They're probably gonna say, what is that? They're gonna say, well, I don't know. And if I were in that position, that doctor, and I didn't know, I would say, maybe you shouldn't take that because I don't know what it is.

41:14
So this is gonna sound really harsh, but I don't mean it this way. A question you may wanna ask yourself in addition to asking your doctor is how much do you wanna be limited by the knowledge range of your doctor? And is it time to shop around? Are there holistic doctors that may have the medical knowledge you're referring to, but also some of this natural information? So there are...

41:43
integrative doctors, and you can have more than one healthcare practitioner, right? You can go see a general practitioner and then go see a rheumatologist. And if you want to get really radical, you can go see an herbalist. You can go see a wise woman as you, they're still out there. So, I mean, it's, I think it is a great suggestion of what you just said to ask your doctor. But I think in this modern

42:11
realm we have to be ready for that answer of I have no idea what you're talking about, you know? Yes. And thank you for pointing all that out because I was going to say back 10 minutes ago that it's unfortunate that our doctors, our general practitioner doctors are not really up to date on herbs and minerals and vitamins because they're really not.

42:39
Our doctors that we have, my son's doctor is fantastic. I love her, but if I brought up Shilohji, she would be like, what are you talking about? And she's really, really smart, but she wasn't taught this stuff. And so when we go to our general practitioner for a checkup, they're like, okay, so your heart rate is good, your blood pressure is good, your lungs sound good, your skin looks good, you can see, you can hear, you can talk, go home. Yeah.

43:07
There's so much more to health than just those five things. And so I think that what you're saying is absolutely right, that you can have a general practitioner who gives you a checkup like your car would get at the mechanic. And then you can go to a nutritionist and say, I'm kind of feeling puny.

43:32
If I eat these things, but I'm feeling great if I eat these things, I think there's a disconnect somewhere, help me. And you can go to an herbal person and be like, okay, my nutritionist said, and then we got talking and she said, I want to talk to you because you're going to know things I don't know. And then you go to a rheumatologist. I mean, there are so many people who know things that the other ones don't know. And it frustrates me to no end. I can't, I'm not allowed to talk about.

44:01
why my son has a doctor who he adores. And it's nothing life threatening, but it is definitely a life inconveniencing. And I wish that his doctors would talk to each other more about how to fix the problem, because it's going to be a lifelong thing, and it gets in the way of him having a fulfilling life. And so I'm probably gonna end up stepping in here in the next six months and saying, okay, guys,

44:31
The things you're doing aren't making this better. I mean, it's not as bad as it was, but it's not making it better. Who do I talk to who knows more than you? Because I need someone who knows more than you on this. And I think I've, you know, I could, I don't wanna go, you know, over your time here, but you know, the, I will say I've got a daughter who's at this point an adult. She's

45:00
one of my kids is in college and thankfully we discovered something called functional medicine. And so she went to see an MD starting in her early teenage years because she had a wide range of issues. And he was functional medicine is a phrase that can possibly be helpful. You know, looking for a practitioner who practices functional medicine.

45:29
I'm sure there are many different kinds of functional medicine, but it seems to include nutrition and focus on things like food allergies. In her case, my daughter's case, she found that cutting out gluten, cutting out dairy, cutting out corn, and originally some other things that she added back in like eggs. She eats eggs with no issue at this point. But it was...

45:58
Number one, identifying those potential irritants or I don't know if you'd call them pathogens, but just foods that you're sensitive to or maybe even allergic to depending on the person. And that's something you don't get from a general practitioner in my experience. They don't, you know, they might send you to an allergist or a nutritionist, but functional medicine seems to be kind of straddling.

46:28
couple of those realms and also dealing with supplements. And one of the things that's really interesting is now, and with that practitioner as well, they sell supplements. So you go in, you find out, okay, you're sensitive to gluten, you're sensitive to dairy, cut those out, you're gonna see a huge benefit. They may recommend some lifestyle things. And by the way, you need to take these three supplements and we have them behind the counter.

46:58
Right. And that kind of enters into a whole new realm there where now the health food stores are complaining, wait a minute, you know, they could buy a lot of those things from us at a better price, but you know, the doctors have identified a revenue stream. So you get this, what it used to be, I think what I've found is that 20 years ago, those kind of doctors were sending people to the health food store. Yes.

47:27
as a practitioner has really ramped up. And, you know, it's neither bad nor good, right? I mean, I think it's good in, but, you know, it goes back to your point about your kind of having to be the advocate for your child and to navigate in between these practitioners and these options. And that's where something like common sense goes. You know, I know Dr.

47:57
Smith, it's not the name, but you know, let's say Dr. Smith is recommending this $50 supplement that includes CoQ10 and some other things. But I'm thinking that I could maybe find something and I'm going to get in trouble with any functional medicine. Wait a minute, he's telling them to go off their script. But we have to navigate these things for ourselves between what one practitioner says or sells.

48:27
and what our common sense tells us and what our own research tells us. And I think it's gonna be a good process if people really trust themselves and they trust their ability to, you know, because I think a lot of times we get made to feel it's the way medical expertise works. You know, trust me, I'm a doctor. And you're supposed to sort of relinquish a certain amount of control.

48:55
You know, my uncle was a PhD scientist at NASA at one point. And he said, you know, I look at my practitioner as a consultant. He's not telling me what to do. He's giving me advice that I'm paying for. And I thought to myself, oh my gosh, Jerry, your doctor must love seeing you walk in the door if that's your approach, you know.

49:19
Yeah, doctors don't love me either because they're like, you need to do A, B, C, and D. And I'm like, well, what about E, F, and G? Because I know there's an E, F, and G coming down the pike. So, so yeah, I always tell my doctors when I meet them, I'm like, so I read a lot. My dad was a, he was in the medical field. So I learned a lot just by listening to him talk about his job. You're probably not going to like me much. And they usually just laugh. So. Yeah, you know, and their jobs aren't easy. And.

49:50
They have limitations, things like liability, right? If that is one thing I've been told, and this may be changing, I'm sure it is, but I've been told point blank by practitioners, look, taking whole foods and vitamins may be very well and good, but it's outside the scope of my malpractice insurance. So if I start telling someone to take Shilajit, and they have a terrible reaction,

50:18
I'm liable for whatever reactions they have and that's not a risk I'm willing to take. Yep. It's so the medical profession and the medical thing we have in our country is so frustrating and so difficult to navigate sometimes. But on the plus side, at least we have it because I would be

50:42
I would be heartbroken if anything happened to my kid that I was talking about and his doctors are very good with him. So I'm thankful for them. And on that note, I'm going to let you go because we've been talking for almost an hour, Rob. I didn't mean to wind this so far out. Well, thank you. It's been a great conversation and I agree with you that, you know, doctors are very important.

51:09
And I think food is very important. So it's an interesting conversation. You know, we've got to, we've all got to find, you know, what works for us and our families. And thanks to you for asking important questions. I always do because I have something called got to know itis. I want to know all the answers possible before I die. Rob, thank you so much for your time and you have a wonderful rest of your day. Thanks, Mary. I hope you have a great day too. All right. Bye.