Reed Davis 0:00  
Why are you putting your health in someone else's hands? Aren't we supposed to be in control of our own lives and health and self-determined it takes some education, but you can do it.

Claudia von Boeselager 0:11  
Welcome to another episode of The Longevity and Lifestyle Podcast. I'm your host Claudia von Boeselager. Here to uncover the groundbreaking strategies, tools, and practices from the world's pioneering experts to help you live at your best and reach your highest potential. If you want to get top tips, insights, and strategies for optimizing your life, health, and longevity, grab my weekly newsletter by going to LLinsider.com. My guest today is Reed Davis. Reed is a board-certified holistic health practitioner and Certified Nutritional therapist, an expert in functional lab testing and holistic lifestyle medicine. He's the founder of Functional Diagnostic Nutrition, Reid served as a health director at a Wellness Centre in Southern California for over 10 years. And with over 10,000 clients is known as one of the most experienced clinicians in his field. Reed serves on the advisory board of the American natural wellness coaches board and the American Association of natural wellness coaches. Read it's a pleasure to have you on The Longevity and Lifestyle podcast today. Welcome.

Reed Davis 1:21  
Thank you so much for having me here, Claudia; hope I can make a contribution to your show and your audience. be so

Claudia von Boeselager 1:29  
excited to have you on MRI, then I'd love to start with functional medicine and those who listen to me a bit longer. I harp on the importance of looking at things from a functional medicine perspective. So excited to dive into it today. And for that unfamiliar Reed, can you explain a little bit? What is functional medicine? What are its main goals? And how does it differ from traditional medicine?

Reed Davis 1:53  
Well, it is a form of medicine. So it's kind of an evolution. So when I started 25 years ago, there was just basically standard medicine, you can call it conventional or, what you like, standard medicine. And then there was alternative medicine, which was considered kind of quackery at the time, are people looking at inserts and really hard for another way. And that's when I came to the field 25 years ago, and people were searching for another way. But anyway, we'll talk about that. But the evolution has been a kind of from alternative to complimentary considered because a lot of people started to accept that, hey, these alternative guys have a better way, or they have a way that's a little different. So from alternative complementary, complementary to integrative, we're now it's like expected, you want to have some alternative guy or gal, you know, in your practice somewhere, offering alternatives. So they it's still parallel. And now functional medicine is the latest in that sort of evolution; it's still medicine, it still requires a license, it still is bound by standard of care, by the same rules apply. And yet, it's a little further along in looking for underlying causes and conditions versus just treating symptoms or managing a disease process, you know, so, so it's a good thing. And my commentary on it would be that it still has a way to go. Because it is still very much attached to standard of care, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, you have to label it, you have to have codes, you have to, you know, the financial model is very much the same, going through insurance or national care, whatever that might be, depending on where you live, the United States is very much dominated still by the insurance companies, then they're all independent, they all offer different, what's covered, and that's what you get, you're gonna get what's covered, whether it's a standard care physician or a functional physician, they might work a little bit harder to get you some of the alternative labs as we do. And so I think that explains it, you know, there's, again, it's different, and that they're, they're at least thinking about root causes. But it's the same in that they're still bound by standard of care and licensure, and the paymaster in the United States, it would be the insurance companies. So where is it going to evolve that was what we probably want to talk about a little bit.

Claudia von Boeselager 4:35  
Yeah, so let's, let's touch on that. And just to recap for people just listening. So you know, also for me, just to differentiate for the looking at the just disease and looking for a disease and trying to solve for that and the more traditional Western medicine app, as is, you know, in 2023, versus a functional medicine perspective, which is more root cause like what is causing this illness like what is behind it, and then researching that and trying to solve for that, which I just find so beautiful. It makes total sense, in my view. But would you say that the challenge of the, as you call them, paymaster, like who's paying the bills, i.e., the insurance companies, and what they decide, is that the biggest hurdle to the adaptation of functional medicine as a gold standard, do you think?

Reed Davis 5:24  
I think it's huge, you know, there's a lot of influences on standard medicine. And it's hard to break away; if you have a license, you're going to want to make your school loans, which can be extraordinary. You go out and use, you know, you start an office, and now you've got leases, then you have the equipment, you have to buy or lease, and you don't even have any staff or customers yet. So physicians start off in a lot of debt. And, you know, there's, they signed contracts with insurance companies, that's how you get your customers. You know, they're not great marketers, or even business people. They just want to help, you know, but they kind of get locked into this system. And it's unfortunate that it hasn't evolved further yet. But the good news is that other sorts of nonlicensed types of practicing have evolved much faster. And so there is a way for the people, the overriding concern for me is the people, you know, the sick people, you know, not not the systems that don't care about those, and in all the different machinations of what's going on, it's how do we get control back into the hands of the person who has something about their health, that they want to change, and so they can go, you know, back where I started quarter century ago, I'll just alternative. So the term medicine itself is we don't call it that we call it Functional Diagnostic Nutrition. But nutrition is more nurturing nutrition for the soul, nutrition for the mind, and spirit and everything. So it's, we call it Functional Diagnostic Nutrition, we're not bound by licensure, there is no big white coat, daddy, or you know, government or you know, anything is really going to keep us under that tight control, we can absolutely number one most important thing, the only thing that concerns us is what's best for that person. Now just paying the bill, because generally, it's the person it is generally considered a fee for service, which means the person who's sick is paying to get unsick, you know, and realizing that they need to be in charge of their own health. That's where it really starts.

Claudia von Boeselager 7:55  
Yeah. And part of that journey, of course, is testing. So let's talk about functional medicine testing. And, you know, what are the typical different types for people listening to functional medicine testing? And maybe you can also share for each of the different areas, you know, what does the test do? What is it for? How often should one get tested? And what type of diseases can it help prevent?

Reed Davis 8:23  
Well, the answer to all these things is always it depends on the person. And yet I was able to, very, very fortunately, was able to recognize some patterns in the functional lab work. So, functional lab work looks a little further upstream for causal factors. And I pretty much quit using the term root cause I mean, it's, it's, I used to have it in my signature, I find the root cause, you know, but it's so elusive, Badea there's not enough labs, there's no magical device or assessment tool. There are labs that are evolving, they're getting better and better at looking at different aspects of what I've termed now metabolic chaos. And so that term really explains what's going on. If I was to show you some schematics and diagrams I have of how the body actually works. It's very confusing. It could be confusing. So in that, 10 years that I spent in the office running labs 1000s, And I tried every lab that was these were sometimes new alternatives to this day, Claudius, some of them reconsidered, research, you saw many, so doctors don't even use them because they can't provide a diagnosis with that test. So they just record the individual labs, and we're not bound by that we can just use lat new labs that are looking for something going on upstream, some imbalance, you know, some weakness, and these do dysfunction, these kinds of things, which, by the way, this is another thing you won't hear hardly anywhere is the discussion of all these causal factors, then the effect they have on each other brother, I don't want to say complicated, but creating more chaos that the can and does need to be sorted out for the person. So, to answer your question, what's a functional lab test, it's one that looks a little farther upstream than just the standard blood test. And This came from when I first started, amazing stories started to occur just started happening because I was not interested in standard bloodwork. So many of our patients coming in that office, when I first started in the last century, they'd already been told nothing's wrong with you, like their standard bloodwork didn't show anything of value because it wasn't far enough out of range to be labeled anything. So there was no diagnosis. And we certainly came or had no interest in diagnosing anything, specifically. And by the way, you need a license to do that. So I was just a researcher who came out of the environmental law field and saving the planet, decided I wanted to work with people changed, jobs went to work in the clinic that was that allowed me to do some very interesting research, and that after 10 years resulted in, you know, when you start recognizing little miracles occurring, you know, you start to wonder, are you onto something, I think that I was, and it turned into an actual step by step methodology. And so functional labs look for what's really wrong. Or if they can't identify it precisely, they can get close enough to it. So these root causes, you may never know. But if you recognize enough for these upstream, I call it the constellation of healing opportunities. And that provides a much broader, much more relative, much more explanatory, understandable, it explains why people feel so lousy when no one else can tell them. Well, here are 10 things that are all out of balance, and they're having an effect on each other. So we just have a system, a way of thinking, that sorts it out and then is able to give the person things to do. So our protocols are drug-free and self-directed by that patient or person; our clients have to eat right and go to bed on time and exercise and reduce stress. And you've heard that word before. Stress, and then you know, and supplementation can be important and things. So it's lifestyle remedies for lifestyle-based diseases. And what we use in the labs to sort it out. Can you talk about some

Claudia von Boeselager 13:04  
of the typical cases, if you will, of patients who come to you, what are the complaints? And what are some of the markers in their panels, their blood panels that come back that you're like, Okay, this is clear. So in case somebody's listening and being like, okay, my blood results, you know, might be actually out of being still in the normal range, according to what a traditional but from a functional perspective, they're not optimized. What are some typical use cases? You see,

Reed Davis 13:32  
there's that, but we have to go beyond that. The body runs saliva testing, urine testing, stool testing, hair testing, and blood work and makes these discoveries and gives people things to do or not do. And so, early on, a lady came in the office, and she had been coming in for chiropractic care, mostly for her neck and back pain. She was Middle East. She was looking very sad to me one day, and I said, What's wrong? She said, it's this weight, you know, and this is a very common thing. Of course, she was about 40 pounds overweight, and that's substantial enough to cause her distress, so I can see it on her face. And I said, What's wrong? Oh, it's just waiting. I'm so tired of this weight. And I'm just really sick of it and not feeling good today about that. And I said, What are we going to do about it? Let's do something. Oh, there's nothing I can do. She told me. She said, Claudia. I'm on this medication for the hives. She gets big blotchy patches on her skin. I'm on medication for the hives, and I've been on it for two years. And I can't get off it, or I get the hives, and it makes me fat. And before I could say something, she said, and you know, read, I was at the doctor the other day for a checkup, and he told me, I told them how upset I was about the 40 pounds that this medication caused her to gain. And she said that he told her she could be fat, or she could have the hives to take her pick. And then before I could get it, I was really like, says, she goes, and you know, read that I told him how depressing that was in he said, or I'll give you some medication for depression if you want. So, this is just one story of many, many, many like this started to have a repeating theme here I was offering people alternative testing that what they now call functional, functional medicine wasn't a common term back then it was just alternative testing. And so we ran some, I said, Hey, why don't you find out why you get the hives? And it never had occurred to her or her physician or anything? She goes, Well, what do you mean, you know, she was in for chiropractic, and her head turned so fast, I thought she wouldn't need her adjustment that day, you know, so anyway, but we ran a couple of laps on it, she was sensitive to some things in her environment in her diet, that eliminated those. And within just a couple of weeks, she was off her medication. And she was working out to a sweat, which she couldn't do before cuz even on the meds, the sweat would cause the hives. And she hadn't had a hot shower in two years. Because that gave her the hives even on the medications. So within two weeks, he's working out to sweat and taking hot showers. She certainly had changed her diet and some things. And this is very common. So I knew I was onto something. And that like, like that happened, I didn't even know what I was doing. back then. I was just the guy in the office that ran labs on everybody like anything they could afford to do. And it was all cash out of pocket. We weren't billing insurance for it. We were just doing what was right for the person if they were willing to invest. And I could give you many cases like that. With kids, especially with kids, because they're so well, they can be very reactive. But they also improve so quickly. Because kids are in an anabolic condition. They're, they're growing so they can overcome that when you're in a growing state, we call an anabolic versus catabolic, by the way, we measure that it's cortisol and DHEA. We have Yes, about what labs would you run. And so I run that lab and every person how catabolic versus anabolic Are you are your body breaking down, you know, there's a balance that we won't break down, it will rebuild. But there's a balance, so you can measure that. And when that's out of whack, you're in a catabolic state, well, your sex hormones are going to be next they're going to, you know, the estrogen to progesterone to testosterone, those ratios change in a negative way. The next thing that goes your immune system, so we'll be looking at the gut and the immune system to get 80%. So there's a measurement called Secretory IgA. So, by the way, you asked another really good question, who can do this testing? And where's that? Where's it sort of fit in? Anybody can get their hands on these. And that's how it should be. That's how medicine should be. It should be, hey, here are all these labs you can run to find out what's really wrong. Instead of just labeling a disease and taking a pill for it, that lady was on a pill and had never even been tested for what was causing the problem. But in some cases, you do get tested, you know, and I call it the sounds-like method. But I want to give you a chance to butt in here because I'll do this all day. I'll go for hours and hours. And I love talking about health and labs and want to make sure I answer your question. In the labs, we use your saliva, urine, stool, hair, and blood; of course, you use blood. But it's not the standard way of looking at it.

Claudia von Boeselager 19:04  
And the not standard way of looking at it is that you look above and beyond for different markers and also different ranges are can you expand on. What do you mean? Is it not the standard way of blood? Well, you can

Reed Davis 19:15  
it's more a way of thinking about the levels like, let's say, a person, and you asked me to for what are some of the common complaints. If a person has tiredness and fatigue and the hairs thinning, and they're gaining weight and can't seem to lose it, and they might even feel sad blue blood, they might have cold or numb extremities and constipation. Well, that's a very classic cluster of symptoms that points the finger at the thyroid. So and we might be inclined to we'd look at all of our labs because we don't know what's causing it. But you'd look at thyroid and go, oh, I pat myself on the back and found your problem. It's your hypo thyroid. And then what would you do if you give some One thing to someone who changed the numbers on the paper, oh, this is low. So we call it trading and paper. You know, it's like, okay, I and again, some of these symptoms are clusters of symptoms, symptomatology, it's very reliable, it will point the finger at the sort of immediate causal factor, low thyroid. And then if you know, here's your medication, let's get it just right, the Focus starts to become the level of medication; we call it titration. You titrate the medicine to get the numbers in the paper, right? And the person might even feel better, like a little less tired and fatigued. But as soon as they have another complaint, it'll be okay. Well, that sounds like so what I'm learning talking about; here's the sounds-like method. Sounds like thyroid; if I tell him don't break his wrist, patting yourself on the back, because there's the minute you lay down that diagnosis of hypo thyroid, you're going to forget about all the other things that that person could do to improve their function, the balance of the hormones, the immune system, digestion, detoxification system, all your systems need to be going. So that's the pattern that I recognize. As a matter of fact, there's an acronym, it's hidden, ha, D, D, E, N. And it's so that our investigation for ammonium in digestion, detoxification, energy production, and nervous system is very simple at-home testing that anyone could do. And that's your data; you deserve it, and you need to know it. And there's, you know, I'm training this army of people to measure those things, to help a person to help you, the consumer, you know, find out what's really wrong. And then there's no take this for that. We don't want to change the numbers on the paper. The numbers on the paper aren't the problem. They're the result of the problem. So that hypothyroidism is the result of something. You see some stressors that are further upstream if you want to use that analogy. And we have lots of analogies like that, that help people so that you get like a kid, I'll just tell you another quick cook, when the lady was coming in the office, and she was doing quite well. And she said, Read, do you work with children? And I said, Well, yeah, I'm a football coach. I've been coaching for 15 years. I love the children I raised for, so yeah, I think I work with kids. What do you mean? Why? Well, they want to send my son home from school for misbehavior. And unless I put them on drugs, they're gonna kick them out of school. And I said, Wait, you're telling me there's a doctor at school told sent is? No, no, this was just the teacher and the principal of the school. The headmaster, right? Okay. Well, that doesn't sound right. How old is your son, he's only nine years old. And so it sounds like he's just being a boy, you know, he kind of looks out the window and pokes the other kids and makes the odd shout out to inappropriately, you know, kind of like I was when I was a kid. And I said, Okay, I understand; well, I don't know if I can help or not. But we can run some tests and see if there's something that's upsetting his nervous system or something. Sure enough, he was sensitive to some foods and to some other things in the environment that we always checked for household cleaning products and personal care products; and there's there are labs, and you can see levels of things that shouldn't be there and, or that are highly sensitive to the immune system is overreacting. What lots of stuff. So, long story short, this guy, this principal of the school, three weeks after we started the boy, on this program, going to bed early, you know, a little more discipline, lots of discipline and food choices, and blah, blah, blah. So the principal tracked me down and said, Hey, this is a different kid. Like he pays attention. He's getting good grades, and he's not upsetting the classroom and this and that. And, yeah, yeah, that's good. Oh, that's good. Oh, I'm so happy to hear that, you know, but then his question was, What did you put him on? You know, and I was, okay, you're looking for the magic pill. And you know, I said, Sir, I'm sorry to tell you there's no magic pill. What we put him on was a better lifestyle, diet, sleep habits and things like, and he's like, okay, you know, it kinda like Nevermind, I thought we were gonna start a revolution at that school or something. So anyway, you get my point that by running lab testing that alternative lab tests, were able to find out what was upsetting his nervous system, or that with that lady, her thyroid when so many other cases we have seen asthma and migraine headaches, and you name it. Again, the easy ones are tiredness, fatigue, foggy thinking, overweight, sleeplessness, you know, or wakefulness, all these different common complaints that aren't a disease yet. Their symptoms change the bloodwork to anything catastrophic or urgent or what they call emergent, you know, like your, your, your blood, your blood sugar's okay, you're maybe a little high, you know, that's a good one to look for. And lots of other markers like that. So we don't do medication. Well, Mike, I think, you know, I teach a course fully accredited by the American Association of Drugless. Practitioners, which we're very proud of. And lots of others you mentioned, some boards that I belong to, and they asked me to serve because it was, I'm a servant, dude.

Claudia von Boeselager 26:00  
And you've also mentioned testing hair. For some people unfamiliar? Why would one test their hair? What are you looking for?

Reed Davis 26:10  
So here, what you can see, I've either been doing a lot of testing or can't do it anymore. Now, hair contains minerals that were kind of in your body in the last over a period of time. So they're great for mineral levels, as opposed to, let's say, the blood now you could get mineral levels and some other markers from the blood, but they're more immediate. There's more to what's going on that day. So we want how it is over time, so the hair gives us over time mineral levels, heavy metals, of course, lots of metals that are too high, and some of these minerals need to be more in balance. Low minerals can mean that you have poor digestion. And there are other sorts of functional assessments that can be done with hair. It's not our first test, but it's a good one. And yeah, so we will troubleshoot with hair; maybe there's exposure to something people with metals in their mouth, for instance, could do a find out a couple of different ways wants to the hair tissue, we've got to htma hair tissue mineral analysis. So, yeah, and you've heard of a one C for blood, like your hemoglobin a one C, it's a better market for blood sugar because blood sugar would change from day to day and even throughout the day. So depending on when you measured it, you wouldn't have an accurate assessment of what's really going on over time. So we use now that hemoglobin, a one C, just call it a one C. And yeah, that's a better mark. Well, hairs like that are what's going on over

Claudia von Boeselager 27:53  
time, which is really helpful. Yeah. Yeah. What about saliva? What are you looking for there? For people unfamiliar

Reed Davis 28:02  
saliva is a direct measurement of the bioavailable levels of whatever you can measure in it. And we mostly measure the hormones, you would DHEA and cortisol; as I said, these are stress hormones. So you want those imbalances, you could find out you're out of balance. Then while you're getting it, you might as well look at estrogen and progesterone, and testosterone. When we look at melatonin, we have a measure the secretory IgA, which is an immune system marker, in that same saliva test. Slide saliva is great because it's time specific and bioavailable. So it's, it's the levels in your system; they're actually being used and available to the cells. That would be the receptor cells. So it's because you can look in blood, and it's there, but it's not really being used; it's bound up by these binding globulins and things like that. So. So it's a bioavailable level, and it's time specific. So morning would be different than night. And that's a good thing. We, you know, because with cortisol, you're tracking the circadian rhythm. So you want to see the decimal moment. And we find out in lots of people it's not; it's a roller coaster. And they go, Well, that explains me. And that's the beauty of saliva testing and other tests for us when we show our results to people, it isn't just so all of this is low; you need to take some of this to raise it or take some of this to block it, you know, to lower it, whatever it might be. So we're not treating the paper. We're saying people with these levels typically have certain symptoms and in the end, and people are always amazed that it explains how they feel. They're not used to going to a practitioner and being in heaven at explaining to you know, they're not mysteries anymore. So there's these so-called mystery symptoms, you know, and a lot of practitioners are just shrugging their shoulders, I don't know why you feel that way. Your bloodwork looks normal. So this is the alternative to that, which explains exactly why you feel so lousy, you know, you're tired, you're fatigued, in the middle of the day, you're exhausted, then you go home at night, and you're, you know, people are self-medicating a lot. You know, they don't need real medicine, like a prescription yet. The doctor says, No, you're you'll be okay, come back every year, we'll check in when you're really bad, then we can treat you. We're trying to do the preventative anti-aging type of, you know, it's longevity and lifestyle medicine.

Claudia von Boeselager 30:47  
Exactly. I mean, I had a situation going back now a few years, but I felt terrible and went to a doctor. And he's like, Oh, well, your markers are okay. You know, first of all, like, these markers, like, who are they based on? My understanding is that from, you know, white males in the 1960s? First of all, like, well, you know, maybe the optimal levels for this guy are not the same as me. And the doctors, like none of these. So I was not feeling well, and he's like, Oh, but your blood is fine, you're fine. I was like, I'm not fine. Otherwise, it wouldn't be here. And it took me down the path of, you know, trying to really understand what was going on and looking at things from a different perspective. And I think that's part of, you know, do we want to go through life just being in this fine state and heading towards disease, or taking back our health using functional medicine tests to actually get ahead of the curve and ahead of any issues that may arise and optimize ourselves as well. So it's, I think it's really powerful and really exciting. It is.

Reed Davis 31:46  
And you're absolutely right, there's this, this does this too, I want to always add in that. If you weren't fine. Let's say you go and you have a complaint, and the doctor does find something; then that might be exactly what you want. And so early on, when I was learning this, you know, I always say that when I switched from environmental law and conservation and saving the whole planet, airborne water trees be super nice. I want to know more about people, I'm gonna study people instead of just all that. And I'd completely change gears, not meant to work in his clinic where everybody had already been eight practitioners, or 10, or 12, and wasn't better yet. I thought that was a complete rip-off that, well, that's to rip off, you know, like, but what I didn't know is they were looking in the wrong place. So these physicians who are doing what they do, they do it very well. These clients coming in didn't have a medical condition; they had their kind of their ladder done on the wrong wall. And the wall that they needed to be on didn't exist, there was no one really wholesale doing the kind of lab work, and it was very, it was hard to find somebody. That's why after 10 years, I started training, and I've trained 4000 people because the world needs more of us so that you can get your ladder on the right wall. So those doctors aren't bad people; they weren't doing anything wrong. You just didn't qualify for their form of service. And this was just, you know, palliative, you know, medication to make you feel better, but not really doing much for you otherwise,

Claudia von Boeselager 33:28  
no. And I think that that goes back to medical school and how the model is right, and how it's all about diagnosis, prescription diagnosis, prescription, and something outside of that realm is a bit like, oh, you know, I'm not, you know, there's no nutrition, for example, taught in medical school, which is the medicine you feed your body every day. Right. So, you know, clearly, there's a big gap in the system, which, thanks to functional medicine and testing, there is helping people get ahead and turn, you know, turn back any health conditions and become the best version of themselves, which is very exciting. Read, I'd love to talk about biohacking to start with, but let's talk about the difference between the science of the bio hack versus the science of the individual. That's a

Reed Davis 34:15  
great question. And, you know, like, here's a hack for Yeah, so these are called blue blockers. They're not dark, like some You see, I bought 500 pairs of these and started hanging them up. So So, there's a science behind blocking the blue light that's coming off of my computer that's right in front of me right now. And the other blue light that's in our lives on your cell phone. And it's, it's not that good for you, you should block some of it. So there's the science of that. How does that work? And you know, what we've discovered about blue light and things, but as to an individual, it's just kind of a that's why we call it a bio-hack. You know, you're so that you can end up wearing these and putting so Some red lights on your head and putting those things for your ears and up your nose. And all around, you could wrap yourself in seaweed and different things. So there's, there are people who sell that stuff. And they know all the science as it applies to a population. Well, I'm not a population, you're not a population, you're a person, you're an individual person. So I think so. So I've seen people waste an awful lot of money on things; these are always good bets. But there are some bio hacks that are just, you have no clue if they're going to help you. But their four grand, you know, their, their $10,000, or they're, they're more, you know. And it's amazing how much you can spend on biohacking equipment and tools that you really don't know if it's going to help you or not, just because it was the science was applied to a population. By the way, that's how drugs are tested. You mentioned diagnosis, prescription diagnosis, prescription, don't forget diagnosis surgery if the pills don't work, they just will just cut the part. So you know, and I want everybody listening to know that you don't have any extra parts. Even if you got two of them. No, you need them both. That's the deal. So don't take any parts away if you can help it. So the science of the bio hack is very sound; there's lots of money being spent researching how it applies if you apply it to 100 or 1000 people, but how it applies to you is different. And that's why you need the basic labs; we do hormone immune digestion, detoxification, energy production, and nervous system, the balance between sympathetic and parasympathetic when we talk about the nervous system, so that assessment first, then whatever the hell biohack you want to try, that's good. But let's recheck you later and see what has changed. And so I'm not saying I don't appreciate bio hacks, I got plenty of them around here. A good, here's one. So this is kind of a bio-hack is its Boost oxygen, you know, I have stuff, I mean, I can just show you right here on my desk, you know, like, here's stuff, like, they're kind of like bio hacks, like, oh, I read this, you know, I'm gonna try it and see if I feel any better. Most of it, I don't feel any different. Because I always feel good. You know, I start off every day with mental exercise and prayer. And, so, you know, it takes a lot to kind of impress me. But, um, I just pray this in my eyes every morning. What is it? Yes, these are electrolytes. And they support the mitochondria, the little instance in your cells. And the eyes are the densest mitochondria per cell, except for the brain. There are like 1000s of mitochondria in each cell. And you could, so it's a good way to get support into the body. So we use, we use, you know, lotions, potions, powders, and pills, and all this stuff, and all the things I have around, I mean, even little Pendency you could wear for energy, support, you know, I tried everything. So all those little bio hacks are great. They might even have some kind of placebo effect that you feel a little bit better when you wear them when you're not, but I want to know by measuring hormones, immune digestion, and detoxification, and there are lots of markers in each category. So so, we're running five labs on every person now. That's the deal. Because there's no one test

Claudia von Boeselager 38:53  
and get the full picture. Yeah,

Reed Davis 38:55  
well, it's not even a full picture, but it's a big picture. It's multiple healing opportunities as I said, and they're the ones that I identified working with 1000s of people were the most critical; there are more tests you can run I mean, there's plenty. So we get saliva, urine, blood, and stool from every person. And then we have a basis, you know, some kind of a baseline on these really critical systems. That's the size of the individual versus the size of the biohack Hey, you can tell me all day long how fantastic These doors are and probably buy him a perfect rate of a pure shelf of eight different types of blue blockers. Mostly because the suppliers send it to me for free because I'm in a position to be influential, but I generally am not. I don't sell very many things or an event everything is very carefully.

Claudia von Boeselager 39:54  
Yeah. My audience loves bio hacks and biohacking. So based on Some labs that you've seen and things that you know, patients try, and obviously, everybody's different. And you know, caveat, please always check with your healthcare provider before trying anything. But what are some of the bio hacks you've seen, let's say, for exercise or some of the nutrition things where you've seen exponential improvements, also for people's brains, hormone levels, and metabolism? What are some of the favorite bio hacks you've seen patients really up-level their health with?

Reed Davis 40:31  
My favorite thing may not be a bio-hack, exactly like with exercise you mentioned. So the progressively accelerating cardiopulmonary exertion, the pace program, so it's, it's not really a biohack it is in a way, but it's, it's exhausting yourself. In 60 seconds, whatever it takes for you to do in 60 seconds, that gets you completely out of breath. Because now you're expanding, you're going what's called Super aerobic, instead of aerobic, as people run it, they figure out what speed can they run out for an hour, you know, and that's below their aerobic threshold. When you go above your aerobic threshold, you get completely gassed, you literally can't possibly go any further; it'd be kind of like running once around the track, you know, 404 100 meters. So you can do that in about a minute. For older people, maybe two minutes, but even a high school athlete can braid for 60 seconds. And so that's the ultimate sprint. Now that will do more for you than almost anything in terms of cardio, and pulmonary week, because you want the lungs too, you know, expand as well. So that means that that's if you're doing that, if you're doing some sprints like that, then a kid you see a kid in the middle of the road, and you want to go save the kid, you know because the cars coming. If you're not in shape, that could kill you people have heart attacks because they're exerting themselves in a way that they had never done before. And their heart just kind of gives up, blows up, whatever. But if you've been there and done that through the pace program, then you could just do it, I mean, and that's really been in shape. So that's a hack or a bio-hack if you want that. It's just they also call it high-intensity interval training; the hit training is close to the pace, and it's not quite as intense as the pace training, but so there's a great hack for exercise. There's also e Watts they call it, which is an exercise with oxygen therapy. And you're getting more, you're burning more, you know the oxygen is needed to burn to make energy and, and so you're getting a little more oxygen, you're burning maybe a little bit more efficiently. So you can do you can exercise a little bit longer, more intensely. Also, with exercise and I've only tried it a couple of times I bought the bands again kind of a biohack, and I didn't see that much improvement because of the restricted blood flow circulation

Claudia von Boeselager 43:21  
katsu. Ben's with him. Yeah, I

Reed Davis 43:23  
bought I bought him when they came out, and like, Okay, are you done that? You know, and so lots of things like that. It's just there are just exercise physiologists, and they're more knowledgeable than me. But I have to say that exercise is a big part of our program. And so is diet, that's number one. So I have another acronym for you if I could. So there's that had d n format I'm indigestion, and so on with the investigation, these are the healing opportunities. These are the baselines you need to know about yourself, and it's your data is one your physician belongs to you. Then what do you do about it? How do I make improvements? Well, it's all lifestyle and holistic, and it helps you live longer and at a higher level of function. And it's d r e s s was spills dress, and that's diet and rest and exercise stress reduction, which we sorted out and supplementation and I have yet to have my own brand, but I know a lot of bottom rows we have our own brand pretty soon after 15 years finally getting around to it but uh yeah, so diet, you have total control over I hope diet rest D RS rest. You can rest not only your body but your mind and emotions and even your spirit, you know, and increase its potential. Diet, rest, and exercise, we talked about stress reduction, which is huge because it's ubiquitous and comes in all these different forms, sorting out the difference between mental and emotional stress. existential angst, you know, physical stress. Certainly, I've, uh, we'll use body, lots of sports injuries, and things. And then, of course, the chemical stressors from the environment and what's in food and everything. And then last is the supplements. So, Dr. Ess, that's that's the answer. That's our answer, and we customize each one. And people can just kind of general areas, it makes sense. And it gives you control over your input for longevity.

Claudia von Boeselager 45:35  
And for people looking to optimize, let's say, brain health or hormone health. What are some things that you typically recommend? Well,

Reed Davis 45:44  
dairy assessment is what we recommend. But when it comes to supplementation, remember, you're genetically you have genetic requirements. So I believe that meeting your genetic requirements excels and performs better than taking some specific nutrient, one thing to get more of. So if you can just meet your genetic requirements, you can live your genetic potential; the right ratios of protein, fats, and carbs are as important as anything; maybe the most important thing is how much protein, fat, and carbs you eat. And you can dial in those ratios like a fuel mixture that makes you feel super, I mean, super high energy all the time and clear thinking for the most part, like a sense of well-being, happiness, joy, not to mention satiation. Like, you're not meant to have cravings. If you're craving, you're not getting the macronutrient ratios, right? And you can play with it, we actually have a test. But you can play with that ratio, then once you get the macronutrient ratios, right, then you can play with the micronutrients, that's your vitamins and your minerals in the sense of fatty acids and antioxidants and trace elements and phytonutrients. And the little particles that are in supposed to be in the soil, you know, and then eat the plants, are you the animals that eat the plants? It's amazing what's not in the soil anymore. So that's where supplementation kicks in. But I don't know if that answers your question or not. But, you know, I generally take the 60,000-foot view, I find it most helpful to give people guidance, but not too much on specifics, and the second run the labs, so I haven't run the test. And then it's hard for me to say,

Claudia von Boeselager 47:35  
Yeah, cuz everyone is so individual as well. For my audience keen on becoming the best version of themselves, what would you say is the protocol, if you will, to biohack your way from normal to superhuman reading,

Reed Davis 47:52  
getting up every day and being really grateful would be a good place to start. I mean, it's such a big question. And I've kind of given you my overall philosophy is look for all the HIDDEN stressors, run, some labs get some markers that are very useful. We're coming out with more and more of these things. And there are some wearables, too, that might help you monitor, like, I love the glucose monitors and what they can teach you. But running labs to get off of foods that are irritating to your nervous system or your digestive system is critical; your immune system gets really ticked off at the wrong foods for some reason. And we know why. So I run the labs and the ATD di n plus oxidative stress if you want. And then, I followed Dr. Ess and customized it. So you have to look at everything. There's no one area that's more important than the others. But everyone does tend to have a weaker area. So you might say, well, where would you start a diet? Yeah, what about sleep? Can't leave that one out? You know, what about exercise Ed during it got to do that one too. And then a stress reduction, there's so much disorder. And then supplements just showed you, you know, like that's just what's on my desk. What about the kitchen cabinets and counters and you know, even up on my nightstand and what is, so there's a lot to sort out, you know, you find a professional that's really well trained in the lab work and drugless protocols. And by the way, someone that will put you in charge because I'll just quickly go back to when I first started. You know, I had a lot to learn, Claudia. Nothing to unlearn. You know, I hadn't been indoctrinated in standard medicine or really anything. I was a pretty good athlete and ate well and all that stuff. But what bothered me probably the most was that people were putting their health in someone else's hands. So I think what you're doing with the longevity and lifestyle podcasts and your, your program, it's, you know, it's good for everything, your brain, your skin, your energy, your that, so there isn't one. Yeah, it's your attitude, it's your mind, it's taking responsibility; that's where it has to start, I would get mad, I'd be out riding my motorcycle, which I do all the time. And it'd be thinking about back at the office, you know, and I had good health, it was enjoying my freedoms, I do very well, in another profession. The environmental stuff was very good to me. And, and I just felt bad for the people in the office, you know, like, but also kind of mad, like, you know, they're not getting any answers anywhere else that pissed me off. But the fact that, like, why are you putting your health in someone else's hands anyway? Aren't we supposed to be in control of our own lives and health and self-determined in these things, it takes some education, but you can do it, I think

Claudia von Boeselager 51:03  
that's a really important piece as well that people feel empowered and that it's okay to actually want to have a copy of your blood test results to actually what's going on. And to ask the questions is what, like, can you help me to understand, like, how do I interpret this? And to really, you know, step up and have more meaningful conversations. I mean, my mother has a medical background. So since a very young age, if I had a doctor's appointment, she's like, make sure you have your 10 questions prepared. I couldn't go into an appointment without my questions.

Reed Davis 51:37  
Yeah, well, keep passing it along because that's what people need to know. Yeah,

Claudia von Boeselager 51:43  
read what excites you most about the future of health, well, and longevity over the coming years and beyond.

Reed Davis 51:50  
You know, I think it is this movement to take back control to understand that, if you give up that control bed, people are going to take it, you know, like, like, who will, who would want control of your health, you know, like, people that profit from it, you know, so there are, I mean, you might have noticed this little thing that went around a couple of years ago, it was called a pandemic. And first of all, I thought we were already in a pandemic, I really, well, people's health is really bad. Well, then, along comes this, this overwhelming, worldwide pandemic that was easily recognized. And people took incredible advantage of that, and of us as people, and tried to strip our rights away and things, and I'm not being political, I'm just being real, I don't care what side of the fence you're on. That was bad, I'm excited about that; we're not going to let that happen again, and we are going to take control of our health. By getting data, you know, there's an intelligence in every cell; you don't have to teach any skills, what their job is. And that intelligence comes from the, you know, the same intelligence that holds the sun and the moon, in the stars, in their orbits and things that intelligence that is the same intelligence, running the show inside yourself, inside your tissues and your organs and your systems. And yeah, there's a bad influence, of course, but we can control a lot of that. And so, I think that's self-awareness being disseminated nicely, you know, by those that really care and really want us to be happy and free. You know, so if you enjoy, you know, it's about the pursuit of those freedoms, health, freedom, and time freedom, and, you know, God forbid, financial freedom, but, you know, there are lots of freedoms that we need to appreciate. health freedom is way up there. Yeah, for sure.

Claudia von Boeselager 53:54  
For listeners interested in understanding functional medicine and functional medicine testing for longevity better, what online resources or books even would you recommend? Do they start with?

Reed Davis 54:06  
We have? Yeah, it's called functionaldiagnosticnutrition.com. So what I just called Functional Diagnostic Nutrition. I just couldn't think of a longer name. And so, so it's Functional Diagnostic Nutrition. So we have FD N, and we're known around the world as FDN. So there's FDN training.com/longevity and Lifestyle in honor of this podcast. So that's where I would go if I were a listener. And if you're interested in taking responsibility, finding out how you could do that, and getting back in control of your own health.

Claudia von Boeselager 54:44  
So we'll link all of that in the show notes for people as well because it is a nice long name. Do you have any final ask recommendations or any parting thoughts or messages for my audience today? Read?

Reed Davis 54:57  
Yeah, get up every day and be thankful for what you have so that you can build upon that. And, you know, look at the world as the cup is half, at least half full, not half empty. Those who are a more positive understanding of that have a better chance of being happy. You know, you can't be happy if you're not healthy. So listen to Claudius, podcasts, and recommendations. But no, it gets it's how you get up in the morning. You know, what side of the bed and before you put your feet on the ground, just try to, you know, because we all swing your legs over and stand up, right? Most of us do. So before you put your feet on the ground. Think of, you know, your point of view. Like, is it gonna be a good day? Hell yeah. Just tell yourself it is. Yeah, even if it's cloudy.

Claudia von Boeselager 55:54  
It's a choice. I agree. It's a choice. And when my mentor told me once, you know, be the thermostat, not the thermometer, in your life, and you choose how you react to the day.

Reed Davis 56:05  
Now, I'm going to borrow that one, I think.

Claudia von Boeselager 56:08  
Sure. Go ahead. You're welcome to read. Thank you so much for coming on today and sharing all your amazing insights really appreciate you coming on.

Reed Davis 56:16  
Well, thanks for asking good questions, and I'm here anytime you need me for anything.