people shouldn't trust their doctors. I don't trust my doctors. I wouldn't trust one person or a lot of people as my only source for medicine, especially when the menu and their skills are limited. Hello and welcome to Awake at the Wheel. So in today's episode, we have our guest, Dr. Maggie Yu. She is a family practice and certified functional medicine physician who graduated from UCLA School of Medicine and has been practicing for 25 years. Over 25 years, in fact. So Dr. Maggie, thank you so much for being with us. And before we jump in and talk a little bit more about you and your practice and your work, I just want to express how excited I am and how excited we are to have this conversation with you, because so much of your work overlaps with the work that we do in our clinical practices, working with individuals, of course, who have mental health concerns. But the overlap with chronic pain, chronic health issues and so on. So after expressing that excitement, just want to say welcome and thank you for being with us. I am very excited to be here and I'm looking forward and wanting to be surprised with some of these questions. Well, you're in the right place then. I love it. All right. So, Dr. Maggie, why don't you tell us a little bit first about what inspired you to begin looking at the whole body? Because as we know, that does differ oftentimes in the traditional health care system. So what was the starting point for you with this? Yeah, the starting point is my own illness and my own inability to find my own answers. And it's my own hitting rock bottom. And to me, that journey was punctuated at certain times of my life with, I think, the delivery of my first child, followed by later, a couple of years later, the delivery of my second child, and then finally with my early menopause at the age of 36. These postpartum events turns out in the end, not by accident. Turns out in the end was a pattern turned out to be in the end, a pattern that's missed by conventional medicine and missed by all the training and practice that I had done up to all those points. So I would say that it's that dramatic health decline into mystery symptoms, feeling like unicorn illnesses that had a major impact on my health, including, you know, I had postpartum depression, fibromyalgia, chronic pain, TMJ, severe depression, anxiety, diagnosed with ADHD as in my mid-thirties and put on Adderall, all of which turned out in the end to be really stimulated by underlying autoimmune disease as well as other root causes that now we know had its infancy in my genetics and an environment in my environment and in my own work stressors and life stressors throughout life. So I would say that in overcoming my own illnesses and having to come out of the box to find my own solutions is where this all started, because I had nowhere else to go but up. So as a physician, how did that experience change your perspective? Because and, you know, speaking only from our experiences and mine specifically with clients that I work with, oftentimes there is a great deal of frustration and hopelessness and just lack of feeling understood by their physicians when they're experiencing these mystery illnesses and symptoms and things that don't have a clear explanation. So how did that change your perspective as a physician? Well, I would say that, you know, my first ten years as a family practitioner and what happens in the break room, people don't really realize upfront what happens in the break room is that every single day those of us who were practicing and delivering family medicine care were designed and we were trained to deal with the ability, diagnose and treat at least 90% or more of whatever symptom comes our way. And then the other 10% were supposed to refer out to the right people were sifter and sorters. But on the front end, we should be able to deal with 90%. And increasingly, there was a population of people who were tired and sick and tired of being who sick and tired of being sick and tired. And predominantly they were women and not exclusively that, but women in their mid-thirties to mid-fifties that were sick and tired of being sick and tired with all normal laps and who were coming to me and asking me things like, What do you think of this diet? What do you think of this supplement? What do you think of this hormone test? And I remember and this is super clear. My biggest shame as a physician looking back is telling every single one of those women that number one, their labs were were normal and that there was nothing that I could do for them except maybe they need to go seek marital therapy or individual therapy, get them on an antidepressant. Right. Or lose weight and exercise more. Right. That's what we were told to say when all these literally cursory laps were normal. And when I look back, I'm horrified and horrified because and I had women and men and parents desperately coming to me to say, hey, what do you think of this supplement? What do you think of this dietary change? And my trained response was, there's no data for that. And I found it helpful. Do you if you found it helpful, you do, But there's no data around it. I had never looked at the data day in my life because I'd never received any training in that in my life. And so why are we saying this to people? So my biggest shame is that in our own ignorance and our own training, we lied to people or we were dishonest, or we gave people half truths. And so it really shaped my practice when I became that patient. When I became that parent, I realized that that is an absolutely unacceptable answer or set of answers. And I will at this point even say that I think it's medical gaslighting, even though we didn't know as physicians that we were participating in that. Yes, on this podcast or in I often talk about good intentions executed poorly. So I think this is certainly one of those situations. I would hope that there is nothing purposefully malicious about that, but it's it's so disappointing to hear that people do. And I hear that term so often with the clients that I work with where they feel that they're gaslit because later on down the road after years and years of exploration, like I was right, I was on to something, you know, X, Y, and Z was actually happening. Let me give you an example. When I was 36 years old, I went into no periods for a year and my first age, which we know as a blood test to diagnose if someone's ovaries are really shut down like post-menopausal came back in the eighties, which by all accounts it is medical menopause. Right. And I remember talking to and these are my colleagues, right? I went to my gynecologist, the male colleague, and I said, hey, why is this happening? Like, I'm 36 years old. I'm not 86. And the response was, Hey, Maggie, you're just getting older. And that is an unacceptable response to be given to a 36 year old woman, I promise you, in any way or even a physician at that point. Right. And in hindsight, and this is really interesting. And I you know, I love talking hormones and there's a huge hormonal component to everything. And one of the things I learned years later was from the years like, you know, two, three years later was I had an underlying autoimmune disorder called Hashimoto's, which is an autoimmune attack against my thyroid, which, by the way, is a hormone making organ. And then still to this day, nobody understands or talks about this concept is that if your immune system is accidentally mistaking your thyroid, which is a hormone making cell as a germ, what do you guys think is a likelihood that my ovary cells or adrenal cells or brain hormone cells are also know if they make hormones, they look very similar to thyroid cells. What's the likelihood they're also the target of an autoimmune attack and that they're being attacked right. And we have no test to diagnose that. But we see hormones that are dead in a 36 year old and we're not even asking why. Right. So once I discovered the Hashimoto's and I figured out through developing my own protocol, really to save my life, how I can actually stop the autoimmune attack, my thyroid hormone function improved. And guess what? My ovarian hormones and adrenal hormones came back online. I came out of menopause at the age of 38. Wow. And I didn't come out, go back into menopause. And I was at the age of 49. And this time really gracefully. Thank you very much. Amazing. But that's not out of ignorance, of bad intent of my colleagues. This. Was that what they knew the best, that they knew how was to do an advanced age. And if you weren't making those hormones right, you're in menopause. That is a correct medical definition with the best intent, with the best that they knew how. But it was wrong. Yeah. So your your protocol, the transform protocol. Can you tell us a bit about that? Absolutely. And for me, it was really interesting is pouring into my own journey. And I remember this is like, believe it or not, when I went to early menopause, it was when Oprah and Suzanne Somers had Oprah interviewed Suzanne Somers and she was talking about and she had to say, as we hadn't written a book about hormones and people thought they were insane and I remember being I think they even were on a cover of Time magazine or one of the major magazine covers. And it was about people talking about hormones and being insane. And yet when I look back, that was the beginning because people started to question what we were told about menopause or about hormones. People started to question, well, is should people be taking hormones? What are what are bioidentical hormones natural versus synthetic? And it just kind of started just snowballed from there. I started to learn about bioidentical hormones. And by literally because there were no normal avenues for an M.D. or a medical professional to learn about what bioidentical hormones are. I called my compounding pharmacy, which was like, I read some books. And I said, Hey, your compounding pharmacies help me understand this. I was taught by compounding pharmacies who are really kind enough to actually teach me about, you need to test hormones and yeah, you need to. There's all these other ways to test it. Here's the thing. I started developing a reputation being one of the only medical doctors in Portland, Oregon, that knew anything about how to test hormones, how to prescribe bioidentical hormones, anything about it. And my family practice started to blow up with patients coming from all around the area because there wasn't an M.D.. Right. And so later on, when I started my own practice, about two or three years later, the entire practice was filled immediately with tons of hormone patients. But here's the interesting thing. Giving hormones may temporarily help a lot of people, but there is a huge population of people where if you give them bioidentical hormones, they temporarily improve and then they get worse and is constantly just like thyroid patients escalating, Lou, up and down all the time. And I started to realize as I started my own journey to understand why I wasn't responding like, you know, the same to hormones either was that there was an underlying autoimmune issue. Once I discovered mine, I started questioning in my patients, men, women and children to say, was an underlying mechanism causing their hormones. And that were it makes it so that just giving them some hormones that, you know, maybe 30, 40% of the other population did just fine with. Why was this 50 60% not responding is underlying autoimmune attack. So I started to test I started to think about I sort of think, well, what has helped me turn around my autoimmunity, I started thinking about the role of gluten in food, right? I started to think about what are ways we can test that because that was huge for me, right? And accurately test that. Found out that that was a crazy landscape of bad labs, bad data, bad training for docs, right? And so that I discovered there were layers right in my own healing. And then I started thinking how I can roll that out with patients. And it came to really testing and understanding what hormone balance is. And it may or may not include bioidentical hormones usually does not. Number one. Number two, think about the underlying why are people having these hormonal fluctuations? And I thought food absolutely related with it. So food sensitivities, but also the kitchen the food is coming into, which is your digestion. I am in when we talk about COVID, when we talk about some of these mental health issues, I'm going to I would love for people to understand I am doctor digestion, really am digestion. It's a huge genetic thing that we are born with that as life and other things come on top of it compounds it. I have not met someone with chronic pain, mental health issues, POTS that didn't have an underlying digestion issue in the first place. So that's huge. And then thinking about as a result of poor digestion, then we get into vitamin mineral, nutritional deficiencies that people really get into that are fueling all these mental health and physical health symptoms. So it's called the five Pillars protocol that I have, and it goes through all of these in a lot of depth and detail. But those are the real root cause, no matter what the chronic diseases or what the mental health disorder is. So I know Dr. Amitay has a bunch of questions too, but I'll ask one question from that and then turn it over to you. But gosh, I have so many questions about the protocol. I love it. So I know here in Canada the the excuse. Let me backtrack. First and foremost, I have the utmost respect for physicians. I know how much training and devotion to their patients they have. And, you know, I don't want to discount that. But here in Canada, oftentimes the excuse for why that in-depth protocol or method of looking at illness is not taken is because, well, they just don't have the time. With our health care system. We get what, a ten minute doctor's appointment, if we're lucky. And in my own experience and in my clients experience, when they bring forward, you know, maybe novel ideas or theories or whatever the case may be, it's shut down. Here's your pills. See you later. Get out of here.“Warehouse medicine” we call it here in the U.S.. Yes. Okay. So that answers my question that it seems to be similar in the U.S. as well, then. Well, because how are we compensating providers? Right. When you follow the money, you know, the types of care you'll be delivered. Right. Because the compensation model of that provider of that health care system will define your care. So you are not going into a full menu. You're going to the menu that is going to feed the whole financial structure of compensation. So in a in a insurance based practice, in a government paid social medicine practice providers, well, interestingly, in an insurance base in the U.S., it'll be by volume. The more number of people you see, the more number of procedures you see, the higher your level compensation. In a socialized medicine, there really actually isn't a volume right? You might be measured by the volume, but it sounds to me like it's more like let's get to the hours in the day to see. And you can be pressure to see as many people as possible because you're, in a sense, an hourly wage worker in a socialized medicine in a lot of ways. Am I wrong? Am I right? Because we have a lot of Canadian physicians and clients in our in our in our in my world. Did I get that right? It seems like I think so. You know, that it's that's why they all of, you know, triple book patients that's why people are waiting for. Skills the hourly worker Right. So that's the compensation system. So what I find is found was that if you're participating in that system, expect that for your menu that you have, which is whatever's going to get you out of the doctor's office as quickly as possible is what you're going to get. Because that doctor or that nurse practitioner trying to survive in an insurance model, just so you know, as it's going to be five or 10 minutes and yes, there's 10 minutes additional you don't even see in charting the documentation, the provider option, but there's still squeeze. Are both of these systems inherently is to squeeze as much volume as possible, which means you're right, there is no time. There is no time. And it's not the providers fault is the compensation system with which they work in that you're participating in. That being said, I realize had I continue to be a doctor in that setting and a recipient of that care, I would be dead three times over. Okay. So given how the system operates, I'm wondering who, if you could, you know, if you can quantify it, who gives you more pushback? Your colleagues who don't want to change their own system or, you know, the different systems that are funding the different organizations or redress funding the entire system? Or are you being received with open arms if people are saying, wow, a whole new approach to medicine or to health? Yeah, so that's really cool that you ask that question because you know, I'm 27 years in practice right now and, you know, when I went into family medicine, into functional medicine, that was a switch. And what happened was, you know, insurance didn't know what to do with providers like us in the US. So initially they were allowing us to bill and as regular medical visits, which they were, they were just longer and time more in-depth. So they were at a higher compensation level because there was time blocking for billing. Right. And then about, you know, I would say in my private practice, which ran about almost ten years, about seven or eight years into it insurance, and suddenly decided we don't want to compensate the same. Right. And in fact, we're going to go back and try to get all these doctors and we're going to go back three years. I'm going to try to sue you for testing that. Now we deem, you know, unnecessary or services that we now deem unnecessary. And it frankly put a lot of people out of business and scared the crap out of all of us. Wow. And it and so for me, that initially was definitely a thing from insurance. And then I was becoming one of the first in Portland. I went I had to switch compensation model, right? I had to say, well, either I stopped providing this care in the insurance model or I have to go stop accepting insurance to be able to continue to provide this care. And I was in a smallish suburb of Portland and not in Portland itself. And I don't know if I can say this now. I'll be totally honest and I'll say this once I switched my compensation model, it became the Salem witch hunt from the community because I was we were the family medicine practice in a community that serves 12,000 people and, you know, eight providers, 12,000 people. There were other primary care clinics in the area, but we were half, half straddling that line. And when that insurance happened and I had to switch, it became the Salem witch hunt in the community towards me personally, because people were just like, we shouldn't have to pay for health care. How dare you charge not take insurance? And and meanwhile, I was being sued by insurance companies for three years of care that we already provided, that we can't get back from anyone else. And so I had no choice. And so eventually so that's what actually pushed me to get out of clinical medicine altogether. On one on one clinical medicine was that there was so much at that time misunderstanding around doctors who went into concierge medicine, cash pay practices or online business models in order to survive that. I you know, I honestly on a whim I was like, you know what? What if I created a online program that actually were able to teach patients the five pillars while providing them care? Would that work? And I did it as an experiment. And within the and I really I mean, I was thinking about, you know, what? If I could just make it seem like a side hustle to balance out what was bleeding out of the clinic because of what was going on, I would be able to survive and I could fund the continuation of this clinic. And within like I would say, the first month, two months, it exceeded my expectation. And within the first four months I realized I got bigger outcomes, bigger, faster, more permanent outcomes. By doing this on an online setting and also by just not even dealing with insurance, just coming straight out and saying, this is what we do, these are the outcomes, right? This is what it costs and insurance won't cover it. I wanted to see what the market would do and they came in droves. And within six months I had so many clients coming in from all around the world reaching out for this information to service. I closed my clinic, I broke my lease and closed my clinic. It was, you know, the insurance model and the small town mentality at that time really forced me, honestly, out of clinical medicine. And yet when I broaden the scope and the world and said, Hey, this is what I do, these are the solutions, people realize that they couldn't get this anywhere else. My online practice like and I didn't have a traditional online practice, it's programs. We educate people, we work with people in groups. We also have one on one services as well. But there's all these different ways with which we can meet people where they're at. But what I found was an educational model was actually the way out of this, not a one on one clinical model. So I've been very clear when you look at my eight years of online content that I've developed, I'm here as an online educator and what we do is way taller order than just, you know, here's green medicine, here's a supplement for this problem. Here's this one test, here's this one supplement for that problem. I teach skills. I teach skills, I teach normal individuals and I teach practitioners the skills with which they can troubleshoot and manage and think through all the the way I think. And so that's a much taller order than, you know, one on one telemedicine, which is now you know, what I'm doing. So for me, the market really dictated it and I had to move away from insurance compensation or any sort of government type compensation in order to do the work that I do. Because even within the population itself, there's a lot of small town America and taboo against physicians who have to go outside the insurance system. And something that's so fabulous about what you describe there. And it really aligns with the work that we do as mental health clinicians, as you are providing your patients with the tools to take control of their health and for them to have that power and control. And I think that that's huge. I really do. And I also think about all the tools in mental health that insurance doesn't cover. That's better, that's better. And so I work so much with mental health. I there's so much, you know, I think about I think about IFS, I think about the sympathetic parasympathetic work. I think. Russell Mattick therapy hate the light my fire, because that's what really helped me. That's those are topics that really have helped the patient patients. But a lot of, at least in the United States, a lot of that is available for people who are able to and willing to self-pay for those types of services. And so for me, like, you know, what's the most expensive thing, being sick. Or having. Or having a sick child in your home, a sick family, that is the most expensive thing. But yet people don't realize that you have to invest in your health and in your mental health to get outcomes that saves lives. And if you want to utilize only your insurance and get results, it's only subsidized and utilized by your insurance company, which is you'll get meds and you'll get, you know, the the type and the duration therapy they deem necessary for you. This is your life. This is your family's life. So for me, I, myself and my clients that we work with have to think beyond what people, insurance companies are willing to pay or not pay for. Okay, so I have a few questions. That first one is, if we can ask what can I ask you what the outcome was of the insurance companies coming after you? Yeah, we ended up settling and I ended up I can't go through all the details of it settling and I ended up I ended up having to shell out at great expense some money that would have put a lot of people into bankruptcy. But I stayed at the clinic for about, I would say two years, 18 months after that ended, so that I could completely pay for that. And it was it was a very difficult time, you know, and and it's also like practitioners getting practitioners to be able to work in that setting as well as some people, some, some practitioners are willing to look outside the box, willing to take some chances to deliver the type of care that our patients really need. And I know in Canada there's still stigma around doctors, medical doctors or even naturopathy physicians, chiropractors as if there's some alternative voodoo medicine in hand. One for me looking at what I I'm calling functional, I'm a functional medicine M.D. medical doctor. So what I do is I take all my scientific medical doctor background and I combine it with everything in holistic alternative medicine that's scientifically based with outcomes. And I put it together and we offer all the tools to people. That's what I do. So for me, I had very little fear around that. But trying to hire and keep providers that are out there are trained and willing to practice and that became very, very difficult. And so, you know, we had eight practitioners and again I said it was, you know, mostly family medicine, medical doctors. And then I had a bunch of naturopaths and the naturpathic medical director and we worked together, but fairly quickly, when, you know, the lawsuits started to happen from the insurance companies, all of them left because they didn't want to be left holding the bag or having like some of their work production bonuses to have to come back where all of them left. And I was left holding the bag during this entire lawsuit. And so for me, the outcome was, you know, for me actually, you know, like it taught me a really valuable lesson. It really taught me leave clinical medicine as quickly as possible. Get the hell out, get the hell out. And don't I have nothing to do with insurance companies anymore? I don't have prior authorizations for the care that I need to save my own life or my patient's life anymore. Free myself so I can work with people who themselves are free and are ready to make those decisions, minus all that politics, bureaucracy and honestly bullshit. Right. So, I mean, one thing that COVID seems to have really done for the good and the bad is it kind of really blew up in this trust the science, trust the doctors, trust the experts. Right. So on the one hand, I'm glad that people are learning, wait, you know, we can't just blindly believe what someone tells us or that this or that 97% of scientists say this or that when there is funding that can, you know, influence greatly influence. The five years later. We've learned in medical school, within ten years, 50% of what we were taught with truth would be heresy, right? The opposite. Right. And that's a replication crisis as well that we have in the social sciences that, you know, a study that comes out says ABC is not replicated yet. People are still acting as if it's the settled science or settled approach. So my question to you is, since again, in the last couple of years, where more people are becoming their own experts, they're doing their own research, which has lots of problems because we know that there's going to be a lot of confirmation bias, a lot of, you know, filtering out of some people want to see it. Right. So how has that in your, let's say, controversial approach goes controversial, whether it's to the industry, to your colleagues, to, as you say, to the community, you went on a witch hunt. How has this whole post post-Cold COVID mentality and ethos kind of affected people's perception of what you're doing? So really interestingly, you mentioned colleagues, one of the bonuses that I had going for me was I was an extremely well respected family medicine physician at the time. All these health crises hit me ten years into it. I was a referral source for tons of other specialists in my community. I was very well known, well respected. And so when I started to go into functional medicine, it was easy versus a new doc coming out and saying, I'm the functional medicine or I'm a natural part because they had they look, when you have a clinical 12,000 patients and have most of it, they're coming in for their primary care as well. You're a referral. You're the money machine for the specialists office. So interestingly, my colleagues didn't didn't really people who knew me and were my referral resources, they all respected the work that I did. Some of them even came and asked me to help. So, for example, I had a cancer major cancer center said, you know, we need help. We need help to prepare these people for chemo or during chemo with, you know, what's going on with some of these, you know, hormone sensitive cancers. And that and we need your help. So I ended up collaborating with quite a few my colleagues when I went out of clinical practice and started my online program supplement company. Here's what happened. Sick doctors found me. Sick Doctors found me. So I would say that at any given time, at least 5 to 10% of the participants in our program are medical professionals who came to for themselves, but also to learn. So I don't have any issue with my colleagues per se, right. If anything, they're being attracted more and more. We recently started a certification program where we actually teach people how to become MDS, chiropractors, naturopathy physicians or nurse practitioners to become an instructor. How do you teach from one to many? Because I think that's a different skill set. So that's what we have a certification. And so when I think about the public, one of the things I think about in the last eight years it's really changed is that when I first went online with my first, we have to do ads because how are people supposed to find you right. As doctors? It's not like I came out understanding what the YouTube algorithm is or the Facebook algorithm or anything. I wasn't expert on podcasts or anything. I came out and I just started doing videos on Facebook. It was like 30 days Facebook Live challenge that my friend dared me on and I did it. And then I went when I went online, my program. How are people supposed to find out? We had to advertise. I had to put up Facebook ads. I learned how to do my own Facebook ads for the first two years. And I got so much flack on Facebook. I mean, you would you would be I mean, it would make you blush and probably boil under the kind of things that were under my ads from people, you know. But. okay. So one of the pictures I had was a sweater that I was wearing that had the shoulder there. And then it had like a little sense right here. So the shoulder was bare and necklace and it says, you money mongering, horror, drug seeking, party hopping, stupid bitch. How dare you charge people who are hopeless and helpless for your services? You drug a new drug a year or something like that is typical. my goodness. I mean that the level of hatred and vitriol that people had and it didn't matter. I was there were there were ads where I was in a lab coat and I was smiling. How dare you smile, you know, preying on the hopeless and helpless, you whore, you know, like it was. I thought. It was bad, but this is ten years ago, you understand? This is ten years ago. You know, like doctors still had the perspective. Like, you weren't supposed to charge all that. So one of the things I did was I stopped being the one to manage my ads. I stopped being the person to receive all that energy because I don't need to be and I don't want to be. And I kept doing what I did, which is besides advertising, I developed a huge content machine basically on YouTube where I just started putting content, content, content, educational content. And what I learned was that the more content I created, that was me, authentically me. No, I'm not dry. I just really shared my own experience and I shared my content. The more people with the right people were being drawn and I saw the shift changed, right? And when the pandemic happened, one of the biggest shifts I saw was the movement of medical doctors online, right? Medical services online, all that. And people started to get used to the idea that online was okay and not only online was the only option. I was already online three years when the pandemic happened where I was crazy before all of a sudden I'm the only like medical program for these really difficult to treat diseases that were already online. All of a sudden I became more golden. Our revenue and our enrollments tripled. Right. And the interesting thing is this the back to the original question, which was how has the information seeking of people, the Google mania affected all this? I think in some good ways, in the good ways in the sense that people shouldn't trust their doctors. I really people shouldn't trust their doctors. I don't trust my doctors. I wouldn't trust one person or a lot of people as my only source for medicine, especially when the menu and their skills are limited. Right. I would want to no matter what. When you buy a car, do you just like research from the car dealer, from the car dealership or from Audi? Only you just do your research an Audi, or do you compare Audi with, you know, BMW and the other cars, whatever it is? Right. Right. So I think that that is actually a great thing because who's leading? Who's leading this actual functional medicine or root cause medicine? Change isn't insurance, isn't medical schools, isn't doctors, it's patients. It's their demand and the thirst for knowledge that's actually fueling this. And it is honestly and I the first chapter of my book is called Leading with Curiosity. We have killed the curiosity, our doctors and the health care system. So who's left to have it? Rogue physician, Does you write or physicians in the alternative medicine space or patients? And I found I mean, I'll be honest, I think that their curiosity really led to asking bigger questions because I have answers and solutions for COVID and long haul and mental health that are completely out of the box. Not only led by my my questions, but because of theirs. So I think it's actually a good thing. But at the same time, a little knowledge is dangerous, which is why for me, I like the fact that I am an authority on many of these areas and I will spew out endless amounts of content to say, you think this, you think that, okay, go check out this playlist on hormones and COVID, this or that. So it's been really helpful to know the space myself. But you're right, little information goes sometimes awry and there is a population of people out there where they're dangerous themselves and others. So if we can shift gears a bit to mental health a little bit more, because with both of us being mental health clinicians, this is obviously a topic of great interest to us, something that I will touch on with every single one of my clients, regardless of their diagnosis, is the gut brain relationship and how important diet is. So you did touch on that a little bit earlier as well. So what do you think is the biggest either myths or misconception surrounding gut health in the brain? Three I think there's three big misses. Number one, boom, digestion is a big issue and it's a core issue. It's almost like a cold wound. We were born with certain steps in our digestion. It's broken and it has severe downstream effects later on in life. And a really simple concept around digestion is that it's there to break down food from bigger pieces to really, really smaller pieces. And food particles are really small. They're highly absorbable and low allergenic. So if any of those steps are broken or there are further assaults on it later in life or medications, we used proton pump inhibitors, let's say, to stop certain steps in digestion. We are creating an epidemic of absorption problems as well as increasing increasing allergy and inflammatory particles of food in our body over time. So that is the biggest mess to me is digestion and its importance from birth to later on in life. Number one. Second piece of that brain is the arising problem with food allergens and the reactions that people are having to more and more and more foods that they're becoming more and more allergic to as a result of digestion is an epidemic levels. And our allergists, my colleagues are absolutely poorly equipped, if at all to deal with it because it doesn't involve RG, which is emergency antibodies, which is their only tool. So we got a whole rising epidemic. And COVID, by the way, is and I don't know how many of you in your audience out there have since post COVID develop lots and lots of allergic type things, including food reactions, right? That seems mysterious. Now they think they're cuckoo because they're allergist in the primary. Care doc tells them that. Am I right that they're not They're right because the infection itself infects the gut! COVID infects the gut. And so it is further assault on digestion and further infection in that area is actually raising the level of food allergens there. So this is a huge mess. And that's why for me, in our transform protocol, I taught food mapping. Our food mapping system has to address both the digestion issues and, number two, accurately be able to test what people are sensitive to. That's triggering the mental health or post-COVID reactions. Right. So food allergies, number one, do not mistake it. That is a huge mess, right. And I know there was a number three. There was. number three, your gut is not people just think about food and digestion analogies. Your gut is responsible. Tons of hormones and but gut brain axis, you might as well say the hormone and brain and get access. So for me, huge, huge hormonal issues involved. And this is also why when you start looking at some of these new drugs that are coming out for people, for weight loss ideas and fix some of these other things, they're really hitting on a nerve here. There's a huge hormonal gut, brain weight, body, whole body connection that's being missed. And so when you mentioned those epic story, when you like, are you saying that that they're like they're introducing something that they don't know, that it's going to have all these unintended consequences on their own? Actually, if you're if you're talking in the case of Ozempic, they know that it's working with GLP one and GLP one peptide actually impacts several of the hormones that we already know. There's a hormonal impact. It can impact on insulin sensitivity, glucagon, it actually can change hunger, a perception of hunger. You know, we already know that some of these drugs are working with the hormonal system within the gut, and that's one of the reasons why there are so many different. I mean, interestingly, when you look at Ozempic in that class of medications, it's having an interesting impact on addiction. And people would be like, why are you doing this peptide thing? Why is it helping with people with sugar cravings, but not just sugar cravings? What about alcohol? What about drugs? Surprisingly, more and more people are finding there's a decrease in the cravings with those addictions. So how important is hormones in that huge. It's not weakness. There's a hormonal component that we're missing. Okay, So normally we do this at the end, but last now. So don't forget. So if you're advocating for patients to advocate for themselves, what best advice would you give to them when they are going to their family physician who's refusing to, you know, either send to a specialist or to do different types of treatments and so on? How can they be their best self advocate? I think education, like I said, educational is the most important and I'm not afraid of our patients going on Google and YouTube and learning. I advocate for it because there's a lot of truth tellers out there. There are large shoot outs. This podcast right is one of them. Every listener that is listening to your podcast right now is educating themselves outside the box. So my thing is, is that never, ever take the one person's word as gospel, right? Never. Number one, blind faith is horrible. So education is the answer. So educate yourself on multiple resources. Give you an example. Listen to this podcast. Go back and look at all the other episodes and see where where's other areas I really want to grow and expand on. Look at this podcast. Who are other truth tellers, right? Who can I surround myself with that tell the truth and that I can tell is telling the truth. Because again, there's a lot of fake health gurus out there also, right? There is a lot of fake health care gurus. I will tell you something really important in the functional medicine space, the advent of like health coaches and people who claim that they know what are some root cause things, what are some medical things, and they don't have medical background, They're not medical doctors, they're not naturopathic physicians, they're not nurse practitioners, they're not you know, a lot of these people have if you guys understood what the how people can call themselves health coach and sometimes the level of certification they get in even and I'm even going to say this, you know, in the U.S. is an institute of functional medicine is a great resource for medical doctors and practitioners to go learn how to train, to learn functional medicine. But then again, I'll give you an example. Learning how they're going through the hormone training is a couple of days, right? It's a couple of days of either online or in-person training. And there is no there's there's little there's really none unless you seek out somehow you find somebody to mentor you, to work with you on that. So it is really scary to me, even in the functional medicine or natural medicine realm, how many people think that a functional medicine doctor or nurse practitioner or somebody knows everything there is to know and is an area that's specializing in the area you have questions around. It's not true. It's a really large landscape. So example, if you're dealing with ADHD and you're looking for a functional medicine approach and yet you go to your primary care doctor and just said you need Adderall and you know, food really makes a difference. I would hop on Google, I would hop on YouTube and look for a natural approaches and I would look through some of the some of the content, but not necessarily even some of the most popular. But look for trusted sources. Who are the trusted sources, who are the MDs in the space, who are the resources? When you look at the background, the person. Right. How long have they been in business, how long they've been creating content? So I want people to have a discerning eye to evaluate, not just their doctor, but their sources for education, because they are very different in quality. So I'm giving people some tools. That's why my first chapter in the book is leading with Curiosity. I actually have a list in that behind the first chapter. In fact, I'm going to offer every one of your listeners a free download of the book. I know you're in Canada, but if you're in the U.S., you could also get a free hard copy. We'll keep you guys the link. Thank you. The first chapter called Leading with the Curiosity ends with at the end about 30 different questions you should be asking of your health care providers. Right. And you should be asking yourself. But I would have you use the same level of discernment in looking at the content creators that you find on YouTube or Google so that you're able to lead with curiosity, but then also get to learn more and more with discernment. Right? So so two things. One, yeah, that's why I said that like post COVID, for example, someone who doesn't have the credentials, they could say, Well, that's actually a bonus because I haven't been brainwashed by the system and everything. That's that's why you're saying you have to be so discerning to make sure that what they're stating truly is credible, not just their say. So It's horrifying. It's really horrifying what's out there. And so and so if you're someone out there and a lot of patients and doctors themselves would call themselves skeptics. Right. And I think you should have a healthy level of skepticism. But if you don't have a tool to discern if the real diamond is in front of you versus a bunch of cold. Right. If you don't have a tool to discern between the two, you're not a skeptic. You're just blind. Right? Right, right. So I'm here. I'm saying, what's the tool? So, you know, truth from Adam Diamond, from Coal? If you don't have that tool and I'm giving you the questions you should be asking to have that lens. So that will make you a smart skeptic to make science civic based decisions on truth, medical truth. Right. So, first of all, thank you so much for offering that. The download, I think will be incredible, invaluable tool for people. Okay, so then, but back to my first question before, which is okay, so they have the information. They've credibly searched everything. I don't know how it would be in the States, but in Canada, I've had so many patients who are highly intelligent. Some of them are like science major, love. It or cool attached to us. That's who comes to us. Okay, well, here's the problem. There's no us. Maggie Doctor Maggie in Canada for say, I mean, there may be a few, but so So they come with this information. They know what they're talking about. They've done the research and the doctor still dismisses them, still refuses to refer them to somebody because we can't self-refer. So to someone like that, what what would you suggest if someone said that to you and it's and again, they're not able to access doctor making this in my own physician, How do I break through that? You get through to them. What would you say? I'm actually going to say this. They can access Doctor Maggie's because one, I do think this is an interesting, interesting frontier in medicine because my programs are educational based. I am an education. We are global, We are we have served by now 17 countries around the world. And what I would say to patients in Canada, we have a lot of people from Canada, Australia as well, UK, Portugal, we have a lot of people in different countries that reach out. There are a lot of actual online providers that are educational programs and mentorship and coaching that people are reaching out around the world. Don't be stuck to your geography in this age of Internet and online and YouTube and resources and learning. It's a global community. So I would say that there's so many resources and I have a ton of patients from who come and work with me, for example, in our hormone program or who come and work with me on our digestion and food mapping program, or they work with us on our AUTOIMMUNITY program or our POTS program, they come to work with us and then they become your best clients, regular practitioners and functional medicine. National providers love our clients after they graduate our program because they are really smart and they really do need the help and they get it and then they come back. And one of the most important skills I teach is how they get to then afterwards assembled a team that they need number one, they could have assembled their own Avengers. Number two is how do they invite regular doctors into collaboration? Like I even like I think about thyroid and I know I'd be like, Yeah, but I need a doctor prescribed. And I was like, Great. Here's a set of here's a couple ways to ask this question with your conventional doctor that would invite collaboration that's within their scope. So I actually teach people how to talk to their doctor to get what they need. And that's a skill that's missing, right? So understand the medical online natural functional medicine community is global. More and more, it's global. And number two, find somebody like me. And in the book, I actually teach it as well as how do you assemble, invite your own doctors to collaborate. They don't have to be a Dr Maggie, to be able to provide some of the services that you need. For example, they don't have to be the folks at the the supplement expert. Maybe you could be. I teach my clients the why behind every single supplement the data they need to make that decision, the length of time when they should be test and when they should stop that supplement or alternate that supplement. You don't need a doctor to tell you that. Why don't you learn the skill? That's a level medical education that we have online that's available, the kind of education I provide for patients in the programs we work with as a provider level. And that's why we have providers from Canada, from Austria coming in, asking us to train them as well because is a provider level education, so that it's freed me away from the clinic, away from that to do something educational. So I have the ability to teach and I am an educational teaching program. And yes, we work with impossible treat diagnosis, but that's how we can do it because we're in education. So all that said, Dr. Maggie, looking back on your own health journey, what I guess I'll say to you is I can only imagine it felt helpless, like a dead end in some situations, like you weren't going to get the help you need because that's the experience of the clients that we see. What advice do you wish that someone had given you back then, or what advice would you give your past self now, given all the information and knowledge you have? Well, I want to actually share with the audience that I had severe, severe, debilitating anxiety depression. And when I said I hit rock, this was when I was 36 and I was diagnosed with early menopause. I my mental health got so challenged that I lost my job as a medical director. I lost my job, I lost my marriage, and I nearly lost my life, you know, and trigger warning if anybody you know, I've had an attempt in my own life and I would say that when I look back at it, it was really alone. I mean I mean, I talk about the aspects of being the doctor and having that happen and the financial toll and all that as being an alternative, holistic medicine provider. But I would say that having mystery illnesses that I couldn't understand and having mental health impact as a result of that, and now that's like the greatest sadness in my life that I didn't know that there was a different future. I didn't know at that time, even with as many tools as I had, that there were answers that were outside the box, that there wasn't only just hope, but there were already real answers out there. And there were people out there that pioneered more and more of this. I just didn't know who they were. Right? I didn't know and what I didn't know. I nearly lost my life and I'm just so glad I didn't. So I to me, the answers, it's just the next sometimes the next YouTube video away, the next book away, the next podcast away. And so I want to people to realize that curiosity not just saves the cat, but it's going to save your life, keep that curiosity alive and keep going and going and going because the next answers that one, one next video, one next podcasts away, one next question away. So keep going. So much so just because we did touch upon COVID, I'm just curious that because you mentioned that COVID was affecting the gut and the hormones there. So so there's so much controversy around long COVID. Is it real? Is it psychosomatic? Like, what would you say to someone? There's no controversy, is there zero controversy that that long haul COVID is real. That's that's a lie. But I mean, there is zero controversy. The long haul exists. The question is why and what's really causing it. And I saw this happen in fibromyalgia. We all saw this with fibromyalgia like ten, 20 years ago. It was like considered the fake woman illness. Yes. And we now know that fibromyalgia describes a lot of symptoms, but there is huge, huge advances in it. Now we're realizing that these people can be diagnosed with multiple autoimmune disorders that and like, you know, and some of these people have earlobes, Down syndrome, genetic issues. I mean, and, you know, and the chronic regional pain syndrome, right? I mean, neuropathy like these, these are all real, right? And So for me, when I when I look at long haul and I've done actually several interviews, podcast interviews around long haul, when you look at the list of symptoms of long haul, it's very similar

Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome. And look at it seriously. Everybody look at the DSM. Clarity's between those two because what like the severe brain fog, the fatigue balance issues, you know, positional changes with dizziness, nausea right heart rate changes, heart irregular rhythm changes, right. Anxiety, right. Depression. Right. And hot, cold tolerability issues, it's very similar to pots and pots is considered a mystery illness in the medical realm in terms of people don't know exactly what the one cause is or there's one blood test to diagnose it. So it's in that fibromyalgia limbo. So here's the thing. I solve POTS for breakfast. I solve Long Haul for breakfast. Why? Is because the underlying root cause of pots and that's what my I'm going to be doing a workshop in this in about in about ten days. But the underlying I'm just going to give you guys a teaser here. The underlying root cause of pots and long hall is believe it or not, one of the mechanism is that COVID we already talked about in fact to get. So that affects the gut and got hormones. But the secret is it actually infects and impacts all the other hormones. I see major ovarian testicular adrenal hormones shut down for 3 to 18 months post COVID. Well. And certain individuals are more susceptible to it than others. And I'm going to tie this together in a bow. Everybody remember when COVID first happened, we said for some strange reason diabetics are more get it more and they die more. Do you know I use insulin? Partly, yes. Hormonal, right. But the other part is diabetes is actually an autoimmune disease. That's widely recognized, easily diagnosed. So we actually have an autoimmune underlying exist autoimmune population and a whole hell of a lot of people who have no idea they have a predisposition and then they get hit with COVID and then it unmasks. Right? Some of these hormone problems like autoimmune, can attack your hormone making organs. So there's already an underlying wound or weakness, and then you get COVID on top of it and it shuts down hormones for 3 to 8 months. And you didn't even know you had a predisposition. So this is why some people get long haul and some people don't. It literally messes up your hormonal axis anywhere from 3 to 18 months. And zero of the patients and clients I've worked with with long haul have ever had their hormones thoroughly evaluated, are understood by any of their regular or natural providers. So I'm just giving you a little taster that this is a this a big issue. And for me, when you look at what has happened with parts and this autonomy as a diagnosis and you look at long haul, they're the same thing. Interesting. It's like I'm going to direct one of my patients in particular to you, because every question I've asked, everything you've said and it's funny that you mentioned POTS because she has POTS and she's highly intelligent, does her own research. She's in sciences and four years she's had nothing but, let's say, disregard for her symptoms, for her own research. She's the one who advocates so strongly for science, she keeps getting shut down. And as you said, like these doctors don't know about poverty. They don't know they're sending these people to cardiologists who are poorly trained. I have cardiologists sending their patients to me because I can fix it. They don't have any tools to fix it because it deals with blood pressure and heart rate. They send it to a cardiologist. And my cardiologist friends are they want to help so badly, but there's nothing that they can do for these people. Right. It's not a cardiac problem. Right. But that's how it's experienced. So along with everything else. Yeah. So again, everything you're saying, like really, I'm going to be reaching out to her and letting her know she has to watch this podcast. There's so many two of my clients. I'm like, this person. This person could all benefit from what Dr. Maggie is doing. My people and your audience is really smart. And so I credit to you guys for putting in podcasts like this content creators who actually put on these long form educational content, deep thoughtful conversations that really validate and educate all these really intelligent people out there who deserve and who need help. Right. So, I mean, kudos, you guys, because this conversation has been really deep rich. And I love that you guys asked them, you guys, smart ass people, that’s all I’m saying. And I think you're I think you are smart ass people. I can't wait to you know, like, have them hear this episode. And I want to I want to consume more of these episodes from you guys. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. So, Dr. Maggie, how can people find you online? Sure. So, number one, I want to make sure you guys everybody gets gets a copy of the book in Canada. You can download it. And then if you're in the States, you can get a free copy, will provide the link. My website is Dr. Maggie you got Tom last is about why are you and then my YouTube most importantly my YouTube. We are it's Maggie UMD on YouTube. So if you look up Maggie UMD, my channel will come up. We currently have 41 41,000 subscribers. We have an online community Facebook group on Facebook called Transform Your Health. Naturally, we have 100,000 people in that Facebook community. So into communities, get into the Facebook group and just learn more of anything. If do nothing else. If something here sparked your interest on uncovered or parts or on, you know, postpartum depression or menopause, go look up my name and that term and start watching some of our playlists and get yourself educated. It's amazing. And do you have any last thoughts, any last comments for our listeners? Yeah. One, somebody asked me yesterday, one of our one of our programs Marissa, one of the participants in our program says, Dr. Maggie, do you have a catch phrase? And this is goes back to I think when I said what is something I wish my younger self knew my catch phrase is of course I can do and I don't know how many times people and I want everybody think about adopting that because when we were kids were born with this kind of level of like, look at our toddler. Our toddler thinks they could do everything right. I'm going I can I can go just as I can do that, dad, I can go up to that dogged anything. Right. And then somehow we got scared to death and we lost it. And now I would say with myself and with 99%, the individuals we work with, their catch phrase is not. Of course I can. It's actually No, and I want to say stop that shit. Stop it. Right. If We can change our go to statement to. Of course I can. Your entire life will change, I promise you. And you have to practice it over and over again until feels real. Someone says, Can you go that concert? Of course I can. Can you do this by tomorrow? Of course I can. I just practicing it. It takes the same effort to say, Of course I can. To maybe or no, it's the absolute exact same expenditure of energy. So just choose. Of course I can. And it will frickin change your life. Amazing. Okay, Well, again, thank you so much for coming on and sharing these insights. And I think it's very inspirational so And we know we'll have all the links and everything in the description and I'm sure more people will reach out to you. And yeah, we need more people like you who again, provide a different path, open another door, give hope. I mean, in our industry, hope is such an important commodity. So I think you are providing that of not blind faith, not false hope, but realistic hope. And I think you really help people see that hope and see the path forward. So thank you again for coming on. And on that note, until next time, keep your eyes on the road and your hands upon the wheel.