Conventional allopathic medicine has its place. Doctors and hospitals are great with emergencies but if you have a long-term health challenge, you're better served with natural, holistic, functional medicine.
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Show Notes
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Transcript...
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David Sandstrom 0:00
In this episode, I'm talking with Dr. Forrest Sauer. And we're talking about and contrasting the difference between conventional allopathic medicine and natural holistic functional medicine. And there's quite a difference to both appropriate at different times and for different reasons. But you've got to understand when and how to use each. We'll cover a lot of subjects. We talked about autoimmune conditions, and nutrition and exercise. We hit a lot, and it's a great episode. Here's a sample of what you'll hear. So if you were a doctor for us, would you explain what functional medicine is? Could you define that for us?
Dr. Forrest Sauer 0:37
Yeah, functional medicine is fixing the root underlying cause of the problem. What we'll do is we'll make certain and figure out what is causing the problem it gets back to what kind of stress your body is going under? Is it a emotional stress? Is it a physical stress? Is it chemical stress, mostly, we'll see it's a combination of all three actually are those two. So we work very heavily with those versions of stress.
David Sandstrom 1:07
Welcome to the Natural Health Matters podcast where it's all about maximizing your health potential, so that you can look and feel your best at any age. I'm your host, David Sandstrom, Naturopathic Doctor and Biblical Health Coach, and this is episode number 109. Today, we have in the show, Dr. Forrest Sauer, Dr. Forrest is a Chiropractor and the founder of Twin Oaks Health, an alternative medical practice that specializes in helping people manage complex health problems like diabetes, thyroid disease, fatigue, and depression. Dr. Forrest, Welcome to Natural Health Matters.
Dr. Forrest Sauer 1:45
Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
David Sandstrom 1:48
Well, I really appreciate you taking the time. I know you've got a practice up there and Twin Oaks. And and you're helping people with a lot of their chronic conditions. But if you would just give the natural nation that 35,000 foot view of what it is that you do today.
Dr. Forrest Sauer 2:01
Well, thanks for that intro. Appreciate it. Yeah, what we do is we work with clients on a one on one basis, very high touch, and we teach them how to transform their lifestyles to fix the underlying cause the problem. So my doctor, it's it's in chiropractic, that really doesn't matter. What we do is we practice functional medicine, so that way, we can stop masking symptoms. Yeah, because that's oftentimes what what I've found in the years of practice is that I'll have a lot of people, they'll be taking vitamins, minerals, they'll be trying to mask symptoms with medications, they know that they probably want a different approach, but they lack the options, they lack the the, like, the options of a different resource. And that's where we come in, is we go and we coach on lifestyle, what's triggering, if it's an autoimmune condition, like Hashimotos, where the immune system is attacking the thyroid? What is causing that that attack? What's causing that trigger? And then we address that?
David Sandstrom 3:01
Yeah, very good. You know, when I had my practice, a lot of people would come to me and they'd have a pile of supplements and a pile of meds that there
Dr. Forrest Sauer 3:09
you see the suitcase roll on, and you're like, Oh, we got to challenge. Yes,
David Sandstrom 3:13
literally, you
Dr. Forrest Sauer 3:14
said suitcases in my office. Okay. Yeah. And you see those people where they're, they have all those supplements? I don't blame them. They're just desperate to try to find an answer, right. And the challenge is, is they feel like they're on this vicious cycle. If you're out there clicking on every single ad, like, oh, there's this new supplement found in the Himalayas. This gotta work, because look at all these testimonials. And really what it is, is just, they're using the supplement industry, just like a big pharma industry. It's just with a lot without a lot of the side effects. And the problem with both of those is, is we're not fixing what's actually going on? No, I say all that to say is that I use vitamins, I use minerals in my practice to get faster results. And it just simply, it's the fast forward button. But we do it after very, very detailed labs. So it's very pinpointed. And if you're taking 30 pills a day, you're just playing a guessing game,
David Sandstrom 4:07
right? You're just playing a shotgun approach, you just hope that something's gonna work, and not a great approach. So you know, I'd like to dive a little deeper into this, this approach, the the allopathic medical care versus a functional holistic practitioner, you know, it's my contention that the, the emergency rooms here in the US are second to none, and they're very, very useful, but you got to know how to use them. So could you talk to the audience a little bit about when to use allopathic or medical doctor or do and when to stay away from them?
Dr. Forrest Sauer 4:38
Yeah, it's a great question. And you know, don't listen to me I'm just a doctor on the internet. Don't take this as medical advice. So if you if you feel like it's an emergency, please go in. But here's the thing is, is our health care system is a tool. And what a lot of people are waking up to is the fact that this tool is badly broken. We're in health care crisis. We are stuck in a symptom based care system. So you go into the doctor, they take some very basic Labs, which insurance is only going to test for what they can prescribe a medication for, like, they're not going to look at the underlying root cause of the problem, there is no profit in that. And so if you're looking for, like, if you get in a car accident, or if you need an emergency surgery, we have one of the best health care systems in the world, that so check them out, they're gonna save your life, when it comes to fatigue, not getting proper as much sleep, hormonal imbalances, diabetes, autoimmune conditions, the healthcare system is very poorly equipped. In fact, they even say in the Medicare handbook, and all principles, whether you're a Blue Cross or Medicare, or Medicaid, or whatever insurance that you have, it's based off of this one foundational principle, and that is the standard of care for preventative medicine is not medically necessary, and therefore not payable. So what are they saying there, the Medicare in the in the statutes, it's saying, we're not going to pay for enhancing the quality of your life, we're just simply going to extend it. And that's where a lot of people are waking up to the fact, especially in the last three, four years, is the fact that oh, my gosh, there's nobody here that's going to save me, there's nobody that is really going to truly educate me on a healthy lifestyle. Right. And you know, with my big wake up call to this, it was actually when I was when I was 10 years old. I found my grandma brain dead on the sidewalk. It was after, it was after a wedding that my family was out.
David Sandstrom 6:40
And So sorry,
Dr. Forrest Sauer 6:43
Thanks. I appreciate it. Because all I wanted to do in that moment was to go up to her and get a hold her. Because up to that point she had she had spent a lot of time pouring into me and my siblings and very obvious, and I just wanted to tell her thank you. Unfortunately, that was the last time I seen her outside of a casket. And what I took away from that. And what I realized is that she left this earth a lot earlier than what she should have. No, we none of us know when we're gonna go. But this was prevented. Yeah, she passed away from a stroke and maybe you know, someone have passed away from a stroke. But we all know someone who has been has left this earth earlier than what they should have. And what that did is that allowed her life to be cut short. So that we she had a purpose that was unfulfilled. You know, I have a faith. And I have this very strong belief that we're all on this earth for a reason for a purpose. And if we don't have our health under control, if we're just simply trying to get by, we're not truly living our purpose. Right. So from that day, I just believe everybody has a second deserves a second chance. Everybody has mom and dad, grandpa and grandma and I. And I wish like heck that I could rewind the clock and share with my grandmother the information that I get to share with my clients now. Yeah, because everybody does deserve that secondary.
David Sandstrom 8:18
Yeah, absolutely. You know, and it is it is about extending lifespan, but it's it's mostly about quality of life, isn't it? I mean, I think that we should be pursuing all the health that we're capable of achieving, you know, and the tagline for my show is we maximize our health potential when we align our lives more fully with God's natural design for spirit, mind and body. And when we do that, and it compasses a lot. But when we do that we set ourselves up to enjoy the kind of vitality and the amount of health and well being and the relational connectedness and the energy and the mental clarity that God wants for us. One of the one that Bible verses that speaks to me profoundly over the years is John 10:10. The enemy has come to steal, kill and destroy, but I accom that they might have life and have it abundantly. And you know, you're talking about your grandmother, and that's a sad story. My mom is 90 years old. She's in an assisted living facility right now she has dementia, and she's in a memory care unit. And you know, she's really missed out, she's alive. You know, she's still here. And I'm grateful for that. But she's missed out on a lot of life over the last decade or so, because her health has been failing her. And I just feel like that's just it's really not God's design. I mean, we're all finite, as you said, Yeah, we all have our day. But I don't want to be suffering from something that's preventable. And I don't want to have to go through a trial, although God can use trials to get our attention sometimes, right? But I don't want to go through a trial. I don't want to see the natural nation. Anybody in this listening audience go through a trial that God would prefer to spare them from if we embrace natural principles, there's no you know, we're not guaranteed health, but we share a set ourselves up showed get make a lot better chance of enjoying vibrant health if we do things the right way. So thanks.
David Sandstrom 8:18
And just you know, just living the way that we were designed to. And I love that verse because, you know, the devil is all about contraction. It's about limiting our options, and how often that we can get stuck in that mindset, where that's what God wants from us, like, oh, you know, my spouse sucks. That must be what God wants for my life or my job is hard and stressful. That must be you know, my part to play in this role. That's the exact opposite of what that verse is all about. It's all about expansion. It's about love. It's about joy. And God does want us to pray. He wants us to be in constant communication with him. However, he also asks us to participate. That's right, ask and actually have a role to play. And so many times all see, Christians are very well meaning people if you have faith or don't have faith, the same sin applies is the sin of inaction, the state of procrastination, where I know many Christians you probably do, too, where they all they do is pray, and they hope for a better life. And they hope for a better tomorrow and they hope for a better life situation, but they never tried to change their habits. Yeah. And this is gonna show up when you start changing your habits when you start changing your actions.
David Sandstrom 11:32
Dr. Forrest, you're speaking my language. You know, there's, there's a guy that I his he's passed away. Now his name was Henry, right. And he has ministry called being health and his book is called a more excellent way. And one of the things that he teaches he used to teach is, Christians are so busy putting Jesus paint on that we forgot to take the rust off first. Yeah. And then the point is, you know, and I was going to Matthew chapter five of the Beatitudes when Jesus was teaching the sermon on the mount this morning. And the whole point of the sermon, he sets it up and chapter five, there, Matthew, is, hey, if you want to experience blessings, which is which is wood, the root word is happiness, if you want to set yourself up for joy and happiness, you've got to you got to do things God's way. You know, you've got to surrender to His love and goodness, and have a change of heart, then, you know, he goes on to talk about, you know, you've heard it said, do not commit adultery. But if a man has looked at a woman with lust in his heart, he's already committed adultery with her. So he say he's taking it from the external and bringing it to the internal and saying, Hey, look at guys, it's a matter of the heart. It's this, this is what I'm talking about here. It's not about the external behavior. It's about surrendering, and setting yourself up to be blessed. We all want the blessings. But there's often those blessings that are promised in the Bible, have a condition, there's an if then statement attached to them, right? If you do this, then that will happen. It's all over the Bible.
Dr. Forrest Sauer 13:03
Yes. And he's gonna show up, if you can handle he's not gonna bless you. If with things that you can't handle, and you need to prove to him through your actions through your life, if you can actually handle those. It's like spider man much what does it great powers call for great responsibility? It's Yes, yes. But yeah, so basically, you need to prove that you can handle the blessings that He already has prepared in your life. And quite often, when I when I see a client, they're in a place where they know they need to make a change. But they're unsure exactly how to make those changes, which I love working with those people because we are in the information age, David, we are in the information age, there's so much information out there. Almost all of it is contradictory. And quite frankly, it can be more confusing than helpful for most people. So when we're bringing on a client's like, Okay, we wait, we break it down. And so it's that way, it's a system. It's like step one, step two, step three, let's make this dummy proof. So that way, all you need to do is show up with the right attitude with the right amount humility, take the action, start changing your mindset, and you're going to be able to start feeling those results. And once you start getting that health back, you start getting that energy back, you start sleeping all the way through the night, you're not waking up with these with hitting the alarm clock five times this is when you can start truly living your purpose. Otherwise, you're just stuck in the prison, which is your body.
David Sandstrom 14:31
Yeah, I love it. Let's let's go back to what we touched on in the beginning of our conversation, and that is someone who is not feeling well. They know something's wrong. So they do what most people do they go to the doctor and the doctor is looking for first he has to he's he's handcuffed him or her they handcuffed with the with the insurance system, right? So they can only do what insurance pays for and then they're looking for disease states. They want to name it, blame it and payment, they want to take your collection of symptoms and assign a name to it and call it a disease. And then they blame your symptoms on that disease. And then they try to tame your symptoms with pharmaceuticals. And if the if the drug stopped working, then it's surgery. And that's, that's their bag of goods. That's, that's really all they've got. So talk to the person who's maybe in the middle of that right now, and looking for some answers. So what would you say to that person when they walk into your office,
Dr. Forrest Sauer 15:27
I think the first thing to realize is that I am, I want to be very careful, because I don't want to condemn any doctor or nurse, you know, they got it into the profession, normally for the right reason to help people. But the fact of the matter is, is when they're going through school, and when they get a job, they are very strictly managed, they're all held to a very, very tight schedule. That's why you can only for maximum time, see a doctor for 15 minutes. And you can only get these labs that like you said, Come back normal. So what is normal actually mean? Well, when when labs are taken, your labs are getting compared to 90% of Americans, you're not getting compared to what an actually healthy human being is, you're getting compared to everybody else. So let's walk through this. Do you think that the average American Health has gotten better? Or is it gotten worse in the past five years? It's gotten worse. I mean, everyone, I asked this every time but everyone's like, it's always gotten worse. Cancer rates or diabetes or heart attacks are at all time high strokes, all in all that are going up, and you're getting compared to a sicker and sicker human being.
David Sandstrom 16:37
Right? And not only that, I would add to that is who's sending bloodwork into the lab? It's sick people.
Dr. Forrest Sauer 16:44
So that's what you're getting 90% of the sick, people, we're talking the same language. And so it's like, no wonder your labs are always coming back within range. And then you maybe leave the doctor's office feeling like you're crazy, like is it on my head, because you've probably been told that before, right? You just need to get over it. Or you just need to deal with it. Or you know what you're, you're 45, or you're 65 Just deal with it. This is how life is I think it's a bunch of BS, I think it's a bunch of crap, you you deserve the right to feel healthy, to feel vibrant, well into your 80s. That's my 100% belief, and you actually believe that you can achieve it, it's just behaving the right way,
David Sandstrom 17:27
You know, a great way a great way, a great way to look at this is, we've been told that our health is kind of like a flashlight. When you turn it on with fresh batteries. It's nice and bright. It's going to shine bright through your 20s and 30s. But you know, after 40 Well, it's all downhill, right? Enjoy the ride while it lasted Exactly. In the batteries are getting weaker, and your light bulb is getting dimmer and slowly, slowly, it gets dimmer and dimmer over time, until finally it goes out. I think our vitality should be thought of more as a candle where you light it and it burns bright, all the way down to the very end of that thing super short and it flickers a couple of times and it goes out. That's that should be our vitality, that that's the way that's what we should be shooting for. And I absolutely agree with you that in our in our 70s and 80s wishes that should be the best part of our lives, because we've got the wisdom to go along with, you know, our purpose and really be effective with at what we do. And unfortunately that's not the norm. That's not what we see is it?
Dr. Forrest Sauer 18:26
Correct? I 100% agree. Yeah. So let's also here's, here's one other thing is when we're talking about okay, like Okay, so why this is a great questions like if we should feel healthy well into our 70s 80s. Why isn't that the case? And really, the answer comes down to stress. There's three different kinds of stress. There's physical, chemical, and emotional kinds of stress. And so, if we're talking about physical kinds of stress, let's break these down physical stress that is the aches the backaches, the arthritis, the daily aches and pains I go, that's physical stress, bumps, bruises, that kind of thing. Well, there's also emotional stress. If you have have notifications turn on your phone or you're watching the news or if you pay any attention to our environment, or if you have a stressful work relationship if you if your work is very stressful, got tight deadlines. Your coworkers are cantankerous, you know, and you have some arguments or you got a boss that's, that's a tightwad, you know that. Those are emotional stresses, you got kids, there's some emotional stresses. There's also the chemical kind of stress. And these everybody seems to know about them, but we also take them for granted. So these chemical kind of stresses are all of the ingredients that are snuck into our food these days. The next time you buy some food, if it comes in a box, a can or it comes out of a window. Check out the ingredients of the food that you're consuming. Chances are there's an ingredient in there That was actually discovered to be precancerous. Or it's spiking up your glucose like it's a it's a high fructose corn syrup, or it's an artificial sweetener, it's destroying your gut, all of these chemicals call, you know, tax your body, their tax your body, and they call for payment, that payment comes in the form of disease. And when you're talking about the healthcare system, where they're going to name it, blame entertainment team, that means that they're just going to simply give you a medication, we're just going to mask the symptoms, you're going to feel better, you're the numbers on the on the lab are going to look better, but you're gonna feel like crap, because it comes with side effects. And maybe it doesn't change the symptoms at all. And all you're doing is you're kicking the can farther down the road. And this is why one medication will turn into three, and that'll turn into five. And I don't want to tame diseases. I want to reverse them.
David Sandstrom 20:49
Yeah. Well, you know, I we are so on the same page. Dr. Forrest, you know, my advice for eating a lot of people ask me Oh, you're a Certified Nutritional counselor. Yeah. Hey, what's what's healthy food? Is broccoli healthy or not? You know, you know, should I eat steak or not? And the answer to that is, look, we all have a biochemical individuality. So there are individual differences. But as a general rule, if you stick by this, you're going to be doing pretty well eat food, as close to its God-given natural form as possible, which would mean single ingredient foods, right? As you just mentioned, if it comes in a box, or a package, and it's radical statement, a box or a package, it's suspect, that doesn't mean everything that's packaged is bad for you. But you know what, they throw gradients in there, you know, it's anticaking agents for the machines. It's it's texturing agents, coloring agents, but red dye number 40. I know when my kids were in elementary school, and they had food coloring, they turned into different kids, they turned into little monsters, and they couldn't control it. You know, and I noticed this a few times. And I realized, oh, they had some of that junk with had some candy or lollipop or something that that had red dye number 40 in it, and it really almost immediately affected their behavior. So yeah, you know, if we if we want to nourish our bodies the way God intended, we should eat, seek out and eat food, the way God provides it. You know, buy food that spoils and eat it before it does.
Dr. Forrest Sauer 22:19
If bugs aren't crawling on your food, then you probably shouldn't consume it. You've we've all seen the image of the McDonald's hamburger that's been looking, you know, the same for for years. insects don't want to eat it, you probably shouldn't either. And just to really highlight how foreign this idea because really what we're talking about is treat food as medicine, food is thy medicine. How foreign This is to the traditional allopathic doctor, I was having a conversation with a non college earner, he's a master surgeon at a hospital. So lots of surgery he did 36 hour shifts, absolutely insane. I can't even imagine it. But wow, we're having a conversation. And he did a surgery on this on this kid. He was in his teens. And this kid he only ate pasta, like that was that was it, it was only grains. And he ended up getting a car accident. So he had to go in for surgery to get some reparative stuff done. Not the sutures that the surgeon was putting into the kid who was in his teenage teenage years, the skin continued to rip and break into sewn up his gut. So that he had to take part of his intestines out. Because his body was in such a state of disease, that he could that his cells couldn't hold a needle. Now he did 12 hours later, he did a surgery on another person where they had a healthy diet. They just you know, similar thing car accident. So no problems and rabbit conversation later. And he's like, Can food really make that big of a difference? Like it? It puzzled him? It didn't it wasn't that aha moment that you and I live with with every single day. And if the doctors are thinking this, what do you think they're spoon feeding the rest of the American public? I mean, we should be infuriated at the fact that we have been brainwashed to think that insurance and our health care system and our what our doctor tells us is going is biblical. And we need to simply follow that. And we're just being led into the, in the exact opposite direction of where we all want to end up.
David Sandstrom 24:29
You know, a lot of people don't know that doctors only get maybe one day worth of nutritional training and four years of medical school. So they get I was neighbors with a guy who actually taught at medical school and he said David it's true, because I know because I taught the course. It was a three hour course. And we did it in an afternoon and that's all we got on nutrition. So if you talk to if you go to your doctor thinking he's a good source for nutritional advice, he's probably going to be leading you astray.
Dr. Forrest Sauer 24:58
You're broke uncle for financial Bice? Well, source?
David Sandstrom 25:03
Yeah, absolutely. You know, they're really kind of guessing. And they're going with what they hear on television, you know, from the food industry, not on good science and doctors, you know, hey, they're smart people, they don't get through medical school without having a brain. But they don't have the time to go through the medical literature and read the published studies for themselves. They, they, they just take sound bites, they listen to the the drug rep who's who, who comes into the office, they they assume that they've done the research that so they'll listen to them. And of course, a drug or drug rep is going to be pushing one pharmaceuticals. That's that's what they do. I know, doctors will oftentimes tell you, Oh, supplements not worth it's just expensive urine. If you're gonna supplement, you know, all supplements are the same, you know, just get the cheapest brand. Well, what industry does that apply to? Does that apply to automobiles? Does that apply to aircraft? Does it apply to pens and pencils, you name it, you know, give me an industry where that you know, that applies? It doesn't. There are differences in nutrition, and there's a lot of good reasons to supplement. You know, our, as you said earlier, our food supply is compromised. And all that we live in a very toxic world and our body needs nutrients, to detoxify from these chemicals that were exposed to. So yeah, we burn up a lot of nutrients because we live in a toxic world. So I think supplementation is a good idea. But it has to be done wisely. Right. And we're you know, taking a, you know, a suitcase full of supplements on a weekly basis is not not a good idea.
Dr. Forrest Sauer 26:37
So where I like to draw the line with supplements is they're very useful. But if I'm going to make a decision, if I if I had to make a decision whether to work with someone to change their lifestyle, or just simply take supplements and continue living the way that they're living, I would choose change their lifestyle, every single time because that's something that you can stick with, and then you're going to take it for the rest of your life, you're gonna take it with you for the rest of your life with supplements. It it's not, you're not going to be able to out pop an unhealthy diet like popping pills. So I just I use supplements, like I said to make things happen faster. But there's a purpose. There's a there's a system to it, we we take labs so that way we know exactly which buttons that we need to push, specifically. And you know, if you're just taking a multivitamin, and you're taking a prebiotic or a probiotic, and that's it, and you haven't fixed anything else, and you're wondering why you're spinning your wheels, and you're spending hundreds of dollars on pills every single every single month. The reason is, is because you're playing a guessing game. And I don't fault you for that you're just doing your due diligence on Google. And Dr. Google is trying to try to fix you. But there's a lot better approach.
David Sandstrom 27:49
Yeah, absolutely. So if you were a doctor for us, would you explain what functional medicine is? Could you define that for us?
Dr. Forrest Sauer 27:57
Yeah, functional medicine is fixing the root underlying cause of the problem. So we work with a lot of autoimmune conditions, whether it be diagnosed or undiagnosed. So maybe you're that person, that red herring who's been bouncing around from Doctor doctor, and you really don't know what's going on. Oftentimes, there's an autoimmune component or inflammation component to that person. So what we'll do is we'll make certain and figure out what is causing the problem it gets back to what kind of stress your body is going under? Is it a emotional stress? Is it a physical stress? Is it chemical stress, mostly, we'll see it's a combination of all three, actually, or there's two. So we work very heavily with those versions of stress. Because realize your immune system with an autoimmune condition, the immune system is attacking the body. Well, it isn't just simply attacking the body for any real random reason. There's a purpose behind it. So we need to find that trigger. And if we we work with some clients who are very advanced autoimmune condition, so they're taking humera Or they're taking some other treks aid or some immunosuppressive drug. Yeah. That is, again, just simply masking the symptom. So what is triggering it? Is it something that you're eating? Is it something that you're drinking? Are you heavy? And are you loaded with heavy metals is a mold? Is it lyme? the the options are truly endless, which is amazing, but also still frustrating. And that's why we do our due diligence upfront, take the proper lab tests and do the proper intake to make certain that all those pillars are knocked down. And that way when we start making changes with our clients, it's very, very specific and very, very pinpointed.
David Sandstrom 29:44
Yeah, very good. So in other words, instead of doing the five minute drive by visit with with the practitioner, you sit down and you talk with them, and you listen to their story. And you you order labs But you order it in a targeted basis, you're not just doing the shotgun approach with labs either, right? You're, you have a suspicion as to what might be going on and you want to verify that suspicion. With lab work, is that correct?
Dr. Forrest Sauer 30:13
Yes. And we do test for almost everything I gets nose to toes because I don't want to run the risk. By the time we see someone, they've usually been around the horn a couple of times they've been around the Sun many times trying to fix this, I'm not going to take that risk with just simply having this attempt be another speed bump, we're going to figure it out. And and so that's the approach that we take is, is that, okay?
David Sandstrom 30:36
And do you work with your clients on nutrition? Do you do you educate people on nutrition as well?
Dr. Forrest Sauer 30:41
Yeah, and one thing that we work heavily with nutrition, and we would take it from all steps of life. So we have a system that we work with our clients in a system because it's repeatable. Now we customize the system for the person based off what's going on, obviously, but we go ahead and we take the pill labs, and then we do a detox, not this fly by night stuff that you see on the internet. That's a three day master cleanse, that's garbage, it's going to put more stress on your body, don't do it. But a detox is going to lay a strong foundation for your gut and your liver and your kidneys and your skin, it's going to lay that foundation for your body. So that way, you can start building off of that, that way, you're going to escape from that vicious cycle that you're stuck on. So it's labs detox for that person that's based off of their labs. And we're just teaching them we're coaching them. We're educating them on all of these pieces as we go through. So it's a five pillar approach, detox, nutrition, what foods to eat, what foods not to eat, what's building their body up, what's tearing their body down. Exercise, you get to earn your way to exercise, we don't just simply throw people on the treadmill, which is a broken way of exercise, but it's 2030 minutes to three times a week, building up lean muscle tissue, balancing out hormones, decreasing stress, making them more resilient. And like I said, you get to earn your way to exercise. So don't just simply start there, because most of our clients, they're exhausted, they're barely making it weigh their way through life. So let's get that natural energy back. First, yeah. And then we can jump into fitness when your body's ready. And that leads us to hormones. So we talked about labs talked about detox nutrition, fitness hormones, if we just simply jump to hormones trying to fix your hormones naturally without bioidentical or whatever. If we just tried to simply balance out your hormones, again, and we ignore those foundational pillars with exercise and nutrition and the detox again, we're going to be stuck in that vicious cycle, spinning our wheels. So we need to get those foundational pillars first, then we can focus on hormones. And then we tie the last one is a mentor. So me, my team, I have health and wellness coaches that are awesome. They're excellent. We just help walk our clients through so that way, they're not in this alone, you know, yeah, if the past three years have showed us anything, that loneliness is not the way to success, isolation is not going to lead to a better, healthier lifestyle. So we have a community may help coach you hold you accountable, make certain that you're doing what needs to be done.
David Sandstrom 33:10
Okay, that sounds really great. So I'm assuming you you have like a time period, you sign people up for a 90 day program, six month program? Or how does that work?
Dr. Forrest Sauer 33:21
Great question. You know, we work with clients from five years old, all the way up to nine years old, you know, a lot of different situations in between there. And even though we use this five pillar approach, that is a system, it does depend upon the individual on what's going on with them.
David Sandstrom 33:37
Yeah. So when someone comes to you, they're not just come and visit by visit, you say, Hey, this is going to be wearing this for the long haul. It's gonna take take some time, I didn't get to where you are overnight, and therefore, you're not going to get out of this hole that you're in overnight. So you know, we're going to work together for the next six months, or is that what you do people you kind of sell a, a time based program or, you know, how does it work with people?
Dr. Forrest Sauer 34:02
Yeah, you're on the right path. Like I said, it's different for everybody. It could be six months, could be four months, could be nine months, you know, two months or depending upon what's going on. But we do set all the expectations up front. And I used to practice with the visit by visit version, and I was not getting the results that I wanted with my clients, my clients were frustrated, I was frustrated. I broke away from that model stuff just simply, you know, fell through the cracks. Maybe you're stuck in that system right now. That's why we don't do it that way anymore, is I want to make certain that every single piece of the puzzle is put together. Because when I'm taking on a client we only work with 20 clients per month. I want to make certain that they're gonna get the results.
David Sandstrom 34:44
Yeah, that's what Yeah, that's really good. So you mentioned autoimmune in that that's quite common. So what do you believe is the root of of an autoimmune condition or is it is there's just run the gamut. How can you know how well What's your thoughts on that?
Dr. Forrest Sauer 35:00
With the immune system? Great question. And it does get back to the three different kinds of of stress that you can experience. So physical, chemical, emotional. I've had clients where they're married them and their spouse, they do not get along. I'm not a proponent of divorce, but they ended up separating, their symptoms get better, because they get rid of the emotional stress. Yeah. Okay. So that could be a possibility. I'm not telling everybody go get a divorce. Don't say that.
David Sandstrom 35:31
Okay. But I would suggest is a better way is work on your marriage
Dr. Forrest Sauer 35:34
Better Way is working it be grownups go to counseling, I often tell men, like be a man go to counseling, get it figured out, work it out together. And I And David, I think the real reason why most people don't want to is because of pride and selfishness. But anyways, that's a different podcast. It's a whole nother episode. It's a whole other episode. But we work very heavily in the in the chemical stress, and the physical stress side. So if they got pain or inflammation, or if they have toxins inside of their body, this is one of the more common versions of stress. We live in an industrial community a lot of manmade, synthetically, hybridized, chemicals and foods out there. And that's creating a massive amount of stress inside of the body, that's just creating a whole cascade of problems, whether it be hormonal imbalances, or autoimmune conditions. Yeah. And realize, like if, if you have someone with who is sick, or is a proponent of having an autoimmune condition, your mom has a thyroid problem, your grandma, does your aunt's do all your sisters do, chances are you are going to get one if you decide to live, basically like that. Right? So lifestyle in the term of disease or genetics. Genetics load the gun, but lifestyle pulls the trigger. So if you never want to fire that gun, if you never want to get out, I mean, conditions live a different lifestyle.
David Sandstrom 37:01
Yeah, that's, that's a great phrase, I'm going to repeat that genetics load the gun, but lifestyle pulls the trigger. So we're not we're not victims of a cruel game of genetic roulette, we have, we have influence, we have the ability to make choices and make changes to a lifestyle that can again set us up for success. I want to I want to go back just a little bit to the mental emotional components. So how would you if you suspect someone's got an emotional issue? How would How do you go about helping that person identify the toxic thoughts or belief system and go about correcting it? Because I, I firmly believe that we have a mental emotional connection, there's a mind body connection that's well documented in medical literature. So you know, how do you go about helping somebody that way?
Dr. Forrest Sauer 37:53
If it's if it's something small David, then we'll work with them. But if it's a fairly advanced case, then we're going to refer them out to the proper proper people who are who have more experience in that. And it's, if we have someone who is stuck in a victim mindset, let's go and say that we have a client where they have five different diagnoses, you know, they've been labeled by the medical system, and they're carrying that burden. One of the biggest takeaways that I want, all the people listening this to take away from is you have hope you are worth fighting for. You do not have to continue living with those labels, you can escape, you can behave your way out of it, your body can heal itself, it was designed in a beautiful, miraculous way. And that message is simply not expressed. Anywhere else, you're not going to get it at the doctor's office, you're not going to get it online, you can reverse it. You can live free, you can live with that purpose, and you are desperately worth fighting for. So I hope everybody takes that into account.
David Sandstrom 38:58
That's excellent. That's really good. That sounds like a good place to wrap up. But I do want to ask you, is there anything that you'd like to mention that we haven't talked about before we wrap things up?
Dr. Forrest Sauer 39:12
I think we're pretty good. I think, you know, the biggest takeaway that I want to express very clearly, to people is that number one, the health care system serves its purpose. If you're looking to it for a vibrant, healthy, God filled purpose filled life. It is the wrong tool to use. There is only one person on this earth can that can truly transform your health. And that is yourself. If you're looking for guidance, if you're looking for help if you're looking for someone to help guide you through those pillars, just simply reach out, give us a call. You know, all of us think that we are self-made men self-made women and to reach out as a weakness. The exact opposite is true. We are designed to live in a community Really, I depend depend on people, people depend on me. That's what makes life beautiful.
David Sandstrom 40:08
Excellent. I love it. That's really good advice. So Dr. Sauer if someone is resonating with this message, and I'd like to get in touch with you, what's the best way to do that?
Dr. Forrest Sauer 40:16
Great question, you can simply go to our website, you'll be able to see the phone number there, get in contact with one of my team members. And we can start having a conversation, like I said, We do limit the number of people that we work with the 20 per month because I want to work with people not numbers. And so we are very careful with people that we do bring on. But most of the people that I get to have a conversation are a good fit, because they recognize they need they need to make a change. Yeah, and they don't want to wait till it's too late.
David Sandstrom 40:45
And your website is TwinOaksHealth.com.
Dr. Forrest Sauer 40:48
Correct. TwinOaksHealth.com. Reach out there. That'd be fantastic.
David Sandstrom 40:51
Right, good. Doc, for us. It was a pleasure. Thank you so much for your time.
Dr. Forrest Sauer 40:55
Thank you appreciate it, have a great day to you too.
David Sandstrom 40:59
For more, go to the show notes page at davidsandstrom.com forward/109. There you can find it audio as well as a video version of the podcast. I also put a full transcript for every episode that you can download for free. And I also put links to all the resources that we mentioned, as well as some type of a content upgrade that you can use to go deeper with that subject. If you're enjoying the podcast, I sure would appreciate you telling a friend about it. This information is relatively hard to come by, especially from a faith-based perspective. So if you told a friend about this podcast, tell them you're enjoying it. I'll bet they'll thank you for it. Thank you for listening, and I'll talk with you in two weeks be blessed.
In this episode, I'm talking with Dr. Forrest Sauer. And we're talking about and contrasting the difference between conventional allopathic medicine and natural holistic functional medicine. And there's quite a difference to both appropriate at different times and for different reasons. But you've got to understand when and how to use each. We'll cover a lot of subjects. We talked about autoimmune conditions, and nutrition and exercise. We hit a lot, and it's a great episode. Here's a sample of what you'll hear. So if you were a doctor for us, would you explain what functional medicine is? Could you define that for us?
Dr. Forrest Sauer 0:37
Yeah, functional medicine is fixing the root underlying cause of the problem. What we'll do is we'll make certain and figure out what is causing the problem it gets back to what kind of stress your body is going under? Is it a emotional stress? Is it a physical stress? Is it chemical stress, mostly, we'll see it's a combination of all three actually are those two. So we work very heavily with those versions of stress.
David Sandstrom 1:07
Welcome to the Natural Health Matters podcast where it's all about maximizing your health potential, so that you can look and feel your best at any age. I'm your host, David Sandstrom, Naturopathic Doctor and Biblical Health Coach, and this is episode number 109. Today, we have in the show, Dr. Forrest Sauer, Dr. Forrest is a Chiropractor and the founder of Twin Oaks Health, an alternative medical practice that specializes in helping people manage complex health problems like diabetes, thyroid disease, fatigue, and depression. Dr. Forrest, Welcome to Natural Health Matters.
Dr. Forrest Sauer 1:45
Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
David Sandstrom 1:48
Well, I really appreciate you taking the time. I know you've got a practice up there and Twin Oaks. And and you're helping people with a lot of their chronic conditions. But if you would just give the natural nation that 35,000 foot view of what it is that you do today.
Dr. Forrest Sauer 2:01
Well, thanks for that intro. Appreciate it. Yeah, what we do is we work with clients on a one on one basis, very high touch, and we teach them how to transform their lifestyles to fix the underlying cause the problem. So my doctor, it's it's in chiropractic, that really doesn't matter. What we do is we practice functional medicine, so that way, we can stop masking symptoms. Yeah, because that's oftentimes what what I've found in the years of practice is that I'll have a lot of people, they'll be taking vitamins, minerals, they'll be trying to mask symptoms with medications, they know that they probably want a different approach, but they lack the options, they lack the the, like, the options of a different resource. And that's where we come in, is we go and we coach on lifestyle, what's triggering, if it's an autoimmune condition, like Hashimotos, where the immune system is attacking the thyroid? What is causing that that attack? What's causing that trigger? And then we address that?
David Sandstrom 3:01
Yeah, very good. You know, when I had my practice, a lot of people would come to me and they'd have a pile of supplements and a pile of meds that there
Dr. Forrest Sauer 3:09
you see the suitcase roll on, and you're like, Oh, we got to challenge. Yes,
David Sandstrom 3:13
literally, you
Dr. Forrest Sauer 3:14
said suitcases in my office. Okay. Yeah. And you see those people where they're, they have all those supplements? I don't blame them. They're just desperate to try to find an answer, right. And the challenge is, is they feel like they're on this vicious cycle. If you're out there clicking on every single ad, like, oh, there's this new supplement found in the Himalayas. This gotta work, because look at all these testimonials. And really what it is, is just, they're using the supplement industry, just like a big pharma industry. It's just with a lot without a lot of the side effects. And the problem with both of those is, is we're not fixing what's actually going on? No, I say all that to say is that I use vitamins, I use minerals in my practice to get faster results. And it just simply, it's the fast forward button. But we do it after very, very detailed labs. So it's very pinpointed. And if you're taking 30 pills a day, you're just playing a guessing game,
David Sandstrom 4:07
right? You're just playing a shotgun approach, you just hope that something's gonna work, and not a great approach. So you know, I'd like to dive a little deeper into this, this approach, the the allopathic medical care versus a functional holistic practitioner, you know, it's my contention that the, the emergency rooms here in the US are second to none, and they're very, very useful, but you got to know how to use them. So could you talk to the audience a little bit about when to use allopathic or medical doctor or do and when to stay away from them?
Dr. Forrest Sauer 4:38
Yeah, it's a great question. And you know, don't listen to me I'm just a doctor on the internet. Don't take this as medical advice. So if you if you feel like it's an emergency, please go in. But here's the thing is, is our health care system is a tool. And what a lot of people are waking up to is the fact that this tool is badly broken. We're in health care crisis. We are stuck in a symptom based care system. So you go into the doctor, they take some very basic Labs, which insurance is only going to test for what they can prescribe a medication for, like, they're not going to look at the underlying root cause of the problem, there is no profit in that. And so if you're looking for, like, if you get in a car accident, or if you need an emergency surgery, we have one of the best health care systems in the world, that so check them out, they're gonna save your life, when it comes to fatigue, not getting proper as much sleep, hormonal imbalances, diabetes, autoimmune conditions, the healthcare system is very poorly equipped. In fact, they even say in the Medicare handbook, and all principles, whether you're a Blue Cross or Medicare, or Medicaid, or whatever insurance that you have, it's based off of this one foundational principle, and that is the standard of care for preventative medicine is not medically necessary, and therefore not payable. So what are they saying there, the Medicare in the in the statutes, it's saying, we're not going to pay for enhancing the quality of your life, we're just simply going to extend it. And that's where a lot of people are waking up to the fact, especially in the last three, four years, is the fact that oh, my gosh, there's nobody here that's going to save me, there's nobody that is really going to truly educate me on a healthy lifestyle. Right. And you know, with my big wake up call to this, it was actually when I was when I was 10 years old. I found my grandma brain dead on the sidewalk. It was after, it was after a wedding that my family was out.
David Sandstrom 6:40
And So sorry,
Dr. Forrest Sauer 6:43
Thanks. I appreciate it. Because all I wanted to do in that moment was to go up to her and get a hold her. Because up to that point she had she had spent a lot of time pouring into me and my siblings and very obvious, and I just wanted to tell her thank you. Unfortunately, that was the last time I seen her outside of a casket. And what I took away from that. And what I realized is that she left this earth a lot earlier than what she should have. No, we none of us know when we're gonna go. But this was prevented. Yeah, she passed away from a stroke and maybe you know, someone have passed away from a stroke. But we all know someone who has been has left this earth earlier than what they should have. And what that did is that allowed her life to be cut short. So that we she had a purpose that was unfulfilled. You know, I have a faith. And I have this very strong belief that we're all on this earth for a reason for a purpose. And if we don't have our health under control, if we're just simply trying to get by, we're not truly living our purpose. Right. So from that day, I just believe everybody has a second deserves a second chance. Everybody has mom and dad, grandpa and grandma and I. And I wish like heck that I could rewind the clock and share with my grandmother the information that I get to share with my clients now. Yeah, because everybody does deserve that secondary.
David Sandstrom 8:18
Yeah, absolutely. You know, and it is it is about extending lifespan, but it's it's mostly about quality of life, isn't it? I mean, I think that we should be pursuing all the health that we're capable of achieving, you know, and the tagline for my show is we maximize our health potential when we align our lives more fully with God's natural design for spirit, mind and body. And when we do that, and it compasses a lot. But when we do that we set ourselves up to enjoy the kind of vitality and the amount of health and well being and the relational connectedness and the energy and the mental clarity that God wants for us. One of the one that Bible verses that speaks to me profoundly over the years is John 10:10. The enemy has come to steal, kill and destroy, but I accom that they might have life and have it abundantly. And you know, you're talking about your grandmother, and that's a sad story. My mom is 90 years old. She's in an assisted living facility right now she has dementia, and she's in a memory care unit. And you know, she's really missed out, she's alive. You know, she's still here. And I'm grateful for that. But she's missed out on a lot of life over the last decade or so, because her health has been failing her. And I just feel like that's just it's really not God's design. I mean, we're all finite, as you said, Yeah, we all have our day. But I don't want to be suffering from something that's preventable. And I don't want to have to go through a trial, although God can use trials to get our attention sometimes, right? But I don't want to go through a trial. I don't want to see the natural nation. Anybody in this listening audience go through a trial that God would prefer to spare them from if we embrace natural principles, there's no you know, we're not guaranteed health, but we share a set ourselves up showed get make a lot better chance of enjoying vibrant health if we do things the right way. So thanks.
David Sandstrom 8:18
And just you know, just living the way that we were designed to. And I love that verse because, you know, the devil is all about contraction. It's about limiting our options, and how often that we can get stuck in that mindset, where that's what God wants from us, like, oh, you know, my spouse sucks. That must be what God wants for my life or my job is hard and stressful. That must be you know, my part to play in this role. That's the exact opposite of what that verse is all about. It's all about expansion. It's about love. It's about joy. And God does want us to pray. He wants us to be in constant communication with him. However, he also asks us to participate. That's right, ask and actually have a role to play. And so many times all see, Christians are very well meaning people if you have faith or don't have faith, the same sin applies is the sin of inaction, the state of procrastination, where I know many Christians you probably do, too, where they all they do is pray, and they hope for a better life. And they hope for a better tomorrow and they hope for a better life situation, but they never tried to change their habits. Yeah. And this is gonna show up when you start changing your habits when you start changing your actions.
David Sandstrom 11:32
Dr. Forrest, you're speaking my language. You know, there's, there's a guy that I his he's passed away. Now his name was Henry, right. And he has ministry called being health and his book is called a more excellent way. And one of the things that he teaches he used to teach is, Christians are so busy putting Jesus paint on that we forgot to take the rust off first. Yeah. And then the point is, you know, and I was going to Matthew chapter five of the Beatitudes when Jesus was teaching the sermon on the mount this morning. And the whole point of the sermon, he sets it up and chapter five, there, Matthew, is, hey, if you want to experience blessings, which is which is wood, the root word is happiness, if you want to set yourself up for joy and happiness, you've got to you got to do things God's way. You know, you've got to surrender to His love and goodness, and have a change of heart, then, you know, he goes on to talk about, you know, you've heard it said, do not commit adultery. But if a man has looked at a woman with lust in his heart, he's already committed adultery with her. So he say he's taking it from the external and bringing it to the internal and saying, Hey, look at guys, it's a matter of the heart. It's this, this is what I'm talking about here. It's not about the external behavior. It's about surrendering, and setting yourself up to be blessed. We all want the blessings. But there's often those blessings that are promised in the Bible, have a condition, there's an if then statement attached to them, right? If you do this, then that will happen. It's all over the Bible.
Dr. Forrest Sauer 13:03
Yes. And he's gonna show up, if you can handle he's not gonna bless you. If with things that you can't handle, and you need to prove to him through your actions through your life, if you can actually handle those. It's like spider man much what does it great powers call for great responsibility? It's Yes, yes. But yeah, so basically, you need to prove that you can handle the blessings that He already has prepared in your life. And quite often, when I when I see a client, they're in a place where they know they need to make a change. But they're unsure exactly how to make those changes, which I love working with those people because we are in the information age, David, we are in the information age, there's so much information out there. Almost all of it is contradictory. And quite frankly, it can be more confusing than helpful for most people. So when we're bringing on a client's like, Okay, we wait, we break it down. And so it's that way, it's a system. It's like step one, step two, step three, let's make this dummy proof. So that way, all you need to do is show up with the right attitude with the right amount humility, take the action, start changing your mindset, and you're going to be able to start feeling those results. And once you start getting that health back, you start getting that energy back, you start sleeping all the way through the night, you're not waking up with these with hitting the alarm clock five times this is when you can start truly living your purpose. Otherwise, you're just stuck in the prison, which is your body.
David Sandstrom 14:31
Yeah, I love it. Let's let's go back to what we touched on in the beginning of our conversation, and that is someone who is not feeling well. They know something's wrong. So they do what most people do they go to the doctor and the doctor is looking for first he has to he's he's handcuffed him or her they handcuffed with the with the insurance system, right? So they can only do what insurance pays for and then they're looking for disease states. They want to name it, blame it and payment, they want to take your collection of symptoms and assign a name to it and call it a disease. And then they blame your symptoms on that disease. And then they try to tame your symptoms with pharmaceuticals. And if the if the drug stopped working, then it's surgery. And that's, that's their bag of goods. That's, that's really all they've got. So talk to the person who's maybe in the middle of that right now, and looking for some answers. So what would you say to that person when they walk into your office,
Dr. Forrest Sauer 15:27
I think the first thing to realize is that I am, I want to be very careful, because I don't want to condemn any doctor or nurse, you know, they got it into the profession, normally for the right reason to help people. But the fact of the matter is, is when they're going through school, and when they get a job, they are very strictly managed, they're all held to a very, very tight schedule. That's why you can only for maximum time, see a doctor for 15 minutes. And you can only get these labs that like you said, Come back normal. So what is normal actually mean? Well, when when labs are taken, your labs are getting compared to 90% of Americans, you're not getting compared to what an actually healthy human being is, you're getting compared to everybody else. So let's walk through this. Do you think that the average American Health has gotten better? Or is it gotten worse in the past five years? It's gotten worse. I mean, everyone, I asked this every time but everyone's like, it's always gotten worse. Cancer rates or diabetes or heart attacks are at all time high strokes, all in all that are going up, and you're getting compared to a sicker and sicker human being.
David Sandstrom 16:37
Right? And not only that, I would add to that is who's sending bloodwork into the lab? It's sick people.
Dr. Forrest Sauer 16:44
So that's what you're getting 90% of the sick, people, we're talking the same language. And so it's like, no wonder your labs are always coming back within range. And then you maybe leave the doctor's office feeling like you're crazy, like is it on my head, because you've probably been told that before, right? You just need to get over it. Or you just need to deal with it. Or you know what you're, you're 45, or you're 65 Just deal with it. This is how life is I think it's a bunch of BS, I think it's a bunch of crap, you you deserve the right to feel healthy, to feel vibrant, well into your 80s. That's my 100% belief, and you actually believe that you can achieve it, it's just behaving the right way,
David Sandstrom 17:27
You know, a great way a great way, a great way to look at this is, we've been told that our health is kind of like a flashlight. When you turn it on with fresh batteries. It's nice and bright. It's going to shine bright through your 20s and 30s. But you know, after 40 Well, it's all downhill, right? Enjoy the ride while it lasted Exactly. In the batteries are getting weaker, and your light bulb is getting dimmer and slowly, slowly, it gets dimmer and dimmer over time, until finally it goes out. I think our vitality should be thought of more as a candle where you light it and it burns bright, all the way down to the very end of that thing super short and it flickers a couple of times and it goes out. That's that should be our vitality, that that's the way that's what we should be shooting for. And I absolutely agree with you that in our in our 70s and 80s wishes that should be the best part of our lives, because we've got the wisdom to go along with, you know, our purpose and really be effective with at what we do. And unfortunately that's not the norm. That's not what we see is it?
Dr. Forrest Sauer 18:26
Correct? I 100% agree. Yeah. So let's also here's, here's one other thing is when we're talking about okay, like Okay, so why this is a great questions like if we should feel healthy well into our 70s 80s. Why isn't that the case? And really, the answer comes down to stress. There's three different kinds of stress. There's physical, chemical, and emotional kinds of stress. And so, if we're talking about physical kinds of stress, let's break these down physical stress that is the aches the backaches, the arthritis, the daily aches and pains I go, that's physical stress, bumps, bruises, that kind of thing. Well, there's also emotional stress. If you have have notifications turn on your phone or you're watching the news or if you pay any attention to our environment, or if you have a stressful work relationship if you if your work is very stressful, got tight deadlines. Your coworkers are cantankerous, you know, and you have some arguments or you got a boss that's, that's a tightwad, you know that. Those are emotional stresses, you got kids, there's some emotional stresses. There's also the chemical kind of stress. And these everybody seems to know about them, but we also take them for granted. So these chemical kind of stresses are all of the ingredients that are snuck into our food these days. The next time you buy some food, if it comes in a box, a can or it comes out of a window. Check out the ingredients of the food that you're consuming. Chances are there's an ingredient in there That was actually discovered to be precancerous. Or it's spiking up your glucose like it's a it's a high fructose corn syrup, or it's an artificial sweetener, it's destroying your gut, all of these chemicals call, you know, tax your body, their tax your body, and they call for payment, that payment comes in the form of disease. And when you're talking about the healthcare system, where they're going to name it, blame entertainment team, that means that they're just going to simply give you a medication, we're just going to mask the symptoms, you're going to feel better, you're the numbers on the on the lab are going to look better, but you're gonna feel like crap, because it comes with side effects. And maybe it doesn't change the symptoms at all. And all you're doing is you're kicking the can farther down the road. And this is why one medication will turn into three, and that'll turn into five. And I don't want to tame diseases. I want to reverse them.
David Sandstrom 20:49
Yeah. Well, you know, I we are so on the same page. Dr. Forrest, you know, my advice for eating a lot of people ask me Oh, you're a Certified Nutritional counselor. Yeah. Hey, what's what's healthy food? Is broccoli healthy or not? You know, you know, should I eat steak or not? And the answer to that is, look, we all have a biochemical individuality. So there are individual differences. But as a general rule, if you stick by this, you're going to be doing pretty well eat food, as close to its God-given natural form as possible, which would mean single ingredient foods, right? As you just mentioned, if it comes in a box, or a package, and it's radical statement, a box or a package, it's suspect, that doesn't mean everything that's packaged is bad for you. But you know what, they throw gradients in there, you know, it's anticaking agents for the machines. It's it's texturing agents, coloring agents, but red dye number 40. I know when my kids were in elementary school, and they had food coloring, they turned into different kids, they turned into little monsters, and they couldn't control it. You know, and I noticed this a few times. And I realized, oh, they had some of that junk with had some candy or lollipop or something that that had red dye number 40 in it, and it really almost immediately affected their behavior. So yeah, you know, if we if we want to nourish our bodies the way God intended, we should eat, seek out and eat food, the way God provides it. You know, buy food that spoils and eat it before it does.
Dr. Forrest Sauer 22:19
If bugs aren't crawling on your food, then you probably shouldn't consume it. You've we've all seen the image of the McDonald's hamburger that's been looking, you know, the same for for years. insects don't want to eat it, you probably shouldn't either. And just to really highlight how foreign this idea because really what we're talking about is treat food as medicine, food is thy medicine. How foreign This is to the traditional allopathic doctor, I was having a conversation with a non college earner, he's a master surgeon at a hospital. So lots of surgery he did 36 hour shifts, absolutely insane. I can't even imagine it. But wow, we're having a conversation. And he did a surgery on this on this kid. He was in his teens. And this kid he only ate pasta, like that was that was it, it was only grains. And he ended up getting a car accident. So he had to go in for surgery to get some reparative stuff done. Not the sutures that the surgeon was putting into the kid who was in his teenage teenage years, the skin continued to rip and break into sewn up his gut. So that he had to take part of his intestines out. Because his body was in such a state of disease, that he could that his cells couldn't hold a needle. Now he did 12 hours later, he did a surgery on another person where they had a healthy diet. They just you know, similar thing car accident. So no problems and rabbit conversation later. And he's like, Can food really make that big of a difference? Like it? It puzzled him? It didn't it wasn't that aha moment that you and I live with with every single day. And if the doctors are thinking this, what do you think they're spoon feeding the rest of the American public? I mean, we should be infuriated at the fact that we have been brainwashed to think that insurance and our health care system and our what our doctor tells us is going is biblical. And we need to simply follow that. And we're just being led into the, in the exact opposite direction of where we all want to end up.
David Sandstrom 24:29
You know, a lot of people don't know that doctors only get maybe one day worth of nutritional training and four years of medical school. So they get I was neighbors with a guy who actually taught at medical school and he said David it's true, because I know because I taught the course. It was a three hour course. And we did it in an afternoon and that's all we got on nutrition. So if you talk to if you go to your doctor thinking he's a good source for nutritional advice, he's probably going to be leading you astray.
Dr. Forrest Sauer 24:58
You're broke uncle for financial Bice? Well, source?
David Sandstrom 25:03
Yeah, absolutely. You know, they're really kind of guessing. And they're going with what they hear on television, you know, from the food industry, not on good science and doctors, you know, hey, they're smart people, they don't get through medical school without having a brain. But they don't have the time to go through the medical literature and read the published studies for themselves. They, they, they just take sound bites, they listen to the the drug rep who's who, who comes into the office, they they assume that they've done the research that so they'll listen to them. And of course, a drug or drug rep is going to be pushing one pharmaceuticals. That's that's what they do. I know, doctors will oftentimes tell you, Oh, supplements not worth it's just expensive urine. If you're gonna supplement, you know, all supplements are the same, you know, just get the cheapest brand. Well, what industry does that apply to? Does that apply to automobiles? Does that apply to aircraft? Does it apply to pens and pencils, you name it, you know, give me an industry where that you know, that applies? It doesn't. There are differences in nutrition, and there's a lot of good reasons to supplement. You know, our, as you said earlier, our food supply is compromised. And all that we live in a very toxic world and our body needs nutrients, to detoxify from these chemicals that were exposed to. So yeah, we burn up a lot of nutrients because we live in a toxic world. So I think supplementation is a good idea. But it has to be done wisely. Right. And we're you know, taking a, you know, a suitcase full of supplements on a weekly basis is not not a good idea.
Dr. Forrest Sauer 26:37
So where I like to draw the line with supplements is they're very useful. But if I'm going to make a decision, if I if I had to make a decision whether to work with someone to change their lifestyle, or just simply take supplements and continue living the way that they're living, I would choose change their lifestyle, every single time because that's something that you can stick with, and then you're going to take it for the rest of your life, you're gonna take it with you for the rest of your life with supplements. It it's not, you're not going to be able to out pop an unhealthy diet like popping pills. So I just I use supplements, like I said to make things happen faster. But there's a purpose. There's a there's a system to it, we we take labs so that way we know exactly which buttons that we need to push, specifically. And you know, if you're just taking a multivitamin, and you're taking a prebiotic or a probiotic, and that's it, and you haven't fixed anything else, and you're wondering why you're spinning your wheels, and you're spending hundreds of dollars on pills every single every single month. The reason is, is because you're playing a guessing game. And I don't fault you for that you're just doing your due diligence on Google. And Dr. Google is trying to try to fix you. But there's a lot better approach.
David Sandstrom 27:49
Yeah, absolutely. So if you were a doctor for us, would you explain what functional medicine is? Could you define that for us?
Dr. Forrest Sauer 27:57
Yeah, functional medicine is fixing the root underlying cause of the problem. So we work with a lot of autoimmune conditions, whether it be diagnosed or undiagnosed. So maybe you're that person, that red herring who's been bouncing around from Doctor doctor, and you really don't know what's going on. Oftentimes, there's an autoimmune component or inflammation component to that person. So what we'll do is we'll make certain and figure out what is causing the problem it gets back to what kind of stress your body is going under? Is it a emotional stress? Is it a physical stress? Is it chemical stress, mostly, we'll see it's a combination of all three, actually, or there's two. So we work very heavily with those versions of stress. Because realize your immune system with an autoimmune condition, the immune system is attacking the body. Well, it isn't just simply attacking the body for any real random reason. There's a purpose behind it. So we need to find that trigger. And if we we work with some clients who are very advanced autoimmune condition, so they're taking humera Or they're taking some other treks aid or some immunosuppressive drug. Yeah. That is, again, just simply masking the symptom. So what is triggering it? Is it something that you're eating? Is it something that you're drinking? Are you heavy? And are you loaded with heavy metals is a mold? Is it lyme? the the options are truly endless, which is amazing, but also still frustrating. And that's why we do our due diligence upfront, take the proper lab tests and do the proper intake to make certain that all those pillars are knocked down. And that way when we start making changes with our clients, it's very, very specific and very, very pinpointed.
David Sandstrom 29:44
Yeah, very good. So in other words, instead of doing the five minute drive by visit with with the practitioner, you sit down and you talk with them, and you listen to their story. And you you order labs But you order it in a targeted basis, you're not just doing the shotgun approach with labs either, right? You're, you have a suspicion as to what might be going on and you want to verify that suspicion. With lab work, is that correct?
Dr. Forrest Sauer 30:13
Yes. And we do test for almost everything I gets nose to toes because I don't want to run the risk. By the time we see someone, they've usually been around the horn a couple of times they've been around the Sun many times trying to fix this, I'm not going to take that risk with just simply having this attempt be another speed bump, we're going to figure it out. And and so that's the approach that we take is, is that, okay?
David Sandstrom 30:36
And do you work with your clients on nutrition? Do you do you educate people on nutrition as well?
Dr. Forrest Sauer 30:41
Yeah, and one thing that we work heavily with nutrition, and we would take it from all steps of life. So we have a system that we work with our clients in a system because it's repeatable. Now we customize the system for the person based off what's going on, obviously, but we go ahead and we take the pill labs, and then we do a detox, not this fly by night stuff that you see on the internet. That's a three day master cleanse, that's garbage, it's going to put more stress on your body, don't do it. But a detox is going to lay a strong foundation for your gut and your liver and your kidneys and your skin, it's going to lay that foundation for your body. So that way, you can start building off of that, that way, you're going to escape from that vicious cycle that you're stuck on. So it's labs detox for that person that's based off of their labs. And we're just teaching them we're coaching them. We're educating them on all of these pieces as we go through. So it's a five pillar approach, detox, nutrition, what foods to eat, what foods not to eat, what's building their body up, what's tearing their body down. Exercise, you get to earn your way to exercise, we don't just simply throw people on the treadmill, which is a broken way of exercise, but it's 2030 minutes to three times a week, building up lean muscle tissue, balancing out hormones, decreasing stress, making them more resilient. And like I said, you get to earn your way to exercise. So don't just simply start there, because most of our clients, they're exhausted, they're barely making it weigh their way through life. So let's get that natural energy back. First, yeah. And then we can jump into fitness when your body's ready. And that leads us to hormones. So we talked about labs talked about detox nutrition, fitness hormones, if we just simply jump to hormones trying to fix your hormones naturally without bioidentical or whatever. If we just tried to simply balance out your hormones, again, and we ignore those foundational pillars with exercise and nutrition and the detox again, we're going to be stuck in that vicious cycle, spinning our wheels. So we need to get those foundational pillars first, then we can focus on hormones. And then we tie the last one is a mentor. So me, my team, I have health and wellness coaches that are awesome. They're excellent. We just help walk our clients through so that way, they're not in this alone, you know, yeah, if the past three years have showed us anything, that loneliness is not the way to success, isolation is not going to lead to a better, healthier lifestyle. So we have a community may help coach you hold you accountable, make certain that you're doing what needs to be done.
David Sandstrom 33:10
Okay, that sounds really great. So I'm assuming you you have like a time period, you sign people up for a 90 day program, six month program? Or how does that work?
Dr. Forrest Sauer 33:21
Great question. You know, we work with clients from five years old, all the way up to nine years old, you know, a lot of different situations in between there. And even though we use this five pillar approach, that is a system, it does depend upon the individual on what's going on with them.
David Sandstrom 33:37
Yeah. So when someone comes to you, they're not just come and visit by visit, you say, Hey, this is going to be wearing this for the long haul. It's gonna take take some time, I didn't get to where you are overnight, and therefore, you're not going to get out of this hole that you're in overnight. So you know, we're going to work together for the next six months, or is that what you do people you kind of sell a, a time based program or, you know, how does it work with people?
Dr. Forrest Sauer 34:02
Yeah, you're on the right path. Like I said, it's different for everybody. It could be six months, could be four months, could be nine months, you know, two months or depending upon what's going on. But we do set all the expectations up front. And I used to practice with the visit by visit version, and I was not getting the results that I wanted with my clients, my clients were frustrated, I was frustrated. I broke away from that model stuff just simply, you know, fell through the cracks. Maybe you're stuck in that system right now. That's why we don't do it that way anymore, is I want to make certain that every single piece of the puzzle is put together. Because when I'm taking on a client we only work with 20 clients per month. I want to make certain that they're gonna get the results.
David Sandstrom 34:44
Yeah, that's what Yeah, that's really good. So you mentioned autoimmune in that that's quite common. So what do you believe is the root of of an autoimmune condition or is it is there's just run the gamut. How can you know how well What's your thoughts on that?
Dr. Forrest Sauer 35:00
With the immune system? Great question. And it does get back to the three different kinds of of stress that you can experience. So physical, chemical, emotional. I've had clients where they're married them and their spouse, they do not get along. I'm not a proponent of divorce, but they ended up separating, their symptoms get better, because they get rid of the emotional stress. Yeah. Okay. So that could be a possibility. I'm not telling everybody go get a divorce. Don't say that.
David Sandstrom 35:31
Okay. But I would suggest is a better way is work on your marriage
Dr. Forrest Sauer 35:34
Better Way is working it be grownups go to counseling, I often tell men, like be a man go to counseling, get it figured out, work it out together. And I And David, I think the real reason why most people don't want to is because of pride and selfishness. But anyways, that's a different podcast. It's a whole nother episode. It's a whole other episode. But we work very heavily in the in the chemical stress, and the physical stress side. So if they got pain or inflammation, or if they have toxins inside of their body, this is one of the more common versions of stress. We live in an industrial community a lot of manmade, synthetically, hybridized, chemicals and foods out there. And that's creating a massive amount of stress inside of the body, that's just creating a whole cascade of problems, whether it be hormonal imbalances, or autoimmune conditions. Yeah. And realize, like if, if you have someone with who is sick, or is a proponent of having an autoimmune condition, your mom has a thyroid problem, your grandma, does your aunt's do all your sisters do, chances are you are going to get one if you decide to live, basically like that. Right? So lifestyle in the term of disease or genetics. Genetics load the gun, but lifestyle pulls the trigger. So if you never want to fire that gun, if you never want to get out, I mean, conditions live a different lifestyle.
David Sandstrom 37:01
Yeah, that's, that's a great phrase, I'm going to repeat that genetics load the gun, but lifestyle pulls the trigger. So we're not we're not victims of a cruel game of genetic roulette, we have, we have influence, we have the ability to make choices and make changes to a lifestyle that can again set us up for success. I want to I want to go back just a little bit to the mental emotional components. So how would you if you suspect someone's got an emotional issue? How would How do you go about helping that person identify the toxic thoughts or belief system and go about correcting it? Because I, I firmly believe that we have a mental emotional connection, there's a mind body connection that's well documented in medical literature. So you know, how do you go about helping somebody that way?
Dr. Forrest Sauer 37:53
If it's if it's something small David, then we'll work with them. But if it's a fairly advanced case, then we're going to refer them out to the proper proper people who are who have more experience in that. And it's, if we have someone who is stuck in a victim mindset, let's go and say that we have a client where they have five different diagnoses, you know, they've been labeled by the medical system, and they're carrying that burden. One of the biggest takeaways that I want, all the people listening this to take away from is you have hope you are worth fighting for. You do not have to continue living with those labels, you can escape, you can behave your way out of it, your body can heal itself, it was designed in a beautiful, miraculous way. And that message is simply not expressed. Anywhere else, you're not going to get it at the doctor's office, you're not going to get it online, you can reverse it. You can live free, you can live with that purpose, and you are desperately worth fighting for. So I hope everybody takes that into account.
David Sandstrom 38:58
That's excellent. That's really good. That sounds like a good place to wrap up. But I do want to ask you, is there anything that you'd like to mention that we haven't talked about before we wrap things up?
Dr. Forrest Sauer 39:12
I think we're pretty good. I think, you know, the biggest takeaway that I want to express very clearly, to people is that number one, the health care system serves its purpose. If you're looking to it for a vibrant, healthy, God filled purpose filled life. It is the wrong tool to use. There is only one person on this earth can that can truly transform your health. And that is yourself. If you're looking for guidance, if you're looking for help if you're looking for someone to help guide you through those pillars, just simply reach out, give us a call. You know, all of us think that we are self-made men self-made women and to reach out as a weakness. The exact opposite is true. We are designed to live in a community Really, I depend depend on people, people depend on me. That's what makes life beautiful.
David Sandstrom 40:08
Excellent. I love it. That's really good advice. So Dr. Sauer if someone is resonating with this message, and I'd like to get in touch with you, what's the best way to do that?
Dr. Forrest Sauer 40:16
Great question, you can simply go to our website, you'll be able to see the phone number there, get in contact with one of my team members. And we can start having a conversation, like I said, We do limit the number of people that we work with the 20 per month because I want to work with people not numbers. And so we are very careful with people that we do bring on. But most of the people that I get to have a conversation are a good fit, because they recognize they need they need to make a change. Yeah, and they don't want to wait till it's too late.
David Sandstrom 40:45
And your website is TwinOaksHealth.com.
Dr. Forrest Sauer 40:48
Correct. TwinOaksHealth.com. Reach out there. That'd be fantastic.
David Sandstrom 40:51
Right, good. Doc, for us. It was a pleasure. Thank you so much for your time.
Dr. Forrest Sauer 40:55
Thank you appreciate it, have a great day to you too.
David Sandstrom 40:59
For more, go to the show notes page at davidsandstrom.com forward/109. There you can find it audio as well as a video version of the podcast. I also put a full transcript for every episode that you can download for free. And I also put links to all the resources that we mentioned, as well as some type of a content upgrade that you can use to go deeper with that subject. If you're enjoying the podcast, I sure would appreciate you telling a friend about it. This information is relatively hard to come by, especially from a faith-based perspective. So if you told a friend about this podcast, tell them you're enjoying it. I'll bet they'll thank you for it. Thank you for listening, and I'll talk with you in two weeks be blessed.
