As Naturopathic Doctors, we often get asked, “Are you a real doctor?” Join the conversation to learn the degree of medical education, clinical training, scope of practice and debunking misconceptions of the Naturopathic Medical profession. Joining Dr. Lara is Dr. Myleen Simone, ND to share how a naturopathic medical doctor works with patients.
Welcome to Physician Heal Thyself, the podcast empowering you to take a whole-person approach to your well-being, spirit, soul, and body. Join me your host, Dr. Ana Lara, naturopathic, doctor, entrepreneur, and a servant of Jesus Christ. We are not just a body. We are spirit and soul. It’s time to integrate medicine and spirituality into our healing. Let’s get started.
Hey everyone. Welcome back to Physician Heal Lay Self, the podcast. I’m Dr. Laura. And today’s episode, it’s episode 11. Today we’re going to talk about our theme is are you a Real doctor? And we’re going to debunk misconceptions about naturopathic medicine as a profession. And I have a very special guest. She’s a friend, a colleague. We went to medical school together. This is someone I turned to for business guidance or medical guidance or even family and life stuff. So I want to introduce Dr. Mylene Simone. I’m going to read her bio first. Dr. Mylene Simone. She’s a naturopathic doctor in Arizona. She’s a licensed naturopathic physician and graduated from Sonora University of Health Services, formerly known as Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine. Her medical training was focused on comprehensive holistic pain management, regenerative medicine and hormone balancing. She built her medical education on the foundation of a bachelor’s degree in biology with a minor in philosophy, which she received from Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego, California. Since entering the field, Dr. Simone has continued to receive advanced training in all areas of her practice by regularly attending and or participating in medical training events and educational seminars. She’s currently part of the education committee for the Arizona Naturopathic Medical Association Board. She is the founder and owner of Regenerative and Restorative Health Center, RNR Health Center, located here in Surprise, Arizona. So folks, welcome Dr. Simone.
Thank you, Dr. Ana. I really appreciate you having me here and I’m really excited about this. Yeah, so I reached out to you a while back and asked, Hey, I want you on the podcast, this talk, because we always have some really amazing conversations and we go off on tangents and you really wanted to talk about this. So in our first episode, I introduce a little bit about what is naturopathic medicine, a little bit of the education that we go through because people are not familiar. And oftentimes we do get asked, are you a real doctor? So when someone asks you that, what is your response to them?
I first have to actually compose occasionally I probably will have a slight laugh, and the first thing I actually say is, if the DEA can give me a license to prescribe controlled substances, I guess I’m a real doctor, right?
And I think that’s where the misconception, a lot of people really don’t know still what a naturopathic doctor does. And so in every state, there’s a little bit of variety. So I want to go over a couple of facts for people to know, and then we’re going to go into what is it we actually do, because every naturopath works a little bit differently. So there are five naturopathic medical schools in the United States. 6,000 licensed naturopathic doctors are practicing in the United States, which I think it’s very little. The demand is high. There’s a lot of work, but there are not enough naturopathic doctors. And that’s licensed because in some states they’re not licensed, but they can practice a little differently. So there are 23 US states and territories that do license naturopathic doctors. It is a four-year education and training program that we go through the postgraduate, they are accredited naturopathic medical colleges.
So just like any medical school is accredited, these naturopathic medical schools are also accredited and they have to go through rigorous annual or every so often they are evaluated to ensure that they are still able to be accredited and they’re doing the right thing. So yes, we can diagnose, we can prevent and treat acute chronic illness. The states, this is an interesting fact, the states with the most naturopathic doctors are licensed, it’s Arizona, Washington, and the state of Oregon. And the scope of practice is so wide, and it varies with each state. So for example, Arizona is one of the states that we have one of the widest scope of practice in Arizona. We have prescription rights, we have minor surgery rights, ivy IV therapies, and acupuncture, if you graduated from Sonora, University of Health Sciences in Arizona. Our programs do encompass acupuncture. So we graduate and we pass our medical boards. And so that’s the thing is that people don’t know. We do take medical boards, we take two sets, one after two years into the program, which are all the heart sciences. That’s what we call the heart sciences. And then after we graduate, we have a three-day, remember that three-day full day exam. It’s the most stressful thing I have ever done in my life. Oh yeah. I think I would rather give birth to twins. And you gave birth to twins then to do that again?
No, I completely agree with you. That was, so let’s see. I had my fourth child by then, and literally a couple of months before I had an adrenal crash and my cortisol levels were at a four. And mind you, that’s almost non-functioning for us. And I’m still breastfeeding two kids, handling my twins, dealing with this custody case in California that we’re traveling back and forth and then studying for these boards. I swear to you, I prayed to every living thing possibly out there, and I was like, just please let me pass me pass. Give me enough knowledge to remember this because I couldn’t remember anything. You would tell me something from all the stress in those four years, including my own personal issues. You could tell me something and I’d just be like, I’m sorry, what did you just say?
Yeah, I remember.
Can we repeat that? Oh. And that’s when I was like, I’m so done. I am not going to pass this test, these tests. And I was so scared, so scared. But the grace of God, I passed. You passed, which was great, but it is pretty rigorous, man. It
Is very, very rigorous. You have to know, one thing you need to know about Dr. Simone that I really admire about you is she, many of us went into the program being parents, but she had twins and she was going through a lot with custody battles and issues on top of other life stuff and raising these two young boys. But then this woman would drive to school in her motorcycle. And I’m like, she’s such a Badass. I forgot about that.
I was like, she’s such a badass, and you’re military too. What branch were you part Of?
I was in the Navy.
So she was in the Navy. So when I learned that, I’m like, she really is a badass. And so then you had two children while we were in school. I had a child in my fourth year as well. But you had only two kids during this time and you had extra. It was very, very demanding. And I believe that people do not understand that our medical program is not just a real medical program. It is harder than a conventional medical program because what we have to learn is we have to learn all of the sciences, all microbiology, anatomy, physiology, chemistry, biochemistry, endocrinology, add to it, gastro.
Oh yeah. Rheumatology, psychiatry, psychiatry, OBGYN, minor surgery, cardiology.
Pediatrics,
Yes, pulmonology, pediatrics,
Pharmacology, pharmacology, all the botanical medicine. So that’s all the sciences. And we all the botanical medicine, homeopathy, IV therapies, physical medicine,
Physical medicine,
Nutrition. And then
We’re also learning how to adjust. Right? We’re adjusting. So it’s just not just physical medicine. When we think of like, oh, just anatomy.
No,
We are dealing with the body. We’re learning how to adjust, right? We are licensed to adjust these for everyone,
We call them nature pathic manipulation because we cannot, we’re not chiropractors, we’re nature naturopathic doctors, but we are trained to manipulate the physical structures, the bony structures and hydrotherapy. Yeah, hydrotherapy, which is unique to us. There’s not a medical doctor or functional doctor that understands these therapies. They’re really unique to the naturopathic community as naturopaths. Were not called nature paths. They were called nature-curious or eclectic doctors or homeopaths. And so through time, this has been many, many years. It’s not new. People think it’s new, but it’s not. It’s been continuing for many years. But in the early 1900’s when the medical schools came around, an MA started, and then all these medical schools started to be accredited, a monopoly was created through the Flexner report and all of that. And so from there, naturopathic schools were not allowed to be accredited. They were left out. It was like the cool kids can do this and everyone’s left out and they left the doctors that we’re actually healing people. And if you look at today’s time, we see that. We see that in our culture, the doctors who are able to heal people and reverse disease, they’re looked at as quacks or they’re put down. But right now I see a big change, especially since covid, where people are tired. People are tired of the conventional medical system, the approach, the lack of, so attention, quality
Care. I think that’s another one. You see your doctor and you’re like, why do I have to see another one? Are you guys not talking? I think a lot of things that I’ve heard from my patients are I see this doctor, I see this doctor, and I don’t get any help. I’m like, okay,
Because they’re looking at that person for the organ system. They’re there. So you go to the cardiologist, then they just look at you for cardiology.
And I tell them that so that they could also have empathy with these doctors who probably came into the medical field with the understanding, and I want to help people. And then they get stuck in this System.
A system that doesn’t allow them to do that. And they are now stuck in their field. They’re just here. And they cannot sway from that particular, those boundaries and limitations. So they have to refer out and it’s another place, another location, another time just completely outside of their field. So there’s no communication. So unless that doctor reached out to that other to find out what’s going on, like, Hey, I refer this patient to you, is everything good? They’re never going to know
And there’s never time to communicate. No, there isn’t. I mean, they’re seeing a lot of patients two, three minutes apart. So there is no time for them to call another doctor and have that conversation. I agree. I truly believe that nurses, and doctors who go into the conventional medical system, they went in with good intentions, which was to help people. But it’s not their fault. It’s a system that they’re in. They’re overwhelmed. I’ve talked to doctors and nurses and the system is overwhelming them with the number of patients that they work with. And insurance start to dictate how many patients they should be seeing and what time is allotted for that, what can be done. So the medical associations, they dictate to them what they’re able to do. What is the next step from if you do this blood work to check for diabetes, what’s the next step from there? Is this is the medication you give? So there’s a process or a protocol they have to follow. It’s a checklist. It’s a checklist. And we’re not checklists.
No.
Everyone’s unique. And so like I said, it’s not completely their fault that the system is that way. There really needs to be a complete change in that system. There’s a time and place for conventional medicine, and then there’s a time and place for naturopathic medicine, the natural things. And so the way we’re trained is we’re trained to incorporate all of this from the conventional to the natural and see what the person’s needs are, but also not just what the person’s needs are, but what is the patient willing to do? Because I’ve had patients that say, I don’t want to take that high blood pressure medication. I don’t want to take the metformin. I don’t want to take the medication for diabetes. And I say, okay, but there are options. However, I’m going to ask you to also do your part and change your diet and start exercising and start sleeping better and manage stress and do these things.
And there are natural things that we can do to help with that condition. But if you’re not going to do your part, then this is going to be destructive to you. And our jobs as doctors is to keep you safe, but really to keep you alive, to keep you alive and keep you safe. So if we think that you’re not going to do that or we’re not seeing that you’re doing it, then we’re going to suggest the medications. So that’s a misconception that some people have. They come to see a naturopath and they’re like, I wasn’t expecting medications from you, but we have prescription rights here in Arizona and they come in handy because sometimes we do need to use them. A nice thing is that we also know how to wean people off of them, and we do.
And I think the other one was, I was thinking about when people come to me about, oh, do you believe in using medication? It’s like, yes, there’s a time and place for all of that, whether you are on it and I’m taking you off and what the plan is. I’m not opposed to medication because there is a time and place for everything.
Absolutely. I educate my patients, and I’m sure you do too. Especially because I work with children, newborns and so forth. And I educate the parents that if your child gets sick, you need to bring them in right away. Let me know. Because if they develop an ear infection, we could treat that naturally. Absolutely. There are ways to do it. Yeah. They’re so resilient, very safe and effective. Children respond so fast to natural medicine. It’s like magic. So there are ways to use homeopathy, herbs, things that we can do, and hydrotherapy that we can do to help get rid of the ear infection. But if you waited two weeks to come in to see me two weeks
And your child is miserable, and I look in their ear and there’s a red flaring eardrum screaming at me, I’m going to throw an antibiotic at it, and then we’re just going to treat it to offset the effects of that with some probiotics and some gut stuff. So this is where I tell people, if you don’t want to use the antibiotic,
You better come see me now. Get In here. Get in here now.
Agree. Jesus. How long have you been doing this? Okay, let’s just come in.
She just comes in. Can you take a look at it? Because oftentimes early on, if we address something early on, especially infectious, it’ll resolve quickly. And that’s what I like about our medicine. There are no negative side effects. It works quickly, but we got to do it early on. Otherwise, we have to be more aggressive so we can’t wait till the end. Yeah.
Let me see. Another thing that when we were going through the medical school program, we often heard from our teachers, the doctors we worked under, that they were not going to like us out there, that we were going to be looked at as quacks or whatever. And I have to just say, I have never had that experience. I don’t know if it’s just me. If people are afraid of me or people respect me or the way I carry myself, I have never had another doctor or medical professional talk down to me when I say I’m a naturopathic doctor, and I’ve been in the hospitals a lot with family and interacting. I have the contrary effect where I’ve had a cardiologist ask me, what kind of medicine do you do? And I’ll say, I’m a naturopathic doctor with pride and that I am one. And he’ll say, this doctor said, oh my God, I love, like really why? He said, every patient of mine that sees a naturopath is much better off. They’re healthier than the ones who are not. I was like, yeah. And he started naming some of the medications, the treatments that we would use for cardiology. And I was like, yep, those are the ones that we would use for that.
I’ve never personally had a doctor tell me, oh, your medicine’s not worth it. But I have heard patients come back to me and tell them, oh, I’m seeing a naturopath. Oh, no, no, no, no. Don’t even listen to them. Their medicine is not even worth it. It’s not backed by science. I’m sorry. Apparently you don’t read those journals. Right, because every single one of our things, botanical medicine, hydrotherapy, are all backed by science, vitamins, and minerals. They all have some sort of study on them. And so you can’t tell me that our medicine is BS because it’s there. They just don’t take the time to actually look it up and find out what is going on here. What’s the mechanism of action? Right,
Right. Oh yeah. And we know the mechanism of action, not just for the pharmaceuticals, but the botanical herbs and even the hydrotherapy. What is it doing in the physiology? So I mean, some of our audience are probably hydrotherapy. What is that? So hydro is water. It’s water therapies, and everyone has access to water. Well, at least in this country, there might be countries, that have limitations, but I guarantee that some of you are watching this, and your mama growing up might have done this before. Even if they get a cold, a wet towel and put it on your forehead, that is a form of hydrotherapy. So the temperature of water is used in the body. There is a physiological response to that. So there’s a change. So I always explain to my patients, that hot water is going to make the vessels and everything expand. So if vasodilation, the vessels expand, so it brings more blood into this area, and cold is going to constrict and contract it, so the vessels and the veins and so forth. So that contraction removes blood from that area or lymphatic. So when you use alternating hot and cold, you’re pump opening and closing pump, and it has a pumping effect. Yeah. That’s also like
You’re doing this.
You’re doing a pumping effect. So for example, the feet, we do what the therapy called wet socks or cold socks
Or magic Socks.
The kids like magic socks because once a child does it the next day they feel better. So magic socks, or I like to call ’em magic or wet socks. It’s very easy. You start off by warming your feet with warm hot water, not to the point where you’re going to scald your feet but burn your feet. But nice enough that it gets some color, some pink color to the feet, three to five minutes. And in the meantime, I tell people, just put some socks, some ankle socks in ice, cold water.
Cotton socks, right?
Yeah. Well ice cold water. And then have some cotton socks and then have some wool socks. Because what you’re going to do is you take the feet out of the hot water, you’re going to dry them up, you’re going to take out and ring out the excess water and the cold sock or the wet sock on, and you’re going to
Put it on your feet. No, you’re going to have the shock. And I always tell them, just be mindful that once you put it on, that contrast is going to shock
You. And that’s what we’re looking for, the contrast. So then we put the wool sock and we tell people, I tell if you have a wool sock, it’ll keep the moisture from coming out, it insulates it, and if not, then wrap a towel around it. And then
Don’t walk around.
Don’t walk around. Just go to bed and go to sleep. And people actually will sleep better, and then they’ll have more energy in the morning. But if you have a lot of congestion in your chest and the head, even headaches, things like that, or you’re getting sick early on, it’ll just dry this up and you’ll feel better. And if you do it every night until it resolves, it’s gone. And you never had to put a substance in your body. Nope. Just using water. So I did this a lot with people during C, and they had the congestion. I was having them do hot and cold therapies on the chest on their back, and they noticed the difference. So everyone has access to water to do these therapies. You know why though? They’re not encouraged or talked about in mainstream medicine, there’s no money to make.
There’s absolutely no money done at home to make behind this. That’s true. But you see all these people making businesses out of hydro therapies that we do and therapies that we do where they’re doing infrared saunas and they’re doing the cold plunges and they’re doing, what is the other one I did? Cryo? The cryotherapy. I did that last month and I will not do it again. I’m not a fan of cold, but I mean, I did feel good the next day. Cryo therapies and things like that, it’s becoming a business and they’re making money out of it, but people really don’t need to go to that extent. They could do these things at home, right? Yeah.
Unless they really want to do a cold plunge even that you could get at home,
Purchase it. You can buy a little 50, $60 little bucket of plastic, one that’s inflatable, fill it with ice and water and just go for it. If you want that, we could do that right now in Arizona because like 112 today, that would feel good. That’s
True.
So I mean, in our industry, we all work a little bit different. So even though we’re both nature paths, we work a little bit different. So tell us a little bit about what are some of the things that you do in your practice that you mostly do in your practice.
So I do a lot of hormone therapy, adrenals and thyroid dysfunctions. And then things that come in spurts are gut issues. So last year, was it last year? Yeah, last year I had a EPI, which is exocrine pancreatic insufficiency. I literally treated like four patients in a timeframe. I had a patient who had ulcerative colitis, like bloody she’d been having issues for a month. She went to go see someone and then, I dunno, they just said something about getting a colonoscopy. She was like, no, I dunno. And medication. And I was like, just do it. Just go see this person. I want to make sure we’re not dealing with cancer, so let’s get this colonoscopy somehow or another. And she didn’t want to do the medication function. Story short. I ended up doing some treatments of ozone therapy with her and some peptides, and that’s all they really did for a couple months. Well, she went back this year for her one year, and she saw the same doctor who did her colonoscopies twice and was very shocked that she had, she did it with no medication and only six IVs and some peptides, and there’s no sign of it.
Wow.
Amazing. And then same with the EPI. So unfortunately, people with EPI, they’re given all these enzymes, but you have to wonder what happened to the pancreas for it to be insufficient and not working properly. And so you have to essentially try to figure out how do I treat that and how do I fix it? And again, I used ozone. That is probably by far my favorite type of therapy.
Let’s talk about it. There’s this, we’re going to go there because that’s another thing. A lot of people don’t know what ozone is. Some people I’ve shared and they’re like, oh my God, that sounds crazy. I’m like, oxygen sounds crazy. Yeah, oxygen is in our red blood cells. It’s everywhere in our body. That’s what keeps us alive. One of the things that keeps us alive. So let’s talk about ozone, because I started using ozone four years ago, a little bit or four years ago, and it was during covid. I was using it to treat people with, because it can treat. So ozone therapy, we’ll talk about it first, is it’s three oxygen molecules that are bound as one. So that’s the ozone, it’s medical ozone, it’s not, which is fine in the atmosphere. This is different. And so we take blood out from the patient, we put it in a saline bag with a little bit of saline, and then we put the ozone into that. So we Infuse it
With ozone, infuse it with ozone, and then the ozone will bind to the red blood cells and make it really bright red, the oxygen that makes the blood look bright. And then I do the ozone with UBI, which is ultraviolet light irradiation. So there’s a machine and it’s a crystal rod, and the blood is passing through that tube through the machine and it’s UV lights A, B, and C. So it’s infusing the blood with what the sun gives off. It’s infusing the blood with that. And so then the receiving it back, it’s not painful. There really is no negative side effects. I have not had many people with a negative side effect. There’s few situations that there might, and we’ll talk about that. But the person, most of the time, what people feel is relaxed. And the reason is because it’s bringing in all this oxygen to the brain and to every part of the body, and they feel relaxed. So it calms their nervous system down, which is good. We want the nervous system to be calm so that the body can heal, but it’s going to go everywhere and it’s going to go to the parts that they need healing. So it could be used for concussions, it can be used for viral bacterial, fungal parasites. It can be used for cancer, any autoimmune conditions, brain health.
A lot of neurological. You did it on me guys. This is Dr. Simone did the IVO zone and some other IVs on me when I had a concussion in 2021, and I could really feel it in my brain, I felt like it was really helping my brain to heal and regenerate because what the doctors had to offer made no sense to me was let’s do a nerve block here and a nerve block there. I’m like, no thanks. We don’t need to do that. Let me give you anti-psychotic drugs for depression and anxiety. I’m like, no thanks. Don’t need that. I don’t need that. So just a couple ozones, some NAD IVs and some other therapies that I did is what helped resolve that along with physical exercise and so forth, help me to heal that. But the first patient that I did ozone who had cancer, was significantly convincing to me. Like, wow, this is a great therapy. And once again, the earlier you start, the better. This gentleman had stage four cancer, a young man, and it just had spread. And so I was like, Hey, if we’re going to do this, we got to be very, very strict about it. He was very compliant. And then he’s been completely cancer-free since then. What are some other things that you use ozone for?
So EPI was one EP. I’ve done it for viral autoimmune, helping out with liver function. I’ve saddled it with other IVs as well, so that way they get a better response because what the ozone does as well is it stimulates the production of this enzyme that allows the oxygen to actually get absorbed into the cells. So even though we’re having these oxygen O2 SATs, we’re finding our oxygen saturation through our blood looks really good, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re actually utilizing it. So oxygen utilization actually improves with ozone therapy. Absolutely. And then now you’re also affecting the mitochondria, which is your powerhouse. Everybody knows it makes all the energy in all the systems and your brain has billions. Billions. And then the next one is your heart. Your heart. You have thousands in there.
Yeah, you have like 500 billion mitochondrial cells, right? I mean mitochondria in this system, each one. So you improve that, you improve that cell, you improve that cells, wherever that organ is at, and then you’re also improving the function of that system. So you’re taking it all the way down to the cellular level and improving it down to the powerhouse, which is what I love about it. Then you allow the cell to not only remove things from inside the cell, but also take things in that it should, and you have this detox
Effect. You take out what needs to be taken out, right? Remove the obstacles and give the body what it needs. And it’s a therapy that’s very easy. They just sit there 30 minutes to an hour, they’re done.
I’ve done it for the nose for people who have congestion or even mold in their nose, and it just really helps to wound care, wound care,ears, right ears. Even subcutaneous injections for people who are in pain.
HPV.
Yeah. Yep.
I’ve injected that. I had an email that the doctors could not clear the HPV. She was an adult woman almost 30, and they just couldn’t clear it. And I said, let’s do vaginal ozone. And so we did. And she did it and she cleared it. She’s like, it was that easy. I’m like, I’m sorry you didn’t know me before and you didn’t know about these therapies, but here we are. And so these individuals, when they get healed, what it is, they’re healed from these therapies. They go off and tell everyone because so happy about it. And so people don’t know these therapies exist or they start questioning. I’ve had a lot of, is this real? Is this real? Is this real? I’ve had people that they’re so traumatized by their medical doctors in the medical system that when they come to me, they’re question me, is lavender safe? I’m like, God made it so it is safe.
Have you questioned your own medications?
Yeah. It’s like have you questioned your doctor about all these medications, all these invasive therapies that they’ve done, but you want to question the diet and the natural herbs and these natural things that we’re doing? But I understand it’s their nervous system. They’ve been traumatized by that. So now they come to someone like us who does not work that way. Because what we do a lot also as naturopathic doctors is that we really do respect people’s right to be informed and make a decision. So they have the consent to make their own decision. So informed consent is very important for us, and we respect that. As long as they know that they’re not going to follow our medical guidance, we are going to notate that because we still are legally responsible to chart that a person’s going against our recommendations based on what we assess them to be. So that’s something that we are very different. We listen to our patients, their needs, we assess where they’re at and we work. I said, we’re like a team. I’m here to help you. I am not here to dictate to you.
And you know what I’ve also had is, sorry, I didn’t mean to go ahead. Is that when patients, I’ve only had a few and now I’ve kind of made it a thing of mind to tell patients is when they tell me, can you just tell me what I need to do? And I have to stop them because I’m like, no, this is not a, you’re going to be blaming me for something you think you didn’t understand for one and two, you just went with the flow and then all of a sudden, it’s my fault.
So you’re going to understand what this plan is and it’s going to be a collaborative effort.
Absolutely.
And if you don’t want to do it, at least you know why you’re not doing it. And then when you come back to me and we’re doing these labs and you cheated, I will know your labs and I will ask you, and you cannot hide it from me because it’s
There. It’s there. Yeah.
You know
What did I start doing? Because in standard in medicine, for example, with diabetes, they only screen hemoglobin A1C every three months. I stopped doing that. And what I started doing with some, especially the ones that I feel like they’re not going to be as compliant, I started having them. I just give them a lab order just to check hemoglobin A1C every month. And so I say, here’s a regimen, the diet, I want you to be a hundred percent compliant for the next month. Do the blood work, come back and we’re going to see where you’re at. And that’s how I started to see a change is they were compliant that shorter time. So once again, the medical associations have said, this is a standard of care. This is a standard process. For someone who’s diabetic, every three months we check hemoglobin A1C, and that’s when insurance will only cover.
If you do it every month, your insurance will not cover. So when you step out of that model and you come see someone like us, we have options. We work with labs that are cash pay that are affordable. That hemoglobin A1C is like a $30 test, I think with some of these labs. So 30 bucks that you spend a month is not a big deal. They go do the test every month. We decide we got to do something different. We think outside the box for us. There’s not a box. There’s a lot of options. And so one of the things that in working with a nature path, so if you’re thinking like, Hey, I want to work with a nature path, just know that we’re going to put you in the driver’s seat of your own health because it’s your body and it’s your responsibility. And all we are is your GPS telling you turn left, turn right, what to do. We are guiding you. You’re hiring a naturopathic doctor because we are here to guide you. We’re not here to tell you what to do. We’re not here to figure it out for you. We’re not going to go home and cook for you. Definitely not going to do that. But we are here to guide you based on our training, our clinical experience, that we know these things work. And then when we see something that’s not working, we got
To change gears.
We got to change gears. And that’s why it’s important early on when we’re establishing care, those first six months, I feel like it’s really important. Let’s see where you’re at, what works, what doesn’t work. And then we know what to change and adjust things. But people don’t want to invest into their health.
No, but they will invest in aesthetics.
Oh, and shoes and two, $300 eyelashes, a hundred dollars nails, hair. They’ll do all the superficial things. All the cosmetic things, but they won’t invest to what’s going on inside. And here’s the dangerous thing about illness is that you get little signs and symptoms, right? Fatigue and hair loss and dry skin and low sex drive, these sort of things. But you don’t really get to see, none of us do. We don’t get to see what’s going inside of us. We may feel fine, but our body might not be doing well. So are you checking in with your body? Are you making the time to stop and say, let me go get a checkup? And I get it that you might not like going to doctors, but that’s still not a reason to not find a doctor that you work well with. Interview people, ask people.
And that’s why we offer options to interview patients before they establish care with us. Because I don’t want to work with someone who’s not going to comply, even if they are paying me. We are a cash pay based practice. We do not work with insurance. And there’s a lot of benefits to that for the patient that they don’t see. They think their insurance should pay for it. And yeah, I agree with you, but what your insurance is going to pay is for sick care, not healing, not the solutions. They’ll keep you in that system and not give you solutions.
Nope.
They keep you in that pattern. I think one of the things that people also fail to understand is how rigorous our training was. So when we think of, at least this is my understanding of conventional medical training, is that you get two years of didactics. So lectures, your classes, and then two years of clinicals. But I don’t know if they’re actually taking classes during that time or is it just straight clinicals? Why are we doing classes on top of clinicals during this time? So our whole four years is comprised of classes and half of it is clinicals.
Clinicals.
And it’s all Day, all day.
It’s all the way to the very end. Just before we graduate,
We’re having classes last two years of medical school is all the still the pathologies, all the things, the diagnosing. So for example, if we have an endocrinology class, that class is how do you diagnose, assess what tests to do, what conventional medications to do. But aside from that, it’s what are all the natural things we would do for that thyroid condition or the adrenal condition or the pancreatic condition. We have so many modalities that we can turn to that it’s very, very intense. And so on top of those classes, we have all the clinical, we’re seeing patients. Basically we’re getting, I think it’s like over 1500 hours. Some of us do more than that, so
I don’t remember. All I remember was just trying to get to class and getting to the clinicals and then dealing with my family.
We got through it and I mean, we can keep this conversation going on and on because the bottom line is that yes, we are real doctors. We can do a prostate exam and a female exam and anything else that any of the other doctors do, including prescribing rights.
Including mental health.
Including mental health. Yeah, exactly. Which not medical doctors are not trained with mental health. DSM five, and understand that because we treat the whole person. And if people wonder, how are you able to do to help people who have cancer? It’s because we got the training. We had oncology, we had hematology. To understand what’s going on in this process and to know conventionally, here’s the treatment. What else can we do to support that immune system in the meantime or together?
Right? What an amazing conversation we’ve had. I want to thank you guys for joining me, and thank you, Dr. Simone for being here today. Thank you so much. We’re going to move into our segment of the good, the bad, and the ugly of our sick care system. And today, our segments going to be brought to you by Dr. Simone.
Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Ana. So recently, and this podcast was pretty old or semi old, it was about six months ago, but I happened to listen to Joe Rogan and Brigham Bueller talk about the medical industry. And one of the things he mentioned, which I didn’t know, and I was contracted with insurance in the past, and I stopped only because it was so constricted. But what he mentioned was something called, let’s see, a pharmacy benefits manager, and this particular individual or this title will go out and essentially will tier your medications, meaning that tier one is the best one, right? It’s the best medicine out there. However, it’s actually not based off the best medicine. They don’t care about that. What they care about is their profits. Tier one is the one that makes them the most money, and tier four is not so which, what does that tell us? That it’s not about helping people get better. It’s what these people can put in their pockets, whether it’s increasing and as convoluted as they want to make it, that makes it easier for them to trick you into believing that this medication is great or this route is great for you. And I found that very interesting that, wow, I didn’t realize that there was this title in this industry that literally will look for ways to make money off of your health issue.
So these tiers are going to, look at what will make the most profit, not what’s in the best interest of the patient. They don’t care. This is another reason why working with insurance is like, this is convoluted, it’s messy, and the patient doesn’t get what’s best for them. No, it’s not, unfortunately. Well, folks, that wraps up our episode today. Stay tuned to the next episode because we’re going to continue the conversation with Dr. Simone, but we’re going to talk about reversing diabetes in a natural way. Thank you for your time. And as remember, as always, be blessed. Thank you for listening to Physician Heal Thyself, the podcast. If you like what you’ve heard, please like, share and subscribe, help this message, reach more people who may need to hear it. Leave your comments. I want to know what you think. If you’re interested in learning more about Raices, visit our website. Until next time, be blessed.