Listen to the two-part series on our conversation on with Dr. Jessyca Franco-Chavez, NMD on the future of Naturopathic Medicine and the MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) Movement. Dr. Franco-Chavez has been advocating for health and natural medicine. Listen in!
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Podcast Episode 54 Transcript
Welcome to Physician Heal Thyself, the podcast empowering you to take a whole-person approach to your wellbeing, 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. Welcome back to Physician Heal Thyself, the podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Alara, and we’re going to continue the conversation with Dr. Jessica Franco Chavez. So welcome back, Dr. Jessica.
I want us to talk about, we were off camera talking about a little bit about what are some ways that as nature paps, regardless to the state that you’re in, that we can get more involved politically and with helping support some of these changes, not just in general, but really to help our naturopathic field to really get out there because yeah, there’s all this functional medicine, integrative medicine.
I get a lot of people who ask me, Well, what’s the difference? And there’s a huge difference between naturopathic medical doctors, functional doctors, integrative doctors, just our whole philosophy, the whole foundation of how we’re taught through medical school. It’s just very, very different. One of my big pet peeves is that I see nurse practitioners and physician assistants having way more rights than we do in many states. It may involve working with insurance, accessing Medicare or Medicaid plans in their state, and being considered a primary care physician to perform tasks that a medical doctor can perform. Here in Arizona, we’re fortunate to have a wide scope of practice, as do many other states. There are still some things that we are not allowed to do. I know my audience always hears this from me, but what is your take when we’re looking at, well, it’s a two-point question, I guess. What can we do as naturopaths to become more involved politically and pass legislation that will allow more naturopathic doctors to practice in the way we do? That’s the first question. Then the other is how do you distinguish functional, integrative and naturopathic doctors? I’ve found that many naturopathic doctors are hesitant to identify themselves as naturopathic medical doctors and instead market themselves as functional or integrative doctors. That kind of hurts my heart a little bit. I’m going to be honest.
I agree with you on that point. It’s curious and beneficial from one standpoint in that, at least, conventional medicine is aiming to understand that they don’t always have all the tools in their bag and the right approach to chronic disease and prevention. In that aim, they’re wanting and urging their other practitioners to understand functional medicine. For me, functional medicine is about understanding lab results in a different framework and way than traditional allopathic doctors. The ranges are sometimes broader, narrow, depending on what is being drawn, don’t really appeal to the naturopathic side of things when we’re aiming to be preventative. Sometimes it’s like they’ll check off, oh yeah, your cholesterol, your TSH, thyroid levels, everything looks great. But then, if you handed it to a naturopathic doctor, we’d say, ‘ Wait a second, I’m a friend here. ‘ And really truly, if your thyroid levels look like this and you see patterns and we recognize patterns and we’ve been trained to look at all of that, then you say, wait a second.
You are this reservoir, beautiful reservoir of this water, and you’re starting to overflow off the top of this reservoir. Some of you’re starting to get cracks in the side and a little bit of water’s leaking out. How can we calm the system down so that you can hold all the water, that beautiful life water and not be pressurized because of inflammation or some chronic disease that is starting to manifest itself? More times than not, we can help calm the body, bring it to balance homeostasis, and then also with a lifestyle medicine approach, say, okay, well we know you shouldn’t have these types of foods or you need to be doing this instead. Or maybe taking, in certain instances, some really good quality physician grade three tier vetted supplemental approach is necessary to help fill in those gaps or plug those holes up so the body can breathe and say, okay, I’m going to start this healing journey and this is why and how I can do it.
Functional medicine, from my experience, also aims to be in that category of understanding labs in a holistic way of the body’s functioning. They really look at the cellular structures and the mitochondrial structures, the energy powerhouse of the cell, and I think they do a fine job of it. They’re looking more into Dr. Hyman’s functional medicine certification program, which I believe he holds, and they’re really starting to explore food medicine. What does it look like? Preservative-free, anti-inflammatory, different types of diets for various kinds of people. Fasting is a huge one. We do all of that, but that’s their bridge, if you will, into the surgical, mostly surgical and emergent and urgent response of traditional allopathic medicine. Then integrative medicine, like complementary medicine, is a little bit more unclear because I feel like it’s an older nomenclature, an older term for a more of integrative approach of bringing a lot of things together and trying to fix it. But it’s more complex and complicated. There are integrative physicians, but it’s like, okay, but what do they really do? We need to know the niche. We need to know the focus. There may be an area of specialization. So for me, integrative is one of those more loose terms that doesn’t really mean so much to the average person. You need to know what you’re trying to integrate.
Exactly what are you trying to do? So I feel like your point on let’s be proud, an actionable item for those listening and for other naturopathic doctors, practitioners, please empower yourselves and each other and get with one of us in the community. Start by proclaiming, ‘I am a naturopathic doctor,’ and make sure that’s at the forefront. I’m not perfect. Sometimes I’m like, oh, yeah, I do. I practice naturopathic functional integrative medicine in my aim to capture their understanding and knowledge, but then I always make sure to explain, ‘This is what I do.’ And so taking the time, being proud of it, saying it with that gusto and gumption that you spent. We’ve spent a lot of time, we worked on what’s off in school?
Yes, we do. We have invested the time, our biomedical science background, our undergraduate degree, and the clinical rotation hours. I mean, those are very complimentary to other professional school programs. Then, some people, because we need to know physical medicine, homeopathy, botanical medicine, clinical nutrition, as I discussed in the earlier series podcast, and then some energy medicine. Some people also explore environmental medicine and other related fields. We’re trained on all that. We go for four years all year round. We do not get a break. We are indeed able to fill that space appropriately, so take pride in it. Then from a MAHA Commission initiative and how we can help be a part of this movement, and I’m not even saying be a part of MAHA, if that doesn’t resonate with you, but there is something happening. People are aware. They’re paying attention, they’re seeing what’s happening in the media. They’re listening to RFK Junior, whether they resonate with him personally or not, or some of what he’s said in the past or not.
I, too, am not one hundred percent certain about everybody I’ve been working with, but for this, I am, for the health of our children, the health of our people, and the options, informed consent, and medical freedom. I am a hundred percent about that because we all should have medical sovereignty and the right to choose what is best for our own health, everybody has a different health platform. Everybody has different things that they’re having to battle daily that should be between your doctor and the doctor, and that patient should be able to make that choice. And so I say in order to do so, naturopathic doctors need to have a seat at the table. That’s what I’m really pushing for at the legislative level, is making sure that we have a seat at the table within this framework that’s happening right now, and that we can continue to have a voice as experts and that we can be able to understand how to talk to our congressmen and congresswomen.
Often, there are more things that you can influence at the state level than even at the federal level. Sometimes, that can be intimidating for people. You walk into Capitol Hill and there’re marble floors and there’s people everywhere, and you have to go and talk to this congressman or woman and you’re thinking, oh my gosh, what do I say? How do I frame it? DC fly posted by an NP is a great place to start. I have to give a shout-out to their admin team, the executive director, Laura Farr; they have really transformed this program and the education that you receive for a whole day. Then we as some of the more lead, I guess, experts in being able to speak to some of these initiatives or congress, go in with a little team of students and we present to congressmen and women or their team and we say, Hey, these are our asks. The asks are this time around, it was for Medicaid inclusion into the states that naturopathic medicine is licensed. And then two would be for recognition and having HSA and FSA for nutraceutical and dietary supplementation, because 75% of Americans use supplements and they’re not covered. The IRS doesn’t recognize health and wellness benefits, and they are not considered pre-tax savings or expenditures.
So, Dr. Jessica, my understanding of that is I had to look into the laws because patients have F-S-A-H-S-A accounts, they come to the office, they pay for their visit, and their supplements. And it was never a problem before; after 2020, many of my patients’ companies were asking for a letter or justifying the supplements they were taking. So I had to look into the laws. So right now, the way the laws are in is that if you’re using an F-S-A-H-S-A account to pay for supplements, it has to be recommended by a doctor for medical purposes, which pretty much nature paths we do, we put in our treatment plan, we’re using these nutraceuticals or herbs for medical reasons. There is a reason behind that. And so we can justify that. Oftentimes, though, it makes practitioners like me write letters, which takes time out of our day, just so that they can cover. But they want to do this every time they make a purchase. So, what you’re saying is that you’re asking for legislation to allow these F-S-A-H-S-A accounts, allowing people to buy supplements online or from any store without needing a doctor’s approval, right? Is that correct? Yeah. Okay.
Correct. So over the counter being able to take, say I always have patients, they have their staples, they have a fish oil or a multivitamin, something that maybe it’s not physician recommended at the time or they’ve been taking it for, but hey, is that not within this whole perspective of trying to be a healthier people and do things preventatively, even on a fiscally responsible scale and trying to tame down the 4.5 trillion of healthcare expenditure per year. 90% of that goes to chronic disease.
The proof is in the pudding. We just need to have an army of experts, not just a few of us. We had double the number of students that we’ve ever had for this last DC fly. However, getting out there may be intimidating. Don’t worry about it. We got you. We’re all learning. Also, none of us are experts when we come out of the door. Sometimes you get questions that you really don’t know and you just say, I don’t know, but you know what? I’m going to get that information for you and I know where to get it. We have a team behind us and ANMP and our lobbyists are phenomenal. Start there. Look into DC fly. You do have to apply because a lot of people are applying nowadays, and there are, it’s kind of like a little entrance exam online just to get you, nothing intimidating, but just so that you are in kind of that wheelbase knowledge base of what does legislative advocacy look like?
What are we doing? What are we asking? What should and shouldn’t you do? That would be a huge actionable item. The second is kind of one that I’ve created for myself, and I’ve really made it a point to know my senators and the House of Representatives here in New Mexico, and I make meetings with them. They’ll call on me, Hey, I want you to come into my office. And I’m like, awesome. Will you be my expert witness? Will you look at some of this information, whether it’s a wellness program going into the schools or I’m helping usher a few bills at the legislative session. My goal for myself, once I started to get a little bit more comfortable was like, Hey, I should make sure that these legislators have my cell phone in their phone and whenever they need to call on somebody within my expert capacity, I hope that they choose me or ask, or at least I can be part of the conversation.
I’ve started to do that. And so I urge others. We are the constituents. They work for us. They are also serving humanity. A lot of ’em don’t get paid at all for what they do. Listening to people and you hear some of the stories of constituents arguing with their leadership or their senators or whatnot, and you just think, oh my gosh, these people are doing the best they can. They don’t hold the golden key in the end. But if you approach them in a reasonable and amicable way, the majority of them do want to help. I say really get involved at that state level MAHA Action Network online, I think it’s MAHAaction.org. They are a nonprofit and they say that they’re nonpartisan. Again, whatever your perspective perception is, but they really do have a good platform for the nationwide legislation.
If you have something ongoing in your community that you want highlighted for more of the MAHA community to know about and support, they’ll put your information on there for free or they’ll put your bill or whatever you’re working on for your state. Then, also, op-eds are a great, great way to get some information out there. So an opinion piece in one of your newspapers or magazines or journals in your community, if you write something and it has this health type of feeling to it, right? Wellness, health, naturopathic, I would urge naturopathic doctors to start writing op-eds. They get noticed. They circle around the nation, and then you can also send them to me or we can figure out how to get them into the MAHA network, and then they will showcase them and they can publish them online. And so those are other ways to start appreciating who we are and have a voice to what we do, so that they know, Hey, I need to call on somebody to be an expert on this clinical nutrition piece as it relates to these food diets. Yeah, I’m going to call on Dr. Jessica because she’s been here nagging at me. She’s been talking to me about all these things. So this is what we need to do. My husband always says the squeaky wheel, so be the squeaky wheel for our squeaky wheel gets the oil, the grease, right? That’s true.
Those are really great points that I’m taking myself personally. So that’s why I asked. That way, I know what I can do on my part. Also to encourage other colleagues to really start getting serious about getting more involved politically at the legislative level, even if it’s just what kind of influence we can have. And you’re right, I do have experience working in that field, specifically with our state senators and legislators, who are people and many of whom have good intentions to help everyone, regardless of their politics. They’re there to help. And when we reach out to them and we sit down and get to know them as people, and they get to see us as well, and they get to learn what we do, we have an excellent opportunity to educate them. They become lovers of our medicine as well, supporters of it as they understand more of it. I think that has a much better impact, that face-to-face relationship versus just putting junk on social media and being so critical about the opposition. So those are great points. So you go to DC fly, this is every year, right?
It is every year.
You’re seeing more, including medical students attending naturopathic programs. That’s really good.
Yes. Oh, this last time, I feel like you say you educate, right? It’s just this compounded understanding and awareness and ability to be able to speak to some of these legislative asks or tasks or information because you want to impart who we are. I remember when first or when I first went, they did not know what naturopathic meant. They couldn’t even say it.
They couldn’t say it.
Now, people, you’ll get one or two people. Ninety percent of the people I encountered knew what naturopathic medicine was. I have to say that’s because of our compounded efforts through the years and being proud of who we are. Even just a side note, even if you’re like, that’s not for me, that’s too much time and I just can’t do that. Hey, you can find your legislator online. It’s super easy. Even the federal, at the federal level, it’s congress.org, I believe. But even in your statewide Google Chat, GPT it and send a letter. Just send a letter, send an email, say, Hey, I’m here. Naturopathic medicine, naturopathic medicine, naturopathic medicine. The more they hear that, the more comfortable it becomes for them to have these conversations. Then when we do have really big asks like, Hey, we need the rest of the nation to be supported in naturopathic medicine. Let’s start this effort. It obviously has to be statewide. It can’t be federally led, but at least we can have the support and people can start to recognize and be able to talk about and talk to our medicine.
Because the reality is these politicians also have a physical body, they have a body, they have families, and their health matters to them too. I have patients who are working in that sphere of politics, state government, they’re under a lot of stress through adrenal fatigue. Their hormones are out to the door. I mean, because they’re working so much and they’re stressing so much and they can’t sleep. Their own physical health is impacted. I think that when they’re listening to us speak, they’re not only hearing but also listening for what they can implement for themselves. What can they do differently for their health and wellbeing, whether it’s physical, mental, or emotional health, and how do they balance that out? Also, how do they raise children in this kind of environment? In my opinion, this is not a political movement. If you are a human walking on this earth living, you should be interested in passing laws, a support, a healthy lifestyle.
I always say that as naturopathic medical doctors, what we really do is teach a healthy lifestyle. It’s lifestyle medicine. I always talk about on this podcast and to my patients about the four pillars of health. These are the four legs to the table. It’s a must. Yes, there’s other things that are important, but this is the foundation and that’s nutrition. That’s first and foremost. What are you eating? We are what we eat. What are you eating? How much? When is it quality? What’s in there? How is it impacting your body? You could eat broccoli and I can’t eat broccoli, and that’s a healthy food. But also, how is our food being our farms? How is it being grown? All of that matters, right? And there’s way more science, and we’re not going to go into that discussion right now, but when it comes to farming and these farmers, they are sacred.
We need to protect farmers. We need to encourage that as a profession, too. My father always said, we bless the people who grow our food because of them. We can put it on our table to eat it. We need to support that industry as well. So nutrition’s first. The second one is in no particular order, but nutrition, making sure we’re sleeping at the right time in enough hours. Some people work grave VR shifts. We can’t do anything. There are things we can do to support that. But most people are not sleeping because they’re on their technology. They’re distracted with other things. Exercise. We know the importance of physical movement. It’s medicine. Our bodies were created to move. When we don’t move, we create disease, we create stagnation and other factors, it just degenerates. The other is stress management. When we lack tools or ways to regulate ourselves and minimize the stress response our nervous system is experiencing, we will deplete ourselves over time. Excessive chronic stress leads us to making poor decisions in our lives, such as eating unhealthy food, skipping meals, struggling to sleep, and not exercising because we have too many other things to do. These are the four things that I tell people. It costs you nothing In addition to do these things, I have a whole podcast on the four pillars and then an individual episode for each of those pillars. How many people are listening to that and following that free advice people.
If you can’t do it on your own, that’s when you need to reach out to someone like us, a naturopathic doctor who understands the importance of that and can then help guide you. Because the other component of our training it’s like the whole MINDBODY medicine that, let’s be honest, medical doctors don’t get that. Nurse practitioners are not doing that as well unless they are learning that separately. But as part of their program, they’re not integrating this mind body component, which is huge. If we don’t align ourselves mentally and emotionally, how our physical bodies are being impacted by that, people get stuck in their behaviors, in their mindsets. And that sometimes leads to disease.
Oh man, I tell you, once you’re a practitioner for a while, you start to see the trends of your patient population. I noticed front and center that the mind-body aspect was something that I couldn’t ignore. Did I want to rush into a gastroenterology appointment and just treat the GI system and help them digest their food or the acid reflux they were having? But more times than not, if you skip that mind body connection, the lock and key don’t hold, and it just reverts back to here I am with this acid reflux again. That’s a perfect understanding of making sure that we are whole body aware and we are treating whole body medicine, and the mind is so miraculous. Just able to help you click into that space to say, I’m committing to this. I’m doing this. And so, yeah, I now do more frequency and energy medicine, balancing first with the patient and making sure that we can get them to a place where, again, balance and homeostasis can be achieved at a level of frequency, because we’re all frequency. Different organ systems vibrate at different frequencies.
In order to tune into a radio station or a podcast, tune in with yourself. That should be something that you can understand and recognize. Just tune in and start to learn, oh, this doesn’t feel right, and this is what it feels like when I do feel right. And again, that’s some of that training. Once you get that in motion, reversal of disease and those obstacles to cure won’t be obstacles anymore. I absolutely believe that the MAHA movement, encompassing everything you just mentioned about the four pillars, is what the MAHA movement stands for: preventative medicine, nutrition, sleep, diet, water intake, and environmental considerations. To your point earlier where you’re like, people can go overseas and they’re totally fine in Italy eating the bread and the gluten and the pasta and whatnot. Well, what’s happening here? Well, what’s curious here is that we are spraying our crops.
There are a lot of people, especially in the National Health Federation movement, and one gentleman, whose last name is Ger. He really has a beautiful concept, and it’s simple; I’m sure we all know it and intuitively understand it. Still, he’s like, listen, we have soil poisoned, and the poison goes into the soil, the grain or that crop grows that livestock, eat that grain or that cereal, then they start to get sick. So, they are taken to the vet, who prescribes a pharmaceutical. However, this pharmaceutical starts to imbalance or dysregulate their hormones, so more hormones are added to the livestock. Then we eat meat that has these added hormones that we don’t need, and then we get sick because these hormones are all over the place in our body, can’t regulate it, don’t know what to do with it, toxin response. And then we go to the doctor to get on a drug to help regulate.
It’s a vicious cycle. It’s a vicious cycle. And it all starts with the soil. What are we growing. And our food, like you said, for the executive orders, one of the pillars, I’ll just say within that document, for those that have read it or that are aware of it, they talk about food medicine, they talk about prevention, they talk about chronic disease, they talk about having a relationship with agriculture and making sure that we’re supporting our local farmers and our farm community. Again, awareness is everything. Wherever you’re spending your money, you’re spending a vote, you’re spending a choice. Making sure that we’re choosing with our money and our voice, and saying, ‘ No, I would prefer not to spend money on these things because I want to support local farmers. ‘ And I think it’s 1% of Americans who go to their farmer’s market or their community garden, have 1% of us. It’s as if we would completely deflate if we didn’t have that agricultural sector in our economy.
That’s very true. That’s very true. I grew up in an area that was all, it was a community, but there were a lot of farms around. I remember in the eighties, I can age you myself here, but in the eighties as a kid, I remember seeing how the ice cream truck goes by the neighborhood. Well, this was a food truck and it was open on both sides, and it was from a local farm, and it was all fresh produce, fruits and vegetables and nuts and seeds that they would grow in their farms. And it was all local here in Phoenix, all along baseline in South Phoenix. I mean in Levine, these trucks would go through our neighborhood and they would weigh it and we would buy it. It was literally food, naturally grown food coming through our neighborhood instead of the ice cream.
Man, I wish that would happen again. You said something that I think is very, very key in all areas of our life, and it’s the word awareness. We need to become more aware of what’s actually going out there and not put your phones down, stop looking at the tv, stop listening to the media, all of that of that. Just get out and really find out what’s in your area. Find out what’s in your soil. I mean, if people were to really do a deep dive into the quality of our soil, the microbes, the lack of nutrients, one of the things that we’re finding in our soil in America is that it’s very depleted in the nutrients and the microbes that we need for the food to grow there and have all the nutrition in there, all the minerals and the vitamins that we get that from the soil.
If we start with depleted soil, our food is not going to, yeah, you’re eating the vegetable, but you’re not getting the full nutrient density that say, a hundred years ago, people used to get from their food. And that’s a concern to me for many of us, because we realize we’re eating these organic foods, but is it really nutrient-dense? However, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t eat it. That doesn’t mean don’t eat it because the processed food in a packaging in a box, in a container. That’s not good. As we get ready to wrap this up, I’m going to tell you that one of the things that led me to become a naturopathic doctor, as I was healing myself in 2011, I was struggling with going to finding a doctor who would listen to me, that would get me the results. The labs were normal, so you’re normal.
But I didn’t feel normal. So, I knew I had enough awareness and intelligence to continue investigating and digging deeper. I recall a time when I was meditating. I prayed and I meditated because I was desperate. I was like, what do I do? God, what do I do? In my meditation, I heard God tell me to eat the food that grows on the soil. I was not on the internet. I was not on social media at the time. And I thought, what does that mean? Even at that time, I was like, what is that going to look like realistically? So I’m eating only fresh fruits and vegetables, nothing in cans or boxes. At that time, I thought, Is that realistic? So I did implement that. I implemented that principle. I only ate fresh produce, nothing that was frozen or in a box or was processed.
That’s when I saw my transformation just by that one move. So I tell people, you don’t even understand the power of food, real food that it has in your body, because you’re removing all the junk, all the stuff, all of that, and you’re just sticking to the foundations of what your body needs. That was my journey into really healing and recovering and restoring very quickly too. It didn’t take years. It was like two, three months. I had all these results, not just physically, but on labs that my doctor didn’t even believe me. She actually said, what did you do to make all this change? And I said, I changed my diet. She’s like, no, really? What did you do? So even the medical doctor couldn’t comprehend that food in itself was enough to change, to transform my health around. And I remember laughing and saying, ‘I don’t know what it is about you doctors that you just don’t get it.’
That the foundation of what we’re built, our bodies, are physically being constructed by the food we eat. Of course, it’s going to make an impact. Dr. Jessica, I walked out of that office thinking if she could be a doctor. That was what encouraged me, but I knew it had to be something different. I couldn’t become a medical doctor, not because I couldn’t able to, because I didn’t want to. I wanted to treat people in a different way. I really want to encourage our viewers. I know some naturopathic medical students watch the show and other medical doctors, naturopathic medical doctors, watch this. I hope this encourages them to stand firmly on those principles. There’s a lot of high-tech technology, sexy things that people are doing to treat illness, peptides and all of this and all that.
Get your diet, just teach people the foundations and then build on that. Is it really necessary to spend two, $300 on all of these new innovative technologies? Is it really necessary to put people on Ozempic and cause other negative side effects for them to lose weight? No. Let’s address all these things that, all the tools, because as naturopathic doctors, we were given a bunch of tools. We have a toolkit like a mechanic does. A good mechanic has what, probably hundreds, thousands of dollars in tools. The more advanced the mechanic is, the more tools he has. But I always say the mechanic is never attached to just one tool. He uses them all. So
True.
He uses them all.
So true. And there are better mechanics than there are doctors.
People leave opposite, right? Think about it. People leave doctors’ offices without a solution after months and months on being a medication. They still have the same symptoms. They’re not improving a mechanic. You take your car, if your red engine light is on and you pay him a thousand dollars and you still leave with the red light on, that’s not going to happen. You’re not going to take your car to a mechanic and say, well, it’s still broken, but you owe me a thousand dollars. The standards need to change for doctors, too. We need to be held to standards of we’re not completely responsible for the outcome of the patient, but we are responsible to do a thorough assessment, do the right evaluations for labs and so forth and so forth. There’s so many other things, but I know for sure I want to be more involved politically here in Arizona to get my feet wet a little bit and find out how can we create an influence here. We already have a great state with a lot of, like I said, wide scope of practice here in Arizona, but there’s still a lot of things that I know that we can further support these changes that are happening at the federal level. But like you said, really we have a bigger impact or a greater opportunity to make an impact at the state level. Absolutely. You had some things you wanted to share with our audience, some little opportunities. So go ahead and share some of those things you wanted to share.
Yeah, absolutely. I just wanted to say that it gives good context and appreciation to who you are and why you are here. And again, you’ve just been a beautiful colleague and friend and partner in health, and I always say partner in health because we teach each other and we teach our patients, and we can’t go home with our patients at the end of the day and say, you’re eating wrong, you’re doing this. We can only advocate and empower and spread that awareness forward. Within that light, I decided to become a naturopathic doctor, specifically because I had this biochemistry professor in my pre-med years and my background, my father’s whole side, all conventional medicine, my mom’s side, all indigenous medicine. And so I was destined to become a doctor in some capacity, and I was following the traditional route. I was a tutor for a biochemistry doctor in the class.
He came in one day and he had a stack of papers and he threw ’em across his desk and he goes, I’ve been vindicated. He starts scribbling all these molecular structures. At the time, of course, you’re like, what is this gibberish? Because these molecular structures were new to me. I knew a sugar molecule, but these were different. And he was probably one of the only people at the time, scientists at the time that were studying artificial sweeteners. So it was aspartame. And he says, ‘I have to tell you, this is going to be detrimental to the human body.’ So I’m obsessed about it. I go through all my family’s food pantry drawers and I’m like, Chuck in the low fat, sugar-free stuff and Diet Coke and all that. During that time was all the rage. And I thought, you know what?
Something is calling me into the more traditional, indigenous side of medicine. That’s where I found the complement of what naturopathic medical school and license could be. I thought, that’s what I’m doing. So I go to my professor and he had already written me my letters for traditional school, and I was already seven interviews deep. So it wasn’t like I was just starting out. I was already committed. This was a significant transition for me, and I thought, ‘You know what?’ Something that voice, that creator God, you’re just like, I know that something inside of me is just tickling me in a way that I can’t ignore it. I went to him and I said, I need another letter, but this time I need it addressed, and it has to be for naturopathic school. And he puts down his glasses and he doesn’t say anything.
And he goes, You’re better than that. I didn’t know what to say. Is that good? Is that bad? Huh? That’s scary, too, that I’m even considering this. You who I just admire and adore don’t think that this is the right path. So I prayed and meditated on it and I thought, Nope, I will not be happy with myself if I don’t at least explore it. And so I did, and I was just, the more I started finding out about what naturopathic doctors do, the more it spoke to my soul. The ironic thing is that the reason I really even got into advocacy looking back is that he really was a musing point for me of that he was a traditional scientist, was curious in exploring alternative foods and preservatives. He was really trying to bridge that understanding between food, medicine, what is a food medicine, what is not a food medicine, right?
Aspartame does not appear to be a food medicine. We need to start really having conversations about this and researching it. And he was, and I think how curious, he’s in a traditional setting yet he’s thinking traditionally and he’s still can’t appreciate that I want to do more of the untraditional role and explore or teach my patients that no is not the solution to a sugar-free lifestyle. That’s been a point of advocacy for me is making sure that I continue to teach people like him that naturopathic medicine is the way forward for true rehabilitation of health and wellness and to help us live stronger, healthier lives. I just wanted to say that because when you’re considering being an advocate, you need to know why. You have to be able to come back to your why or else it can be intimidating, it can be tiring, it can be sometimes you’re doing it out of the kindness and goodness of your heart and spirit, and you want to make sure that you have that foundational understanding of I’m advocating for those that cannot advocate for themselves because 60% of Americans have a chronic disease that sometimes is so debilitating that they cannot advocate for themselves.
That’s the other actionable ask is the Confucian-inspired quote that RFK Junior had said recently: is A sick person only has one wish, and that’s to get healthy.
That’s true.
And it’s true. It’s as if you have all these wishes and dreams, but when you’re sick, your only wish is to get healthy and well again. I just wanted to inspire everybody to think beyond themselves and to really help us promote our medicine because our medicine has such value and we really need to lean into that community aspect of it.
Wow, amazing. That’s powerful. Thank you for sharing that. So we’re going to get ready to wrap up here, provide links if people want to reach out to you, learn a little bit about you. You also wanted to, was it the first five people that follow you or DM you on Instagram that they’ll get a MAHA hat and a sticker? So, can you provide that information and I’ll put it in the description notes to the episode as
Well? Yeah. So I have, again, this is from MAHA and the Mahaaction.com. I think I said .org earlier, excuse me, MAHA action.com. Some of my teammates provided great caps and stickers. So for those of you that are interested, I want to give away some of those goodies. So the first five people, if you want to DM me and follow me on Instagram, give me your address and I will ship you a few hats and stickers.
And just make sure to note on there that you heard this on the Physician Heal Self podcast, so she knows who to send it to. So thank you so much, Dr. Jessica, for sharing your time, your expertise, your knowledge, and experience. I always appreciate you and we will catch up again before our audience. I want to thank you for listening to this episode of Physician Heal Thyself, the podcast. Please make sure you share and subscribe to the channel. And until next time, 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.