Episode 147
Reed Davis:
The DRESS Formula: 5 Lifestyle Keys to Unlock Your Body's Healing Potential with Reed Davis
In this episode, Reed Davis introduces us to the DRESS formula, a comprehensive lifestyle approach that forms the cornerstone of his methodology. He delves into the concept of "metabolic chaos" and how it contributes to a wide range of health problems, including autoimmune conditions.
First Aired on: Jul 8, 2024
Episode 147
Reed Davis:
The DRESS Formula: 5 Lifestyle Keys to Unlock Your Body's Healing Potential with Reed Davis
In this episode, Reed Davis introduces us to the DRESS formula, a comprehensive lifestyle approach that forms the cornerstone of his methodology. He delves into the concept of "metabolic chaos" and how it contributes to a wide range of health problems, including autoimmune conditions.
First Aired on: Jul 8, 2024
Table of Contents:
In this episode:
Episode Summary
In this enlightening episode, we sit down with Reed Davis, founder of Functional Diagnostic Nutrition (FDN), to explore the revolutionary approach to health that's changing lives around the world. Reed shares his journey from environmental law to functional health and explains why traditional medical approaches often fall short in addressing chronic health issues.
Reed introduces us to the DRESS formula - Diet, Rest, Exercise, Stress reduction, and Supplements - a comprehensive lifestyle approach that forms the cornerstone of FDN. He delves into the concept of "metabolic chaos" and how it contributes to a wide range of health problems, including autoimmune conditions.
Key Points:
- The limitations of traditional medical testing: Reed explains why "normal" lab results don't always mean you're healthy. He discusses how standard blood work often misses underlying functional imbalances and how FDN practitioners use more comprehensive testing to uncover hidden health issues.
- The stress cascade: Reed details how chronic stress triggers a series of health issues, starting with hormone imbalances and leading to immune dysfunction, digestive problems, and even autoimmune conditions.
- The HIDDEN framework: This unique approach examines Hormones, Immune system, Digestion, Detoxification, Energy production, and Nervous system balance to get a comprehensive picture of an individual's health status.
- Genetic potential vs. genetics: Reed emphasizes that while we can't change our genetics, we can maximize our genetic potential through targeted lifestyle interventions based on functional testing results.
- The role of functional lab testing: Reed discusses how functional tests provide deeper insights into bodily functions, allowing practitioners to create more personalized and effective health protocols.
- The importance of health coaching: Reed highlights the value of ongoing support and guidance in implementing lifestyle changes and achieving lasting health improvements.
Diving Deeper into Functional Health
Reed emphasizes the critical role of lifestyle factors in healing chronic conditions. He explains how the FDN approach differs from conventional medicine by focusing on root causes rather than symptom management. Through real-life examples and scientific insights, Reed illustrates how this functional approach can lead to transformative health outcomes.
The conversation also touches on the evolving landscape of functional medicine and the growing recognition of its effectiveness. Reed shares his vision for a future where everyone has access to a health coach and personalized, data-driven health strategies.
Notable Quotes
"You could be spending a lot of money on organic and all the good things, and it's not really being broken down and absorbed."
"We resolve metabolic chaos by getting people to live themselves out of the problems they've lived themselves into."
"There's no one at the top of the stairs, right? I don't know a perfectly healthy person. And I know a lot of people, and this is what they've done their entire lives, and everyone can pick something to work on."
Other Resources:
Connect with Reed Davis
Watch this interview:
Episode Transcript
Reed Davis:[00:00:00](Teaser Intro)You could be spending a lot of money on organic and all the good things, and it's not really being broken down and absorbed.
Reed Davis: Then you could also look at the mucosal barrier, which is where the leaky gut, which is the kind of the parent of autoimmunity. And you can also see what stress is doing and how it's breaking your body down, how you're aging before your time. So the functional tests tell you, you know, how things are working inside.
(Intro Bumper)
Julie Michelson:[00:01:00](Episode Intro) Welcome back to the Inspired Living with Autoimmunity podcast. I'm your host, Julie Michelson. And today I'm joined by Reid Davis, Board Certified Holistic Health Practitioner and Certified Nutritional Therapist. Reid is an expert in functional lab testing and holistic lifestyle medicine. He is the founder of Functional Diagnostic Nutrition and the FDN certification course, which has over 4, 000 graduates in 50 countries.
Julie Michelson: Reed served as the health director at a wellness center in Southern California for over 10 years and with over 10, 000 clients, he is known as one of the most experienced clinicians in his field. Reed serves on the advisory board of the American Natural Wellness Coaches Board and the American Association of Natural Wellness Coaches.
Julie Michelson: In today's conversation, we're discussing the difference between functional health and the [00:02:00] historic medical model. Reid shares his journey and his expertise on how we can all shift out of illness and into vibrant health. And we also discuss the FDN training program for those who have a desire to heal as well as help others do the same.
Julie Michelson: Reed, welcome to the podcast.
Reed Davis: Thank you so much, Julie. Pleasure to be here.
Julie Michelson: I have, I'm so excited about this conversation. Um, so, but before we even dig into all the autoimmunity information you can give us, um, I would love for you to share a bit of your journey because like so many of us, this isn't, I don't think this is what you're doing now is what you imagined you'd be doing when you were younger.
Julie Michelson: Um, but unlike most of us, it's not because of your own wellness journey that you got here. So can you just share, you know, how did you come to create the functional diagnostic nutrition?
Reed Davis: Yeah, there's, there's a story there. It's been an adventure, [00:03:00] you know, and I have to say, you never know how it's going to turn out, but, um, I got my first, uh, help book when I health book when I was about 19.
Reed Davis: And so there may be, and I wasn't in the health business. Until I was in my forties. Matter of fact, I was in environmental law and conservation. So in the, in the 1990s, I thought it was saving the whole planet. And I actually did very well. There's lots of ways to make money in that industry. Uh, and so we were doing great.
Reed Davis: And I started to. You know, I saw so much damage done to the flora and fauna of the planet, and you're trying to, I started wondering about people. What about people? And what about me? You know, I had relatives that died at young ages, and I think you are familiar with that. Yep. And so I didn't want that happening to me.
Reed Davis: I was already [00:04:00] in my 40s. But by the time, my late 40s, by the time I got into this field, which is in 1999, and so I switched jobs. I just went from Being the CEO of a, uh, basically a recycling company to, um, uh, just the lowest level at a wellness center. And it was hard to
Julie Michelson: imagine,
Reed Davis: you know, I mean, they, they brought me in as a businessman, uh, cause I'd done very well.
Reed Davis: And, um, yet. The owner said, hey Reed, um, if you want, you can take this nutrition course with me. The doctor was getting her diplomat in nutrition and said, if you go to these classes with me, I'll let you work on our patients in between classes, and you'll get your certified nutritional therapist certificate.
Reed Davis: So I jumped on that opportunity and my life changed immediately. I just fell in love with working with people. Now I'm saving people instead of birds and [00:05:00] dogs and cats or whatever, whales, and you have it in the environmental field. And so it was just a remarkable experience. enlightening and joyful experience, although the people coming in the office weren't joyful, they were miserable.
Julie Michelson: Yeah.
Reed Davis: But my opportunity to help them became my mission in life. And so it's never changed in 25 years. I, I'm dedicated to helping people find the underlying causes and conditions. Because as you know, I'm not a physician, I couldn't, I didn't want to start diagnosing.
Julie Michelson: Me either.
Reed Davis: Yeah. So I didn't want to start diagnosing and treating, it would have been inappropriate and maybe even illegal.
Reed Davis: You know, I had nothing to do with medical. It's what's really wrong. And all the patients were game to do what I recommended, which was run functional laboratory work. It was called alternative back then. Right, you know, we [00:06:00] didn't call it this and I've seen functional medicine evolve. It's not finished evolving.
Julie Michelson: No
Reed Davis: but it went from alternative to to complementary to Integrative, you know, which is more it's being accepted to functional where now it's being championed by Medical and that's a good thing. But we so we were there and All those years ago. Um, I had a lot to learn,
Julie Michelson: uh, but I had
Reed Davis: nothing to unlearn,
Julie Michelson: which is lovely.
Reed Davis: Yeah. Yeah. And I just got to run labs and look at what's really all these. And I was trained at amazing mentorship and I'll wrap this up in just a sec. So with this incredible mentorship, scientists, researchers, lab directors, and lab lab geeks, you know, um, I learned to find annoying causes and conditions.
Reed Davis: And it became my sole modality. I mean, the nutrition course that I took [00:07:00] didn't work. It was just basically take this way, you know, take this for that supplements and stuff. So, but it was the lab work that over 10 years, I ran thousands and thousands of labs, helped thousands of people. And I recognized patterns.
Reed Davis: So, in addition to the training and the mentorship I was receiving from physicians and scientists, I was recognizing my own patterns in the office. We were a busy office. Matter of fact, I loved going out and getting new ones. I started lecturing. So I did that for 10 years. And the patterns that I recognize are the foundation of the, what we now call functional diagnostic nutrition.
Reed Davis: When I taught my first class, after 10 years, Uh, they kind of made me to start teaching other practitioners, read, you're doing great. Hey, you're, you can only see so many people, why don't you deputize a few? And that, that rang a [00:08:00] bell, um, in my busy mind. And, um, and so the first class, and I've never looked back from then either, just teaching became, okay, I can teach this methodology.
Reed Davis: So it's a way of thinking. And along with the steps, methodology means method, steps. The ology is the way you have to be thinking. So it's a methodology and you have to be thinking that the body, uh, is pretty smart. You don't have to teach any cells what their job is. The body wants to heal itself. If you give it everything it needs to heal and remove the interferences.
Reed Davis: So that's what FDN is. It's that and all of the, uh, protocols. All drug free, um, lifestyle medicine, pretty much.
Julie Michelson: Which is amazing. And I, I love, um, I ha I just told you before we started at some point, I want to go through the FCN course, [00:09:00] um, you know, I'll need CEUs and, and, uh, next year, so, you know, you'll probably see.
Julie Michelson: See me on the roster just because we're, you know, we're all always learning, but it's already so aligned with what I do. Um, you know, I'm not a prac. I'm not a practitioner. Um, I, I, you know, I, I know. And we'll, we'll get into it because I think what you hit on the beauty of not being a physician. Um, and I say that with love and respect for physicians, most of my listeners know I live with a physician, I work with a physician, and we love working together because I still have, I didn't have anything to unlearn, and I have the patient mindset, and so I'm going to prioritize maybe Different things than a physician would, um, and I approach helping my clients the same way, you know, FDM practitioners do, [00:10:00] which is we do a load of labs up front, um, because there's our roadmap.
Julie Michelson: Right. And so, you know, because we are, and I know, I know you agree with this. I've heard you speak. Um, shockingly, we're all individual. So we have patterns. I know it's wild. Um, and, and so, and I go through the same thing. I, I just had a call even last week where somebody was like, that's expensive. And I'm like, It is, but you're here at my door because you haven't had, you know, haven't been helped.
Julie Michelson: So, you know, do you want to wait six months and trickle the labs like you would have done, you know, with a functional medicine physician? No, you want to get better. Um, so I, I love that. And, and, you know, obviously most listeners are either have auto immunity or autoimmune adjacent autoimmune loved ones.
Julie Michelson: Um, I want to, because Functional [00:11:00] diagnostic nutrition, um, but you're not a physician and you're not working with diagnoses. People kind of look at me like when I'm crazy, when I say I good, don't get a diagnosis with them. We don't have to undo your thinking. Um, you know, let's talk about that a little, because I think you share that view as well.
Julie Michelson: How can you help somebody if they don't have a diagnosis?
Reed Davis: Well, they could have one from a physician. Sure. It's just not, it's not, um, usually it's just the, uh, uh, a name or label for a cluster of symptoms. Right. And it, it might have a lab or two attached to it for confirmation. So doctors do what's called a clinical diagnosis.
Reed Davis: It sounds like this. Let's see, hypothyroidism. Right. Because in the cluster of symptoms, that's very, very distinct. So you list those six or eight or ten things, um, oh, it sounds like hypothyroidism. Let's check. And they check the thyroid and pat themselves on the back. I [00:12:00] found your problem. It's hypothyroidism.
Reed Davis: Here's your prescription to make up the difference. Right. And in our world, we call that treating the paper. Now it does provide relief. People will feel better. They get a little more energy, or they lose a couple pounds. But then as soon as something else occurs, Which it will! Which it does. So when you don't treat the underlying, uh, processes, disease processes, and malfunctions, and imbalances that are sometimes very far upstream, well then, either the symptoms will come back with a vengeance, and what do you do?
Reed Davis: Well, you need more medication. you know, up your dosage, or they appear as new, uh, symptoms, which if that same physician can handle it, uh, then it would just be, well, that sounds like low testosterone or something. So they run the test and pat themselves on the back. Yep. It's well, and now you're on two medications.
Reed Davis: You're on only two and you're in it. [00:13:00] So, so they're still treating the paper, still using it. Now, do you get relief? You might, from the testosterone, get a little more libido and, uh, build a little bit of muscle and have some more energy and things like that. But, but, um, it doesn't fix the So, we don't think that way.
Reed Davis: So, the answer to your question about diagnosis is That well, I can't give one. I want and I don't want to because none of our patients coming in 25 years ago wanted another darn diagnosis, right? Like I already have three. I don't want another one. I want to know what's really wrong. And well, I'm your guy I just I was a again the open book and I had The freedom to do this in, in a wellness center, uh, there was physicians there and I had no trouble getting all the lab work that they were willing to pay for.
Reed Davis: That's like
Julie Michelson: me. Yep.
Reed Davis: Yeah, so it was fun. I had a great time in those 10 years helping people and when they started to get results. [00:14:00] Like amazing. Right. Results. I, I tell this story all the time. I hope it's okay. Please. You know, it's one of my most popular, but I could give you a hundred. But this lady can't, it's just with your audience, this lady comes in, she's there for some chiropractic and massage and stuff.
Reed Davis: And I would walk the patients back to the treatment room. She had a pretty big place and, um, and get to know them and all that. So she's, it was about her eighth visit, I think. And I could tell she was sad. I said, Hey, you know, first name, what's going on? Oh, and she just was in a bad day. Uh, Reed, I'm just so tired, sick and tired.
Reed Davis: I'm 40 pounds overweight and I just can't stand it anymore. And it's because of this medication I'm on for the hives. And, and right away I'm thinking, okay, you know, I couldn't get a,
Julie Michelson: I couldn't
Reed Davis: get a word in. She, [00:15:00] she would, she had to be heard out like, like, and I went to the, so I'm on this medication for the hives, maybe gain 40 pounds in two years and I'm sick of it.
Reed Davis: And it's the, you know, and she said she had just been for a checkup, told the physician how sick of it she was. And he said, according to her, ma'am, you could be fat or you can have the hives, you know, you take your pick. And she said, so she said, that's very depressing. The physician said, well, I'd be happy to write you a prescription for antidepressants.
Julie Michelson: Oh, gosh, of course.
Reed Davis: And so, so she was, now I understood why she was presenting so down. Right. And, but when I said, by this time we've walked her back, this is all going in the hallway back to the, to the treatment room. And, and I typically, I would do some trigger point therapy. It was a really good myofascial therapist, among other things, but [00:16:00] I'd do some trigger point therapy, put a heat pack, and then the chiropractor would come in and And adjust, uh, do the adjustments and we were known for that, really, really good type of therapies and modalities and things.
Reed Davis: But when I said to her, well, first name, why didn't you ever try to find out why you get the hives? Yeah. So. As you had mentioned, well, her head snapped around so hard I thought she wouldn't need her chiropractic. I thought I heard the, what? And, and I said, yeah, let's, let's run a test. You can run a test if you want to, maybe, no guarantees, but maybe find out why.
Reed Davis: So we ran some tests. We found out what she was eating and things in her environment that she needed to change. And she did. And within nine days. of my report of findings on the lab work. Uh, she called her doctor and said, I'm off this medication. I found out why I get the hives. [00:17:00]
Julie Michelson: Amazing. And, and it, you know, it's so inspiring and also sometimes frustrating and can spark a little anger, um, which can feel change.
Julie Michelson: So that's good.
Reed Davis: Doctor was doing what he's trained to do, which is relief. Right. That's never, you know, like relief is good. Yeah. As a side effect for her, the side effect. Effect became worse than the problem or is bed. Was she, uh, another two weeks went by and I talked to her again and she said that she was in the gym working out to a sweat and taking hot showers, which she hadn't done in two years.
Reed Davis: 'cause even on the meds, hot showers and sweating, what triggered and the hives. And she'd lost some weight, you know, a respectable amount of weight already, you know, and, and, man, so underlying conditions, can you help people without being a physician and diagnosing? Oh, heck yeah.
Julie Michelson:[00:18:00] Absolutely. Absolutely. And I'll give the disclaimer I give all the time.
Julie Michelson: And I've heard you say the same thing. Western medicine is fantastic for acute care. So if you, you know, need surgery, break a bone, have an infection, like go to a Western trained medical doctor. Um, but it's just not designed to, to handle all of these chronic conditions, including autoimmunity, but there's so many of them now.
Julie Michelson: And they're just, You know, multiplying, um, you know, probably, well, not, not just probably, one of the reasons is, you know, environment, like you started with, so, um, you know, it does all tie together. We are, you know, absolutely affected by environment. I want to ask Let me add, let me add one thing to
Reed Davis: it, because you, you touched on a very important point.
Reed Davis: Are we in competition with physicians? No.
Julie Michelson: Partnership. Partnership.
Reed Davis: You know, if you have communicable disease, you get off a plane from [00:19:00] West Africa and your temperature is 105 and you're bleeding from your eyeballs, you're not going to call your nutritionist, FDN practitioner, or
Julie Michelson: health coach.
Reed Davis: Yeah, health coach.
Reed Davis: Same thing with gunshot wounds. Sure. Yeah, and so communicable diseases and you got to go get checked out because here's the the definition of back, two backyards, medical backyard and our backyard. So when the downward spiral is really contracted, well, the observations I would make with my functional lab testing can't be capitalized on.
Reed Davis: You've got to stop the bleeding, so to speak. Once the bleeding stop, then we can Uh, then you're in the next backyard and we, and, and people were coming in 25 years ago with that and their downward spiral wasn't, it was just some long drawn out, well then the observations we make and the lifestyle recommendations and the epigenetic [00:20:00] programs work, you know, because you have time for the body to heal.
Reed Davis: That was our original premise. The body wants to be healthy. If it has, if you have enough time, you, you can get over an awful lot of ills.
Julie Michelson: Absolutely. And stop that, that spiral of, especially, you know, once people have an autoimmune diagnosis, again, it's the same thing. If you don't handle that, those root drivers, you're gonna get a second and a third and maybe even a fourth.
Julie Michelson: I had, I had one client who had eight, eight different autoimmune diagnoses. And she's well now. So, you know, it's, I always say it's never too late and definitely never too early. Um, I know you're, uh, you mentioned patterns, right? This is how the whole FDN started was because you were able to say like, okay, you know, yes, we're individual, but I see these patterns, um, and you have fantastic acronyms.
Julie Michelson: So will you share a little bit about your approach? You know, what, what are you [00:21:00] looking at? What do you, you know,
Reed Davis: So, in the office, in a 10 year period, I ran thousands of labs and thousands of people, and I had great mentorship. Along the way, I started recognizing patterns, and most of our, most of our patients were women.
Reed Davis: They seemed to care more about their health, and they were, Working, they had kids that were grown, sometimes even out of the house. Empty nesters kind of a thing going on. And some even had younger kids, but that was the demographic. Now, I first became a specialist in hormones because that was a big thing in the day that the drugs being used were horrible and there was stuff going on with research there.
Reed Davis: So, and then what I realized was that you could help someone with their hormones What about their immune system? What about digestion? What about detoxification? What about energy production? So I, I ended up over there coming with this acronym, [00:22:00] H-I-D-D-E-N, hidden. And a lot of it's hidden. You have to run labs and you look at hormone balance and the immune system.
Reed Davis: So H-I-D-D-E-N is hormone immune digestion, detoxification, energy production, and nervous system balance, you know, the sympathetic parasympathetic, and there's tests for everything like that. Now, here's the other consideration though. It's that none of that's happening in a silo independently. Yes. We're so unique and individual.
Reed Davis: And so what I learned is that, you know, you couldn't say, well it sounds like hormones, or it sounds like the immune system, or it sounds like nervous system imbalance, or it sounds like a parasite, or whatever. You know, you, you, what became important was to look at the entire constellation. of healing opportunities.
Reed Davis: Those are not diagnoses. Healing opportunities are what really needs to be worked on. And here's the other thing. These causal factors, this whole constellation of, of [00:23:00] causal factors, they're all having an effect on each other. And that's why you need to know about them all. And you can start sorting it out.
Reed Davis: So what I, what I labeled that was metabolic chaos. And so that phrase has become pretty popular too. It has. FDN practitioners, my, my graduates all use it every day because that's the only problem that a person has to us. There's metabolic chaos. Right. You got all these causal factors, they're affecting each other.
Reed Davis: You can't even singly measure some of those interactions. Right. Um, but we know about them. And, uh, when you look at the entire constellation, You can come up with what a person can do immediately, which is where the lifestyle acronym comes in. You know, it's, it's not your genetics. You can't change your parents, but you, you, um, you're given some genetics, and what you want is genetic potential.
Reed Davis: You want to realize your fullest healthy genetic [00:24:00] potential, and we're not all handed the same deck of cards when it comes to that.
Julie Michelson: Right.
Reed Davis: I, for instance, We'll never be a NBA star.
Julie Michelson: Oh, come on, Reed. Well, you know, at
Reed Davis: 5'10 you know, I'm not going to make it. So, so, uh, the idea is that genetic potential, though, is what you want.
Reed Davis: So, if you find all these healing, Opportunities, you've identified a bunch of stuff, HIDDEN, and everyone has to work on it all, and there's also oxidative stress, there's other things you could throw into the, the, the, uh, metabolic chaos, what's creating and what's, what has resulted in the symptoms and things.
Reed Davis: Well, when you have that approach, and you know that. It's not genetics that matter, it's epigenetics, it's your lifestyle. And I realized that very early on, I can remember over 20 years ago, asking, starting to ask every patient, What's [00:25:00] your home program look like? What are you doing at home? Right. You can't just come in here three times a week and throw it on us.
Reed Davis: That's not what we're here for. We want to, and so it would became D R E S S. Diet, rest, exercise, stress reduction, and supplements. Now, we could do a whole two hours just on the stress. But D R E S S is our, it's the FDN practitioner formula for success, dress for health success. And um, it's funny cause there was a book in the seventies about dress for health success.
Reed Davis: If you went back and looked at it and dressed that way today, you'd be considered a clown. But it was good back then, the big white ties and,
Julie Michelson: uh,
Reed Davis: anyway, I had that book, um, uh, but dress for health success is how you live. From the time you get up in the morning to the time you go to bed, and even in between how you sleep.
Reed Davis: Diet, rest, exercise, stress reduction, [00:26:00] supplementation. It also makes it very easy to be a health coach and manage that person. So, in our world, we assess all the healing opportunities. You gotta run some labs and do some intake, get to know the person. Um, then you can, um, Correlate those lab results with the person in other words clinical correlation, you know, all these things going on You're finally the first person that ever explained to a someone why they feel so crappy all the time When they might have even been told there's nothing wrong with you.
Julie Michelson: Yeah
Reed Davis: standard blood work and that's your
Julie Michelson: labs are fine
Reed Davis: Come back when you're sick, you know, like right bad and in the meantime, here's a chill pill Yeah. So, so no, we find healing opportunities. Especially in those cases. And then you have to recommend and design the right [00:27:00] protocol for that person.
Reed Davis: There's no one diet right for everyone. Thank you. Rest is highly individualized. Exercise is highly individualized. I'll tell you right now it's 70. I can't do the, I had to you. Quit kickboxing was too hard on my hips. You know, I have a torn labrum, you know, you kind of damn there's a lot of stuff So even wear and
Julie Michelson: tear.
Reed Davis: Yeah well used body so diet individualized rest in visualization exercise The stress reduction is again. It's a whole The whole conversation itself, but very quickly, it's mental, emotional, psycho spiritual stress that's going on in your head and your heart and your mind and things. There's physical trauma, like I've had a lot of from sports and motorcycles and things.
Reed Davis: And then there's the chemical, biochemical stressors. And where did I start? environmental laws and studying, uh, how bad the environment is for, for, um, you know, [00:28:00] flora and fauna. It's bad for us too. So you have this whole, this whole, uh, world of stress reduction. And then the supplements are important because food just isn't the quality it used to be.
Reed Davis: They can be used therapeutically to support and stimulate and things like that. So D R E S S, but only guided by investigation of HIDDE. And that's our basic formula. We resolve metabolic chaos by getting people to live themselves out of the problems they've lived themselves into. And again, this works perfectly with medical who work on the, um, you know, communicable and accidents and, and, and, and weirdo genetics, like total people with genetic defects.
Reed Davis: And, um, In our sometimes missing parts, you know, that's really, uh, we can't grow parts back. But, um, that's our backyard. You know, it's the, it's the wall you need your ladder on if [00:29:00] you're going to, uh, take charge and, um, live yourself out of it and, um, live yourself into, um, a really healthy, vibrant, and joyful backyard.
Reed Davis: Life, you know, the last thing I'll say about doctors and us, why we work so well together, doctors will save your life and we'll, we'll put more vibrancy into it and the longevity and anti aging that goes with it.
Julie Michelson: Yeah, which I love that that you brought up and we're, you know, talking mostly about and, and this was what drove your path, you know, chronic illness and things like autoimmunity, but it's the same approach for up leveling and, and, you know, aging with full health.
Julie Michelson: Um, I, you know, I didn't think I would live to see 55 and I probably wouldn't have wanted to if I had continued to decline anyway. Now I'm like, Oh, the next few decades are going to be amazing. [00:30:00] Um, I always say, you know, I, I want to live well until I'm done. And so this approach is a wellness approach. It doesn't really matter what you're looking for.
Julie Michelson: If you think you feel well. This approach will help you feel better,
Reed Davis: Julie. That's an excellent point. And a good, good place. We could move on, um, you know, and I'll come back anytime you guys want.
Julie Michelson: I would love it. I want to throw this in though, for anybody listening on audio that doesn't, is not familiar with you.
Julie Michelson: Cause you just mentioned that you're 70 check out. Check out Reed, because you would not believe he was 70 if you met him in person, and that's what true wellness can be. It can be full life, even with wear and tear. Wear and tear's fair, you earned it.
Reed Davis: Yes.
Julie Michelson: But
Reed Davis: You got it honestly, anyway.
Julie Michelson: Yeah. So, sorry, I interrupted you because I had to, I had to throw that in.[00:31:00]
Reed Davis: Well, you know, I enjoy speaking about this so much, but on a podcast it's limited as to what you're going to. The one thing we didn't cover is the science and how robust, like, my program is, and what I had to learn in those 10 years, The anatomy, the physiology, the biochemistry is intense, and that's all in my course that I teach.
Reed Davis: So it's a real great refresher for physicians. Uh, from a lay perspective, it's quite unique, but it's a real education for health coaches and, um, even nurses and the others who like to take my course and learn a whole, uh, methodology. We have thinking, and, um, of course, it's a great business opportunity, too.
Reed Davis: You can become an independent health entrepreneur by doing this. And there's no prerequisites except for that you're willing to do the work on yourself first. Yep. And that alone would be worth the price of admission. If you just got really healthy from it, wow. You know, [00:32:00] but the fact that you could turn around and help others as a hobby, just your family, friends, whatever, or as a profession, which is why I created the Association of FDM Professionals.
Reed Davis: My grads are so numerous. We've trained over 4, 000 people.
Julie Michelson: Which is amazing. And in 50 countries, right?
Reed Davis: Yeah. Yeah. I didn't even know. Probably more countries.
Julie Michelson: Yeah,
Reed Davis: I didn't know there was countries named what, you know, all these, that's a country, that's a
Julie Michelson: city
Reed Davis: somewhere, but, but, um, uh, mostly United States, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and United Kingdom, but, um, we're, we're all over because you can do this from, you know, if you can get the labs, uh, shipped.
Reed Davis:Like, here's a lab right here on my desk. I got to fill this one out. I
Julie Michelson:know that one.
Reed Davis:Next week.
Julie Michelson:Yep.
Reed Davis:So, and, and I'll, because I, I have every lab I've ever run in 20 years, and boy, can you track the, and, and still, it's part of why, of being healthy, I think. [00:33:00]So, I don't know, maybe last word to your listeners, to our listeners today is start getting the data.
Reed Davis: You need data. Yeah. You can't just be told, try this, try that. Yeah. And physicians are getting data, but they're really not handing it over to you, uh, freely in most cases. And most Beg it, beg for it, you know? Yeah. Or demand it. And you want to start tracking it, because guess what? You're going to change doctors.
Reed Davis: And the one you're seeing now doesn't know the one or even know what the results were five years ago. That's important information, and it's your information. It belongs to you. And so I recommend getting the data and making your decisions on it, and tracking it over time so you can see that you're on the right track.
Julie Michelson: I love that you brought that up. This, this idea of health autonomy, um, because for years, decades, you know, that is the old system is that the, you know, the doctor has the answer and it's going to fix you and [00:34:00] you already hit on if you don't change lifestyle and address all these, all these lifestyle areas, you know, the a, the data is not going to do any good.
Julie Michelson: Um, but, but also, you know, it's, we're in this amazing age where information is available and, and, you know, I have been told before, well, you can't have that. I'm like, it's my body. These are my labs. And then I get to know if something's changing, um, you know, can you touch on. That like you mentioned, but a little deeper on the difference of if somebody, you know, has been told your labs are fine, you're, you know, your labs are normal.
Julie Michelson: Um, you know, I won't get into the whole, is it in your head and all, but, but the difference between the labs, you, you know, you run or an FDN would run or that I run, how are they different? Because people always come up and they're like, Oh, I've had. So many labs done down to like, Oh, you know, I, I [00:35:00] had, I had a heavy metals test and it was a blood test, you know, like there's just so much misinformation and, and there is a real difference in the information we can access.
Reed Davis: You know, well there's functional tests that tell you how your body is working, and then there's other tests that like tell you what your food sensitivities are, or what your parasites and bacteria and funguses and viruses are, or what your uh, metal toxic levels are and things. So, you got functional, which is going to tell you, How are your adrenals?
Reed Davis: Are your hormones balanced? How's your immune system working? Is it overactive or underactive? How's digestion working? Are you actually breaking down and absorbing food properly? You could be spending a lot of money on organic and all the good things, and it's not really being broken down and absorbed.
Reed Davis:Then you could also look at the mucosal barrier, which is where the leaky gut, which is the kind of the parent of autoimmunity. And you can also see what stress is doing and how it's breaking your body down, how you're aging before your time. So the functional tests [00:36:00]tell you, you know, how things are working inside.
Reed Davis:And then there's other tests like, which is again, they're usually done on the sounds like method. Sounds like heavy metals. Right. Let's test for those. And you might even find a couple. And then you might even look for the source of those things. You might find mineral imbalances too. You might be able to, well, try to adjust it.
Reed Davis: But the functional tests are, uh, sort of higher level. It's a, it's a hierarchy that you need to know about. And I think that's the real data. Um, so, so, With respect to the standard letterwork that doctors use, it's too generalized. They're just, the ranges are so big and where should you be? Now, because if the range is this big, maybe your best functional, you do better here, someone else does better here, In whatever that thing might be, and but only when you get this far out of range off camera.
Reed Davis:Oh, yeah. Now you have a [00:37:00]problem. Okay, well, couldn't you have told me as I was talking. 10 years ago before I. You know, if the range is like this and you, you were here and now, are you fine, when you're right on that, you know, borderline, are you really fine? No, you've, you've lost function along the way. And so physicians typically don't track and don't, they just look, are you over the line or not?
Julie Michelson: Right. And I say that all the time, you know, if you, we talked about how rampant chronic illnesses and how unhealthy our society is, and the labs you're getting at your doctor, if they're not flagged, that means you're average of a horribly unwell population. I don't want to be. In the average of this, of the current population versus what you're saying, the functional tests are, they're you there.
Julie Michelson: How is your body doing? And that's like, you know, a huge missing piece. So I, I love that. You said that. And, and it's
Reed Davis: a [00:38:00] good, good discussion. There's a book called, um, normal blood test scores. Aren't good enough by Ellen Cullen. Um, if I have it right, something like that, normal blood test scores aren't good enough.
Reed Davis: And so that's a beginning of understanding of why, what your physicians, when he only flags this and that, cholesterol and vitamin D, if they're even testing it. You know, and then, well, and then each,
Julie Michelson: Each lab company has a different range because they see different kinds of populations. So it's, it's right.
Julie Michelson: There's
Reed Davis: LabCorp and Quest, the two biggest referencing things. So that's standard and it's not good enough to be normal. You need to be able to track where you're in the range and, you know, before you get over the line. And, um, the other thing is most positions aren't sitting down for for any length of time to explain what each one is.
Reed Davis: What are these markers? Nope, it's just this one's over the line, this one's [00:39:00] under the line, and here's what you do about it. That's diagnosing and treating specific things. We would look at it more, we would call it functionally minded, but, so that's the blood work, but then the saliva testing, urine testing, stool testing, hair tissue, mineral analysis, and things like that, they're much more functional.
Reed Davis: And then there is the Uh, direct contributors to metabolic chaos testing, like parasites, bacteria, funguses, viruses. You have your food sensitivities, which we look at. Everyone has some. It's good to know what the good foods are and shop there and make your meals out of that stuff instead, at least for a while.
Reed Davis: And there's more, but yeah, and it usually, the reason why physicians don't do it is because On one hand is because it's not covered by insurance in many cases, right? It's called an out of pocket and physicians generally aren't going to you know They're signing contracts with insurance companies to send them patients [00:40:00]to stay within their scope of practice and and The medical model the algorithms that exist there that they're bound to it's very quite limiting actually and so we're not
Julie Michelson:know even what to do with the results to
Reed Davis:Well, they're not changing.
Reed Davis:So that's why I have a training program, uh, by the way, but, um, there's so much to, to uncover and to unpack here. I don't know.
Julie Michelson: We could have 10, 10 conversations. Let's, let's talk about the training program briefly. So the listeners that are peaked and maybe they're on their healing journey and are in that place of like, Ooh, I, you know, a, I either want to learn more because go through the program, like you The one prerequisite is, is to work on yourself
Reed Davis: and want to help people.
Julie Michelson: Yeah. Yeah.
Reed Davis: And we are a bunch of, uh, do gooders, you know, you know, we want to help people, uh, but we want to work on ourselves. That was [00:41:00] what inspired me in the beginning was. Hey, I see what's happening to the flora and fauna. What about me? What about us? And what about me? I didn't want something sneaking up on me.
Reed Davis: And, you know, so I switched jobs, and as you know, I ran a lot of labs. And now I teach a course in it, and what people would learn is how the dominoes fall, you know, how it starts with stress. We look at, you know, we do a saliva test of the stress hormones, cortisol, DHA. We see people are in a breakdown state, they're in a catabolic state, their bodies are breaking down.
Reed Davis:Well, the next thing, it's due to stress, various kinds. The body doesn't care what kind of stress it is, mental, emotional, physical, chemical. It reacts with stress. out of balance. Right. And so the next thing to go in this dominoes is the sex hormones. You know, your estrogen, your progesterone, your periods get funny, your menopause comes early, you, you get infertile and all these issues around the sex hormones and for men it's a [00:42:00] little different.
Reed Davis: But, um, uh, then the next thing to fall, believe it or not, is usually the immune system. So digestion becomes poor because It's a big, the gut is a big part of your immune system, as a matter of fact, it's most of your immune system. And so we see secretory IgA going down, uh, due to chronic stress. And then if your secretory IgA is down, that's, that's something in your gut to, to protect you from bugs.
Reed Davis: Um, well, If it's low, big bugs come along, and they have, and they start to reside, you have a good host for them. This is why we say the bugs aren't the problem, it's the host. Right. It's the environment. So, stress, sex hormone imbalances, immune system problems, then you get this, what's called a dysbiosis, you're not able to, you know, you have good bad flora issues, and you're not able to break down food properly.
Reed Davis: Now you have a malnourishment issue, even if you're eating great [00:43:00] food. You're assimilation of nutrients into the body. And from there, it gets worse. These bigger, bigger, badder bugs, I think is the medical term. The bigger, the bigger, badder bugs, They can ruin the lining of the gut, along with chemicals and foods you shouldn't be eating and Medications, just like all, yeah.
Reed Davis: Drugs, excuse me, and so now we get permeability of the lining of the gut.
Julie Michelson: Oh, then we get autoimmunity.
Reed Davis: Well, you know, in, in, in succession, the, the downward spiral and the, uh, dominoes would fall such that the liver would get congested. Because everything goes through the portal veins, uh, from the stomach, from the, from the small intestines into the liver.
Reed Davis: Doesn't get directly delivered into the body, except some fats that go through the villi. But, um, you get this, this is where the science and anatomy and physiology becomes really important to understand this downward spiral. So that's what we [00:44:00] teach, is all, where, how all the dominoes are falling. And you can point to people where they're at.
Reed Davis: in that progression. And then you can teach them how to heal and recover and restore, uh, back to normal function. That would be the goal anyway. And we don't over promise anything, but very reasonably expect people who are then, once we figure out all the malfunctions
Julie Michelson: and
Reed Davis: the influences, you know, the epigenetic factors, uh, then you can live yourself out of it.
Reed Davis: We can give you the right diet, rest, exercise, stress reduction. That could be getting rid of foods, handling the bugs, a lot of things, and supplementation becomes very important. But I would say the overriding methodology includes, it's the person taking charge, not me taking charge. It's like, this is the [00:45:00] data.
Reed Davis: It's your data. This is your, it's your saliva, your blood, your urine, your stool, your hair, whatever we're analyzing. And then, and, and so it's you, you get to control the outcome. I can't control the outcomes. But that's where the health coaching comes in. I think it's a good point to, to, um, to summarize is that yes, I can run all the labs.
Reed Davis: Yes, I can correlate it directly with why you feel so crappy. Right. And you will understand and know. Wow, no one ever showed me this before and we'll even design the custom dress program together Individualize that but then what right do I send you on your way?
Julie Michelson: It's the how do you do it?
Reed Davis: Hey, good luck with that Months you better have lost 20 pounds and and have more energy and clear thinking and All that.
Reed Davis: No you coach you have a
Julie Michelson: plan
Reed Davis: Regular, uh, follow ups with someone who knows, uh, [00:46:00] why you're doing this, understands you as a person, and can help keep you on track and motivated, and retesting as needed, you know, uh, and, and correcting course, because the course corrections is the real goal. Um, heavy burden of the health coach to help you correct what, because things don't always go exactly the way they're laid out.
Reed Davis: Like some, sometimes it does, but it's like sailing a ship, you know, we grew up on the great lakes.
Julie Michelson: Nice. So
Reed Davis: we sailed. My dad had a sailing this afternoon. Fantastic. Yeah. My uncle was a Commodore of a yacht club, you know, and so, um, there's no power boating to health. Yeah.
Julie Michelson: No,
Reed Davis: those guys love that big potters, you know, it's a lot of zigzag and a lot of tacking and coming about and, you know, heading up falling off, you know, um, and all the, all the sailor terms that actually apply your correct course, there's wind in the [00:47:00] sails.
Reed Davis: In your life, there's waves slapping up against the bow, trying to push you off course, there's currents under the water, and everyone has a different size hole, keel, you know, uh, rudder, everything.
Julie Michelson: Well, and we're never done, right? It's not like, oh, you know, this is working and maybe this isn't exactly what I need to be doing in 10 years.
Reed Davis: That's a fantastic point. There's no one at the top of the stairs, right? Yeah, I don't know a perfectly healthy person. And I know a lot of people, and this is what they've done their entire lives, and everyone can pick something to work on.
Julie Michelson: Yeah. So the, the program itself, I mean, it sounds like it's so rich and so dense.
Reed Davis: It's robust. It's robust. It is
Julie Michelson: robust, but it's how, it's how long is the program? I could teach
Reed Davis: you what took me 10 years to figure out in 10 months or less, because it's self paced. So teach you what I learned in 10 [00:48:00] years and have learned since. Uh, uh, in 10 months or less. Um, and, uh, if you go to that uur LI gave you Yep, um, uh,
Julie Michelson: fdn training.com/autoimmunity,
Reed Davis: it'd be a great thing we have a free gift for, for our listeners and, um, direction and information and.
Reed Davis: Things like that. Um, Julie. So wonderful, which is very generous. Thank you. Some folks. Yeah.
Julie Michelson: Yeah. Yeah. I can encourage, you know, wherever you are in your healing journey, at least go check it out because whether it's for your personal healing or you're at that place where you're already thinking of, you know, Paying it forward and, and helping create change.
Julie Michelson: Um, Reid has done, you've done what, what we dream about, right? Like I, I love helping people, um, and you actually stepped up and, and created a scale where you shifted [00:49:00] from, you know, working directly with clients to teaching practitioners and, and whomever is interested in learning and healing. And, and that is how we really create change.
Julie Michelson: So really, really grateful for the work that you're putting out there.
Reed Davis: There's an evolution in place. Yes. I saw alternative. Um, well, I mean, some people thought we were kind of quacky. Yes.
Julie Michelson: Well, some people probably still do, too.
Reed Davis: Yeah, so, but I've seen that alternative go to, um, complementary and integrate, because it works.
Reed Davis: Yeah. And it became integrative, and now it's functional medicine, and it's still going to evolve. We're health, everyone has a health coach. Yeah.
Julie Michelson: I love it. I love it. Now's the point where, because I promised I'd let you go on time today, which is very hard for me because I have so many things to talk to you about.
Julie Michelson: Um, so we'll pull, you already offered, we'll pull you back in down the road to, to talk a little more. Um, but this is the point listeners are, are, they [00:50:00] know to, to listen for, which is, and this can be anything under the sun read. What is one step listeners can take today to start to improve their health.
Reed Davis: I would say get up in the morning and Drink a big glass of water, purified water, and get into a state of mind that's grateful.
Reed Davis: We, we actually talked about this a little bit before the recording started, like I get up every day and decide to be happy that this is going to be a good day. And look, you know, I live in Southern California, so when I look outside, yeah, I see a lot of sunshine and blue skies. But even when I don't. You know, you carry the sunshine with you, and I would say start there with your point of view, and have a cup that is half full.
Reed Davis: Uh, And maybe one day it will run it over. Yes. I'd love it.
Julie Michelson: Uh, so important and, [00:51:00] and that will expedite all the other healing work, just really everything else works faster, better, you know, so beautiful, beautiful contribution.
Reed Davis: Well, good job, Julie. I want to commend you for all the fantastic work you're doing, and for putting these things together.
Reed Davis: Uh, and you're, you're doing wonderful. I appreciate and I'm honored to be here.
Julie Michelson: Thank you so much. It has been an absolute pleasure and, and you've really given us some wonderful gold today.
Reed Davis: Thank you.
Julie Michelson: Thanks for everyone listening. Remember, you can get those transcripts and show notes by visiting inspiredliving.
Julie Michelson: show. I hope you enjoyed this episode as much as I did. I will see you next week.
​ (Outro Bumper) [00:52:00]
Reed Davis: Then you could also look at the mucosal barrier, which is where the leaky gut, which is the kind of the parent of autoimmunity. And you can also see what stress is doing and how it's breaking your body down, how you're aging before your time. So the functional tests tell you, you know, how things are working inside.
(Intro Bumper)
Julie Michelson:[00:01:00](Episode Intro) Welcome back to the Inspired Living with Autoimmunity podcast. I'm your host, Julie Michelson. And today I'm joined by Reid Davis, Board Certified Holistic Health Practitioner and Certified Nutritional Therapist. Reid is an expert in functional lab testing and holistic lifestyle medicine. He is the founder of Functional Diagnostic Nutrition and the FDN certification course, which has over 4, 000 graduates in 50 countries.
Julie Michelson: Reed served as the health director at a wellness center in Southern California for over 10 years and with over 10, 000 clients, he is known as one of the most experienced clinicians in his field. Reed serves on the advisory board of the American Natural Wellness Coaches Board and the American Association of Natural Wellness Coaches.
Julie Michelson: In today's conversation, we're discussing the difference between functional health and the [00:02:00] historic medical model. Reid shares his journey and his expertise on how we can all shift out of illness and into vibrant health. And we also discuss the FDN training program for those who have a desire to heal as well as help others do the same.
Julie Michelson: Reed, welcome to the podcast.
Reed Davis: Thank you so much, Julie. Pleasure to be here.
Julie Michelson: I have, I'm so excited about this conversation. Um, so, but before we even dig into all the autoimmunity information you can give us, um, I would love for you to share a bit of your journey because like so many of us, this isn't, I don't think this is what you're doing now is what you imagined you'd be doing when you were younger.
Julie Michelson: Um, but unlike most of us, it's not because of your own wellness journey that you got here. So can you just share, you know, how did you come to create the functional diagnostic nutrition?
Reed Davis: Yeah, there's, there's a story there. It's been an adventure, [00:03:00] you know, and I have to say, you never know how it's going to turn out, but, um, I got my first, uh, help book when I health book when I was about 19.
Reed Davis: And so there may be, and I wasn't in the health business. Until I was in my forties. Matter of fact, I was in environmental law and conservation. So in the, in the 1990s, I thought it was saving the whole planet. And I actually did very well. There's lots of ways to make money in that industry. Uh, and so we were doing great.
Reed Davis: And I started to. You know, I saw so much damage done to the flora and fauna of the planet, and you're trying to, I started wondering about people. What about people? And what about me? You know, I had relatives that died at young ages, and I think you are familiar with that. Yep. And so I didn't want that happening to me.
Reed Davis: I was already [00:04:00] in my 40s. But by the time, my late 40s, by the time I got into this field, which is in 1999, and so I switched jobs. I just went from Being the CEO of a, uh, basically a recycling company to, um, uh, just the lowest level at a wellness center. And it was hard to
Julie Michelson: imagine,
Reed Davis: you know, I mean, they, they brought me in as a businessman, uh, cause I'd done very well.
Reed Davis: And, um, yet. The owner said, hey Reed, um, if you want, you can take this nutrition course with me. The doctor was getting her diplomat in nutrition and said, if you go to these classes with me, I'll let you work on our patients in between classes, and you'll get your certified nutritional therapist certificate.
Reed Davis: So I jumped on that opportunity and my life changed immediately. I just fell in love with working with people. Now I'm saving people instead of birds and [00:05:00] dogs and cats or whatever, whales, and you have it in the environmental field. And so it was just a remarkable experience. enlightening and joyful experience, although the people coming in the office weren't joyful, they were miserable.
Julie Michelson: Yeah.
Reed Davis: But my opportunity to help them became my mission in life. And so it's never changed in 25 years. I, I'm dedicated to helping people find the underlying causes and conditions. Because as you know, I'm not a physician, I couldn't, I didn't want to start diagnosing.
Julie Michelson: Me either.
Reed Davis: Yeah. So I didn't want to start diagnosing and treating, it would have been inappropriate and maybe even illegal.
Reed Davis: You know, I had nothing to do with medical. It's what's really wrong. And all the patients were game to do what I recommended, which was run functional laboratory work. It was called alternative back then. Right, you know, we [00:06:00] didn't call it this and I've seen functional medicine evolve. It's not finished evolving.
Julie Michelson: No
Reed Davis: but it went from alternative to to complementary to Integrative, you know, which is more it's being accepted to functional where now it's being championed by Medical and that's a good thing. But we so we were there and All those years ago. Um, I had a lot to learn,
Julie Michelson: uh, but I had
Reed Davis: nothing to unlearn,
Julie Michelson: which is lovely.
Reed Davis: Yeah. Yeah. And I just got to run labs and look at what's really all these. And I was trained at amazing mentorship and I'll wrap this up in just a sec. So with this incredible mentorship, scientists, researchers, lab directors, and lab lab geeks, you know, um, I learned to find annoying causes and conditions.
Reed Davis: And it became my sole modality. I mean, the nutrition course that I took [00:07:00] didn't work. It was just basically take this way, you know, take this for that supplements and stuff. So, but it was the lab work that over 10 years, I ran thousands and thousands of labs, helped thousands of people. And I recognized patterns.
Reed Davis: So, in addition to the training and the mentorship I was receiving from physicians and scientists, I was recognizing my own patterns in the office. We were a busy office. Matter of fact, I loved going out and getting new ones. I started lecturing. So I did that for 10 years. And the patterns that I recognize are the foundation of the, what we now call functional diagnostic nutrition.
Reed Davis: When I taught my first class, after 10 years, Uh, they kind of made me to start teaching other practitioners, read, you're doing great. Hey, you're, you can only see so many people, why don't you deputize a few? And that, that rang a [00:08:00] bell, um, in my busy mind. And, um, and so the first class, and I've never looked back from then either, just teaching became, okay, I can teach this methodology.
Reed Davis: So it's a way of thinking. And along with the steps, methodology means method, steps. The ology is the way you have to be thinking. So it's a methodology and you have to be thinking that the body, uh, is pretty smart. You don't have to teach any cells what their job is. The body wants to heal itself. If you give it everything it needs to heal and remove the interferences.
Reed Davis: So that's what FDN is. It's that and all of the, uh, protocols. All drug free, um, lifestyle medicine, pretty much.
Julie Michelson: Which is amazing. And I, I love, um, I ha I just told you before we started at some point, I want to go through the FCN course, [00:09:00] um, you know, I'll need CEUs and, and, uh, next year, so, you know, you'll probably see.
Julie Michelson: See me on the roster just because we're, you know, we're all always learning, but it's already so aligned with what I do. Um, you know, I'm not a prac. I'm not a practitioner. Um, I, I, you know, I, I know. And we'll, we'll get into it because I think what you hit on the beauty of not being a physician. Um, and I say that with love and respect for physicians, most of my listeners know I live with a physician, I work with a physician, and we love working together because I still have, I didn't have anything to unlearn, and I have the patient mindset, and so I'm going to prioritize maybe Different things than a physician would, um, and I approach helping my clients the same way, you know, FDM practitioners do, [00:10:00] which is we do a load of labs up front, um, because there's our roadmap.
Julie Michelson: Right. And so, you know, because we are, and I know, I know you agree with this. I've heard you speak. Um, shockingly, we're all individual. So we have patterns. I know it's wild. Um, and, and so, and I go through the same thing. I, I just had a call even last week where somebody was like, that's expensive. And I'm like, It is, but you're here at my door because you haven't had, you know, haven't been helped.
Julie Michelson: So, you know, do you want to wait six months and trickle the labs like you would have done, you know, with a functional medicine physician? No, you want to get better. Um, so I, I love that. And, and, you know, obviously most listeners are either have auto immunity or autoimmune adjacent autoimmune loved ones.
Julie Michelson: Um, I want to, because Functional [00:11:00] diagnostic nutrition, um, but you're not a physician and you're not working with diagnoses. People kind of look at me like when I'm crazy, when I say I good, don't get a diagnosis with them. We don't have to undo your thinking. Um, you know, let's talk about that a little, because I think you share that view as well.
Julie Michelson: How can you help somebody if they don't have a diagnosis?
Reed Davis: Well, they could have one from a physician. Sure. It's just not, it's not, um, usually it's just the, uh, uh, a name or label for a cluster of symptoms. Right. And it, it might have a lab or two attached to it for confirmation. So doctors do what's called a clinical diagnosis.
Reed Davis: It sounds like this. Let's see, hypothyroidism. Right. Because in the cluster of symptoms, that's very, very distinct. So you list those six or eight or ten things, um, oh, it sounds like hypothyroidism. Let's check. And they check the thyroid and pat themselves on the back. I [00:12:00] found your problem. It's hypothyroidism.
Reed Davis: Here's your prescription to make up the difference. Right. And in our world, we call that treating the paper. Now it does provide relief. People will feel better. They get a little more energy, or they lose a couple pounds. But then as soon as something else occurs, Which it will! Which it does. So when you don't treat the underlying, uh, processes, disease processes, and malfunctions, and imbalances that are sometimes very far upstream, well then, either the symptoms will come back with a vengeance, and what do you do?
Reed Davis: Well, you need more medication. you know, up your dosage, or they appear as new, uh, symptoms, which if that same physician can handle it, uh, then it would just be, well, that sounds like low testosterone or something. So they run the test and pat themselves on the back. Yep. It's well, and now you're on two medications.
Reed Davis: You're on only two and you're in it. [00:13:00] So, so they're still treating the paper, still using it. Now, do you get relief? You might, from the testosterone, get a little more libido and, uh, build a little bit of muscle and have some more energy and things like that. But, but, um, it doesn't fix the So, we don't think that way.
Reed Davis: So, the answer to your question about diagnosis is That well, I can't give one. I want and I don't want to because none of our patients coming in 25 years ago wanted another darn diagnosis, right? Like I already have three. I don't want another one. I want to know what's really wrong. And well, I'm your guy I just I was a again the open book and I had The freedom to do this in, in a wellness center, uh, there was physicians there and I had no trouble getting all the lab work that they were willing to pay for.
Reed Davis: That's like
Julie Michelson: me. Yep.
Reed Davis: Yeah, so it was fun. I had a great time in those 10 years helping people and when they started to get results. [00:14:00] Like amazing. Right. Results. I, I tell this story all the time. I hope it's okay. Please. You know, it's one of my most popular, but I could give you a hundred. But this lady can't, it's just with your audience, this lady comes in, she's there for some chiropractic and massage and stuff.
Reed Davis: And I would walk the patients back to the treatment room. She had a pretty big place and, um, and get to know them and all that. So she's, it was about her eighth visit, I think. And I could tell she was sad. I said, Hey, you know, first name, what's going on? Oh, and she just was in a bad day. Uh, Reed, I'm just so tired, sick and tired.
Reed Davis: I'm 40 pounds overweight and I just can't stand it anymore. And it's because of this medication I'm on for the hives. And, and right away I'm thinking, okay, you know, I couldn't get a,
Julie Michelson: I couldn't
Reed Davis: get a word in. She, [00:15:00] she would, she had to be heard out like, like, and I went to the, so I'm on this medication for the hives, maybe gain 40 pounds in two years and I'm sick of it.
Reed Davis: And it's the, you know, and she said she had just been for a checkup, told the physician how sick of it she was. And he said, according to her, ma'am, you could be fat or you can have the hives, you know, you take your pick. And she said, so she said, that's very depressing. The physician said, well, I'd be happy to write you a prescription for antidepressants.
Julie Michelson: Oh, gosh, of course.
Reed Davis: And so, so she was, now I understood why she was presenting so down. Right. And, but when I said, by this time we've walked her back, this is all going in the hallway back to the, to the treatment room. And, and I typically, I would do some trigger point therapy. It was a really good myofascial therapist, among other things, but [00:16:00] I'd do some trigger point therapy, put a heat pack, and then the chiropractor would come in and And adjust, uh, do the adjustments and we were known for that, really, really good type of therapies and modalities and things.
Reed Davis: But when I said to her, well, first name, why didn't you ever try to find out why you get the hives? Yeah. So. As you had mentioned, well, her head snapped around so hard I thought she wouldn't need her chiropractic. I thought I heard the, what? And, and I said, yeah, let's, let's run a test. You can run a test if you want to, maybe, no guarantees, but maybe find out why.
Reed Davis: So we ran some tests. We found out what she was eating and things in her environment that she needed to change. And she did. And within nine days. of my report of findings on the lab work. Uh, she called her doctor and said, I'm off this medication. I found out why I get the hives. [00:17:00]
Julie Michelson: Amazing. And, and it, you know, it's so inspiring and also sometimes frustrating and can spark a little anger, um, which can feel change.
Julie Michelson: So that's good.
Reed Davis: Doctor was doing what he's trained to do, which is relief. Right. That's never, you know, like relief is good. Yeah. As a side effect for her, the side effect. Effect became worse than the problem or is bed. Was she, uh, another two weeks went by and I talked to her again and she said that she was in the gym working out to a sweat and taking hot showers, which she hadn't done in two years.
Reed Davis: 'cause even on the meds, hot showers and sweating, what triggered and the hives. And she'd lost some weight, you know, a respectable amount of weight already, you know, and, and, man, so underlying conditions, can you help people without being a physician and diagnosing? Oh, heck yeah.
Julie Michelson:[00:18:00] Absolutely. Absolutely. And I'll give the disclaimer I give all the time.
Julie Michelson: And I've heard you say the same thing. Western medicine is fantastic for acute care. So if you, you know, need surgery, break a bone, have an infection, like go to a Western trained medical doctor. Um, but it's just not designed to, to handle all of these chronic conditions, including autoimmunity, but there's so many of them now.
Julie Michelson: And they're just, You know, multiplying, um, you know, probably, well, not, not just probably, one of the reasons is, you know, environment, like you started with, so, um, you know, it does all tie together. We are, you know, absolutely affected by environment. I want to ask Let me add, let me add one thing to
Reed Davis: it, because you, you touched on a very important point.
Reed Davis: Are we in competition with physicians? No.
Julie Michelson: Partnership. Partnership.
Reed Davis: You know, if you have communicable disease, you get off a plane from [00:19:00] West Africa and your temperature is 105 and you're bleeding from your eyeballs, you're not going to call your nutritionist, FDN practitioner, or
Julie Michelson: health coach.
Reed Davis: Yeah, health coach.
Reed Davis: Same thing with gunshot wounds. Sure. Yeah, and so communicable diseases and you got to go get checked out because here's the the definition of back, two backyards, medical backyard and our backyard. So when the downward spiral is really contracted, well, the observations I would make with my functional lab testing can't be capitalized on.
Reed Davis: You've got to stop the bleeding, so to speak. Once the bleeding stop, then we can Uh, then you're in the next backyard and we, and, and people were coming in 25 years ago with that and their downward spiral wasn't, it was just some long drawn out, well then the observations we make and the lifestyle recommendations and the epigenetic [00:20:00] programs work, you know, because you have time for the body to heal.
Reed Davis: That was our original premise. The body wants to be healthy. If it has, if you have enough time, you, you can get over an awful lot of ills.
Julie Michelson: Absolutely. And stop that, that spiral of, especially, you know, once people have an autoimmune diagnosis, again, it's the same thing. If you don't handle that, those root drivers, you're gonna get a second and a third and maybe even a fourth.
Julie Michelson: I had, I had one client who had eight, eight different autoimmune diagnoses. And she's well now. So, you know, it's, I always say it's never too late and definitely never too early. Um, I know you're, uh, you mentioned patterns, right? This is how the whole FDN started was because you were able to say like, okay, you know, yes, we're individual, but I see these patterns, um, and you have fantastic acronyms.
Julie Michelson: So will you share a little bit about your approach? You know, what, what are you [00:21:00] looking at? What do you, you know,
Reed Davis: So, in the office, in a 10 year period, I ran thousands of labs and thousands of people, and I had great mentorship. Along the way, I started recognizing patterns, and most of our, most of our patients were women.
Reed Davis: They seemed to care more about their health, and they were, Working, they had kids that were grown, sometimes even out of the house. Empty nesters kind of a thing going on. And some even had younger kids, but that was the demographic. Now, I first became a specialist in hormones because that was a big thing in the day that the drugs being used were horrible and there was stuff going on with research there.
Reed Davis: So, and then what I realized was that you could help someone with their hormones What about their immune system? What about digestion? What about detoxification? What about energy production? So I, I ended up over there coming with this acronym, [00:22:00] H-I-D-D-E-N, hidden. And a lot of it's hidden. You have to run labs and you look at hormone balance and the immune system.
Reed Davis: So H-I-D-D-E-N is hormone immune digestion, detoxification, energy production, and nervous system balance, you know, the sympathetic parasympathetic, and there's tests for everything like that. Now, here's the other consideration though. It's that none of that's happening in a silo independently. Yes. We're so unique and individual.
Reed Davis: And so what I learned is that, you know, you couldn't say, well it sounds like hormones, or it sounds like the immune system, or it sounds like nervous system imbalance, or it sounds like a parasite, or whatever. You know, you, you, what became important was to look at the entire constellation. of healing opportunities.
Reed Davis: Those are not diagnoses. Healing opportunities are what really needs to be worked on. And here's the other thing. These causal factors, this whole constellation of, of [00:23:00] causal factors, they're all having an effect on each other. And that's why you need to know about them all. And you can start sorting it out.
Reed Davis: So what I, what I labeled that was metabolic chaos. And so that phrase has become pretty popular too. It has. FDN practitioners, my, my graduates all use it every day because that's the only problem that a person has to us. There's metabolic chaos. Right. You got all these causal factors, they're affecting each other.
Reed Davis: You can't even singly measure some of those interactions. Right. Um, but we know about them. And, uh, when you look at the entire constellation, You can come up with what a person can do immediately, which is where the lifestyle acronym comes in. You know, it's, it's not your genetics. You can't change your parents, but you, you, um, you're given some genetics, and what you want is genetic potential.
Reed Davis: You want to realize your fullest healthy genetic [00:24:00] potential, and we're not all handed the same deck of cards when it comes to that.
Julie Michelson: Right.
Reed Davis: I, for instance, We'll never be a NBA star.
Julie Michelson: Oh, come on, Reed. Well, you know, at
Reed Davis: 5'10 you know, I'm not going to make it. So, so, uh, the idea is that genetic potential, though, is what you want.
Reed Davis: So, if you find all these healing, Opportunities, you've identified a bunch of stuff, HIDDEN, and everyone has to work on it all, and there's also oxidative stress, there's other things you could throw into the, the, the, uh, metabolic chaos, what's creating and what's, what has resulted in the symptoms and things.
Reed Davis: Well, when you have that approach, and you know that. It's not genetics that matter, it's epigenetics, it's your lifestyle. And I realized that very early on, I can remember over 20 years ago, asking, starting to ask every patient, What's [00:25:00] your home program look like? What are you doing at home? Right. You can't just come in here three times a week and throw it on us.
Reed Davis: That's not what we're here for. We want to, and so it would became D R E S S. Diet, rest, exercise, stress reduction, and supplements. Now, we could do a whole two hours just on the stress. But D R E S S is our, it's the FDN practitioner formula for success, dress for health success. And um, it's funny cause there was a book in the seventies about dress for health success.
Reed Davis: If you went back and looked at it and dressed that way today, you'd be considered a clown. But it was good back then, the big white ties and,
Julie Michelson: uh,
Reed Davis: anyway, I had that book, um, uh, but dress for health success is how you live. From the time you get up in the morning to the time you go to bed, and even in between how you sleep.
Reed Davis: Diet, rest, exercise, stress reduction, [00:26:00] supplementation. It also makes it very easy to be a health coach and manage that person. So, in our world, we assess all the healing opportunities. You gotta run some labs and do some intake, get to know the person. Um, then you can, um, Correlate those lab results with the person in other words clinical correlation, you know, all these things going on You're finally the first person that ever explained to a someone why they feel so crappy all the time When they might have even been told there's nothing wrong with you.
Julie Michelson: Yeah
Reed Davis: standard blood work and that's your
Julie Michelson: labs are fine
Reed Davis: Come back when you're sick, you know, like right bad and in the meantime, here's a chill pill Yeah. So, so no, we find healing opportunities. Especially in those cases. And then you have to recommend and design the right [00:27:00] protocol for that person.
Reed Davis: There's no one diet right for everyone. Thank you. Rest is highly individualized. Exercise is highly individualized. I'll tell you right now it's 70. I can't do the, I had to you. Quit kickboxing was too hard on my hips. You know, I have a torn labrum, you know, you kind of damn there's a lot of stuff So even wear and
Julie Michelson: tear.
Reed Davis: Yeah well used body so diet individualized rest in visualization exercise The stress reduction is again. It's a whole The whole conversation itself, but very quickly, it's mental, emotional, psycho spiritual stress that's going on in your head and your heart and your mind and things. There's physical trauma, like I've had a lot of from sports and motorcycles and things.
Reed Davis: And then there's the chemical, biochemical stressors. And where did I start? environmental laws and studying, uh, how bad the environment is for, for, um, you know, [00:28:00] flora and fauna. It's bad for us too. So you have this whole, this whole, uh, world of stress reduction. And then the supplements are important because food just isn't the quality it used to be.
Reed Davis: They can be used therapeutically to support and stimulate and things like that. So D R E S S, but only guided by investigation of HIDDE. And that's our basic formula. We resolve metabolic chaos by getting people to live themselves out of the problems they've lived themselves into. And again, this works perfectly with medical who work on the, um, you know, communicable and accidents and, and, and, and weirdo genetics, like total people with genetic defects.
Reed Davis: And, um, In our sometimes missing parts, you know, that's really, uh, we can't grow parts back. But, um, that's our backyard. You know, it's the, it's the wall you need your ladder on if [00:29:00] you're going to, uh, take charge and, um, live yourself out of it and, um, live yourself into, um, a really healthy, vibrant, and joyful backyard.
Reed Davis: Life, you know, the last thing I'll say about doctors and us, why we work so well together, doctors will save your life and we'll, we'll put more vibrancy into it and the longevity and anti aging that goes with it.
Julie Michelson: Yeah, which I love that that you brought up and we're, you know, talking mostly about and, and this was what drove your path, you know, chronic illness and things like autoimmunity, but it's the same approach for up leveling and, and, you know, aging with full health.
Julie Michelson: Um, I, you know, I didn't think I would live to see 55 and I probably wouldn't have wanted to if I had continued to decline anyway. Now I'm like, Oh, the next few decades are going to be amazing. [00:30:00] Um, I always say, you know, I, I want to live well until I'm done. And so this approach is a wellness approach. It doesn't really matter what you're looking for.
Julie Michelson: If you think you feel well. This approach will help you feel better,
Reed Davis: Julie. That's an excellent point. And a good, good place. We could move on, um, you know, and I'll come back anytime you guys want.
Julie Michelson: I would love it. I want to throw this in though, for anybody listening on audio that doesn't, is not familiar with you.
Julie Michelson: Cause you just mentioned that you're 70 check out. Check out Reed, because you would not believe he was 70 if you met him in person, and that's what true wellness can be. It can be full life, even with wear and tear. Wear and tear's fair, you earned it.
Reed Davis: Yes.
Julie Michelson: But
Reed Davis: You got it honestly, anyway.
Julie Michelson: Yeah. So, sorry, I interrupted you because I had to, I had to throw that in.[00:31:00]
Reed Davis: Well, you know, I enjoy speaking about this so much, but on a podcast it's limited as to what you're going to. The one thing we didn't cover is the science and how robust, like, my program is, and what I had to learn in those 10 years, The anatomy, the physiology, the biochemistry is intense, and that's all in my course that I teach.
Reed Davis: So it's a real great refresher for physicians. Uh, from a lay perspective, it's quite unique, but it's a real education for health coaches and, um, even nurses and the others who like to take my course and learn a whole, uh, methodology. We have thinking, and, um, of course, it's a great business opportunity, too.
Reed Davis: You can become an independent health entrepreneur by doing this. And there's no prerequisites except for that you're willing to do the work on yourself first. Yep. And that alone would be worth the price of admission. If you just got really healthy from it, wow. You know, [00:32:00] but the fact that you could turn around and help others as a hobby, just your family, friends, whatever, or as a profession, which is why I created the Association of FDM Professionals.
Reed Davis: My grads are so numerous. We've trained over 4, 000 people.
Julie Michelson: Which is amazing. And in 50 countries, right?
Reed Davis: Yeah. Yeah. I didn't even know. Probably more countries.
Julie Michelson: Yeah,
Reed Davis: I didn't know there was countries named what, you know, all these, that's a country, that's a
Julie Michelson: city
Reed Davis: somewhere, but, but, um, uh, mostly United States, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and United Kingdom, but, um, we're, we're all over because you can do this from, you know, if you can get the labs, uh, shipped.
Reed Davis:Like, here's a lab right here on my desk. I got to fill this one out. I
Julie Michelson:know that one.
Reed Davis:Next week.
Julie Michelson:Yep.
Reed Davis:So, and, and I'll, because I, I have every lab I've ever run in 20 years, and boy, can you track the, and, and still, it's part of why, of being healthy, I think. [00:33:00]So, I don't know, maybe last word to your listeners, to our listeners today is start getting the data.
Reed Davis: You need data. Yeah. You can't just be told, try this, try that. Yeah. And physicians are getting data, but they're really not handing it over to you, uh, freely in most cases. And most Beg it, beg for it, you know? Yeah. Or demand it. And you want to start tracking it, because guess what? You're going to change doctors.
Reed Davis: And the one you're seeing now doesn't know the one or even know what the results were five years ago. That's important information, and it's your information. It belongs to you. And so I recommend getting the data and making your decisions on it, and tracking it over time so you can see that you're on the right track.
Julie Michelson: I love that you brought that up. This, this idea of health autonomy, um, because for years, decades, you know, that is the old system is that the, you know, the doctor has the answer and it's going to fix you and [00:34:00] you already hit on if you don't change lifestyle and address all these, all these lifestyle areas, you know, the a, the data is not going to do any good.
Julie Michelson: Um, but, but also, you know, it's, we're in this amazing age where information is available and, and, you know, I have been told before, well, you can't have that. I'm like, it's my body. These are my labs. And then I get to know if something's changing, um, you know, can you touch on. That like you mentioned, but a little deeper on the difference of if somebody, you know, has been told your labs are fine, you're, you know, your labs are normal.
Julie Michelson: Um, you know, I won't get into the whole, is it in your head and all, but, but the difference between the labs, you, you know, you run or an FDN would run or that I run, how are they different? Because people always come up and they're like, Oh, I've had. So many labs done down to like, Oh, you know, I, I [00:35:00] had, I had a heavy metals test and it was a blood test, you know, like there's just so much misinformation and, and there is a real difference in the information we can access.
Reed Davis: You know, well there's functional tests that tell you how your body is working, and then there's other tests that like tell you what your food sensitivities are, or what your parasites and bacteria and funguses and viruses are, or what your uh, metal toxic levels are and things. So, you got functional, which is going to tell you, How are your adrenals?
Reed Davis: Are your hormones balanced? How's your immune system working? Is it overactive or underactive? How's digestion working? Are you actually breaking down and absorbing food properly? You could be spending a lot of money on organic and all the good things, and it's not really being broken down and absorbed.
Reed Davis:Then you could also look at the mucosal barrier, which is where the leaky gut, which is the kind of the parent of autoimmunity. And you can also see what stress is doing and how it's breaking your body down, how you're aging before your time. So the functional tests [00:36:00]tell you, you know, how things are working inside.
Reed Davis:And then there's other tests like, which is again, they're usually done on the sounds like method. Sounds like heavy metals. Right. Let's test for those. And you might even find a couple. And then you might even look for the source of those things. You might find mineral imbalances too. You might be able to, well, try to adjust it.
Reed Davis: But the functional tests are, uh, sort of higher level. It's a, it's a hierarchy that you need to know about. And I think that's the real data. Um, so, so, With respect to the standard letterwork that doctors use, it's too generalized. They're just, the ranges are so big and where should you be? Now, because if the range is this big, maybe your best functional, you do better here, someone else does better here, In whatever that thing might be, and but only when you get this far out of range off camera.
Reed Davis:Oh, yeah. Now you have a [00:37:00]problem. Okay, well, couldn't you have told me as I was talking. 10 years ago before I. You know, if the range is like this and you, you were here and now, are you fine, when you're right on that, you know, borderline, are you really fine? No, you've, you've lost function along the way. And so physicians typically don't track and don't, they just look, are you over the line or not?
Julie Michelson: Right. And I say that all the time, you know, if you, we talked about how rampant chronic illnesses and how unhealthy our society is, and the labs you're getting at your doctor, if they're not flagged, that means you're average of a horribly unwell population. I don't want to be. In the average of this, of the current population versus what you're saying, the functional tests are, they're you there.
Julie Michelson: How is your body doing? And that's like, you know, a huge missing piece. So I, I love that. You said that. And, and it's
Reed Davis: a [00:38:00] good, good discussion. There's a book called, um, normal blood test scores. Aren't good enough by Ellen Cullen. Um, if I have it right, something like that, normal blood test scores aren't good enough.
Reed Davis: And so that's a beginning of understanding of why, what your physicians, when he only flags this and that, cholesterol and vitamin D, if they're even testing it. You know, and then, well, and then each,
Julie Michelson: Each lab company has a different range because they see different kinds of populations. So it's, it's right.
Julie Michelson: There's
Reed Davis: LabCorp and Quest, the two biggest referencing things. So that's standard and it's not good enough to be normal. You need to be able to track where you're in the range and, you know, before you get over the line. And, um, the other thing is most positions aren't sitting down for for any length of time to explain what each one is.
Reed Davis: What are these markers? Nope, it's just this one's over the line, this one's [00:39:00] under the line, and here's what you do about it. That's diagnosing and treating specific things. We would look at it more, we would call it functionally minded, but, so that's the blood work, but then the saliva testing, urine testing, stool testing, hair tissue, mineral analysis, and things like that, they're much more functional.
Reed Davis: And then there is the Uh, direct contributors to metabolic chaos testing, like parasites, bacteria, funguses, viruses. You have your food sensitivities, which we look at. Everyone has some. It's good to know what the good foods are and shop there and make your meals out of that stuff instead, at least for a while.
Reed Davis: And there's more, but yeah, and it usually, the reason why physicians don't do it is because On one hand is because it's not covered by insurance in many cases, right? It's called an out of pocket and physicians generally aren't going to you know They're signing contracts with insurance companies to send them patients [00:40:00]to stay within their scope of practice and and The medical model the algorithms that exist there that they're bound to it's very quite limiting actually and so we're not
Julie Michelson:know even what to do with the results to
Reed Davis:Well, they're not changing.
Reed Davis:So that's why I have a training program, uh, by the way, but, um, there's so much to, to uncover and to unpack here. I don't know.
Julie Michelson: We could have 10, 10 conversations. Let's, let's talk about the training program briefly. So the listeners that are peaked and maybe they're on their healing journey and are in that place of like, Ooh, I, you know, a, I either want to learn more because go through the program, like you The one prerequisite is, is to work on yourself
Reed Davis: and want to help people.
Julie Michelson: Yeah. Yeah.
Reed Davis: And we are a bunch of, uh, do gooders, you know, you know, we want to help people, uh, but we want to work on ourselves. That was [00:41:00] what inspired me in the beginning was. Hey, I see what's happening to the flora and fauna. What about me? What about us? And what about me? I didn't want something sneaking up on me.
Reed Davis: And, you know, so I switched jobs, and as you know, I ran a lot of labs. And now I teach a course in it, and what people would learn is how the dominoes fall, you know, how it starts with stress. We look at, you know, we do a saliva test of the stress hormones, cortisol, DHA. We see people are in a breakdown state, they're in a catabolic state, their bodies are breaking down.
Reed Davis:Well, the next thing, it's due to stress, various kinds. The body doesn't care what kind of stress it is, mental, emotional, physical, chemical. It reacts with stress. out of balance. Right. And so the next thing to go in this dominoes is the sex hormones. You know, your estrogen, your progesterone, your periods get funny, your menopause comes early, you, you get infertile and all these issues around the sex hormones and for men it's a [00:42:00] little different.
Reed Davis: But, um, uh, then the next thing to fall, believe it or not, is usually the immune system. So digestion becomes poor because It's a big, the gut is a big part of your immune system, as a matter of fact, it's most of your immune system. And so we see secretory IgA going down, uh, due to chronic stress. And then if your secretory IgA is down, that's, that's something in your gut to, to protect you from bugs.
Reed Davis: Um, well, If it's low, big bugs come along, and they have, and they start to reside, you have a good host for them. This is why we say the bugs aren't the problem, it's the host. Right. It's the environment. So, stress, sex hormone imbalances, immune system problems, then you get this, what's called a dysbiosis, you're not able to, you know, you have good bad flora issues, and you're not able to break down food properly.
Reed Davis: Now you have a malnourishment issue, even if you're eating great [00:43:00] food. You're assimilation of nutrients into the body. And from there, it gets worse. These bigger, bigger, badder bugs, I think is the medical term. The bigger, the bigger, badder bugs, They can ruin the lining of the gut, along with chemicals and foods you shouldn't be eating and Medications, just like all, yeah.
Reed Davis: Drugs, excuse me, and so now we get permeability of the lining of the gut.
Julie Michelson: Oh, then we get autoimmunity.
Reed Davis: Well, you know, in, in, in succession, the, the downward spiral and the, uh, dominoes would fall such that the liver would get congested. Because everything goes through the portal veins, uh, from the stomach, from the, from the small intestines into the liver.
Reed Davis: Doesn't get directly delivered into the body, except some fats that go through the villi. But, um, you get this, this is where the science and anatomy and physiology becomes really important to understand this downward spiral. So that's what we [00:44:00] teach, is all, where, how all the dominoes are falling. And you can point to people where they're at.
Reed Davis: in that progression. And then you can teach them how to heal and recover and restore, uh, back to normal function. That would be the goal anyway. And we don't over promise anything, but very reasonably expect people who are then, once we figure out all the malfunctions
Julie Michelson: and
Reed Davis: the influences, you know, the epigenetic factors, uh, then you can live yourself out of it.
Reed Davis: We can give you the right diet, rest, exercise, stress reduction. That could be getting rid of foods, handling the bugs, a lot of things, and supplementation becomes very important. But I would say the overriding methodology includes, it's the person taking charge, not me taking charge. It's like, this is the [00:45:00] data.
Reed Davis: It's your data. This is your, it's your saliva, your blood, your urine, your stool, your hair, whatever we're analyzing. And then, and, and so it's you, you get to control the outcome. I can't control the outcomes. But that's where the health coaching comes in. I think it's a good point to, to, um, to summarize is that yes, I can run all the labs.
Reed Davis: Yes, I can correlate it directly with why you feel so crappy. Right. And you will understand and know. Wow, no one ever showed me this before and we'll even design the custom dress program together Individualize that but then what right do I send you on your way?
Julie Michelson: It's the how do you do it?
Reed Davis: Hey, good luck with that Months you better have lost 20 pounds and and have more energy and clear thinking and All that.
Reed Davis: No you coach you have a
Julie Michelson: plan
Reed Davis: Regular, uh, follow ups with someone who knows, uh, [00:46:00] why you're doing this, understands you as a person, and can help keep you on track and motivated, and retesting as needed, you know, uh, and, and correcting course, because the course corrections is the real goal. Um, heavy burden of the health coach to help you correct what, because things don't always go exactly the way they're laid out.
Reed Davis: Like some, sometimes it does, but it's like sailing a ship, you know, we grew up on the great lakes.
Julie Michelson: Nice. So
Reed Davis: we sailed. My dad had a sailing this afternoon. Fantastic. Yeah. My uncle was a Commodore of a yacht club, you know, and so, um, there's no power boating to health. Yeah.
Julie Michelson: No,
Reed Davis: those guys love that big potters, you know, it's a lot of zigzag and a lot of tacking and coming about and, you know, heading up falling off, you know, um, and all the, all the sailor terms that actually apply your correct course, there's wind in the [00:47:00] sails.
Reed Davis: In your life, there's waves slapping up against the bow, trying to push you off course, there's currents under the water, and everyone has a different size hole, keel, you know, uh, rudder, everything.
Julie Michelson: Well, and we're never done, right? It's not like, oh, you know, this is working and maybe this isn't exactly what I need to be doing in 10 years.
Reed Davis: That's a fantastic point. There's no one at the top of the stairs, right? Yeah, I don't know a perfectly healthy person. And I know a lot of people, and this is what they've done their entire lives, and everyone can pick something to work on.
Julie Michelson: Yeah. So the, the program itself, I mean, it sounds like it's so rich and so dense.
Reed Davis: It's robust. It's robust. It is
Julie Michelson: robust, but it's how, it's how long is the program? I could teach
Reed Davis: you what took me 10 years to figure out in 10 months or less, because it's self paced. So teach you what I learned in 10 [00:48:00] years and have learned since. Uh, uh, in 10 months or less. Um, and, uh, if you go to that uur LI gave you Yep, um, uh,
Julie Michelson: fdn training.com/autoimmunity,
Reed Davis: it'd be a great thing we have a free gift for, for our listeners and, um, direction and information and.
Reed Davis: Things like that. Um, Julie. So wonderful, which is very generous. Thank you. Some folks. Yeah.
Julie Michelson: Yeah. Yeah. I can encourage, you know, wherever you are in your healing journey, at least go check it out because whether it's for your personal healing or you're at that place where you're already thinking of, you know, Paying it forward and, and helping create change.
Julie Michelson: Um, Reid has done, you've done what, what we dream about, right? Like I, I love helping people, um, and you actually stepped up and, and created a scale where you shifted [00:49:00] from, you know, working directly with clients to teaching practitioners and, and whomever is interested in learning and healing. And, and that is how we really create change.
Julie Michelson: So really, really grateful for the work that you're putting out there.
Reed Davis: There's an evolution in place. Yes. I saw alternative. Um, well, I mean, some people thought we were kind of quacky. Yes.
Julie Michelson: Well, some people probably still do, too.
Reed Davis: Yeah, so, but I've seen that alternative go to, um, complementary and integrate, because it works.
Reed Davis: Yeah. And it became integrative, and now it's functional medicine, and it's still going to evolve. We're health, everyone has a health coach. Yeah.
Julie Michelson: I love it. I love it. Now's the point where, because I promised I'd let you go on time today, which is very hard for me because I have so many things to talk to you about.
Julie Michelson: Um, so we'll pull, you already offered, we'll pull you back in down the road to, to talk a little more. Um, but this is the point listeners are, are, they [00:50:00] know to, to listen for, which is, and this can be anything under the sun read. What is one step listeners can take today to start to improve their health.
Reed Davis: I would say get up in the morning and Drink a big glass of water, purified water, and get into a state of mind that's grateful.
Reed Davis: We, we actually talked about this a little bit before the recording started, like I get up every day and decide to be happy that this is going to be a good day. And look, you know, I live in Southern California, so when I look outside, yeah, I see a lot of sunshine and blue skies. But even when I don't. You know, you carry the sunshine with you, and I would say start there with your point of view, and have a cup that is half full.
Reed Davis: Uh, And maybe one day it will run it over. Yes. I'd love it.
Julie Michelson: Uh, so important and, [00:51:00] and that will expedite all the other healing work, just really everything else works faster, better, you know, so beautiful, beautiful contribution.
Reed Davis: Well, good job, Julie. I want to commend you for all the fantastic work you're doing, and for putting these things together.
Reed Davis: Uh, and you're, you're doing wonderful. I appreciate and I'm honored to be here.
Julie Michelson: Thank you so much. It has been an absolute pleasure and, and you've really given us some wonderful gold today.
Reed Davis: Thank you.
Julie Michelson: Thanks for everyone listening. Remember, you can get those transcripts and show notes by visiting inspiredliving.
Julie Michelson: show. I hope you enjoyed this episode as much as I did. I will see you next week.
​ (Outro Bumper) [00:52:00]
settings
Divider Text
My Guest For This Episode
Connect with Reed Davis
Reed Davis
Reed Davis, Board Certified Holistic Health Practitioner (HHP) and Certified Nutritional Therapist (CNT), is an expert in functional lab testing and holistic lifestyle medicine. He is the Founder of Functional Diagnostic Nutrition® (FDN) and the FDN Certification Course with over 4,000 graduates in 50 countries. Reed served as the Health Director at a Wellness Center in Southern California for over 10 years and with over 10,000 clients is known as one of the most experienced clinicians in his field. Reed serves on the Advisory Board of the American Natural Wellness Coaches Board and the American Association of Natural Wellness Coaches.
Popular Episodes
Episode [Block//Episode Number]
Aired on: [Block//Air Date %F j, Y%+0]
Aired on: [Block//Air Date %F j, Y%+0]