115- How to Assess GI Pathogens with Reed Davis

Bryan Carroll: [00:00:15] Have you ever had a pain in your gut that has bothered you for a long time? But you couldn't figure out what was going on. Sometimes this happens from the foods we eat and sometimes there is something more going on in your gut, like a pathogen of some sort.

And if you aren't looking at the issue of the right way, you might not realize exactly what is going on. What's up everyone. I'm Bryan Carroll and I'm here to help people move more, eat well and be adventurous. And today I have at Reed Davis of functional diagnostic nutrition on the show to talk about GI pathogens and what we can do to clean up our systems.

So let's dive into my conversation with Reed. Reed Davis does a holistic health practitioner and certified nutritional therapist and is an expert in functional lab testing and holistic lifestyle medicine. He is a founder of functional diagnostic nutrition, and he teaches the FDN course to over 2,500 trainees and graduates across 50 countries and has provided functional lab assessments to over 10,000 clients.

Thank you for coming onto the show. Reed, 

Reed Davis: [00:01:20] Bryan, thanks so much for having me here. Hope to. Do some good, 

Bryan Carroll: [00:01:25] Of course. And I'm, I'm sure you will, especially with, you know, your extensive background and speaking of your background, I love to hear what got you into functional nutrition and, what brought you to where you are today.

Reed Davis: [00:01:38] Thanks so much, you know, it's been very interesting. Over 20 years ago in the nineties, in the last century, I was actually an environmental law. And so I was saving the planet, you know, air birds, water trees, bees. And when I started noticing it's a. Did environmental remediation, you know, all the dead animals and birds and plants and even water, you know?

And I thought, well, what in the heck is it doing to me and us people? So it completely changed directions in about the year, 1999 to what's it doing to people? What, you know, what about health of us? You know, I mean, I love the animals, but people are more important. And I went to work at a clinic. It's fascinating that they just trusted me.

I had a good background in research and writing and things, and, they actually turned the place over to me to run it. And I had the amazing opportunity. Two go to this, these classes, these nutrition classes with the owner who was a chiropractor. She was getting her diplomat in nutrition and said, I could go as her assistant, you know, come to the classes with me.

So I did. And then. She let me work on her patients in between classes. And I was just amazed. I fell in love with the clinical side and with working with people one on one. So I've spent the last 20 plus years doing that. And this is real quick, but what amazed me, Bryan, about everybody walking in the door.

At that clinic was, they'd all seen five or more practitioners, sometimes 10 and still had the original complaints. No, it was from the law background and consumer advocacy. I thought that's a rip off, you know, how could that be? Like, let's why don't, why don't we see what we could do to find out what's really wrong with you.

And help you fix it. And I decided then now easily that I would be the last person they needed to see. Well, I'm going to be the last person, you know, And to this day I teach now I teach the system. I dealt, it took me 10 years of working in the clinic, running thousands of labs on thousands of people making my own observations along with the great mentorship that I had.

I had great mentors, but I think I just had suggested super high volume of work. I was just really good at getting new customers too. And so, I ran thousands of labs and thousands of people. I, you, you make some observations, you make some mistakes, but you'll learn a lot. I'm very good at recognizing patterns.

And I recognize some patterns that way, if people would just investigate this with the labs, the hormone immune digestion, detoxification, some others, and then, you know, Apply the principles of healing, no medical diagnosis or treatment. It's all based in nutrition and, you know, lifestyle, exercise, and rest and reducing stress and these kinds of things.

So we had got just amazing results. Like it became a system. It just evolved. And then I finally, you know, package it up so that others could learn it to learn on a gradient step by step. And then guess what? Now, instead of just me helping a lot of people, we have a couple thousand practitioners helping a lot of people.

So it's really grown into this wonderful organization and, and effort. You know, that we have new, I have a big tribe and it's getting bigger. 

Bryan Carroll: [00:05:11] I'm really curious, because you mentioned that, the work that you were doing previous to this had to deal with the environment and the impact it has on animals.

And then you transitioned into what that could be doing the humans. It seems like humans are very resilient. Like we can, I take a lot of abuse before things start to get out of whack. Is that true from what you've seen being on both sides of that? Or do you think we are more, we're less in tune with what's going on with our body?

Reed Davis: [00:05:39] Yeah. People are like that. Proverbial Timex watch, you know, it takes a licking and keeps on ticking. We can take a lot of abuse, man. I mean, you see people who are not only the. Subject to all the environmental stressors and things in life that can affect your body. but then standard medicine also just the way that that's handled is can be another contributor to what I call metabolic chaos.

So you could have some health problems, go get help and get worse. Because you're not dealing with the true origination of that disease or illness or whatever it is. So one thing kind of piles upon another there's people who walk around they're missing body parts because of modern medicine, you know, like this well would take pills.

Well, and then eventually we'll just take the parts. So parts don't grow back. And so, yeah, I've seen, you know, a lot people can really take. Take a lot of abuse, man. And, but, and yet, you know, we're, you know, we're, We're just so adaptive. We have these innate intelligence in every cell that wants to be better, you know, wants to return to balance or homeostasis if you want.

And so that innate intelligence, it's what we work with. We work with the desire of every cell tissue, organ and system. It wants to be healthy. It will just take nutrients out of dirt. If it, if it had to, even when you eat absolute crap food. You know, it's going to the body want, it'll pull, it'll find the vitamins and the minerals and the central fatty acids and other things, phytonutrients and trace elements.

And what have you, it'll find those things. If it can desperately and try to survive. 

Bryan Carroll: [00:07:32] And you had mentioned that you're really good at looking for patterns. And one of the things I want to chat with you today is different pathogens in the gut because I've had a lot of different guests on talking about digestive health.

but no, one's really brought up the idea of different pathogens that could disrupt the GI tract. So what patterns have you seen and pathogens that are causing a lot of destruction in people's guts and what would that look like? 

Reed Davis: [00:07:59] Well, yeah, we run pathogen testing, we find pathogens and then they can be, dealt with, generally there's a lot of, things going on inside your body.

Like one thing we look forward to the DNA of these bugs and what you recognize is his DNA. It's not yours, you know, and it's generally done through stool testing and their saliva testing. There's other ways to check, but so you, you, you are a host four. Stuff. That's not you. And so there's two ways to look at that.

Well, is it the book? Or is it the host? So I've looked at both, I've spent 20 years determining that, both are critical, both are really important. So, there's a lot of practitioners still today and, and, it's it's okay. But you know, they, they listened to a set of symptoms and say, well, that sounds like a parasite or a bacteria or fungus or a virus or some pathogen, some, some bug, So it sounds like that.

So let's check for that and you can run a stool test or whatever you run and say, Oh, look, I found your problem. And I would contend this is from sheer experience, that if that's your point of view, that I found your problem, and we're going to give you this, introduce an agent to treat that problem, you know, chase the bugs away, if you will, or kill the book that you're going to leave.

Probably more than half your clients or patients, unsatisfied, because it's not the book, it's the host. And so I learned this 20 years ago when people would come in the office and I would run stool testing for bugs back then and say, look what I found. It's, you know, H pylori, which is a bacteria or cryptosporidium part of them, which is a parasite or an on and on.

And they would say. Oh, yeah. Well, you know, I've already seen a couple people. One told me I had fungus and one time I had to, and I've already treated for something two years ago and I got better for a while, but then I didn't get, you know, then now here I am again with just one more pathogen. So that's a pattern that I recognized Bryan, is that people, you know, if you think you're, Oh, I found your problem.

No, you didn't. You know, not if that's what you, if you think the bug is the problem, it's because they're unhealthy. It's because they don't have an immune system resistant to these opportunistic organisms, which will take over if you let them. And so the parent recognizes it's the host people have one after another of these books.

So the problem isn't the book. 

Bryan Carroll: [00:10:32] So what's going on with the host too, and make that environment. Acceptable for a pathogen to thrive. 

Reed Davis: [00:10:42] Well, good that you recognize it. You know, some people are just better hosts for bugs than others, and it could be due to a long history of, maybe the way they looked after themselves or not looked after themselves.

And a lot of people have destroyed the normal, microbiome. So we have, biosis and dysbiosis. We have, an imbalanced between good and bad flora in the body.

But it's part of you. So we, we exist, in coexist with this microbiome and it's, there's a very healthy balance. There's some of these bacteria actually very beneficial. They help us break down food and absorb nutrients. And, they're actually part of the immune system. Now there's always a small amount of these unwanted.

Unfriendly flora, but you need a little bit of that too. Why would you need some, a balancing good and bad for why not just all good. Well, because some of those bad flora keep your immune system active so that it's ready for something more virulent to come down the pipes. And so when you're out of balance, you actually become more susceptible to the sort of bigger, more virulent type bacteria or even parasites.

I just look at them as like the bigger bucks, you know, and then of course there's the fun guy and, and there's, there's obviously viruses. Everyone knows that today. And so you, then you become a good host for them. So it's kind of, you know, this might not be a politically correct analogy, but if you look at a, a bad neighborhood and the people that live in it, and everything's kind of dirty and dangerous, our guts could be compared to that.

And if you just chase away the bad characters. But don't fix the neighborhood. You got to fix the broken windows and paint, paint, everything, and clean up the sidewalks. Whatever, if you don't do that, then guess what the bumps are just going to move right back in. And so I, and again, it's not a politically correct analogy, but I see it every single day practice.

And I, I teach along those lines of it's the host, it's the environment, the restoring proper, balancing the microbiome is really critical. 

Bryan Carroll: [00:13:07] Yeah. So when it comes back to, You know, your previous career in environmental stuff, you're seeing a lot of that coming into play with the humans, just like you mentioned, because you're getting.

you're in contact with viruses, bacteria, fungi, all sorts of different environmental factors. And then like you're saying the host, depending upon their health as a host or their susceptibility to these types of pathogens or increase or decrease how their body reacts once that one of these pathogens sets their home up and starts proliferating.

Reed Davis: [00:13:40] Yes, exactly. With the caveat that there are some books. It might not care. How else do you are? They're going to kick your butt. Like if you get off a plane from West Africa and your temperature is 105, and you're bleeding from your eyeballs, you don't call your health coach. You go directly to an emergency room and get attendant care, heroic cure.

You need to have your life saved, you know, by modern medicine. That's what it's good at. And they can intervene hopefully to, you will save you from drowning in that pool of. You know, viral overload. And so, what we just agreed on is true with the caveat that there's some books that are really bad for everybody.

Bryan Carroll: [00:14:24] So when you're testing people, what percentage of the people that you have worked with, do you think have some sort of GI pathogen that they're dealing with? 

Reed Davis: [00:14:34] Well, that's a really good question. Now, obviously I'm only dealing with the unhealthy population, so we're not testing healthy people. For the most part, people come to us with something, Bryan, something about the way they look or the way they feel that they want to change.

And sometimes desperately. So we're, we're finding a very high percentage, way more than half. And if you allow me to leave it there, I will. But way more than half. have some kind of, at least dysbiosis that's the mildest form, then you go into, well, not only is it out of balance normal floras, you know, but there's something on top of some opportunistic organism on top of that.

Organism on top of that. And so that's, you know, really big percentage of people who aren't well, 

Bryan Carroll: [00:15:23] and you just mentioned the way people look right. Which is a big complaint for a lot of people. They want to change their ass as that X and then the rest of the health is kind of second, to what their ultimate goal is.

So how would something like this impact someone the way someone looks, whether it's weight or whether it's, skin conditions or anything like that? 

Reed Davis: [00:15:45] Well, you just hit it, you know, usually, it's the skin or the, overweight and, aging and premature signs of aging, you know, things like that. no, you can get very specific, but, you know, it's the way you feel like you're tired, fatigued, could be worse.

Sinuses allergies, moodiness irritability, you know, Digestive problems, aches and pains too swollen joints. I mean, it could just be so many complaints along with that, that aren't as. visible, although you can see it, if you knew what to look for, the signs and symptoms, but yeah, something about the way you look or the way you feel that you want to change.

It can be anything from a horn growing up the top of your head to just, you know, a few blemishes here or there, you know, or like, you know, some people are 10 pounds overweight and are afraid to go out in public. Other people are 110 pounds. Overweight, you know, mentioned how some of them might feel. So, it's all relative to a person and that's why we, we spend a lot of our time working with each person as a unique individual.

You just have to do it that way. 

Bryan Carroll: [00:16:59] Well, what about a pathogen? What caused someone to, possibly gain weight? 

Reed Davis: [00:17:05] Well, when you are not, metabolically efficient, And eat the wrong foods. You're going to probably gain unwanted weight. You know, so weight gain, we're usually talking about, fat, which is unsightly.

So you don't feel good about the way you look and you really don't look that good maybe in a bathing suit or something. So I'm pathogens cause interference and normal. physiology and metabolism. So they're what I call one contributor. To metabolic chaos, but they're just one of many things. I mean, if you're breathing particularly in the air that are harmful, that's another contributor to metabolic.

Yes. If you're eating foods that you're sensitive to, that your body looks at as an invader of some sort or offending a particle, that's another form of, or contributor to metabolic kids. So I categorize and is a pattern of recognizing parasites. It's just one. Unwanted pathogen pathogenic, in theaters, they're just one more form of, environmental stress.

If you will, they come from outside, they get to the inside and they harm you. They cause disruption in normal metabolism, metabolic pathways. So you can gain weight. You can end up with bad skin, bad breath. I mean a hair falling out. And again, sinuses allergies. All of these things can come from. Just, let's see what's out there that we don't want to be to Harbor very much off, and we want to nurture our body's ability to be resistant and still stay within and equilibrium, still function normally.

And so that's kind of the goal to function normally. 

Bryan Carroll: [00:18:55] Earlier you had mentioned, possibly using a stool test to test for different pathogens. is there one test that is looking for a wide variety of pathogens or do you have to, I try and pick and choose which ones you want to, be looking for and then get a test for that.

And on top of that, what have you found to be the best tests that you like to use? 

Reed Davis: [00:19:18] well, those are great questions. You know, me, I'm always taking the broadest view possible. So, First of all, when you're spending a client's money on lab work, you're supposed to know what you're looking for. You should have very, you should have done a very good history, taking a list of all their symptoms and everything.

They've tried so far to get rid of it. And so you have a complete picture of a person you've already formed an impression. About a person before you spend any of their money on lab work. So now you should know what you're looking for and that avoids using, going on a fishing trip to hope you catch something.

That's really your more inexperienced clinician who doesn't know what they're looking for. You know, and this is why, even though I teach a course in functional lab work, you know, try to instill a very judicial use, especially when you're spending someone else's money. And so, so with that in mind, there are a wide nets you can cast just to look at the broadest number of things.

most of those are DNA tests looking for DNA. That's not yours. And, they can run, along with that other functional labs, looking for digestive markers, immune system markers, and things that are very helpful. those are good tests. you know, there's one I like called the GI map for instance, and have a very good relationship with the scientists behind that dr.

Tom and the people there. So, and they'll come and educate and educate our group and they're just, and they understand. To the health coaches, aren't looking so much for treatment options. As they are for healing opportunities. That's a really important consideration. the, you know, physicians tend to want to know what's the disease in Ottawa, Trudy, no, as you label it, a cryptosporidium Giardia, you know, H pylori, you know, candida, you, you label the condition and then here's the treatment, some agents.

So they tend to take on all commerce and, There's not a lot of consideration of all the variables now as a health coach, the variables are exactly what we're most interested in. You know, who is this person and how do they live? What kind of environment do they have? You know, like what are they eating, what time they go to bed and you know, how much exercise they get in and how much toxicity is in there?

You know? So, so we, we care a lot more about the variables. And I think the answer to your question is, You know, it depends on who's looking at the test results. 

Bryan Carroll: [00:21:53] Yeah. Yeah. That a big piece definitely is interpretation part, just like you said, depending on who is looking at the results and what they would can make out of it.

and like you also said, the pathogens is just a small portion of the puzzle. And do you want to take a broader look at the host itself? So when you are assessing someone to see what type of hosts they are for these pathogens, are you doing different tests to see What's going on inside of their body as well?

Or are you looking for different nutrients, deficiencies, or acidity markers or anything like that? 

Reed Davis: [00:22:29] That's a great question. We definitely look at the. entire microbiome, if we can. So I'm not sure I answered your last question very well, but they just said there are wide nets and it was an astute question and there are more narrow ways of looking for specific.

Books like, you don't see it a lot anymore, but microscopy was always really good. Cause now you have a human actually looking for some, some, some lab rat who's just really good at recognizing, you know, bug parts, you know, arms and legs or whatever these books, you know, for, for eggs and, with a cold ovum and.

Things like that. So there's also antigen testing, which is very good. That's looking at the body's immune response to it. You're actually seeing the bug. You're seeing that the body's elevated some antibodies specific to that particularly energy. So there's that way. And, and there's also culturing. You can put stool little swabs in a various number of Petri dishes.

And see what kind of fuzz grows on it? Well, that's another way to look, so it's very helpful if you know your client, you know what you're looking for at least generally, and then you can run the appropriate tests, but then today that's kind of some of that cool lab technology is going out the window with these very wide net, the DNA type testing, and then, You know how you treat it and treat the host and improve them is really critical.

You can't just stamp out the bug. It's like chasing the bumps out of the neighborhood. You got to fix up the neighborhood. So again, I'm still not sure I'm answering your exact question, but hopefully that illuminates a little bit more. you can let me know. 

Bryan Carroll: [00:24:09] Yeah, it's, it's definitely a tough, tough question to answer, right.

Because there's a lot of variables and we're trying to simplify something that's very complex in a way that's A little bit more actionable. But speaking of treatment options and protocols, let's just take 'em, you know, something super simple, like a pattern that you've seen many times with someone.

Can you show us just an example of what a protocol might look like too? help someone that might not be the best host for a pathogen, and then how you built a filter that down into trying to eradicate the pathogen and fixing the host at the same time. 

Reed Davis: [00:24:50] Yeah. And I'll try to keep it from getting too complex, but it's, what's going on is pretty complex.

Like you asked me the question about how can a parasite make you, you know, gain weight. Well, it makes you unhealthy and unhealthy people, especially if they eat wrong, lose weight. And so what would I've developed over all these years for a number of reasons is a, a complete holistic lifestyle program.

And so. We find that if you eat right and get the right type of rest and you exercise, those are good places to start. Now, then you also have to deal with stress reduction. Now, parasites, bacteria, fungus viruses, food sensitivities, the area breathe, you know, what's in your food and water and things of that can be very stressful.

So there's all these hidden stressors, including bugs as a certainly indicated there just one more. They're just one more contributor to metabolic chaos. And of course, supplementation, I think getting the right nutrients, is also very important. What you don't get from food, you can substitute with supplementation.

Supplementation can also be used to stimulate. Or support certain organs or systems like digestion or the thyroid or the immune system. You can, you can do less supportive things to get you over a hump. So that protocol, you just asked me a protocol question. I put it all into the D R E S S D R E S S diet rest, exercise, stress reduction, and supplementation.

And there is a right diet for you. It may not be the right diet for me. There's no one died. That's right. For everybody, you know, there's certain foods bad for everybody, but no one diet that you could just say is right for everyone. So you have to find your own right diet. We know how to do that. Sleep cycles incredibly important.

You treat every cell tissue organ system in the body simultaneously when you get a good night's sleep, the same thing with eating the same thing with exercise it's nonspecific treatment. For anything that's. Wrong with you. It keeps you, keeps you healthy. You know, sitting is the new smoking. You can't be healthy if you don't eat right.

And go to bed and get a good night's sleep and exercise in terms of the stress reduction and supplementation. There's a lot of labs you could run to help figure out the hidden stressors, including things like environmental pollutant panels and heavy metals. And, you know, on top of the parasites, bacterias, and other pathogens and food sensitivities and things, and then supplementation should be customized.

A four each individual to know, by the way, if you didn't notice that spills, D R E S S dress let's dress for health success. That's a, that's a system. So, so successful that we've had at trademark, you know, my certified practitioners all just say, look, you know, whatever your problems are, the answer is dress for success.

And because guess what? We're not physicians. And this is how this was created. I wasn't a physician. I was an environmentalist now working in a wellness center and I had to come up with something completely holistic and nonspecific because otherwise I get gotten accused of practicing medicine without a license and coming from a law background, I'm not going to.

Do anything like that. So what I helped do is really establish what is the backyard? What is the sandbox of a health coach? You know, what can we do? Well, we can, we don't treat anything specifically. We treat everything nonspecifically because the no, no parasites, or maybe a little, wedge that you could carve where there could be a, integration between, the medical backyard.

Or sandbox and ours, because there is sometimes the person with certain bugs, it might be better. Just have them go get treated for a couple of weeks by their doctor, you know, but then you get out of the woods or you get that thing handled. And now the health coaches  bankers now make you really healthy.

So it doesn't get back to the way it was. You, you become a much more resistant to that. Thing. So how do we do that? We work on every cell, every tissue, you know, every system, every Oregon simultaneously with a complete holistic lifestyle program. And it's actually pretty easy to follow know, eat, right. Go to bed.

Exercise. Reduced stress and take your supplements. It's a daily living kind of a thing, and you'll have some roller coaster. You, and also as this kind of health coach, you can relax a bit because you may not. Like finally resolve every single person's every last health problem. Why is that? Well, cause we all have them.

We're all different. And in the pursuit of health, Bryan, you know this from all the work you've done, there's no one at the top of the stairway. Like, I don't know anyone perfectly healthy. So I don't feel compelled to help clients get perfectly healthy. I, myself at 66 years old, I feel like I'm in really good shape.

I've been Biomark to where I'm actually about 40 biologically. So, but I'm still on the stairway. I'm still, there's no gurus. I'm not a guru. And neither are you. Is what I like to tell people, you know, but we're on the steroids. So I may have less steps to go. Than a person who's Wade. There's people you come across, your clients have a lot of steps to go and we help them up the steps and they could even pass us, you know, cause you're educating on the principals involved.

And so that's just kind of how I look at protocol is it's all holistic, it's all behavior and their specific, you know, even though I sit with. We don't treat anything specifically. There, there are things to do that are very therapeutic, that can be applied by a person on themselves, you know, so that's how we handle that.

We educate people here, you could do this, you know, or you can go see your doctor and, we're pretty chill about it. 

Bryan Carroll: [00:31:05] So the acronym dress is that in order of importance are, or are they all as equally important? 

Reed Davis: [00:31:14] Well, it's a component. I mean, They're all really important. Some are a little easier to do some, some people already eat really well, but they might sleep lousy and not exercise.

So you, what you do with the clients, you find the weakest area and then the, you know, diet is always. You know, you could start there with most people, but you know, it might be the other elements and certainly you have to do the investigation. So our methodology is three steps. It's assess like you form your impression about a person.

Then you run some lab work if needed, and everyone does, if they're ill enough. and you find the healing opportunities there. So you assess, assess some more. And then you create a program address, customized dress program, the right diet for you and, and you know, what you need to do to improve sleep and all these other things, especially those hidden stressors, we've identified some.

And so again, you know, one is to assess two is to create a dress program. Well guess what? Number three is, someone's got to run the program and that's where the rubber meets the road in health coaching is can you. Get your client to behave a certain way. Well, if you've run labs and you've correlated those with how they feel, look, here's why you feel so crappy or look so crappy.

and here's how to fix it. And so that's very motivating. We're often the first practitioner that's actually sort of lab work that has any relevance that they can understand. I met many as you know, That's Bryan, they've been, they've been told nothing's wrong with them. Their blood work looks normal. It looks normal, you know, go try diet and exercise.

Yeah, go try. That is if they haven't already, you know, so it's, it's a very cool system. Just words. 

Bryan Carroll: [00:33:12] So I'm a client and I come in and do you tell me the dress model and, my diet, my diet's. All right. you tell me to rest, but I have 15 kids at home, so that's never going to happen. Exercise. You know, I do some squats throughout the day and I do some pushups, so I'm, I'm at least moving and I'm chasing 15 kids around, stress again, I have 15 kids, then I have work.

so that's gonna. That's going to be hard for me to take care of, but supplements I could get on board with that. I just, I mean, if I can take some pills and that fixes the problems and balances out all those nutrients, that sounds pretty good. Especially since we come from a, you know, a country that loves taking a pill to fix issues.

So how do you in a situation like that, where someone has a lot going on and it's really hard for them to You know, breakout. Each different factor and try to figure out, okay. Even if you have 15 kids, okay, what can, how can we make it less stressful? And how can we, get you more rest and stuff. And especially someone that just wants to take a pill, the magic pill to fix everything.

How do you work with that? 

Reed Davis: [00:34:24] Yeah, it was an interesting attitude and we both know where it comes from. You know, the kids were a Pillsbury too, society, at least the Western world tends to go that way. and sometimes you can just sort of swap that out with some other thing. You know, we do a lot of. Of swapping of a one habit for another.

first of all, that never works. matter of fact, when I first started learning, I told you I went to the school with the chiropractor and it was all supplement based. It was, you know, poke around and do a few assessments and then sell them some supplements. And. People after a month, Mike, by the second month where let's see some, a month's worth of supplements and then they come back for a reassessment.

And if they're feeling, you know, okay. You know, they might believe in it for another month or two, but after that they're done, you know, if it hasn't worked, they say it doesn't work. And if in this reason is they left out the D R E S they only did the final S you know, and that's what took me 10 years to figure out.

Maybe I'm a slow learner, but. Supplements alone. Just aren't going to get the job done. They're supportive. You can stimulate your mood. Like if you're getting on a plane, I popped some stuff because. It helps, but you, you better get it all together. And, so pill poppers, you know, that's good. At least they'll take their supplements, but then you just take the next week it's there and it might simply be I put this into the category of stress reduction, not really having them.

Purpose well-defined and being self aware enough to take a few minutes in the morning. If I could take, take that person with 15 kids and have them take two minutes in the morning to do a little bit of, self-awareness routine and to call upon their subconscious a little bit and just to become a little bit more aware than they, you know, that's one step.

Remember we said, there's no one at the top of the stairs. You're somewhere in here and there's a lot of people down below and they have a lot of steps to take. It might just be, become a little more self aware so that they can start to organize. If I have 15 kids, I'd create three basketball teams. I'd make I do something with it.

I would, I create a street street cleanup crew, and we'd all go do something useful every day as a team. You know, that's just how I think in work. I have, you know, right now, 23 people work for me, but I've had many, many more in my environmental career. and we're just getting started, you know? So we're going to organize the whole family around keeping mama or Papa healthy.

So that we can, and then you're, you're all gonna, like, you know, that tends to fall, you know, downstream from there. If you're doing things because otherwise you're going to be running around, putting out fires and it's just going to be horrible. You know, you got to get everyone. Thinking using the same paradigms and point of view and stuff, it could actually be really joyous to have 15, you know, like I love kids, I coached football for 15 years, so I love kids, youth football and, We helped a lot of them get over their asthma and add and HD and all these, all these silly things, you know, by being more organized by eating, by following dress, running some labs, but following dress.

So I would take that person on, like I take on every person that the principles. The principles involved, apply to everybody. And there's natural consequences that are inescapable, whether it's bad behavior or good, you will reap the reward. You know, the, the seats, you know what I'm saying? 

Bryan Carroll: [00:38:06] Perfect. I love that.

do you have any final things you want to say before we wrap this all up? 

Reed Davis: [00:38:12] Oh, just, you know, I don't know when you talk about pathogens, which was kind of the topic for today, it's just one more contributor to metabolic chaos. And you definitely, if it's spirit, you know, testing is good and you can rule out that you don't have something that's going to kill you.

and that's why physicians are good people to run it by because they know the downside better than anyone they study disease and they know where it can go. And sometimes you could have a, A condition. That's where the downward spiral is so contracted that you need medical intervention numbers. The observations I make as a health coach, can't be capitalized on because this person's going South too fast.

Well, we got to get him out of the woods or, I've had a, one of my cohorts, you know, talk about their drowning. They need a life jacket and then get them over to the side of the. The pool or whatever, and now, now we can, take care of them from there. So integration is important and, yeah, the real strength getting well is in the purview backyard of a health coach.

And, we play well with other stuff. And 

Bryan Carroll: [00:39:19] then my final question is, what do you do each day to keep yourself healthy? 

Reed Davis: [00:39:23] Well, it kind of just mentioned it, you know, I get up every day and decide it's going to be a good day because I'm not always sure. You know, especially if I'm dreaming or there's something going on, stuff like that.

And try to make a conscious decision. Talk a little bit about self awareness there. I put my feet on the ground outside and, and think about that, you know, having a positive. They and th that we try to attract positive energy, you know? So, I think that's a conscious decision every day to check your point of view is a cup, half empty or half full.

Just tell yourself it's half full. Just keep saying that. And it will manifest in one way, shape or form at some time. Now I do other stuff too, but that's, that's the way I started. 

Bryan Carroll: [00:40:09] Awesome. Well, you're doing some great stuff over at functional diagnostic nutrition, and people can learn more about the programs that you offer @ summitforwellness.com/fdn.

Is there any social media platforms or anything that you are also on? 

Reed Davis: [00:40:24] Yeah, I think we're in all of them. I have a team that's more inclined to that I started this business and all they had was a pager. On my hip, you know, in the belt clip pager. And, and I did it without internet, without I built one of the busiest nutrition practices in the country, you know, without using the internet.

So, it's amazing what you do. Today's technology remarkable, but I'm not that person, but I hired the right people. Yes, we're on everything. 

Bryan Carroll: [00:40:54] Thank you so much Reed for coming on. I really appreciate everything that you shared with us. And, I would love to have you back on in the future, Reed shared some valuable points and provided a great framework to get started with improving your health with the dress acronym.

If you want to learn more about functional diagnostic nutritionist, then you can go to summitforwellness.com/fdn to learn more. And if you enjoyed this episode, it would be extremely helpful. If you left a rating and review on your podcast, player of choice. If you could click on that little rating button just real quick, that will help more people to find the show.

And I would really appreciate it. And next week I have Ryan Foley on the show. So let's go a, learn a little bit more about him. I am here with Ryan Foley. Hey Ryan, what is one unique thing about you that most people don't know? 

Ryan Foley: [00:41:46] Yeah. So I'm a, I'm a physical therapist by trade, but. When we, when I teach people about when I teach students and other therapists about movements and pain rehabilitation, a lot of what got me into this field was actually the world of prosthetics and robotics.

And I merge a lot of the principles I learned from that, with the rehab that I do from a movement standpoint. And people kind of think that that's quite weird, but we can gain an awful lot of. Insight into how we can improve a move, but capacity by looking at, what happens in prosthetics and robotics and engineering.

it's on a massive part of our approach, but we use lots of different principles there. So I think that's quite unique because I think it's not really often that you see those kinds of connections in the physical therapy world. 

Bryan Carroll: [00:42:30] And then what will we be learning about in our interview together? 

Ryan Foley: [00:42:35] We will be learning about why people express pain, what are the things that we can do to ultimately reduce the need for the expression of pain in the body?

We can, we're looking to go into how. Evolution has actually allowed for a body to be expressed and designed in a certain way and how we can actually, how we can actually exploit that to build more robust movements and how people in pain can improve upon that. And I have a physical therapist can actually use this information to improve their, their treatment and rehab approaches to what 

Bryan Carroll: [00:43:06] are your favorite foods or nutrients that you think everyone should get more of in their diet?

Ryan Foley: [00:43:11] Yeah. So w this one for me, I'm from Ireland and I'm living in Ireland. Currently. I actually moved back from the U S a couple of years ago. And when I came back from the U S Ireland, again, a lot more natural food, a lot more fresh food and real food, was something that I really missed when I was in the U S it's a lot harder for me to, it was a lot harder for me to get healthier in the U S.

And so when I came back, The real food is the biggest thing I felt I needed more supplements. I needed more kind of additions to my nutrition when I was in the U S maintain a healthy body and a healthy digestive system. But now it's really just a case of meeting real kind of wholesome food that doesn't have an awful lot of ingredients in it.

When you look at the food label, it's that, that would be the biggest thing for me. 

Bryan Carroll: [00:43:56] And then what are your top three health tips for anyone who wants to improve their overall wellness? 

Ryan Foley: [00:44:02] Yeah, so biggest things for me is to check in with your breathing capacity. How well are you breathing on a daily basis?

That will be key. And this there's many things that you can use to check in with your breathing capacity, your breathing capacity. Number two, it would be. Reframing your, your perception of stress. So we inherently think of stress as a bad thing, but if we can strategically apply stress to our system to share stress or a greater surface area over a greater, over a greater, or across tissue structures and systems, I think we can improve our overall capacity and our robustness with movement and our over a movements.

Moving efficiency. So just reframing your, your perception of stress and number three is getting a better sleep, making sure that you wake up regressive. If you don't wake up well rested, you might need to check in with your, your breathing as well. And how will you actually set up your sleeping routine?

So I think those are three big things that I would definitely want to get across to people. 

Bryan Carroll: [00:45:01] Pain is such an interesting sensation for anyone to experience, and there is so much more to it than we could ever expect, which Ryan teaches us all about. So until then keep climbing to the peak of your health.