Addressing The Root Cause Of Health Issues To Live Your Best Lifestyle With Dr. Forrest Sauer, Functional Medicine Practitioner, Twin Oaks Health

Posted on April 17, 2023
Addressing The Root Cause Of Health Issues To Live Your Best Lifestyle With Dr. Forrest Sauer, Functional Medicine Practitioner, Twin Oaks Health

 

Watch the episode here

 

Our healthcare system has made it difficult to access care, that it seems easier to think our health issues are all in our heads. Well, this episode will show you that you’re not crazy. When you’re not feeling right, then you are right. Corinna Bellizzi interviews Dr. Forrest Sauer about this commonly overlooked dilemma, diving deep to address the root cause of health issues. Dr. Forrest is a chiropractor and the Founder of Twin Oaks Health, an alternative medicine practice that specializes in helping people manage complex health problems like diabetes, thyroid disease, fatigue, and depression. Join him as he discusses the concerning statistics on the American diet and what we can do instead to feel our best and live our best lifestyle.

 

Key takeaways from this episode:

  • The concerning statistics on the health of Americans
  • Assessing people with an autoimmune disorder
  • Tools to stay on track in building healthy habits for lasting change
  • The process of a food-elimination diet
  • The difference between functional medicine and Western medicine

 

Guest Social Links:

Website: https://twinoakshealth.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/forrest-sauer-14752591

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drforrestsauer/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DrForrestSauer

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@drforrestsauer

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Addressing The Root Cause Of Health Issues To Live Your Best Lifestyle With Dr. Forrest Sauer, Functional Medicine Practitioner, Twin Oaks Health

In this episode, we're here to talk about a simple concept. When you're not feeling right, you are right. Too often, the medical system underserves people because our healthcare system is ultimately sick care. If you're not with that system and aren't sick enough, it's in your head. I'm here to tell you that it's not in your head. You're not crazy. To unpack this issue, I'm joined by Dr. Forrest Sauer. He is a chiropractor and the Founder of Twin Oaks Health, an alternative medicine practice that specializes in helping people manage complex health problems like diabetes, thyroid disease, fatigue, and depression.

They've assisted thousands of patients who have long and healthy life. They ultimately treat them. They first determine the underlying causes of a patient's illness by considering all sorts of factors from nutrition, distress, toxins, allergens, genetics, and the whole shebang. Before I bring him up to this particular event with me, it's important that I cover a simple disclaimer. This show is offered for informational and entertainment purposes only. If you happen to be in Dr. Sauer's local area, you could seek him out as someone to support your needs or the care of a qualified healthcare professional. With that, let's bring him right up. Dr. Sauer, welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me.

That intro left us with quite a bit to chew off.

That was complimentary. I appreciate it.

I'm sitting here and I have heard a lot about this entire concept where people are told, “It's in your head. You're not sick,” then they end up finding out they've got toxic mold issues or a nerve condition that is causing them to feel like their skin is on fire. These things can be challenging to diagnose. As it stands, we're all doing our best every day, but some of us don't get the basics covered. I would love for you to talk about what your approach is and how you start with a patient or with someone who's coming to you with a health concern so that readers can perhaps take that into their own journey and think about who they're working with.

It all starts off with the fundamental truth that if you go into the doctor, the clinic, or the hospital, insurance companies are only going to pay for lab work that the doctor is going to be able to prescribe medication for. Otherwise, it's simply going to increase costs on their end because if you think about the treatment modalities that the doctor is allowed to give you, they're allowed to give you either surgery or surgical recommendations. They can do some therapies or medication and that is it.

There is no conversation about, “Why did this happen in the beginning? Why or how did it start? How can we start reversing the problem and fixing the root underlying cause of the problem?” That's called functional medicine. That's how we practice. As I've seen thousands of labs that people send to me, they say, “Can you review my labs and see what's wrong?”

Number one, it's very limiting information because there are no comprehensive labs that the doc is allowed to run, but then also the “normal” levels that the labs run are getting wider. It's because we're being compared to sick people. Lab ranges are made up. They're simply made up. They're made up of averages. The average, 90% of the people who have labs taken, is where these “healthy ranges” are coming from. Do you believe that 90% of Americans are considered healthy or sick?

The statistics about overweight and obesity make that a stark question to answer. Our waistlines are expanding, undernourished, and yet we're getting too many calories for what our systems can handle presently or we're getting the wrong kinds of foods because a calorie is not simply a calorie when you don't have the right nutrition base there.

We're dealing with a situation where people are generally inflamed, and most people don’t know what it feels like to feel perfect anymore. They might have felt great in their teens and 20s, but they're now entering their 30s and 40s and starting to realize like, “I have this thing that's bothering me,” and that only gets compounded with time. I don't think 90% of people are healthy.

Seventy-two percent of Americans are either considered obese or overweight. I believe that is a startling percentage. It does have to do a lot with the food that we're eating or that we're not eating. If you look back even many years, the people in America looked very different than the people do nowadays, and that's because of the food that we're putting in our bodies. That's where we can go back to, “Fundamentally, how does the medical system work?”

If you go into the doctor's office, what do you tell your doctor? You tell them, “I don't sleep well. I have thyroid problems because I have seen it on Dr. Google. I think that I got these hormonal imbalances. What do I do about it?” The doc says, “We're going to see some labs and give you medication, but that's it. That's all that we have time for in these seven minutes that I'm allowed to spend with you.” The overwhelming burden the healthcare system is becoming on Americans is sad. Quite frankly, it pisses me off.

NWC 52 | Health Issues

 

It extends beyond that because we also have big food that comes into play here. I have to tell you, I have two young sons. My younger son is expressing some symptoms of autism. We have been consulting with people, having an in-home care specialist come and observe him, and things like that. Most of his behaviors are pretty mild, but it's in social settings that he has challenges. Analyzing that within the home is hard to do. Even this practitioner says to me, “Did he go to the refrigerator and get a bell pepper as a snack?” I said, “Yes.” She's like, “I don't ever see that.” I've had my older son's teacher tell me, “I've never seen a kid come to break out mushrooms from his lunch and enjoy eating them.”

I'm like, “We aren't giving our kids healthy foods.” If I'm hearing this from teachers and care providers that this is something that's far outside of the norm and their experience, then it means that even us as parents, we're perhaps we're kowtowing a bit to the packaged food system where it's like, “It's what's easy, so I'm throwing it in my kid's lunch,” as opposed to feeding them real whole foods in a consistent basis.

This isn't to say that I'm judging other parents. It's hard to do this, but if we have a world where we're creating everything that's packaged and we have a world where the chip bag may end up being the hallmark of our oceans because we're seeing them float around in ocean masses like you wouldn't believe because they blow away even if you intend to throw it in the garbage, it gets blown away and into the sea. We have some systems that are broken. Convenience is perhaps the enemy of health. I don't know a more convenient food than an apple, but how many people are grabbing an apple as a snack as opposed to that so-called nutrition bar?

With big food, there are multiple factors that are going into this. Big food makes it convenient. There are literally billions of dollars and thousands of studies gone into how to persuade people to make food look attractive, how to make you buy it, consume it, and consume more. The average American is working at a disadvantage. Unless you have a true education on what it looks like for you to start living a healthy lifestyle for yourself, there's not a one size fits all approach. There's no magic thing.

Truly being educated, what does it look like to sustainably live a healthy lifestyle, not for the next six months but for the rest of your life? That education is never happening. Instead, we pick a useless topic that we learned about in high school. I won't offend anybody, but you pick something that you don't use. It's been a while since I've used Calculus. It seems like our focus is on the wrong education

As a doctor of chiropractic perhaps had more nutrition in your curriculum than some of the MDs that we see continuing to get degrees now where I'm told in many cases, they might have essentially a week's curriculum or even as little as a day focused on nutrition and nutrition specifically for health. On this show, we've interviewed people, Dr. William Li, who wrote the book Eat to Beat Disease and Eat to Beat Your Diet. It's like the undiet book focused on helping you fall in love with foods that can support health, even Dr. Joel Fuhrman, who wrote Super Immunity.

I brought him in to talk about immunity, but he's written several different works. Dr. Joel Fuhrman focuses on getting people off of all processed foods, not even olive oil, and getting them to focus on making foods from whole nuts and seeds if you're using nuts and seeds and not seed oils to whole raw foods and then preparing them with minimal oil, if any, using poaching and other methods to cook, to retain the nutrition and to avoid superfluous calories that may not benefit your health.

Through his systems, he's able to get people off of the medications that they came to him with and return their lives to health and restore metabolic health. Metabolic health is one of the big trending topics. If we're to come back to this because, in the intro, we talked about diabetes and thyroid disorders which are metabolic health crises. How do you assess and help people work through some of these challenges to potentially even get out of a space where they might have considered someone who had an autoimmune disorder before, but now if you look at their health markers, they look fine?

Let's go ahead and say if I have someone who has Hashimoto’s. It is when the immune system attacks the thyroid. It's classified as an autoimmune condition. You can have an autoimmune condition that attacks your gut. That's Crohn's disease. It can attack your nerves, that's multiple sclerosis. In the case of Hashimoto’s, when the immune system is attacking the thyroid, we always want to figure out why the immune system is being triggered, to begin with.

Typically there's a hormonal imbalance, whether it be a sex hormone-like with estrogen, progesterone, or testosterone. Maybe there are some gut health markers that are not working. Maybe there's a slide aside of leaky gut that comes along with it. They're exhausted from figuring out why the immune system is being triggered in the first place. Typically, it can be because of a chemical. Maybe it's a pesticide or preservative or some artificial flavor ingredient that is found in processed foods.

Maybe it is a food that has been hybridized and changed in the past many years like gluten, corn, soy, or any of these mass-produced grains. We see a lot of these foods unfortunately triggering the immune system to then attack the thyroid, making that autoimmune condition worse. How do we reverse it? We need to first remove the triggers. I always talk a lot about, “If we're going to fix some things, we need to stop putting the crap in.” You can take your turmeric, fish oil, healthy Omega-3s, and all of these antioxidants, but if we don't change our lifestyle, we are going to be chasing our tail at the end of the day.

If we're going to fix some things, we need to stop putting crap in.

That's the foundation, you have to start there.

Here's a classic example, a classic case. Your medicine cabinet is full of supplements. You're taking twenty pills every single day and yet you still feel that crap. There you go. That's what's going on. We need to stop putting the crap in before we start focusing on getting the stuff out.

There's no magic bullet. That's a problem that many of us come up with. We are expecting this Western medicine approach to nutrition like, “There's going to be this magic thing that I can take, like Advil for a headache and suddenly my health is going to be better. It will turn a corner.” That isn't a reality. If we think about the fact that our cells continue to regenerate throughout our lives and they may have been more forgiving when we were younger and perhaps when we had better practices, but then as we get a little bit older, the damage we've done along the way starts to accumulate.

It can take time for those cells to rebuild. You don't necessarily see the effects of doing something like shifting your Omega-3 to 6 consumption overnight. It takes some time. Thankfully, with where we are with our testing protocols and things like that, you can do something like getting a baseline on a test. See how you're doing with vitamin D for example. Take a test a few months later and see how you're doing again.

The same thing can be true for something like Omega-3s. In fact, that's something we're working to do at Örlö Nutrition, our sponsor for the show, to provide new subscribers with an Omega-3 blood spot test so they can test themselves at baseline. With their fifth month of subscription, they can see what the movement has been. Our plan is to launch that in May 2023, which will be quite interesting, but this test costs money. Many people out there would be saying, “I'm not sure if my insurance covers that.”

From what my discussions have been with doctors, they tell me back like, “Most will, but you have to push for it. You might have to pay a higher copay for that.” If you find out that something like an Omega-3 blood spot test only costs $50, it might be more affordable to do it yourself than through your medical office unfortunately because every time someone touches a piece of paper in standard insurance, they charge you $100.

If you ask someone who's educated on the healthcare system about why healthcare costs are going up and up and up, it's because of administration. That's the biggest thing. You said a lot there, and I'll start off with proper expectations. If you take a pill, it's not going to fix it automatically. If you change your lifestyle, that's not going to happen overnight or in a week.

It might start to happen in a month, but we're going to test the baseline. In five months, we're going to test again. That is an appropriate amount of time to start expecting to see real lifelong changes. A lot of people simply set false expectations. They try something for two weeks, white knuckle in it, relying all on their willpower, and fall off the wagon. Not only do they fall off but they push the wagon into the woods and they set the whole thing on fire.

That's typically how people fall off. It comes to setting proper expectations and what you are going to be okay with. I recorded a video about health to give you options. A healthy man wants 1,000 things. A sick man only wants one thing. If you want to have all the options that you want, be able to go on a hike, take your spouse out for a hot date, or go on a trip or vacation, you need to have the option and your health to do that.

If you're feeling fat, sick, and depressed and cruising the channels on your couch after work because you don't have energy for anything else, you got limited options. Ultimately, what are you okay with? What are you okay sacrificing for? Some people feel changing their lifestyle a lot at work. It is, but feel the way that you're feeling right now.

I want to share something because this might be news to you too, but specifically in the space of Omega-3s, one of the things that we've found surprising with specific individuals who take our product over standard fish oil is that they do start to realize the benefit a little bit more quickly, and because of that, they're more likely to keep taking it. I want to tell the story of one of the first customers of our Omega-3 product at Örlö Nutrition.

It's in this active omega-3 form. It's a polar lipid. Theoretically, it's up to three times more bioavailable and gets into your cells more quickly than fish oil would. As I also shared with you privately, it is emerging research showing that certain genome types may have a harder time integrating a standard triglyceride fish oil or Omega-3 that you might buy from the shelf.

What this individual noticed was that within only four days that his dry eye complaints had disappeared. This was something that he was surprised by because he had taken Omega-3s from fish oil before for months at a time and never noticed a difference so would stop taking it. His partner was an optometrist who kept telling him, “You need to try it. Take Omega-3s. Do it again. It will help,” and started taking the polar lipid form because he was perhaps at a disadvantage.

He might've also had the APOE e4 genome type like myself. I have one representation, but 15% of the population has 1 or 2 representations of that genome type and are therefore at an increased risk for things like Alzheimer's or other brain conditions. These things can be connected because if you're not getting enough Omega-3s and they're not getting to the place that they need to go, like your brain and eyes, half of the fat in your brain and eyes is made up of DHA, and half of the weight of that is literally DHA.

It's 1/4 by weight of your brain and your eyes are made up of DHA. DHA is a specific Omega-3. Americans are dramatically undernourished in this particular fat. If they're not supplementing with it, they're probably not getting enough. You have this thing where with time, you create a cumulative problem where your cells have less of this vital nutrient in them and you end up replacing it with what you have in your diet.

This is essentially what we do with everything. If we don't get enough of the core vitamins that we need to support a healthy system, our body will ultimately do its best with what's there. You end up scaffolding things that are falling down and your cells aren't as happy. You're not as able to eliminate toxins or traffic nutrients or moisten your eyes so that you don't have these dry, itchy painful conditions that ultimately impede you from leading a healthy and happy life.

I know this is a big topic but I wanted to use this example because it connects to many different things. It's like, “What is your motivation to keep taking a supplement? What is your motivation to keep forward with a healthier habit and perhaps a more whole foods-based diet that sends you to the kitchen as opposed to the convenience store?”

As people, we need to build healthy expectations and goal sets and then create something that we can measure against if we're going to build this lasting change. Given that you treat people all the time in your practice, I would love to hear from you what tools you might share with those that you're working with to help them keep track along the way so that they don't lose interest, get demotivated and shift away from the healthier habits.

We always start off with comprehensive labs. We test nose to toe. We test for everything. That's where we start. That way, we know exactly where we're going. We use it as a guideline. Usually, people use the spray and pray method where they're going to take a whole bunch of stuff and they're going to see what sticks. We take the opposite approach, test first and then figure out.

Side note, this gets back to the administration side of the healthcare system. When I first opened up practice, I had a list of labs that I wanted to test for. I sent it off to the medical main hospitals in our town. They came back with bills like, “If we're going to run these labs, it's going to be $4,000 for these labs.” That was many years ago. I can't imagine what it would be like now.

It's like, “That's not going to work.” We decided to go outside of insurance, and it saves a ton of money. It is ridiculous. That was a rabbit trail. First, it is with lab testing, then after that, we start figuring out, “Let's go ahead and do a food elimination phase style diet.” We start pulling out the most common irritants, gluten, corn, soy, dairy, eggs, and nightshades. It sounds like a lot, but we take it on a week-by-week basis.

For the first week, we focus on three things, “Let's remove sugar, artificial sweeteners, and gluten.” Week two, “Let's eliminate dairy and corn. Get used to that because these are healthy habits.” These are healthy habits that we're trying to adopt in our clients. That way, this is something they can stick with. I want these habits to become automatic by the time they're through with us that way they can continue living this way and not simply have to suffer through dry salads every single day. This is about being flexible in lifestyle and living a life when you got kids at home.

That's why we take that approach. People oftentimes have already tried taking gluten or corn out already prior to seeing me, but who's to say you're only sensitive to one food? You could be sensitive to many. Corn is about as inflammatory as gluten is, especially specifically with Hashimoto's clients. It seems like there's a very strong correlation there.

NWC 52 | Health Issues

 

Corn is high in sugar. this is part of the reason probably.

Think of it. Functional medicine takes the exact opposite approach of Western medicine. With Western medicine, you have a symptom and you get a pill for that. With functional medicine, it's like, “Why is that symptom occurring?” It's occurring because there's some imbalance. What's causing that imbalance? It's something that you're consuming or getting exposed to, whether that be food, medication, or a lotion that you're putting on your skin or whatever else that you have going on.

What is the cause of it? If you fix the cause, you don't have the symptom. It is a magical way of thinking. It's the food elimination phase and we do take our time with that. We take a two-month process. We simply take two months. We slowly walk our clients through a very step by step and hold them accountable.

We kick their butt if we need to with love to make certain that they're getting the results because that's what's important to us, then we show them exactly what to do, when to do it, how to do it for them specifically, so that way there are no more guessing games along the way. It is the food elimination phase with labs. By the time we get there is when we're adding foods back in. Here's another thing that I see a lot of people doing incorrectly. It's how to add foods back incorrectly. Here's how you do it right. You take one food and you reintroduce it at a time. Let's go and say you're eating a very clean diet, meat, veggies, fruit, healthy fats, and all that great stuff. You don't go out and have pizza.

That's the wrong way to do it. The right way is to take 1 food and eat it 3 times a day for 3 days. If you feel fine after day 3, then you can move on to the next 1. The immune system has about a three-day leg period for people. Some people can notice it right away. For some people, it takes a full three days. You have that particular food 3 times a day for 3 days so that way your body has enough exposure and you're going to be able to tell, “I'm more tired today. I didn't get a good night's sleep. I feel like I'm more inflamed. My nose is running.” Those are the very classic symptoms.

NWC 52 | Health Issues

 

Let's unpack another question that relates to this because some people say, “I don't know if I want to go through all that trouble. I would like to take a food sensitivity test like that offered by Everlywell or whatever for $100.” What are your thoughts about something like that? Does it help you on your journey, or is it superfluous information that you could deduce another way through a food-elimination diet?

Here are my thoughts on food sensitivity. I don't like them. Here's why. Because it is going to be determinant what foods you consume on a regular basis. If you are sensitive to dairy and you have a bowl of cereal every single morning, that's probably going to come back as positive on the food sensitivity test, number one. Let's go and say you go dairy-free. You take the same food sensitivity test, and six months later, those markers are going to be lower because you're not exposed and not triggering the immune system.

Does it mean that you're not sensitive? That's why you have to see how your body responds to it. That's number one. Number two, most food sensitivity tests that I see are not testing comprehensively enough. They'll simply run an IgG, but you need to do IgE, IgA, and you need to do CD4. There are multiple triggers that your immune system can be exposed to or be flagged and you need to have the right food sensitivity test done.

I was curious. I took an Everlywell test knowing full well that I can eat broccoli. I eat the other crucifer just fine but I'm sensitive to broccoli, and it's any cultivar of broccoli. I can't do Chinese broccoli or broccoli rabe and all of them. I thought, “It's not going to come back with anything on that,” and it does. It comes back with nothing. You would think if you didn't know better that I'm not allergic to broccoli.

It is not the case. I get stabbing pains. It's terrible. I can't digest it. It's toxic for my system. I have the same problem with quinoa. Unfortunately, these foods are snuck into a lot of healthy foods these days. I have to be careful and read a lot of labels. Even some of the vegetarian proteins might be marketed as pea protein, but when you get into the ingredients, they also have chia and, a lot of the time, quinoa.

Grains can be problematic for a lot of people. I expected to see that I had some issues with gluten on the test. I do eat bread, but I have one gene for celiac. I expected it to come back as gluten sensitive. I’m not gluten sensitive via their test, but they did show sensitivity to other proteins that are shared amongst the grains including buckwheat and some others. Who knows what the truth to that is? I ultimately know that when I don't eat any grains, I feel a little bit better and more connected to my gut.

We started the beginning of this show and I said, “How do you feel? Are you feeling your best?” If we get to asking ourselves that question like you eat a meal and then how do you feel after it, journal about it, even saying, “This is how I felt before and after.” That can tell you something and you know your immune system might respond three days later or a little bit more to something you ate before. I do think that our body gives us signals for when things are working well. We need to pay attention to that. I do think that food journaling can help people both be more honest about the foods they are consuming and pay a little bit more attention.

It eliminates a lot of, “Did I have this three days ago?” You can go back and look at it, especially when you're in the exploratory phase of trying to figure out what foods are going to be the triggers.

What are your thoughts on nightshades?

It depends upon the person.

Personalized nutrition.

Some people handle it fine. Some people do not. I had this client one time. We ran them through this food elimination phase, and we couldn't find anything. At that point, we did run a food sensitivity test. It turns out she was sensitive to strawberries out of all the things. She's like, “I have that every single day.” We took out strawberries, she felt much better. In rare cases, we do run food sensitivity tests, but 99.9% of the time, the elimination phase does work great.

What's the best price? It's free. It might send you into the kitchen to explore some new dishes that you're putting more healthy foods in your diet.

Also, becoming a label reader. Don't pay attention to the advertising graphics and all the pretty pictures on the front. Turn it around and start reading the ingredients on the food in the back. I've done this for so long. It's second nature to me, but this is a skill that you can easily adopt. Do it for 30 days and read every single ingredient label of the food that you pick up. It's going to become a healthy habit and you become much more aware of the food that you're putting in your body.

Be a label reader. Don't pay attention to the advertising graphics and the pretty pictures on the front. Turn it around and start reading the ingredients on the food in the back.

I've seen that you had an article on the Örlö website, and it was about seed oils. This is a big thing that I've been trying to get out, the vegetable oils or the seed oils. I'd rather have someone who has a diet high in sugar than seed oils cause there's much inflammation and damage that is done by these. If you read all of the packaged foods that have these harmful rancid oils in there, you'll be almost offended because they're in almost everything.

Speaking from someone who's been in the industry of Omega-3s and fats for many years, the culprits that are out there are sometimes unsuspected. The other I like to caution people to look out for is trans fats. The way label law is written, they can be hidden in products and even say zero grams of trans fats but then be buried in the ingredients because they're less than the threshold level. Even a little bit of trans fat in your system gunks up your system. It inhibits the action of your delta-5 and delta-6 desaturases. I know this is geeky, but for readers, these are the enzymes needed to break down plant-based Omega-3s and 6s.

If you inhibit them with this icky fat that's like one molecule away from being plastic, then 1) You're consuming an antagonist to a healthy working system. 2) It's not food. Open a tub of margarine and leave it in your garage on a hot sunny day. Nothing will come in and touch it. Do the same with butter and you'll have a fly on the butter in 30 seconds. Recognize what's food and what isn't. Trans fats are in almost every peanut butter out there.

You have to be careful because it will say partially or fully hydrogenated soybean oil, palm kernel oil, or peanut oil even. If we want to think about this, the reason that we're thrown off kilter with this inflammation, this overabundance of Omega-6 and under-consumption of Omega-3s has to do with the refining process of all these oils in the first place. That's why people like Dr. Joel Fuhrman are saying like, “No seed oils or processed oils. Don't do it. Go to food.”

If you want to make a beautiful delicious salad dressing, I can show you six recipes in my book that require a blender, some pistachios and whatever other seeds you like, and then some citrus or some vinegar, things like that that you spruce it up with and then suddenly you have this delicious salad dressing that you didn't buy off the counter in a grocery store and even when it says olive oil or avocado oil as it's oil, it ends up being the third ingredient after canola and soybean oil, which are both Omega-6s.

I know that this is a soapbox I stand on from time to time, but it's because it's as intense as you say, “Consume more Omega-6s. They help you create inflammatory prostaglandins, leukotrienes, and cytokines so that you end up ultimately in a system where you're constantly inflamed and that inflamed disorder reinforces itself and suddenly you've got arthritic complaints in your ankles and toes, and you're only 35.”

It runs a positive feedback loop. It feeds upon itself. You need to, on purpose, stop that positive feedback loop. This is where you have someone who has multiple diagnoses. Maybe they got diabetes, Hashimoto’s, and sleep apnea. All of those are caused by inflammation, which most likely is coming from their lifestyle. If you fix the lifestyle, you can start reversing specifically diabetes. Sleep apnea is simply inflammation as well as Hashimoto’s is an autoimmune condition

If you're interested in losing weight, if you reduce your consumption of Omega-6s, you get fewer triggers that tell you you're hungry. This is why if we go to a bag of chips, it's got a perfect balance of salt and Omega 6 fat. Sometimes they're even dusted with sweetness to them almost you get like sugar sweet all at the same time thrown in there. They're engineered to be almost addictive. You eat a couple, and before you know it, you've eaten the whole bag.

It's been a while since this ad campaign came out, but who is that bag of chips that’s like, “You can't eat just one?” That's specifically what they're doing. They had ingredients on the chips that hacked the brain. That way, it blocked the feeling full mechanism. That's predominantly what MSG does, and that's still being found, even though that's an unknown carcinogen. It blows my mind how sick the standard American diet truly is. There is no wonder that we are considered the sickest developed country in the world and yet we spend more than three times the amount than the next developed country on our healthcare system. We're eating ourselves sick. That's what we're doing.

We're eating ourselves sick.

We start off with some assumptions that are not necessarily correct. I go to the basics. The food pyramid that I grew up with is the foundation of grains at the bottom. Now we're flipping this on its head. We're saying, “Ultimately, you do need to consume healthy fats like nuts and seeds. Not the seed oils.

You can eat the nuts to support your health, get walnuts and pistachios if you want sesame seeds or things like this to sprinkle on your foods.” That's all fine when you're looking at whole food. When you start to corrupt it into this more refined basis, generally speaking, you're refining out the Omega-3s because they don't remain as shelf-stable that way. You're not getting those in the food that you would be consuming otherwise.

We need to remake what that looks like. If we are eating a more balanced diet, then we are going to feel a little better and we're also less likely to overeat. It's important that we acknowledge that. Get back to the basics and perhaps it's through an elimination diet that you get there. I wondered too if you had other particular tips because we know for instance that vegetarians and vegans tend to be deficient in vitamin B12 and Omega-3s.

With Örlö, those are two things that we're addressing with our products. We also know that individuals who don't spend time in the sun and don't get enough vitamin D. What would be the core supplements set that you would suggest someone consider understanding that they've addressed their baseline and they're working on their diet? They've done some elimination work, but they want to make sure that those products they stock in their medicine cabinet aside, not the pharmaceuticals, they've got supplements lined up to support their journey to ensure their success. What do you guide them towards?

When most people think of supplements, I think of longevity. What's going to support them in the long run? Eighty percent of your immune system is located in your gut. Sometimes a probiotic is absolutely necessary, but making certain that you're having enough butyrate, prebiotics in your gut, and a variety in your diet to feed those bugs in your gut is vitally important. If you live in the Northern Hemisphere, Vitamin D is essential to make certain that you're creating enough hormones. Vitamin D is not a vitamin. It's a hormone and is essential in many different factors. Not just simply keeping your bones healthy, but also depression, anxiety, and thyroid function.

Vitamin D is essential to longevity. A good source of healthy Omega-3s is if we aren't living out of the Garden of Eden and we like to let loose on Friday night sometimes, supplementing with a high-quality Omega-3 like Örlö is essential to keeping the inflammation suppressed. Those are my go-to's when we're looking at longevity as proper gut health. If we have an autoimmune condition, glutathione is fantastic and all of these supplement recommendations are coming on the heels of the assumption that you're living a healthy lifestyle. That is the foundation. The reason for glutathione is that's going to stop that positive feedback loop that you'll get with autoimmune conditions that make themselves worse and worse.

It's understanding that it takes time to rebuild healthy cells, especially with something like vitamin D and also Omega-3s. There is some residents' time to rebuild those cells. What I've noticed from people is they tend to realize the most benefit. They see it start to creep up and change sometimes almost immediately, like certain effects, but the long-lasting change happens after about the 4th or 5th month. Is that generally speaking what you're seeing in your practice when you retest them?

We do retest that month four for most of our practice members, but if I take a client on and I don't see any changes at all within the first 30 days, I do know that I missed something because the body should be able to start repairing itself fairly quickly.

That's great for readers. If you're trying to work through some of these challenges on your own and you're not noticing a difference after about 30 days, you probably are missing something. That could also mean that your doctor is missing something if you're in treatment. You might need to seek additional help from a qualified professional like Dr. Sauer. As we prepare to wrap here, I would love to know if you have any parting words that you'd like to share or any other additional resources that you'd like to point our audience to.

If you want to learn more about our process, you can most certainly go to the website. It's TwinOaksHealth.com. How we practice is an educational base approach. Instead of simply putting you on a 30-day protocol or having you meet with me or one of my team members and us giving you supplements and sending you home, we want to educate you on what it looks like specifically to live your best lifestyle. We teach you all of that. How I believe functional medicine should be practiced is lifestyle first.

If you're looking for assistance with that, we'll certainly go there and contact our team. We specifically are on a mission to show the forgotten and misunderstood hope because many people have gone into the main medical system and are told they're crazy and it's all in their heads. Nothing could be further from the truth. You deserve to live optimal health and live life the way that you want so you can do the things that you want in life. That's my fundamental belief.

Do more of what you love with those you love. Thank you so much for joining me and for sharing that on our closing. That helps wrap a bow around everything we've talked about. I want to also remind our audience that there's no time like the present to get started with something like Omega-3s. Örlö Nutrition active Omega-3 is in the polar lipid form. They can be up to three times more absorbable than fish oils.

If you are curious and you want to get started now, you can head over to OrloNutrition.com and use the code NWC20 for 20% off at checkout. You could also choose to subscribe and get an everyday 15% discount. Check them out. Omega-3, DHA, and prenatal DHA are all available now. They're vegan, have unsurpassed purity and freshness, and are documented to be the world's most sustainable resource for Omega-3s and algae nutrition.

Thank you so much for all of the thoughtful time and energy you have put into this conversation. I would love to also include the list of the few core supplements you recommended. I want to make sure I have them correct before we wrap. That is Omega-3 and vitamin D. I know we mentioned vitamin B12, but you didn't come back to that one. You said if they had some sort of a Hashimoto’s or another autoimmune disease to make sure that they're getting glutathione.

I believe there's a prebiotic or probiotic.

Prebiotic fibers.

With the probiotic, here's a big one. You'll have probiotics on the market that have only simply one strain of bacteria in there. I tend to go for about five different strains of bacteria in a single supplement. That way, you're not just hammering away on one vitamin or mineral over and over again. That can create an imbalance.

We did also interview a couple of individuals from Supergut before and talked about prebiotic fibers. For readers, if you want to dive more into prebiotics, you can learn from Marc Washington and Dr. Chris about prebiotic fibers, sources from food, and those that you can get in supplements as well. If you're eating a whole food plant-based diet, you're probably getting a lot of prebiotics, but you may not be getting enough of a few core essentials. Supplementing a healthy diet in these cases can be very good. Do you advise people to look for refrigerated options as opposed to those that are shelf-stable or where do you sit on that?

Preferably, refrigerated. It extends it a little bit longer. It slows down the cellular mechanisms a little bit longer. If you can refrigerate it, that's the best case.

For this, we're referring specifically to the probiotics and not to the Omega-3s. Our Omega-3s do not need to be put in the refrigerator. Thank you so much again. This has been my absolute pleasure. I'm going to go ahead and recommend everybody here to follow Dr. Forrest Sauer on Instagram. That is @DrForrestSauer. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

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To find out more about Dr. Forrest Sauer, his programs, and more, visit TwinOaksHealth.com or his Instagram @DrForrestSauer. If you learn something, I hope you'll subscribe to the show. Please give us a thumbs up, a five-star rating and even write us a review. This will help more people to discover the show. It also will show us a bit of appreciation and keeps us going strong. It serves as what I would call its own show currency. To learn more about what we're doing at Örlö Nutrition, to build nutrition solutions that are better absorbed by you and also better for the planet, visit OrloNutrition.com.

This show is all about serving you. If you'd like us to dive into specific topics or have questions that you'd like us to answer, then send us a note on social channels to Hello@OrloNutrition.com or on social channels @OrloNutrition. As we close this show, I hope that you'll raise a cup of your favorite beverage with me as I raise a cup of my day's coffee and say my closing words. Here's to your health.

 

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About Forrest Sauer, DC

NWC 52 | Health IssuesDr. Forrest is a chiropractor and the Founder of Twin Oaks Health, an alternative medicine practice that specializes in helping people manage complex health problems like diabetes, thyroid disease, fatigue, and depression. They've assisted thousands of patients who have masked their symptoms for years with pills and surgical treatments to recover from the inside out and live a long, healthy life. To treat them, they first determine the underlying cause (s) of the patient's illness, considering factors like poor nutrition, stress, toxins, allergens, genetics, and their microbiome (the bacteria living in and on their body), before developing a personalized holistic healthy living plan to treat the patient's condition.

 

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