Root Cause Revolution: The Future of Healthcare with Dr. Remina

Embark on a journey of healing and self-discovery as Dr. Remina joins me, Lorayne Michaels, to unravel the mysteries of functional medicine. Prepare to be captivated as we share transformative stories of moving beyond conventional treatments and highlight the profound impact that addressing the root causes of illness can have on our lives. From the evolution of healthcare to the harmonious blend of osteopathic practices and Eastern wisdom, this episode is a must-listen for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of what it means to truly heal.

Embrace the entrepreneurial spirit that breathes life into the wellness industry, empowering individuals to reclaim their health and vitality. In this compelling conversation, we discuss how personalized workshops, innovative corporate wellness programs, and virtual functional medicine services are making waves in fostering long-term well-being. Whether you're a health professional or simply passionate about wellness, join us for an enriching episode filled with actionable insights that could revolutionize your approach to health. And remember, sharing is caring – pass this episode on to loved ones eager for a fresh perspective on achieving their best health.

IG: DrRemina
Website : www.drremina.com
Email: DrReminaDO@gmail.com
Podcast: The Dr. Remina Panjwani Show

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Are you finding that you're educating a lot of your patient population? Hey, this is actually available to you and it does work. It's not, you know, oils and mantras like it actually works.

Speaker 2: 0:14

Yeah, and that's funny. You say that because I always use the term. People think it's woo, woo.

Speaker 1: 0:20

Yes, yes, Welcome to the Bite Size Podcast. I'm your host, lorraine Michaels, former EMT and nursing assistant, now business owner and wild entrepreneur. I walked away from over 15 years in medicine to pursue my passion and my God-given talents. Now I get the honor of helping other women discover their passions and purpose. If you're feeling stuck in life, unsure where to go or what to do, welcome. If you're exactly where you want to be great, you're welcome here too. If you have faced any kind of hardship or setback, you have found a safe place here. In other words, no matter who you are or what you've been through or what you're going through, this is the space for you.

Speaker 1: 1:10

On the Bite Size podcast, we'll discuss life, business and faith. There's something for everyone. So grab a cup of coffee and something to take notes with, because there will definitely be things you won't want to forget. Because there will definitely be things you won't want to forget. Welcome back to the Bite Size Podcast. I'm your host, lorraine Michaels, and today I have with me Dr Romina, and we are going to talk about all things in the health and wellness, where it's going, where it's been, and a little bit about what Dr Romina does and what she's super duper passionate about and so welcome Dr Romina.

Speaker 2: 1:53

Thank you for having me. I'm so honored to be here.

Speaker 1: 1:57

Thank you for being here. I know you are a mama and a doctor and that in and of itself is a handful, so thank you for being here and carving out time from your busy schedule to talk to us about what you absolutely love. So Western medicine has completely changed from what we once knew it was right, and when we first got into it I know we talked about this we were at an event in Texas not too long ago and we got to talking about it and shared some common beliefs. And so tell us why you first got into medicine not functional medicine, but what first drew you to medicine.

Speaker 2: 2:47

Yeah, and I mean you definitely started out right, correctly. Western medicine is not what it used to be, so what I originally got into medicine conventional Western medicine was the idea to help people, but in a scientific way, through medicine. Because I just found it so fascinating the aspect of medicine and just using it to help people to save lives right. That's typically what most doctors or people in the medical field go into is to help people to save lives right, and so that is the original reason I got drawn into medicine.

Speaker 1: 3:27

Yeah, changing lives. I feel like that's been the lifeline, if you will like, the baseline of what we strive for. That's in this personal development space, right? Is we want to help people, and I think that's been the seam of it all and it kind of morphs into other things, right I mean?

Speaker 1: 3:54

I know my story was probably different than yours, but still, like I said, the same seem through. It is helping people, and um how it transformed us into where we are now. And so now you're doing functional medicine, which I absolutely love, and I wish more practitioners would be a little more open-minded to that. Um, just because it utilizes the giftings that God has given us, the resources that God has provided us, and it's more of a whole patient approach and trying to get to the root of the problem and not just slap a bandaid on it. How did you fall into functional medicine?

Speaker 2: 4:43

And yeah, that's another great point you put is the bandage approach, right? So that was always something that I guess bothered me. I would say there was something that didn't settle well, but I just didn't know what it was. So my training when I went to medical school I'm an osteopathic physician. So in the States there's two different types of physicians that practice medicine. There's your traditional allopathic medicine and there's osteopathic physician. So in the States there's two different types of physicians that practice medicine. There's your traditional allopathic medicine and there's osteopathic physicians too. Right, and you take the same boards, you practice in the same settings. The main difference is the approach. So we get more of an integrative medical approach already into our curriculum and you also get more detailed classes of other aspects. So that gives us the tools already to practice and incorporate all the approaches of mind, body, spirit and lifestyle not just symptoms approach that we do in conventional medicine. Now that's not to say that allopathic physicians can't practice. They just have to take additional training. They have to take additional training to practice integrative medicine. So that's just a portion of it.

Speaker 2: 5:52

So then I graduated medical school, went to training. I did internal medicine, residency training, so that was my specialty, and then I worked in the hospital setting and, of course, during this time what really burnt me out, as did most people in medicine, is the COVID pandemic. So that's where you could see everything and at that time, yes, you wanted a bandage approach, but you could also see that what did people do to lead them up to being more vulnerable to death? Right, when things happen, you could see that chronic diseases that are tied to a lot of aspects that could be preventable. I'm not saying most, you know, in COVID some things just weren't in our hands right. But in general, that is where I really felt I need to do something more because I'm not really using what I feel is right In conventional medicine.

Speaker 2: 6:49

What it is today, it is a bandage approach, it is insurance-based, it's a business, it's corporate medicine and doctors and other healthcare workers we really don't have much power, sadly, and it's just a common misconception for people oh, doctors have it together, we treat people, so you know, with everything, right, but we're limited. And then there's other aspect oh, they make so much money? No, we don't, it's the insurance companies that dictates what we do and how we practice, and sometimes like they don't even pay, well, right, and so it's just changed. The dynamics have changed. It's no longer in the physician and patient control, and that's just heartbreaking because, although conventional medicine is great in the acute setting to put a bandage right, you want a bandage if you've got like a big cut, like you're about to lose your limb, or if you're having a heart attack, or if you have end stage diseases, like you're having strokes. Is a whole population that could benefit. That isn't necessarily needing a bandage approach and that's what can be optimal for health.

Speaker 2: 8:07

Right, and these days people want to maintain their youth, they want to live quality life longer so they can be there for their purpose, their loved ones, whatever their purpose is right, and there's a way to do that. You don't have to keep putting medicine and wait until you have the diseases and then the diseases that lead you down to the bandage approach. Right, and these days people look at aging as a way of just being decrepit and that was the older definition. Right, like your last decade of life is in and out of the hospital and there's no quality. But it doesn't have to be that way and I think now there's a big movement of people that want to embrace the holistic approach and the way that draws me in is I've always been into that and I feel like my calling is to help people live their optimal life.

Speaker 2: 8:57

And it's getting to root cause. And that's what drove me to functional medicine, because it's science-based, it works and it's personalized. It gets to root cause. It considers lifestyle right. Lifestyle also mind, body, spirit. What is your sleep like? What are you eating? What's your stress? Stress kills you. It does right, yeah. And relationships. It's looking at it as a holistic approach in that sense, and the more people are aware of it which they are and more practitioners are seeing it's working and it's the way to go. It's just. I feel like this is going to be the way of medicine. It's going to be the new Western. Right now, how I do it is blending Eastern and Western, but I think this is going to be the way of medicine. It's going to be the new Western. Right now, how I do it is blending Eastern and Western, but I think this is going to take over.

Speaker 1: 9:44

Yeah, how do you do that? So, being in a practice that is Western medicine and if you are a functional physician, how do you blend that and how do you get the practice on board with it? If it's not your practice, if it's a general practice and there's other practitioners there and you are a functional medicine physician there, how do you get everyone on board to like melding the two together?

Speaker 2: 10:13

Yeah, and that's a great question. So I also, because I work in the hospital, that aspect is really difficult to incorporate functional medicine, right, because at that point you really are just bandaging everyone and you can't really do much. But where you can is if you are in a setting where, yes, you can kind of practice an outpatient setting. But there's also a way of just completely not even following the insurance-based model. It's close to you, could do your own practice and they call it cash pay and people shy away from that because they think it's expensive. But it's not right.

Speaker 2: 10:55

You think about how much do you pay to just get insurance and what is it really doing for you? If you look at it, you're paying for the quality, the education that the specialist has, the functional medicine. I had to go get an additional almost two years of training, get board certified, so that gives me the tools not only from my medical career but enhancing it through my specialty, right? So you want to see a specialist and the amount that you pay if you go into a traditional medical practice your copay is still going to be like over a hundred dollars. So what are you paying for, right?

Speaker 2: 11:31

So, if you look at that personalized approach, the education, the expertise and the personalized approach to you, the quality is there and then you don't have to fight any other barriers.

Speaker 1: 11:43

Right. Yeah, if things are approved or denied right Exactly or just getting access?

Speaker 1: 11:49

Yeah, oh, a hundred percent. So what would you say to the patients that are fed up with the insurance and things getting denied, or the doctors that they're seeing are not getting to the root of it and they're just kind of pushing them around, going to different specialists that are thinking about hey, I want to check out functional medicine, how would they do this? And if they're fed up with insurance, how would they not? Would they forego their insurance? Insurance, how would they not? Would they forego their insurance? Do this cash pay approach and find functional physicians that practice this way?

Speaker 2: 12:25

Yeah, well, some functional medicine providers do both. Right, they'll still have their traditional practices, but there's also an option where they can provide functional medicine and certain aspects can be covered by insurance. So there's a way that they can work around it. So I wouldn't say like, go of the insurance, because that's a good, I would say backup, saying you know, god forbid, if you have to go to the hospital then it's there. It's there to provide just a safety blanket, right. And also, you want to keep up with your screenings, like your preventive care screenings. That's still important. You still want to keep up with pap smears, mammograms, prostate if you're a man, all those things you want to keep up with because that helps you with the true prevention.

Speaker 2: 13:14

And so the functional medicine physician, or if you're practicing both, you could still access that component.

Speaker 2: 13:23

So there are some that only solely practice functional medicine and it's just like a concierge, no insurance base, and for that aspect, honestly, it's either a word of mouth, you could Google, but you have to be careful because not everyone is going to practice as a physician. There's other credentials. So that's why it's important you work with someone who cares, who's credible and who has the expertise and is trustworthy. So a lot of it yes, you want to research. They will. A lot of them will give you a chance to have, like a discovery call. Use that, ask them questions.

Speaker 2: 13:59

What's your approach? I've done this. I've gone to so many doctors. How are you going to be different? How can we work together? That's you taking your health into your hands and using that therapeutic relationship with the functional medicine doctor as a tool, as a guidance. So you got to do your research on your end, see what works, and there's a lot of people out there. They will use social media, they will use the internet and just find out what works for you. It's the feel when you have the conversation. A lot of it is the feel Will this work out? Can we have a good therapeutic relationship?

Speaker 1: 14:36

a good therapeutic relationship. Yeah, have you noticed a lot of people like are you educating a lot of people on this availability? Because I know a lot of people because I'm in medicine or was in medicine are just unaware of what functional medicine is. Are you finding that you're educating a lot of your patient population? Hey, this is actually available to you and it does work. It's not oils and mantras, it actually works.

Speaker 2: 15:11

Yeah, and that's funny you say that because I always use this term people think it's woo-woo. Yes, yes, and that's because it's been kind of infiltrated by people that aren't credentialed for this. But yes, so interestingly there are people that I do educate on what truly is functional medicine and they're like, oh wow, this is so fascinating. But then other people are already familiar with it because they've done the research or they've seen a functional medicine physician and they've moved different states and they want to see a different one. It's a little bit about educating and bringing to awareness that how health could be true health to help you get to root cause or just be optimal.

Speaker 1: 16:22

So you can, even though you're healthy or as well, other physicians that you can collaborate with that practice functional medicine that are more specialized. So if someone comes to you in the hospital and it is something that is a root, you know the root cause is going to require a different specialist and you can refer them to that specialist because you know that they do practice functional medicine as well and they're not going to just throw medication at them. They're going to go deeper, to the root issue Are you in collaboration with other physicians that do practice this way?

Speaker 2: 16:56

So in my area there are specialists, but there's not many that practice functional medicine. There are some here, like the gynecologists I mean, that's a big one Gynecologists that practice functional medicine. They also blend Eastern and Western in their sense. And then there are some GI doctors, there's cardiologists. They're not local but they're available across the states and that's the other portion of how we deliver medicine. But also, even on top of that, functional medicine is you can take it virtually, and that's the whole movement is being concierge and virtual, so you could collaborate with many physicians and also patients and other specialists too.

Speaker 2: 17:43

So it's not just the physicians but also the modalities, right? So if you have someone, for instance, trauma therapy right, I'm not a certified trauma therapist, but I have a psychologist that's in the area that practices trauma, a true, not a non-traditional approach, shows she, she is certified, she's a psychologist, but she also blends all these other modalities, and I find that is so important to collaborate on that aspect, because, even so, even though I can treat everyone basically as a whole, because that's how I believe you're a whole, but I can't, I'm not certified in trauma therapy, right, and so that's where the collaboration comes in and we can treat the person as a whole, and that's part of getting to root cause. Is trauma shows up in different spaces, right? And if you look at the movement of mental illness, mental disorders, that's just a label.

Speaker 2: 18:40

What's the root cause? Right? And so that is how, one of the ways that I collaborate with another doctor in the area that practices a holistic approach and it is successful and then also adding in like, yeah, like adding in meditation, sound bath, yoga, right? So I also collaborate with people that do that and it is such a therapeutic benefit for the patient and you see changes.

Speaker 1: 19:08

Yeah, absolutely being in the hospital, though how do you follow up with them? How do you if they find you and they love you and they want to work with you, but you're in the hospital? How do they, can they continue that relationship that you know working with you? Are they able to do that?

Speaker 2: 19:27

If they're interested, and it's always a feel right. It's the patient that's going to say well, doctor, I've done this and that and I thought I was doing right. But here I am, I'm having a heart attack. What else can I do? What else can I do? And then that's where I'm like, okay, so they're ready to listen, let's capitalize on the lifestyle. Let's capitalize because, yes, maybe it's genetics. You can't control genetics, but you can control how you live your life and what you do with it. And that's also a big factor, because you got genes, you got the environment and you got the lifestyle. And that's where the functional medicine approach comes in. So that's where I would say, okay, yes, there's more you could do, and let's talk. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 20:08

Yeah, that's, yeah, that's key. I love. I love the fact that this is becoming more of an awareness and people are getting educated about it and it's not just woo woo, although there is some some stuff you're like that's not really right, um. So it's great to see that this is a movement, um, and it's a positive movement and it's beneficial for us, um, and it would be wonderful to see more of the melding of the two because, having worked in, you know, the emergency department and the trauma center locally, there is a place for Western medicine, a hundred percent, but there also is a place for functional medicine because, like I had said in the beginning, you know, god created us with the intentionality of everything working together and also with the resources to heal ourselves, naturally.

Speaker 1: 21:12

And it doesn't have to be man-made, although there are some cases where a man-made medication would help. But that wasn't the intent for us to live that way, totally dependent on a medication. And I feel like, if more people realized that and they didn't have this mindset of it is what it is, but if they knew what the root cause was, if they knew what caused them to get to this place and it could be reversed and it does take work, then I think more people would be apt to doing it. Unfortunately, we are a microwave society and people just want the quick fix now and they would rather just pop a pill and deal with it. But I also think if they knew the level of good that they could feel if they just did the work, it would be so much more worth it, you know.

Speaker 2: 22:12

Absolutely. And here's the thing like you could keep throwing pills and bandages. But then you look at and and I'm not calling out specifically the elderly population, but because there are some hundred years old patients that like, take no medicines and they truly stick to lifestyle but there are. It's not uncommon that people will come in with a bag of medication, right, but then you have to think about okay, you're never going to get to root cause, but it's going to show up in some way. If you don't take time for your health right now, it will show up when it's late.

Speaker 2: 22:46

And all the medicines you keep taking think about it there's side effects. There's an interaction that happens, like people that I see in the hospital. That are polypharmacies, what you call it, and you end up with side effects. You have people think you're confused, you're having a stroke or whatever the case is, whatever weird symptom you come in with, but it's because of the compounding effects of all the medication, the polypharmacy. So that has a side effect too. So at that point we're going to be like well, I think you're trying to mask it enough and your body is ready to show you root cause. So let's evaluate this now. And what happens? You end up taking up more time, more money. So you have to face it eventually right.

Speaker 1: 23:32

Yeah, yeah, oh my gosh. I know it's the sad truth of it all. So I want to give you an opportunity to talk about what you are most passionate about, and I know it is functional medicine. But is there anything that you are working on that you want to just really showcase and I love to help people that way.

Speaker 2: 24:00

So part of what I'm doing is not just the functional medicine approach and sharing that aspect of medicine to help people personally. So I do have that concierge and virtual practice. So that's there so people can work. But I also love adding in the option the opportunity to bring the talks to stage. So I definitely want to start bringing the keynote speaker aspect, because more people need to know about this right and how it applies and how you could be better and take charge of your health. So the keynote speaker at conferences, that's one. And expanding my podcast, the Dr Amina Panjwani show, that's also, um, something that you could have a bit of information on every topic. It's for everyone. And then I'm definitely going to start writing an outline for a book Awesome, so that's coming up too. So a couple of things right. Just that entrepreneurial spirit that spreads the awareness and love and empowerment to everyone.

Speaker 1: 25:03

Yeah, absolutely, that empowerment piece is huge because I feel like a lot of people nowadays they don't feel like they have control or power over their health. They feel like they're subject to the bag of medicine. So having that education, what you're doing and speaking to people and at conferences and whatnot, that education piece really does empower the patient to take control over their health and wellness and I think that is important for everyone. So do you speak at like within businesses, practices, all the things?

Speaker 2: 25:44

All the things and that's the part we could do corporate wellness. We could do actual conferences, and then there's wellness workshops, too, that I love to speak with and then add in the practice of that component. So there's yoga, sound bath, meditation, so you could really mold it into whatever scenario you want, and that's the beauty of it.

Speaker 1: 26:03

So you could really mold it into whatever scenario you want, and that's the beauty of it, yeah, awesome. Well, I can't wait to hear more about this book and how that's going to unfold. We'll put all of your contact information in the show notes so how they can find you on social if they want to book you to speak. And also, y'all need to listen to this podcast. Dr Romina knows what she's talking about. She's got a heart for helping and a plethora of information as well. So, friends, if this episode has helped you in any way, or if you know someone that would benefit from this and they need to hear it, please share it and tag us so we can follow up with you and have a conversation and just so we can meet you virtually. But as always, guys, I love you and just remember you were divinely created for divine purpose and there was no mistake in you.