Turning Adversity Into Advocacy Through Functional Medicine – Dr. Deb Muth on The Healers Café

holistic medicine meant. To me it was just this weird foo foo stuff about diet and spirituality and who knows what else. And I called up my girlfriend and I told her what was going on, and I said, you know somebody that can help me? And I’m going to tell you that I know nothing about this, and I don’t even know if I believe it, but I’m not willing to be disabled in four years. And luckily, she was a great friend, and she did not mind me teasing her about being witchcrafty. And she took me to a friend of hers who was a nutritionist, and we sat down and chatted, and what she knew blew my mind away, like I I was looking at her like, I know none of this, and I’m a graduate as a nurse practitioner. How do I not know any of this? And we talked about thyroid and talked about nutrition, and by the time I left, I had this very strict diet that 25 years ago was really the diet from hell back then, because there was nothing you could have as an alternative to no gluten, no dairy, no sugar, no nothing, you know. And I went home, and I said, You know what? I’m going to give this a try. And within three days, all my symptoms were gone. And I thought, wow, there’s something to this crazy stuff. And so I started learning a little bit more and a little bit more. And as my career took me in different places, I kept coming across people that were using herbs and natural medicine from other countries, and I felt like they had this huge knowledge base that I was lacking. And it was when I was working in the inner city of Milwaukee with a lot of Hispanic clients that were bringing their natural traditions to us as we were caring for them during pregnancy and sharing with me all these different things that they did. And I started to go, Wait a minute here, something’s amiss. And I that was what intrigued me into looking into natural medicine, and I started on my journey of becoming a naturopath.

Manon Bolliger  04:57

Wow. Well, it’s quite shocking when you hear, you know, a prognosis that is debilitating. You think it’s just bad table manners or not table but bedside manners. You know.

Dr. Deb Muth  05:12

Right Exactly.

Manon Bolliger  05:13

It’s really, it’s lack of openness too, of what is actually possible. So I had, MS, too funny. You have the same, same background. That’s about that long ago. And and healed naturally. You know, at that time, I was already a naturopath, so it wasn’t my the reason I became one, but it certainly was a wonderful lesson during .So, interesting. Yeah, very interesting. So, you’ve been in practice, you…so, what is the…do you have a focus? Sometimes we’re, you know, we’re told, if you have a focus, it allows the practice to get bigger. What’s your situation that way?

Dr. Deb Muth  06:05

Yeah, I have a whole bunch of focuses. I think I have ADHD when it comes to what we do in the practice. So I started my own practice in 2011 before that, I co owned another practice with two medical doctors, and when I left them, I came into my existing practice that I have now, and my focus was chronic illness and hormones primarily at that point. And since that time, it’s really morphed into a whole bunch of things. I have five practitioners that work for me, health two health coaches, and we treat a little bit of everything at this point. And I understand from a marketing aspect and from starting out where it’s easier to focus on one thing, but I think sometimes that one thing pigeonholes us as well, um, especially if financially, times get difficult, the first thing people are going to cut are the things they don’t necessarily need. So if your practice is primarily a luxury of some kind, like in for instance, hormones are kind of a luxury. People don’t have to have them, but they feel a whole lot better with them. That would be one of the first things that they would start to cut or push off. Where, if you’re dealing with somebody with chronic illness, they really don’t have that luxury of doing that. And so I think having a balanced business, from a business standpoint, actually helps you survive during some of those lean times in business.

Manon Bolliger  07:29

It’s purely a marketing thing, you know. And if it’s, if it’s genuine, right, like that people you know feel like this is the the thing, the one area that they just know inside out, they can’t help themselves. You know, it makes sense, you know, but it’s but, you know, I know, because in my practice, I also had people, naturopaths, working for me, and, you know, we talked about all the the marketing angles, you know, we need to have a little focus you do digestion and digestive health. And if anyone comes with that, we’ll send you there. So we were sort of, kind of copying the allopathic model of separating people by their ailments, which we know is not how it works, right? So it’s kind of an awkward thing, but you know, at that time, that was the mentor, and that’s the recommendation. And so you know, for myself, I chose pain, because with Bowen Therapy as one of my main aids to what I do, people have pain, right? You know, it seems somewhat natural, but I think for a lot of naturopaths, it’s just not, you know, because the scope is big enough to help about anybody.

Dr. Deb Muth  08:54

Yeah, I agree, and I think so. You know, the idea of talking about a topic or a dis-ease, right? An ailment. It’s kind of whatever is the flavor of the day, right? Five years ago, six years ago, it was all about SIBO. Now it’s all about mold, and we can keep shifting all of those things. But ultimately, the message, in my opinion, should be more about what that person wants from their life.

Dr. Deb Muth  09:20

Instead of us talking about disease, let’s talk to the client about what it is they want to have success in and in that area, then it allows the naturopath to open up all the different tools that they have in their toolbox to help them reach that final goal. And I think if we speak from that message, we’re doing the client a better service, and we’re doing ourselves a better service in business.

Manon Bolliger  09:44

Absolutely. And I think, you know, I mean, business works with a goal, right? So often it helps. You know, it’s like we’ve been trained to think, Oh, get rid of this pain.

Manon Bolliger  09:56

So we’re always focused on the pain or the symptom, rather than the reason you want to have no pain, you know? And when you focus people on the reason, it changes everything, it’s like, suddenly, it’s almost like they’re super conscious, comes into gear and boom, you know, we’re, we’re ready, we’re, we’re hearing the messages that, you know, there’s a goal worth attaining, and and then you become more creative. You’re, you’re willing to go along with what, what you’re prescribed, you know, if it fits. You know the feeling, right? But, yeah, no, I agree. So, so you have a business school to help, also practitioners rather, yeah, tell me a little bit about that and what started in that.

Dr. Deb Muth  10:50

Yeah, so I have a school called Functional Medicine Business Institute, functionalmbi.com. Is the website, and what I found is a lot of practitioners that come out of school still feel inadequate. You know, nobody teaches us business unless you go to business school. So nobody teaches us that. And so starting out, it’s very overwhelming. We don’t know all the things that we need to have until it’s too late. And so I help them set up their business structure from the very beginning and walk them through everything, help them find out who is their ideal client. How do we speak to that ideal client? What’s your why? Why do you want to do this in the first place? Because there these days are long and they’re hard, and you better have a pretty good why? Because some days the business beats you up, but if you don’t have a strong Why, you’re not going to be able to stick with it. So we talk about that, and then I call it like office in the box. So I’ve been in business a long time, 25 years, I’ve put together pretty much every tool any business owner is going to need. So we share all of our protocols with them, all of our documents for hiring and firing and HIPAA and policies and procedures and medical protocols. That’s one of the other things that I found such a lack in when people finish functional medicine school or even naturopathic school, not so much naturopathic, but functional medicine school, doctors and nurses and nurse practitioners that go to a functional medicine program, they come out needing a protocol. They don’t know what herbs to give and what to give together and what’s the dosing to use, and how do I look at this lab from a functional standpoint? And so part of the component of our program is we sit down on a monthly basis and meet with all of our students, and they present cases, and we will help them put those protocols together and navigate some of those really difficult cases. And then we share all of our protocols that we use for every disorder in the practice with them as well, and so it really helps them feel not alone, and gives them somebody to call on when they don’t know what to do.

Manon Bolliger  12:49

I mean, it sounds more than business, right? It sounds like like case, you know, case acknowledgement, case…

Dr. Deb Muth  12:58

Case review.

Manon Bolliger  13:00

Case review and yeah, I do find that that’s a definitely a problem, less so, like you say, with naturopaths, because we do. We have a, you know, almost two years of doing clinical, you know, that allows to have some confidence. But a lot of the problems I saw is not doing follow ups, not letting their clients know what’s expected of them or their patient. How about you on your end?

Dr. Deb Muth  13:32

Yeah, same thing. You know, I had a great mentor early on, and he taught me, if I wanted to have a busy practice and a successful practice, I would make sure that my clients had a follow up scheduled before they left at their visit, and they knew exactly what they were supposed to do and when they were supposed to come back. And before he told me that I was doing the same thing, I would just let them go and say, Well, call me when you need me. And then I was giving a ton of free care away. And then I was getting frustrated, and so once I started scheduling those regular follow ups, I found that it was so much easier for the client, because they knew okay by this time they needed to make sure they had all these things done, and if they had a problem, they would call. But they were calling less often, so it was having to do less management in between my visits and less free care in between my visits, because I scheduled those regular visits with them, and that built my practice incredibly like I went from having maybe a quarter full practice to within a year and a half, I had a completely full practice just by scheduling my follow ups consistently with my clients.

Manon Bolliger  14:38

And I think too, though, a lot of the practitioners hesitate to do that because they feel like, well, maybe they don’t need it. Maybe, you know, etc, etc. The lots of reasons, yes, maybe it’s not necessary in some cases. But I’ve heard that, you know, most of the people. Patients, because as I was trying to give away my practice, and as I was moving less and less and taking more space for Bowen College, it was that I heard from the patients. I don’t feel like I’m taken care of, you know, I’m left. I don’t know when do you think I should book and so I just said, like, make it a thing, you know, the follow up and tell them you can phone, you can cancel it out, right? Or, yeah, not yet the right time, you know, but at least the onus is on them, and they’re participating in their health project. I think that’s essential. What other things have you really noticed that practitioners needed help with, or?

Dr. Deb Muth  15:51

I think they need help with talking to clients, like how to talk to them at a level that they understand. It’s very easy for us to get into the science and get into the research, because that’s what we love, right? But we forget that we’re talking to somebody A who’s not going to geek out on the science like we are, and B, they don’t understand half the language we’re using to them. We’re speaking a foreign language. It’s like, I tell my IT guy, you have to talk to me in English because I don’t understand your language. It’s like, if I was going to start to talk to start to talk to you in medical language, you wouldn’t understand what I’m saying. And we have to talk to people in a way that they understand. It’s it’s not that it’s demeaning to them, but it’s not their world. And if we talk to them in a manner that they get and we put the symptoms and the problems that they’re having into their daily life and how it’s going to affect their daily life. A, they understand it more. B, they’re more inclined to do what we tell them to do, because now it makes sense to them on a personal level. We can’t just assume that everyone has the same goals and the same responses, and then giving them something to take with them at follow up afterwards is so important, because we can talk for an hour and they’re only going to retain a small fraction of what we talked about, and then they get home and they forget what we said. So if you could have something that you can send home with them, whether it’s something in writing or you create a video, if you find yourself saying the same thing over and over again, create a video and then send them the video so they can listen to it as many times as they want. It’ll save you so much time on the back end when they call and say, What did she say about this again?

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Manon Bolliger  18:37

Yeah. Oh, so true. I think we went down very similar paths. I had a bunch of videos, you know, when do you repeat? Like a remedy so that they do. Because ultimately, patients have to be, you know, feel autonomous and be in their health, you know, but because of the lack of really understanding, like it, it’s not, it’s just a different understanding, right? They can be also fully hoodwinked, you know, by safe and effective or, you know, things that are FDA approved. What does that mean? You know?

Dr. Deb Muth  19:18

Right.

Manon Bolliger  19:20

No, I mean, I think it’s, it’s so important because, you know, during this, I mean, I’m in Canada, so we don’t, we just got out of a month ago where the health care workers in BC finally did not have to take this bio weapon only a month ago. Yeah, and we lost 17,000 healthcare workers.

Dr. Deb Muth  19:45

Wow, just leaving the field?

Manon Bolliger  19:50

Yeah. It’s just unbelievable, you know, but, but the thing is, that can happen, you know, if, if you’re not communicating fully what it is that we want here, what is it we want? Is it just, you know, the wiping off of symptoms, or how does our immune system work? You know? Why? Why do we need these unproven, foreign and now more and more dangerous as we find out, you know, and I think you know, with JFK coming up, we’re going to have it blown out in the public.

Dr. Deb Muth  20:28

Yes, we are. There’s going to be a lot of shock coming, I’m afraid.

Manon Bolliger  20:34

I think so. And I think too, I was going to ask you this, how do we prepare for that? Because I think, you know, I thought, when this whole pandemic started, I thought, you know, I reached out to my board, all excited, hey, this is our chance to really do something as naturopaths. Well, no, we just had to follow the board was bought and everything was anyway. It’s just the crime is so big. But I was naive thinking that we could, you know, just do basic stuff that would help people boost their immune system and stay healthy and not succumb to 99 point whatever. Some ridiculous, small chance of getting something, you know? But now we’re dealing with a big problem, because people have been, have come to mistrust, but they have been lied to, you know. And the people who have symptoms, and those who you know, wonder if the symptoms are related or not, like this, being lied to is, is a huge component of health. Mental health is now deeply affected, you know. So I feel like the the naturpaths orfunctional medical doctors almost, you know, it’s time to kind of look at this very seriously, so that we don’t have to talk about doom and gloom, that there really are things to be done, right? You know?

Dr. Deb Muth  22:18

Yeah. I agree. I mean, there’s a lot of things that we were not told the truth about, and a lot of things that were hidden from us. And the people who understand that are doing fairly okay with it emotionally, you know, they’re angry. They’re doing okay with it, the people who didn’t know that our governments are not great, and they’ve we can’t always trust them, and over the years, they’ve used us as guinea pigs and things like that, where they really haven’t had a clue about that. Those are the people that are really struggling now with this information that’s coming out, if they even understand it’s coming out, because so many of them are blind to it. They don’t know. They’re on vaccine number seven or eight, and they don’t have a clue, but they’re starting to figure things out, and they still don’t understand the magnitude behind it. They just think it was an error. And I think when RFK brings some of this information to the forefront, even more so than he ever has, and the masses actually hear it. You’re absolutely right. There is going to be a lot of mental health issues. There’s going to be a lot of anxiety and anger and distress and post traumatic stress of some of this. And as a medical community, we have to address this. We have to address that our you know, our medical system has not always been 100% on the up and up, and neither has the government. And how do we fix that? And how do we change that, and how do we support these people as they transition through understanding this is going to be very key to them coming out on the other side of it in a healthy fashion, both emotionally, physically and spiritually.

Manon Bolliger  24:04

Yeah. I mean, some lessons are harder to take, you know, and, and I think the other thing too, I mean, at least when the well meaning and honest medical doctors who spoke, you know, like Makala and there’s, I don’t want to start naming because I’ll forget, but there thankfully have been quite a few banned and censored. And you know that thing, of course, which is what the problem was. Otherwise more discussion on the subject. But because they’re medically trained and only medically trained, it’s really doom and gloom because they, they don’t see the body like we do, right? They don’t. Their focus has never been on healing. It’s been on management, you know? So really understanding that we can actually get better is not within their scope in that way, right? So I think there’s a real opportunity for you know, not, I don’t want to say alternative, it’s the wrong word. But parallel systems that you understand the human body and understand spirit and understand energy and understand all of it, you know, I think you know, there’s, there’s people heal. People heal spontaneously, no matter how dark it can be and and how it can be sometimes you hear, Oh, well, they’ve their immune system can’t function as well. Well, okay, yeah, genetically, there’s been modifications into the genome. But is that an incurable situation? Is that not something in epigenetics that we can deal with? Of course, it must. It must be.

Dr. Deb Muth  26:07

Yeah, I agree. And I think you know, this is what integrative medicine is supposed to be, right? The best of both worlds coming together. The world of natural and spiritual and energy combined with the best of our traditional medical system as we know it. You know, our traditional medicine system really is herbs and plants and food and that kind of thing, but the traditional system as we all know it now because it’s been stripped from us for so many years. But you know, there are good things in both worlds, and we if we blend them together, people can heal.

Dr. Deb Muth  26:43

But I’ve never seen somebody heal who can’t heal their spiritual or mental health, but they can heal their physical side. They’re always stuck in that Limbo if they can’t feel heal their body as a whole. And I think that’s what’s so important. And with natural medicine, that’s what’s so nice, is that we address those things differently than what our traditional medical system does with psychology or medications and things like that, and we go at it from spirituality and energy and herbs and things like that, and it’s just different ways. But it’s exciting to see that some of the the natural modalities that in this country have now been squashed by the FDA have the opportunity of coming back again and really truly healing people, you know, peptides and exosomes and things like that. Those are things that really can heal. And they’re natural things. We just seem to want to make them a bad compound of some kind and and I’m excited for it. I’m really excited for this time and energy medicine being part of the the basic and the the whole piece, not just something that’s foofoo out here on the fringe that you do behind closed doors and don’t tell anybody about I’m excited for that to come to the forefront of medicine again.

Manon Bolliger  28:02

Yeah, I think it’s we’re definitely living, I think, in the most exciting time with all the the discoveries that have been suppressed, you know, it’s going to be just wild the, you know, because one of the things that animates human beings, is creativity, and when that’s not being stopped, you know, and like imagine, all the research that’s been done, you know, on cancer that has been squashed, right?

Dr. Deb Muth  28:35

Yes,

Manon Bolliger  28:36

People have been either persecuted, killed, their offices ransacked, whatever. You know, some something dirty. You know, when they’re when they’re free to share that with humanity and, you know, and different ways and different points, and you know, it’s going to be so exciting.

Dr. Deb Muth  28:54

It’ll be so exciting. I mean, we have to remember our health care system in this country, anybody…

Manon Bolliger  28:59

When we get behind, what causes it exactly stop, you know exactly, my Wi Fi went off. Could you repeat what you just said?

Dr. Deb Muth  29:10

Yeah, I was just saying, you know, we have to remember that, especially in this country, in the US, our care is sick care. It’s not healthy care, it’s disease care. And so there’s no benefit from a profit place for people to be healthy, there is only profit if people are sick. And so the opportunity of really, truly helping Healthy People and having people be financially well for helping people to be healthy instead of staying sick, that reward on the other side can be so great and really change our the foundation of our people around and it’s very exciting. I’m super excited to be part of healthcare at this point, you know?

Manon Bolliger  29:54

So, gosh, we don’t have much more time. What would you like to…I mean, there’s many questions, like, how did it, you know, how is that period? How did it affect your the people in your clinic? We could talk about that. We could also talk about something else in your practice that you really want to share. So I’ll leave it to you.

Dr. Deb Muth  30:17

Oh, yeah. You know, I think what I’d like to say, since we’re talking to practitioners, you know, when I got diagnosed with MS two years ago, I was really embarrassed and really hid from the diagnosis. As a naturopath, I felt so much shame that, how could this be happening to me as a naturopath? I didn’t want to tell anyone. I hid it from my staff for a really long time. None of my patients knew. Very little family knew. My immediate family knew, but nobody else outside of that knew, because I kept thinking, what are people going to think of me if they know? Will they think of me as a practitioner that can’t do their job anymore, what they think of me as somebody who’s inadequate because I let myself get sick. You know, all of those crazy thoughts went through my head, and what I realized is it was the biggest and worst decision I ever made by keeping it to myself, because I went through everything in healing my MS, by myself. It took me 18 months. I researched everything myself. I did go outside of the world, out of the country here, and partnered with another physician in New Zealand who helped me, who actually turned me on to a great PhD practitioner in Canada. And I learned a ton from him about healing the brain and getting rid of scar tissue, and I think now if I would have shared that I could have maybe healed faster and learned more and knew more, and could have allowed my team to support me more, because I felt so alone. And so, you know, I want to encourage practitioners that are going through stuff like this to not be afraid of telling your story, not being afraid of letting people wrap their arms around you. You don’t have to be the strong practitioner that everybody leans on and you can’t lean on anybody else. You can be human. You can be genuine. You can be real. And now that my patients know about it, I mean, they’re all so sad that they couldn’t be there to support me during this time, because I have patients that have been with me for over 20 years, and they’re like family, and they would have been there for me, and I really wish I would have shared some of the things that I was going through during this time with with everybody.

Manon Bolliger  32:38

Wow, yeah, that’s, yeah, I think if you feel lonely, definitely, it’s like, you know, there’s a tendency with diseases to blame oneself. We have to take responsibility, yes, but that’s very different than blaming oneself or feeling that, you know, yeah, that it…how did it happen to us? There might be something we’re doing wrong or whatever, right? That’s a big I mean, I know I went through that, you know, myself. It’s like, well, how can they trust me to help them with their problem if I can’t, even, you know, deal with my own house?

Dr. Deb Muth  33:21

Yes, yeah.

Manon Bolliger  33:26

But, yeah, I chose to keep it quiet for myself because, in part, I didn’t feel like I had the strength to deal with everybody’s stories. You know, sometimes, you know people are shocked, or they well intended, and they want you to do this, and they want you to do that. And I felt no you know what, I know what I’m going to do. And I created, actually, my own program to get myself out of it.

Dr. Deb Muth  34:01

I did too.

Manon Bolliger  34:12

But you’re like, so powerful.

Dr. Deb Muth  34:17

Yeah, it was great. I mean, I remember going to the literature and going, okay, what are all the things that cause MS, and how does it relate in my life, and what fits and what doesn’t? You know, you’re your own guinea pig. When you’re a practitioner, right? You’ll try anything and and so that’s what I did. I started playing with all kinds of different things, and finally developed what I felt was like the best protocol, and 18 months later, I had an absolutely clean brain MRI with no white matter disease present at all. And that just doesn’t happen. You know, we’ve all been taught that can’t happen. And Dr, Goodenow, who’s in Canada, who researched plasmalogens, encouraged me to say this can happen. And when I started learning about plasmalogens, I realized that that was the last piece of the puzzle for me that was going to clean away that white matter disease. And six months later, it was all gone.

Manon Bolliger  35:12

Wow. And what is his name? I didn’t quite hear it.

Dr. Deb Muth  35:15

Yeah. Dr, Goodenow.

Manon Bolliger  35:17

Goodenow, okay, And what province is he in?

Dr. Deb Muth  35:20

He is in Moose Jaw.

Manon Bolliger  35:22

In Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. interesting, yeah, anyway, and there’s so many different solutions, that’s the other incredible thing,

Dr. Deb Muth  35:33

Yes. And you know, I think that’s the important thing. And the thing that naturopaths and functional medicine people gravitate to more than any other medical practice, is that there is not a one size fits all. It is very individualized, and everybody’s story is different, and how they got there is different, and we take all of that into consideration when we’re working with them.

Manon Bolliger  35:56

Yeah, I think that’s profoundly the basis of our difference. Yes, I think that’s it really holds the space for healing. Thank you very much for having the strength as a naturopath and functional medical doctors. So thank you.

Dr. Deb Muth  36:14

Thank you for having me. This was a pleasure. It was really nice to have this conversation with you.

Ending

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