Everybody listening listening to Medicine remix of Duty. Thank you for calling the medicine remix hotline, please leave. Thank you. Hey guys, this is Eric Madrid. I'm a family physician Southern California. Just came across your podcast new on anchors. I was kind of looking to see what was out there and found your guys's stuff started listening to it, and I like what you guys have. I'm glad you were able to find a nice Outlet to help balance this crazy life of medicine that we all have undertaken. Anyway, talk to you guys later. All right. Have a good evening. What's really good remixed Hood, it's your boy riche. It's your podcast medicine remixed. And today's episode is another installment of our doctor Mentor. He's interview Series where we talk to doctors from various Specialties in medicine that Vibe with the remix culture that we're trying to create on our show medicine remixed. And our guest today is dr. Eric Madrid was a board certified Family Medicine doctor with an interest in holistic medicine, otherwise known as root cause medicine And we will talk about what that means in this episode doctor Madrid received his bachelor's degree in microbiology and molecular genetics at UCLA. He then graduated from medical school at the Ohio State University School of Medicine and completed his Family Medicine Residency at Presbyterian Inter-Community Hospital in Whittier, California where he served as chief resident. He currently practices at the Rancho Family Medical Group, which is affiliated with the Loma Linda Medical Center and he's also an assistant clinical professor at the University of California Riverside School of Medicine. He's the author of The Vitamin D prescription the healing power of the Sun and how it can save your life. So you already know we're going to be talking about some vitamin D in this episode. And dr. Madrid's writing has also been featured on Kevin MD and his podcast heal thyself has been featured on Apple podcast top health podcasts and has even made appearances on the top overall charts several times. Is episode covers a lot of ground from nutrition and supplements doctors doing social media and podcasting and the perspective hacking nature of doing medical missionary work. There's a lot of valuable nuggets in this one for anyone listening. So without further Ado do enjoy this phenomenal, dr. Midori interview with dr. Eric Madrid on the one and only medicine remixed. Well, hey Eric. Hey, what's going on? How's it going in its reach. Hey nice to talk to you reach nice to talk to you too. Thanks so much for agreeing to do this. Absolutely. So I was on your Instagram stories girlier to see what you're up to and it looks like you were up in Big Bear Mountain. I am yeah Big Bear Big Bear is a kind of a mountain resort here in Southern California, and we're blessed to have a kind of a second home up here. So All frequently come up here just to relax and do some extra reading and studying and writing and you know, try to help my brain get a little bit more creative as I get away from the busyness of everyday life down the hill. That's awesome. How often do you do that? I come up here about twice per month. Usually about two weekends per month at least sometimes more but at minimum twice per month. Okay. And is that something that you do with your family or are you kind of go up there? R it varies the kids, you know, I have three kids. My oldest is 20 have a 17 year old and a 16 year old the first year they're actually very excited, you know coming up here and then now they're kind of over it. So yeah, I'm kind of like if you guys don't want to go that's fine. I'm going right right. Sometimes my wife will come up here with me as well. So it just kind of depends it's only about an hour and a half drive from my house. So it's not that big of a deal. That's great. Yeah. I definitely want to dive into some of your routines and practices I mean Sounds like you have so much stuff going on from you know, your family medicine practice and you're also, you know teaching medical students and that you do a lot on social media. You have the podcast your husband your father and you know, kind of how you balance all those things that definitely want to get into a little bit later but one of the things that we try to do to just kind of start off these interviews, I mean, we consider doctors like the class thing Society has to axle superhero those without sounding too corny, but we want to typically start these interviews by asking what your first comic book I kind of looks like for you and other words. What is the error committed rid MD AKA holistic health man. What is the origin story there? Well, yeah, so it's interesting. I've been interested in, you know, holistic medicine Integrative Medicine actually ever since I was in high school and part of that actually I was inspired. Goodbye, Aunt of mine who was an RN and she also interested in using medicine are using food and herbs as medicines as opposed to Pharmaceuticals just so she kind of actually taught me and gave me some information and to me it just made a lot of sense that if we as future healers or as a future doctor if I could help encourage patients to live a healthy life. Style and eat appropriately that you know, that would obviously bring a lot of satisfaction and I always have said that to me it's a lot more satisfying to help prevent a hundred or a thousand patients from having a heart attack or stroke them to actually try to treat them after it's already happened. Right but interestingly I actually started off upon graduating from high school. I wanted to be a doctor but like a lot of people I thought it was going to take too long and that was kind of thing. Night settle for second-best and I actually started off as a business major. Okay, fortunately, I went to a community college because changing Majors would have been very expensive otherwise, right? So I spent two years at Cerritos Community College in the suburbs of Los Angeles here in Southern California taking a lot of business classes and so on but deep inside. I still have a desire to be a doctor. So about two years after you know, when I was just about ready to transfer I kind of had a you know, a wake-up call and said you know, what why am I doing this? I'm not going I'm not going to you know, enjoy I'm going to have regrets in my life if I don't pursue medicine, so then I actually switched over to science major and ended up spending four years at a community college in total before I transferred to UCLA. Okay, ironically, right? My first concern was I didn't want to waste time and there I was spending a couple extra years because I had changed my Majors but Again, I think education and any form is never really a waste and it would soon turn out that it would be at my benefit later on that business education. So, of course I go, you know go to UCLA microbiology and molecular genetics. I ended up going to medical school at Ohio State or the Ohio State as it's known in Ohio and a lot of Californians as you may know or may not know end up leaving the state. I think are you from California? No, I actually like the opposite from New York. Okay, okay. Alright, so a lot of Californians because there's so many people here a lot of Californians end up leaving the state of California to go to medical school and I was one of those. Okay, so I'm dead blind Ohio state did my Family Medicine Residency? And as you know, there's so much material to cover while in medical school and even residency. We're just trying to keep her head above water and trying to learn everything that we need to learn and obviously under that traditional approach. There was not much focus and attention put to nutrition and Holistic medicine and integrative approaches. So it kind of fell by the wayside. I'll be honest. I kind of you know spent those seven years of med school and residency just kind of trying to learn basic medicine and then upon, you know graduating from residency. I kind of you know, my flame got re reignited and I started just reading more learning more going to conferences studying more and just really deepening my knowledge and holistic medicine functional medicine integrated medicine and really trying to Practice more of what now seems like a lot of people are calling root cosmetics and trying to get to the root cause of the problem as opposed to simply giving a pharmaceutical for a symptom. Right and that's kind of where I am. Now. I'm kind of more of an integrated doctor and you know certified in Family Medicine, but you know, when I obviously treat people conventionally but a lot of times we'll use an integrative approach and really promote a diet and lifestyle changes and when appropriate if there's certain supplements that can be effective will add that or use that either in place of or in addition to Certainly, you know pharmaceutical drugs at the patient may need right, you know kind of going along with that, you know, the word holistic in general can have somewhat of a polarizing effect. So like how do you you know go about defining what a holistic approach is especially for people within medicine that might be critics of kind of the connotations of what's a holistic medical approach using supplements and you know other entities that aren't the traditional all treatments modalities that we use right? Well, I think if you if you just think of the term holistic, it means really just kind of taking a comprehensive approach one of the things and you know in medicine is that we tend to take a very linear approach. So the patient has high cholesterol. Yeah, you know the commercial say, you know, when diet and exercise is not enough talk to your doctor about, you know, Lipitor or whatever. The right medication is when diet and exercise are not enough adding Lipitor may help but let's face it. I mean you Diet and nutrition exercise is almost never a very limited Lee counseled to Patient. It's red because the the kind of system that we have. It's so rushed, you know, we have our 15 minute appointments. We're just trying to solve a problem give a person a drug and get on to the next patient. But in reality that approach to someone with high cholesterol really should be discussing or insomnia or anxiety or depression or whatever. The problem is. We really should be discussing diet nutrition exercise. Sighs how is that individual balancing their life? How are their relationships? And how are they sleeping at night time? So in reality that is a holistic approach just taking all these aspects into consideration, but I think we're frequently too quick to jump to the Pharmaceuticals. Also, right we say the patient comes in with high cholesterol. They see the cardiologist. They you know had McDonald's three times that week but because they're on 80 of atorvastatin their cholesterol looks great and the heart doctor says, hey great job. Whatever you're doing keep it up. Right and a lot of times these medicines can become an excuse for us. You know, it's almost like they wipe away evidence of the you know, the crime scene. Yeah, you know that that's that's interesting that you say that because you know, as you were kind of talking about this I was reminded about the movie Minority Report if you seen that movie, it's been a while. Yeah. Yeah, but you know what I'm talking about the whole idea of like pre-crime like preventing a crime before it happens. We're going to be waiting for me in the car was going to rape me as going to be stabbed. Here within a year pre-crime effectively stopped murder in our nation's capital and you know thinking about the analog are medicine inside wouldn't be wouldn't it be so great if we had a system like that and then it's like wait, we actually do you actually do have had system that we know what's going to kill you. Yeah, right really treat it as like this amazing thing about that. We have to be able to prevent disease. So I'm totally with you. Yeah, I'll give you a give you great. Example here to of a way that we kind of missed the boat. So so when we think let's take hypothyroidism for example, right? If you go online if you look up at Mayo Clinic you know.com or you know, Merc Merc manual or any of the leading medical journals, you'll see that the leading cause of hypothyroidism worldwide is iodine deficiency, right the leading cause of thyroid nodules worldwide is iodine deficiency. When was the last time you've ever seen an endocrinologist? Gist are a primary care doctor check and iodine level on a patient. That was not. Yeah, right and because we are we've been taught that the reason being is because since we supplement our since we have fortify our salt with iodine right that we don't have iodine deficiency in this country, right? But when was the last time you told the patient to add all the salt they want to their food right true. Yeah for the last 20 years. We've been doing the exact opposite. We should avoid salt avoid salt. Yeah, right and Interestingly it was it was a 2013 study based on the nhanes data, you know the government kind of gets together nutrition and health information and dietary information and puts out a report and in the United States, so they looked at people in the United States K. This is a few years ago in the United States 10 to 11 percent of the u.s. Population has a mild to moderate iodine deficiency. Well, they're okay and this is based on government data. It's not you know, it's not conspiracy medicine Journal at its mainstream thyroid medicine journals, right 10 to 11% have a mild to moderate deficiency. And if you were to actually factor in a mild deficiency based on I would estimate probably another ten percent. So we're talking almost one in five people in the United States have an iodine deficiency either mild moderate or severe interestingly 10% of the population has thyroid disease. But again, so my Approach To Medicine is like, hey, let's you know, let's try to get to the root cause yeah. Yeah. Outside were nodules you have an underactive thyroid, you know my own daughter actually had I deficiency. Hmm and you know, so we're treating her just for the multivitamin. I'm not gonna write, you know, am I getting crazy but again, but the fact is that you know, if we didn't, you know, this we would have look in the fact is you know, 10 to 20% of pretty high number for us to completely ignore. Oh, yeah. Now that's significant. So that's why I use holistic medicine. I kind of you know, go back to the basics. I think sometimes we get too caught up in all the science and to Caught up in you know and all the medications and I've had many patients, you know, go into afib and the hospital and and they're on you know, proton pump inhibitors and diuretics and you know, neither the ER doctor or or their cardiologist, you know, every check the magnesium level. So I also admit patients and I kind of also work as one of our hospitalists for for medical group, but sure enough, I'll check the magnesium level and it's severely low and I've had cases where patients do not respond to build high as I am, but all of a We give a bolus and magnesium and they go back into a they convert back to normal sinus rhythm, or they at least become very controlled right the Kaizen great in the works. But sometimes again we forgot the basics. Hey, let's check this person's magnesium Rubble. So I think yeah, so I think that's what I tried you at the med students, you know that come and rotate with us. I say, hey all this stuff that we're learning super important, but don't rebuild the engine without, you know, first checking to make sure there's gas and oil in the car. That's right. It seems like medicine nowadays is such a reactionary practice like you're describing. Scribing we're just throwing pills and surgery at things whereas we're not really emphasizing what the root causes and changing people's Lifestyles. So as you know, new agey as some people might find that some of these practices it's actually like going back to fundamentals essentially and really, you know, going back to the basics and I think that it's easy to lose sight of that with the culture of medicine nowadays, you know, just as far as the since we're talking about supplements and things like that the supplement industry is and Like very controversial sector of our society because of how high the unregulated it is and how little evidence there actually is about so many products that are out there supplement company to die. You do not need approval from the FDA before a product is marketed. You can make Health claims without prior approval from the government and you don't have to prove the safety or effectiveness of your product before putting it up for sale. So in your practice what supplements if any do you yourself believe in in and do you recommend to your patients and what supplements do you caution against if any so again the ones that I use most commonly, honestly, we're just be a simple multivitamin for example for patients because so many of us have a poor diet and you know, depending on our stress levels, you know, we each have kind of a unique metabolic demands right not, you know, not everybody needs to drink eight glasses of water a day, right? If you're 90 years old with congestive heart failure that's going to worsen your symptoms. You know, if you have marathon runner you running to You know 10 to 15 miles, you know in training every day and you drink eight glasses of water a day. You're going to be dehydrated, right? You know Shaquille O'Neal might need more nutrients than an Olympic gymnast who is you know for 10. So so again, we have to realize that each person has a unique metabolic demands and requirements. So to assume that one-size-fits-all is kind of I think a dangerous thing. But anyway, so number one would be a multivitamin just because there was something like what 90 vitamins and minerals so I figured are either on a biochemical level you either deficient you have the exact amount you need or you have excess right-wing one of those three things and with our poor diet that we have, you know, chances are that were not in excess the vitamins and the chances of us having the exact equal amount that we need is low. So, you know, so the evidence is actually quite deficient a lot of things. I'm so that's why I started with the multivitamins and then depending on certain symptoms that patients are having leg cramps migraine headaches. I've had a lot of success using magnesium primarily Aquila. Form though. Not the magnesium oxide. I think I absorbed very well and that just kind of you know, that's great. If someone has diarrhea, right but usually we use a chelated form like citrate or malate or something like that but magnesium and I've had great success and helping to prevent migraine headaches. I'll get rid of nocturnal leg cramps muscle twitches and so on a lot of these patients again are on maybe ppis or diuretic. So the we know that those drugs actually will bring upon a magnesium deficiency, right? I've had some patients, you know, I've utilized in John's work. Example for some patients with mild to moderate depression and there's pretty good evidence that the st. John's Wort could you know can work for that and what else why I have a lot of seniors as well. And right now, you know, there's a lot of concerns are how do we treat pain in the senior citizens or just in people in general and there's a bigger version towards using opiates. And so that kind of leads us would NSAIDs but a lot of seniors also have chronic kidney disease, you know stage 3 stage for whatever. That's right. So we can't really use NSAIDs. There's population. We can't use narcotics on this population time and I was no longer effective. So like what do we do? You know as Healthcare Providers to these patients that come to us and say hey I'm having severe pain. What do you know? So I've had good success using tumeric, uh-huh, for example, and their studies out there that show that it has a similar method of mode of action. It can inhibit the cyclooxygenase or act as a cox-2 inhibitor, you know, also, there's evidence that tumeric and the herb boswellia also can help reduce inflammation and I've had many patients who've been able to either reduce their need for opiates or reduce their need for n sets because they started taking turmeric or Omega 3 fish oil and they've been able to reduce the inflammation to a tolerable level. Yeah. That's a great point. My family is originally from India and you know, we use a lot of turmeric in our cooking but even on top of that my backgrounds in Orthopedics, and I have had my Other start taking turmeric supplementation on top of the turmeric that we have in our diet. And you know again this is probably not something that has been studied long enough for us to really prove the some people that it makes like a significant difference. But anecdotally I will say that my mother has definitely seen a difference and a lot of other patients that you know, I've taken care of have as well you typically recommend that they take turmeric in the pill form or also kind of like use it in their cooking or how do you If I build both actually, so I will encourage them to you know to use it in there cooking and you know, we have the tumeric powder in our in our spice cabinet and then also in a pill form as well usually as a capsule, I usually have them take it maybe 2 to 3 times a day around 500 milligrams and not helps usually at least with their Baseline and then you know and definitely, you know to use it, you know in their food as well. Okay, and if that's something that you would recommend to only Old better having pain or is it something that you feel like everybody should be taking I think it's a good supplement actually for a lot of people, you know, there's other studies to that would suggest that it's also helpful for for the brain and for memory and maybe even in the prevention of Alzheimer's disease. So I think anyone maybe with a family history of Alzheimer's disease or who's concerned about memory, it could be a helpful herb from some of my research to I think you know, Alzheimer's disease is definitely something obviously becoming more and more. Common is the population ages but it's not necessarily as common in India where there's a high turmeric intake and as you probably know too. So the active ingredient in tumeric is the curcumin right which is which is where we get the word Curry, right? So but India and gentle, you know, they tend to have a higher intake of the turmeric and curcumin so so maybe in a roundabout way that contributes to the reduced incidence of Alzheimer's disease compared to you know those in you know those in the Western Hemisphere and first thing Interesting. Yeah, you know one of the other things that I have read in is it's obviously multifactorial and I need to revisit this literature. But also, you know speaking more than one language I've heard has also helped with kind of reducing the risk of like early onset dementia and maybe even Alzheimer's but you know from the pathophysiology of Alzheimer's being related to you know, inflammation and things like that. I guess, you know, that's probably why There is a correlation that tumeric May reduce the risk of Alzheimer's my right and kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah, I've heard that as well. And from what I've read to tumeric also helps increase bdnf, which is a called brain-derived neurotropic Factor. So it's kind of a protein I guess or a factor that that's made in the brain that helps with neurogenesis or neural plasticity of the brain. So basically helps new nerves. Do you know we used to believe when I was in med school actually? We have to believe that the brain cannot be, you know, regenerated, you know, once you lose brain tissue, that's it. And now we know otherwise that the brain is very plastic and it can be regenerated. But you know every thought everything we learn every experience we have are actually creating new neurons and new connections. And that bdnf is one of those factors that's really important to do that. So, yeah, so tumeric helps with that exercise helps with that, you know, so this is what I tell patients to and they're worried about memory loss even I say hey. A you need not only do you need to eat right and have a diet You Know Rich and and antioxidants and fruits and vegetables and you know these certain supplements that you know can potentially be helpful, but you need to exercise as well. And I think again the prom with Western medicine is where the oh you have memory issues here some Aricept here's some Namenda that's not working. And you know, we just kind of leave it at that. And again, it's never that simple. You know, why those medicines may be helpful. They might only be a small part of that equation. So if there's 20 things contributing to a Memory loss we need to address all 20 things and that's again goes back to being a whole holistic approach. Yeah, you got to address all 20. Whereas each individual one. You may not notice any significant difference and that's why maybe a lot of these studies don't show don't show benefit because it's kind of like giving, you know giving a person who's in debt a dollar and uh, of course, they don't go out of debt with the dollars. So therefore the conclusion is money will not get you out of debt price, right? It just not enough, you know, we need to address the whole thing. That's right. Yeah, that's a great point, you know in prepping for this interview. Also, I learned that you wrote a book back in 2009 called the vitamin D prescription the healing power of the Sun and how it can save your life talk about why you decided to write that book and what that process was like writing that book in the context of being a full-time family doctor and maybe some important points as well. Discussed in that book sure. So now you can remember this is in 2009 in 7 in Southern California, which has the most Sun probably of you know one is you know, almost anywhere and they not in the world. Yeah, probably 330 days of sun per year and here I am testing my patience for a vitamin D deficiency, right? And at the time there was only one other book on Amazon and it was written like around 2001 and and so on and Obviously it didn't get much traction because it took you know, most another decade for vitamin D deficiency to become a to become commonly known and accepted. So I've always been kind of a contrarian so kind of you know, go against the grain and whatever aspect of life and so I'm trying to remember exactly how I think it was a patient who came to me and they said hey patient came to me. She had really bad fibromyalgia and she said hey, can you check my vitamin D level? I might learn something. If on your vitamin D levels great. She's like no and I was reading this thing on the internet right again. This is like 2007 mode in 2006. So the internet, you know many cases didn't you know, it's kind of a joke back then right? Would you see that the internet, you know, obviously little more credibility. So she's like, you know, I read it blah blah blah and you know just being open-minded I said, hey, let me look at what you got and you know, let me say if I look up I do some research on vitamin D deficiency. I look up The Merck Manual and it talks about vitamin D deficiency can cause Muscle aches joint pains and I'm like thinking oh my gosh, it sounds like fibromyalgia. Right? Right. I must abide by the definition there. So so I you know, go ahead and order a vitamin D 25 hydroxy level on her and sure enough. Her level was low. It was like it was like 12 and I was like, wow, this is amazing, you know what's going on here? So, you know, so I had a couple other patients with fibromyalgia and at this point, I'm like, yeah, I'm going to test them. Maybe five or six patients and sure enough all of them were deficient. Wow. And so I started going to my colleagues. I'm like, hey, look, I've been checking these people for vitamin D deficiency and they're like, yeah. Sure. This is Southern California. What are you doing? Oh my God. I'm like look, I actually had to bring the lab results to the meetings to show them and their that kind of got their attention. And so that's kind of where it started and then I just started doing more and more research and you know started reading a lot of the journal articles that are out there. R there's a dr. Holick at a Boston who kind of one of the vitamin D gurus is done. A lot of research on it. There is a organization down in San Diego couple doctors out of UCSD who found that geographical locations where there was less vitamin D that there are higher rates of colon cancer and breast cancer. And then of course, I remember to med school right? They teach us the latitude and how that increases one's risk for multiple sclerosis, right? So then I started researching that so, you know because I kind of have like a nadie. HD Personality, yeah, it started off. I'm thinking him. He's going to write like a six-page article and may be submitted to the American Academy of family physicians. I've got like Forrest Gump. I just kind of kept going going and going I just kept on going to like 200 pages right and you know printing up, you know just hundreds if not thousands of Articles and then I ended up, you know publishing my book back in 2009 and then kind of the whole vitamin D re you know, and it's had its Ever see in this sense since then, you know like whether or not supplementing is really helpful or not. And you know a whole bunch of studies say yes, if you study say no and you know, I think it goes back and forth, right but in either case it definitely, you know, we're still relatively early and understanding that the vitamin D, which is actually a hormone, you know steroid hormone and how it can affect overall health and I'm actually thinking of can't believe it's already been nine years since I wrote the book. Yeah, so I'm actually thinking of starting an updated version here for the ten year anniversary. Verse 3 and the maybe I'll have something coming out next year 2019 updated version. Yeah, that would definitely be timely and you know, I totally agree. I feel like I hear so much more about vitamin D these days. So I feel like you were you know, definitely a Pioneer the back in 2009, you know writing about themes related to that. So how did you go about wind up like self-publishing that or what was that process like? Yeah. So so initially I was looking for Publishers and it was kind of difficult. So then I kind of I end up self-publishing it through Amazon which made it nice and then I reached out to some other literary agents. And if you recall back in 2009 2008, it was kind of during the economic collapse. The stock market was down and I met was a guy in Manhattan a book publisher. I was real excited just even meet with him and stuff but at the time Russian companies were being real skeptical and real hesitant because of the you know, just the economic crisis that was going on and you know, people have less discretionary income. So at least that's what he told me that you know that nonfiction and so on where you know kind of risky at that point, so and I said, okay that's fine. I just ended up self publishing it and pretty much you know, it went through Amazon and that's kind of where you know majority of things are purchased at least when it comes to books nowadays anyway, so so it's worked out good. Yeah now that was very timing and as far as the amount of time that it took You too, kind of compiled all of that research. He started that kind of in 2007 kind of prompted by this patient and how long did it take you and how did you kind of find a pockets of time in your day? We put that together and it wasn't easy. So yeah, so I started researching it in 2007. It was probably when I started seriously writing the book it was probably mid 2008 and literally I would before I would leave my office at the end of the day I would go on. Mad pull up a couple articles print them up go home and read them and you know, sit down on my computer for an hour or two while you know, my kids are doing their homework or my wife's was doing her work or sometimes even when we were watching a family movie. All right, so that's that's tough. But you know, I frequently tend to do that when we're watching, you know TV or watching TV just because I don't like to I try to be productive as much as possible when I'm awake. Yeah, I think most of us try to multitask to the best degree. A possible. So I would just write you know a few pages here and a few pages there knock out some more on the weekend then like I said about a year later it was I think I think if you're a couple hundred Pages 210 Pages or something like that and just slowly kind of, you know work on it over the course of the year. That's phenomenal. I mean, I feel like it's so many doctors now, especially with the rise of social media and having an outlet to kind of get their message out there and there, you know so many platforms including you know pod. Captain now. How did you kind of get started in social media and with the podcasting and what like daily routines if any do you have and it may be similar to kind of what you just discussed about your book and finding time to get that time in with social media and podcasting but kind of take me through your journey in social media and ultimately finding podcasting and how that all kind of went down. Right? So I've always been very creative. You know creative spirit in that sense. I'm always like trying to trying to create new things do new things and kind of push the push the limits and don't my first, you know, like most people my first experience with social media was my space right here. Everyone's best friend was Tom and yeah that was back in the early, you know to thousands or so and I remember when I got my first Mac computer, this is probably like in 2005-2006 and this whole idea of Justine was pretty pretty exciting again, my date might be off a couple years, but I think it was around 2006 maybe 2007 glaze and I got my first nap and there was a thing called podcast and I'm like wow, this is great. So I would experiment actually back then on my Mac and I actually made a couple of podcast back then but I didn't have the time really or the or the material in the sense the variety and the diversity of material and the time to do the editing as well. And it was a lot more complicated than it is now. Oh, yeah, like the anchor app is just amazing. Yeah, and so I dabbled with it, you know a decade ago and then it kind of went on the back burner and I think you know, I think I was using pot being I think at the time and ended up removing the podcast because you know, nothing happened with him for a couple, you know many years. So then we kind of jump forward and you know, like I said, I have three kids we had meet my wife and I we had them while I was in medical school which and residency which is not necessarily advised but It's difficult. But now that they're older it's kind of nice because I'm I'm only 46. All right little bit right have that freedom. But anyway, so, you know, of course them with the kids and the social media, you know, I don't want to be one of those old dabs, you know, and totally out of the loop. So I had to kind of keep my social media skills up. It's only guys got my Instagram account at three four years ago. And of course Facebook, which now I guess is the old person's right social media Snapchat, you know. Download download a year ago, but didn't really use it as more just to spy on my kids and make sure there's no trouble and but you know, then my wife is a little bit more into social media. So she really like show me how you this is how you do a story and this is how you do it and it's done. So then I really, you know, I posted stuff like Dennis Bergkamp years ago and you know, then I was kind of off it for a while and then I think just with the natural growth of it, you know ended up with but followers and so on and if I got more into it just probably this past summer and stuff started posting more. And then when I kind of discovered anchor and you know the ability to make podcast and so on so just kind of now, you know doing that. I mean working on between the anchor podcast and you know working on some of my books and things that I write log articles that I write as well and you know, and it just try to do that and you know now that the kids are older they don't want to really spend as much time with us parents. I have to find me my wife top to find ways to not only enjoy each other, but you To entertain ourselves as well. Sure. So do you have any specific kind of routine with social media or podcasting like you have specific times of day that you kind of dedicate to that or is it more of like an organic kind of a process where you know, you're just posting when you feel like it. Yeah. I'm trying to you know, I'm trying to maybe post at least one time a day sometimes more and if I do it it's maybe can be like morning lunch time in the evening. Just kind of when I'm not in the clinic or not have a little bit of spare time, but But as you know, you know, we have to really put time from this on things because you know, you can be on social media and that's you know, you spent 30 minutes and you're like, wow, it's just I just wanted to post one thing and it was going to take me a minute and now it's been 30 minutes, right so it can really zap ones time. So I find it important to try to balance that out and you know, so if I post like right before I start seeing patients then obviously I won't get sucked into into the media to that degree because I'll have other other responsibilities that I need to attend to. Yeah. No, absolutely and Yeah, it's definitely definitely a challenge but I feel like it's one of these things that that's really important. I mean depends on who you talk to and definitely for more of the Old Timers in medicine. Like there's still a lot of skepticism and fear around it. But I feel like the benefits far outweigh the risks as far as like how I see it. How do you think social media can be really helpful for doctors in practice Yeah. I think it could be very helpful in a sense. Even when I look at the med students nowadays or we have PA students who rotate with us. Well, you know the attention span of the millennial generation is definitely shorter and one aspect they need rapid transitioning of images so to speak so one aspect it's a way to educate as well because you know, the use of memes you can really tap a lot of information and a lot of quality information. And of course, you always have to be skeptical of the source as well because pretty much you know, anyone can Anything and people are going to believe it. So I think it's important to you know, kind of fact check whatever's out there as well that if the sources are reputable and if the people have, you know, some kind of experience behind them and so on then I think you know, it could be a great tool for Education only of healthcare providers, but also just patients in general also can be a good way for health care providers to grow their practice for healthcare providers may be to get a following so to speak who you know in the future of one has a book or some other Paper or article that's written. It's easy to disseminate it to you know thousands and thousands of people whereas it would have been very difficult to do that. And without the use of social media, right? It's phenomenal, you know, your podcast has really taken off. I feel like in a short amount of time even though it's funny what you were talking about doing the podcast thing back in the day me and Dee my co-founder of the men's remix. We did something very similar back at it was a little later than you did even maybe around too. As in 10 or 11. We also kind of host it on COD Dean and at that time we were you know, we were roommates we were like in the same place. We kind of had to be in the same place at the same time and you know had all this like recording equipment and we had the edited and figure out all these RSS feeds and stuff. And then it was what until much much later that we discovered anchor and figured out that you know, we could be doing this remotely and you know in any down time that we had in the hospital or like owner commutes and things like that. But when did you join anchor was it? It you know just this past year or yeah this past year. I think I joined it may be in May and then you know, like anything, you know, the first step is always the hardest things. I sat on it for a couple of months and had my hesitancy. I was scared. I was like, oh my how about you know, what if I don't but if I sound funny because of course, none of us like the way we sound when we hear us. Yeah, so I had that nervousness that I think a lot of people have whenever they're trying to do something new, especially when right off the bat knowing that I D under the scrutiny and be evaluated by by other people and I remember just telling myself, you know, what the first 10 or maybe even the first 20 are really going to suck but I gotta just do it and over time. It's just gonna get better and better and better so I had to just kind of stick myself out there and and and make it work and see what I can do. And you know, I think I've gotten a bit better over time and I hope to you know, even continue to improve is the you know, as time goes on. So basically this summer is when I really just kind of started Started doing it now. It's amazing. And and you know, like I said, it's really has taken off in a short amount of time. We've been kind of following you from afar and congrats on the success. You've been like featured. Thank you, like the top 10 a health-related podcast on Apple and we even saw you make a few appearances on you know, the the top charts overall, which is just phenomenal talk a little bit about what your podcast is about and why you think it's had the That it had which has been tremendous. Like I said, thank you. Yeah, so the title of in is heal thyself, which interestingly when I was even skeptical about using that title, right because that's kind of like an old turn. Yeah, he'll die self like, you know, this is shows my age even more and again, I'm only 46 but I'm baking is this going to appeal to see the appeal maybe to the seniors but you know, I don't know what percentage of them are listening to podcast. I want to make from appealing to all to all demographics. So I called it heal thyself and really my goal. Goal is to provide information and to empower people to heal themselves because it's not your job is the doctor or it's not our jobs is the position. So to a degree our job is to heal patients and to help patients and to help improve their quality of life. But but we're only seeing them, you know, I mean, even if you see somebody four times a year for a 15-minute appointment, you're only spending an hour with them each year, which is just a small blip on the screen. That's right. And so how much Information can we really give them how much can we really do and just a 15-minute appointment? That's really going to transform their lives. So what we really need to do is put them on the path so that they can change their own lives so that they can become encouraged and motivated and to provide them with the resources and knowledge in the education to continue to work on themselves to heal themselves. And you know, I kind of feel sometimes I'm you know, yeah, I'm kind of like a life coach and a health coach at the same time because you know I can tell. You something avoid this or do that? But unless you're going to my patients leave the office unless they're going to maybe read an article read a book or watch a documentary perhaps on you know on Netflix or Amazon Prime, which I tend to promote, you know, try to encourage them to do that and a lot of people tend to be in love as their you know, with their TV or with their mobile phones, whatever they can watch documentaries, but I try to encourage him like Hey, you need to become a you know, get a minor in nutrition major key. Ellen is only a small aspect of it. So that's really what I'm trying to accomplish is to encourage people to educate themselves get a minor in nutrition. So to speak unofficially learn about it read about it. And you know, the fact is the more we focus on something the more we will manifest that in our life, right? So if you're focusing on health and nutrition you're reading about it, you're more likely to eat healthier make better decisions, you know be more physically active because that's what's in the Forefront of your thought process and that's really what I'm trying to accomplish here just to empower people No, absolutely not. I think you're doing a tremendous job and definitely, you know encouraging to see how quickly people have kind of caught on. What are you doing? If anything as far as you know, promoting this to your patients and students why I've interviewed for example, a medical student at Loma Linda because he rated with me and I think he shared it with a lot of his friends and colleagues so that actually got a lot of a lot of listens and then I would use Facebook as well to promote it or I have it pretty decent following on Facebook and then also Instagram And then also as I mentioned before my kids, you know, like most Millennials nowadays are masters of social media. So so my my two sons have one has almost 20,000 followers on Instagram. So he's shouted me out a few times on this story and my other son passed almost a hundred sixty thousand followers. So he shouted me out the few times in the story. So that also kind of drove some traffic to the site as well. Okay, I guess the influencers. Don't fall far from the tree I guess. Exactly exactly. That was another thing to my son had my son also has a business podcast and he started out a couple of years ago. So, you know in a roundabout way. I was re-inspired again. I'm like, you know, my my son and he's not even using anchor he's doing the old school where huh, but I'm thinking hit my son can you know start a podcast and do well with it I go. You know what? Let me let me try this again and let me you know restart this process and so on. So again, I was kind of you know, our children Inspire us. Anyways, you know that we don't always realize you know, when they're young. We don't realize how they will inspire us when they get older but I think any parent out there as kids that were inspired in many ways by her own children who will let you know teach us things about ourselves that we never realized. Yeah, that's phenomenal. You know this a few like quick questions and we'll wrap this up. I want to be mindful of your time. Don't get back to enjoying the mountain there. Thank you. So I found in prepping for this interview also that you've been doing missionary work in Haiti since 2006. And I just wanted you to maybe touch on how you got into doing that kind of work and any notable experiences or impact that this work has had on your life and your practice. Yeah, I'll be honest they're going and going on these missionary trips is actually been life-changing to be rather on. It's one of my colleagues. He had been going to Haiti the current Medical Group. I work with its Rancho Family Medical Group and Southern California, where in the southwest Riverside County and the other looks like seven. We have like 17 18 doctors and Just as many PA Sanders practitioners. And so I joined the group back in 2005 and one of my colleagues have been going to Haiti for about 10 years or so about seven years at that point and he got interested because his patients he had a couple of patients who had started a non-denominational the religious-based christian-based that it's a non-denominational Mission nari group. So he basically added the medicine to it. So we would go out there and basically provide medical Outreach. To those in the What's called the central plateau of Haiti. It's about a about a maybe a three hour drive from Porter branch. And and I've gone probably about a dozen times over the last 10 years we go for about one week at a time and I'll be honest like it's really changed my life and they sense of yeah, I mean, let's face it. Everyone has problems. We all have problems and even here in the United States by the richest country in the world, one of the higher standard highest standard of living in the world, but yet we're still Anxious we're still depressed. We still have insomnia and then I kind of realized that a lot of it really just comes down to perspective because I bend it, you know for the most part even the poorest here in this country for the most part. I mean, there's always excepting for the most part we pretty much have a roof over I had we, you know, pretty much you're getting at least one meal a day and so on and you know, obviously we have higher expectations for you know for us here in America, but we have clothes, you know, we have shoes for the most part. And when I went to Haiti, it just broke my heart because you know, there's still so many people there who don't even have the basic necessities that we all take for granted. So and by that I mean shelter right or they might live in a an adobe like house with mud walls in a thatched roof. So, of course when it rains will frequently does over there no water leaks into the house and then they have a dirt floor or they may not have shoes. So there's a lot of kids, you know running around with Shoes on you know, they have to walk five or six miles to a well to you know to be able to provide water to get water for the family. And so it really just kind of I think allowed me to appreciate the situation that I'm in and that we are in here in the United States. But then also just to be more mindful others around the world and saying hey, you know, when we're in a position where we can help others and provide medical care and do things that we need to make sure we get back. Because not everyone has the Good Fortune, you know that we have I mean to see a kid, for example, I had one patient there and he was probably about nine years old and he comes up to see us and he has pus coming out of his ear right a horrible case of Titus media. He has a ruptured tympanic membrane ruptured eardrum and I ask them is how long has this been going on? They said three weeks. So this could help us with coming out of his ear for three weeks because they didn't have the money to get an antibiotic or didn't have the resources there. To see a doctor so they can get an antibiotic which you know, really just cost, you know, maybe a couple of dollars wholesale. Wow, and so of course we gave them the antibiotics and you know, and he was able to get better and stuff. But again, you know things like that and it's only a two-hour flight from Miami. It's a tragedy. Yeah. Yeah, I think really perspective is a very valuable medicine and it's definitely something that I get quite a bit every time I, you know, go back to see where my parents grew up in. Tia and there's so many places like that around the world when you know, you really start to see the difference between third world problems and first world problems, and I think there's nothing like actually being in the setting itself to really drive that point home, right? How often do you get to do this? I go to Haiti once a year and open and just recently actually about two three weeks ago. I came back from the Philippines, which is the first time I had done a mission trip to the Philippines. So that was that was fun. Siding and so we had about you know about seven or eight days medical Outreach and then few know about four days of just aren't are fun and relaxation. So that was that was nice. Yeah. Yeah is that typically the time frame that you spend in Haiti as well. Your therefore for likes a little over a week. Yeah. So Haiti tends to be about seven days just because it's a little easier to get there and then Philippines. It's about a 12 to 14 day trip amazing. And you do this through your practice essentially or I do. Yeah, I do so there's about three or four other doctors in our this and then we'll go various times throughout the year to Haiti or to the Philippines always making sure that we don't leave at the same time in the sense, right? Because it would be too too much work for the those who stay behind right but one of the nice things to I think about going do need medical Outreach trips to Medical mission trips is one of the things that it kind of helped reinvigorate my excitement for medicine to because I feel that when we go there we can simply just be doctors, right? Yeah, and we're not worried about is this drug covered. Could we take medicines with us? We have our formulary that we're going to work from but again, we're not wearing like a let me give you a prescription. It's not covered. I'm going to get a callback and from the pharmacy or I don't have to spend if I spend 10 minutes or 15 minutes with the patient. I don't have to go spend another 10 minutes documenting the whole note the whole visit and what went on just from a med legal perspective. You know, we literally could just see patients take care of them do what's necessary and just keep moving on to will literally see hundreds and hundreds of patients each day. That's amazing. So, it's really it's really Nice in the sense because it kind of brings the joy back in medicine that sometimes you'll be a doctor's fun. But we have to admit as Healthcare Providers. The fun part is you know for you is probably doing the surgery or are actually taking care of the patient, but the not-so-fun part is, you know spending half the day on the computer left-clicking right clicking and typing this that's right. Yeah. No, I mean most of the job, you know winds up being in the documenting and the electronic medical record dealing with insurance companies and all of those, you know, I guess first world problems, right? Downwards but then on the flip in the third world when you don't have to deal with any of that, it's just like wow. Wow, I'm actually like way happier here. That is I don't have to you know, do all of them all those things that are causing my first one exactly because no one goes into med school say I'm going to med school because I want to sit spent half my day sitting in front of a computer typing and clicking right we go there to help people. That's right. So definitely very very enriching. Awesome. Well Eric, this is phenomenal. We covered a lot of different ground here. I would love to do. Around to at some points as you know, we continue to follow the success of your podcast and all the exciting things that you're doing with social media and definitely keep us posted on the vitamin D prescription 2.0 definitely promote the the hell out of it on medicine remixed and where can people find you in General on social. So on Instagram just Eric Eric Madrid MD and also the same on Facebook facebook.com forward slash Eric Madrid MD awesome and It will provide all the links in our show notes and I'm sure you've heard a few of our episodes Absolutely. You know, we do like kind of the mixtape styles of podcasting so we'll get this, you know chopped up and mixed in the next few weeks. And I think people are really going to get a lot of its. Yeah good job, by the way to it. I really enjoy it. I enjoy generics and you guys do a great great job with the sound effects and and I always look forward to listening to your episodes when they come out so I really Appreciate that man. Thank you so much. All right. Thank you. Have a good day. Alright, bye. Documentary documentary about that he told you to go see this is probably one of the hardest things to do and that's ask for help on any front asking for help. Medically. I don't need therapy asking for help LifeWise. Asking for help supporting medicine remix, I guess it's all uncomfortable no easy way to do it until now the folks over at anchor have decided to unveil something that we think is pretty dope called listener support and way it works is you go to Anchor dot f m / medicine remixed and it'll take you to our page. There's a support button click on it follow what it says and Bam. Now donated the vital blood to this organism that it needs to keep on pumping. Thanks for listening medicine remix.
In this interview, Reesh talks to Dr. Eric Madrid, a board-certified family medicine doctor with an interest in holistic/root-cause medicine. He currently practices at the Rancho Family Medical Group, which is affiliated with the Loma Linda Medical Center and he is also an Assistant Clinical Professor at the University of California, Riverside School of Medicine. Eric is the Author of the Vitamin D Prescription: The Healing Power of the Sun & How It Can Save Your Life. His writing has also been featured on KevinMD and his podcast "Heal Thyself" has been featured on Apple Podcasts Top Health podcasts and has even made appearances on the Top Overall Charts several times. This episode covers everything from nutrition and supplements, doctors doing social media and podcasting and the perspective hacking nature of doing medical missionary work. Enjoy! Visit anchor.fm/medicineremixed/support to learn more! Find us on Social Media:   Facebook: facebook.com/MedicineRemixed Instagram: instagram.com/medicine_remixed Twitter: twitter.com/medicineremixed  ---   Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/medicineremixed/message 