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In this episode, Vic and guest host Dr. Erica Oberg delve into integrative and natural medicine, focusing on longevity, chronic disease prevention, and optimizing health through personalized medical approaches. They discuss the role of naturopathic medicine, the importance of proactive health management, and the potential of modern diagnostic tools and treatments like full-body MRIs, genome sequencing, and advanced biomarker testing to enhance wellness and extend health span. Dr. Oberg shares...
In this episode, Vic and guest host Dr. Erica Oberg delve into integrative and natural medicine, focusing on longevity, chronic disease prevention, and optimizing health through personalized medical approaches. They discuss the role of naturopathic medicine, the importance of proactive health management, and the potential of modern diagnostic tools and treatments like full-body MRIs, genome sequencing, and advanced biomarker testing to enhance wellness and extend health span. Dr. Oberg shares insights from her extensive experience in the field, offering practical advice on achieving better health outcomes.
------🔎RESOURCES🔎
Dr. Erica Oberg’s website & blog
Cost Effectiveness of Prevention
American Association of Naturopathic Physicians
Institute for Functional Medicine
0:00 - Intro
0:52 - Dr. Oberg Background
9:14 - Dr. Oberg’s Credentials and Experience
11:50 - Explanation of a holistic approach in integrative, regenerative, and precision medicine.
18:00 - Health Optimization Strategies
20:00 - Screening and Diagnostics
23:02 - Cost and Accessibility of Services
30:00 - Early Cancer Detection
42:56 - Genetic Testing and Personalized Medicine
45:00 - Mind-Body Connection and Lifestyle Modifications
50:00 - Public Health Perspective
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Every week, healthcare VCs and Jumpstart Health Investors co-founders Vic Gatto and Marcus Whitney review and unpack the happenings in US Healthcare, finance, technology and policy. With a firm belief that our healthcare system is doomed without entrepreneurship, they work through the mud to find the jewels, highlight headwinds and tailwinds, and bring on the smartest guests to fill in the gaps.
if you enjoy this content please take a moment to rate and review it your feedback will greatly impact our ability to reach more people thank you welcome to hell further we have a guest episode today I'm really excited to talk about uh longevity with our guest Doctor Erica Oberg she is at Marquee Health Erica thanks for joining me appreciate this thanks for having me back I'm looking forward to it yes we met a month or so ago at the Aspen Ideas Health conference and I love to getting to know you and learning a little bit in between sessions about your work and really appreciating the time to talk through this so let's start off give the audience a little introduction to your background what where did you study how did you get involved in integrative natural medicine and longevity what are you been up to in your career yeah sure I'm a natropathic doctor I have been practicing for 21 years I graduated from Bastille University in Seattle a lot of people ask what is the big difference between natropathic doctors and medical doctors or osteopathic doctors a lot of it's the same but there's some differences in the details in terms of our training we all go to four year medical schools the first couple years are pretty much the same right all the anatomy and physiology and biochemistry and pharmacology but where it really differs is in the the clinical training nachapathic doctors uh don't do surgery or obstetrics and so that opens up a lot of time in the curriculum to do a much deeper dive into nutrition micro nutrients botanical medicine um a lot of actually uh counseling lifestyle change psychology things like that so that's the overview of training like all doctors we pass medical board exams after training to be licensed in the states we wish to practice in unique for a naturopathic doctor went on to do a residency and then a postdoctoral fellowship at the university of Washington and the fields of health promotion and so I actually spent the first decade of my career splitting my time between clinical practice and health promotion research so we ran a number of clinical trials essentially trying to reverse chronic disease with various different lifestyle programs and strategies and measuring the impacts of that on both health outcomes and also health system this outcomes such as cost and utilization across the health systems yeah excellent so give me a little bit of your personal interest what attracted you to this specialty in medicine as opposed to all the other things you might have gone into yeah I'm just passionate about helping people thrive I just have I have a lot of energy myself and I just know how much better I perform when I'm taking great care of myself and eating and getting the fitness and the sleep that I need and I'm just really passionate about helping people thrive no matter what stage of health or disease there in I think people can experience more health and wellness in the last months of their lives and they can do that at any other point in their career whether you're a busy executive or you're a stay at home parent or you're struggling with a serious chronic disease they're all opportunities to help bring a little bit more vitality and enjoy and function into people's lives and I've just been watching it happen for 21 years and I just feel so blessed that I get to make a living doing something that makes lives much better for so many people yeah what it struck me when we were talking in Aspen and it resonates again right now that there's a different tone talking with you or others in this field really in promoting health or being a proactive about getting one of your patients on a road to better wellness better health more energy I suppose to a lot of traditional medicine is about fixing a problem is that a fair distinction or would you categorize it differently we definitely fix problems too but I think there is definitely a difference in attitude there's a lot of pessimism and and discouragement I think in a lot of traditional healthcare systems and a lot of people show up in my office feeling disheartened feeling confused feeling like they've been given no hope and it's not really a matter of a hope it's a matter of just doing the appropriate investigations and finding where are the leavers that we can push on and engage to help somebody start getting better and improving their health really at that foundational root cause level and then for a motivational point of view it seems much more engaging much more optimistic to be able to talk about solutions of course we wanna correct situations that are causing negative symptoms but also leaning in and like making a positive difference improving their overall health is really uplifting or exciting for I would think for patients yeah exactly the the idea that actually getting better not simply signing up to manage a chronic disease for the rest of your life or slow progression right which is often talked about and heart disease or dementia but you can actually make improvements and gain health and functionality and we've shown that in clinical trials and other people have shown that in clinical trials that really is yeah it's very doable and attainable by I believe everybody yeah and let's talk about Marquee Health just permanently you recently last 6 to 9 months joined Marquee Health you're in California but Marquis I think is nationwide or at least across many states talk about Marquis just for a minute yeah I've recently joined Marquis Health as their Medical Director and it's a really exciting opportunity Marquis Health specializes in the longevity space and in helping uh clients take really deep dives into their health so we specialize in you what we call an in depth executive physical that includes everything from your full body MRI's and your full genome sequencing to testing your microbiome and all of those other metrics of health and function and when we have that much data we can really make very precise recommendations to help people optimize their life yeah excellent so let's dig in now this space is growing very quickly lot of excitement and attention around it at least for me the PETA Tia book recently got a lot of people more engaged in this maybe since covid to really start paying attention to longevity wellness what their options in integrative medicines a lot of terms that I'm not sure I understand and certainly the audience maybe doesn't fully understand so how should we understand the space integrative medicine regenerative medicine precision medicine can we spend a minute just talking about the terms what they mean or how you think about what the audience should approach this space yeah definitely a lot of the terminology is more in the branding space than in the medical specialty so in terms of medical specialties that you can be um board certified in natropathic medicine um there is an integrative medicine board certification available now and then there's some certifications they're not board level certifications but the Institute of Functional Medicine offers a certificate what's common across all of those is that doctors and nurse practitioners too are eligible for some of those certifications doctors in that space are going to be taking that holistic approach really looking at the root cause not just the symptoms on the surface but what's really going on in the full physiology underlying the cause and also where the interplays are with the lifestyle so when people are looking for a qualified practitioner it is nice to look for one of those certifications either a naturopathic medicine a degree or a functional medicine certificate or board certification by the ABIM the organization of Integrative Medicine those will really steer people towards clinicians that have been very well trained in the space as opposed to there are some brilliant health coaches out there but there's also a lot of people that maybe don't have the depth or don't have the credentials to order the diagnostic tests or really make the prescriptions that might be required after we find out what's going on okay it's interesting that you turn them as branding or marketing has is it fair to say that longevity vitality anti aging a rejuvenation are all different ways to express a similar practice or are there subtle differences that are useful to talk through there might be some subtle differences there isn't a board certification and longevity medicine but there are some some organizations that lead continuing education conferences for doctors that specialize in that I think when we're in the longevity space we really are thinking about what can we optimize today with that preventive lens to really focus on extending the health span not necessarily the lifespan but you know how we can help people be thrive and functioning up until their last days hopefully the regenerative medicine space that I love playing in that space that tends to get a little bit more into maybe some of the tools in our toolbox where we use some of the therapeutics like stem cells or exosomes or whether they're derived from yourself or from exogenous sources those are both available and that really plays into helping reverse some of the aging so those are some of the differences that that might come up when somebody's looking at the doctors who promote those different terms okay but if they find a board certified practitioner like yourself in this space they can that that that clinician can then advise them on what's best for their situation and then yeah you or another question would advise the patient on how to approach whether it's longevity or regenerative or precision these are all aspects of what you do is that fair I I would say so I think the the big differentiator probably is actually the patient right so practitioners such as myself were generally focused on your goals right we don't come to the conversation with Vic I'm gonna help you lift to be 110 if that's not what you're interested in then that's not your goal then that's not where attention is gonna be focused so I think with that holistic approach to that root cause approach we're really interested in your goals and how we can help you optimize to reach whatever you want that to be whether it's getting on the floor with your grandkids or racing a sailboat across the Atlantic or living to be 110 yeah or like for me I wanna extend my health span uh think that's a term that you throughout that I think is really valuable that my ability to live a productive enjoyable high quality life with good health that's more important to me than the number of years but as you say there may be different goals for different people someone may love to sail and that would require certain strengths or conditioning that that they would work towards definitely I think there's a just as a little side note I think there's a public health aspect to this that I always think about as well when we are functioning well and operating at the top of our game especially people like you who are in positions to help change the healthcare system right when we are functioning at a higher level we're able to feed that forward into our companies into our communities into the people that we lead and that makes for a better world a better health system yeah excellent so now I wanna get your advice on how should I think or how should the audience think about uh working with you or working with anyone in the integrated natural medicine space in relation to the traditional healthcare doctors everyone or most people have a primary care dog or they might have two or three specialists they work with does working with you is it an adjunct is it additive or does it somehow replace one or more specialties how how should the audience think about that it can go both ways for example at Marquee Health we offer so essentially three basic tracks we offer a deep dive core program that's really designed to access our doctors as specialists and so in that program people come in for usually three months and do a whole battery of tests and get some initial recommendations and some health coaching and basically a road map to go on their way now we also have two tracks for people that want to stay with us and consider us their primary care providers and for those patients we offer annual concierge memberships where we'll continue to partner very closely with them as they move through their their health journey and that type of concierge primary care is what I've been doing for most of the last dozen years or so in my private practice yeah okay so Marquis you joining Marquis and app allows you to expand the offering where you certainly can keep doing that concierge you are the primary coach or the health advisor that might work with me to understand my situation and then together we would decide gosh we should go see this other specialist we should see an oncologist so we should see maybe there's a surgical thing we need to look into and then you also through marquee have these deep dive where you give someone three months of very involved analysis a lot of testing almost a evaluation and then they would have much more information to go back to their existing primary care dock and and manage it themselves with horse ability to come back to Marquis at a later date yep yeah we have people that like to just do their annual check in when uses more as a specialist I think about myself as more of the quarterback right we've got a whole team including our health coaches our specialists our radiologists that are reading our imaging reports etc of course you and your family are the center of the team so really my job as as your longevity concierge doctor is to service that quarterback and help line up who are the other players on your team and how are we gonna make sure they're passing the ball back and forth appropriately yeah okay excellent and then let's talk about where people should best engage with this specialty or this part of medicine so is there an age range where people in their 30s or 40s or 50s or 60s I'm 53 that they should really get involved or maybe any age is fine but they'd be different protocols what's the how does it affect ages yeah there's definitely different guidelines on what preventive screenings are appropriate but what phase of our life let's say on average most of our clients patients engage with us in their 40s and 50s right when we're just starting to get old enough to feel some of the aches and pains right the knees aren't functioning as well maybe there's been some alarming things on a basic screening lab panel cholesterol or blood pressure something like that or maybe there's been a scare with a friend who's gotten a cancer diagnosis or something yeah I know for me sorry to interrupt I know for me that I think I was 43 when I went into my primary care DOC and said I think something's wrong with my knee I used to run every day I ran I did a lot of jogging and running and I said I think something's wrong I might want to see an orthopedic and his response was you're over 40 now you just can't run anymore right that was really sad I was not pleased about that but I didn't know you I didn't know you I didn't know who to call yeah and of course I am aging but I think there there could be other strategies where you could keep running but you might have to alter your diet or for me I've started doing much more stretching and core and then I found that I can run further without hurting cause at least my Pilates instructor thinks that my posture is better so yeah so when you get that first initial um sign that you're getting older that's when people start looking for other solutions and maybe come into Marquis or something like that's certainly the most common entry point and it's a great entry point when we're in our 40s and 50s we still have so much vitality and regenerative capacity that we don't necessarily have to lean on some of the more advanced regenerative tools like exosomes or stem cells which I have injected into my knees many times in my effort to remain a runner the earlier we start that path of prevention and optimization the smoother the ride through the second half of our lives is gonna be okay then how do you think about disease states are there particular disease states that are very amenable to these treatments cardiac disease or cancer or neurological issues diabetes are there things that you would say really fit well with this or is it more of a lots of things can be assisted I mean that is the beauty of taking a root cause approach is that it can improve the perforal symptoms pretty broadly in terms of if what we've demonstrated conclusively in the data reversing cardiovascular disease is very accessible reversing cardiometabolic disease diabetes very accessible one of my colleagues just published her book on reversing alzheimer's disease um with a 74% success rate across a cohort of I think about 30 participants yeah pretty advanced dimension too reversing diseases is very very much within our reach and we can also look at the costs that saves the health system and all sorts of other things but that comes with some investment in both mostly in terms of personal willingness to change some things in the lifestyle right whether that's working a little less or drinking less or exercising more or any number of things yeah or even exercising differently like I found when I past the 40s I can no longer just run every day five to eight miles I have to vary it more and that's probably better cross training and healthier overall but when you're younger you don't have to worry about those things so there's maybe a variety of interventions that are both behavioral maybe there's like supplements or other things you can add in based on what you're trying to achieve exactly and doing some of those things that repeat some of the things that do decline as we age for example our hormones or our stem cells or collagen in our knees of her connective tissues so regenerating some of those those supplies can really help the body repair and and heal yeah so you've mentioned a couple times one of the things that I've been honestly pretty pleasantly surprised about in the last 60 days as I've started to look into this is there's a significant amount of of research and public research and studies that are validating this is not your opinion although certainly you have opinions there is a pretty good body of research into these interactions that this isn't let's put in some exosomes and see what happens there's lots of studies and and people can you can point to others can do research it just takes a little bit of work to dig into it and find it the traditional health system they're busy so may I don't wanna put blame anywhere but they don't necessarily point to these studies as often as maybe they could yeah the er is not the right place for that conversation needs to happen a little sooner than that but yeah I am a strong proponent in educating my patients about the research and helping them sift through what's on pub med or what's out there in the popular literature and figuring out is this a strategy that's going to be potentially appropriate for them yeah yeah excellent and then let's talk about uh income level and costs so I I believe most of these tests are self pay but maybe there's insurance coverage for them what is the reimbursement environment it's mixed we do use labs like the One Heart Labs and Lab Core and quest for a pretty in depth general work up depending on your insurance that'll be covered per year deductible or whatever your arrangement is with the insurance company there are cash based labs that I used to just because it takes the mystery out of that process and as a someone involved in the healthcare space what the lab bills the insurance company is significantly higher than what they build an individual so the individual sometimes the cash price it can be lower than the deductible and in some cases not every case but surprisingly high percentage of the cases that's true yep so that's one of the things we've done at Marquis is our CEO has all of those connections and has worked to facilitate excellent contracts with the imaging companies with the lab companies so that we can do that type of testing at a much more affordable cash price but some of the more the less standard things microbiome testing micro nutrient testing those ones tend to be cash pay unfortunately even things like coronary artery Calcium scores aren't always covered by insurance so it ends up being a little bit of a mix a dance between what people have to invest in their own health and what we can maneuver through the existing traditional insurance system yeah and so for the audience what just give a rough frame of reference what is the Gen is it a monthly budget or maybe annual how should I think about how much money would it cost to do that deep dive or to engage with you as my concierge just in right now I'm sure every patient is different based on what you order and what you end up but give people a frame of reference is it thousand dollars is it hundred thousand dollars what's generally what are we talking about somewhere in the middle right at Marquee Health we have three programs of entry we've got one our base program starts at about 3,000 and then our annual memberships are 12,000 to 20,000 depending on what all is included so that's for pretty high level care people can definitely get a good workout workout for 25 to 45 if they want to do the full in depth everything including like a full body MRI and coronary artery Calcium score of their interest in just a blood panel or say they're really young in their 30s the price point can come down in those and that's not protesting of course that's also we bundle it with the health coaching so that people can actually get started with somebody to help them implement my recommendations um plenty of times sitting down to really get all those questions answered and develop that individualized plan because it's not one size fits all by any means it is a time intensive process but the feedback we get most people find it highly worthwhile and yeah yeah so I mean I think if you are in your 40s or 50s or in 60s an investment I'm gonna call it an investment of 3,000 5,000 even $20,000 can really pay off in you experiencing a much longer health span being able to do what you love to do whatever that is play tennis going to jog play with your grandkids go sailing I like to hike on a hike but also I think there's a delay or reduction in the traditional health system cost of treating these symptoms that can certainly save you money over over your life so if you invest some now at being more healthy and really catching some of these things and treating them in a preventative or even rejuvenative way then you prevent a very expensive health treatment later that is that fair or is that mischaracterized no that's definitely fair there's lots of data on that we published a booklet on the cost effectiveness of prevention about a decade ago the date is a little out of date now but I was just looking at it before we got on this call and the benefits are the audience for that was was health systems trying to get them to improve insurance coverage for this type of care and the timeline the horizon is shorter than you would think making that investment in prevention and in reversing basic things cardiometabolic disease heart disease really turns into savings like in two to three years in a pretty pretty most cases on the more extreme end my colleague that just published the reversing uh alzheimer's project they did a cost effectiveness analysis of that and as part of the research study they were able to throw the kitchen sink at these participants so they got diet changes they got their social situations enriched they got tons of supplements they got physical therapy they got sleep apnea fixed whatever it took right yeah and the cost analysis on that was about $20,000 and if you think about the monthly cost of memory care yeah that's one month that's less than a month I know these people are actually functioning better and enjoying life again yeah that's incredible so yeah I'm a venture capitalist so I typically invest in startup companies and then we're hoping to sell those companies in four to six years so they return on this investment for your patients is much faster than some financial investments and they're investing in themselves and their health and their family's health and right you actually get to enjoy feeling better like in a couple weeks right yeah okay so let's talk about what you and I were talking before they call was some of the tools of the trade when people come in I know there's some blood tests there's some genetic tests what are the common things let's give people not that every patient would be unique and you would advise them on their very specific situation but let's give people a flavor for the type of diagnostic test that can be run because I think unfortunately not many people are that aware of the what's available out there is there is there a visual component to your podcast if I do a screen share yeah can we we have both audio and visual but probably about a third of the listeners will be able to see it and the ones that can't should go on to YouTube and watch it through that medium and I'll link will probably link in the show notes as well to some of these assets too this is a good visual for thinking about um some of the biomarkers that we immediately assess so when I think about the preventive uh longevity deep Dive lab panel the first things that I'm thinking about are those factors that are gonna be root cause or underlying to most disease namely inflammation or oxidative stress right those words are used interchangeably and when we have inflammation and oxidative stress the big things that are impacted of course are the vasculature and then the mitochondria which are the places in the cells where we make energy so that's what we feel as the aging process is not literally not making enough energy yeah the mitochondria stop working so well for you lose functionality for by the sea exactly yeah so when I'm thinking about lab tests yeah so for people that are listening we're looking now at a at a cross section of a of a blood vessel I think is that right uh huh yeah okay yeah we're looking at the progression of cardiovascular disease from a nice clean open blood vessel to one that's filled with plaque and thrombus and was basically becoming obstructed in this situation of an acute m I and so we've got different biomarkers that can be measured along the way to help us understand really the stage of disease without an angiogram so at the beginning are some of the early inflammatory markers F2 isoprostains that's gonna be measuring some oxidative stress in the proteins of the body oxidized LDL right LDL cholesterol most people uh remember as LDL being their lousy cholesterol right HDL being healthy cholesterol so the worst is oxidized LDL which is going to be LDL that has that that oxidization and so it's gonna be interacting with the vasculature and having the propensity to stick and damage the end of the helium and then once that starts to happen we see more global inflammation things that we can measure like with a high sensitivity CRP or a said rate um those are fairly not specific we can measure more precise inflammation like a myeloporoxidase that's a blood test that tells us if the immune system is active in the vasculature is the body in an active recovery clean up mode trying to like wall off those plaques and solidify them so that they don't rupture and cause further damage on things like LP PLA two is also going to be giving us that sense of it and then finally at the end of the day we're measuring biomarkers of acute injury right do we have hydroponin levels because somebody's in a acute coronary syndrome or having an am I and so those are the last things that were measuring on the trajectory so that's just thinking about the vasculature but we can look at a similar set of file marker before before you go on so for people that are listening there are five markers that you have on the screen here in the they indicate the progression of um oscaritis heart disease over time would you screen for all of them or you would start with the oxidation the F2 Isop's I'm probably not saying that what do you do them all at once how do you we we scream for all of them at once right we wanna know where somebody is on the trajectory of the disease we also do an advanced lipid panel so that we can catch some of the genetically the markers of cholesterol that are more genetically related we also look at the blood sugar insulin landscape because that's gonna be an independent source of inflammation so we start with a pretty deep dive on all of them not always the late and stage ones in a younger population but we want to know the whole landscape and then we also want to know is there actual calcification already happening in there then that would be done with simple imaging like a coronary artery Calcium score yeah so we're doing that so if the patient has that proponent t I'm probably not saying that that means the heart itself has been injured in some way is that fair exactly yeah that would be a very negative marker but one you'd wanna catch certainly exactly and that's the one where you're off to the specialist cardiologist maybe to the interventional cath lab and that that situation stints might be the appropriate prevention right okay okay so these are these all blood lab tests or their variety of them these are all blood lab tests and these particular ones all should be covered by insurance okay so that that seems pretty straightforward what else should people be thinking about is there I think you mentioned hormone testing testosterone estrogen and some like growth factor um probably those are blood tests as well or happy test for that those are all good to screen with blood tests blood is not the optimal way to monitor hormones long term for example for putting somebody on bio identical hormone replacement then I'm gonna want a little bit more precision with say a urinary hormone test um but blood tests are a good screening place we can catch low testosterone or perimenopausal changes pretty easily with blood tests and and then from there it just helps refine where we can intervene to give somebody some more vitality whether that's with supplements that might be precursors to hormones to help your body make your own hormones better we use peptides in that space a lot as well especially in the growth hormone or whether hormone replacement is as appropriate and often it is certainly by the time women are in menopause and men are in andropause we generally all feel better with a little bit of hormone replacement right okay and then there's been a lot of press a lot of excitement around very early cancer screening what are your thoughts about that is it helpful is it a mix bag where you get some benefits and some false positive what are your thoughts about the early cancer what do you do for early cancer screening if anything yeah we do a lot we use the Grail test which is definitely the hottest newest most comprehensive multichand detection test I use traditional methods as well either digital mammograms or more often sending women out for MRI's because they're a little more accurate a little less uncomfortable but yeah the Grail I think has a lot of promise their science is pretty buttoned up they definitely skew towards a a false a higher chance of a false positive than a false negative right you'd much rather be scared rather than miss something so that's probably the biggest downside is the anxiety and the additional expense of a work up if you do find something they they published their data over the first couple years in terms of what their actual detection rate is it's pretty low that's probably some population selection they're detecting things I think about 3 to 5% of the time so it's a pretty low um but that's probably consistent with the the incidents of early cancers in the population um it does that seems pretty realistic that if you screen 100 people three to five or even three to 10 will get a positive result meaning that there's some indication of cancer and then there's further work up further attention certainly is anxiety producing but it is worse to not know that you have cancer growing in my opinion it's worse and mine too just follow up and it's not it's not worth um a significant intervention then you had a false alarm and it's it's okay you had 30 days or 60 days of worry but um right then it's okay is that right is that the way it proceeds kinda yeah exactly some people don't wanna know when if they don't wanna know then I respect their preferences on that but yeah when it does come back with a positive finding at least gives us enough information know what organ system we need to go investigate with further imaging and testing yeah and it can be life saving simple things like thyroid cancers are relatively common now you can detect that in a young person and that's one that's very curable and change the trajectory of their life rather than leaving young kids with a parentless situation yeah yeah and and I don't know that there's been a study but my my impression is that the incident of cancer has been increasing since Covid I'm not sure why but it seems like it has been and so that argues that younger ages might consider this kind of broad grail cancer screen I think the grass curating is a great idea for younger adults definitely people in their 40s and 50s I'm not sure about the correlation with covid but certainly over the last 10 to 20 years I think just our environmental exposures are so much higher and that's probably contributing to the increase we're seeing in population cancers yeah okay and then do you go into metabolic function at all that diabetes and other metabolic these diseases are really sadly growing incredibly quickly do do you dig into that do you have screening tests a lot yeah definitely we do a lot not just checking somebody's say hemoglobin A1C but also looking at there in the moment glucose and insulin I'm a huge proponent of continuous glucose monitors the devices that you can yeah put on your arm and watch on your phone have you played with those at all I haven't but uh my partner in jumpstart did and he Learned a ton in 90 days just how his own body processes in glucose and that he should go on a walk or not go to bed right after he Learned how he should manage his diet exercise and living in a way that I think was really helpful so that that encouraged me to get I haven't I'm managing I'm trying to focus on sleep right now but that's the next thing I'm I'm working on yeah Sleep's a huge one definitely if you're not getting good quality sleep overnight is when we release the majority of our growth hormone right so if you're not getting into deep sleep you're not releasing growth hormone and that's gonna have an inhibiting impact on all the rest of your hormones so often when we can improve sleep we can dial everything else in so we use lots of those biomonitors that continuous glucose monitors for Rings Fitbits Apple Watches all of that data I love it because not only does it give me information but most importantly it gives you the lifetime information to make different choices yeah right that's what mostly our health care comes down to is making a better choice yeah okay then how do you think about genetic testing is there a value in that or what aspects of genetic testing do you typically use yeah at marquee we do offer full genome sequencing and it has been very interesting and game changing for a number of people we look at those snips of single nucleotide polymorphisms because those ones are very useful for for helping to dial in where we can make really nutritional changes one area where we look at the snips a lot is in the area of methylation there's a number of genes that control how efficiently we methylate which impacts how we read our DNA how how the whole epigenetic coding is put together and then changed over time if you're not methylating correctly it doesn't function very well exactly exactly so I find that type of testing can be really helpful to dial in somebody's individual nutrition and supplementation yeah okay anything that we missed as far as the tools of the trade are things that are your most important go to I would say the rest of it really falls into choosing the interventions that we do after it we haven't touched upon anything mind body related but I do think it's important to help people find and cultivate things that get their brains and out of the racing minds that we normally have and into some of those calmer states so whether that's guided meditations or again type of exercise like yoga or walking on the beach or prayer there's a lot of yeah well you can get out of that fight or flight chronic stress situation or or body reaction into a more relaxed sympathetic mode exactly exactly and that helps everything right right right okay now I I'm personally very interested in heart health I set a goal to end heart disease by 2035 really for three reasons one it's the number one killer of people in the US and really in most developed countries secondly I think early screenings are not very expensive don't have a lot of downside and if we catch heart disease early the traditional healthcare system has lots of tools to assist patients in managing with heart disease if you catch it early and obviously the tools are less effective if you don't catch it early and I think it's possible we need a lot of patient indication we need a lot of effort in getting screening earlier getting access to folks but I'm optimistic I think we could knock heart disease out of the No.
1 place as the killer of humans and then I have heart disease and so selfishly I'm interested in digging into it because of that in your experience how treatable is heart disease how realistic is it to think that if we got education early screening better inventions we could not get out of the No. 1 cause of death I think it's certainly doable the interventions are there whether it's getting people to the cath lab quickly or using innovative things like helation or phosphedol coalene infusions I do a lot of those in my practice plasma exchanges there's all sorts of interventions that we can do in just better cholesterol management right better blood pressure management where I would like to share your optimism and enthusiasm is whether we have the willpower to put in the efforts on the lifestyle front right to be active for 30 minutes every day no matter what and choose to eat a more balanced vegetable rich diet and not rely on fried chicken and fries so I think big piece of it would be really involving changing our food system and our transportation system and making our environments more conducive to health cause right now that the easy choices to walk into a 7 11 and get a meat stick and a Slurpee right and drive to your next destination yeah yeah I I that that's fair I I'm a village capitalist right so I typically invest in early stage things that don't really are not effective yet but there's hope that they'll be effective and that's how I'm approaching this I have a belief that's not at all validated and so I wanna say that up front cause you're a clinician used to scientific validation but at least for me and it's a data point of one but once I understood that I have heart disease I was much more 10 of to my diet exercise sleep and something like a Calcium score if it's not very expensive I don't think there's that there's a little bit of radiation but it's fairly minor and if just for instance if we gave it to anyone who was 35 or older right my belief is the result of the Calcium score should be you have a zero Calcium score and if you're 35 years old and you don't have a zero Calcium score there is something that needs attention you that means you have plaque in your veins and arteries that has been sealed over with Calcium which is the helpful step the body takes but also is indicative that your arteries are hardening your arteries are are beginning to be damaged yeah I think absolutely getting that type of information to a younger population that should have some motivation to stay healthy to be around for their kids their families their careers whatever motivates them I think it's I think your goal is 100% reachable for those that that want to try and yeah that's right so if they if let's just say someone is 35 and they get a Calcium score of 20 or 40 or 50 they should now talk to you talk to a cardiologist get better treatment get more treatment maybe get on a statin start managing their diet monitoring it more carefully and now we would catch the escalation of heart disease much earlier because it's asymptomatic this is part of the issue people don't know they are slowly building up this disease in their veins and arteries until they have some event or until they are 50 or 55 or 60 and their LDL or cholesterol scores go up right until it's pretty progressed right definitely getting that early intervention into a younger population would save the health system so much money on those late stage interventions yeah it would save money and it would lead to much better public health across the entire population now if you get a negative Calcium score meaning you have early heart disease and then you choose to do nothing about it and you keep going to 7 11 and getting the whatever you call it the stick of meat that is not that healthy but then that person probably won't see much improvement but now we're talking about personal choice and I think we're in America people can choose to be unhealthy but it would be good to at least have awareness around that yeah I'm this is why I'm in the spaces I'm a huge fan of data right knowledge is power when you know what's going on especially with your own health then you can be empowered to make different choices and we might not need to make those choices every single day right everybody gets a cheat day to go out and have a burger and fries and yeah it doesn't have to be 100% on all the time but when you know your numbers and your data then you can choose how stringent you need to be with your choices yeah so do you have any stats of the prevalence of osteoarthritis in 35 year olds it's not very low you would think it would be low cause they're young but with the diet we have I think there is a percentage of the population that has heart disease pretty early yeah I don't have that statistic off the top of my head but I know it's a moving target and they're seeing some of the early cholesterol streaks even in elementary age children now so it's definitely an issue that's hitting a younger and younger population yeah and you don't have to be morbidly obese and experiencing physical symptoms that you feel to have arthritis in your veins and arteries and begin having the long term effect of the disease I think that's there yeah yeah yeah there's a reason why it's the No. 1 killer cause it's largely undetected yeah it's undetected and and a cruise over years or decades and so the idea is to try to catch it early so we can begin putting these interventions in place so yeah it's exciting Nancho's there yeah yeah I think it's I'm gonna keep working on it I I I've just started talking about it now this is my third podcast focused on um health and wellness as it applies to heart disease let's end with what you where do you recommend someone who's listening right now that wants to learn more about what's available where should they start I'll put a link to Marquis website in the show notes but is there a an article or a book or something that you're published or what's the best place for people to learn more and try to think about their own situation and apply it to to this offering yeah I mean there's lots of resources out there you LED with Peter Atea's book outlive I mean there's it's on the that's probably the most commonly cited one it's a I don't know it's whatever list the seller lots of people are talking about it yep any solid he's got great information makes it very accessible people interested in some of the more nuance conversations I do a lot of blog posts on my website at Doctor Erica over.com people can explore some of the organizations that are involved in promoting these more integrative approaches but they're interested in finding a natropathic doctor they can do that at natropathic.org if they're looking for a functional medicine doctor it can be at the Institute of Functional medicine.org so those are good resources for finding clinicians I wish there is a better way to find all of us but I think you part of the challenge was what you laid out right at the beginning right there's a lot of different words for kind of the same rue cause approach and so it can be challenging to find practitioners like us out there in the world yeah so I'll put these links in the show notes so people can easily get to them and really appreciate your time doing this and I'll just end with there's lots of resources but I think probably your personal website is where everyone should go and then they can start there and learn about what you offer and then link out to different places and go from there yeah that sounds great definitely and definitely keep me a breast of your your efforts to end heart disease I let me know if I can help love to see what come to to reality yeah I think the first year which were in right now is really me learning in public and doing a podcast like this and reading a lot and experimenting with my sleep right now and then next year is gonna be trying to take those learnings and bring it out to more people but I wanna be realistic and also self aware that I'm certainly not a clinician in any sense of the word I'm much more of just interested patient myself and maybe ambitious enough or disruptive enough to say that I think we can end heart disease so I love it Doctor Alan Oberg thank you for doing this really appreciate your time we will link to your website and a couple of the other sites in the show notes and I'm excited to continue the conversation over time with you sounds wonderful thanks so much Vic I really enjoyed the conversation okay thank you have a good day and take care bye bye