The Root Cause - Business of Medicine Podcast

Dr. Richard Horowitz lost 2,000 patients and remortgaged his house rather than abandon a diagnosis the insurance panels insisted didn't exist. Forty-one years later, he's published the first reversal of an Alzheimer's biomarker in a chronic Lyme patient.

Show Notes

Season 2 opens with a conversation Erik and Davin have wanted to have for a long time.
Dr. Richard Horowitz is a board-certified internist, the creator of the 16-point MSIDS model, and the New York Times bestselling author of Why Can't I Get Better? — the book patients call "the Lyme Bible." Over 41 years he treated more than 13,000 patients with chronic Lyme and tick-borne disease. In November 2025 he closed his clinical practice, and more than twenty advocacy organizations jointly honored him with a Lifetime Achievement Award.
But this isn't a victory lap. It's the story of what it actually cost.
Early in his career, Horowitz did what a well-meaning doctor does: he brought the insurance companies in to look at what he was finding. They told him he'd "spent $70,000 on a disease that doesn't exist." The medical boards investigated him. The panels threw him out. He lost 2,000 patients in one stroke and remortgaged his house to keep the doors open. His wife told him she'd understand if he wanted to stop.
He didn't stop. In this episode he explains why — and the answer turns out to be less about stubbornness than about a two-hour-a-day meditation practice he started in medical school, precisely because he knew he'd need it.
In this episode
  • Bringing the HMOs in to validate his findings — and what happened instead
  • Losing 2,000 patients, remortgaging the house, and deciding whether to keep going
  • Why he's never been successfully sued in 41 years, and what his documentation had to do with it
  • Meditating two hours a day through medical school — and a Jewish physician's path into a Tibetan Buddhist practice
  • How the MSIDS model was discovered by listening to patients, one unexplained finding at a time
  • Dapsone combination therapy, now backed by eleven peer-reviewed papers
  • The Alzheimer's case: reversing p-tau 217, the most sensitive biomarker, in a live patient with chronic Lyme
  • Why Ending Chronic Illness argues all 16 MSIDS factors apply well beyond Lyme — including cancer
  • What he'd tell a physician who is certain they're seeing something their specialty says isn't there
About Dr. Richard Horowitz
Founding member and past president-elect of ILADS. Served on the HHS Tick-Borne Disease Working Group and co-chaired its co-infection subcommittee, which delivered recommendations to Congress. Founder of the MSIDS Foundation. Author of Why Can't I Get Better?, How Can I Get Better?, and Ending Chronic Illness (Simon & Schuster, October 2026).
Links

Creators and Guests

Host
Dr. Davin Lundquist
Dr. Davin Lundquist is a board-certified family physician, innovator, and healthcare leader with over 25 years of experience integrating medicine, technology, and holistic wellness. A graduate of the Keck School of Medicine of USC, he has held senior leadership roles at CommonSpirit Health, Dignity Health, and Augmedix, where he advanced the use of technology to enhance patient care. Driven by a passion to move beyond symptom management, Dr. Lundquist founded the Quantum Advantage Method™, a science-based, holistic framework designed to help individuals restore vitality and reverse dysfunction. His approach blends functional medicine, advanced diagnostics, and principles of quantum science to empower patients to achieve optimal health and lasting transformation.
Host
Dr. Erik Lundquist
Dr. Erik Lundquist, MD, ABFM, ABoIM, IFMCP Dr. Erik Lundquist is the founder and medical director of the Temecula Center for Integrative Medicine, where he blends conventional, holistic, and functional approaches to help patients achieve lasting wellness. Board-certified in Family and Integrative Medicine, he specializes in endocrine disorders, chronic fatigue, migraine management, cardiometabolic health, and chronic pain. A graduate of St. Louis University School of Medicine, Dr. Lundquist completed his Family Medicine residency at Naval Hospital Camp Pendleton, where he served as chief resident. He spent eight years on active duty with the U.S. Navy, including service as a battalion surgeon in Iraq and at the Naval Hospital in Naples, Italy. Certified by the Institute for Functional Medicine, Dr. Lundquist is passionate about empowering patients to take charge of their health and teaching fellow clinicians integrative approaches to chronic disease. Outside of medicine, he enjoys the outdoors, singing, dancing, acting, and spending time with his wife and three children.
Guest
Dr. Richard Ira Horowitz
Richard I. Horowitz, MD is a board-certified internist, New York Times bestselling author, and one of the world's foremost authorities on Lyme disease and complex chronic illness. Over a 41-year career he treated more than 13,000 patients with chronic Lyme and tick-borne disease at the Hudson Valley Healing Arts Center in Hyde Park, New York, where he served as medical director until closing his clinical practice in late 2025. Frustrated by patients who stayed sick despite adequate antibiotic treatment, he developed the MSIDS model — Multiple Systemic Infectious Disease Syndrome — a 16-point diagnostic map of the overlapping infections, immune dysfunction, toxins, hormonal imbalances, and mitochondrial damage that keep chronic illness locked in place. Dr. Horowitz is a founding member and past president-elect of ILADS, served on the HHS Tick-Borne Disease Working Group, and co-chaired its co-infection subcommittee, which delivered recommendations to Congress. His research on double-dose dapsone combination therapy and on glutathione in COVID-19 has been widely cited, and his MSIDS Foundation now funds studies on reversing Alzheimer's-related biomarkers in chronic Lyme patients. He is the author of *Why Can't I Get Better?* — known in the patient community as "the Lyme Bible" — *How Can I Get Better?*, and *Ending Chronic Illness*, out from Simon & Schuster in October 2026. In November 2025, more than twenty advocacy organizations jointly honored him with a Lifetime Achievement Award.

What is The Root Cause - Business of Medicine Podcast?

The U.S. healthcare system is at a breaking point—soaring costs, worsening outcomes, and widespread physician burnout. The Root Cause – Business of Medicine podcast, hosted by brothers Dr. Erik Lundquist and Dr. Davin Lundquist, charts a different path: one where healing, fulfillment, and business thrive together.

Each episode shares powerful stories of medical professionals who stepped away from the traditional grind to embrace integrative, functional, and alternative approaches to care. Through candid conversations with practitioners who have redefined success, listeners gain insight into navigating their own transitions, reclaiming a sense of purpose, and reshaping the way they practice medicine.

Erik: Well, welcome back now to season two of the Root Cause Business of Medicine podcast.

Erik: And today's guest is not going to be one you want to miss, Richard Horowitz.

Erik: Not only is he an icon in the Lyme world, but he just is a great physician, a great mentor, a great example of how to practice medicine.

Erik: There were many things that stood out to me today, but Davim, what were some highlights for you?

Davin: Well, uh he definitely caught my attention when he said he meditates with uh Tibetan Buddhist

Davin: you know, monks are in a temple of some sort.

Davin: And um, you know, from the get-go, uh a Jewish background to, you know, Buddhist uh uh temple was really a

Davin: a fascinating um lens into into how he w operates and um I I think, you know

Davin: I feel like there's people on this earth who are just completely driven by their purpose.

Davin: And I've and I felt that from him, right?

Davin: Where he's so aligned to, you know, doing good.

Davin: uh and helping humanity in in a way that um it you just feel the energy oozing from him, like this ability to just align with that purpose and kind of surrender to that higher purpose.

Davin: And that has just taken him on this journey.

Davin: um and but somebody who also is just so blessed with such talent, right?

Davin: Both entertaining and like a brilliant mind.

Davin: What a mix.

Erik: Yeah, no, it was it was great.

Erik: And I think I was really struck by

Erik: The fact that early on he made decisions to take care of himself and his mind.

Erik: To your point, that the

Erik: he spent two hours meditating during medical school, during one of the most stressful times of his life, because he knew he needed that.

Erik: I think that st set the stage for him to make really good decisions that were true to himself.

Erik: When the going got tough, when he was, you know, kicked out of insurance companies, when he put before a medical board, had to hire lawyers to defend himself.

Erik: He knew where his course was and it helped his journey and has led to the success that he's had early on.

Erik: So we look forward to you listening to today's podcast.

Erik: And without further ado, here we go.

Erik: Welcome to the Root Cause Business of Medicine podcast, where we explore what's broken in healthcare and what we can do about it.

Erik: I'm Dr.

Erik: Erik Lundquist, and I've been practicing functional medicine for the past 15 to 20 years.

Erik: I'm excited to co-host this podcast with my brother, Dr.

Davin: Davin Lundquist, who's just beginning his journey into functional medicine.

Davin: We come from different points on the path, but we do share a common goal.

Davin: We want to rethink how medicine is practiced and help others do the same.

Erik: The U.

Erik: S.

Erik: healthcare system is in crisis, rising costs, declining outcomes, and physician burnout at an all-time high

Erik: But you know, we found a different way.

Erik: Another way.

Erik: A better way.

Davin: On this podcast, we dive into real stories from medical professionals who've stepped away from the traditional model.

Davin: Kind of like me.

Davin: and have found a new purpose in integrative, functional, and alternative approaches to care.

Erik: These are authentic conversations with practitioners and friends who've redefined success, not just for themselves, but for their patients and communities.

Davin: Whether you're a clinician feeling stuck, a student seeking direction, or just curious about what is possible, you're in the right place.

Erik: This is the Root Cause Business of Medicine Podcast.

Erik: Well, welcome to another episode.

Erik: This is our actual first episode of season two of the Business of Medicine podcast or the root cause business of medicine podcast.

Erik: And today's guest needs really no introduction, Dr.

Erik: Richard Horowitz, is one of the most recognized experts in Lyme disease and chronic

Erik: complex illness, as you'll find out, um in the world.

Erik: And he has board certified as an internist

Erik: He's the founder of the Hudson Valley Healing Arts Center in New York, where he has spent more than three decades treating patients with Lyme disease, tick-borne infections, and chronic multisystem illnesses.

Erik: And over the course of his career, he has evaluated and treated more than twelve thousand patients suffering from some of medicine's most challenging and controversial conditions.

Erik: He's the author of a couple of books that I have right here.

Erik: Why I can't get better and how I can get better.

Erik: And they've been v invaluable to me in not only treating my wife who had Lyme disease, but also in helping my patients.

Erik: um as well.

Erik: And it's just been a wonderful, wonderful experience to learn from such a great mentor.

Erik: But today's conversation isn't primarily about Lyme disease.

Erik: It's about the business of medicine.

Erik: It's about what happens when a physician sees something different than the establishment sees.

Erik: It's about building a practice around complex patients.

Erik: navigating that criticism and then trying to figure out a financially viable way to stay afloat despite all the pushback.

Erik: So it's going to be really interesting today to hear your story, Rich.

Erik: We're so happy to have you on the podcast.

Erik: And so why don't you back up just a little bit and tell us how you kind of got into this

Erik: aspect of medicine.

Erik: I'm sure that you, you know, didn't graduate from your residency thinking I'm gonna be the world's renowned expert in Lyme disease, right?

Erik: So how did how did all of this kind of trans transpire for you?

Richard: No, I actually, you know, when I went to Northwestern University, I went to do theater and music and and I sat down with my mother and I said, Ma, I think I want to be an actor and a singer.

Richard: And she said, you know

Richard: I think it's better maybe you become a doctor.

Richard: She said, why don't you just do singing and acting on the side?

Richard: And I went, all right, I I guess that'll probably work

Richard: Um so uh yeah, uh interesting.

Richard: You know, as a as a Jewish doctor, I only had a chance by the way, I had to be a lawyer or a doctor, right?

Richard: With the last name Horowitz.

Richard: I didn't really have a lot of choice of what I was gonna do in this world, but

Richard: Fortunately, my mother was right.

Richard: You know, you hate to admit your parents are right.

Richard: Mom, you are right.

Richard: It was good that I went into medicine because I ended up helping a lot of people.

Richard: Um but you but you're right.

Richard: You know, I I grew up in a household with a doctor

Richard: So my my stepfather, um Harris, was a surgeon.

Richard: He went to medical school in Switzerland, in Germany, um and in in Switzerland, um

Richard: Also learning veterinary medicine, interestingly enough, he did a lot of interesting stuff.

Richard: Um he published his dissertation was on Q fever of all things uh interesting.

Richard: Which is interesting considering it's a tickboard infection, right?

Richard: Um that that we have seen.

Richard: Um in fact the case we'll discuss today briefly that I just published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease Reports, this patient actually had been exposed to Coxia Brunetti, um apart from Lyme disease and Earlichia and

Richard: uh two Bartonella species.

Richard: So, you know, when I went into medicine, um, I was a biology major at Northwestern.

Richard: Um at the time when I was trying to go into medicine, it was difficult to get in the U.

Richard: S.

Richard: , so I went to Europe.

Richard: Uh, because my stepfather said, listen, they've got a great program in Belgium.

Richard: It was a seven-year program in French, which was very interesting to be doing seven years of medicine in French because

Richard: You know, I had it in grade school from fifth to twelfth, but I couldn't probably speak a sentence even though I knew all of the terms and, you know, vocabulary.

Richard: Uh so I went to Switzerland for three months to do an intensive and

Richard: It was fine by the time I got out.

Richard: Um, but I met wonderful people there.

Richard: And because it was a seven-year program, you know, they had like two years of nutritional biochemistry.

Richard: uh two years of anatomy, a year of dermatology, a year of ENT.

Richard: It's a very different program than we have the four-year program here

Richard: So it was seven years of med school the after four years of college and three years of internal medicine residency at Mount Sinai um in New York City.

Richard: I was at the city hospitals.

Richard: But you know, you're right.

Richard: I I didn't come out thinking I wanted to do lime.

Richard: In fact, the joke is on a third year um in in residency, my friend Howie Prusak and I were sitting in an auditorium the last year.

Richard: And somebody from Stony Brook came and started talking about Lyme.

Richard: And I remember specifically turning to Howie and saying, Oh yeah, I'm sure that's a disease we're gonna see a lot of in our lifetimes.

Richard: And it's like, oh God, I had no idea.

Richard: So

Richard: Yeah, m my mother wanted me to open up a a practice in Bayside Queens, um, where I had grown up, and I really wanted to be a country doc.

Richard: There was a

Richard: uh a um Tibetan monastery in Wapinger Falls.

Richard: I had studied Tibetan Buddhism.

Richard: I started studying it in nineteen eighty one.

Richard: That was my first teacher with Lamagendan Rappoche and I've been studying it now for 45 years um as a practicing Buddhist

Richard: And um I asked Lama again in Rappochet before I left medical school.

Richard: I said to him, Lama, what do you want me to know before I go out into the world as a doctor?

Richard: And he said, Richard, the most important thing is exchange yourself with others, put yourself in people's shoes, and do for them what you would want done for yourself

Richard: And he said, if you do that, he said everything will go well.

Richard: So the reason I mentioned this quote is because Vashir Hospital

Richard: helped me to establish a medical practice.

Richard: Um it was above Poughkeepsie, New York, in Hyde Park.

Richard: Um they gave me a loan.

Richard: Um I became assistant director of medicine at Vassar when I was moving up there, worked in the ER because

Richard: Today's the business of medicine, so right it I wasn't making any money initially.

Richard: But what was really interesting about starting off in the emergency room is, you know, when you get the head nurse of an ER to see your skill set.

Richard: What was interesting is Roseanne, who saw me, man, she told everybody about my skill set as an internist, and my practice started filling up actually very quickly.

Richard: Um But you know, opening up a practice there, what I didn't realize

Richard: is I was opening up in the middle of the largest Lymanemic area of the United States, which is the Hudson Valley, New York.

Richard: And I was going there because I wanted to get meditation teachings from

Richard: Uh the the lamas who are literally 18 minutes um from where Vashra Hospital was.

Richard: I was ten minutes from where I was living.

Richard: And I thought, all right, it's a good mix.

Richard: You know, I'll I'll study medicine, I'll help people, I'll still, you know, enjoy meditation training

Richard: And then I walk into a Lyme epidemic and um and since we're again we're talking about the business of medicine, um, and I think some people know this story and you'll ask me questions about this afterwards, but

Richard: I was very naive going into medicine.

Richard: I've I've been in medicine now for 41, almost 42 years.

Richard: Um and I I've seen over 13,000 actually patients with chronic Lyme.

Richard: They've come to me from all over the U.

Richard: S.

Richard: all over Europe, Australia, New Zealand, uh Chi I mean literally all over the world.

Richard: And I had this idea

Richard: That um everyone was like me.

Richard: That's how naive I was, that they had a motivation to help others.

Richard: Like you're a doctor, you're gonna help other people.

Richard: So lo and behold.

Richard: The first couple of years when I was starting to see these patients with Erythema migrans rashes, the classic rash of lime, which, you know, 50% of the time does not look like a bullseye.

Richard: It looks like a spreading red rash.

Richard: Which is oftentime confused with a cellulitis, um like a herpes oster infections.

Richard: You can even get vesicles or a spider bite, right?

Richard: Those are some of the common ones.

Richard: Um and so, you know, I would see these patients, 75% would get better

Richard: 25% roughly, maybe a little more.

Richard: It did not get better.

Richard: They kept relapsing.

Richard: So I remembered Lama Gendin Rinpoche what he said to me.

Richard: It's like

Richard: I referred to infectious disease doctors.

Richard: I referred to psychiatrists for the mental issues.

Richard: I referred to, you know, PT doctors.

Richard: Um uh to to neurologists, to everyone under the nobody could figure out what to do for these patients because it was an early part of the illness.

Richard: There wasn't really enough known.

Richard: So one of my patients who came in with a bell's palsy said, Rich, you got to go to the LDF conference.

Richard: And it was there that I actually met Joe Boris Gano, Ken Liegner, and Dr.

Richard: Sam Dante for the first time.

Richard: Learned that a little bit longer antibiotics could help.

Richard: Got back to my practice.

Richard: Um started doing it, noticed it did help

Richard: But what I didn't realize, and I don't know that they talked about this at the LDF conference, is I walked onto a medical political battlefield.

Richard: without realizing that it was so controversial to be diagnosing and treating chronic Lyme.

Richard: So the first couple of years, I started seeing patients with drenching night sweats.

Richard: I had just gotten back from a conference

Richard: And it sounded like Babesia, except Babesia was not supposed to exist in the Hudson Valley where I was.

Richard: So I spoke to Rick Osfeld at the Institute for Ecosystem Studies.

Richard: He agreed to send out ticks.

Richard: to University of Rhode Island to IGENIX, lo and behold, we found Babesia in the ticks.

Richard: I checked my patients.

Richard: I had hundreds, hundreds of positive PCRs

Richard: fish testing, Babesio throughigenics, which was now validated by the New York State Department of Health, and positive antibody titers.

Richard: So what did I do?

Richard: Because I'm so well-meaning, I brought in the insurance companies.

Richard: This is when HMOs were just starting

Richard: Um, I I will not mention the HMO and I will not mention the insurance company because I don't want to embarrass them.

Richard: But I brought them in.

Richard: I at this point had about 2,000 patients growing my practice.

Richard: Um, and I just had a woman in a wheelchair, five years in a wheelchair, unable to walk, with these drenching sweats.

Richard: I gave her Mepronosithromax, which at the time was

Richard: uh the the the primary treatment, which by the way I was the first doctor to publish on it in abstract at the LTF conference before Peter Krauss published it in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Richard: And that was thanks to Joe Boroscano and he and I having some back and forth discussion.

Richard: So

Richard: After a couple of weeks, this woman had enough strength to start getting out of a wheelchair, starting to walk.

Richard: She's now skiing.

Richard: She's an avid skier after being paralyzed from the waist down for five years.

Richard: So I'm thinking, oh my God, this is so great.

Richard: I have to tell the insurance companies.

Richard: I have to tell the HMOs because they're going to want to know what what great work I'm doing to get patients better.

Richard: I bring them in to look at these hundreds of cases and they say to me.

Richard: There's no Babesia here.

Richard: We don't hear anything.

Richard: We don't they basically said, listen, you just spent $70,000 on a disease that doesn't exist.

Richard: I started getting invested by the medical boards and they threw me out of their panels.

Richard: I lost 2,000 patients in one fell swoop.

Richard: I had to remortgage my house to stay in practice.

Richard: And I turned to my wife and she said, listen, baby, if you don't want to do this anymore, I understand you you'll find something else to do in life.

Richard: It said, sweetheart.

Richard: I I love medicine.

Richard: I love helping people.

Richard: I'm not going to give up.

Richard: We remortgaged the house so I could stay in practice.

Richard: Um I had to start taking private insurance.

Richard: I did keep Medicare, by the way, for about 25 years.

Richard: Until it was impossible for me to do that because I was spending forty five minutes to an hour with these patients and Medicare was just not paying.

Richard: But ultimately

Richard: The Lyme community found out about me and started filling my practice as I started coming up with these novel treatments for Lyme.

Richard: So, since this podcast is the business of medicine, I will tell you that my naivete going into medicine.

Richard: thinking that everyone was like me, like they were here to benefit people, I really was very naive about what goes on in medicine.

Richard: Now of course several years later the New York State Department of Health validated that Babesia was in the Hudson Valley.

Richard: By the way, I never received an apology uh from the HMO and from the insurance company.

Richard: I'm sure that shocks you, right?

Richard: Yes, absolutely it shocks you.

Richard: Um and and of course later on, now I work for the New York State Department of Health on their TikTok working group

Richard: And over the years I've actually worked for HHS.

Richard: I was on the first round of their tick-born working group where I was one of seven Americans who work with the CDC, the NIH, the FDA, and the Department of Defense.

Richard: So

Richard: My first steps in medicine, uh, very rocky with the business of medicine.

Erik: Yeah.

Erik: Wha what was that?

Erik: What did that feel like though to you in terms of this transition?

Erik: Like you were this you're this pivot point, right?

Erik: And

Erik: I'm I'm curious, uh you know, we we we delve through all aspects of business and one of one of the the interesting parts that we've seen it kind of

Erik: this theme and Davin kind of tends to s bring this out of our individuals, this this this ability to be true to your authentic self.

Erik: Right.

Erik: So here you are, you you you purposefully set up your practice in an area where you could continue your spiritual practice, right?

Erik: Continue to maintain that balance in your life.

Erik: And then you're hit with this.

Erik: crossroads where now you're at this intersection of, okay, this is how I want to care for my patients.

Erik: I can't continue to care for my patients.

Erik: But in this in the way that I am, but at the same token, now I've got to completely change my business model.

Erik: What what did that feel like and how did you work through that?

Erik: I know you had a conversation with your wife, but I'm I'm I I want you to go a little deeper into that aspect.

Erik: Because I think I I I think a lot of practitioners when they come to this

Erik: crossroads of conventional versus integrative and functional medicine are like how do how do I how do I get out of this world

Erik: that I that I feel comfortable in.

Erik: It's protective, but it doesn't feel right or authentic to me.

Erik: How how do I make that leap?

Erik: And you know, one of our subtitles is

Erik: you know, the first step is the hardest, right?

Erik: And so tell us a little bit about that experience, a little more.

Richard: Yeah, no, I mean look, it w it was a challenging time.

Richard: I mean, I obviously had to change the business model and charge and I I don't even remember what I was charging back when this happened, you know, over thirty years ago.

Richard: Um, but

Richard: Because I I have been incorporating literally Buddhist principles into my practice of do for others what you would want unto yourself.

Richard: Always put yourself in people's shoes as do what they would want do for you.

Richard: So it was kind of like, okay, I'm going to charge enough to earn a living.

Richard: Not charged, despite what some Lyme patients think.

Richard: They have no idea, by the way, what it is to be practicing as a Lyme doctor, because I've probably spent over a quarter million dollars on legal fees during my career.

Richard: Um, because every time I would call a lawyer because they would call me before the medical board, I don't even know how many times, five, six, seven, ten.

Richard: It was twenty-five thousand dollars.

Richard: that you had to write a check to the lawyer.

Richard: Um and and basically now at this point the situation has changed for doctors out there, because I've published and we'll talk about this.

Richard: Um, there's now eleven articles published in the peer review medical literature on dapsone combination therapy, which I believe is uh ultimately shown to be a cure for chronic Lyme, as long as you don't have

Richard: active Babesia, active Bartonella, loaded with moltoxins, Msitz factors that we'll talk about in a little bit.

Richard: So now um and by the way, I was let off every time from the medical boards because my documentation and my medical charts, I learned from the very beginning.

Richard: You put medical articles in you know your medical charts.

Richard: So I would have articles in there about persistent Lyme, about the medical literature showing that Brilliant Burkdorff persists.

Richard: I would do an extensive differential diagnostic workup for these patients.

Richard: So if somebody had an ANA that was positive, which you see in Lyme.

Richard: I would make sure that the double-stranded DNA and their Smith antigens were negative that they didn't have lupus.

Richard: So everything I did

Richard: And I I must have published at least twenty-five articles, pretty much almost one a year.

Richard: So I was getting my work out into the medical literature with a validated symptom questionnaire and um every study I published online showing how it helped

Richard: But I made sure that I backed up everything I was doing, but the stress of getting calls from the boards and having to go before them

Richard: Um, it it was an extremely stressful experience, not to mention, of course, financially daunting with this, but what I ended up doing financially to make this work

Richard: I just kept, you know, every year at the end of the year, and I don't think I've ever discussed this with people, we almost had zero in the bank, but so I gave my I did not up my salary, by the way, for 20 years at least, and gave my staff raises every year and bonuses

Richard: Because I was opening up a 401k and a um, you know, a defined benefit plan.

Richard: So I was putting money away for the future, which I definitely suggest that doctors do and you do it early on in your practice as much as possible.

Richard: So I didn't have to keep increasing, but I made sure my costs of the way I practiced were such that it was as low as possible for the patients.

Richard: They might have understood that.

Richard: But at the end of the year, my staff knew, especially my, you know, my my head nurse who was overseeing the practice, we made sure I was doing this as financially, you know, viable as possible for the practice, but keeping the pr the the prices as low as possible for patients so it was not

Richard: you know, a hardship for these patients because I was a practicing Buddhist.

Richard: I needed to do well by myself, but also do well by them.

Richard: So the guidelines that they taught me, I mean I think they came in with a certain ethics coming in as

Richard: You know, as a a Jewish person who was very, very religious.

Richard: I mean, I went to Yeshiva when I was young and graduated Valdictorian my Hebrew school.

Richard: And I was speaking to God when I was six years old.

Richard: I don't even go through most of this with uh you know, I'm no, I mean I'm I'm kind of an amp I didn't realize at the time I would have to explain this, but

Richard: I I, you know, kind of download stuff.

Richard: I maybe go through this with you a little bit, but almost every discovery I made in medicine, I believe, was guided.

Richard: Um where the left side of your brain takes in the intellectual information, but the right side of your brain, the intuitive side, is guiding you towards where the answers is because you planted seeds.

Richard: And by the way, my teachers taught me to do this

Richard: That when you go out in the world, you plant these seeds of aspiration.

Richard: And you plant a seed every day in the ground, like a plant- a farmer who is planting seeds, and these seeds are.

Richard: Seeds of love, wanting people to be happy, compassion, wanting people to be free from suffering.

Richard: Um, and and basically saying, may I be a wish-fulfilling gender when people hear my name,

Richard: They be well and be happy and all obstacles are out of the way.

Richard: I mean, this is kind of like the way the Tibetan Buddhists teach you to do it.

Richard: I was planting these seeds 41 years ago.

Richard: And I believe in my heart of hearts that the reason I've probably discovered a cure for Lyme and maybe an answer for some Alzheimer's patients, as we're about to discuss, since I just published

Richard: The first article linking up Lyman Alzheimer's and a live human being showing that I can reverse PTAU 217, the most sensitive and specific biomarker.

Richard: The only reason I believe I've accomplished any of this is because of the blessings of my spiritual teachers who, as I was going through these difficulties with the HMOs and insurance companies in the boards,

Richard: I would go to Lama Norla at this monastery and they'd say, Lama, um, I got problems.

Richard: He would say, Oh, you need to do prayers at the monasteries in Tibet.

Richard: Uh it's $1,500 to do a Tara boom and a guru she boom.

Richard: I'm not exaggerating if I'm telling you I probably spent $100,000 on prayers.

Richard: in Tibetan monasteries for obstacle aversion.

Richard: I I I'm sure I probably have one of the most interesting stories on your podcast ever in medicine because of like

Richard: This spiritual lineage I've been connected with and the way I've been connected since I'm a young boy.

Richard: But ultimately, it it all worked out, right?

Richard: Um, even though it was daunting.

Richard: you know, at times to be able to do this.

Richard: But so financially I changed the model and I charged what I had to charge, but I made sure it was as equitable as possible.

Richard: that it never felt like I was, you know, taking too much from patients or giving and I always made sure that and my staff will confirm this, I didn't up my salary literally for 20 years while they were getting bonuses because I was putting away money in a f

Richard: you know, 401k and defined benefit print.

Richard: I was okay.

Richard: So why not give to my staff and be generous because, you know, my Tibetan name, uh Jim Papunsac, because he is high of generosity, right?

Richard: That's my Tibetan name.

Richard: So it's like, well, I gotta be I gotta be generous.

Richard: I've got to do what I can.

Richard: that was my name Lamagendon Repochet gave to me for a reason.

Richard: So I found by integrating the spiritual aspects of what I was doing with this, you know, aspect of being a doctor and being in the world with my feet on the ground, with my head in the sky

Richard: It it it guided me forward.

Richard: It worked.

Richard: Um, but you know, over the years I had to increase prices as, you know, as things went up as

Richard: Um, but almost every year at the end of the year, we really didn't have too much left at the end of the year.

Richard: So that's why I know my practice worked, because you know, I have enough now to retire.

Richard: Um I invested well in the markets early on while the markets, you know, were doing well.

Richard: Um so it all it all worked out for me.

Richard: Um but definitely daunting and stressful, yes.

Richard: And if it wasn't probably for my meditation practice and my spiritual practice

Richard: Um, I'm sure my adrenals would have been shot a long time ago.

Davin: Wow, this is so uh I I love this.

Davin: I mean

Davin: For me, my sort of change in terms of the direction I've gone with medicine also aligned with kind of this spiritual kind of reawakening that that I went through and um I I I'm no I'm no

Davin: I haven't studied at a Tibetan Buddhist monastery, um, but I I definitely love many of those concepts and and I think philosophically

Davin: Um, I came across someone, Dr.

Davin: David Hawkins, maybe maybe you've read some of his work, I don't know, but um he was a psychiatrist who became enlightened and you know he talked about some of the same things that you're describing in terms of

Davin: um having this um more enlightened approach to to taking care of people, right?

Davin: And that, you know, creating love and that high frequency

Davin: Uh can have just as big an impact as um as the science, right?

Richard: Don't keep coming from that head of yours that has all these thoughts.

Richard: Come from the heart.

Richard: Give the patients hugs.

Richard: And it's like, and by the way, if you're a main practitioner, this is interesting, when I was applying for a main medical license.

Richard: They tell you specifically, do not touch your patients.

Richard: You know, it's like I was hugging my pa it's like actually I'm hugging my patients because I love them, I care for them, they're my friends.

Richard: They I want them to know I care for them and I'll tell you, and this

Richard: Goes to your point, Davin.

Richard: When patients know you care, that helps the healing process, right?

Richard: They know you're not doing this for money.

Richard: They know you're doing this because you care.

Richard: I think that that healing process, especially because so many people come in with trauma.

Richard: You know, they've had emotional trauma, they've had sexual trauma, they've had physical trauma.

Richard: I mean, y you're just starting out in the lying functional world, but

Richard: I mean, it had to easily be thirty a third, forty percent of my patients with trauma that come in here.

Richard: And and if you don't address that mind-body connection with that emotional trauma,

Richard: These patients will not get better the same way.

Richard: So, you know, so it it you know, it's interesting.

Richard: Um the the right brain approach to medicine when you've got these complex cases.

Richard: And you might have four or five things in your mind that's possible.

Richard: And then you sit.

Richard: And by the way, for people that want to know more, a very simplified approach to this meditation, I have a medical detective Substack.

Richard: Um and it's free to sign up.

Richard: I don't charge for it.

Richard: It's free.

Richard: People give me seven dollars a month if they want to.

Richard: Um I pay someone to do all my AI work and stuff, but it's free.

Richard: Um, if you have a Substack go on Medical Detective and go back and look at the five-part meditation series I did early on.

Richard: I've now published over a hundred Substacks.

Richard: And what I did is I took these, you know, forty-five years of Buddhist teachings.

Richard: This is one of my favorite things to do, and I condensed it down, you know, into five substacks of like, how do you look at the empty, clear nature of mind to reach enlightenment?

Richard: It's like

Richard: I studied Mahamudra meditation with the um very venerable Trankarapushe, um, and I have extensive handwritten notes.

Richard: By the way, my

Richard: My my book we'll talk about today a little bit, which is my next book coming out called Ending Chronic Illness, a revolutionary new program to reverse inflammation and heal persistent disease.

Richard: And I I have some of the meditation instructions in there

Richard: But um it in what I've done over the years in my books, I've also incorporated these spiritual principles in there because I don't think

Richard: When you're dealing with these complex illnesses, you need a map, right?

Richard: So the 16 point MCDS model that, you know, Erik, you had shown people, how can I get better?

Richard: Why can't I get better?

Richard: This new book, Ending Chronic Illness, takes the 16-point model

Richard: and shows you how it applies to a broad range of chronic illnesses from um ADD, ADHD, autism, Alzheimer's.

Richard: um allergies and asthma, autoimmune diseases, MS, rheumatoid arthritis, cancer, cardiovascular disease, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, hormonal dysfunction, pain syndromes, migraines

Richard: Um uh long COVID.

Richard: I've got basically over 2,000 references backing this up.

Richard: And how did I manage to write this book?

Richard: Well, because when I discovered that this 16-point model applied to chronic Lyme, and I published two years ago that it applied to long COVID, and I published in the journal Microorganisms 2024.

Richard: The article I published six weeks ago in the Journal of Alzheimer's report showed that all sixteen MSIS factors apply to Alzheimer's.

Richard: And and thanks to the grace of God and Simon and Schuster.

Richard: They gave me a contract to do a one-year dive in the literature to see if this model applied to any other chronic illnesses.

Richard: It applied to literally every chronic illness I looked at, which means that whatever now you name the chronic illness.

Richard: The patients have hope because you have a new model to address it.

Richard: A doctor like you who's new in functional medicine or even old-time functional medicine

Richard: It's like, hold on, I'm seeing these chronically ill patients.

Richard: Let me look at the 16 MCDS factors for the illnesses that Wright Horowitz is writing about.

Richard: But even parents that are searching for, you know, solutions for their kids at this point, or even prevention, you're well.

Richard: But sh my whole family died of cancer, right?

Richard: They're all Ashkenazi Jews.

Richard: They grew up in Brooklyn.

Richard: They were smokers.

Richard: They didn't know the risk factors.

Richard: I have no one left in my family.

Richard: When you look at the cancer chapter in ending chronic illness, I'll show you how all 16 MSIDS factors apply to cancer.

Richard: So you can use it for prevention.

Richard: So, you know, this book for me is going to be

Richard: I don't know if it's my last science gift to the world, but it it probably will be.

Richard: My next book will probably be the 45 years of oral teachings that I've received from these Tibetan lamas that I've taken extensive notes, many of which, by the way, have passed away

Richard: It probably will be a multi-volume set because these teachers have taught me on the enlightened nature of mind with incredible teachings.

Richard: And I believe honestly I would not have accomplished anything that I have accomplished.

Richard: if it honestly wasn't for these teachings.

Richard: So um yeah my my journey in medicine has been an interesting one.

Richard: Definitely uh not not something I would have expected starting out.

Erik: Yeah, cer certainly not the typical one of just graduating residency, going into a practice, staying there for twenty, thirty years, retiring, and you know, and everybody's happy because they

Erik: that you got a chance to to be with Dr.

Erik: Horowitz, right?

Erik: I mean this is I I think you bring you you said so many things that I have follow-up questions for that um I I just wanna I just wanna

Erik: summarize a little bit of some of the key points that are so amazing in your story.

Erik: And I think one one was this concept of paying attention to the spiritual download.

Erik: I believe that when we are opening ourselves to goodness and to betterment of the world,

Erik: that that that opens us to receive divine revelation, right?

Erik: Personal revelation to help our patients.

Erik: I I 100% believe that God wants the best for

Erik: humanity and people who are willing to tap into his resources, he will download that information.

Erik: So I'm so glad that you shared that.

Erik: and that you have acted upon that.

Erik: That was the other, that was kind of the second aspect that I wanted to summarize.

Erik: Not only did you receive that inspiration,

Erik: But then you acted on it, which I think sometimes becomes challenged.

Erik: Well, how do how do how do I do this?

Erik: How do I how do I take this system that now I'm is coming to me and then it takes work.

Erik: to to put into practice.

Erik: Your s your sixteen point systematic approach did not, you know

Erik: uh uh come to you one day and then you were practicing that way the next day, right?

Erik: I mean it was it was a process of learning, figuring out which ones

Erik: We're there.

Richard: Right.

Richard: But but I I'll I'll tell you just the one thing about that of the way spirit, I believe, helped me with this, and I'll give you a perfect example.

Richard: So here I'm looking to find a cure for chronic Lyme disease, whatever it was 15 years ago.

Richard: And I I give this guy, I'll just tell you some interesting stories.

Richard: Cause you're right with the 16 point M sit Smack and Nalica just came.

Richard: It came story by story.

Richard: So the woman in the wheelchair was Babesia.

Richard: Another woman comes in, she can't talk, she's got aphasia

Richard: Um, and she's gone to major medical centers in Boston.

Richard: Oh, we think it's a stroke, it's an atypical migraine.

Richard: It turns out I found Bartonella.

Richard: I at the time we didn't know that it was a biofilm persistrobacteria like Lyme, so I gave her, I think it was doxycycline and equinolone.

Richard: And within weeks, she starts talking for the first time in years.

Richard: And it's like

Richard: Oh my God, Bartonella, important part of the model.

Richard: So it's like check Babesia, check Bartonella, right?

Richard: Another person comes in.

Richard: Um it's a dentist friend of mine.

Richard: It's like, Britch, I just checked myself.

Richard: I'm loaded with heavy metals.

Richard: I had mercury, so I checked myself, loaded with mercury, arsenic, cadvin.

Richard: So I chelate myself.

Richard: I then start checking my patients loaded with heavy metals.

Richard: 25% of the patients I chelate go, hey doc.

Richard: After you treated me with antibiotics and I pulled out the mercury and the lead and the arsenic, the cadmium, the aluminum, my brain fog's better.

Richard: My fatigue is better.

Richard: It's like heavy metals.

Richard: Check, mold patient.

Richard: This just happens.

Richard: So every part of the MCIDS model

Richard: Came out of the motivation.

Richard: How may I benefit others?

Richard: How may I relieve their suffering?

Richard: But what happened is the universe guided me.

Richard: It was like they always gave me the patience I needed.

Richard: And with Dapzone, you'll love this story with Dapzone

Richard: So my friend Phyllis Freeman says, Rich, I got this guy at the gym.

Richard: He's sick for seven years.

Richard: He can't work.

Richard: He's in his late 20s.

Richard: He can't go to school.

Richard: He can't work.

Richard: He's in bed.

Richard: Would you see him?

Richard: I said, sure, Phyllis.

Richard: He comes into my office.

Richard: I start him on dapsone combination therapy.

Richard: This was the time when I was just using 100 milligrams of dapsone.

Richard: I didn't know the dose that was required to put this thing in remission.

Richard: He comes in the fourth month and he says, Doc, I'm feeling horrible.

Richard: I go, oh, what's going on?

Richard: He goes, oh, I have horrible fatigue.

Richard: My pain is bad.

Richard: My brain fiber.

Richard: I said, well, what are you taking?

Richard: on taking Doxy twice a day, refampin twice a day, and dapsone 100 milligrams twice a day.

Richard: I said, oh my God, you're taking too much dapsone.

Richard: You you doubled the dose by accident.

Richard: Stop the protocol.

Richard: Come back in a month.

Richard: Let me know how you're feeling

Richard: He comes back in the month and he goes, oh my God, I'm feeling well.

Richard: I went, what?

Richard: He was sick for seven years.

Richard: This was four months.

Richard: I said

Richard: No fatigue?

Richard: No.

Richard: Joint pain?

Richard: No.

Richard: Brain fog.

Richard: He said, doc, I feel great.

Richard: I said, don't take anything more.

Richard: Come back in three months.

Richard: He's back in three months.

Richard: He's well.

Richard: This goes on for a year until he gets 16 tick bites in Maine.

Richard: So I learned because my patients made mistakes.

Richard: Mistakes.

Richard: Now how did mistakes happen?

Richard: I'll tell you my theory

Richard: I put out this theor I put out this prayer to the universe.

Richard: May I be of greatest benefit to the you know most people to relieve their suffering.

Richard: It's almost like God whispers into the mind of patients, take a double dose of dapsone.

Richard: Horowitz will notice.

Richard: The patient with quad dapsone, same thing.

Richard: She's on double-dose dapsone.

Richard: She calls me and goes, oh, I'm feeling horrible.

Richard: What are you taking?

Richard: Oh, I doubled the dose.

Richard: I said, you're taking 400 milligrams.

Richard: Stop it.

Richard: She comes back a month later.

Richard: Oh my God, I feel great.

Richard: It's like

Richard: It happened again.

Richard: It wasn't me being like a brilliant, I know what's causing it.

Richard: It was like the patients making mistakes

Richard: But you had to be an acute astute enough clinician to listen to the patient and understand.

Richard: But it was literally like the universe was giving me the clues and guiding me along the way to find answers.

Richard: And the same thing happened with Alzheimer's

Richard: This last patient before I just retired after 41 years was the almost the only patient in my practice who never did dapsone

Richard: She had an elevated Alzheimer's marker, PTAu 217, the most sensitive specific biomarker.

Richard: And for 15 years, this woman had rheumatoid factors with joint pain, but refused to do dapsone.

Richard: I showed her the biomarker and I said, listen.

Richard: You really need.

Richard: I said, I don't know if it's gonna help, but there's no really good treatment.

Richard: Let me try it.

Richard: We did Dapsone for nine weeks.

Richard: Three months later, her PTAW7 went from 0.

Richard: 33

Richard: tw twice above normal to point one two.

Richard: It reversed it by sixty-three percent with a nine-week oral protocol.

Richard: The best that the anti-amyloid drugs like Lacanimab and Ananimab do is twenty-three percent in six years.

Richard: With brain shrinkage and brain bleeds, this was 63% almost three times better in nine weeks.

Richard: Now, this patient

Richard: was the only one who hadn't done adaption, but it came in at the end of my career from planting a seed in the ground.

Richard: May I be of greatest.

Richard: I mean, this is mind-blowing because it's not like

Richard: I was so brilliant.

Richard: It was like the prayers that I made started manifesting.

Richard: I believe that's how this whole thing unfolded.

Richard: So yeah, it's been a fascinating journey.

Richard: Like

Richard: But just listening to the patients, they would always give you the clues.

Richard: And and that's pretty much how I discovered all the parts of the MSIDS model.

Richard: Um is that's how it all unfolded, is by patients coming in with

Richard: kept looking for answers.

Richard: Oh, this one is the adrenals are shot.

Richard: This one the men were coming in with low testosterone because the hypothalamic pituitary axis, there was inflammation from the lime.

Richard: I would give them colomifenidorymidex.

Richard: The testosterone would go up three times, right?

Richard: It was just by trial and error and never giving up.

Richard: Um, you know, one of my patients have actually got it here.

Richard: You know, she she sent me this like at at the very end, right?

Richard: I keep it on here because it's true.

Richard: It's like, don't ever give up.

Richard: If you never give up and you pray for help and you just say, please, this patient is suffering.

Richard: May I help them.

Richard: A lot of times I find that a door opens where it wasn't before, and that's just been my clinical experience.

Richard: And by the way, as long as I put the patient first and never looked at finances.

Richard: Always just patient first, good quality medicine.

Richard: Somehow the finances always followed, right?

Richard: That that has been my experience by just following a certain ethical moral way of

Richard: Again, using this code that they taught me, which I learned in Judaism, but I also learned with my Buddhist teachers.

Davin: Every time you speak, I feel like w you know, we could go a hundred different directions.

Davin: You know, full of wisdom comments.

Davin: Um but my f

Davin: The first one I want to mention is this idea of mistakes and how it's, you know, all connected.

Davin: Uh uh again, I had mentioned Hawkins before, but he talked about the fact that he didn't think there were any mistakes.

Davin: in reality, you know, there's nothing outside of the karmic balanced harmony of the universe, you would say, right?

Davin: And and it and it it but it

Davin: But I've never really thought about like my patients' suffering or the phase of suffering that they're in as almost like a contribution to the collective, right?

Davin: And

Davin: I think that's a beautiful way to look at it, right?

Davin: And not that we would ever want anyone to have to suffer, but if they do, um, through their own karma or through their own experience or through their own, you know, ignorance and making a quote mistake,

Davin: Um, the fact that they could then turn that into a contribution through, you know, you being maybe the person in a position to recognize that.

Davin: uh is is a really beautiful concept, I think.

Richard: Yeah.

Richard: Yeah.

Richard: Thank you.

Erik: Jill, Jill, you know, Jill Carnahan's another one that I always say, I'm Jill, I'm so grateful that you have gone through

Erik: so many medical challenges so that we can learn from your wisdom of overcoming those medical challenges because she has such an amazing

Erik: scientific brain like you do, and she's just always thinking and observing and questioning and asking, you know, and stuff.

Erik: And I think that's

Erik: That's where where things really unfold is when we're asking those questions and we're observing.

Erik: I I I I think you could, you know, our training

Erik: You know, which I'm sure it was similar, but y your your training in medicine would have taught you to chastise the patient for not following directions.

Erik: Like why did you do that?

Richard: But when I started medicine, that might have oh I believe me, my my approach to medicine changed over the years.

Richard: I think the first years

Richard: When I was in medicine, it was like you didn't take the blood pressure medicine the way I do like, oh it but I tell you, the longer you're in medicine, you do this, it absolutely shifts over time and you become a little bit gentler and softer.

Richard: Um, but you know, not just working free from here, but you gotta work from the heart right at at the same point in time.

Richard: And by the way, I mean it it's a lot more nourishing in medicine.

Richard: You will get burned out in medicine with with the way the HMOs and medical system and everything is happening, right?

Richard: If you don't find a way to nourish yourself, and I found over time, you know, what gave me the greatest joy?

Richard: The greatest joy I have is making someone better.

Richard: Nothing.

Richard: There is nothing greater for me than finding an answer for someone's illness that they get their life back.

Richard: And they write me an email and I've gotten many at towards the end of my clinical career.

Richard: Now I'm moving into the research space to try and do, you know, multi-center randomized placebo trials and I'm helping doctors who need help and

Richard: You know, I'll I'll probably start a doctor training program very shortly uh because I'm starting to get all these questions from doctors across the world.

Richard: Uh yeah, I mean I try doing a consultation service.

Richard: And just one day alone I got 75 emails from Czechoslovakia, from Bulgaria, from Mexico, from it was like all over the world.

Richard: And I showed this to my wife and she said

Richard: You you can't do this, sweetheart.

Richard: Like you promised me a life, you know, after 41 years that I said I got it, Lily.

Richard: It's like, so so I'm gonna do I'll I'm gonna start a I have to figure out a day of the week to do this.

Richard: I'll put out a

Richard: a call to action here.

Richard: But uh I'll start a doctor training program or a couple hours a month.

Richard: I'll get doctors on the call and we'll start to do case studies and go through it.

Richard: But

Richard: You know, that and moving from one-on-one now to serving the millions because my life and my wife would say she's a master astrologer, by the way, I'm a I'm an Aquarius with an Aquarius rising, so she'll say, you know

Richard: Your your y your humanitarian purpose, right?

Richard: It's it it's about humanitarianism, right?

Richard: It's a it's about helping the world.

Richard: And it's uh so

Richard: At this point in my life, I just turned 70 just a little while ago.

Richard: I mean, this stage in my career, you know, it's about also your spirituality of preparing because

Richard: Life is very impermanent.

Richard: You don't know how long you're going to be here.

Richard: And my teachers have given me instructions on how to awaken, on how to recognize the clear, empty nature of mine in one lifetime.

Richard: So, you know, I'm I'm not gonna blow this experience and

Richard: I I want to make sure that now I have a balanced life.

Richard: I mean, I exercise seven days a week and keep off the sugar and I get enough sleep.

Richard: You know, I'm making sure I'm doing all the good things for my health, but

Richard: I want to integrate more meditation practice at this point and and also teach, of course.

Richard: I love teaching.

Richard: In fact, I I reached out to Andy Weill just a little while ago.

Richard: about possibly teaching at his medical school in Arizona one week a year.

Richard: Right.

Richard: Yeah, just to teach the functional medicine community, the MSITS model and what I've learned not just for Lyme, but for all of these other chronic illnesses.

Erik: That's amazing.

Erik: Because I think the perception of individu you know, particularly practitioners who have heard you speak or may have listened to you

Erik: your books, audiobooks, or read your books, you know, is that oh, you you just arrived at this point and now you're you're uh doing so great financially because of all of these things.

Erik: And I I I really appreciated the fact

Erik: that you shared your story because I think sometimes there's this misperception that somehow, you know, it the success just falls out of a tree and you just, I'm not good enough or I can't do this or whatever.

Erik: I mean I think that this is a common thread through any of us who get to a point of any type of success, um, both financially and scientifically and and medicinally.

Erik: It it comes through a string of choices that cause us to reflect on who we are and how we're putting forth ourselves in the world.

Erik: And putting those choices back to back.

Erik: Sometimes we learn more from choices that don't turn so well and other times they build on themselves.

Erik: And we grow.

Erik: And I think that your your journey is so fantastic because it it helps us see that there was huge costs at the beginning of your career.

Erik: And you were willing to make those sacrifices and pay those costs to have the success that you're having now.

Erik: And and and y you didn't you didn't

Erik: M the the the cost wasn't so that you could be a, you know, best-selling author.

Erik: The cost was so that you could

Erik: provide information and knowledge that would help people get their lives back and and be be

Erik: you know, saving grace for so many individuals.

Erik: So th thank you for that.

Erik: I I think it's I just wanted to acknowledge that.

Erik: Um thank you for making those choices.

Richard: And and by the way, you you never write a book to become a best-selling author and make money if you don't know the way the publishers work.

Richard: Uh yeah, so uh my first book, you know, the hardcover, you make fifteen percent.

Richard: St.

Richard: Martin's takes eighty five percent, the soft cover

Richard: you make seven point five percent.

Richard: You the you know, even a book like this, you know, this this took me, you know, a year, year and a half of doing a download.

Richard: I if I was to do this in hours seeing patients, you make a lot you do this because you have a gift you want to share for people.

Richard: It's sort of your legacy.

Richard: You know every doctor I think needs to think about also I this was brought up to me because I was just in Florida for two podcasts

Richard: about your legacy.

Richard: And I never really thought about it in that way, but it's like what is the legacy you want to leave as a physician or human being, whatever you're doing in the world, for future generations?

Richard: Like, if everybody thought, can I just do one thing that makes the world a better place?

Richard: Right, that you've you can leave this planet, you know, with a with a clear conscience and mind going, I served well.

Richard: You know, the the world's a better place be because of what I did.

Richard: And

Richard: You know, when I was very young and I was in prayer and I was, you know, hearing things when I was young and I don't there are things I don't even want to share because I heard things when I was six years old praying to God that actually came true later on in my life.

Richard: And it's like

Richard: I didn't even know what I was hearing when I was young, because I didn't realize an empath and I was downloading.

Richard: I had no idea what this was.

Richard: I thought everybody, by the way

Richard: Like, did what I did until I realized afterwards.

Richard: And by the way, Jill Carnahan and I have had this conversation because Jill's a sister.

Richard: She and I have had the same conversation on spirituality and medicine.

Richard: That I I think

Richard: Um it's an important element, whether it's Judaism, Christi, Buddhism, is that doesn't matter what it is you're practicing

Richard: But I think it's an important component to integrate it because it it rounds you out as an individual and it allows you to help with the stressful situations

Richard: Right, that will come up inevitably in medicine, because it's a very litigious field just in general.

Richard: Um, and you know, fortunately in my forty-one years I've never been successfully sued.

Richard: It's happened a couple of times.

Richard: I've been, you know, in there, but because my

Richard: My documentation of my medical records and my differential was so good it you know nothing happened, but it it's a very stressful situation being a doctor.

Richard: So, you know, you you've got to understand when you're going into this that

Richard: This is not all, you know, it's roses and it's melt.

Richard: It's I'm a doctor and it's it's this is not an easy field.

Richard: People do not realize what this is.

Richard: And, you know, I I hope with ending chronic illness it'll simplify the functional medicine approach because I have literally, you know, everything I learned in functional medicine is stuck into ending chronic illness.

Richard: I mean, I know people go to IFM and

Richard: all these conferences and it's great.

Richard: Um, but this is going to be a quick manual down and dirty to get you to where you need to go for someone with, you know

Richard: How how did I get someone with Crohn's disease and inflammatory bowel disease?

Richard: How did I get them off their medic medication?

Richard: Right?

Richard: How do I get a patient who thought they had MS but didn't have MS?

Richard: How did I stop the demyelination?

Richard: Um even if Epstein barbarians are now responsible.

Richard: So

Richard: What this book will do for you know for doctors, for patients, for parents looking for answers for again prevention, just staying alive.

Richard: I'm look, I'm looking for 108.

Richard: I've got this this a sacred number in Tibetan Buddhism.

Richard: I'm going for 108.

Richard: Uh we'll we'll s and if you saw what I swallowed every day in my kitchen table, what I you know, I'm blocking NF kappa B with NACL phytoic acid glutathione and I'm stimulating NRF two with cocurmin, resveratrol, broccoli seed extra.

Richard: I mean

Richard: It'll go nobody could do.

Richard: It's like, well, you know, I've got a good life.

Richard: I want to stay alive and be healthy, so I'm gonna exercise and do proper diet and get to sleep.

Richard: Meditate for stress reduction.

Richard: I can't express enough a doc.

Richard: By the way, in medical school

Richard: I did my first meditation.

Richard: I learned transcendental meditation, by the way, my first year in med school because it was so uh stressful.

Richard: And I took a course, it's just a funny story, um, in England in the UK for the TM City course.

Richard: um where they taught you yogic flying and I thought, well if I could learn yogic flying, it was like levitation.

Richard: I thought I could teach people the power of the mind.

Richard: So I go to I go to the UK.

Richard: This is a very funny story.

Richard: Um and I'm in this room with 150 people and and they teach you

Richard: the uh the yoga sutras are potentially in this parti yoga sutra that you put in and all of a sudden these people around me they're starting to like jump up and down like frogs and they're coming off the mats and nothing's happening to me.

Richard: And I'm thinking there's got to be like a candid camera here somewhere.

Richard: Right.

Richard: So I decide to fast and kind of clear my system.

Richard: And the next day, I notice this thing starts opening up in the bottom of my spine.

Richard: It was the kundalini started opening.

Richard: My breathing started going like at 140 beats and all of a sudden I noticed this energy pushing me up.

Richard: And it's not like you're flying because I was a Superman freak.

Richard: I used to run around with a cape and

Richard: Rigo Park Queen's trying to tr take off.

Richard: So this is like me.

Richard: It's like I couldn't be Superman when I was young, but I'm gonna learn flying right when I'm an adult.

Richard: In any case, it was fascinating because even though like you don't stay up unless you're obviously a very advanced yoga practitioner.

Richard: I saw the way the energy channels and stuff moved in the body.

Richard: And I'll tell you, going through seven years of medical school in French, where the last four months of the year was was oral examinations before the professors.

Richard: It was like every five days.

Richard: And they started with 1,500 people year one and got it down to, I think, 350 year two.

Richard: They eliminated 75% of the medical school class and they kept eliminating

Richard: In my seventh year, I didn't even know I would ever graduate.

Richard: Like you never felt safe.

Richard: So medication for those people who have not integrated for stress reduction in medicine, I then eventually met my Tibetan llamas several years later because

Richard: I found I didn't feel like I was advancing as an individual, like I was meditating and it was helping.

Richard: I was meditating two hours a day, by the way, in medical school just for stress.

Richard: It was great.

Richard: Um and now it's a different form of spiritual practice where I took vows to do it every day, but I would really advise docs, please do not

Richard: ignore some form of good stress reduction.

Richard: No matter how well you feel that having under control, 99.

Richard: 9% of every chronic illness patient that's ever come in.

Richard: Their adrenals are shot, whether it's phase one, phase two, or phase three adrenals.

Richard: And I think it really got me through med school and through my practice, um, apart from connecting and always asking to be a benefit.

Richard: So

Richard: You know, for people listening with you know the practice of medicine, please integrate what whatever it is you do for that.

Richard: I think it's absolutely essential to keep yourself strong in a field that is really uh uh not an easy field to be in these days.

Davin: It's interesting.

Davin: I um I went and took a a T M course, you know, down in LA and uh I I thought like the coolest part was at the end where they actually give you your mantra and they light the incense and it was very like

Davin: It was just such a cool experience, you know.

Davin: Uh that was like a minor version of of what you've done.

Davin: Um so I you know, I couldn't agree more with

Davin: the having that balance and that spirituality and and you know centeredness, having purpose.

Davin: But there's something else you've mentioned that I think um

Davin: Th there's a lot of us in the f in the medical world that could benefit from this as well, which is pairing that purpose and that that drive and that, you know.

Davin: um desire to do good in the world with some really good mechanics in terms of like financial

Davin: prudency, if you will.

Davin: I mean the way that you describe sort of you kind of put your practice on lock in a way where you're like, okay

Davin: I'm not gonna go crazy.

Davin: You know, I'm not gonna try to figure out how to become a gazillionaire through my practice.

Davin: I'm gonna take care of my staff, one, right?

Davin: And I'm gonna make sure that the model

Davin: is sustainable.

Davin: Right.

Davin: But I but you had no you you know maybe through your you know

Davin: Buddhism and whatnot, and you had let go of attachments to material things and you sort of turn that over to the universe to sort of come as it may.

Davin: Um, but I think others could benefit from just saying, hey

Davin: You did some things that are so important.

Davin: One, you had the discipline to document and defend everything that you did, especially in an emerging space where there wasn't a standard of care necessarily, right?

Davin: And I've heard Erik talk about this as well.

Davin: You know, um, you know, don't say that your high dose vitamin C I V is gonna cure cancer, right?

Davin: Or that you're treating cancer, right?

Davin: No, you're

Davin: This is an adjunct or this is, you know, this is supportive thing, whatever.

Davin: You know, you gotta be careful how you word things.

Davin: And so you it sounds like you were so disciplined in that regard.

Davin: Um, but then also financially and from a business structure standpoint, you just created your practice in a way that you just didn't overdo it.

Davin: You didn't put yourself in a hole.

Davin: And you created some um processes that made that sustainable in a way where you had that nice balance.

Davin: Where did that come from?

Davin: Or how how is that just the way your brain works?

Richard: No, well, you know, and it happened to so example, I mean something that helped my practice ultimately was nutraceuticals, but let's say and how did it even happen?

Richard: So let's say 30 years ago, um uh I noticed that let's say patients were coming in with uh elevated homocysteine, and I needed to get them a good B6, B12, and folic acid.

Richard: And at the time um country life vitamins were around.

Richard: I actually went down to Long Island.

Richard: I wanted to look at their plant to see how they made them.

Richard: Um and I started using, you know, a few vitamins.

Richard: So just like the MCIDS model developed

Richard: Patient by patient, right?

Richard: Where I learned, oh, the microbiome is important, leaky gut and mast cell activation, like my allergies and asthma got better after I got off histamine foods.

Richard: Um, right, I didn't have to use, you know

Richard: sprays the rest of my life or beyond Cingulare or Montalucas.

Richard: It happened piece by piece, but it was the same thing with ink ink using nutraceuticals.

Richard: So I started with one or two.

Richard: And then as the need happened, oh, patients are herxing like crazy.

Richard: And they would go pick up supplements over the counter and there was no absolutely no GMP like

Richard: And I said, no no no, I I gotta get you like good manufacturing stuff.

Richard: So what I did is I ended up carrying it in the office

Richard: And like all, I discounted it significantly for patients.

Richard: So it was a win-win.

Richard: I won, they won.

Richard: It was less for them, less than they could get it anywhere else, but it gave us an income source.

Richard: And over the years

Richard: I started increasing it.

Richard: I mean, I still have it on my website, cangetbetter.

Richard: com, where a lot of my supplements are 20 or 25% off, and I opened it to the public.

Richard: Right.

Richard: Um, so that it's a win-win.

Richard: And I notice if it's always win-win, it's like it it's good for you.

Richard: I want to make sure you benefit, but I'm also gonna make sure that I can survive and have a practice.

Richard: What ultimately happened over the years

Richard: is that income from the nutraceuticals as it grew, because I think I've got at least 300, but I needed them because I needed a good NAC, alpha-lapoic acid, and glutathione.

Richard: So I ended up being on the board of Zymogen.

Richard: Why with David Pearlmutter and I got to meet David and all these, you know, that's where he and I met and you know, I met Lee's and we went to his house, you know, down in Florida.

Richard: And but it it was basically so I was on the board of Zymogen.

Richard: So half the supplements I swallow every day are from Zymogen

Richard: Because I've been through their plant four times and they're above like FDA standards.

Richard: They're like Pfizer, right?

Richard: So, but I made sure, but it grew out of the need

Richard: Right?

Richard: Oh, I I got a lower inflammation, right?

Richard: I needed a folic acid for dapsone, and I'm not gonna give them deplin, right?

Richard: Because you can't get eight tablets of deplin a day.

Richard: It's not gonna happen.

Richard: So zymogen weight and L-methylfolate called Zacol XR.

Richard: I discounted it 20 to 25% off so my patients could afford it, but I put it on the website.

Richard: Ultimately, you know, my I think my overhead, I don't know, it's like 30%, whatever I make on these things, but I made it low enough

Richard: That I benefit, but the patients benefit.

Richard: So because this is the business of medicine, I didn't start off, oh, I'm gonna make money in vitamins.

Richard: It happened because I looked at what the needs of the patients were

Richard: And in the Stap Zone protocol that's published, you're on four probiotics twice a day.

Richard: And I cannot afford that you go pick up a lousy probiotic

Richard: you know, from wherever, because you're gonna get C diff.

Richard: I haven't seen a case of C.

Richard: diff in years by using Probiomax 350 billion from Zymogen.

Richard: and Saccharomyces Ballardi um from orthomolecular and orthomolecular's other probiotic um using therolac from master supplements what I did is

Richard: I chose supplements that were not just GMP, but the highest quality I could find.

Richard: And by the way, I'm taking them all myself.

Richard: Right?

Richard: I take four probiotics twice a day 'cause I realize and, you know, again it's it's all an ending chronic illness.

Richard: The gut brain axis, the gut liver bra

Richard: If your microbiome is off and you don't have enough short-chain fatty acid bacteria, you're going to be driving inflammation.

Richard: You know, so here all these people are going and trying to optimize their health.

Richard: Right, but at this point we know that all chronic disease, we have an epidemic of chronic illness in this country, right?

Richard: Up to sixty percent of Americans have one chronic illness.

Richard: 25% of Americans have two chronic illnesses.

Richard: 86% of our health care costs and 70% of the deaths are from chronic illness.

Richard: 18% of our GDP is chronic illness and growing.

Richard: And yet we don't have a model for chronic illness.

Richard: So when I wrote ending chronic illness, I realized this 16-point model is kind of what the medical system needed.

Richard: for both treatment and prevention.

Richard: Part of the reason I wrote the book, but but also along the way I realized like, hey, I had to provide

Richard: these nutritional supplements to protect my patients so I could get them the these products at the least cost because they were swallowing a lot of pills and it benefited the practice.

Richard: But it always came from that motivation of not to make money

Richard: But let me let me do right.

Richard: I need to get them stuff to protect them, but I'll find a way to do it that I can benefit, help our practice.

Richard: And again at the end of the year, um you could ask my nurses, you know, who are now working for Dr.

Richard: Dempsey with my you know, we had very little left, which meant I did it right, because I put my money aside into a 401k in Define Benefit plan long enough ago.

Richard: that I grew it in the stock market and I didn't have to do it by trying to make it on the patience, right?

Richard: I just made enough that I s I did smart investing.

Richard: I won't also tell you how my right brain when I when it maybe I can share this one with you.

Richard: So it was time to buy my medical center.

Richard: I I found a place.

Richard: My grandmother said, Richard Darling.

Richard: I want to give you, you know, whatever, $100,000 and said, oh grandma, that's so wonderful.

Richard: Thank you so much.

Richard: I took the money and I went to my right brain intuition and I said, all right, I need three stocks.

Richard: Like of how I'm gonna do this.

Richard: I don't even want to this I did this early on and I found these three stocks that my right brain intuition, I won't give you the details of how I did it, looked amazing.

Richard: I doubled the money

Richard: you know, within about, I don't know, six, eight, nine months, and that was the down payment for the medical center.

Richard: Uh I don't I I would call that now spiritual materialism, but I needed it for the medical center.

Richard: I would never advise anyone to do that for that purpose, but I needed it for right to helping patients.

Richard: So again, because this is the business of medicine, see, I didn't do it through IV drips.

Richard: Um, I didn't do it through SOT therapy at $3,000 a pop or hyperbaric.

Richard: Look, God bless people, I have nothing against these things.

Richard: But my goal always was I need to find a short-term oral generic cure

Richard: for Lyme disease because it's a worldwide epidemic.

Richard: And that most people in the world cannot afford SOT and IV ozone and all of this stuff.

Richard: And by the way, the medical boards do not necessarily look nicely upon it either.

Richard: Great.

Richard: So I did it through nutraceuticals.

Richard: I did it through opening up a website.

Richard: Anyone can go on and cangetbetter.

Richard: com and see what I take.

Richard: And you'll see if you look under my in my new book in chapter four, Lowering Inflammation.

Richard: Interestingly enough, I show you the 16 MCIDS factors, and this is, I think, coincidental.

Richard: There are 16 inflammatory pathways underlying these 16 pathways, like NF kappa B

Richard: Um NRF2, NLRP3 inflamosomes, which Dapstone hits, but also LDN, low-dose naltrexone, melatonin.

Richard: I show you how chronic disease, right, is an epidemic proportion.

Richard: Chronic disease under it's underlying by chronic inflammation, underlies all chronic disease.

Richard: And if you want to optimize your health, you can't optimize if you don't identify where the inflammation's coming from.

Richard: So this model tells you where the inflammation's coming from.

Richard: And that it shows you how to optimize with diet, exercise, sleep, nutritional supplements, hitting the infections, getting the microbiome, optimizing your hormones.

Richard: So

Richard: It again, it was a win-win situation.

Richard: So for doctors out there figuring out how do I do this in a good way to support my practice, I found actually opening up a nutraceutical website.

Richard: I know that you know some people will look at this, those Lyme doctors are interested in making money.

Richard: I could not have kept the prices of my practice as low as I did without nutraceuticals.

Richard: Absolutely no way.

Richard: I think by the end of my career, maybe forty percent of my income

Richard: was from nutraceuticals and 60%.

Richard: But it was beautiful because the patients were getting the supplements lower than they could get them anywhere else.

Richard: Right?

Richard: And I'm swallowing literally, I'm not exaggerating.

Richard: Seventy I kept this website open by the way, because I still want to get the supplements it cost

Richard: My wife and I are taking probably 70 supplements a day to stay alive on the planet.

Richard: My whole family's dead.

Richard: I don't have one person left.

Richard: Right.

Richard: So, so I I business of medicine.

Richard: I I'm afraid with the medical boards with the way they look at some of these alternative therapies.

Richard: The only other thing I did IV was IV glutathione.

Richard: That is the only IV treatment I did.

Richard: And not that I don't think, by the way, that SOT therapy and some of these treatments may help people.

Richard: But I also know that people relapse afterwards.

Richard: And a lot of people can't afford $10,000 or go to Germany for $15,000 to fry their brain at 107 degrees to try and kill spirochetes, right?

Richard: These are biofilm persistrobacteria

Richard: So my goal was starting out in medicine, how might I help and be of greatest benefit to the most number of people and you know those who hear my name may they be well, these kind of spiritual seeds I planted in the ground

Richard: Go back now, now fast forward 41, 45 years later, I think I've discovered a cure for Lyme.

Richard: I may have discovered an answer for certain Alzheimer's patients.

Richard: Not one patient in my practice died from long COVID.

Richard: I published the first article in the medical literature in April 2020 on glutathione for long COVID.

Richard: And how did I discover it?

Richard: It's what we said before.

Richard: People used to come in with Babesia with shortness of breath.

Richard: I give them IV glutathione and they go, oh, my shortness of breath is better.

Richard: I went, oh, cytokine storm.

Richard: It's like, let me block NF kappa B.

Richard: It probably will work.

Richard: And it was working in my patients.

Richard: Not one patient died.

Richard: Later on, by the way, years later, they discovered that people in the ICU who died from ARDS with acute respiratory distress syndrome had the lowest glutathione levels.

Richard: because your lungs have 140 times more glutathione than anywhere else in your body.

Richard: If you've used up your glutathione to get rid of environmental toxin treating infections

Richard: You're gonna get ARDS.

Richard: Turned out also that Dapzone is the only published uh drug.

Richard: It was a small case study of 40 people that stopped ARDS 100% success rate.

Richard: So again, how did I discover this for long COVID?

Richard: Just trying to help people, right?

Richard: Oh, seeing the connection between the cytokine storm that I saw on Lyme Babesia and what was happening in COVID.

Richard: How can I benefit?

Richard: It it it's amazing, right, when I look back at my medical career, how planting these seeds and just trying to do this ended up bringing solutions from everything from chronic Lyme to long COVID to now.

Richard: Alzheimer's disease, but I would say from the practice, the practical side of the business of medicine, listen carefully, right?

Richard: I I found the nutraceuticals were fine.

Richard: I know some people will still say

Richard: It's wrong.

Richard: It's like, you know something?

Richard: You don't understand the business of medicine because I would have had to charge so much more for my patients to keep my practice doors open and give my staff bonuses.

Richard: And salary increases while I kept mine stable, I would never have been able to do it.

Richard: So you just don't understand the business of medicine and the practicality

Richard: But this was a kind of a win-win for the patients and it and it worked for me for those listening who said, you know, I think that's that's maybe a good solution I could integrate.

Erik: I love that.

Erik: Well, thank you so much.

Erik: We are we are coming up on the end of our program and we wanna we wanna share with you our last question and that we ask all of our our participants

Erik: And that is w where do you see the future of integrative and functional medicine going?

Erik: Right?

Erik: I mean you you you had the the challenges of

Erik: taking care of thousands of patients often who came to your practice seeing multiple different providers who who they wouldn't really listen to their symptoms.

Erik: Um, you put things together, you you had to fight against medical boards, but where do you see I mean it's come a long way, but where do you see the future of integrative and meta uh functional medicine going?

Richard: So so for me, um the future of integrated functional medicine, in fact all medicine, by the way, is as we talked about, we're in the middle of a chronic disease epidemic um where chronic inflammation is underlying all this chronic disease, and we're gonna break the healthcare bank.

Richard: They've actually shown that.

Richard: We're going to exceed our GDP cost like in a in a decade or fifteen years where healthcare is basically gonna be too expensive and we're gonna crash the whole system.

Richard: The sixteen point MCDS model that is in ending chronic illness

Richard: that is applying to ADHD, autism, Alzheimer's, autoimmune diseases, chronic fatigue, fibro, cancer, uh hormone disorders, inflammatory disorders, long COVID.

Richard: This model needs to be adapted, and I'm now trying to work with the NIH and people I know so that I can now start leading studies so we can do multi-center placebo controlled randomized trials.

Richard: For all these chronic illnesses to show that the 16-point model, because there's always a difference between association and causation, that we need to show that this association is causation, and that we can not only lower health care costs

Richard: Um, but I believe we're gonna need chronic disease centers of excellence where doctors can spend the amount of time that I've been spending with patients, because right now the HMO model of fifteen minutes

Richard: Does not work.

Richard: So you're gonna need chronic disease centers of prevention where people maybe get back money on their taxes by making sure that their blood pressure and their cholesterol and their diabetes

Richard: But even their inflammatory markers are low, and that if you do well every year at the end of the year and you're in range, you get money back on your taxes.

Richard: Incentivize health.

Richard: Because, you know, God bless RFK Jr.

Richard: for going around and going, we gotta get off-site drugs and take out the dyes out of this and and we've got a Cronus disease problem.

Richard: He's right.

Richard: But you have to have a practical solution for solving the chronic disease epidemic.

Richard: And I believe that the system will have no choice but to adapt.

Richard: the 16 point MSIS model with 2,000 plus references that's in ending chronic illness, I don't think they're gonna have a choice but to adopt it because the system's gonna crash.

Richard: Right.

Richard: So for people that want prevention and are looking for answers

Richard: I I I mean if it doesn't go there, uh the medical model is gonna be we're we're gonna be in big trouble because right now we're we're we're going down um as a society.

Richard: In fact we just there was a report that came out just a couple of weeks ago

Richard: We're spending twice as much as other countries and I think we're 30th in the world regarding, you know, the kind of care we we give here.

Richard: This is just unsustainable.

Richard: So um I I think the integrative functional medicine approach has to be put into medical school curriculums.

Richard: And I think the 16 point model that I've now shown is associated with all these chronic illnesses.

Richard: It it's time for docs to say, hey, this is a a really easy to integrate model.

Richard: And now that I'm seeing all these chronically ill patients, I've got a model that'll help me.

Richard: So I'm not looking, what do I do for these patients, right?

Richard: I'm sending it to, you know, all these doctors for uh consult consultants and they can't figure out what's wrong.

Richard: It's like go to the model

Richard: Um I for me, that's going to be the future of medicine.

Erik: Oh, that's great.

Davin: I think we're gonna uh have you back on your 107th birthday

Davin: And and we'll look back and say that this was the day when the trajectory of chronic illness uh i in the in our world changed.

Davin: Because I I think this is really amazing.

Erik: Yeah, and I would I would encourage any of our listeners to not just buy the book, but also to listen to it.

Erik: I'm I'm uh hoping and assuming you will be narrating it on audible

Erik: as well.

Erik: And your theater background definitely comes into play and it's one of the most entertaining audible um book

Erik: that I've ever listened to, you know, it it made learning really fun.

Erik: So thank you for for putting that into work.

Richard: Well thank you.

Richard: And for those interested just go on ending chronic illness dot com or can get better dot com for more information for the book.

Richard: Um

Richard: I've got my medical dissective substack.

Richard: I'm on all social media, Facebook, you know, Dr.

Richard: Richard Horowitz.

Richard: So um people can find me.

Richard: Uh but ending chronic illness dot com um and cangetbetter.

Richard: com, you'll you'll get updates um on everything I'm doing.

Richard: Awesome.

Richard: Thank you.

Richard: My pleasure.

Richard: Great being with you guys today.

Richard: It was a lot of fun.

Erik: It was so much fun.

Erik: Yeah, thank you.

Erik: And it and yeah, we could we could've gone down so many

Erik: So many tangents so many so quickly, but it was you did a great job and we really appreciate you taking the time to be on here and I think your story will be really inspiring for

Richard: You know you know if this can help doctors starting out in medicine or they're struggling right now, God bless, let let it happen because you you know, we all learn from giants.

Richard: I learned from giants.

Richard: Like um let them learn from my experience of being in the field for so long, of like what I did to make it work and and and never go

Richard: Give up and integrate that spiritual side.

Richard: It's worked for me and I think it'll work for others.

Davin: Yep, I agree.

Davin: Thank you.

Richard: My pleasure.