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I have a question for you. Do you feel like there’s something inside of you that wants more out of life, but chronic pain or stress is constantly pulling you back to a lower standard, and bad habits? If the answer is yes, I’m going to share with you a distinction that I’ve made in clinical practice that has given power back to my patients.

When I began clinical practice in the mid 90s, I had a really interesting experience that molded the way I treat patients, and ultimately the way we help patients at our center. It originates from my background as a competitive athlete. I have competed in national, international, and world competitions in full contact fighting. I was actively competing, training, and fighting in the ring in the U.S. and throughout the world. In fact, in 1996, I was on the U.S. team and we fought in the World Championships. So I was fully immersed!

At the same time, I began to study Chinese medicine and immediately realized that I was in this really unique position of being on both sides of the medical system. On one side I was studying injuries, sprains, strains, fractures, and traumas. I was studying the impact of stress on your physiology and your psychology when you have these conditions. And on the other side while I was fighting, I was getting sprains and strains, injuries, fractures, and traumas. I was experiencing tremendous amounts of stress in my physiology and my psychology from these conditions, and not to mention the amount of stress you have when you step into the ring against an opponent that wants to hurt you! That alone added significant stress. It was stressful – there is no lie. Every fighter experiences a tremendous amount stress. We just have a good game face.

I soon realized that the athlete and the patient were the same! And when I began to see them the same, I began to treat them the same. When I did that, my ability to help patients dramatically improved. Why is this important to you? Well if you can extract just one gem that could trigger the athlete in you, it may be all you need to break through to the next level in your health. So, how is every patient the same as the top athletes I treat?

Just like an athlete, all patients want to squeeze the most out of life. They want to live life to the fullest. They want to be a high performer. No patient has ever come to our center just because they want to get out of pain and stress.  You may be thinking, “No, that is exactly why I would want to receive care at your center.“ However, being in clinical practice for close to 20 years and treating thousands of patients, I’m going to disagree and say that is not why you would want us to help you. You would want our help because pain or stress is interfering with your ability to live life to the fullest.

I have asked this same question to my patients over the years and every single one agreed that getting out of pain or stress was not their final goal. Instead, getting back to living their life fully was really what they wanted. Pain and stress was only an obstacle in their way. So ask yourself, “Why do I want to get out of pain or stress?” Or, “If I didn’t experience this pain or chronic stress any longer, what would I do?” These are key questions to ask yourself because they will begin to show you the bigger picture of your health and life!

Most people forget what their true potential is. They forget what their outcome is, because when you are in pain and when you have stress, your focus is directed on what? That’s right – pain and stress. Now, when you start focusing only on getting out of pain or stress, you get stuck in a pressure cooker. You know the pressure cooker. You have pain, you have pain, you have pain. So you take a medication, you eat, you drink, you do something to reduce the pain, and the pain goes away. But then you forget about your bigger goal, you’re bigger vision. You stop doing the thing that you really wanted in life, that outcome that you wanted so badly… It’s the same issue that yo-yo diets have. You gain weight, gain weight, gain weight, so what do you do? You get on a diet! You lose the weight, and then what do you do? You stop dieting, and then what happens? You gain weight!

This is the pressure cooker. It causes you to lose sight of what’s most important in your life: Your initial goal of optimal health!

Our goal at the center is to break you free from this trance. When you break out of this hypnosis, you become re-inspired of what’s possible, reminding you of your true potential. Have you ever gotten in your car early in the morning, turned the ignition on, and hit the gas and the car barely moves? You immediately realize that you left on the emergency brake. It was interfering with the car’s ability to move. What happens when you release the emergency brakes? You move!

Pain and stress in your physiology is like having that emergency brake on. We live in a culture that believes that we have to add more because we lack it in our own bodies. It’s like putting in a bigger engine, bigger tires, and using jet fuel to make the car faster, but meanwhile all you had to do is release the brakes.

When it comes to your healthcare, it’s essential to integrate medical modalities that reduce the interference of pain and stress, and more importantly to help optimize body function. The science and evidence now shows that biomedical acupuncture, one of the modalities we utilize at our center, does exactly that. Because of this, it is now being utilized in the medical system as a drug-free specialty for patients.

So, what do you think? Are you at the point in your life that you’re ready to take your health to an entirely new level? If you are, we’re here to support you with the use of science-based natural medical modalities such as biomedical acupuncture,  neurofeedback brain training, as well as dietary, herbal, and nutritional strategies.

If you’d like to find out more about how we can support you with your specific health concerns and goals in a safe and effective way, contact our office at (619) 287-4005 to schedule a free consultation where we can answer any questions you have to find out if and how we can help you with your healthcare needs.

If you or someone you know is beginning to experience symptoms of mental decline such as reduced memory and attention span as well as slower mental speed, I’m going to share with you a new medical technology that can have a profound effect on improving brain function and the quality of your life.

The most common thing I hear from people with memory and attention issues is, “I’m just getting older, and I’m learning to live with it.” No! It’s not because you’re getting older! It’s highly likely that your brain is degenerating at a fast rate and the decline is clear. We live in a time in which we now have an understanding that you don’t need to live with it. There are things you can do to not only slow down the process of brain degeneration, but more importantly improve what is called neuroplasticity – which is simply increasing your brain connections. You can improve your brain health at any age!

When it comes to discussing the brain, it’s vital to understand that any form of chronic physical, chemical, and emotional stress will speed up brain degeneration. You may be saying, “Come on, stress is all around me. How in the world am I going to get out of stress?” However, the issue is not about running away or hiding from stress. It’s about offsetting incoming demands with recovery. If you don’t offset these high stressors by implementing lifestyle principles and strategies, significant brain decline will happen.

When it comes to the nervous system, stress is stress! Whether it’s chronic stress from traffic, your job, or constant fighting with a significant other, it’s no different than the stress response that turns on if you have to run for your life from a tiger – or at one time, run from an enemy tribe. The only difference is that at some point if you escaped the tiger, you got to rest and recover. Whereas the chronic bombarding emotional stress of today’s world keeps coming! Our bodies were not designed to handle this long-term stress, specifically our brain.

For example, let’s use this as an illustration. You have a tiger coming at you from the corner of the room. Is it more important for you to determine the angle that the tiger is coming at you so you can figure out the best position that you want to move – or is it more important to get blood flow in the legs to RUN? Run of course! The frontal lobe of your brain is all about intellect. It’s about decision-making and planning; it is the rational, thinking part of your brain. The back of your brain is the more primitive and reflexive part. Now, your brain does not want to be contemplating anything when under stress. It wants to be reflexive so that you can run fast. Therefore, blood-flow shifts from the front of the brain to the back. This is the reason why we can’t think clearly when we are under a high amount of stress.

Nothing is more damaging to the brain than stress. In addition to emotional stress, the most common stressor for most Americans is a sugary, high-carb diet.  Other common stressors that contribute to brain degeneration include smoking, food intolerances, food allergies, anemia, bacterial gut infections, poor digestion, joint pain and inflammation, and autoimmune diseases, just to name a few.

Now, there is also part of the brain called the hippocampus, which has been shown to start degenerating at increasing rates with high amounts of stress. What is the hippocampus? It’s a part of the brain that converts short-term memory to long-term memory. So what does that look like? You go into a room and you forget why you’re there, not once in a while, but often! Or you go to the grocery store and you have 3-4 items and you forget 1 or 2, not sometimes, but often. Or you just met someone, they tell you their name, and within 5 seconds or 10 seconds tops, you forgot it! And this happens often! This is telling us that there is a high probability of rapid brain degeneration occurring. This is most often due to the chronic stress one has had or is still experiencing in their life.

So please, don’t just learn to live with it. If you or someone you know is experiencing mental decline take action now! Please, if not for yourself, then for the people around you that you want to experience a full and joyful life with! If you would like to find out more about how we can assist you or someone you care about with mental decline in a safe and effective way, contact our office at (619) 287-4005 to schedule a free consultation where we can answer any questions you have to find out if and how we can help you with your healthcare needs.

If you or a loved one is experiencing chronic stress and anxiety and are concerned about the impact on heart disease or stroke, I’m going to share with you some insights that can powerfully impact how you go about your healthcare. Research has shown that people who experience heightened levels of stress and anxiety are 4-5 times more likely to have a fatal heart attack or stroke. Now before you get even more anxious because you think you can’t control your outside circumstances, I’ve got some news for you. You’re right! You can’t! BUT there is something you CAN change, and it’s something that you have complete control over.

Before I dive into what you what you can do to prevent these health issues, let me first explain how stress impacts heart disease and stroke. A critical point to realize is that when you get stressed, you increase what are called platelets in your body. Now, why in the world would the body produce more platelets? Well first of all, what are platelets? Platelets are clotting factors. They clot! They create sludge in the body. So why would the body do that under stress?

A fundamental fact is stress is that your body believes your brain as if whatever you’re imagining or perceiving is real! In other words, your brain believes whatever you’re thinking about with high emotional intensity, just as if it’s really happening in that moment. If your body chronically perceives your boss, work deadlines, and traffic as real threats – such as a tiger nearby – clotting factors will increase, preparing for a possible bite or claw from this imaginary tiger.

Short-term stress – a brief increase of clotting factors – is not the problem.  It’s the ongoing chronic stress of that “perceived” tiger, i.e. your boss, rush hour traffic, or chronic fighting with your spouse that continues to fuel platelet production.

So think about this. If you have a high amount of platelets (or sludge) going through the heart, what could happen? Heart attack! And what if it goes to the brain? That’s right, stroke! And we often hear, “But I thought he was healthy? He was so stressed, he was Type A, but he got a clean bill of health. I really did think he was healthy.” Have you ever heard this, or maybe even said it?

Under chronic stress, the body also produces hormones such as cortisol and epinephrine that can, over time, damage heart muscles. These hormones scar the blood vessel walls of the heart and brain. This leads to build-up of plaque and those platelets mentioned earlier. These factors are MAJOR risks for heart disease and stroke. Yes, the cause may have been high platelets, cholesterol, or inflammation, but it is not the source.  The source is chronic stress.

In today’s world, more than any other time in history, we are getting overloaded and bombarded with high demands, and the problem is that we aren’t offsetting our stress with recovery. If you keep on pushing and keep on pushing, what’s going to happen? You’re going to overload the nervous system, which is basically the circuit panel of the body.  It’s no different than your home. Think about the electrical circuit panel in your house. If you turn on every single electrical appliance full-blast, with everything cranked up, and then you get an oversized heater and you plug it in and you crank it all the way up, what do you think is doing to happen? That’s right, you’re going to blow a fuse.

As annoying as that is, we have to remember that it’s a protective system. If we did not have that system, what could happen? There could be a fire, or an explosion! We have a very similar system in the body. We won’t explode or catch on fire if something goes wrong, but when you overload nerves of function, your body also goes into a self-protection mode.

It doesn’t start with the big conditions or big diseases. Rather, to protect you, your body starts by shutting down function. It starts to reduce function because there is a high amount of power and demand, or in other words a high amount of stress! If you drive a high amount of power, or high demands also known as stress into the heart, what could happen? You could have a heart attack!

Fortunately, you have the power to make a change. This change is about shifting the way you go about your healthcare. In other words, it’s about shifting your focus from only treating disease, signs, and symptoms to begin treating the source. And the source is always a breakdown in function. In order to support body function, we must begin looking not only at diet, lifestyle, and exercise, but even more importantly at a change in your standard of health AND the mindset behind it.

This mindset is not about changing the external factors of stress, but rather your ability to handle the stressors of life and how you process these experiences in your body. This is not an easy task. But after seeing thousands of patients in my nearly 20 years of clinical practice, I found that this plays a major role in breaking through these conditions. When you re-train your mind to this high standard of health, your health changes for the better!

This standard and mindset is exactly what we use here at the center to help patients break through health conditions that most say are impossible. Utilizing Chinese medical principles that have evolved over 3,000 years combined with 21st century technology such as neurofeedback brain training and biomedical-based acupuncture as well as dietary, herbal, and nutritional therapy based on blood tests, hormone panels, and other diagnostic markers, you have the ability to use the best of all medicines.

If you’d like to find out more about how we can support you in raising your standard of health in addressing specific health concerns, in a safe and effective way, contact our office at (619) 287-4005 to schedule a free consultation with one of our functional medicine specialists where they can answer any questions you have to find out if and how we can help you with your healthcare needs.

Are you always getting sick, or maybe you know someone who struggles with a chronic immune issue? If you’re in a frequent state of stress, which often extends for long periods of time, your immune system is being suppressed! Ultimately, this stress is what leads to a compromised immune system.

Over the years, my patients would commonly tell me that they experienced a significant amount of stress prior to an illness, but they never seemed to see a connection. Instead they blamed it on a sick coworker or family member, or that “evil flu bug” that’s been reported as the “worst” in history. I also hear people say, “Sure I’m stressed. I have a lot of stress around me. What do you expect?”

But here’s the thing: Life will come at you. You’ll experience everything from constant high demands of your job to family stress and unexpected tragedies. The KEY to offsetting these high demands – also known as stress – is not about changing the world around you, at least not as your first priority. The primary focus is about changing something inside of you, specifically your psychology and physiology. But first, let’s first provide you with a better understanding of the stress and immune connection and why you get sick under chronic stress.

Here’s the premise: Cortisol , a stress hormone, suppresses antibodies. Antibodies are like the immune system’s military police.  They identify and neutralize those bad things like viruses and bacteria. If you continue to bombard the body with cortisol at high frequency, duration, and intensity, these protector antibodies become suppressed.

There’s also a flip side to this! When surgeons perform an organ transplant, they need to suppress the immune system for a period of time so that the body does not reject the organ. So what do think they use? They use steroids, which are an external form of cortisol, which is that stress hormone that we just talked about. This is because if the immune system isn’t suppressed, the new organ could get rejected. Now normally that’s a good response, but definitely not in this case when we want to get past the immune system to keep that organ functioning with the rest of the body.

When you get stressed chronically, it is directly suppressing your immune system. So what do we do to offset these high demands? You can move to a tropical island, but the only problem is that you take you with you. This true solution is to increase your recovery from those hits of stress.

Your job is always going to push you. The people around you will continue to hit those emotional buttons. That evil flu bug will come back every year – bigger, badder, and stronger! Even in my own personal practice, I can tell you beyond the shadow of a doubt that I will not get sick even though I’m around sick patients ALL day. The only time I begin to notice my body break down is when I’m not offsetting the high demands with recovery.

So what in the world does “recovery” mean? When I’m pushing real hard and feeling like I’m getting out of balance, I get honest with myself and do an internal check by asking myself, “Where in my diet and exercise am I lagging behind? Am I getting enough downtime and sleep? Am I holding any negative emotions about myself or others?” You may be thinking, “Really? Emotions?” Yes! What’s interesting is that the Chinese figured out over 3,000 years ago that one of the primary drivers of disease is chronic negative emotion. What’s even more interesting is that science is just now catching up to confirm this.

So do a quick check on yourself and be honest! Is your diet, lifestyle, and exercise interrupting those high demands (AKA stress) and supporting recovery?

There is so much information on this topic that it can get you even more stressed, which is not what we want! So where do we look to be most efficient? Well, I encourage you to look at time-tested strategies. Looking for the culture that has the longest health and longevity track record in history, you will see it to be the Chinese! Hands down. So how did they do it? Simple: they used their own medicine! The Chinese developed strategies to restore the body and activate recovery at the same time! What a concept!

These strategies include dietary, herbal, and nutritional therapy as well as restorative exercises such as tai chi, chi kung, and meditation. Not medication, meditation. What’s interesting is that we are now seeing more and more research validating how meditation can have a profound effect on interrupting the stress cycle and restoring health. This doesn’t mean you need to put on a robe and go to a mountaintop and chant. What we’ve done is extract why meditation works and developed exercises that can be incorporated into your daily life. See, there is a clear physiological change that occurs through these practices that’s worth investigating.

These are all the strategies that we utilize here at the Center for Integrative Care. But we go one more level! We utilize blood tests, hormone panels, and other diagnostic tests that your medical doctor would prescribe pharmaceuticals. Furthermore, when we provide nutrient cofactors (herbal and dietary therapy for immune issues), the strategy is different than that of a pharmaceutical. The primary and fundamental difference is that we are supporting your body’s immune response in withstanding and fighting that virus or bacteria. In other words, what we do is provide you the resources for your body to fight the fight! We don’t need to duplicate what pharmaceuticals do because what they do is very effective… but with potential side effects.

It’s essential to weigh the risks and the benefits. There are times when you need medication and there are times a drug-free option is the best way to go. However, more often in today’s world, we have the ability to use the best of both medicines.

Let’s discuss one more piece to this puzzle. When I say “immune response,” you’re probably only thinking of those outside bugs like bacteria and viruses. I also want you to think internal for a moment, as it relates to cancer cells. Your immune system also has what are called natural killer cells. When you suppress the immune response, those military police start to get suppressed as well. And when they get suppressed, they cannot manage cells that grow out of control and mutate. They also can’t manage cells that are supposed to die, which instead begin to mutate as well! So we want to not only think external, but also internal from a standpoint of how stress impacts the entire body inside and out.

Let’s say that you go to your doctor and get diagnosed with a condition. The condition produces symptoms. The condition and its symptoms are treated. Is that the end of the story? Well maybe, but most likely not, because the underlying cause of the condition has not been addressed. We don’t just want to get stuck at the level of treating symptoms and killing the body’s messenger. If you want to produce high levels of health, or if you simply don’t want to get sick, you MUST address the source of the issue.

In Chinese medicine, we go upstream and find out what drivers are throwing the entire system out of balance. We examine what physical, chemical, or emotional demands are bombarding the system. Consider asking yourself, “Where is my body not recovering? What key nutrients, herbal, and dietary therapy can build my body’s reserves? How can exercises such as chi kung, tai chi, and meditation restore my health and interrupt the stress response? How can acupuncture play a MAJOR role in stimulating natural killer cells, reduce cortisol output, and improve the absorption of nutrients to improve immunity?” These are very critical questions that need to be asked if you want to take your health to the next level.

If you would like to find out more about how we can assist you with your specific health concerns and how we can best integrate the use of science based natural medicine along with your current health care in a safe and effective way, contact our office at (619) 287-4005 to schedule a free consultation where we can answer any questions you have to find out if and how we can help you with your healthcare needs.

How important do you think the power of focus is for your health? Personally, I found it to be the deciding factor when stress and demands are high. Why? Because in those moments, when your back is against the wall, and you’re getting pressed the most, where and how you focus will determine if you give up from fear OR if you turn fear into fuel to break you through to the next level.

My biggest lesson on the importance of focus came early on as a competitive athlete when I was fighting in national, international and world levels in full contact martial arts. It was the internationals championships and I was fighting for the gold medal. My opponent came at me with all he had, and I barely got out of the first round!

See, in that first round all I focused on was the kicks and punches coming at me. My attention was only on protecting myself from his attacks. Now, you don’t need to be a full contact fighter to realize that if all you do is block and focus only on what’s coming at you, you’ll never win in the ring or in life. So, I make it to the end of the round and get to my corner and I say, “Coach! This guy is gonna kill me, what’s happening? What’s going on? I trained so hard for this!” I really didn’t think I was going to make it.  Have you ever felt like just giving up because you saw no way out? That’s what I felt like.

But in that next moment everything changed. In that next moment my coach gave me an insight. A gem. This one insight allowed me to go back into that second round and beat my opponent. In fact with this one insight, I went on to win fight after fight after fight! Now you would think he told me a secret martial arts technique or movement or something that I physically did. In fact, it wasn’t a physical strategy but rather a psychological one, specifically as it relates to the power of focus… With an intense stare he says, “I want you to take all your attention, all your focus, away from the attacks coming at you and shift it only – I repeat only! – on the spaces and holes your opponent provides you every time he attacks.”

By shifting my focus from what I didn’t want – that is, to get hit – to focusing only on the spaces, the targets, the opportunities that were created every time he attacked, it changed EVERYTHING! Going into that second round with a completely different focus, I miraculously began to see the openings in my opponent.

In life, kicks and punches – also known as the demands of life and STRESS – are going to come at you. If you focus only on those stressors, guess what you’ll see more of? That’s right, more of the same. BUT when you train and condition yourself to see the opportunities that present themselves because of the demands, your life moves in a radically different direction. You must train yourself to focus this way because it is a skill, no different than ANY skill. The more you practice the better you get.

Years later, this concept went even deeper into my nervous system. I had an even more profound experience that caused me to dive into the science of the brain because I knew there had to be something behind this. See, when your focus begins to shift, a part of your brain called the reticular activating system begins to shift as well, and it brings into your awareness all the things that relate to what you’re focusing on.

In another words, that part of your brain starts to direct and bring up into your awareness additional things that relate to whatever is most important to you in your life. I understood this at the level of science, but it wasn’t until I had a personal experience that it really hit me, and I’ve used it ever since for my patients and myself. That experience happened in 2006 when my daughter Isabella was born, and it was a powerful experience for me. See, for years before she was born, I would walk through grocery stores and I never saw a diaper isle. I really never saw them! In fact, I don’t believe they even existed.

Then suddenly on March 28 2006, when my daughter was born, they started to put up diaper aisles in all the grocery stores! I mean it was amazing! It was this whole new isle dedicated to diapers! So what happened? What happened was my reticular activating system said, “What is the most important thing in your life right now?” Now, if you are a parent, you know that it’s diapers! My brain said I needed to be aware of that, and my reticular activating system brought into my awareness everything that had to do with babies, and diapers were on my radar from that day on. When I first had dogs, what happened? All of a sudden Petco’s started popping up everywhere! Of course they didn’t physically start popping up, but rather they started to pop up into my awareness because of this part of the brain.

Are you with me? Just remember, because our brains cannot process all of the information that it takes in at the same time, it brings into your awareness only what is most important to you – basically what you focus on the most. So if optimal heath is high on your radar and it’s the most important thing to you, where you focus entirely on it and you’re committed to it, you will start to see more things that relate to it! This is a critical concept when it comes to the power of focus because it’s not just what you focus on, but also ALL the things that relate to it that will come into your awareness. This can profoundly shift your health and your life if you commit to mastering this skill.

What’s interesting is that over the past 2 decades in clinical practice, I’ve seen an increasing trend of patients presenting with more and more difficulty in their ability to focus and sustain attention over periods of time. That poses a real big problem not only in one’s ability to master the skill of focus, but more importantly it can be a strong indicator that one’s brain function is declining.

Brain degeneration occurs as a normal process of aging. Your ability to keep your brain stimulated and activated by way of what is called neuroplasticity is ESSENTIAL in reducing the effects of brain decline. Now, neuroplasticity is simply your brain’s ability to increase its connection between one brain cell and another. This can be done through physical and mental exercising. Everything from short bursts of high intensity exercising, to mentally challenging yourself with learning new things, to brain games have been shown to improve brain connections.

A recent advance in technology, which is arguably one of the most direct and strongest ways to activate and regulate the brain, is a technology called Neurofeedback. Through this technology, we have the ability to place direct impact on the parts of the brain that are showing decline, and make changes in a fraction of the time that traditional treatments need. With that, I also want to point out that this is a time-sensitive issue, because time is the factor that leads to more and more brain degeneration. So if you’re noticing focus, memory, and mental speed decline do not wait! The sooner you take action, the better probability you have to improve brain health and performance.

One of the primary reasons for bringing this technology into our Center has been because we are now seeing more and more patients who are showing increasing signs of brain related conditions, such as memory and attentions issues, anxiety, depression, as well as concussions and traumatic brain injuries. So I’m really excited to be able to support patients with these types of conditions. The other reason for bringing in this technology is about improving brain performance. This is because another portion of our patients come to our center because they want to keep their edge and improve their brain performance even more! They’re already performing at high levels and want to maintain and improve their focus, memory, and mental speed.

What’s amazing about Neurofeedback is that it also enhances performance in areas where one is already skilled. These high achievers are focused and driven and are constantly pushing themselves to go further. These folks include not only the athlete and business executive, but also the stay-at-home mom who wants to be at her best, or the student who wants better grades. For these people, our assessment is focused on performance and what might be interfering with their success. These people are outcome-oriented. They want to live life on their terms and want to use every strategy possible that will support their goals and vision. Utilizing Neurofeedback brain training allows these individuals the ability to both optimize brain function and sustain the benefits much longer than anyone ever thought possible.

If you’d like to find out more about how we can assist you or someone you care about in improving brain health and performance, in a safe and effective way, contact our office at (619) 287-4005 to schedule a free consultation where we can answer any questions you have to find out if and how we can help you with your healthcare needs.

A question people often ask me is, “Why is it so hard to achieve my health goals? I want it so bad!” They know exactly what to do and they still can’t achieve it, or they can’t maintain their new outcome. Most people hit the wall in achieving their health goals when they get what I call a snap-back effect. Have you ever been on your way to achieving your goal, fired up, and EXCITED – but at the same time you begin to feel something pulling you back the opposite way, getting stronger and stronger? Then there’s a point where you get snapped right back to your old ways and you say, “How come this always happens?”

If you’ve been in this place, I’m going to share with you a distinction that I’ve made that changed thousands of my patients and me forever. Once people get on to the road toward achieving their goal, they soon realize it’s not a smooth ride, because eventually they begin to hit some major bumps, dips, and roadblocks. These bumps, dips, and roadblocks are your old bad habits. Are you familiar with these? There is no way around them. They’re out there, and they’re going to get you! You’re going to come up against them – it’s just a matter of time. In fact, this is where most people get snapped right back to their old ways.

In order to get to where you need to go, you need to first replace these old habits with new habits. Over 90% of our day is habitual: it’s automatic, and you don’t have to think about it. If you don’t change those habits, they’re going to slingshot you right back to your old ways, and this is the reason why most people fail, even though they want to succeed so much!

Now, I understood this for a long time at the level of science, but it was not until I had my own experience that it really shifted the way I look at this process. This experience happened early on in my practice when I taught a class on the power of habit. About three weeks before the class, I was thinking about what was one of the most challenging things I deal with when I’m working with patients?

I immediately realized what it was. I’ll do an exam, and I’ll figure out exactly what the problem is. I tell the patient, “This is what you need to do…” For example, I’ll give them an exercise they need to do every morning or a dietary regimen they would need to follow if they wanted to achieve their goal. So, I’m excited and I’m thinking this is going to happen! I’m thinking that we’re going to handle this in short order. (Now, remember, this was early on in my practice…) So, the patient comes back a couple of days or week later and I go, “How did you do?” and they say, “You know I exercised once, and I slept in the other days. I had to feed the kids. I had to take out the trash. I didn’t have time to go to the grocery store. I’m going to start next week.” And my brain was at that point frying, because I’m thinking, “What’s going on here?” But there was an even bigger challenge waiting for me!

It wasn’t just one patient, it wasn’t two or three – it was hundreds of patients that I noticed over a period of months. So I thought ”Okay, I got to figure out what’s going on, because I am not getting this. I see value here, but there is clearly something I am not seeing.” And I knew that in order to help patients, I needed to be in their shoes. I needed to understand what they were thinking and what they were feeling. So, what I did, and I reluctantly did it but I knew I had to do this… I stopped the thing I love to do most and that is my training, my own ritual of exercise every day. I stopped because I was committed to figuring out what my patients were thinking and feeling in order to really be of service to them.

Now, the first couple of days that I stopped exercising, it was actually kind of cool. I slept in a couple of extra hours, and I was catching up on stuff that I never did. I was watching cartoons that I didn’t even know were still on the air. I mean, who still watches Tom and Jerry? I was watching Tom and Jerry. It was insane! But about a week into it, I was getting stiff and I was getting achy. Do you ever feel like that? Where your body is going, “I need to move!” But I said, “No, I’m not doing it. I must understand this. I am never going to help more patients until I’m really in their shoes.” So I held.

And in just two weeks – two weeks! – my body became habituated. My body began to want to sleep, sleeping a couple of extra hours a day, catching up on the news, and I mean it was a wonderful three to four hours, literally, it was great! So, at the end of two weeks, I thought, “I now know what patients are feeling. Their life gets busy. I’m just going to go into that class and tell them what’s going on, that I understand, and I relate with them.” Uh-uh! Nope.

It wasn’t until the next moment that I had the game changer. Because in the next moment when I thought I knew everything, I opened my cell phone and I set my time for the next morning’s training. Now, the time I wake up is when the world is sleeping – really, really early. So the moment I set my alarm, I had the most interesting thing happen. When I set my alarm, I felt this intense amount of resistance in my body. I felt this huge weight and nausea. It was so strange!

I didn’t know what was going on. Then, the next moment, my brain said this: “Do you really want to get up that early?” I was like, WOAH! What did I just say?!! I didn’t even wait for the next day to come. I immediately put my gear, put on my sneakers, and I went for a run that moment. And I’ll tell you, I had a ping-pong match in my head, “Do you really have to do it? Do you really need to do this? Do you really want to get up that early?” Have you ever had this ping-pong match in your head trying to exercise?

But, I’ll tell you. I did not stop! Because I knew on the other side was pure energy. Vitality. Strength. Everything I knew I needed and wanted back in my life. Nothing was as good as how fit and healthy felt. Nothing! Not even Tom and Jerry.  And when I got to the other side, I never had to do that again, because I finally knew what it felt like to be habituated to something I-did-not-want!

At that point, I knew what my patients were dealing with. And you know, it isn’t easy – I know it isn’t easy – BUT IT’S WORTH IT! And most importantly, my team and I are right there with you to help you every step of the way. This is why I want to give you the opportunity to see how we can support you in developing powerful habits of health. This is where we help our patients the most. We support patients, helping them shift from where they are to where they need to be. We know that there’s a conditioning process to get you to your goal in developing these new habits. We understand which new habits are required to achieve your goal. So we develop a strategy and a plan of implementing and conditioning these new habits based on your health goals.

If you would like to find out more about how we can assist you with your specific health concerns and how we can best integrate natural medical modalities along with your current health care, in a safe and effective way, contact our office at (619) 287-4005 to schedule a free consultation to find out if and how we can help you with your healthcare needs.

Are you looking for more natural options in your healthcare? Have you been told that you have to learn to live with your problem? Fortunately, there is a shift occurring in the world of medicine today and the options you desire are completely possible.

The world of medicine is coming full-circle. We are moving away from an old outdated disease-centered model called disease-centered care. With this type of care, there came a certain question: “What type of disease does this person have?” But when you ask that question, you start to focus on what? Disease! And when you focus only on disease, guess who gets left out? That’s right, the actual patient.

If you focus on disease only, you may knock out that disease, but guess who’s going go along with it a lot of times? The patient. In other words, the risk factors increase for the benefits desired. Now there are times that you may need to consider this such as a life-saving procedure or medication, or in cases of chemotherapy for cancer. Yes, it will blast out the cancer, BUT the patients get beat up in the process. Or taking antibiotics to knock out the bug, BUT it’s also going to wipe out your intestinal flora. Again, there are times that these modalities are necessary. But with that said, we now have more integrative options that can support the body during the use of these modalities or as other options entirely.

These options are possible because there is a shift occurring in the healthcare system. We are now moving away from this old outdated disease-centered model into a new era of medicine called patient-centered healthcare – which asks an entirely new question. “Who is the person who has the disease?” The focus is on you, the patient! When you come from this question, your entire healthcare changes and you start to look at the upstream issues. You start looking at diet, lifestyle, exercise, nutrition, mindset, and standard of health.

This is what integrative and functional medicine is all about. What’s happening now is that we’re merging both systems where Western medicine and Eastern/Chinese medicine are coming together in what we called functional medicine. That is what patient-centered healthcare is all about.

I often remind this to our patients who have been referred to us by their doctor. Why? To remind them that they are part of this exciting shift that is all about them being in the front seat of their own health. I found this to be quite empowering for the patient to know that they are at the center stage of their healthcare. The fact that medical doctors refer over 85% of our patients that come to our center tells us that the focus of these doctors is on what’s best for the patient’s return to health.

In today’s world, we are seeing that patients can have access to both systems of medicine, which clearly has a synergist effect, leading to a reduced need or increased effectiveness of medication. On that note, I’d like to share with you a really interesting study that was quite eye opening. This study showed that in 1997, Americans made 386 million visits to their medical doctor. That sounds like a lot! But do you know what was even more interesting? At the same time, Americans made 627 million visits to alternative medicine practitioners. That’s almost twice as much! According to Harvard Medical School, one out of every two people in the United States between 35 and 49 years old has made a visit to an alternative medicine practitioner. With such a significant increased use of alternative therapies, it’s obvious that there is a greater demand for non-pharmaceutical options. For example, medical doctors refer patients to our center to help these patients reduce their need for pain medication via the use of biomedical acupuncture. So this shift is happening everywhere!

A question you may want to ask yourself is, “What can I do to be part of this shift?” The first start thing is to have an understanding that the medical system is known as mainstream medicine, containing two sides to it. We have downstream and we have upstream. Downstream medicine is the treatment primarily of disease, signs, and symptoms. Upstream medicine is a focus on improving lifestyle, exercise, diet, nutrition, standard of health, and the mindset behind it. There are thousands of diagnoses and thousands of diseases. They are just the downstream effect of a weak link, and that weak link is always a breakdown in function.

So again, how can you be part of this shift? Start thinking integrative: Utilizing the best of all science-based medicine. Think beyond just your condition. Start to look upstream and ask yourself and ask us, “What else can I do? How else can I help myself?” You want to start focusing on thriving not just surviving. If you focus only on surviving, you’re just going to meet your day and you’re going to just get by. The empowered patient sees themselves at the center stage of integrating the best of all medicines.

Be proactive and not reactive in your health care. When you’re reactive in your health, you live in fear. When you live in fear about your health, you stay stuck at the effects of your life. So DECIDE to take responsibility and get back into the driver’s seat of your own health. In our modern medical system, the combination of multiple therapies significantly increases patient outcomes. This integrative approach has a greater affect than any one modality on its own. Adding science-based natural medical modalities such as acupuncture, dietary, herbal, and nutritional therapy as well as brain training technology called neurofeedback into your healthcare is a safe and effective approach to the treatment of many health problems, especially pain, inflammation, stress, anxiety and depression.

If you’d like to find out more about how we can assist you with your specific health concerns and how we can best integrate the use of natural medical modalities along with your current health care in a safe and effective way, contact our office at (619) 287-4005 to schedule a free consultation with one of our functional medicine specialists where they can answer any questions you have to find out if and how we can help you with your healthcare needs.

I’m often asked by patients, “What are some of the most important qualities that I need to achieve a high level of health?” In thinking about this question, I realized there are many important qualities, but there is one that standouts as one of the most common that I’ve seen consistently in patients that have made the most profound changes in their health. In fact, this one quality is really the foundation of making long-lasting change. Without it, you live at the effects of your life. But with it, the ability to make change is at your fingertips. With this one distinction, I have seen patients make breakthroughs when everyone else thought it was impossible.

This one factor may seem so simple and too good to be true, but because it seems so obvious, it’s often unfortunately thrown off to the side! The consistent quality in people that I’ve seen achieve the highest level of health is that they take full responsibility for their health. So simple, yet so powerful! It’s about owning your health!

So what does that really look like? They do not give up their health to anyone. They don’t blame their doctor, their insurance company, the healthcare system, or their parents for bad genes. They don’t complain to their friends that it’s their partner’s fault. Some of you may be saying, “IT IS my parents’ fault for giving me that gene, and that’s the reason I can’t lose weight!” Or, “I really don’t have enough time because of my kids, my job, or because of that person that I can’t exercise or eat healthy!”

However, as long as you believe that things outside of you are responsible for your health, you’re giving up your power to take your health back. In order to take back control of your health, you must get to that realization that, “If it’s going happen, it’s up to me!”

Now I know that there are some of you who are reading right now saying, “OH NO! I do complain and blame everybody. I guess there’s no hope for me.” Yes there is! I’ve seen patients get to the point in their health where there was a switch. Something in them said

“There’s more to life than this and I want it!” And they change! So hang in there.

Think about your life right now, specifically your health, and ask yourself, “What is it about my body or health that I need to change now, or else the quality of my life will never be the way I envisioned it?”

There are probably some of you still thinking, “Really? That’s it? It can’t be. That’s too simple.” Hear me now. I have found in my 19 years of working with thousands of patients that most people make their health way too complicated. Getting back to the foundations of health is what most people miss. Why? Because we are constantly getting bombarded with information, with the newest quick “fix”. Why does this pull us in? Well, because anything new creates excitement, stimulation, and basically a change in our emotional state. Then the next thing you know, we’re back were we started.

So, just hold for a moment and breathe. Come on, take that breath! Listen, I understand. Our minds are ALWAYS running and we’re just trying to keep up. So please just take a moment and give yourself a chance to get back to the basics.

For example, let’s talk about the first time I tried to get my fireplace started. I threw a couple pages of newspaper in because I wanted to create that fast flame and bam, I got it! This surge of flames. It was awesome! Then in moments, it was gone. 20 minutes and three full newspapers later I realized, “I need something that’s going to give me that long-term burn.” So what did I do? I went to the grocery store and got a Duraflame log! The point of my story is not to get caught up in the peripheral bright flames of the next best, new and quick thing. It will leave you sitting there in ashes, no pun intended.

When you decide to take back responsibility for your health, you begin to look at the problem with full acceptance that you ARE part of the equation. Once you do that, YOU can be part of the solution.

We live in a time that we can use all the best medicines. Taking responsibility means to go beyond just treating the effects of your health, and start being at cause. In order to do that, you need to start being proactive in your healthcare. This is where looking at your health from a functional standpoint instead of a symptom-focused mindset has its greatest strength.

This means that you begin to take a look at your health BEFORE the bigger conditions manifest. Even if you’re in a major health crisis right now, integrating a functional approach causes you to begin focusing on factors such as diet, exercise, nutrition, and impacts of stress on your physiology, as well as the impact of a positive mindset and of course a negative one.

Western allopathic medicine is a powerful medicine especially when there is a crisis, or a significant health condition that requires more immediate attention. The responsible patient is one who has both the medical doctor and the functional medicine specialist on their team. So think integrative. Taking responsibility means beginning to look at the bigger picture of your health beyond solely the symptoms, signs, and disease. It means to begin looking upstream and asking yourself, “What else can I do? How else can I help myself?”

We as healthcare providers are here to serve you, BUT you need to take responsibility first and foremost in your own health. You want to start focusing on thriving, not just surviving. If you focus only on survival, you’re just going to do what’s necessary to get by. You’ll do just enough to get out of pain. This is a lower standard of health, or what I call the pressure cooker. I’m in pain! I’m in pain! I need to do something to get out of pain! Then your goal ends up being to just get out of pain, and you lose sight of the bigger picture. What does that higher vision of health look like? Vitality, strength, vigor, fertility, energy! Everything we call “being healthy.” You have the ability to experience that!

If you take enough medication, you will feel no pain. In fact, you’ll feel nothing. There is always a place for medication, but don’t let that be your end game. Let medication, if required, help you reduce your suffering just enough for you to increase momentum in other areas of your health. The key is to have a bigger vision for yourself beyond just managing pain. Focus your intention on thriving. Take responsibility and integrate the best of all medicines to help you bridge the gap from where you are to where you need to go.

Get into the front seat of your health. Most people spend their life in the backseat of their health care NOT taking responsibility. And when you’re in the backseat, you eventually give up. When that happens, you start to become a statistic and your health declines. So don’t do it! The responsible patient is proactive, not reactive in their health care. When you don’t take responsibility, you live in fear and succumb to being at the effects of your condition instead of cause. So take responsibility. Demand more from yourself than anyone expects and be an example of what’s possible for your family and friends.

So my question to you is: Are you willing to take on the challenge?

If you would like to find out more about how we can assist you with your specific health concerns and how we can best integrate the use of science-based natural medical modalities along with your current healthcare in a safe and effective way, contact our office at (619) 287-4005 to schedule a free consultation with one of our functional medicine specialists where we can answer any questions you have to find out if and how we can help you with your healthcare needs.

Traumatic brain injuries can take a large toll, but they don’t have to control your life. New technology called Neurofeedback Brain Training is changing how patients recover from brain injuries, literally re-training the brain and improving all facets of cognitive function.

Have you ever said, “Why do I always do that?” or “How come I keep snapping back to my old habits, no matter what I do or how bad I want to improve my health?”

According to Socrates, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.” In my nearly 20 years of treating athletes and non-athletes alike, I’ve found that the one driving force that will determine long-term success or failure is an understanding on how to utilize the power of habit.

We ARE our habits. The outcomes of our lives come from our habits. Within minutes of dialogue with a patient, their habits begin to unfold. In fact, you can look at anyone and get a good sense of their health habits. Over the years, I needed to pay close attention to what prevented people from achieving truly high levels of health, and it comes down to this one power. What unfolds in my interaction with patients is their habitual pattern of what they focus on and pattern of language, which is basically an expression of their habits or thinking.

Two patients with identical conditions of severe lower back or neck pain, plus the same orthopedic and neurological exam findings, can have radically different outcomes. The majority of the time, I will know which of the two patients has a higher probability of improving their condition and their quality of life. The determining factor is the patient’s habitual pattern of focusing on a positive outcome and language pattern, containing within it their optimism and strong desire to be proactive in their health.

I’ve seen the same be true with two people wanting to lose the same amount of weight. One focuses on all the reasons why they didn’t lose weight, can’t lose weight, will never lose weight, and has tried “everything!” The other, meanwhile, focuses on how they WILL lose weight, taking the meaning of the prior experiences not as failure, but rather feedback on what not to do again and making that their fuel. This is a developed habit in how one interprets the experiences in their life. While one person will create a worst-case scenario, the other will create a positive meaning. Yet both are going through the same situation.

Interestingly, recent research from The Institute for Work & Health reinforces this evidence. The Institute has found that patients who are optimistic about recovery following an injury will actually recover and return to work faster than patients who are less optimistic. We see this all the time in our center! In fact, these findings support why we place such heavy emphasis on education to empower our patients, which ultimately leads to more optimism about their health.

So let’s look at this a bit more closely. Habits start with patterns of thinking, which determines what we focus on and is expressed in what we say and what we do. For example when you are injured, getting back to work or back onto the athletic field as fast as possible is critical. Why? Because like the body, the mind can become deconditioned and fall into other patterns, also known as bad habits. This could look like patterns of laziness and emotional instability, which could lead to behaviors such as overeating and over drinking. So the goal is the same, whether you’re an athlete or you need to get back to work after an injury. That goal is getting back into training or work as fast as possible! In other words, you must have a sense of urgency in your thinking to minimize that time off. This sense of urgency is a habit of Optimal Health.

An interesting effect that we see at the center is that when we expect habits of excellence from our patients to improve, they improve! The opposite is true as well. When you are around people that expect less from you, most people do less. So our philosophy is to ALWAYS expect more.

Hear me now: “We often reflect the expectations of those we are around the most.” Simply put, be around people, groups, and organizations that demand more from you, than you demand from yourself. This is why when patients start care at our center we demand more from them than they expect from themselves. This is the same for the athlete, injured worker, those injured in an auto accident, and every other person walking though our doors. We see every patient as a high performer needing to get back into their “playing field” so they don’t lose their edge physically and mentally.

See, we are all creatures of habit. When I ask most patients if they have ever developed a good routine of exercise, the answer is- yes of course! They would share that it became part of what they did. It wasn’t separate or different than any other daily routine activity. I would then ask them what normally happens if they go on vacation, get sick, or the kids are up sick all night for several days. They tell me they end up falling out of habit with their exercise routine.

In fact, when you let a little too many days go by it becomes increasingly more difficult to return to that routine. Pains from injuries pull us away from healthy routines. When we fall out of routines that make us less productive individuals, it causes us to forget what’s most important in life. This can lead to laziness, falling prey to outside influences, and possibly unhealthy habits.

According to the latest research, over 90% of what we do each day is habit. So take a moment to look at your life and the routines you’ve created. If you want to make a change in your health, you must begin with consciously creating new rituals, also known as habits. This is the number one controlling factor of our lives. Now, be easy on yourself, as the habits you will be overriding with new habits have deep pathways already set in your brain and body. Just like a record player or a CD, if you continue to override the old pattern with the new pattern, you’ll start hearing new music – basically, a new habit! So be patient with yourself and soon you’ll experience the power of new habits of optimal health.

One extremely effective strategy that I have used for nearly two decades with patients is what I call the success generator. Basically you incorporate one thing each week that you KNOW you can be successful doing. It must be something that when you think about it, there is no feeling that it will not happen. It has to have the same type of feeling or energy as when you think about eating your meals, brushing your teeth, or bathing – or in other words, something with no real emotional charge at all. It’ll just get done. So look at your big health goal and chunk it down and chunk it down until the pieces of the goal are small enough that you feel and say to yourself, “No problem, it’s done!” Each week or two at most, you want to implement a new chunk and before you know it, you will create that success generating momentum.

The oldest book of Chinese medicine called the Yellow Emperors Classic (which is several thousand years old) emphasized that one of the most important factors of long-term health above everything else is maintaining healthy rituals, also known as habits of health. Now the danger with one who is injured and unable to work is not just a physical issue but also more importantly, a psychological issue. So what I found to keep up motivation is to keep fueling the reasons, the why one needs to get back into their life and especially work, as a primary dialogue until it penetrates into the patient’s mindset. We keep pushing until the patient realizes that it’s an absolute “must” to get back in their life.

Our job is to empower and educate the patient in simple yet powerful principles to begin creating this shift. From a Chinese medical standpoint we focus on uncovering the psychological, dietary, and environmental stressors that can trigger and amplify chronic pain and other health problems. By educating the patient with why they are having what they are having, we empower them to be more proactive in their own health. This bio-psychosocial model is now being utilized more and more in the entire medical system. So let’s consider how scientific and evidence-based natural medicine, along with this optimal health mindset, can be integrated into your healthcare.

If you would like to find out more about how we can assist you with your specific health concerns and goals with the use of natural medical modalities, contact our office at (619) 287-4005 to schedule a free consultation to find out if and how we can help you with your healthcare needs.

People often come to our center either in a place of inspiration or desperation. They’re either driven by pain or compelled by possibility. They have so much drive, but often have no road map to success or they’re going in about 10 different directions. If you’re in this place or you know someone that is, I’m going to share with you a simple yet powerful strategy to take that drive and both focus and direct it in the most efficient and effective ways possible.

Think about it. It’s like getting into your car and having jet fuel, but no map to get to your destination. Yes you will move fast and far, but you will never get to your destination.

I have found the most direct way to your destination is to model people that have what you want. If you model people that have what you want, you’ll get what they get! Now for myself, I model high-level athletes because I found that in the world of sports, there is not just a mountain of examples, there’s an entire mountain range. And by the way, I want to point out something very important – modeling a high standard of health is not a behavior or anything that is an action oriented process, rather it’s a thought process, an attitude, a belief system. So it does not matter what sport an athlete plays.

It is the standard that the athlete has that makes them extraordinary. It is not the physical side. In the world of high level sports, everyone has to be physically powerful, strong, and agile, but what separates the best from the rest is their mindset – their standard. You extract that and you put it into your own life, then the magic begins to happen.

Think about it this way: If you could start taking the essence of high standards from different people that inspire you, you’ll start making changes that most would think are miraculous. Why? Because they won’t see you doing anything different physically. They’ll only see the expression of what changed inside of you. This is intangible; it’s expressed by living life on your terms, not compromising anything less than your best. When others want to give up, you say to yourself, “This is getting me stronger. Bring it on!” Living from this standard takes you to a whole new level.

To illustrate this, let me give you an example of an athlete’s standards that I model. In giving you this example, it’s my hope that you ask the question, “How can I implement this standard into my life?”

Are you willing to play? I’m going to imagine you said yes!

This athlete’s name is Jerry Rice. He is probably considered one of the greatest football players of all time. In fact, he was so good that he had about 30 or 40 more touchdowns than the athlete in second place. So people would go up to him and say, “Jerry, how are you so awesome – and I mean you are amazing – what is your secret?“ Now, if you watched Jerry Rice in preseason training with the 49ers you would have seen exactly what that secret was.

During training, he would be toeing the line with the other receivers because all the other receivers would be trying out for the team. Jerry is there with them along with Joe Montana, who was quarterback then. Each of the receivers would come up to the line and they would run a pattern – they would jog out and turn around, catch the ball, and walk it back to Joe. Each of the receivers did the same thing: just walk, jog, cut the pattern, catch it and walk it back, nice and nonchalant. Then Jerry goes to the line, steps a line, and boom! He goes full blast, cuts the angle, catches it, and powers all the way into the end zone. He runs back and hands the ball to Joe.

All the receivers look at Jerry Rice like he’s an alien. Then they go back to their own old standard, which is what? Jog back, nice and easy. And by the way you know there are reporters, their parents, all there saying like, “Hi mom!” You know, catching the ball, walking back, and smiling for the camera, just going at their own little pace.

Jerry gets back on the line, he toes the length, boom full blast, cuts the angle… He puts in 100% all the way to the end zone, for three hours, every single practice. After a while people would go up to Jerry and say, “Jerry, you made the team, why are you trying so hard, what is all this full blast, full speeds stuff?” and Jerry said, “Oh! That’s easy. Long time ago, I made a decision and that decision was that every time these hands touch a football, this body has got to be in the end zone.” This is his standard!

Why do you think he is one of greatest football players of all times? Because he demanded more from himself than anyone would expect. He did not lower his standards to the other receivers. He did not compromise. Don’t compromise your health. It’s all you’ve got, and you can take it back.

So here’s my question: “Can you extract that high standard and put it into your own life?” Realize that bringing a standard like this into any part of your life will shift everything. Why? Because it will cause a ripple effect. Think of your standard as the governing dynamic, the denominator of all the actions you take. If you make that the base you work from, then any breakthrough is possible. If you only stay focused on behavior and actions, you’ll never make lasting change.

So my question again is how can you extract this simple yet powerful standard and implement it into your own life? I challenge you to bring this into your life and see the results for your self.

If you like to find out more about how we can support you in this process in achieving optimal health along with the use of natural medical modalities, to support your health goal, contact our office at (619) 287-4005 to schedule a free consultation with one of our functional medicine specialists where they can answer any questions you have to find out if and how we can help you with your healthcare needs.